Peace: Eternally Elusive?

Posted on July 26, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

Nothing is more dreamed of and sought after, especially these days with our soldiers dying every day and our hostages, languishing unspeakable torture in the tunnels of hell in Gaza, than peace. It feels cruelly mocking each time, and we say them several times each and every day, Oseh Shalom B’Maromav, Hu Ya’aseh Shalom, Aleynu V’al Kol Yisrael V’Imru Amen, He who makes peace in His heights, May He make peace on us and on all Yisrael, and let us say Amen.

In the secular world of politics, we daily hear cries for Peace which, there, is equated as a “Cease Fire”, not as an actual anything, but as an absence of “Fire”, of fighting. As we’ve experience time and again, especially in modern times, merely ceasing fire at best brings a temporary quiet, often setting the stage for even more violent atrocities in an ever-more quickly approaching future.

It seems that we really have no idea what this always dreamed of and striven after “Peace” is.

The language of Torah, the Sfat Emet, The Language Of Truth (also the name of a very deep book of Chassidic thought by Rabbi Aryeh Leib Alter, the founder and first Rebbe of the Ger Dynasty but here used specifically designate the Hebrew language.) presents the first clue, using the word Shalom to mean Peace. But Shalom and Shleimut means much more than that–it means completion and perfection. We end the Aleinu prayer with the phrase that He and His name be unified, Yihyeh Adonay Echod U’Shmo Echad, describing a future of perfection when we are all able to see the underlying Unity of all Existence, when we can see beyond the apparent dualism which obscures everything and which leads us to chase the false god we call Peace, but only mean cease fire.

As we know in our current war against Iran and its proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, any respite which will give them the opportunity to rearm and reorganize in order to attack us again and again with inhuman violation and violence, as they promise, makes a mockery of the very concept of Shalom, Peace.

Pinchas, for whom this week’s parsha is named, is promised the Brit Shalom, the Everlasting Covenant of Peace, but we learn that he only earns this through the seemingly horrific act of impaling Zimri and Kuzbi with a spear, putting a stop to their indecency which had led to a massive plague killing the Jewish People at that moment. Furthermore, we learn that Pinchas becomes Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah, the Prophet, who will some day announce the Mashiach, the once and future King of Israel who will herald the future of Perfection/Peace (that word again).

The Hebrew letters that spell Mashiach are related to the word for speech, Siach (משיח/שיה). Curiously, Pinchas’ act which earned him this eternal and honored role was done in silence, not in words. But we express our hope, several times a day, for real peace, in those words “Oseh Shalom”.

Shalom transcends our understanding, especially at this time. Perhaps that’s why it’s so often confused with the mere cessation of violence. rather than a true resolution and a transformation of Evil into Good.

For the last seven months, I have daily prayed and continue to pray for the true peace of our winning the unconditional surrender of pure evil.

Shabbat Shalom

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Restoring the Tablets

Posted on July 23, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

As we reach the end of Tammuz 17, a multi-purpose fast day in the Jewish calendar, this year with Israel still engaged in an existential war that began with the barbaric attack of October 7, when approximately 120 are still held prisoner in unimaginably horrible terror in the tunnels or equally horrible middle-class apartments of inhumanly cruel slavers in Gaza, as we begin the millennia-old Three Weeks commemorations leading to the annual mourning of the Churban, destruction of our Holy Temple, A House Of Prayer For All Nations, more than two thousand years ago, we’re once again faced with the reality that we need to do something very differently than what we are doing……. Or perhaps not…..

In such a period of crisis, it’s hard to feel anything but urgency. But consider that life takes place in time, and many more factors than we can begin to track develop in time, as well. Changes we have made five years ago, ten years ago, even more, haven’t necessarily run their course, maybe some have yet to kick in–perhaps we need more patience to see the results of our previous hard work and excruciating decisions. Perhaps new factors, the results of other people’s life-decisions, people we don’t know and whose lives we had no idea are intimately bound with ours, have yet to begin to effect the arcs of our lives. We just don’t know.

The first of the Bakashot, the prayers of request we recite three times daily in the Amidah, the Standing Prayer that is the cornerstone of the devotional part of our daily responsibilities, beseeches God to grace us with wisdom, knowledge and the ability to intellectually analyze. These are skills we aren’t born with and can’t take developing for granted, but, rather must pray for Divine Favor to acquire, both individually for our solo journeys in life, but also collectively, as the Jewish People navigate history. We need wisdom to evaluate where we are in this journey–is it just around the next curve, even as it appears infinitely distant, or is it really as far as it seems at times like these? And once we find ourselves on the right map, understand where along we are in our route, what do we do next?

Much intellect, not to mention emotion, is wasted on the question “why did this happen to me/us?” when the useful next question is “what do I/we do now?”. For that, we can prepare, we can take steps forward, we can pray. But what if our map is defective? If, to use a modern metaphor, our “Waze” database is corrupted and unable to lead us safely to our destination?

My short thought along this line this year is to look back at the first of our communal disasters on this day, exactly 40 days after the Sinai experience of receiving Torah on that very first Shavuot, that day that Moses, our Teacher, descended to what he thought were the sounds of war and battle, but which turned out to be the orgiastic worship of the calf, our very own, very first hand-made idol, violating the very first instructions God gave us…. We learn that, either in anger Moshe cast the Luchot, Holy Tablets, to the ground, shattering them, or that these Tablets, themselves, burning with pure outrage, flew out of his hands on their own volition to shatter on the rocks of the mountain.

In either case, from the very first moment they were possessed by Am Yisrael, the code became scrambled. Our first act with the Torah was to screw it up.

Of course we can’t do the right thing until we restore that code, fix the Torah, at the very least the Torah shel Ba’al Peh, the Oral Law, the book of reality as precisely decoded using very specific and precise techniques and rules. Necessarily, we must be doing something radically wrong, to be so far off course…… Or, perhaps we’re eternally engaged in the processes of revising that code as it does bring us closer and closer, even if we’re preventing ourselves from seeing that we’re actually on the right track and oh so close to our goal…… if only we’ll let ourselves see that!

So, perhaps just like every day, we should give ourselves, along with all Am Yisrael, our fellow workers, fellow explorers, more credit, that we’re actually so much closer than we, in our insecurity (which is, after all, only doubt in God) fear. Or, with our current urgency and resolve to finally do it right, starting now, perhaps we’re a mere three weeks away from the rebuilding of our Holy Temple, may it be this year.

Brachot to all

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MiMa’amakim–From The Depths

Posted on June 28, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

Just when it seems we’re, once again, on the brink of disaster, we should find comfort that our yearly Torah cycle brings us to Parshat Shelach. When it seems we’re being abandoned by our closest allies in our war against the epitome of cruelty and evil, Hamas, whose very name means violence and as rocket attacks from the north, threatening the very center of our spiritual tradition, Tzfat, we read how our top leaders were so overwhelmed by the challenges facing us as we were about to finally enter The Land, that all they could find to talk about was our certain defeat at the hands of enemies greater and stronger than us.

In that historical time, we were, indeed, denied our destinty once we had fallen to the depths of denying it to ourselves, and it was decreed that we’d spend the next forty years wandering aimlessly in the wilderness. But we could be forgiven then, since we hadn’t yet received the lesson, that we fall both in order to ascend, but also to lift those shards of holiness that had fallen from the primal holiness in order to provide us with a holy mission.

Of course, we acknowledge, God could have just as easily created a fully perfect world as He did create the one we, instead, inhabit. filled with imperfections which are also our opportunities to transcend ourselves, to become God-like, as much as possible, by partnering His perfecting Creation. Throughout our individual lives and throughout our journey as Humanity, at least the idealized version of Humanity, Am Yisrael, our task is to find all the fallen pieces, all that was too holy as it first appeared and thus had to fall to the greatest depths in order to become accessible to us and lift them up, repaired and able to take their destined place and role as we transform what merely is to what it can potentially become.

Perhaps our greatest tool in this task is our ability to analyze, the separate the spark from the husk, to see the potential and the path to that potential, to achieve wisdom, da’at. 

In the story of the Spies, Meraglim, in Parshat Sh’lach, only two out of twelve were able to see beyond their own fear, beyond their own individual limits as individuals, and imagine our true potential as Am Yisrael. Likewise, in the months before we were so cruelly invaded and butchered and abused, so many of our so-called leaders, our self-appointed elites, cried out weekly, if  not more frequently, that we were incapable of fulfilig our task of fully settling this holy land. That we lacked the merits to be the true owners of this real estate even though we’d already undergone the miracle of returning and resestablishing a state after two thousand years. So much self-doubt, so much refusal to see God.

But the lesson of this Torah reading is that if we don’t enter the land immediately, we will after a limited period. And even if we didn’t, at that time, take possession once and for all, but, instead, face additional exiles, but after those exiles we will, as we have, return to claim our eternal place in this, our Eternal Homeland.

This time, let’s stop before giving in to despair. Let’s fill ourselves with the Love and Faith, Ahava ve’Emunah, that we are here this time to stay, and not just to barely survive, not just to continuously fight for our existence, but to thrive and lead the world, from the deepest depths, to the highest heights.

Shabbat Shalom

(For more details on these ideas, study carefully the Meor Eyayim by Menachem Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl (1730 – 1787), the founder of Chernobler Chassidut, Parshat Sh’lach L’cha.)

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Descent

Posted on June 11, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

A well-known principle in Kabbalah is  that of descent for the sake of later ascent, as it says in Mishlei (24:16), “a Tzaddik falls seven times and then he rises.” Much of the world of  Chassidut (see, especially, the Meor Aynayim (the first Chernobler Rebbe) provides a way of understanding our falls as the mechanism by which we are directed to descend in order to retrieve and then redeem those klippot, broken shards embedded deep in the very structure of Creation. which are directly connected to our individual neshamot, souls, in order to repair and restore Creation to its originally intended state.

As the universe was originally created, it hadn’t yet developed the capacity to give and receive (one of our prime contributions as human beings is to bring that momentum/relationship into existence). Thus with the enormous input of Divine/Cosmic energy and no place to keep it, it shattered into small pieces scattered all over the universe, leaving everything with the unrealizable potential of infinite creativity, but unable to exercise it until it was reorganized and reconnected, until we repair, m’taken it.

On Shavuot, God Himself descends, comes down to our level, in order to give us Torah. Following His own rules (as it were), just as we do, he descended in order to rise, to bring each of us as individuals, and to all of us together as Am Yisrael, Torah, as yet defective as we, The Jewish People, are not yet involved and fully engaged with it through it’s system of mitzvot (both “commandments, but, more deeply, mechanism of joining together) in order to recognize each Jew and raise each of us up to our unique highest level.

As Moshe is commanded to take our census, the count (or, literally, to raise the head) of every Jew, according to our name, our true name, all the combinations and permutations of the letters (with their associated numbers (gematria)), encompassing the entirety of our personalities and our capacities to love and form relationships with God and with other people and with all Creation. Also according to Gilg’lutam, literally according to our skulls (perhaps our intellectual capabilities) but also according to the pre-determined (but as yet unrevealed (to us)) incarnations each of us will have to undergo in order to complete our individual journeys/missions upon this earth, within this life.

Our process/mission/obligation is to repeatedly go down, to descend into the sweaty world of work and effort and frequent disappointment and failure, to eventually transform all our challenges into the successes of achievement and purification, filtering away the energy of failures while presenting to the world the rectified version (this is the actual real meaning of tikkun olam, perhaps the most misused (too often deliberately) and mis-understood concept in contemporary Judaism) of every aspect of reality as it is ultimately fashioned and designed by the Holy Creator Himself.

It’s important to know, each time we re-engage and face a new challenge, that initial failure is probably built in, but that it is for our, and the world’s, ultimate benefit. Sort of like reaching all the way to the ground with a ball, in order to hurl it as high as we can, our serial failures until success provide the necessary momentum to eventually succeed, to raise each thing we come into contact with to it’s very highest potential.

We receive the Torah this year, just as we do each year, and, just like each year, we really don’t know what to do with it. We don’t know how to solve the challenges each new encounter with it will present to us. Perhaps our challenge(s) this time will be halachic (details of how to perform Jewish rituals or prayer to to administer an authentic justice system (that transcends our short-term thinking), perhaps they will be ethical. Since everything is included in Torah, these challenges can also come in science, technology, diplomacy….. But, and perhaps this is the sign it’s our authentic, individual challenge, at first we won’t have a clue how to reach a solution.

But built in to the system of Torah is our methodology, which we learn by observing and then imitating the world of Oral Torah, i.e. Talmud, and that’s often by being presented solutions points of view completely different from our own. In the process of refining our own thinking, we can reinforce our original thinking or, more often, adjust it by incorporating other points of view. Acknowledging our own necessarily limited knowledge, both from incomplete information or from unwittingly imposing our likes and dislikes, i.e. emotions, on our “facts”, we rely upon and only grow from the competition of ideas.

There are other times and situations, of course, where other tactics and other methodology applies. The main thing is to always keep in mind that our opinion is likely wrong, or, at best, incomplete, and that we’re just a fragment of the process and the journey to reach the truth. In other words, we need to continuously fall (fail) and rise, to eventually perform our authentic part in the process of Talmud Torah, Torah study (with study as a creative, and not merely passive, action).

May we all face our challenges and failures, even our occasional successes and triumphs, with love and gratitude, and may we continue our efforts and contributions to the overriding project we are, and have been and will be, gifted by this Holy Torah. 

Chag Sameach

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Rational Vs. Irrational Love

Posted on May 31, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

The Torah talks about Chokim as a class of mitzvot, commandments which have no reason, i.e. are irrational. There is no obvious benefit to performing that mitzva beyond, perhaps, demonstrating ones commitment to and membership in Am Yisrael, the Jewish People.

Merely doing something irrational, because it’s irrational, of course is of no benefit to anyone and we should avoid that.

How can we know the difference if intellectual and/or logical analysis yields no data?

Perhaps that’s the value, in itself, of being part of a people. A people with three and a half millennia of traditions and practice, rather than just aiming to be an “inspired individual”, hoping for a flash of insight or motivation and then going off on our own to fulfill that vision.

Merely following what’s been done in the past because it has been accepted also leaves us wanting. Our situation is always different and today, as a sovereign people, at least those of us lucky/bold enough to live in Israel under our own, imperfect as it is, sovereignty, differs from that of Jews any time in the past.

But being part of community, not merely individual and independent agents, but being part of a living, growing, changing and developing society forces us to consider our effect on others and on the group also.

There isn’t an easy answer, and we would’t want one because that would limit the infinite which is our Neshamot and their connections with the Ultimate Spiritual Source, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, The Holy One Blessed Be He.

Each day is a challenge, which is a good reason to wake up every morning filled with love and gratitude and hope.

Shabbat Shalom

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A New Focus

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

These are preliminary thoughts on what has become a very popular custom during the days between Pesach and Shavuot. I am only offering here observations and, perhaps, proposed directions, but not any concrete or comprehensive practice. These need to be considered and debated by our greatest minds and greatest hearts.

It has become very popular in many circles to associate the seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuot, of counting the Omer, known as S’fira, with a seven-by-seven matrix of the seven Sefirot, celestial spheres, an analysis of the Divine holy energy with which God created, sustains and develops the universe. Obviously, the very structure of seven weeks of seven days lends itself to these meditations, as do the phonetic similarity of laSaper (remember that in Hebrew P and F are usually interchangeable) (counting) and Sefira (each one of these seven discreet types of energy). Countless books have been written as guides and explanatins and explorations over the fifty years, both by traditional/religious Jews and less observant “progressive” Jews.

Simply, using this system, we assign in order Chesed (Love), Gevurah (Strength), Tiferet (Beauty/Balance), Netzach (Victory/Eternity) , Hod, (), Yesod and  Malchut to each week and further subdivide each week into seven days with the same sefirotic influence. For example, the first week contains chesed within chesed, gevura within chesed, tiferet within chesed,  (love within love, power (strength) within love, beauty/balance within love, etc.) The second week love within Power/Strength, Power/Strength within Power/Strength, Beauty/Balance within Power/Strength) and similarly for all seven weeks (7 x 7 = 49 days, with Day 50 Shavuot, receiving the Torah). This is all very well and satisfying, but only as far as it goes!

The shortcoming with these meditations is that they focus exclusively on the emotions rather than the intellect. As far as they go, they’re fine and beautiful, but especially in these days, with so many existential challenges bombarding us, I fear that many of us, and certainly all of us collectively, lack the intellectual power to solve them. Perhaps this is paralleled by the idea that “facts don’t care about our feelings”. Although we do need to develop and practice “emotional intelligence”, that’s not enough. (Just as intellect isn’t enough….)

In the expanded/complete Sefirot system there are ten (related to the Eser Dibrot, ten sayings “commandments”). From Sefer Yetzira, and other books, we learn that our total reality is “constructed” as the set of all these influences and their inter-connections. (Relate to most String Theory physics interpretations which, “coincidentally” is also made of of ten vibrating strings/chords/coils. This also dovetails with Einstein’s theories demonstrating the continuum of energy/matter (since matter is, in this view, constructed of vibrating energy). The upper three, Keter (Crown, top of the head, the place we receive and initiate inspired creative thought), Chochma (Intelligence, the right hemisphere of the brain, these inspirations themselves) and Bina (analysis, parsing *from the word בין, beyn, between (taking a concept into components)., associated with the left hemisphere). These two, Chochma and Bina then resolves into Da’at (but in most sefirotic systems Keter  and  Da’at alternate–if one is present the other “disappears” in potential, leaving three (so the total with the lower seven remains ten). Anyhow, Da’at is actual knowledge (often represented by the mouth or larynx–we can (should) only say what we actually know!)

Anyhow, my point isn’t to unify Torah with high-energy physics (although ultimately they must be harmonic with each other),  but to point out that or practice over the last couple centuries (these Omer/Sefira meditations are actually very new, even if they are based on ancient texts, most dating back only two hundred years of so.) Rather, I want to propose, although I don’t at this point have a specific scheme how-to, we incorporate either into this period or perhaps another one (the three weeks before Tisha b’Av suggests itself as a possibility) a meditation to be devised, strengthening, coordinating and reinforcing these three “upper” sefirot which are associated with the intellectual.

Perhaps we can introduce a slightly more complicated meditation incorporating these three (four) additional “layers”, or, as I suggested, perhaps introduce them at their own separate time in the yearly calendar.

In any event, one this is apparent to me now and that’s we’re completely unprepared to face new challenges, both in terms of existential challenges and also, more importantly, the challenges of transitioning our tradition and halacha and prayers from merely surviving as exiles in an extremely hostile environment to developing, strengthening and refining our relationship with the Creator, our unifying the physical with the spiritual, since it appears that restoring that relationship in an ultimate way (also described as re-elevating the feminine with the masculine, but also realigning them from Achor l’Achor back-to-back, to Panim l’Panim, Face-to-Face, so true communication and collaboration can occur.

As for now, let us all prepare to cross the Reed Sea, Yam Suf into that intermediate stage, the desert, Midbar (realm of words/speech dibbur) between the slavery of constriction (Mitzrayim, Egypt) and the ultimate freedom of Yisrael.

Chag Sameach

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Is This Pesach Different From All Other Pesachs?

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

Yes, this is the first time in the lifetimes of most Jews alive today that we, as a people, are under so much attack on so many fronts. The cornerstone of Zionism, that if only we had a country with an army to defend us, we could genuinely bid “Never Again” to genocide. Certainly, for the first time we can conceive of there is a significant body of Jewish hostages, cruelly kept as human shields, as bargaining chips and just to enjoy Jewish vulnerability that we had all thought was finally a thing of the far distant past.

Serious people seriously ask can we halachically, in accordance with Jewish religious law, greet each other with the phrase Chag Sameach, may you festival be joyous? Shall we sing the beloved songs concluding the Seder? Can we possibly fulfill the Torah injunction, V’Samachta b’Chagecha, and you shall rejoice in your festival? And even if we can, technically, isn’t it possibly in monumental poor taste to carry on as usual?

Of course the Nation of Israel remains at a war begun just over half-a-year ago, at the conclusion of the previous Chag, Sukkot, on it’s concluding holiday, Simchat Torah (remembering the multiple ironies that Sukkot itself is called Z’man Simchateinu, the Time Of Our Happiness and Simchat Torah means and celebrates Joy In Our Torah). For those of us living in the State of Israel, not a one of us is untouched, there being zero degrees of separation here between us. We all remain obsessed over the hostages, however many even remain alive, and our committed to their return (or to our forcing their return, either by military pressure of, invoking the old and hard to recall triumph of the rescue at Entebbe almost fifty years ago (July 4th, 1976, heroically led by the brother of our current Prime Minister, Binyomin Netanyahu (who also participated in that rescue), Yonatan Netanyahu).

Yes, all that is true, but those who advocate reducing or eliminating the joy miss the greater point.

Joyously celebrating each of our festivals is, as I mentioned, a Torah injunction, a Mitzvah. Not only are mitzvot eternally binding, the very meaning of mitzvah, which comes from the root צוות, which means a tightly bound group, means to join. While our personal experience might be significant to our individual spiritual journeys, our collective mitzvot, like this one, joins us together across place and through time, making us the unique nation, Am Yisrael who we are.

It’s not that we’re smarter than others or more successful, more virtuous or more gifted by God that defines us as a people, so much as it is our three -and-a-half thousand year commitment to binding ourselves together under the sovereignty of The Creator.

Some might try to define our insistence on happiness, davka, especially, on this year’s chag as a sign of resilience under fire, as it were. But nothing is further than the truth.Rather it is our gutty realism. Pesach is eternal. The current war, like all wars, is just in passing. As a people, we’ve experienced many wars, many of them much more threatening and damaging and existential, than this one.

Perhaps because the US has never been invaded, Americans have an unrealistic fear and revulsion to war.

Sure, it’s a drag and no one, I repeat NO ONE here is untouched, but life goes on. Israel remains in the “top happiest countries” list. Perhaps it’s a matter of expectations and, more likely, there’s a translation error. “Shalom”, Peace, for which we pray at least three times every day, doesn’t mean the absence of battles, but a sense of completion and fullness. That we have yet to reach those goals is no reason to end the millennia of hard work so ingloriously.

Together we will be victorious

Chag Sameach

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Do We Really Listen?

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

VaYikrah begins a new book of the Torah and is always read close to Purim. It begins with one of the rare curiosities in our tradition in that the word itself, ויקרא is always written in a Torah scroll with a small א, Aleph. Is it really there and what difference is there if it is or it isn’t?

Perhaps it really isn’t an א, an Aleph? Could it be an ע, Ayin, which is often pronounced similarly? With an א, as traditionally read, it means “And He called”, God to Moshe. קרע, with an Ayin, would mean And He tore, which, given B’nei Yisrael’s behavior at Sinai and just after, is not an impossible reading. More than once in the Torah, God threatens to destroy the Jewish People and ot make a new nation from Moshe and his descendants, presumably more compliant. And each time, Moshe, mirroring Avraham arguing to save the people of Sodom, argues to save Am Yisrael.

It could also mean that God usually needs to shout to get Moshe’s attention and it could mean that even, at least at this time, Moshe is so eager to hear these holy words that even when they come as a whisper, he hears them fully.

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Purim Sameach

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Living With Both Eyes

Posted on March 10, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

Any mature understanding of the Torah requires simultaneously reading both for literal meaning and for metaphor. Perhaps no other topic requires this as much as does the Mishkan, the proto-Temple in the desert, a physical structure in which we are to carry out most of our ritual practices as well as (and primarily) a place for God to dwell (V-Shachanti B-Tocham). This ability to read the metaphor along with the pshat was pointed out to me by a friend and colleague, Rabbi Shimon Benzaquen in Seattle, who explained that the ability to balance halachic observance with social balance comes from the weekly reading of Shir HaShirim, The Song Of Songs, on the surface a rather explicit secular love poem. For it to even have a place in our religious tradition, it must (and does) have a deeper meaning, the intimate relationship between God and Man and between the Creator of the Universe and The Jewish People. (Similarly, the Song Eishet Chayil on Friday evenings before Kiddush, too often consigned as a token thank you to the wife who prepared the meal–it too is a description of the complex relationship of giving and receiving between HaKadosh Baruch Hu and Yisrael).

The Meor Eynayim draws many parallels between the absence of the Mishkan, which will manifest itself in the future, b’Ezrat Hashem, as the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, and the absence of Da’at, wisdom, as personified by Moshe (Moses) from this world. As he explains, building the Mishkan brought, for the first time in human history (at least since Edenic times we really have no grasp of or understanding of), a full manifestation of Da’at in this world. For the short time it stood, we operated (at least the spiritual aspects of our national existence and personal spirituality), in the most effective way possible truly bringing light to the world.

It was, possibly, the only time (including the eras of the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem) where universal peace was at least potentially possible, creating a world where each people and each person received exactly, and in exact measure, what he or she needed to live to their fullest potential.

(There are a number of easily available rabbinic resources discussing both the vessels of the Temple and its construction–I’ll refer you to the commentaries of the Malbim (Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michael, 1809-1979) and also the Mishakanot Elyon by the Ramchal (Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzatto) 1707 – 1746), both in ancient times and in the future.)

It’s hard to judge it merely coincidental that we have been reading these parshiot which discuss the Mishkan in these weeks, both in the context of the current defensive war we are fighting against Hamas and other jihadists, and in the context of Israel’s future, the ingathering of exiled Jews throughout the planet, and the specific proximity to Ramadan, which, although it started as a religious fast/feast period of meditation and prayer, has evolved, especially in the last several years as a time for intifada, religiously-driven attacks especially against Israel. Once again, we anticipate (although pray against) a month of unspeakable violence and cruelty focused on the El Aksa Mosque.

Just imagine if Temple Mount once again hosted the Bet HaMikdash, manifesting the wisdom of Moshe radiating to the entire world (Bet Tefillah L’Kol HaAmim–A House of Prayer To All Nations). That it were to fulfill its holy function to unify all mankind in love and holiness rather than a particularist, exclusivist and violent nightmare.

The Meor Aynayim emphasizes the close textural connection between erecting the Mikshkan and observing Shabbat. He also connects the building of the Mishkan to our job in this world of completing and perfecting the world and of complete, in-depth immersion in Shabbat preparations as literally building the Mishkan as our proper Work for the weekday, which we weekly complete, bringing and re-bringing the Mishkan into physical and permanent manifestation

May this upcoming month, Adar II, in which we will celebrate Purim, refocus and rededicate us all to building, together, this ideal House Of  Prayer, which will redeem the entire world, heralding, indeed, the new dawn, Ayelet HaShachar.

May the entire world enjoy only Brachot, Blessings.

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The Secret To Falling

Posted on January 5, 2024 by Harry Zeitlin

“And these are the names of Bnei Yisrael who came to Egypt” (Shemot 1:1)

Many Chassidic lessons are based on a verse in Mishlei (Proverbs), 24:16. כי שבע יפול צדיק וקם, a Tzaddik falls seven times and (then) rises. With the vicissitudes everyone’s life follows, the path is never one of constant progress. Everyone stumbles as they make their way, but to make a worthwhile life, we all have to get up and try again.

The Meor Eynayim brings a powerful insight and opens a new dimension, transforming a constant challenge all humans face to a unique opportunity each time we do fall.

Why do we necessarily fall, what do we do when we’re there and how do we reclaim our previous position, perhaps climb even higher?

God isn’t cruel or capricious. He doesn’t play games with us. Our falling, just as our rising, is aimed to the purpose engaging us as His partners in completing Creation, in bringing an intentionally imperfect world to perfection.

When we fall, it’s not merely to a void as there are no empty spaces in the universe. חיות, Chiuyut, Life Energy, the energy of existence is the matter of our world, and this chiuyut manifests itself in Neshamot, soul energy. Thus, wherever we fall, we find the presence of another who has previously fallen to this exact spot. The reason we fall, and then rise is to lift up the previously fallen soul we find there, a soul we uniquely are deeply connected to, and to restore it to it’s true place (which might be higher than it previously was and which also might be higher than our previous position.

Our falling and rising isn’t merely an exercise to boost our own standing, but it presents us with the opportunity and obligation to help another. Our subsequent elevation isn’t merely a matter of physics, like a bouncing ball, but a reward for our own efforts. Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Et Zeh, Every Jew is intimately interconnected with each other.

On a more cosmic, level, consider the state of humanity throughout history. Beginning with barely a subsistence way of life, we’ve formed societies, developed cultures, created civilizations while, along the same curve, we’ve inflicted incredible cruelties on each other, fought wars and destroyed both nations and the individuals that comprised them. But, over all, each time, human civilization comes back stronger with unimaginable advances in knowledge, the creation of new beauty, of new paths each of us can follow to maximize our human potential together.

As an Israeli, it seemed that after October 7 we couldn’t fall further. But our response as a nation, while it does necessarily include military action to undo the centralized concentration of evil, just as every generation is commanded to attack and destroy even the memory of Amalek, the personification of senseless evil, the war is a necessary duty and not something anyone looks forward to as an opportunity for glory or fame.

Much stronger in its expression is the unity, love and mutual support we show and experience every day. Compared to the sinat chinam, needless and arbitrary hate and rivalry that characterized Israel politics at least to one week before that tragic day, our society which unquestioningly fell, has risen.

In both the individual and the collective experience, the mechanism is the same. We’re put into a position where only we, do to our connection with them, can give a boost to someone else. Rather than merely gathering our own upward momentum, which raises us, we’re being rewarded for our service. Our setbacks, reverses, failures and downright disasters, even while some may be tied into the various reward/punishment mechanism, at the final analysis, each one becomes an opportunity to fill our finest purpose, which is to partner with Hashem, our Creator, to bring the universe closer to perfection.

Rather than fear our descent into slavery, look forward to our future triumphs. The current war must, indeed, be won, but we have no idea the heights we and all humanity can achieve as a result.

Shabbat Shalom

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