Dear friends,

I begin this letter with mixed feelings. On one hand, I am not sure how much to share with you, and on the other hand, I like you far too much to keep much back. 

I received a wedding gift today, one that put any other gift we received in the shade.
It is a check for $9. It was sent from a man who began corresponding with me years ago. He reads Hamodia, and likes the Torah articles. He had a question and a comment on an article I wrote, and we have been corresponding since. He is a prisoner in a federal facility. 

In the course of the time he has been incarcerated he has developed himself spiritually in ways that we can all envy (or at least admire). Keeping kosher, studying Torah and most of all not being destroyed by an environment that tells you hundreds of times a day that you are unworthy in every possible way, is a great feat. Many people have been reduced to emotional and spiritual pulp in situations that are far less overwhelmingly negative. On one of my trips to the States, I travelled out to his “home” a medium security jail, together with another woman. Our aim was to meet him, and give him something small. In order to arrange our visit, we registered, arrived at the right time, and then sat through an indeterminant amount of time while all of the prisoners were counted before they could enter the large public room where visitations take place. The vast majority of visitors were women whose faces told me that they are mothers and wives. In the short time we spent with him, we got a feel for what it means to never have warm food, because if it koshers it’s cold. Never turning your back on your”friends”. There were some rays of light in the darkness. One was having visits from an unbelievable group of frum men who come out on a regular basis to learn with and to bring chizuk to someone who was once just a stranger to them. I didn’t notice any others. 

The $9 is more than he earns in a week doing the kind of work available in the lock-up. It means real sacrifice of small things that help make life bearable. 

I made a decision on the outset not to ask questions about his pre-prison life. It would be intrusive, and in a certain sense voyeuristic. In the note he sent with the check, he expressed regret that he couldn’t attend my wedding personally. “I won’t be here forever” he wrote. I hope the day will come when my husband and I can have him over for a Shabbos in our home.

Why was I reluctant to write this? I like to write about either the parshah, or what is going on in your lives or in mine. His story is not one that will resonate to you, at least not on the surface. You don’t live his life, nor do you know what getting up in his cell feels like. When I thought about it more, I changed my mind. It occurred to me that in some regards we are all imprisoned. Some of us have addictive behaviors, others are locked into families that are so hard to navigate that your love for them and your belief in yourself can barely coexist. Almost all of us are locked into self imposed traps where the person you want to be and the person you are barely on speaking terms. The good news, is that you can be like my acquaintance, Mr. G., who is free in the deepest sense of the word. His trick (from the outside) is that he has realistic aspirations and knows what steps he can take to make them actually happen.

The reason that I decided to write it anyway isn’t just because of the message of dignity and hope that came with the $9. It’s because it is actually related to one of this week’s Parshah’s most moving questions; What does Hashem want of you? You may have tied yourself down to one of the answers that work for most people . He wants you to do all the mitzvos. But not only that . You have to get your kids into the best schools. Make a great shidduch. See that the couple can get by in the beginning at least. You want to marry (or stay married), raise perfect kids (have you met one lately?), have a rewarding career (In every sense of the word rewarding). The proof that these are popular goals is that this is where the majority of people invest not only their time, but their hearts and souls. The Torah tells you that all that Hashem wants of you is to fear Him. 

Fearing Hashem isn’t the same thing as dreading punishment. That has nothing to do with Hashem; it’s about fear of suffering.  Your first step in learning fear of Hashem means taking in some of the wonder and enormity of His creativity and power. The next step is to envision yourself working in the perfect job, one that you have dreamed of forever. Your employer is brilliant, generous, and has told you that your work is more than good-it’s great. If you were given an assignment you would relate to it seriously. If you see the deadline approaching, you might begin to feel some anxiety. Is it because you think that the boss will slap you? Hit you? Hold a staff meeting in order to humiliate you? Of course not. Your anxiety is born fear of losing his respect, admiration, and possibly your position. Along the same lines, realize that Hashem has given you an assignment that only you can do. You don’t want to lose the bone that you are building as you do this assignment. 

The sages play on the word mah, which means “What”? They point out that it is very similar to the word “meah” which means a hundred. “What does Hashem want of you? “ they ask enigmatically, “To say 100 blessings a day”, which plays out by your seeing everything that you eat, see, touch or experience has being a gift from Hashem, for which you can/should bless Him.  This means that you are on assignment, your job is to find Hashem in the world regardless of your situation, and to become His servant. Mr. G. is on assignment. 

He is on assignment. He has no complaints to The Boss. He does his job as best he can. 
So are you
And I
On assignment with the knowledge
Of the dazzling
Brilliant 
Beloved
Place that your heart becomes as you go on one step
At a time.
​
Love,
Tziporah    

​Dear friends,
​
When you study Western history, you may notice after you passed your last exam that you were really studying the history of warfare. When you study Jewish history, you find something else. It is the history of moral triumph (and at times defeat), and the accompanying history of scholarship. One of the major exceptions is in this week’s Parshah. You have the Jews being told to wage war against the Midianites, and it is part of our sacred history-part of the Torah. The question is why?

It's not because we ever saw war as a test of nationhood. War is by nature brutal and often tragic. It is, however a test of what you are willing to fight for, and possibly to sacrifice for. Most of the wars you read about when you learn history were fought for expansion and a subtle but toxic something called national pride. (Think of the Napoleonic wars, the endless battles for a “place in the sun” that led to the colonial wars in Africa, the underlying issues in the war in Viet Nam and more). The wars the Jewish nation fought were by Hashem’s command to claim our land (after offering peace terms to the non-Jewish inhabitants allowing them to continue living in Israel as law abiding citizens who keep the Noachide laws). 

The war against Midian was different. It was not for survival (such as the war with the Amalekites who attacked us in the desert right after the sea split). It was not because we were under physical threat in Eretz Yisrael. It was because we were under threat for our very existence - an existence which is defined by who we are as Jews. 

They tried to destroy us morally by instructing their daughters to attract and later seduce young Jewish men. How did they do this? They set up a bazaar, and when a young man would come in to look at the goods, the middle-aged saleswoman would suddenly “need a break” and send in an attractive young woman to “substitute”. She had a script. Looking him straight in the eye, she would begin a dialogue that sounded something like this:
He “How much is the rug?”
She, “40 dinar. May I just ask you one thing before you go? I’ve always been fascinated by the Jews”
He: (with tolerant smile, always happy to help…) “sure”
She, taking out a box of tissues or whatever they used in the desert 4000 years ago. “WHY Do you hate us?”
He “I don’t hate you! Why do you think I hate you?”
She, “You won’t celebrate with us. You always find excuses to avoid being with us. There’s a major festival tonight. I know your type. You won’t be there. You think you’re above us”. This is said between little sobs and shaking shoulders.
He. “You have it all wrong. I’ll be there”

And he was, and he found himself in a world he always avoided, with women he would never see again. 
What did they believe? We don't know much about their systems any more.  Whatever it was, it robbed the ordinary Joe's and Janes of the idea of having a real relationship with the Creator. They thought that they were too small, to low, and that any belief in human morality or potential was an enemy from whom they had to escape. You find this today, when people who live with sins, that are described as ‘abominations’ in the Torah, cover it up with a platina of pride. 

The name of their idol was Baal Pe’or.  The Master of the Gap. The gap in question is the anal cavity. They would defecate before their god. What were the adherents of this bizarre mode of worship thinking? The Chassam Sofer explains that they were making a statement. “G-d in heaven doesn’t want (or can’t have) anything to do with us. We are base and gross. Unworthy and unable to relate to G-d’s transcendence and compassion. They were as the French philosopher Camus (who would have felt right at home with the Midianites) would say, “We are like whales stretched out on a beach” almost dead, but in the sun. Certainly, closer to an animal than to a person.  Do what you want. The animals do! Would sum up their theology.
A rabbi was on a plane, and his seat mate took note of the kosher food that he had ordered. The other man had also made a special request and his vegan food came shortly after the kosher tray was passed over his head. “I don’t eat other animals” he said, making note of the tepid chicken served on the overcooked rice on the rabbi’s tray. “Why not? The “other animals” eat each other animals”, the rabbi replied. “Most are not vegan”.… 

We are not animals. Our ancestors had to fight against those who would redefine them as such. It was a hard fight. It is a battle that some of us have to fight fairly often.

Outsmarting an enemy is the best way to do battle against him.  Get in touch with your nature, and use it to serve Hashem. You are not an animal who eats because the food is there, and it looks good. If you take the laws of kashrut seriously it gives you the means of being truly human, not another animal. You can learn to feel the good “Gaavah d’kedushah” pride in being holy.  Communicate with Hashem. He loves your words and even if the words of the siddur don’t flow from your heart, He loves the person who opened the siddur in an effort to speak to Him on His terms. Every mitzvah you do is eternal. Every time you learn something new, you are validating the entire purpose of the world’s creation.

You are important
Human
Possessed of a soul
That lasts forever.

Love,
Tziporah             

Dear friends,
Today begins the period on the calendar called the three weeks. It’s a time of diminished joy, a time in which you try to deal with the realities of our lives as individuals who are no longer part of a nation that has claimed an indigenous culture, land or language. You are part of the Great World, but not consistently really at home.

Those of you who live in the States are aware of the rise of a new brand of Black anti-Semitism. I saw a clip in which one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement stood in a large public area near a Jewish neighborhood. Pointing at the homes, he asked his adoring audience, “. Who owns these homes?” and the answer was “The Jews” “How did they get them?” “White Privilege”. The fact that the Jewish refugees struggling to keep alive, keep their kids in school, and maybe belong to a synagogue were not a privileged bunch by anyone’s definition when they hit the shores of the US is not relevant when you are selling hatred. Just don’t bother him with facts. Also, if he tells you that as a Jew you don’t belong, you are just a leech trying to suck his blood, don’t ask him where you do belong.  The answer won’t be Israel. From his perspective, Israel deserves vindictive financial and physical consequences for being racists who are addicted to committing daily genocide against our Partners for Peace.

How would you like it to be if you had your “druthers”?

Do you dream of peace (which means acceptance and validation, not just non hostility)? I have really terrible news, and some marvelous news as well.

The bad news is that it’s not going to change until we change. The same way the galus was predicted, the redemption is predicted. The good news is that it will definitely change, and so will we. The kind of rave I saw is typical for galus; the 2000-year exile we are so accustomed to. In fact, it feels unpleasant, but normal. The good news is that it is the same Torah that told us that we can open our hearts, redefine ourselves as a G-dly people and affect the entire world. 

These 21 days are days of re-evaluation of who we are, much as the 21 days between Rosh Hashanah Hashanah Rabbah. You have to first figure out who you aren’t and who you don’t want to be before you can go onto becoming something more.

What don’t we want?

The bloodbath that spelled out the destruction of the Temple. The subsequent expulsions in countries where we lived lives in which we felt we were completely accepted until it became clear that we were never genuinely accepted. We don’t like being forced to move on from country to country until you can find Jews in every country on the planet. We don’t like learning hard lessons, such as the fact that as long as you define yourself as a citizen of the world rather than as yourself, the world will not accept you, nor has it ever done so for very long. 

There has never been world peace (without even considering the way Jews are dealt with) and there is a reason for this. Peace can only occur when there is recognition that each and every piece of the puzzle has a place to be. When you try to homogenize the nations you reap the raw hostility that erupts every year or so because no one wants to be destroyed or repressed or to be left with no identity. 
The function of the Jews as a people is to exemplify what the puzzle can look like through the example we set. In the Maharal’s vocabulary this kind of example is called “tzurah” or structure. The tzurah presented in the Torah is big enough for each nation to be itself (which is why in classical Judaism converting other people is not quite the thing to do; If a person was born a non-Jew, he has a piece of the puzzle that is real and important. Why trade it in for another one with a Jewish star on it? If he/she says, I never really belonged. I need the structure the Torah provides, then he or she is now an official member of the clan (after circumcision for men and immersion in the mikveh for both men and women). 
The Torah is the structure that Hashem gave us to know how to put the pieces together.  “structure”.

​You have 21 days to be less distracted and more focused on one thing.
Are the way things being now the way you want them to be?
Do you like hatred?
How’s about violence?
What about change?

During the 820 years the Bais HaMikdash existed, we had structure. Something of the Bais HaMikdash still remains. Get yourself to the the Kotel (okay, go to Aish and see the Kotel through their 24-hour camera). Let it speak to you. Let it inform you that you are part of something bigger than yourself, and that the structure you want to govern your life is the one that was created by the One who simultaneously re-creates the world over and over giving you chance after chance to bring meaning to your life and to enjoy His world. Just get the rules right.
 
Use the time well!
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

Rosh Chodesh Tammuz is so different than other Roshei Chodashim.  I doubt that you know what Tammuz actually means. Of course it is possible that you have no particular desire to assimilate this particular bit of information, but then again, who am I to say?  I will tell you what it means at the end of the letter. That should keep you reading!

A hint, and some reflections on the nature of language.

The word Tammuz is actually not Hebrew. It is Aramaic, the language that was spoken in Babylon. We never really made a complete linguistic recovery from that period when we headed back to Israel (and the majority stayed put; after 70 years Babylon which had been conquered by Persia). It was a place where we found a niche, far from the horrors of the Roman occupation of Israel, and in a relatively tolerant environment. The language that we had learned to speak on foreign soil was our language. It didn’t take long for this to occur. It was only 70 years earlier that the exile had begun. 
Although Hebrew (or Lashon Kodesh, the Holy Tongue) was never forgotten, it also was never really alive again as the language that you woke up to in the morning and went to sleep with at night. It was the language of prayer, of holy books that were always part of our lives as a much beloved family member. There were always people who chose to speak Lashon Kodesh, but for the majority Aramaic was their native tongue. 

Maharal points out the reason this happened.  Lashon Kodesh no longer expressed us.
Although the language is holy, and the holiness of the Jewish People is real, the bond between what could have been the language that gives expression to this kind of holiness, and the lives we actually live is not always that steady. Lashon Kodesh is the language with which Hashem created the world, it is also unique in this that it has no word that isolates physical intimacy from its spiritual and emotional component. This is both its virtue and its liability.  If a language isn’t a “good fit” for you, you will find yourself adjusting the language to fit, or end up speaking another language. Modern Hebrew is the perfect example of this phenomena. Ben Yehuda, often referred to as the father of modern Hebrew, and he author of its most popular lexicon was a purist. He tried to find Heberw words that fit into contemporary experience. What happened was that even when he though of words that work, modern Israeli’s are comfortable using phrases like Veeken (week end), breksim (brakes) and totalreck. The words take you to the West, a place that many young secular Israeli’s feels at home in even more than in Yerushalaim.

One of the big questions that you may find yourself asking when you think about your Jewish identity, is why we have one.  It’s not land (at present the majority of Jews still don’t live in Israel), nor is it language (hmmmm. There must be a reason that I am writing this letter in English.  You speak it, and in honesty, for the most part, it is also the language of my self-talk. It isn’t culture. The culture of say a Jew living in LA is different enough from the culture of a Jew living in Addis Ababa force you recognize that history and culture aren’t the bond that made us a people. It also isn’t religion. In case you live in a cave and aren’t quite aware of what goes on outside cool doom, many Jews in both LA and Addis are not religious. We are still a single people, and the Jew in LA or Addis is no less Jewish than the one in Yerushalaim. No one knew the answer to what actually makes us a people than Bilaam and Balak, this week’s parsha’s anti-heroes.
What did they know, and why did they care, and what does any of this have to do with you?   

When Balak the king of Moav hired Bilaam to curse the Jews there was more going on there than a HR deal in which someone is hired for a job and collects a small fortune in compensation. Bilaam was a profound mystic, who had a deep grasp of the underlying unity of Hashem’s creative power. For him, this kind of knowledge was egocentric. I was more a search for ego fulfillment than it was a channel for devotion. Hashem opened doors for him that He had never opened for a non-Jew. 

Bilaam’s grasp of reality was so great that he could use his tongue the way an archer uses arrows. He could verbally make accusations that were not unfounded, and demand that justice be done. He was threatened by us. Our existence forced him into a secondary role in the world’s stage. Jew’s   Each of the blessings he was forced to give (as you can see in the Parshah, parshat Balak which is in BaMidbar) was an alternative glance at a piece of reality that could be easy seen as negative but true.

What’s Wrong With Us?

The first Bilaam did was to focus on only one part of the Jewish Nation’s encampment. He didn’t want to see the whole. The picture of Klal Yisrael, the Jews as a united group is so awesomely great that there is no weak spot to attack. Wherever you look for the rise of moral values, sensitivity towards others, add acts of kindness, we are there. When you look for seeing Hashem’s unity so that you recognize that each person comes from one original source, as does every microbe and every galaxy, you will find Jewish people there ceaselessly looking for meaning (sometimes more successfully sometimes less so).  When you look at us as we sometimes are; hopelessly fragmented, embattled against ourselves, unable to find the magic ingredient that unites us, you see us as Bilam did.

He began his blessing by saying, “Who can count Yaakov’s earth”. We do mitzvos without abandoning the physical world. The comparison with the earth also has a deeper side. Maharal’s Earth is the “mother” of everything that grows. So are we. Every meaningful spiritual road starts at Sinai. It is the source of all of the great world religions. They base their principles and teachings on the revelation that Hashem gave to us, giving us the empowerment that we have to touch every seeker. If you were to ask everyone who lives in Yerushalaim, for instance, “Is your life touched by the Jews and the Torah”? The answer would be be that if they are Muslim, Christian or Jewish the answer is yes. Spiritual ambition is engraved on the soul of even the least observant Jew.

The earth also consumes. It reduces even the strongest metals to rust and nothingness. We have faced the greatest civilizations, watch their decline, and outlive the challenges that they presented.
What’s right with us, and what does this have to do with today’s reality?

One of the problems that we face, is that we don’t  know ourselves well enough. We have lost our language as a result of assimilating the way the people who surround us express their version of the search for meaning.  You may not know yourself well enough to find the moral stamina to face the current reality of watching the disintegration of society. We have been down this road before.
It’s time to see yourself through Bilam’s eyes. Recognize that you have the potential to live a life that nurtures and that at the same time confronts everything that is false in the world surrounding you.

WHAT DOES TAMMUZ MEAN?
AHA! I didn’t lie!

Tammuz is the name of the ancient Babylonian sun god. It tells you that you have lived in this kind of distorted culture and survived. You come from people who lived with every sort of depravity and stayed “awake” enough to have Torah flourish the way it does today in Jewish enclaves that are surrounded by today’s version of depravity. The words of Kaddish, probably one of the prayers that have survived exile the best, are in Aramaic!

I don’t know what kind of challenges you face. Ironically, from the parshah, I do know one solution.
Be yourself
Your deepest holiest
Self.
​
Love, 
Tziporah Gottlieb (yes I know that you know who I am, but I love my new name) 

Dear friends,

It feels so good to look at mistakes that other people made, take a deep breath, and say, 
“What an idiot”. Be honest. Could you see yourself standing in Korach’s shoes? He lived through the plagues, the splitting of the sea, receiving the Torah. He ate mann every day. Did he really think that Moshe, the man who Hashem selected to bring these earthshattering events into being was a bad choice? Wouldn’t taking over Moshe’s role be that be like me taking over the control tower in a huge airport? If you were there at the time that Moshe announced that Hashem had told him to install Elitzafon (yes, I know you never heard of him) as the leader of the Levites, would you call for new elections?
​
Korach was far from a fool. He was blessed with intellectual capacity far greater than anyone you are likely to have encountered. He was fabulously wealthy. He had presence.
His flaw was that he believed in democracy.
Huh?
He argued that no one is inherently “better”. Everyone deserves an equal chance at being whatever they choose to be. It’s a convincing argument. After all, in some ways we are all the same. We all fear loss rejection, pain, failure, poverty and death. We all want acceptance, comfort, success, financial security, and life?  Doesn’t that mean that we are all basically the same?
Not really. From the perspective of the Torah the truth about your identity is far more complex. While you and I have many areas of life that are almost indistinguishable, there are many areas that are non-negotiably different. One is the genetic heritage you carry with you that was determined by Hashem before you were born. This includes specific intellectual and emotional tendencies (some of which have observable genetic markers!). Another individuating factor is the family that Hashem selected for you; your position in the family; the factors that made your mother into the person she was when she saw you the first time; their health, their financial success or lack of financial stability and endless other factors that you didn’t choose. Each of them is part of the environment that was the backdrop for your choices. You also live in your times which are very different than my times. I never faced the horrors of overt anti-Semitism-my older relatives can’t imagine life without its tedious repetitive mind-numbing background music of cliché-ridden hate. You may have grown up in an environment where anti-Semitism is somewhat fashionable. You have your body, your life experiences, the neural channels your choices have engraved on your mind. There never was or will be someone who is your clone. The Talmud put it this way; “How great is the King who mints countless coins, and each one is different”. None of this means that the similarities between you and every human are illusory. They are just as real as the differences, and demand just as much acceptance, direction, and care.

Korach didn’t accept that the differences are real, and that they are purposeful. He wanted leadership. Hashem gave it to Elitzafon.

What are you supposed to think when you feel like a size 9 foot being forced into a size 6 shoe? Why should you be denied a role that feels right, and by your definition of fair, you should have it!
Korach’s father. Yitzhar was the second of Kehat’s sons. Kehat was the most distinguished of Levi’s sons. His first son, Amram, was Moshe, Miriam and Aaron’s father. Amram had two more brothers, Chevron and Uziel. Korach’s expectation was that since Moshe had “taken” the glory for his own nuclear family, (Amram’s children) when the leadership of the tribe of Levi was up for grabs, the fact that his father Yitzhar was the next brother made his choice the most likely one. But it wasn’t’.  Moshe skipped over Yitzhar, and Chevron, and chose Elitzafon, Uziel’s son for the leadership. The way Korach saw this was that Moshe doesn’t want to share power. That’s a good reason for choosing a young leader who was not groomed for the job. Korach maintained that Moshe didn’t want Korach’s great mind, immense wealth and charismatic personality too close to the power base.

Was he wrong?  

Of course, he was wrong. The reason isn’t that nepotism is a great value and must be maintained at all costs. The reason is that only Hashem who authors each individual’s abilities and environment knows the plan he has for each person. Fulfillment comes from living the life that offers you the maximum potential to be yourself. The problem that Korach had, is that he didn’t really know the self he could be. He only knew the self that he was at the time that he decided that he had had enough. Had he waited, there would have been a place for him; a position called Levi Gadol, the High Levite, a position much like that of the Kohein Gadol High priest) would have emerged. Hashem had a pair of size 9 shoes waiting for the day that Korach could step into them.

You can choose to be Korach, or you could choose to be Moshe. 

Interestingly, Korach, who was fighting for the fulfillment of his own ambition destroyed himself and everything that he touched. Moshe was very much his opposite. To him, the only question worth thinking about when he was faced with choices, was what does Hashem want NOW.

Korach was convinced that he was acting “leshem Shamayim” for the sake of heaven. He wanted spiritual self-expression on the highest level, and encouraged others to do the same. The result was disaster.
The earth swallowed up Korach and his followers. Th reason is that fomenting this brand of discontent is a crime against the earth itself. The earth was given to us humans to turn it into a place of profound spiritual beauty. The way this happens is by negation of ego, and focusing on what Hashem gives us. Moshe was the humblest of men. He could know what Hashem wants of him through seeing reality through a clear lense, devoid of ego or any prism of self. He was a living GPS heading towards where we were meant to be.
In Pirkei avot we are asked to refrain from disagreement. Sometimes a disagreement that has a core of being leshem Shamayim is ‘captured’ by ego, desire and the rest of the choir.  Disagreement where there is no emotional agenda is an entirely different matter. It is called ‘search for truth” and is the key to all serious learning.

Where does your search for truth lead? You are all different and simultaneously you are all similar. If you are sincere, you won’t all get the same answers., but you will look to the Torah for your truth. The vast majority of fragmentation within the Jewish people comes not from hearing different answers, but from looking for answers in the wrong places. 

Recently, we have been living in a world in which humans are no longer in control and have been forced into seeing this with overwhelming clarity. Maybe we can learn not only to ask the right questions, but to look in the right places, and surprise ourselves when Moshiach arrives – may it be soon! 

Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

One of the most annoying things about Covid19 is that it just hasn’t taken its leave of us as yet. Did you realize that months, not weeks, would pass, without life returning to normal?  Just two weeks ago, when my husband and I went out (YES OUT!! WHAT A DELIGHT!) to Machaneh Yehudah Market (which was permitted according to the instructions given by the Ministry of Health), we were duly masked and gloved. When we entered the shuk on Thursday one of the locals looked at the half empty lanes of the marketplace that usually can be navigated only by native Israel’s and folks from Brooklyn. It had taken on an almost Mid-Western patina of civility. He looked at us  and said, “That’s it, Corona is finished”.  Within a few days, it was permitted to go to shul (with restrictions), to send you kids to school, and to eat out if that’s your thing. 

Then we heard that numbers of people infected are rising. Whether it’s because you really need more isolation to get rid of it once and for all, or whether there are other factors involved with we are not yet familiar, one question still needs to be answered; where is the demarcation line separating your trust in the One who created you (and every microbe that will ever exist), and your responsibility in taking care of yourself, not just in this situation but in all situations. 

Is taking an attitude of “what will be will be for the best” the right way to go, or should you perhaps not be so dismissive of the voice that demands your taking the steering wheel into your own hands?
 
POSSIBLITY ONE: LET GO
YOU ARE NOT IN CHARGE.

Ramban maintains that in the case of one of Avraham’s tests, his failure (Ramban’s words, not mine) to let go and surrender to Hashem affects us still today. The imprint on the future that most of us would see as negative is indelible.

Just stand in Avraham’s shoes for a moment. Avraham and Sarah left Ur Kasim (which is in today’s Iraq) after he had faced being burned to death and rescued from that fate miraculously.  They then headed out to Haran, where he and Sara succeeded beyond anything they could have dreamed of. Thousands of people came under their influence, and began to believe in one God. At that point, almost inexplicably, Hashem told him to leave everything behind; He also told him that the result of making the choice would be children, money, fame, and the key to giving blessings to others. He left with Sara, Lot, and their followers, and when they arrived in Israel, not only didn’t they experience the blessings that they had every reason to anticipate, they actually found themselves starving. They ultimately only had two choices; go or stay. 

Avraham chose to leave. Ramban tells you that this was a terrible mistake. He should have trusted that Hashem can cover His checks… This is important for us, because the patriarchs and matriarchs related to their future generations the way a foundation relates to a building. A flaw in the foundation that is barely visible at floor level, can result in the Leaning Tower of Pisa! You can only give what you have, and Avraham and Sara didn’t have the absolute faith in Hashem that could have changed things for their descendants. “The deeds of the patriarchs are a sign for their children” Ramban famously quotes. They left Egypt in the face of a famine, and so did their children two generations later when Yaakov and his family had to leave Israel because they were starving. Avraham and Sara found themselves under the Egyptian oppression when Sara was taken by force, and their descendants experience oppression of slavery in the same country, but much much more severely. Had he had the faith to remain in Israel, Ramban concludes, none of this would be necessary. 

That means, in plain language, that Avraham should have stayed in Eretz Yisrael and trusted that the One who told him to go there, would save him from the famine.

POSSIBLITY TWO: BE RESPONSIBLE
YOU MAY NOT TAKE THE GIFT OF HAVING CHOICES LIGHTLY

The Torah tells you to guard your life, “Very much”. Don’t endanger yourself or take your life lightly. It is a precious and irreplaceable gift. Shmuel, the second greatest prophet of all times, was told by Hashem to anoint David (later to be King David) as king. There was only one problem. The reigning king, Shaul, had no intent of surrendering his crown, and was doing everything human (and some would argue inhumanely) possible to prevent David from usurping the throne. As far as he was concerned, Israel already had a king, namely himself, (Shaul) and the job of reigning monarch was not one with openings. Shmuel didn’t do what would have been most simple. He didn’t just go and hope for the best. He told Hashem. “What will be? If Shaul finds out he’ll kill me’ The response was for him to take a wagon and tell whatever troops he comes into contact with that he is headed towards David’s fathers’ home and was coming to offer sacrifices. He was not rebuked by Hashem, for not having sufficient trust in Him to just tell the truth and risk Shaul’s uncontrollable anger., nor is there any talk of this having brought about anything dire in future generations. He was acting responsibly; he said whatever he had to say to avoid endangering himself. He was pro-active.
It seems that the two stories are two opposing ways of seeing the unrelenting war between the voice that tells you that the way you want to go is in trusting  completely and sincerely, and the answering voice says that you are obligated to be responsible enough to treat your life as the precious gift that is.

THE BOTTOM LINE
The spies that Moshe sent, were our example of making the wrong kind of choice. They were not just doing what they had to do in order to figure the best way to move forward. That would have been good. Instead they editorialized the entire 40 days of their journey to death. It stopped being a practical approach to entering Israel, and became an anxiety ridden journey away from Hashem.  If they had just been less reluctant to trust Hashem’s explicit promise to be on their side, things would have been very very different.     

NOW FOR YOU
Your soul was sent down to this world for the sake of doing a mission. If you are doing whatever you have to do (find a shidduch, earn a living, deal with difficult people etc), with integrity, and then ONCE YOU HAVE DONE YOUR PART step quietly back. Move away from obsessive flashbacks to trust.
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HAVE only simchah, faith, and nachas.

Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

Shavuos has passed, and we will be having quite a dry spell before there are any new times of renewal. Does that mean that you are doomed to a several month spell of FOMO?

Sort of…

The best time of all is real life. That's where you give birth to yourself, and let the true you emerge. One of the ways in which your choices happen is by stepping back and figuring out what your priorities really are. There is a bit of Gemarah that says, “Rabba bar Machsya says that Rav Chamma bar Guria says that any city that has the roofs higher than the roofs of the synagogues will eventually be destroyed as it says, “To trample Hashem’s house and to establish its destroyed places”

The reason that I gave you an exact quote is that there are quite a few things that you can see in it that may change your focus. One is that everything here is attributed. I don’t much about Rav Machsya and even less about Rav Chamma, but there is one thing that I do know; Rav Machsya was an amorah, a teacher in the Talmudic era, someone who was close to the Oral Law in ways that I will never know. He had the opportunity to meet with and observe people who were one step closer to Sinai, and who had direct linkage with those before them. It doesn’t just take you back to Moshe, it takes you all the way back to the One who gave the Torah, who is the same One who created the world. 

When  you look around you or (for those of you who like this sort of thing) when you learn about the incredible intricacy of literally everything physical, you see the Hand of a giver, the One who wants you to live and interpret His world in ways that give you meaning, you know this because he chose to make you a human being.

Humans are the top of the pyramid, but we are simultaneously the only ones who could choose not to find their place. Everything in the world is still connected to its source just as much as it was on the day it was created. You are no exception. Your body, soul and evolving history are connected to Hashem. Every choice can get you closer to the One who creates life every second, or distance you. The scholars of the Talmud chose to learn, to explore, and to ultimately share what a human can know of the pattern that governs every choice you can possibly make.  

Here they talk about living in a city; a topic which is not an easy one just now.

I am aware, that as I write this, the incredibly painful destruction takes place every night in many of Americas metropolises. Wanton, heartless destruction, surrounds you if you go out to see the scene. It didn’t come out of nowhere - there is history that has to be confronted. From the perspective of the Talmud, one thing must be said.

The fact that there is rage doesn’t mean that its offshoot is justice. There is nothing remotely resembling justice in looting a Gucci bag or a large-TV screen.

The voice of anger is always the same. This can be true of genuinely justified anger (Imagine the anger a parent would feel if their child was murdered), or trivial anger (the kind that you feel when you find yourself asking, “how dare he park where I wanted to park”). The voice says, “This isn’t how it should be; it should be the way I want it to be”. The underlying assumption is, of course, that the way you want “it” to be must be right.

How can you know?

The Talmud says that the beginning of the destruction of a city is when the roofs of the local buildings are higher than the roofs of the synagogues. Maharal explains this by saying that spiritual reality is inherently more exalted than material reality. That would mean that values that are eternal (and you can only know what they are from the Torah) have to be seen as transcending material reality. What happens when this is reversed? When questions of what morality really means are not asked? You have a situation evolve in which the purpose of life, its Source and its meaning are forgotten. What is remembered is how good material pleasure feels, how loud the desire for status talks, and how marvelous it feels to experience a little righteous indignation. This mixture is what you see every night. To use Maharal’s words; “lowliness is a part of the physical world (it was created to follow, not to lead);  exaltation belongs to the non-physical world. When you reverse this, the inherent plan Hashem had for the world and order for the world that the Torah reveals, is destroyed”.

What does this mean in plain language? It means that the indignation about a murder (which, needless to say is part of the Torah’s system, and reflective of valuing the true worth of human life) is just. Looting, violence towards the law officers (whose lives are not less valuable than that of Floyd), are not part of this system. It is part of another system, one in which whoever is most vicious wins. It’s a perversion of what being human is all about.

What does this have to do with you?

Do you always put the right things first? I try to, but I don’t always succeed. The immediacy and the here and now nature of living in a way in which grabbing for what you want gives you instant pleasure is sometimes overwhelming. It can be the pleasure of saying what shouldn’t be said because it feels so good, or doing something that shouldn’t be done for the same reason. 

Here’s the good news. Once you know who you don’t want to be, you are much closer to being who you do want to be. We have all summer to practice!
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Love,
Tziporah Gottlieb (can’ya believe it? I am still floating

Dear friends,
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Soon you will be reliving standing at Mount Sinai at what is arguably the greatest moment humankind ever experienced. Receiving the Torah changed everything. It made it possible to live a life in which you actually end up where you want to be, and your example changes the game for the rest of the world as well. When you look at words like “morality” the source of all of the basics and far more, was that day in Sivan. No gift can even begin to compare to what Hashem gave us on that day.
An interesting halacha concerning gifts (don’t you like to hear about gifts?) relates not to the gift, but to the panache of being a giver. 
Let’s say that your motive is magnanimous; the reason that you are giving the gift is completely altruistic; you have been made aware of someone else’s genuine need, and want to help them out by bearing some of their burden.  Your next move ideally is to do your best to make yourself as “small” as the situation allows. In fact, if you can be invisible to give anonymously that would be perfect. Your goal is to let them feel dignified, not needy or “unfortunate”.  Being in need “translates” to many people as failure, lack of street smarts, and vulnerability. When you give discretely, you save the dignity of good people.  
 
Need isn’t the only language of giving. Sometimes it is the language of closeness and even of love. If you give something out of love, then being anonymous is not only unnecessary, it is antithetical to your purpose You have to really be there, not just to soak up the good feelings, but to let the other person know that you using the gift as  a means of conveying a far deeper message. You want to let them know that you are giving them yourself.
Hashem gave us the Torah out of love.
There was nothing subtle about those days in Sivan when we faced the mountain. If you were there, (and in the most genuine sense, you were), you would have heard lightening and seen thunder. You would have seen the mountain ablaze, shaking violently, and the heavens and earth meeting. What that means is that you would be forced existentially to acknowledge that the system you have always know isn’t what you thought it was. You may be under the impression that reality is objective. You take it in through your senses, and let your mind interpret what you saw (heard, smelled, touched or tasted). You know that Hashem can control nature; there’s nothing new there for a people who saw the sea split, and who had lived through the plagues in Egypt. What is new to you, is that He also controls your ability to perceive reality. He controls your senses. If He wants you to be able to see thunder, that is His choice and prerogative. He can and did make our abilities change by changing nature from within us. Why would He do that?
He gave the Torah out of such love that wanted it to be clear to us that He is giving us something of Himself, the power and energy that usually is hidden from the human eye. He wanted us to know how beloved we are.
Did it ever happen to you? Did you receive a gift from Hashem that He “signed”? Those times when you had every reason to assume that life would take a specific path but just didn’t. Did you have personal “U turns”?
I think we all have had times in which the word “definite” turned out to be relative. Step back from yourself for a moment. Think about where you are today, and where you were when you were eleven. Could you have predicted the changes that would unfold?
When the miracles happen you sometimes have to work hard to notice them. They are not as visible as they were at Mount Sinai, and habit can be so stupefying that nothing that you experience opens your eyes. 
So out of love, Hashem gave us another gift; one that occurs frequently. He made it possible to live without falling into the trap of letting time erode your sense of wonder.
Time is hard to define. We relate to it by using artificial constructs; minutes hours days. Who decided a minute has to have 60 seconds? If it isn’t the words we use all of the time (seconds minutes, hours, days) what is it?  One definition of “time” is that it is the measured progression of change. The earth has its cycle, and its movement is how we keep track of things. Every week we take a break from the constant movement, at least to some degree. When you keep Shabbos, and you take yourself out of time & space, you are experiencing a gift. It is the one that the Talmud tells us is a gift from Hashem’s treasury. 

Time can be a cruel master. How many times have you heard someone tell you something that sounds like, “You have to be there by 5.00”. Or “You have to complete the report by Jan.20.” or “The casserole should stay in the oven for 1 hour. Leave it in longer, it will be dry tasteless and touch. Take it out too soon it will be runny and repulsive. “ Sometimes, the “someone” who forces you to submit to the clock is you!  Shabbos is the time when you leave what Alsheich would call the world of “fragmentation”, where a million competing goals vie for your undivided attention. You enter what he referred to as “the world of unity”. 
Imagine a 5000-piece puzzle. When you finally put it together you discover that not only does it form an interesting picture, but it also simultaneously portrays the artist who designed it. During the week you do your best to put the pieces of a fragmented universe together. On Shabbos you find meaning. 
This is the greatest gift of all.
The word Torah is sourced in the word ‘horaah’, which means teaching. The Torah inevitably teaches, instructs, and lets you see the way. Without the Torah, navigating the world spiritually would be ‘mission-impossible’. Shabbos is considered to be so significant, that if it was on one side of a scale, and all of the other mitzvot on the other side of the scale, the scale would balance. 
This year Shabbos and Shavuos are come together.  The two greatest gifts!
Enjoy every moment.
Love
Tziporah

Dear friends,
It is Lag B'omer night. This year I am here, in my living room, not in Meiron. 

My heart is full of joy, not only for my marriage, which should begin tomorrow, but for all of the light and goodness that fills the world in the merit of Rabi Shimon.

Our entire tradition of looking inward, and discovering how close we are and how beloved we are, this stems from His revealing the parts of the Torah that bring this home to your hearts.

As high as he could fly in a spiritual sense, he was never above taking each person He encountered and saying, I am here for you, no matter who you are, what you have done, or where you have been.

You are invited (virtually) to my website to see our chaseneh on video.
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Much, much love to you all. 
Tziporah