Sitting on my parents’ magical porch early Shabbat morning, looking out over the changing sky – from black to magnificent shades of purple to lighter blue, watching flocks of birds soaring south, my cortisol levels undoubtedly went down in a way which would probably be empirically measurable. Sometimes, it is only when you start to relax that you realize how wound up you have been. I am not at all sure that in these times, we have the ability to truly unwind, but even small windows of just quietly experiencing the magnificent world we live in can help us get through the tough days and can give us the strength to keep going, to keep fighting for a reduction (elimination?) of the suffering that is all around us.
Yosef Mendelevich, former refusnik who spoke at our shul last night, recalled a moment of joy in the midst of what must have been an ongoing nightmare of years of imprisonment. In order to keep the laws of kashrut in impossible circumstances, he had planted a small garden behind his barracks in which he grew edible plants to sustain him without having to rely on the clearly non-kosher prepared food that was given to the prisoners. He described a moment of standing in the sun (which came out about one month a year), tending to his garden, and appreciating just being alive. This, moments before he was harassed and punished by guards for wearing a kippa that he and a fellow Jewish prisoner had created for themselves.
Aside from the unbelievable mesirut nefesh of this man and aside from his ability to fully appreciate that moment in time, what struck me most was the look of calm happiness on his face as he told the story, the way the memory itself was still having an effect.
Sometimes we need to remember to tend to our souls, to rise above the practicalities of our day-to-day existence, to rise above events in the news, and to find the things that will sustain us in a deeper sense. Even if only for a moment.