​Dear friends,

No one can say that they don’t know.

The last year has been hard on all of us, but the last few weeks have been far more painful. We have been forced to see that Covid isn’t a threat to specific groups, the elderly, the vulnerable and those with pre-existing conditions., Even if it were, would that justify allowing an emotional mechitza to separate you from them? hardly. It’s about newborn babies, mothers of tiny infants and of large families. Boys of 17. Young men with what we would assume is an entire life before them. No group is safe. Hashem has told the angel of destruction not to differentiate between the righteous and the wicked. Even the great scholars and the most generous and compassionate people have not always been spared. 

The scientific community has ceaselessly worked, doing whatever they can to preserve life and to make it possible to tame the beast. Hashem has granted them success in producing a vaccine that will, BEH, silence its roar. IN the meantime, more remains unknown and as yet undiscovered. The story is not over; not for the thousands of people presently afflicted , those on life support, those on respirators and ventilators, those who will never be quite the same, and those who don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Will their husband/wife/baby/mother/father/ child/beloved friend or chavrusa/rabbi or rebbetzin still be alive?

It’s time to recognize that the only One to whom we can turn is Hashem.

Rabbi Dovid Lau, the Ashkenazi chief Rabbi has organized a tefillah in Kever Rachel. It will begin at 4pm today, and whoever can take the time to daven with him then, or at whatever time works out for you, will be part of Am Yisrael’s collective voice. The main thing is to daven, and to open your heart to Hashem, who awaits our tefillot

May we only hear good news, and soon see the geulah shleimah,
​
Tziporah Gottlieb

Dear friends,
The lockdown in Israel is still on, and may continue for a third week. The number of people with Covid is still getting higher by the day, and the tragic deaths are becoming more and more frequent.  The funerals are as always grim, sober, and most of all heartbreaking. 

If you were to let yourself step back, and see the situation as it is, what would you say?

It’s hard to know. The one thing that you know is that this isn’t the first or last time that events were impossible to interpret as they happened. At times, they are easy (or at least possible) to interpret in the course of time. At times, they are not. This leaves you with the question of what Hashem wants from us, when we don’t really know or understand what is happening.

One way to answer the question is to think more deeply about ourselves, and our responses in a world that by its nature, is both good and bad. What does good really mean? What does bad really mean?

To my mind, good is synonymous with clarity, light, revelation, while bad would be synonymous with chaos, darkness, and concealment. This mixture isn’t easy to separate into segments. In the Torah, where we find the story of Adam eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the challenge involved eating. Once you eat something, it is part of you. Similarly, the chaos and the order, the light and the darkness, the clarity and the concealment are all there not only in the world, but also in you! How do you separate the components? How do you manage to rid yourself of evil, and retain what is good in yourself?
The effect of learning Torah and doing mitzvos is to strengthen the part of you that is drawn towards light. At the same time, you have to strengthen your emunah, your basic faith in Hashem’s presence, so that you teach yourself to find Him in simple daily life.  The opposite is to let your body dedicate itself to the act of constant taking without informing your soul as to what it wants, how it will get it, and what the price really is. Being a chronic taker will turn you into a person whose repertoire includes most of the base desires. Did you ever steal anything? How about when you were a kid? If you did, you “invested” in chaos. You didn’t know it at the time. At that point, the core motivation was impulsivity and pleasure. The same would hold for an illicit relationship and similar moments of darkness when the spiritual side is silent. 

Is this you?

Don’t worry! You aren’t a finished product. You all know the basic steps that let you return to what you were before these indulgences became part of your “normal”. Let’s say you don’t really think you have the strength for all three parts of T'shuvah"? Don’t give up. Even if you just feel regret, and never really completely wean yourself off the behavior because it’s too hard for you (translate: You are weak), the fact that at least your guilt and regret are honest, is enough to move you beyond the place you are now, and to let you have some clarity.

Suppose your issue isn’t’ desire, impulsivity etc. Suppose you have assimilated skepticism about Hashem’s involvement in your life, about the truth of the Torah or about whether or not keeping the mitzvos really changes anything. If this is you, you are potentially in a much more painful and difficult place. The reason is that you think you are right, which means that you may have managed to redefine darkness to mean light. At this point it’s harder to do Teshuvah. How can you feel regret and feel right at the same time? The answer here is to step back and remember who you are. You come from a people who have experienced Hashem in every step of their journey. The stories in the Torah are not myths. They happened. You can‘t tell thousands of people that they have all simultaneously suffered the same massive delusion. No one can convince a generation to accept something that happened in the immediate past as a true event that they actually experienced through the eyes of those who all told the same story. You may feel that the Torah is true. Emunah goes deeper than history. It’s part of your inner sense of not being alone, of looking at the most basic parts of you, the desire to love and be loved, and the universal awareness of meaning that takes you back to Teshuvah.

That’s what this week’s Parshah is about. 

The Jews in Egypt were very blocked. The nature of their lives as slaves was dark, empty and painful in ways that we can’t easily imagine today. When they came close to crossing the line that would make them redeemable, the part of them that knew the truth was rediscovered.
They cried out to Hashem. 

It wasn’t their Plan A. That was to wait things out until Pharaoh died, and then assume that the enslavement would end under the new regime. It didn’t’
Then the emunah that they had latent within them, as part of their spiritual DNA came forth.
Maybe it’s time that we tried this method.

Today’s Parshah tells you about the last plagues. Hosts of locusts stopped at Egypt’s political borders. That showed the broken, hollow, hoping against hope, Jews, that forces other than natural ones are involved. Nature doesn’t know what political borders are. The locusts did. IT was an eye–opener.  Hail showed them that fire and water can coexist. They can unite to serve one Master. Just like darkness and chaos can be redefined as challenge, and light can be redefined as inspiration, and together they can lead you to Hashem. In the next plague, there were Jews who experienced the light that Hashem made accessible to them, and other Jews who identified so strongly with the darkness of Egypt that they wanted more than anything to stay where they were.
​And to do
Nothing
At all
Just to stay where things are 
Familiar
And not alive.
 
Hashem guided them, and is giving us. You have choices to make.
Love Tziporah

​Dear friends,
 
I just received a letter that I had never expected. 
A number of years ago, I got a letter from Chaim Dovid Goldstein, who had read one of my articles in Hamodia, and had a few questions. In and of itself, this is very unusual. By and large if there are questions they get filed away under H for ‘hmmm’, and are forgotten. Occasionally the person with the question will ask her rabbi or rebbitzen, and more rarely actually send me a letter.
 
What made this letter unique is that it came from Federal Prison. Periodically, he wrote letters to me about my column  The questions were always on target, often accompanied with a dash of wit and always with a full cup of good humor. In the course of the years, I got to know about his transformation. He read chumash, mishnah, and articles on hashkafa. Jewish volunteers from the area would visit him as well as the handful of other Jewish prisoners. He began to keep kosher very seriously. What that meant was never having hot food, since even kosher food that was brought couldn't be warmed up in the general oven. It also meant adopting a very different schedule than the rest of the prisoners. He would get up early to learn and to daven, and go to sleep as soon as possible to avoid the dissolute lifestyle and language that was so much part of the culture of the prison.
 
I know him as the man he is now; an idealistic baal tshuvah who serves Hashem with significant mesiras nefesh. And of course I hope that this is the way Hashem judges all of us. None of us are completely clean, and Hashem is merciful enough to look beyond our incredibly numerous failures. 
 
We have been through hard times. The Covid has imprisoned all of us to one degree or another. I hope that you have been well and are managing under the circumstances. The political turmoil has also done its bit to pull the rug out from under our feet.  May we soon all be free, and may it happen with the miracles that we saw in Mitzrayim or more!
 
Miracles happen all of the time. Wait a minute. If they happen all of the time, why call them miracles? Why not just describe what you see. You are surrounded by miracles that you may have never noticed. 
 
Did you ever hear the harsh silence of the forest? I would  at times escape to Brooklyn's Botanical Gardens during my High School days. I didn't know enough to see the author of the silence and the beauty. I was in Bais Yaakov, but to shallow to make the lessons that every Parshah and every prophet spoke out with such elegance have much to do with real life. I didn't use the word "miracle' in my self-talk. I used the vocabulary of Waldon Pond which we learned in our rather forgetable English class. It was only much later that I knew that a miracle isn't supernatural necessarily, or even unusual. It’s anything that leads you to Hashem.
 
Ramban tells you that a miracle is something dramatic enough to catch your attention and make you recognize that G-d is not only the direct cause of the world's existence, but is also involved in its moment by moment continuance. Not only that, but that He is fully aware of the choices you make, and the way they cause you in a certain sense to rebrand yourself and the world as a whole. Think about what being in Egypt during the year before the exodus would have been like.
 
Blood (and don’t forget, the act of changing water to blood not only is changing the appearance and taste of the liquid, but its entire chemical structure), Frogs (and don't forget that the Hebrew word for frog, tzfradea has its root in the word tzfar, which means siren. The incessant croaking was their proclamation of Hashem's ability to change the rules of the game, by changing the instinctual responses of animals.) The frogs came indoors, away from their outdoor wet habitat into the ovens and beds of the Egyptians. Lice emerged from the earth so that they were literally stepping on swarms of the repulsive creatures. The Egyptians didn't open their minds; to them the event was tragic, not miraculously. The Reason that this was the case is that t a miracle must by definition lead you back to Hashem, and they didn't have the fortitude to let themselves go so far beyond their assumptions about life. 
 
What does this have to do with you?
You don't have your water turn to blood, or your bed full of frogs, or your ankles oozing with lice bites. What all of these plagues tell you is that you matter. You are seen. Hashem responds to you. You are the reason that the cosmos exist.
 
You can partner with Hashem by being part of the story, not just a spectator. Notice what goes on around you. See His hidden hand. When you do this, the gigantic miracles that your ancestors saw in Egypt become part of your life.  You come to realize that you are seeing what they saw, but in far more subtle form.  Thinking in these terms can make you realize something.
 
You are in His image
You can notice HIs involvement
You can mirror His involvement and caring, by more like HIm. That means, (gulp) being more involved and more caring.
 
You can replace words like "impossible" "terminal" "all over" "too late" and "hopeless" with new words. "Unlikely, but then again,  who really knows?" "The One who cared enough to get me to Israel, keep me alive, and find me people who care, is still with me now. 
 
Think about the big miracles as you obsrve the small miracles of daily life.
 
Chaim Dovid Goldstein didn't know or care about "impossible" hopeless" or "too late". You can make the same kind of choice. Let his example stay somewhere in back of your mind, so you can pull it out when you over overwhelmed. You can learn to think in these terms even if you are in quarantine. Even if  you have Covid. Even if you have had enough
 
Love,
Tziporah.

Dear friends,

What do you really want? It’s not a simple question. If you take, for example, someone who loves her friends and family and get her to ask herself whether living for the feeling of closeness is what it is all about, sometimes the answer is, “I don’t know”. This is sometimes the result of her asking herself another, far more basic question: “Do I really live in a way in which I am totally dependent on other people for my sense of purpose? There are people who live for the satisfaction that their work gives them. “It feels good to express your potential and doing it successfully is marvelous. You still may find that the answer may be a question. He may ask himself, “Do I really live for the feeling of achievement?”  

Today’s parshah begins by telling us that Yaakov lived. Of course, he had the almost unimaginable joy of bringing up a family that could be the foundation of a great nation, one in which each one is a tzadik in his own way. He was reunited with Yosef, who exemplified the ideals that he lived for. He had every reason to feel profound satisfaction with his life. The Torah presents him with words that seem to have nothing to do with really living. “And Yaakov lived in the Land of Egypt”. There are two ways to hear this statement. One fits right into the way you would generally think. Yosef was in Egypt. After so many years of anguish at last, they are reunited. Not only are they reunited, but he discovers that Yosef is still Yosef, that none of his exposure to the worst of the worst at the most vulnerable age, and after base betrayal by his own brothers changed him. What could make Yaakov feel really alive more than that?

The Sfas Emmes questions this assumption. Yaakov knew that when he went down to Egypt that he was beginning a story that didn’t have an easy narrative. He knew about the prophecy that there would be enslavement, suffering and estrangement. He was a man of truth, and a man whose vision went beyond his personal life. How alive could he feel when he knew that he was leading his family into tragedy? He answers that if you are a person of faith, you can feel a sense of purpose and vivacity (what a word for being alive!) even in Egypt. Being alive for a human isn’t all that different than for a tree. If you are connected to your roots in the earth you can stay alive. If you aren’t dead it is just a matter of time. Hashem is the root of all life; the reason that you feel so much joy from love and success is that they both mirror Hashem’s middos, which are embedded in your soul. The more you have connection to this inner reality, the less the outside world will change your inner peace.

Every so often things happen that make you aware of how involved Hashem is in the life of ordinary people even in today’s world. Rav Melech Biderman is a bright light. He is like the rebbe’s of old (although he is not a rebbe) who made their life’s work bringing a sense of Hashem’s presence to people who are not up there on top of the invisible roster of Greats. He told the following two stories that I want to share with you.
​
A man named Rav Druck lives in Ramat Shlomo is a wonderful baal chessed and a real scholar. His elderly father lives in Netanya, and has great pleasure in inviting his children and grandchildren (and great grandchildren) over for a yearly Chanukah party. Last year was no exception. Rav Druck also has a daughter who lives in Neve Yaakov. She is a single parent of several young children, and her life by the nature of things isn’t all roses. On the way to Netanya, Rav Druck’s daughter and son in law had an idea. They would drop in by her sister, who found it too hard to travel to Netanya with her little kids, and liven things up. They followed up and came with treats, music and sang and played with the kids. When Rav Druck’s daughter looked at her watch and saw that it was getting late, she told her husband, “We have to leave now. The direct bus to Netanya leaves at 6:15”. As soon as they heard this, the kids began to cry. They didn’t want their world to revert to the quiet evenings that they were used to. Her husband realized that they were far more needed in Neve Yaakov than they would be in the crowded and jovial scene in Netanya. “Let’s stay here tonight. It’s a bigger mitzvah”. The bus that they missed was in a terrible accident, (one that made all of the papers here in Israel). They have no pretense of knowing why the accident happened, or why other people had to suffer whatever they suffered. The only thing they know is that when they did what they were sure (to the best of their ability to know) what was closest to Hashem’s will, He did the equivalent of saying “yes”.

When I heard Rav Biderman tell the story, at first I was very surprised that he used real names rather than hiding behind names that were made up, or anonymity. I listened again, and the second time I heard the story (it was recorded) I understood. His message was, “this is real. It happened. Not thousands of years ago. Now. To people you may have walked by. To people who are just like you”. 

Story 2 is saved for next week. Stay tuned.

For those of you in Eretz Yisrael, enjoy the semi lockup. Let it take you where you need to be.

Love,
Tziporah 

​Dear friends,

There are gifts that can never be anticipated, and certainly not repaid. When you think about your life; I am sure that you will detect many such presents. Some of them are so general and so easy to share that you can easily not see them. Last night, for instance, the sky assumed a usually deep shade of blue before it finally receded into black, and let the white/golden moon take its place with the kind of delicacy and splendor that are hard to find at the same moment. Everyone in Yerushalaim sees it; some of us were able to let it speak to us, and others were not.

There are other times that the gift you receive is so unique, that it stands out. Friday night, I received this kind of gift. I was with the Bnos Avigail for our Shabbos in the Old City. We stayed on Har Tzion, very near the tomb of King David. When we arrived on Friday afternoon, the security men only allowed 15 girls in at a time. The result was that the rest of us davened minchah immediately outside the kever in the open area that no doubt was the place that countless people davened or learned before us, and the girls who went inside had the rare experience of being there when there aren’t crowds of tourists breaking the silent speech of tefillah. After the seudah, we walked to the Old City. 

To give you an idea of why I call this a miracle, I want to recall a conversation that I heard about a half a year ago. Professor Robert Aumann is a Nobel prize recipient, and is completely observant. In fact, when the committee in charge of the event informed him that 1) tickets for the event itself will only be given to immediate family, meaning parents, spouses and children, and 2) formal dress is required, and the Nobel committee in Stockholm will arrange for tuxedos for the men they were in for a surprise. Most Nobel laureates have relatively small families, i.e. a spouse, and two kids or so, and maybe an elderly parent. They were not ready for a laureate who needed 11 seats. He also informed them of the Biblical injunction to refrain from wearing wool and linen, and the absence of an official shatnez checker in Stockholm to check the tuxedos for himself and his sons. What this all tells you, is that he is both quite brilliant, and more significantly a man of deep commitment to Torah and profound faith in Hashem.

He was talking to a non-Jewish college quite a number of years ago when looking at the Old City from the panoramic view on the Haas Promenade. He was asked if he ever expected to get to go to the Western Wall. He had said that man will walk on the moon before this will happen.

It happened.

When Hashem decided the time was ripe, in what was close to a dream sequence, everything changed, and we can walk through Shaar Tzion, the gate through which our forces entered as they re-took the Old City in 1967. Heading onwards, we walked on Rechov Chabad. I was explaining some of the history (we could see the Cardo, the remains of the ancient Roman marketplace), when an elderly gentlemen said, “I have a story to tell you about Yerushalaim”. He told us how he took an active interest in building a mikveh in the Old City, and raised funds, and sat with the architect and contractors about making it happen. As things turned out, they uncovered a water duct that goes all the way to Beit Lechem, built by Shlomo HaMelech, thus bonding the past and present in ways that typify being in the Old City. When he was finished, I asked him to give the girls a brachah. He said that the Talmud tells us that there are always 36 hidden tsaddikim, and he isn’t one of them, but he had one moment in which he as. Of course I asked him what happened.

“The law requires that before any reconstruction can be done in the Old City, the archeologists have to be given the opportunity to examine the site. There is a recently built basketball court built for the children of the Old City. As they dug, the remains of an ancient church were uncovered. The plan suggested by the secular authorities was to dig up the entire area so that the church be presented and become a tourist exhibit. He found out about this, informed the erudite senior Rav of the Old City, Rav Nebentzahl shlita who invited the mayor to his home to discuss the matter. The mayor, Mr. Leon, who Is traditional and very respectful of religion immediately agreed that what the Old City needs is not a bastion of avoda zara and arranged for the plan to be stopped. “That was my moment”, he told us. At that point I suspected something. I asked him for his name, and he said “Holtzberg”. I asked him if he was the Holtzberg who is so active in visiting the sick. “Yes” he told me. I immediately realized that he is Rav Aryeh Levine’s grandson, son of Reb Simchah Holtzberg who was also called the “Father of the Wounded” for his commitment to wounded soldiers.

Was this not a gift to the girls?

I only have one regret. I could have asked him about his grandfather, and about what his moments of being one of the 36 hidden tsaddikim were, since he told him that he had one.

But who has to look a gift horse in the mouth?

May you all soon be in Yerushalaim in the Bais HaMikdash, feeling the beauty of Hashem’s greatest gift to us; His presence.
​
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,

The nights are long, and dark. Last night the stark white of lightning illuminated the sky, with the background symphony of thunder. Chanukah lends itself to theatrical weather.
​
When you look at the special addition for Chanukah that appears both in the prayers and in Birkat Hamazon, you can get a feel of how much more stark and powerful this kind of night was during the war.
The Maccabees had to face it. Taking refuge in the caves and forests agent the best largest and most disciplined army in the world was a life-or-death disciplined performance. They were few, untrained, and had lived their lives pursuing truth through learning Torah, not pursuing Greeks against impossible odds. They assumed that they would die, and they still found the gamble worth it.
It was all ideological. Can you picture saying the equivalent of “Who cares?” and just getting on with your life?

It’s no coincidence that the story of Yosef is read during Chanukah. He too faced impossible odds, and had no expectation of survival, but for him the battle was entirely different. He had come to do battle against himself, pitting his natural desires and fears against his awareness of Hashem’s will.
Can you picture yourself saying the equivalent of “Who cares?” if you were Yosef?
Potiphar’s wife stopped at nothing to get Yosef to have relations with her. She changed her clothes several times a day, created situations where she could speak to him, and ultimately threatened to fake a scenario presenting him as an attacker, and herself as a victim.

What motivated her? Was it just the banal old cliché of a lonely woman meets an attractive man?
It was far deeper than that.  She knew astrology (which was very common in Egypt during her lifetime). She saw that Yosef’s descendants would come from her line, and she wanted to make it happen, she wanted to be part of something bigger than herself. What you may not know is that Yosef also knew astrology. He saw the same stars that she did. His conclusion was that he would fail the moral test he faced. He would end up committing adultery with her, and she would bear his child. He now had the best excuse in the world. He could say, “I am inevitably going to fail this test.  I am doomed. The test is too big.”
AND YES!! The whole thing is ideological. Who will know what happened between them? Can you picture yourself saying the equivalent of, “Who cares?” if you were Yosef?

Now he had the same choice as the Maccabees. Should he head off to battle (in his case against his yetzer hara, his evil inclination) knowing he will lose, and face spiritual death? Should the Macabees enter battle against the Greeks knowing that in all likelihood they will face brutal and immediate physical death? They came to the same conclusion. They both decided to do the right thing, regardless of the possibility of facing death.

AFTER ALL, IT’S ONLY IDEOLOGICAL…

This is called “mesiras nefesh”.

IT’S NOT ONLY IDEOLOGICAL. IT’S ABOUT WHO YOU ARE, AND WHO YOU WANT TO BE. 

The result was (both of them!) divine intervention that changed the game completely. The Maccabees won, entered the sanctuary, and witnessed the miracle of the candelabra staying lit for 8 days (the time needed to bring down new oil from the north). Yosef ended up as the viceroy of Egypt. He saved his family, Egypt, and ultimately the entire known world which was affected by the famine. He also ended up showing us what it truly means to be a tzadik.

You have your challenges, and I have mine. The one thing we share in common is that you and I are both going to find ourselves thinking that there is no hope - that we are going to lose this one. The truth is, that Hashem will help you as He helped the Maccabees and as He helped Yosef.
How are you going to find the courage you need to survive the dark moments?

Even Potifera, Yosef’s master, knew that “Hashem is with him”, in his own words. He recognized that Yosef had ruach haKodesh, inspiration from Hashem, a higher source.

The Talmud tells that you can only have ruach hakodesh if you are happy.
NOTHING MAKES YOU HAPPIER THAN LIVING A LIFE OF MEANING, OF LIGHT, OF WHAT CHANUKAH MEANS TO US ALL.

Yosef’s secret was being happy with any situation that he faced. THIS CAN BE  YOUR SECRET TOO.

Love,
Tziporah           

Dear friends,
I teach at an Israeli Midrashah called Netiv Binah. I can hear you clearly, thousands of miles away.
“What is a Midrashah?”
A midrashah is a learning framework for women who work. People who aren’t acquainted with Torah Judaism can’t always relate to it easily. The students work at a real-world job. We have a lawyer, a language specialist, and a woman who is in a high position on one of Israel’s major industries.  They come in after a full day at work. At the end of the day, you might assume that the next “activity” is dinner, the news and finally a shower and bed.
Not for them. They come to the MIdrashah (which begins its classes at 5:15 breaks for dinner at 6:15 and continues most nights until about 10 (!). They want more than to come in first in the rat race. They want Torah, and of all of the women I teach, they are the least afraid of changing.
Not all of the women come every night, and not all of the women stay for the entire program. Even so, it is unique. There is nothing like it as far as I know in the secular world. They don’t take tests, get marks or degrees. It is all for the sake of learning more, in order to be more and to do more.
The Midrshah is located on Sorotzkin Street not far from Yerushalaim’s central bus station. Thedesign of Sorotzkin 35 (where the Midrashah is located) features 6 entrances on two levels, oneof which faces the street, the other one right behind. So, you have Sorotzkin A and Sorotzkin B. There is a shared underground area for parking, and on either side, there are storage areas. 
A fire broke out last week. It began in one of the storage basements, and spread from unit tounit. It stopped rather mysteriously at entrance 3, the one that leads up to Netiv Bina.  That is miracle number one. It also spared one other unit. That is miracle 2, and it carries a deep message.
 The story began well before the fire.
“Avi” the owner of the spared unit, answered a phone call from his neighbor. It seems that there was a plumbing issue, and the neighbor wanted him to come up to his apartment to help him out. Avi did, but just a few days later had reason to regret it. The symptoms were the usual ones; and before he even had it checked, he knew he had COVID-19. And so did his wife. And their kids… Their neighbor, it seems, had COVID when he asked Avi to look at the problem, but didn’t “bother” to mention the extremely catching virus. He knew that he was exposing his neighbor, but he wanted the fix the plumbing. 
 It wasn’t an easy time for Avi or for his family. He could sort of hear the outdoor minyan, but not really. His kids could sort of focus on the telephone classes, but not really…. When his neighbor (finally) called to ask him for forgiveness, his first response was to say that he forgives him, just because it is so unpleasant to say you don’t forgive someone, but he knew that in his heart there was no forgiveness at all.  Avi was too honest to just say the words. He wanted to be able to say them sincerely.
He stepped back from his ego. He had enough perspective to ask himself the hard questions.
Who determines my fate, and the fate of my family? “Who benefits from Hashem’s decrees, are they not made with only our ultimate good in mind?”. The thoughts flooded him it felt like a lifetime, but it was just a few seconds. He forgave his neighbor sincerely. This story was told by Rav Meilich Biderman, one of the brilliant stars in the contemporary world of teaching Torah to the masses of people who want inspiration.
I then found out that no less that Avi himself had recounted the entire thing on mainstream media…
Besides opening my eyes, I hope to some degree at least, it opened my heart
Having an “ayin tovah”, a good eye, means being willing to see what is good and meritorious in your neighbors, and in your friends. It generates feelings of being invested in his success, and generous when judging his failures.
The opposite is ayin raah, w hen you look at others as though they are engaged in an unending war of Us against Them. Avi was able to see that everything he is ad has is a gift from Hashem, and that no human is genuinely a real competitor. If nothing else, Corona has taught us that we have absolutely no way of controlling events, or even anticipating what will happen next. It is in other Hands. One of the lesson s that this plague has taught us is to finally quit eh game of Us angst Them and of course its “daughter’ Me against Him.
Yosef’s brothers felt threatened by him, and for good reason. They tragically misjudged him, and thought that there was option for what they know was the beginning of a nation, to defend its unity by not let one of the brothers push the others into the twilight of history
You can easily understand their misjudgment if you let your mind take over, and keep your emotions out of the picture, which is usually the best way to make serious decisions. There’s one problem. After the tragic deed was done, and Yosef was sold, they sat down and had a meal. What that shows are that a moment that could/should have been one in which they mourned their brother, even though they thought there were no other options, was tinged with their raw envy and their desire to win the battle of Us against Him. 
Would we have done better?
I don’t know who will read this letter. Just go back a bit and ask yourself how you feel w hen you are vulnerable. Let the answer sink in deep enough for you to replace the fear of loss/failure/rejection/losing the game/competition that fuels envy with tranquility/trust/courage/ emunah.
I hope that I can,
and I hope that you can too.
 
Love,
Tziporah

Dear friends,
What confusing times we live in!
The elections are over, but are they really?
There is a vaccine for Corvid 19. Is it really what we were hoping for?
There are countless conspiracy theories floating around. It would be easy to dismiss them, but over the years I have discovered that sometimes the most outrageous conspiracy theories turned out to be true. Of course I have also discovered that the majority of them don’t turn out to be true. Where do you turn to when you are looking for truth?
When my boys were still teenagers one of Israel’s repetitive wars was going on. Word got out that Rav Shach zatzal had made a major address about responding to the situation. When I went down to the mailbox to pick up the paper (we had a subscription that I had bought for my first husband thinking he would enjoy it. He didn’t nor did the kids. I was the only one who read my “present”). Of course, since they were teenagers, one of them grabbed it out of my hands immediately. After a moment he threw it on the table and said. “He didn’t say anything”. I looked at the front page, and saw that there were 6 columns worth of “nothing”. I asked him what he meant to say. He said, “Oh you know. Daven. Learn. Show greater respect and generate unity to your fellow Jew”. To him this felt like nothing. He would have much preferred something novel and (even better) dramatic. Maybe a call to have every single person in the country to go to the Kotel at dawn, or maybe a demand that everyone adopt a foster child or at least that all of the yeshivos close for a day of focused prayer in one of the holy places in the north (preferably not too far form a nature reserve). 
It doesn’t go that way.
Truth is the whole picture. We humans are far too limited to see the truth as it really is. Our lives are too short, our intellects too limited and our emotions too strong to avoid subjectivity.
Truth is far bigger than factuality. If someone were to ask you “Who was Hitler” and you answer “a vegetarian”, your answer would be accurate, but far from true. The only possible address for truth is truth that is from a source that is higher than you are (much as in the physical world, what you see form the top of the mountain is far more reflective of genuine reality that what you see from your window) From the mountain top you can see an entire panorama. From your window, if you are not careful (and if the pane isn’t clean) all you see is yourself and your immediate surroundings. When Hashem gave us the Torah, He gave us truth.
There’s a problem.
You can only hear the truth if you don’t block it out. You can block it out by physical passion or by ego, or by unwillingness to change. The illusion is that living a life of falsehood is sweeter. In the short term this is often accurate, but accurate and true aren’t the same things.
The only one of the patriarchs who is mentioned in Birkat HaMzaon (the prayer after eating bread), is Yaakov. We refer to Hashem as “Our holy One, the Holy One of Yaakov”. The reason that he is mentioned and not Avraham or Yitzchak is that he took their teachings even further than they did. He used their legacy to climb the mountain, and to see the world form its top. Avrhaham introduced the world of his time to belief in one G-d, and realized that we are in His image, and we can develop ability to bond with Him by mirroring Him. He is the host of the world? Be hospitable. He is compassionate; plead the case for others the way that Avraham bargained for Sdom.  Avraham was the pillar of chessed, Yitzchak built on what Avraham had started. He saw that there are many obstacles that are in the way –and he combined dealing with them with living he kind of life Abraham had lived. Besides the awesome and inspiring moments that you are familiar with (for instance, the akeida) he brought the ideal of living for Hashem into every aspect of his life. His “pillar” is the pillar of devotion to Hashem. Devotion demands strength, He left us our collective ability to make awesomely painful and difficult choices to stay Jewish. Yaakov saw the “whole picture”-Avraham’s love of Hashem, and Yitzchak’s strength and devotion.  He became a man of truth. This means seeing the whole picture. The whole picture always includes Hashem in it, since He is every blood cell and every galaxy at the same time. Yaakov’s name is mentioned in Birkat HaMazon because he could see Hashem even in the bread he was eating. 
Eisov was his twin
Equally as gifted, brought up by the same parents. His every choice ended up false for one reason. He couldn’t ever take himself out of the picture. His cheessed is based on the personal satisfaction and external recognition that it often brings. His courage was unfocussed.  I grew up on the Three Muscateers and the Knights of the Round Table. They were portrayed as being courageous, but the loyalty was never to Hashem, who for them was at most a vague presence somewhere Out There.
I don’t know who will resolve the confusion concerning the American election. I don’t know what will end the Corona Pandemic. What I do know is that tshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah are the visible sources of change that you can see when you are on top  of the mountain.
 
Love,
Tziporah