Rabbi 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

“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

Last Motzash (Motzei Shabbat, a time for a traditional Malave Malka–accompanying the Queen as She returns to Her heavenly realm after joining us as we weekly celebrate Shabbat. A Melava Malka usually involves music, dessert-type food, sharing Torah insights, usually in a small, intimate group, extending the special energy of Shabbat, into the week for just a bit longer), I went with a friend to hear my current favorite musicians here in Jerusalem, Nigun Quartet.

It might seem strange, inappropriate even, to enjoy a concert while we’re in the middle of a war. While, thankfully (Baruch Hashem, Bless/Thank God), Jerusalem has remained relatively safe and secure, others haven’t been so fortunate–much of the rest of the country has endured almost endless air raids, many ending in actual rocket strikes, deaths and injuries. But outside the realm of military response, the best we, ordinary Jews (stam yidden) and citizens can do is to, as massively as possible, add to the positivity of the universe, and that was exactly both the stated intention of the band, (as it’s leader and bassist, Ophir Schneider) explicitly stated when welcoming the audience to the tiny, but intimate Jerusalem venue, Mazkeka, a converted water cistern behind the former main Post Office in the downtown area, and the message of their first song, Berditchiver Melody sings, “The Entire World Is A Very Narrow Bridge–But The Secret Is To Be Completely Unafraid”.

While Israel, the nation, is forced to defend itself with the latest and most powerful military technology it can invent, create and gather, Israel, the Spiritual Nation combats ultimate evil as it always has, by bringing the greatest light. With our music, our Torah insights, our paintings and our songs, with loving smiles including yesterday’s political or social rivals at our tables and feasts, marches and memorials, we increase God’s presence which banishes all evil and eventually transforms it to Light.

In this week’s parsha, Vayechi, after giving individual brachot to each of his sons, Yaakov dies in Egytian exile. The brothers, primarily Yoseph, fulfil their final promise to their father to redeem him from exile and bury him in Israel, in the cave with our ancestors Avraham, Sara, Yitzchak, Rivka and, awaiting Yaakov, his wife, Leah (Rachel, who died earlier, is buried alone a few miles north in Bet Lechem). After this final act of unity and love, all the brothers, the entirety of  Am Yisrael, The complete Nation of Israel, voluntarily return to Egypt, to a certain future of slavery. Reinforced by their unity and devotion, by their faith if the deeper words, spoken just beneath the superficial meanings of their father’s comments and promises, they are fearless and know they will not merely survive what will be a horrific future of slavery, stripped of all power and personal dignity, save what they save from their holy tradition, perhaps just their familal names and holy language, they will eventually be ready to become a true nation, bearers of Light, the eternal Light to the nations, able to battle every evil and disasters, even through today, with the total faith and confidence that we will not merely survive, but thrive, and after the greatest horrors will rededicate (remember, the recent war included the time frame we, even in war, celebrated Chanukah) the world to the greatest light.

B’Yachad NeNetzach,

Together we will be eternal, together will our light overcome all darkness

VaYerah Aylov Hashem, And God appeared to him. VaYerah means much more than merely appearing, God filled Avraham with His Holy Light, Ohr, אור, His very Presence, what we often refer to as Shechinah. Everyone who has ever studied and taught this parsha points out that this was on the third day after his brit milah, self-circumcision, the most painful day of recovery. In fact, God made the day especially hot in order to discourage travelers so Avraham wouldn’t be disturbed by passersby. Avraham, of course, motivated primarily in his life by Chesed, love, the will to give, felt bereft–not only was he in terrible pain, but his greatest comfort was being withheld, so God also sent him some visitors so he could share hospitality.

There are those who attack Judaism from its very foundation, arguing to ban brit milah. Such were the Greeks in antiquity. Today’s enemies, too often misguided folks from within, think the purpose of life is to avoid pain. And then there are apologists who talk about newborns not yet developing the nervous system to truly register pain at all, as if making the brit a passive experience that the baby won’t even be aware of somehow makes it ok.

The fact is that it does hurt, although it’s true that for most eight-day-olds the pain is transitory. But if it were only cosmetic, giving all Jewish males a common look, conformity, although mostly hidden, it would be a waste of time rather than holding the position of the first mitzvah every Jewish boy participates in. It hurts to remind us, as we mature and grow into love and its physical manifestation of sex, that this organ, intended to give, to create new life, also has the potential to hurt and punish, and thus must always be used with care, with holy kavannah (intention/focus), with love.

Timely, as the Torah always is to contemporary life, falling just a few weeks after the outrageous massacre by Hamas and other Gazan palestinians, characterized by brutal rapes and abuse, the negative potential of the penis cannot be ignored. Must not be ignored. This reminder of how Avraham entered into the covenant with God, how he dedicated himself and his descendants to only engage in sex if it is motivated by love and the desire to give life, tells us what we need to know about what it truly means to be a Jew.

Sublimating selfish and self-directed pleasure, any temptations to dominate another, to equal cooperation to create new life should be the goal of all humanity. Modeling that is our first step as Jews to be Ohr l’goyim, a Light to the Nations. When all mankind reaches this level of awareness and of just being civilized is when we have made room for God’s Light, always waiting in the wings for the opportunity, to enter the world with overwhelming blessing to all. Such a great light as to equalize the cosmic lights of the sun and the moon, Bimhayra b’Yameynu, Soon, in our days.

Shabbat Shalom

A year or so ago I spent a couple years focusing on the Sefer Aish Kodesh by Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, The Piacezna Rebbe, rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto. Beyond the profundity of his Torah, and it’s some of the most profound chassidut one can find, and his insistently urging us find God’s authentic voice within our own neshama, to always tease out what is Ratzon Hashem God’s Will, what The Creator is urging each of us personally to do to raise our souls to ever deeper Unity with His Essence, I, and everyone I’ve ever learned this with, is struck with the complete absence of discussions or descriptions of the horror the rebbe‘s day-to-day life was. Surviving the brutal death of his entire family, instead he wrote inspiring and eternal insights based on each weekly parsha. Just from reading his words, you’d have no idea what and his community endured.

I’m reminded of his holy teaching as our people have just now been thrust into the worst horrors since his time. I’m neither a reporter nor a journalist….. nor a fundraiser, and I will take my cue and inspiration from his holy example.

The Meor Eynayim discusses God’s promise to Avram while charging him to leave behind everything he knows and to venture, with only his trust in The Creator to protect him, into a new land, the Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael, to where we, just seventy-five years ago, have miraculously returned after two millennia of tortured exile.

One of God’s conditional promises to Avram, then, is that He will “enlarge”, “greatly enlarge” his name. In a literal sense, God added a heh, ה, one of the three separate letters in the transcendentally holy tetragrammaton, four letter name of God,  spoken aloud only once a year in the Holy of Holies of the Temple, at the height of the Yom Kippur service, “enlarging” Avram’s name, אברם, to Avraham, אברהם.

The Chernobyler Maggid does’t leave it at that, but teaches us that we all have two names. First, the name we’re given by our parents at birth, which is the true name of our neshama, and, as such, connected directly with the root of all life-energy. It is totally and purely good.

However, since we’re all made of matter and not just spirit, we have another name that reflects that duality, a deep, but not the deepest, essence that is mixed of good and evil. Avraham, and we by extension, are invited to participate in a life of mitzvot, not merely commandments or instructions, but opportunities to join, לצווה, Kadosh with Kadosh, Holy with Holy and, step by step over a lifetime, purify ourselves and, thus our names, so that when we finish our journey, only the purely good name, imbued with God’s Holy Essence, remains.

This is why, for the Jewish People, Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, The Holy Land is special, because this is our field to refine our names through our actions,  binding ourselves to the Holiness of the Land and the Holiness of each other, lifting the essence of the entire concept of Name, Identity, not only for us but for all mankind.

Departing for a moment from the example of the Holy Piacenza, I want to share the observation and experience during these last three war-weeks in Israel, that the level of unity and communal love is so far beyond anything I had ever even imagined. Somehow, even if we didn’t choose to be, we are here now involved in this process where we refine Name, Identity far beyond where it’s ever been before.

Although, still living in the material world as physical beings and, as such, working in the arena of actual warfare, may we bring this refinement and elevation through our actions and interactions to the very highest.

Shabbat Shalom

There’s a Bracha, blessing, we say on new fruits, on inaugurating a new holiday, when we buy new clothes. It’s called Shehechiyanu and the body of it goes, Shehechiyanu v’Kimanu v’Higiyanu La’Zman Hazeh, That we have lived and been sustained and have reached this moment.

There is a lot of Talmudic and Halachic discussion and disuputation on when this prayer is required, when it’s permitted. And anyone who has followed these Torah thoughts of mine, or who has studied text with me, or even had a casual conversation with me (since I’m not very good at avoiding my obsessions about Torah in present day Israel), knows I strongly feel that halacha is dynamic and, at this point in time and place, is changing faster than anyone can keep track (even if the official pronouncements by the “powers-that-be” rarely reflect this reality.)

Anyhow, for the past two weeks I have been forced to realize and appreciate just how precious each an every moment of life is. To be alive and enjoy a mundane cup of coffee, to have a meal, to awake to a new morning, I notice that I’ve been using Shehechiyanu as a mantra. I can’t but give thanks for each and ever moment, for the privilege of each sip of my favorite drink, each lesson or insight in Torah I’m granted, each conversation with a friend, every second with a loved one.

Repeat it to yourself, Baruch Ata Adonei Eloheynu Melech HaOlam, Shehechiyanu v’Kimanu v’Higiyanu La’Zman Hazeh.

Just as the world was renewed after The Flood, when Noah emerged from the ark, I must give thanks.

And then I can only reply, Amen.

Shabbat Shalom

Over the millennia it has been taught that the gematria, numerical of V’Etchanan is 515. We also learn that after pleading with God exactly  five hundred and fifteen times to complete his mission by leading he people into the land, God silences Moshe with the admonition that if he were to ask even one more time God would have no choice but to grant him his desire. Moshe then stands down and is silent.

Why, when so close to realizing his dream, to fulfilling the very reason he was created, would Moshe yield?

In previous lears I answered that Moshe realized that had he entered the land, could only have done so leading the Jewish People into our land as Melech HaMashiach, the Ulimate King, building the permanent Beit HaMikdash, never to be destroyed, Am Yisrael never to be exiled, veritably Olam HaBah, the Eternal Wolrd of Perfection. What’s not to love, to desire, to work to achieve? How on earth could he have just said, in effect, “No, thank you”?

In years past, I merely continued by saying that while perfect, this Eternity would be, somehow, a lower order of perfection and, furthermore, being eternal, would lock all humanity into a permanently defective reality, never to be improved. I would have marveled a the concept of there being orders of perfection, similar to the different orders of perfection that theoretical mathematicians mean when they talk about aleph-null, aleph-one, aleph-two and beyond. But I never really speculated about what would have made these “perfections” defective.

This year I think I have a clue fo begin speculating, hopefully a small insight which can help us really understand not so much the historical anomaly, but our task today to build towards and lead to a more perfect Perfection.

Much is made of the nature of Jewish wisdom which is based on disagreement and debate. The entire Talmudic tradition is in the form of Rabbi So-and-So says the rule is such-and-such while Rabbi says such-and-such. As the question is debated over generations as we try to determine exactly what is reality as reflected into the material world in terms of what actions maybe be mandated, others prohibited. Underlying this Talmudic technique is the plain reality that, as the Maharal from Prague long-ago stated, Since on God is perfect, everything else is necessarily imperfect. In other words, no matter how well studied or experimentally explored an idea, not individual man is capable of containing its truth in its entirely. Which means that any view of reality which hasn’t undergone the full development, so to speak, from the Written Torah through the Oral Torah, the experience of the first two Temples before the seemingly endless Exile which led to the development of this conversation-based reality, is inferior to the later stage of knowledge.

To use another metaphor, it is through the give-and-take of not-knowing requiring questioning and then receiving answers, the giving and receiving and giving and receiving which is also the essence of a fully mature relationship between the masculine and the feminine, which, itself, is the inner narrative of the Zohar and the remainder of our mystical, Kabbalistic tradition.

Had we entered the land with only the Torah received by Moshe at Sinai, without the maturation process, led only by a King, without allowing for the full development of a mature Feminine, although seemingly perfect and eternal, we would have found ourselves condemned to eternal childhood, to Mochin K’tanim, to a limited and smaller consciousness.

And Moshe, no matter how he longed to have fulfilled his individual “destiny” and ambition, embodying the ideal of humility, would never have imposed his selfishness on all future generations. So, a mere hairsbreadth from his desire, obeyed the Creator who told him to cease praying.

May we merit to continue to maturation, to first admit our own inadequacy and incompletion, to allow the other to complete us, and to in the perfect marriage envisioned in Shir HaShirim, Solomon’s immortal love poem, of fully equality and collaboration, Amen Ken Yehi Ratzon