Life's Unexpected Twists and Turns

I have found it difficult to write since Oct. 7. Some things take a long time to digest. This is taking a very, very long time for me to digest and to put into any words at all.

Although there have been many points of light and moments of joy, it feels like the world first went dark when Ely passed away, and has been getting darker ever since. From May 2019 until February 2020, when I was in the acute phases of fresh grief, what gave me some degree of comfort was my family and my community.

And then Covid hit. Deep loneliness turned into deep loneliness plus isolation. Searching for ways to find meaning and to get out into the world, I decided to go back to school to start a new career – one which I believe will be truly fulfilling.

And so started a new phase. A phase of distraction. Distracted by the intense workload, by trying to run a household, be there for my children and grandchildren, and single-handedly tackle the many regular nuisances that come up in life (broken AC, car tests, etc.), I lost touch with myself to a large degree. Yes, there were individual moments of depth, of clarity, of connectedness. But they were vastly outweighed by the ocean of “things to do.”

And then Oct. 7 happened. It has been difficult to process, even more difficult to connect to my own experience during this time, and yet even more difficult to directly think about and experience the pain. The pain of all of the people I know personally who have suffered directly, and the pain of all the people I don’t know but are still part of my family of Am Yisrael.

So now, almost a year later, I am sitting down to think and to write.

What am I feeling? How am I coping? What are my children going through? How is it that I continue learning for my degree, despite the sometimes-mundane tasks, despite the fact that I feel that my inner growth is (temporarily I hope) a bit stunted at the moment, despite the fact that I do not have the time to devote to chesed projects or to the war effort?

In my head, I am taking the long view. It is my hope and prayer that my training will eventually contribute, in some small way, to the healing that is so desperately needed. I also maintain the hope and belief that my ability to grow and learn in a deep, Jewish way, to connect to G-d, will return with full force once I step fully back into that arena.

But mostly, I offer a deep deep prayer that Hashem envelope us, all of us, with His love. I don’t know about you, but I could really use a Hug.

The power to decide.

That is real freedom.

I think that most people have behaviors that they are not happy with.  These can range from speaking lashon hara, to anger management, to truly addictive behaviors.  These behaviors can take many forms and come in various shades.  At times we manage to control them, and at times we do not.  Some behaviors are so automatic that we lack awareness about them.

Why do we do things that we do not want to do?  How does that even make sense?

Even more puzzling, why are there some behaviors that may be difficult to control in some circumstances but which are not a struggle at all in others?  An intriguing example for me has to do with the laws of meat and milk.  I love ice cream, and if it is put in front of me, I will either eat it or at the very least have an internal struggle about it, if I think that I “shouldn’t” have it.  That very same (dairy) ice cream, if put in front of me after I have just had a meat meal, will not even trigger a minor struggle in my mind.

How can this be?  Is it not the same brain in both circumstances? 

And how is this related to Pesach?

At the risk of sounding extreme, I think that learning to control our behaviors is THE purpose of our lives.  And I think that the laws of the Torah are a gift in that they give us some insight into how to accomplish this.

Let’s think for a second about the internal struggles that occur when we behave in ways that we are not proud of.  On the one hand, we know in our higher mind that we do not want this particular behavior.  However, in the moment, on some level, we do want it.  Why the dichotomy?  Why can’t we just listen to our higher mind?

Interestingly, when something is ABSOLUTELY off limits, most of us will not struggle.  This may differ from person to person, but I am sure you can think of examples of things which perhaps other people struggle with but you do not, because it so clearly out of bounds that you don’t even consider it.

The problems start in the gray area.  For example, if smoking is something that is acceptable in society, and/or is not against halacha per se, then someone who has a smoking habit will have a hard time breaking it.  But I would venture to say that if that same person had a sick child who was at high risk of dying from the second hand smoke of that parent, that parent would in most circumstances be able to control themselves, at least in the presence of the child.  This is proof that we do have control.  The difficulty is in drawing the line.

When Bnei Yisrael crossed the Yam Suf, there was a clear line drawn between us and the Egyptians.  Between our belief system and theirs.  It’s not that there weren’t some challenges to this – for many years there was a strong temptation to go back to the “old ways.”  But really, that line was never fully crossed again and over time it got easier to maintain the separation.

It would seem like freedom is the ability to do whatever we want.  But what do we really want?  It seems like sometimes we ourselves are in conflict.  We want the chocolate cake but we also want to be thin.  We want to be calm and stress free but something triggers us and we find ourselves “wanting” to lash out.  So it is way too simplistic to define freedom as the ability to do what we want, because what we want is often not clearly defined in our own minds. 

I would like to posit that TRUE FREEDOM is the ability to separate our higher “wants” from our baser desires.  Freedom is the ability to do what we really want – what our higher self wants, without being enslaved by our baser, more animalistic side.

True freedom comes from consistently knowing where to draw our lines.  Sometimes we are given that information (as in the laws of the Torah), and sometimes we have to figure it out for ourselves. 

This is the beauty of being human.  Animals were only given one of these types of desires, and they have no choice, really, but to act upon them.  We, however, were given the ability to live on a higher plane and not be enslaved by them.

May we be redeemed this Pesach from at least one lower level, unwanted behavior.  By knowing where to draw our lines in the sand, by taking a firm stance with regard to what we really want and who we want to be, we can cross our personal Yam Suf, and thus experience true freedom and joy.

Chag Kasher V’sameach

Pesach is a time of miracles.  Great, big, movie-level theatrics types of miracles.  Amazing, right? Water turning to blood, frogs jumping around wherever you look, golf-sized balls of hail and fire – you name it.  And of course, the splitting of the sea is probably the most famous and awesome of all miracles.

But what is the message for us, nowadays?  Is it that G-d is All-powerful?  Well, yes.  But I would like to suggest that it is more than that. 

Let’s start with the event that signaled the beginning of the actual escape from Egypt and for which the holiday of Pesach, or in English – Passover – is named.  The tenth plague was different than the nine that proceeded it in that the Israelites were told to sacrifice a lamb and put the blood on the doorposts.  Based on this action, Hashem would skip the homes with the blood and only kill the firstborns in homes without the sign on the doorpost.

I would like to focus on two aspects of this event.  The first is the idea of Hashgacha Pratit.  If until now, the contribution of our people was monotheism and related to the creation of the world, now we were being set up to bring a different concept into the consciousness of the world: the idea that this One Great G-d is also involved in the details.  He is aware of and acts in accordance with the human actions in the world that He created.

Let’s pause and think about that for a minute.  We are talking not just on a global, historical level, but on a house-to-house individual basis.  This is a difficult concept for us to swallow sometimes: why would G-d pay attention to little-old-me?  After all, He is infinite, created the entire world, and there are billions of people in the world.  Why would He care about me? I’m less than a speck in the scheme of things. 

I believe that one of the main messages of Pesach is that He absolutely is involved in our lives, on an individual, house-by-house and person-by-person basis.  The message of Pesach is that G-d is both capable of and indeed desires to give individual attention to each of His creations.  He can skip over one house and not another, intentionally. 

The second aspect of this event is that we were active participants.  How did G-d decide who to skip over and who not to?  He asked us to be part of the team.  If we do our part, we can count on Him to do His part.  And that is a message that is also far from trivial.  When we take a step, show our commitment, G-d is there, watching over us.  The message of Pesach is that we have a relationship with G-d. A relationship! With G-d! If you think about it, that is nothing less than awesome.

The second event, which cannot be ignored of course, is the splitting of the sea.  There are those who claim that the splitting of the sea was not necessarily a supernatural miracle. According to some scientific modeling techniques, it can be shown that a very strong wind for a certain period of time could have that effect. 

OK, let’s take that for a minute as a given.  What are the odds that exactly at the right moment, when Bnei Yisrael were about to be attacked by a mighty and powerful army, this “natural” event occurred?  And that just as the army reached the sea, the waters fell back down on them, killing them all?  I think it stretches the credibility of any reasonable scientist to say that that is within the realm of possibility.  Generally, when scientists are confronted with almost infinitely miniscule odds, they calculate those odds as zero.

So this brings us to the additional incredible aspect of Pesach: the idea of G-d’s intervention in this world on the basis of time.  This is probably the subject of a whole different blog, but let’s remember that time is a construct that G-d created and thus is not bound by it.  Every once in a while, we may get a glimpse of Hashgacha in terms of timing: something happens exactly then, or events converge in a certain way such that something significant happens.  Sometimes we can even look back at past events and see how they tie into things that are happening now.  If you pay attention to these types of things, you start to become aware of them more and more, and you start to realize that the odds of all of these things happening in just this way are almost negligible. 

But whatever we are capable of seeing is just the tip of the iceberg.  If you start to contemplate the enormity of orchestrating the world while still providing us with the freedom to choose how to be a part of this orchestra, then you truly begin to get a glimpse of the awesomeness of G-d as an active Entity in our lives.  This Shabbat, Shabbat Hagadol, we can contemplate this gedula, this awesome greatness, to whatever degree our limited minds are capable of contemplating it. 

So remember, a miracle is not just a fireworks-type of event that makes us look up and say “wow.”  It is found in the daily happenings of our individual lives.  We as Jews represent this on a national level.  But on an individual level, we must recognize it and embrace it as well.

Let’s just appreciate for a moment the concept of communication.  We actually have the ability to express what is inside of our own heads, our hearts, our inner selves.  We have different ways of communicating our own thoughts, feelings and ideas – to other people! 

On the other side of the equation, and not by chance, we have the ability to take in what other people have expressed.

Aside from the mind-boggling details of the neurological, anatomical, physiological, motor, linguistic and other aspects that are involved in these processes of speech, hearing, reading and other forms of communication, let’s take a wider view for a moment at the essence of it.

Think about two people: separate entities physically, connected by thought. 

What a great concept. 

Remember when phones needed to be connected via a wire?  We thought that “wireless” communication was a revolutionary invention.  And indeed, for human inventors it was.

But we forgot that it already existed in the natural world.  That the real Inventor had thought of a way for humans to be separated into bodies while still maintaining the ability to share higher level aspects of ourselves.

It’s a gift to humans that is so basic, so fundamental, in our lives, that we don’t even notice it.  Until or unless it’s not there. 

But we should notice it, and not take it for granted.

The next time you speak to your spouse, get a message from your child, or listen to a really good podcast, just pause for a moment to appreciate this gift.

It is a gift for the living.

I put my finger on it this morning.

It’s the silence.

Of all the physical aspects which are gone, the one which is most acutely felt is the lack of communication.

It’s like somehow in the back of my mind, I keep wondering why it so quiet.  And how long it will be so.

*********

What does it mean to choose life?  What choice do we really have?  We were put into this world, and most people only leave it against their will.  (I will add here that my heart truly goes out to the ones who feel that they want to leave this world and to their families.  I acknowledge that very real pain, but that is not my focus at the moment.)  So does that mean that by default, as long as we haven’t chosen death, we have chosen life?  I used to think so.  I thought – OK, that was an easy one.  I choose not to die, therefore I have chosen life. 

First of all, after suffering a very deep loss, there is sometimes a tendency to want to join the person who died.  To one degree or another, I think that many people experience that as part of the mourning process.  But interestingly enough, I have found something else that is quite surprising.  I have found that I, personally, am drawn to life in a more acute and real way.  What do I mean?  I’m not sure I can express it fully, but in some deep way, I am now drawn to the essence of life.  I seek interactions with people who remind me that to be human is to think, to feel, to exchange thoughts and ideas. 

The lockdowns have been very difficult and lonely, and I think that the main reason for that is that it seemed that life came to a standstill.  We were not interacting with each other and with the world in the same way that we had been.  We were just “surviving.”  And that is really the point.  Surviving is not choosing life. 

Choosing life means choosing beauty, choosing love, choosing to think and create and produce. 

Choosing life means just being at one with the essence of being alive. 

Paradoxically, I think it is the close-up view of death which has taught me that.  With all of the pain and sorrow, with all of the longing for what was, there is a deep, natural, inherent pull to life with all of its beauty, emotion, and – well – aliveness.

כל זמן שהנשמה בקרבי מודה אני לפניך

Shabbat Shalom

The absurdity of the situation was, to me, striking.

There we were, learning about the incredible intricacy of the physics of human speech, the equally incredible intricacy of the physics of human hearing, and even more incredibly: the perfect synchronization between these two systems.  Each of these systems is based on a perfect synthesis of the laws of physics, the anatomy of the speech and hearing tracts, our neurological and cognitive abilities, and a myriad of other factors which come together just so to enable us to talk and hear.  The fact that we can communicate with one another and understand each other (hopefully) is yet another layer of complexity woven into the system.

When faced with this awesome beauty, the professor creatively found every way possible to avoid using the word “G-d.”  “Who is responsible for this?” he asked.  Dutifully, one of the students answered: “Evolution.”  “Correct!” he responded triumphantly.  A little later during the same lecture, he referred to the “creator” of these wondrous abilities as a generic “they.”  And at another point, he stated “this is due to billions of years of specialization due to evolutionary forces.”  I recalled that in an earlier lecture, he had patronizingly referred to those who might believe that behind the physical realities of the world was some being, some “G-d.”

Landing in the world of academia at Tel Aviv University, I was not surprised to learn that many scientists are atheists.  But what struck me today is the effort required to maintain such a stance given the wonders of the world we live in.  It seems to me that the energy required to prop up the notion of there NOT being a G-d is truly astronomical (hence the title of this article). This is especially true for scientists, who are daily faced with the enormous complexity and yes, true beauty, of the inner workings of the world as we know it.  And that doesn’t even take into account what we don’t know about the world, which is likely infinitely greater than what we do know.

I happened to watch a short video yesterday by Dr. Gerald Schroeder (Believe in God in 5 Minutes (Scientific Proof) – YouTube), a physicist who is also an observant Jew.  Dr. Schroeder has published several books, and although the video that I watched yesterday is just a very tip-of-the-iceberg type of talk, it illustrates how the basic assumptions of science are continually challenged by new research.  It seems to me that the world is slowly but surely moving towards an era of revelation – wherein even the skeptics will eventually acknowledge that there are some things which are beyond us.  There is still, today, a very strong resistance to this idea. 

But I hope and pray that one day, not only will people understand that there are things which are beyond our senses, this realization will also come as a huge relief, and we will all be able to experience it with great joy and bliss.

והיה ביום ההוא יהיה ה’ אחד ושמו אחד

This is going to sound like an “Artscroll” story.  You know, the kind that you hear which is supposed to be inspiring, but which some people don’t believe in all of its details.  But this story is one which I just watched as it unfolded, and it affected me deeply during this time of leadup to the Yamim Noraim (High Holidays).

First some background: I am sadly part of a group for young (up to age 60 if I’m not mistaken) Jewish widows and widowers who identify themselves as “religious.”  Although there are other groups for widows and widowers, this group was set up to specifically address the needs of the religious population.  In addition to scheduled events and lectures, there is a very active WhatsApp support group. 

I generally don’t read all of the messages on the support group because sometimes there are just too many and I don’t often feel the need.

But this morning, I noticed that there were about 50 messages that I hadn’t seen since yesterday, which is an unusually large number.  I took a peek to see what was going on, and it turns out that a woman posted a very moving message yesterday.

It was her and her late husband’s wedding anniversary.  In an act of true inner strength, she decided to mark the day by writing an anonymous note to an unknown bride and groom who were getting married at the same hall that she and her husband had gotten married in, and to include a gift for the young couple.  She shared this with the group because these are exactly the types of things that people in the group find helpful.  Anniversaries can be tough, and she wanted to project a positive way of dealing with this tough day rather than dwelling on the loss.

She shared with the group the note that she had written.  Let me tell you – it was impossible to get through it without tears streaming down my face.  It was essentially a letter of “advice” to the young couple based on what she had learned from her loss, but it was so heartfelt, so real, and so giving, that it was simply an act of beauty.

As I scrolled down the messages, seeing the reactions of people on the group to what she had done, one message in particular came up which caused a whole new cascade.  A woman who identified herself as being a silent observer on the group (she of course also being a widow) said that she had to respond to this message.  You see, it was her son who had gotten married last night at that hall; her son – orphaned from his own father – with the life experience of watching his own mother struggle with her widowhood – he was the one to receive this gift from the (no longer anonymous) heartfelt stranger.  Everyone in the group was in shock over this chain of events.

I am crying again as I write this, due to a profound, deep sense of Hashgacha Pratit.  This is a reminder to me, and hopefully to whoever is reading this, that we can always rely on Hashem.  He is there, taking care of us, even when we don’t see Him.  He is pulling all kinds of strings which are invisible to us, and in ways which are incomprehensible to us.  Personally, I identify this feeling with the word “הנורא” in the first Bracha of the Amidah.  But even after all of the amazing goodness and Hashgacha that I personally have experienced in my life, I don’t always remember this.  So thank you, Hashem, for sending this reminder – really a Divine “lovenote” of sorts – during this special month of Elul.

  אני לדודי ודודי לי

I just had a realization.

In my previous post, my attitude was all wrong.  I had it backwards.

Ideally, our relationship with G-d should be one of pure love, one with no strings attached, not תלויה בדבר. 

Although this seems like a lofty goal, which is almost unachievable, I actually think it’s closer than we think.   (Eitan Katz – Ki Karov | Live in Jerusalem 2 | איתן כ״ץ – כי קרוב – YouTube)

Particularly when we go through difficult times, we can show up in a purer way.  We become more sensitive to others.  We remove layers of expectations and fears from inside of us (back to the onion).  And as we go deeper and remove those layers, we can start to show up as we are.  And really, there is no greater gift than that.

Yesterday caused a bit of a crisis.

It was the last day of a year of shiurim on Sunday morning.  The first shiur, with my dear friend and very talented lecturer Yafit Clymer, was about Good and Evil in Judaism.  It was a very in depth course, which spanned Jewish literature and thought from the Torah, through modern times.  The last few shiurim were mainly about the Holocaust, and I found these shiurim to be particularly challenging and somewhat disturbing.  Understandably, of course. 

The second shiur, with Daniel Shereshevski, was a very interesting and engaging shiur in Tanach, which followed the course of the 929 program.  (The 929 program is an online program which cycles through the entire Tanach by learning one perek every day, five days a week.  There are a total of 929 chapters in the entire Bible, hence the name of the program.)  For most of the year, we were studying Tehillim, and for the last few weeks we were studying Mishlei.  Well, yesterday we reached the book of Iyov, and since it was the last shiur of the year, we had an overview of the book rather than diving into one or two chapters in detail.

The two shiurim yesterday both drove home the same point.  The question asked was: how do we understand that there is evil in this world, and more particularly that bad things happen to good people, and maintain our faith in a good G-d?

Although I have grappled with this question in my personal life, really it was never that much of a struggle.  Even though I have suffered, I believe that ultimately G-d is good, and that He has a plan which is not understandable to us. 

But somehow these two shiurim yesterday stirred up the pot.

In both of them, I was forced to confront this topic in a way that I had not done so until now.  It is hard to articulate what was different, but somehow I left a bit disturbed.

I think that what is really happening inside of me can be compared to the layers of an onion.  As each layer of grief, acceptance, understanding, gets peeled away, a new layer just underneath the surface is then exposed.  The new layer has new nuances, new insights, and almost inevitably causes new pain to surface.

It is hard to pinpoint the exact point of pain, but one thing that is coming up for me is that I identified with Iyov in the following way:  The impression you get of Iyov at the beginning of the book is that he had a good life, but he had a certain level of fear of losing it.  He was meticulous – and he thought, or at least hoped, that this would protect him from losing what he had.

I used to be like that.  I remember when saying “modim”, where I would thank G-d for all He has given me – that my כוונה was – please let me not lose all the good you have given me.

I guess I have to admit it. 

I feel hurt.

True – my faith is intact.  I have no doubt that G-d has His reasons and that the picture is much bigger than what I can see or understand.

True – I am thankful for everything that I do have. 

But in a way, I feel like G-d has let me down. 

At the same time, I am able to hold in my head the understanding that really G-d hasn’t let me down and in fact, actually owes me nothing.  It is me who owes everything to Him, including my life and all of the beautiful things in it.

But… I can’t help feeling hurt.

And as we read in an article by Rav Amital in Yafit’s shiur, we can’t just brush the feelings under the rug.  We have to be true to them.  And as we also learned in an excerpt from a book by Rav Soloveitchik, the key is not to ask “why” but rather “for what” (לְמָה ולא לָמָּה).  That is, how can we take this pain and use it to move forward in life.

So I will grapple with this new onion layer for the next few days.  I will face the feelings head on, and let them wash over me as needed. 

And then I will continue to move forward, in an attempt to turn the pain into growth, to transform the onion into a more tasty and sweeter smelling form.

Thank you Hashem for sending me just the right messengers at the right times in my life.  This is a reminder of Your guiding hand in my life.  My faith remains intact, even through the pain; even through the tears that inevitably come when we peel an onion; and even with the knowledge that the onion is here to stay.