Rabbi Zeitlin

(I’ve been trying to express and share my thoughts as they’ve developed over the last several, relatively quiet, months. In order to finally share something before Shabbat, I ask you to please forgive and overlook spelling and grammatical errors, but to the time pressure. Humbly, with thanks–RHL)

I doubt that we’ve ever been more divided as a people, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The more of the entire spectrum we cover, potentially the more of full reality we can bring under the umbrella of Kedusha, of Holiness, Tachat Kanfei HaShechina beneath the wings of the Shechina, the Holy Divine Presence.

At the very minimum, and most obvious, is the gap between what those of us who have taken the opportunity to live with what is soon to be an absolute majority of our people, no longer under foreign and hostile sovereignty, whether we personally describe ourselves as “religious” or “secular”, “Ashkenazi” of “Sephardi”, “right” or “left”, and our brothers and sisters, even (especially the ultra-orthodox?) anywhere else (even in such orthodox strongholds as Lakewood, New Jersey, or Stamford Hill).

Those who remain in the Diaspora have a single duty, the one they’ve served, for better or worse, throughout the world, for the last two thousand years. That is to survive, too often within a murderously inhospitable environment. That is first, to remain alive, and second, to preserve an at least recognizable Judaism and Torah culture against all odds. As a people, we’ve succeeded beyond all possible expectations, and regardless of distortions and unhealthy trends, between the assimilation-seeking and the backwards-looking approaches, we still have our unique identity (often enforced from the outside, but still keeping us together), a continuous study of Torah and of Jewish ethics and morality, our stiff-necked personalities, our heart-tearing music, heart-soaring poetry, our unique intellectual bent (which extends beyond those who maintain talmudic analytical methods to our greater Jewish culture). Two thousand years in Germany and Poland and Iraq and Egypt, in Russia and Italy and Libya and the US, never anywhere for more than just a few generations before driven elsewhere, we’ve made it from the year 70, and the Great Destruction of Jerusalem and our Holy Temple and our exile throughout the earth, to now, when many of the Jewish People are returning home to our land, The Land Of Israel.

Without minimizing the danger of a hundred year war against any Jewish presence at all in the Holy Land, or the constant threat of annihilation (now with Iran collecting a mass of nuclear-bomb-grade uranium), the hostility and diplomatic betrayal of former allies, we have survived. We have achieved that millennia-long task. Our job now, and this has always been part of our mandate, at least when we could afford to focus on it, is to increase awareness of God, of the Infinite, in this limited physical world. We are in a time when it’s not merely possible, not merely permitted, but mandated to celebrate that God has created 600,000 root-souls (corresponding to the 600,000 letters in an ideal Torah scroll) of Jews. That we no longer need force ourselves into the strict conformity, comforting and fortifying for some, brain/soul-deadening for others, that was enforced both from without and from within these past two millennia. We’re invited/mandated to explore and live the infiniteness of The Infinite One, and to see, at the end of the day, that Infinity is contained in The One.

Each of us, growing into this responsibility at our own paces, must manifest ourselves and, at the same time, accept and celebrate our fellow Jews as they, at their own paces, manifest themselves.

We’re pushed into such extremism in Israel today. Perhaps it’s a necessary, but painful full step, part of the process of differentiating, to see our differences with others, but in the true love of Ahavat Yisrael, mutually loving and supporting and understanding that each of us is but a small part of a whole which is greater than any of us.

It all seems so urgent right now, but I’m sure that if we each step back and look more historically at the challenges we’ve faced to get to where we are today, we can confidently embrace the challenge of Kol Yisrael Eruvim Zeh b’Zeh, All of Israel is intertwined, one with the other.

Of course, there a commonality among all humanity, but let’s give ourselves the opportunity to face one challenge at a time, confident that we’ll get there, too. But, for now, if all of us, Am Yisrael, The Jewish Nation, can accept and support each other in love, we’ll deserve a lot of credit.

Shabbat Shalom

Rosh Hashanah is rapidly approaching. The first (week)day without sounding the Shofar is almost over.

Throughout the day, however, my head has been filled with an idealized version of the Shofar’s song. Tekia, Sh’varim Truah, Tekia, Tekia Gedola….The song builds in my heart. It’s so much better than any of the times I’ve practiced over the month.

Tomorrow, we all hope it will be brand new……

We learn that Moshe fervently prayed, asked for favor/Grace, Chen, חן, 515 times (which is the gematria, numerical value, of the word “v’etchanan“, ואתחנן), begging God to overturn His previous decision to bar him (Moshe) from entering The Land. Moshe’s entire adult life was dedicated to leading the Jewish People, first out of slavery and later into the promised Land of Israel, showing them how to conquer and then fully dwell in (by being fully in harmony with the perfection of) The Land. It was a crushing verdict, barring him from doing that.

But we’re taught a very curious thing when God replied to him, Rav L’cha רב לך, “That is many (enough) for you”, implying that had he prayed just once more, the 516th time, God would have no choice but to grant him his request. We’d expect that, just as you and I, in our frail humanity, certainly would have to gain our dream, Moshe would have immediately made that one additional plea. Instead he stops and remains silent, thus forever refused entry.

Moshe, a prophet, the paradigm of Prophet, foresaw exactly what would have happened had he led The People. He would have been, as it were, The Mashiach. Leading Am Yisrael as the Melech, the King, he would have conquered the land, made Jerusalem into the eternal capital and built the Bet HaMikdash, The Holy Temple. We, and the world, would have immediately entered Geula, the realm of Ultimate Redemption and we would lived in a world of eternal perfection.

Except, and this is a difficult idea to conceptualize, we would have found ourselves in an eternally “inferior perfection”. Perfect in that everything would be optimized, but inferior in that it could have been yet better. In fact, it would have lacked to possibility of ever becoming better.. Moshe saw that this shortcut, without the subsequent destructions and exiles and rebuilding and seemingly ultimate devestation and almost endless exile from which we, two thousand years later, are just beginning to emerge, without all the learning and growth that comes only from facing and experiencing pain and disaster, would have been, as it were, an immature type of “perfection”. He didn’t want to condem us to eternal infancy, being forever stuck, without having  permanently incorporated within our experience and character the essence of growth and change.

In order to guarantee that our highest destiny, Olam HaBa, The World That Comes (“the world to be” is a faulty translation) is one of eternal growth and not, chas v’shalom, eternal stagnation, he had to give up his own second deepest desire (his deepest desire being the welfare of his people).

Thus we learn that true love, the only love worthy of the name, is entirely selfless.

Shabbat Shalom

Today has been the tenth of Av–yesterday was Shabbat and no one fasts. Nonetheless, the energy resembles “the real deal”, Tisha B’Av, the 9th of Av, and those who fast, refrain from showers and leather shoes, et al., are engaged that way today.

For a variety of reasons, I haven’t fasted in years (nor can I on Yom Kippur), and, every year, I begin the day out-of-phase with most other mitzva-keeping Jews. This time around, however, I’m finding deep meaning in the very fact that I am out-of-phase, because isn’t that what this day is really about?

Of course we all mourn the Holy Temple, even if none of us could possibly have any realistic idea of what it was, how life as a Jew felt then, or what it might mean in the future, when, with God’s help, it is restored. But, in all honesty, it’s very difficult to mourn real estate and building materials, and, perhaps, even more difficult to mourn rituals we barely know anything about.

What we do miss, and I think we all, to one degree or another, miss, is the transcendant unity of a center towards which we all turned. At least for me, when I try to take a few steps beyond “feeling bad”, I realize that what I’m really experiencing is radical alienation–I think we all do.

Each of us, necessarily, experiences God, whether in Torah and Mitzvot or in Nature or in Relationship, uniquely. The only thing that really unites us, which has the power to allow us to connect with a radically different other, is The Creator,Who created each of us incomplete. 

An integral part of Creation, a central clearing house, as it were, for all of humanity’s spiritual essence, a Beit Tefilla L’chol HaAmim, a House of Prayer for every nation. In it’s absence, we can, at best, join our souls, our spiritual essences (nefesh/ruach/neshama) in superficial ways since, without that great clearing house which gives us the keys to understand-by-experiencing the subtle soul-material exchanges, it’s difficult to move beyond the mere physical (perhaps an explanation of the dominance of pornography, available universally and dominating the media) which is, by definition, superficial (“beauty is only skin-deep”).

So, of course, if we take a day like today, a day of national mourning, of focusing on just that very unifying structure that enables us to truly bond with others, if we allow ourselves to feel at all, foremost in our feelings is radical alienation.

We Torah Professionals (i.e. rabbis and teachers) don’t often talk about Unity and Oneness. In the observant world, at least, we get distracted by the details of every ritual action, Mitzva, to the degree that we forget we’re embarking on an action that really isn’t, or isn’t limited, to this physical world. So few of us are even slightly aware, have ever been taught, that when we perform mitzvot, when we pray, alone or together in groups, we’re not trying to bribe God into filling our wishlist. Rather, we’re operating on levels we’re not even aware of, let alone able to understand, to unite all the disparate energies of Creation into their correct, perfect formation, which is really what Tikkun Olam really means (i.e. according to God’s plan, not our own).

But, the raw truth is that without the Grand Unifying Context, in traditional Kaballistic langue, Shechina, the Divine In-Dwelling, which is best sustained at the Beit HaMikdash, we’re, at best, spinning our wheels, merely practicing, unable to truly join together, hence profoundly alienated from our true selves, our true potentials.

And this is what we mourn.

And what we hope we can fix by this time next year, so as never to have to mourn this way again.

Amen, Ken Yehi Ratzon.

This week’s parsha, Kedoshim (in Israel, it’s Acharei Mot in the diaspora) lists and reviews many mitzvot presented earlier. One of them, Lo Ta’ashok Et Reyecha (Vayikra 19:13) on the surface merely seems to instruct us not to take advantage of our fellow, not to charge him usurious interest. Fair enough, when a friend, neighbor or coreligionist is having a hard time coping financially and needs to borrow some money to get through a crisis, how terrible it is to gouge as much interest from him, presumably since he can’t get a loan or other financial help on better terms. Certainly, it’s not very nice to exploit someone’s misfortune, and the closer that person is to us, the worse the offense is.

But the Mei HaShiloach offers an insight into a much deeper meaning. He explicitly states that if we see that someone is in need and it’s within our power to help and refuse, that is also a sin. In other words, we should each feel absolutely liable to help a fellow, and to never see someone else’s misfortune as a financial opportunity for ourselves. 

But, as my parents, as well as various of my teachers, would have asked, “Do you need the Torah to tell you to be a decent person?”

To that, the Mei HaShiloach would answer that if can give someone a bracha, a blessing, and you don’t, even that is a sin. Although in theory it’s true everywhere that Kol Yisrael Aravim Zeh L’zeh, the entire Jewish people are intertwined, one with the other (TB Shavuot 39a), living in Israel this is a palpable feeling we experience every day. Thus, even if we don’t actually know the person requiring a bracha, we’re still connected to them and, thus, obligated.

This also demonstrates the power of brachot, of blessings. They have the potential to provide so much benefit that withholding the bracha constitutes an actual injury.

Of course, this is closely related to the concept of Dan Kol Adam b’Kaf Zechut (Avot 1:6), to assume another’s innocence unless proven otherwise. Thus we assume that each of us is worthy of our bracha as well as all other efforts to give them a hand.

What a privilege (zechut) it is to be part of Am Yisrael, especially when one is also blessed to live in Eretz Yisrael.

Shabbat Shalom

Based on Devarim 22:6-7, we’re instructed that if we happen upon a nest with fledglings or eggs in it, we should send the mother away before taking the birds or eggs. We’re promised, as a reward, a long life. Superficially, it seems we’re talking about showing an extra measure of kindness, not merely avoiding cruelty, by taking the feelings of the mother to heart.

We do, of course, emphasize avoiding cruelty, which, along certain lines, is the basis of kashrut (there are those who convincingly argue that eventually, for a diet to be kosher it will need to be vegan!). There are other mitzvot aimed at kindness, such as supporting widows and orphans, welcoming converts, visiting the sick, accompanying the dead to their graves, regular tithing and other forms of tzedaka (charity), and that is very important, but also should be self-apparent to those of us striving to live a moral life.

Zohar, in general, and the Tikkunim, even more so, rarely repeat general lessons and sentiments we would have learned elsewhere. It was written in order to draw Divine Energy, HaShefa HaKodesh, into the material world we inhabit, for the purpose of providing Am Yisrael, the Jewish People, with the spiritual tools we would need to survive what has been almost 2000 years of exile.

When discussing this verse, Rabbi Shimon first, surprisingly, tells us not to take the word tzippur literally to mean bird, but rather to mean Neshama, not merely a soul, but one of the deepest levels of soul. More specifically, he refers to the Neshamot Tzaddikim, the souls of our holiest people (throughout history, as well as the deepest parts of our own neshamot), and he describes them as those who were constantly and actively engaged in Torah, learning (intellectual attachment to this highest levels of spirit) and  Tefilla, prayer, especially at regular hours).

The point he wants to make is that those who are always engaged in the holy aspects of life, especially at regular times, can count on God, the bird, to constantly hover over them, infusing them with the holy flow of energy. The rest of us, however, who only engage in such practices on an ad hoc, catch as catch can, basis, will occasionally experience the added intensity of being accompanied/protected/instructed by God Himself. But, only once in a while.

He emphasizes that these experiences are transitory and we need to function even when it feels more that we’re on our own. He really points at the danger of becoming a “spiritual addict”, someone who has talked himself into believing he needs a spiritual high at every waking moment in order to not merely be inspired, but merely to live a regular life.

Hopefully, later tonight all of us together, the collective Jewish Nation, Am Yisrael, will experience a great sense of freedom as we, walk out of Egypt as part of of Seder evening. We hope to be freed from the prison of Mitzraim, a narrow and restricted consciousness. We look to experience our greatest high as The Holy One draws each of us close to Him.

But given that we are, for the most part, normal people and not great saints, tzaddikim, we need to prepare for those feelings to pass, to return to normal. Hopefully uplifted and changed, at least a little, forever, but we won’t remain in that “peak state” for long.

I will go farther and say that if we do remain at that level for too long, we should worry and grow suspicious. A constant theme in Torah is that we both rise and then fall. And it is this “wave pattern” that’s both normal and healthy, but also which leads to final revelations and truths. A temporary truth or inspiration, no matter how attractive it feels, will prevent us from further growth if we refuse to let it go when proper. A ladder which carries us to the second floor becomes an anchor which locks us there.

May be all be blessed to experience, personally, God’s direct intervention in our lives, bringing us higher and closer, but let us also have the wisdom and the strength, Gevurah, to go back to our lives. Yes, bringing our new wisdom with us, but not thinking we’d reached the ultimate goal.

Chag Sameach

“And who knows, perhaps it was just for such a time as this that you became Queen”

“Umi Yodeah, Im L’Eyt HaZot HiGa’at LaMalchut“

Megillat Esther  4:12

As Purim rapidly approaches this year and there is more apparent chaos in the world right now than we have ever experienced, it’s natural to feel overwhelmed by it all. Two years of Covid, a voluntary (and thus insane) shut down of most western energy resources and the ensuing worldwide economic crises, runaway global inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine on top of all the other less publicized wars currently raging, uncontrolled terror throughout the globe (including unending terror against Israel as well as hate and violence against Jews everywhere)…. I’m sure I’m not the only one who longs to pinch myself and wake up from a the nightmare, but then shocked and depressed to learn that it’s all real and not a bad dream at all. Cries to The Creator seem to be answered with eternal silence.

“What am I doing here? How can I escape?” are far from unique questions. “Why is this happening to us?” is, if anything, an even more universal cry. Are all our desparate questions going to remain unanswered? Will fear be our constant condition?

“What can I do?” 

*      *     *      *      *     *      *     *      *       *

Now, we might finally have something to work with.

No, I can’t hand you a blueprint. Neither can any religious leader….. nor a political leader. Not a scientist, a celebrity an “influencer” nor a “prophet”.

But there are answers. But you have to search within your heart for your own.

The thing is, there are no universal answers. Not even any general ones that aren’t so vague as to be useless.

Because each of us has a unique answer, a unique mission, a unique job to do in this world. We all have a part to play, but my part is not yours, your role not mine. No rabbi or priest or monk or shaman or teacher or visionary can tell you, because, just like you, just like me, they have to discover what they’re being called to do. There is no “one-size-fits-all”, no Giant Bargain Family Size. Just small individual servings.

And finding your answer, and even performing your task, completing your job, doesn’t release you. Once you finish one job you’re immediately presented with the next! As is everyone else. And then another one and another one and…….

But this isn’t slavery, this is opportunity. Opportunity to participate in your ultimate purpose, our shared destiny, our shared privilege. Man, immediately upon creation was honored by The Creator with the invitation to partner with Him in completing Creation by bringing perfection. We’re presented with an imperfect world in order for each of us to find our unique way to bring our detail to its closest perfection. Tikkun Olam, not a secular political agenda or cliché, are our individual corrections and refinements, each imperfection and path to repair visible only to our unique selves.

God participates and helps us each step of the way, most significantly by placing us moment-to-moment, exactly where we need to be to see what we need to do. As the Chenobler taught in Meor Eynayim, every place you find yourself in, it is because in the specific place and at that specific time you find yourself there, there are Netzutzei Kodesh, Holy Sparks, assigned only to your specific Neshama, soul, that you must find and raise to their highest, proper place. Only you have the unique powers to perform this, and, for the world to reach it’s highest potential, every job needs to be done. You, me, each of us, everyone is 100% essential to the world.

It’s ultimately a matter of attitude, how we choose to look at it. “Oh woe, why me?” or “Thank You for choosing me, for seeing my strengths and unique vision and abilities, for your confidence, faith and encouragement that, yes, I can do this.”

Asher Kidshanu B’Mitzvotav V’Tzivanu, Who planted and recognizes the holiness within me to perform this unique, vital, important job. 

No one of us is useless, with no purpose. We all have the potential to succeed, to earn respect, admiration, self-respect and love. From ourselves, from our fellows, from The Creator. We’re each of us invited, each of us needed. Each of us, just like Queen Esther, is true royalty.

I’ve played guitars for more than sixty years, and as almost every musician experiences, between practice time and just for the love of playing, the vast majority of that time I’ve played by myself. But, again as almost every musician knows, it’s much more fun to play with others. We live to play with the band.

Alone, we can give our personal creativity free reign, but we quickly run into the limits of talking with and to ourselves. With no one else providing their input, their unique musical ideas, it’s not long and we merely repeat ourselves endlessly. Not only does that become boring, but without another responding, we really can’t even begin to evaluate the value of what we’re doing.

Curiously, but not surprisingly, this is also the model of Torah study, discussing/arguing/bouncing ideas with a chavruta, a study partner. This word is also based on Chaver, friend and, when used as a verb, means to join. It cannot be productively, let alone satisfyingly, alone.

Synergy, which in Greek simply means working together has come to mean the phenomenon when the total is greater than the mere sum of the parts. Modern recording techniques make it easy to isolate individual parts in a performance and it quickly becomes apparent that a bluegrass band is much more than a guitarist and a banjo player and a mandolinist and a bassist. Listen to a quartet like, for example, the Julliard String Quartet perform complex music like Bartok’s third quartet, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7yfyIDdDBk. You rarely hear a bare instrument or a single line, but, rather, a full mosaic of sound. Watch their eye-contact and their other communication. Everyone performs not just the music score written for them, but joins the others to make something much greater.

Similarly, just recently out of slavery, Am Yisraei, The Jewish People, joined together to create a “communal art project”, encompassing many intricate arts as well as design and organization challenges to build the Mishkan, a portable Dwelling for The Creator, as He accompanied us on our journey through the desert, HaMidbar (a Divine Conversation). The design and execution were such that it became a model hundreds of years later for both of the now-destroyed Temples in Jerusalem, as well as a template for the Eternal, yet-to-built, Third House (Bayit Shlishi), a House of Prayer for All Nations, an eternal meeting place for all humanity to meet with The Divine at the Center of the World, Jerusalem (The Inheritance of Peace).

Mei HaShiloach, written almost 150 years ago, describes the process as the humblest vessels of the Mishkan, the Yetidot, the stakes to hold up the boards of the courtyard, as covered with copper. You might think that this indicates that they were the least valued of the holy vessels since all the objects were either made of or plated with gold, silver or copper. with copper the least rare, least expensive of the three. But, rather, he points out that in the kabbalistic sense, copper points to complete mastery which transcends mere knowledge (of the three intellectual faculties, knowledge/facts/conclusions, Da’at, is far below Inspiration (Chachma) and analysis/process (Binah). Nachoshet, copper, implies complete mastery of knowledge, in this case Ratzon, Will. In other words, even the humblest of artisans joining in the work on this project was able to realize that every detail of every action he/she was taking was independent of their individual eccentricities, but truly Ratzon Hashem, reflecting the Divine Will. Working together at this level of awareness and sensitivity and art, they were assured that every object created was precisely made to fit into the whole, completely unlimited by any defect.

Those who contributed to the materials and who participated in the work, and that might well have been universal participation, were described as Chochmei Lev, of a wise heart. In other words, inspired with a perfect balance of intellect and emotion. By integrating our complete humanity in creating a Dwelling Place for The Creator, we also fulfill its destiny as a House Of Prayer For All Nations.

Likewise, Bayit Shlishi, the third House (we don’t create a fancy designation for it, rather, just Bayit, a house), soon to be built on Har HaBayit, The House Mount, is not intended to be our, or any peoples’ private turf, but a place where each of us, in our divine uniqueness comes to consummate our individual relationships with The Creater. While it might appear controversial before the fact, it will soon unite all people of goodwill in a way where each of us feels a sense of personal ownership and belonging, as well as connection and love for all. May we see it soon, in our lifetimes.

כל הנשמה תהלל י-ה הללוי-ה

The Entire Neshama Will Praise Y-ah, Halleluy-ah

King David ended his monumental work, Tehillim, Psalms, which, among other things, contains or hints at the entire Oral (meaning no written, not fixed to any printed page, and, therefore, Infinite, like The Creator Himself) Torah with those words above.

Each of us has at least one thing inside us, a special talent, a point of view, a sense of humor, a passion, a love, an interest, a hobby, an expertise….. that makes us uniquely who we are. Many of us have several, but everyone has at least one. Maybe we can sing, perhaps have a phenomenal memory, an intense love. Perhaps we can dance, maybe play the guitar. Write computer code, find new insights in a page of Talmud that’s been pored over by generations of brilliant scholars. Some of us can run faster or jump higher or hit or catch a ball. Can defend an offender so passionately as to acquit them, can lead Tefilla, can sing a song, are a magnet to children or, perhaps, to stray cats and dogs. Some people can just sit and smile and make those around them feel good.

Parshat T’rumah instructs each individual Jew to transfer to God some mysterious matter called That Which Is Elevated. At the literal level, our ancestors were, historically, commanded to bring precious material for the building of the Mishkan, the portable temple, literally the Dwelling of the Infinite God within the physically restricted desert within the similarly restricted material world. But, of course, we know that this is also the blueprint for the future Mikdash, Holy Space, the Temples in Jerusalem. Likewise, we have been taught repeatedly that The Torah is, like The Holy One Himself, Infinite, and while describing a single mundane building project in time, It also instructs each of us, throughout history, how best to live our individual lives.

If you’ve been following my essays over the last couple years, you’ll notice that I have become very influenced by the teachings and ideas of Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, the Ishbitzer Rebbe, rabbi in a small Polish town in the mid-nineteenth century (1839-54). A shtetl where over 90% of its approximately 5000 Jews were slaughtered in the Shoah, Holocaust. At the Ishbitzer‘s time there were, more likely, just under 3000. Nonetheless, his words seem especially relevant and true today, especially for those of us privileged as well as brave, to live in Israel, working to complete our charge as Jews and Humans, to partner with God in His Creation, creating the ultimate balance of din and chesed, awe and love, while adding the finishing touches which, in any work, brings the beauty.

In his major work, Mei HaShiloach (Vol.2), he teaches us that the real mitzvah is to aid God in all of His directing that world, everything in it’s exact time. We’re no longer restricting our thinking to a single building project, as it were, and not even to it’s constant upkeep, but to everything He does in our world. A one-time event, obviously, is inadequate, and rather, the description in the Torah is meant to serve as a blueprint for our lives, to raise up and donate whatever is needed at the moment.

While there are descriptions of how the “architecture” of the Mishkan resembles, or can be mapped out, on a human body, as well as the Sefirot, that really tells us that it is a model of the Universe (as are each one of us, too). Gold, silver, wood, colored dyes, etc. is merely a beginning to help us understand. Additionally, we must first be the owners of our T’rumah. And it must truly reside in our hearts (Yidvenu Libo). And just as he hints through a midrash he brings, some gifts will be gold and not silver, fields and not vineyards, in other words while each of our individual contributions will not encompass the entirety of the project, perfecting this material world, having been “lifted up” to The Creator, they will be unified within Him, so each of our individual gifts, our individual passions, what each of us brings into this world and into Life, will complement and complete everyone else. Even if we, individually, can’t possibly imagine how our song or our line of computer code or our four meters of wall, or our love and nurturing a single child in a single family, or whatever it is that moves us to add that to the world, we should rely on our Emunah and Bitachon, belief and trust, that it will all fit together.

Moreover, each of us has moments, sometimes very extended ones, when we can account for this interest or this emotion. “Why am I the way I am?”, we often cry out. Or “Why. has this happened to me?”

The answer, from this perspective is we are each given exactly what we need, throughout our lifetimes, to bring up, to develop and to then contribute. It is all needed, each of us is needed and have an equally integral part to play.

Remember, we describe the describe Mashiach as one who will, among other things, build the Third Temple, Bayit Shlishi. This isn’t intended to be a myth or a children’s story, but a heads-up of what we will actually be called up to do at that time. So, we will each of us need to learn how to bring the entirety of our individual Neshamot, as T’rumah, into service.

Leaving Egypt, our first exile, is the paradigm of Redemption and Transformation, setting the themes for the other four exiles and redemptions.

The women of Yisrael are told to “borrow” precious items of gold and silver from their Egyptian neighbors. A lot is made of our leaving Egypt despoiled. In fact, it is this very silver and gold that make their way into the vessels, furniture and tools of the Mishkan. How can that be?

The Mei HaShiloach expands on a Gemara in Brachot to teach that even when we emulate the perverse acts of the Egyptians, when we do them, somehow, they become virtuous. He doesn’t mean that theft or rape or exploitation is, somehow, ever ok when we do it, that we have a mystical Get Out Of Jail Free Card, that our …….. smells, somehow, sweet. Chas v’Shalom!

The idea is that we transform the gold and silver, the material treasure of Ancient Egypt, once in service to the Avoda Zara, idol worship of elevating a flesh-and-blood leader, Pharaoh, into a false divinity, by using them in service to the one true Infinite God. These precious materials are no longer merely objects of display and dominance and envy, but rather shared by the entire people (and from there to all humanity and then to all creation) as they’re put to a higher purpose.

Likewise, the Ishbitzer teaches (based on a prophecy from Isaiah (14:30) that we take the most precious qualities of each society we found ourselves enslaved to and we refine them, often beyond all recognition, and repurpose them, remove them from the realm of ego and self aggrandizement into the realm of universal improvement and benefit, in other words into the service of The Almighty, partnering with Him to complete and perfect Creation (the authentic Jewish meaning of the often misused and misappropriated phrase tikkun olam).

Think of all the cultures where we were enslaved. Or discriminated against,  made second-class citizens. Subjected to humiliation, unfair special taxes, limits to our occupations, not to mention wholesale slaughter. Think of the grandeur of ancient Babylon, ancient Persia, Greece and Rome. The pinnacle of European culture and enlightenment, pre-war Germany. Of the great Arab cultures of the middle east. And see the steep decline in today’s America, accompanied with rising anti-semitism and exclusion, that’s starting just now.

See the refinement in culture and in science and technology sweeping Israel. Not just the Start Up Nation, but the lone example of real Democracy in the Middle East, most of Asia and most of Africa. A nation filled with symphony orchestras and modern dance companies, a thriving jazz scene (consider how many Israelis went to study music at the Berklee College of Music over the last thirty years!), art museums, publishing houses and universities. Not to mention the greatest flowering in history of Torah studies of all kinds and from all points of view, that is not only thriving, but growing faster than the eye can see.

This is the promise of each Geula, Redemption, cascading and combining into the final, ultimate Redemption which is taking place right here, right now.

We haven’t come close to completing the process and there are plenty of mistakes and false steps along the way, but with each passing moment we truly go “From Strength To Strength”. We are truly marching out of Mitzraim b’Yad Rama, with a high hand.

Participate and celebrate. Together.