Dear friends,

Noach heard news that none of us ever heard (or ever will hear).
No one will survive.

He was literally speechless- no defense, no prayers for a miraculous change of mind, no apparent regret for what is and was the worst possible calamity that ever did or will happen.
Here you are, beginning your life anew after the holidays, and the first chapter you read in the Torah takes you to exactly the opposite of what you may have wanted to see. It’s not the Brave New World. What’s the message?

Noach is described as tzadik tamim, a tzadik who is `` whole''. Ramban comments that his trust in Hashem was absolute. Even before he heard about the flood, he didn’t turn to sorcery, fortune telling, or any of the ways of entering the foggy and spiritually escapist world of the occult that were so popular in his time. He recognized that wherever Hashem is taking him, that is where he has to be. He was not blind to the society in which he lived. He lived with corruption every day of his life. He saw the progression in which the most human of all traits, the traits that you love when you find them alive and well in yourself, inherent desire to give, and the will to make things more real, valid, and beautiful was eclipsed by most animalistic of all of your traits, the desire to endlessly take.

There was promiscuity, and by the nature of things all promiscuity is exploitive. There were all sorts of idols worshipped. What they had in common is that they demanded nothing in the way of higher moral consciousness. If you had to write the philosophy of the pre-mabul world in one word, the word would be “gimme”. The spiral downward had taken them to a point of no return.

Noach understood that the next step was one that only Hashem can determine. He accepted the decision with his characteristic wholeness. This acceptance wasn’t born of cruelty or of callousness. It was born of the hope for a new beginning.
Avraham took things differently when Hashem presented him with the decision to destroy Sdom. There too, there was no real possibility of change. Avraham, however, bargained. You could make a mistake, and think that he was outguessing Hashem. He wasn’t. He trusted Hashem so much that he is referred to as the “Head of all believers”. There was someone else he didn’t trust.
It was himself.
He knew that as a human, his role is to feel.
Not to judge.
He was right. There was a moment in which you can see that he knew the truth; Hashem’s will is just. He said (about himself), “I am dust and ashes”, meaning his human limitations blind him to genuinely grasping Hashem’s will, but the limitation is his, not Hashem’s.

In today’s society judging Hashem is fashionable. Admitting human limitation is not. There is enormous hidden greatness in being able to say, “I don’t know”, and mean it. It is even greater when your heart says what it says, but is silenced by its realisation of Hashem’s greatness.

You are moving into the Real World, and so am I. There are no holidays until Chanukah. Your ability to take all of the marvelous wondrous moments you had (maybe shofar. Maybe ne’ilah, maybe seeing the throngs head towards Birkat Cohanim, maybe just tasting the sweetness of the coming year, with its gift of renewal and life) and bring them to the ordinary somewhat (blessedly) uneventful moments. There may be moments that are dark, not given to your ability to look at them and see more than uninterpretable fog.

Great!
Those are your Noach moments.
And maybe even your Avraham moments.

Noach’s descendants fill the world. Every person you will ever encounter is here because somewhere way back there was one man worth saving. He was given instructions about how to build the ark that would be the means of his escape from the teaming waters of the flood. One of them was to build a Tzohar on its side. What exactly is a Tzohar? Rashi says it's either a window or a precious stone that sheds light. You can look outside and see destruction, or look inward and see light. Or both.

Love,
Tziporah ​

Dear friends,

It’s almost here.     
                                                  
Experiencing Yom Kippur on its own terms can feel heavy, guilt provoking, and oppressive. That’s only true when you let confessing your (already existent) faults somehow morph into being major Issues. The truth is that Issues (and their cousin, Baggage) are there whether or not you deal with them. Confessing that they are real is the first step towards putting all the luggage down.

The process begins the day before Yom Kippur. When you eat, of course the taste, smell and texture of the food talks to your body. This is how Hashem designed His world. Now, let them talk to your soul as well. Let yourself say the blessing and mean what you say. If, for instance you take a coffee as you head out, when you say, “Blessed are you……who brought everything into existence through His word” and think about the implications of these words, the effect is to atone for the sins that you may have done that involve food in the course of the year. Impulsive eating, non-kosher eating, eating without a bracha, all build your identity.  They make you see yourself as a smart animal, not a truly human being in God's image. You say a bracha and it all changes. This is what brings you into the spirit of Yom Kippur. You have taken a basic simple activity – eating - and treated it as you should instead of separating you from Hashem, eating led you to Him. It became a bridge instead of a wall.

THE BAD NEWS
If you ignore your faults, they continue existing. They lead you to disliking yourself, and worse still, living with hopes of somehow escaping at least briefly the tedium and stress of life. 

THE GOOD NEWS
Your faults are what makes your life real, challenging, and (believe it or not) happy.  You make choices and the good ones take you further than you ever could have gone without it being tested. The angels are static. They are compared to soldiers standing at attention, always ready to move at the commander’s word. You are mobile. The person you were yesterday maybe you, but it may or may not be the finished product. Humans are “walking” constantly. The main challenge is noticing that you are actually making choices, and that the choices you make today are authoring who you will be on your last day. There's increasing evidence that the payoff of working past age 65 may go beyond income. Some studies have linked working past retirement with better health and longevity. A 2016 study of about 3,000 people, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, suggested that working even one more year beyond retirement age was associated with a 9% to 11% lower risk of dying during the 18-year study period, regardless of health.
A 2015 study of 83,000 older adults over 15 years, published in the CDC journal Preventing Chronic Disease, suggested that, compared with people who retired, people who worked past age 65 were about three times more likely to report being in good health and about half as likely to have serious health problems, such as cancer or heart disease.

Other studies have linked working past retirement age with a reduced risk of dementia and heart attack. You may be wondering why I am sharing this info with people who are 40 years too young for it to have any practical application. The reason is that it seems to me that fear of work is on the rise. 
T'shuvah is work! It’s the kind of work that generates fulfillment, and gives you guaranteed success (since t'shuvah “works” even if you fail in the future, as long as you are being real when you endeavor to change, you broke down a fence. There is no guarantee that you won’t rebuild it, but there is a guarantee that you became closer to Hashem by at least trying to tear it down.

THE BEST NEWS 
The holiness of the day is often felt at its very first moment, when you go to shul for Kol Nidrei. Annulling vows is important, but you may be wondering why it feels so deep, so awesome. The reason is, the Kabbalistic work Matok MiDvash says, is that this brings about a parallel annulment so to speak of Hashem’s vows, In the second paragraph of SHEMA you read about Hashem’s covenant. He will draw us close with peace, prosperity, and a lifestyle that resonates with your sense of How Things Should Be. 
​
KEEP READING. 
You will get to a place that says that Hashem will never give up. He will push you to the wall again and again until you can bring yourself back to Him to His Torah.
 
THE BEST NEWS OF ALL!
Hashem is on your team, willing and ready to make your journey less difficult, more challenging, more invigorating, more peaceful all at the same time.
 
Love and gmar chatima tovah,
Tziporah  

Dear friends,

How was your Rosh Hashanah?

The answer that you give may surprise you by its overt dishonesty. 

If your answer focused on how the meals went (and yes, there are three different kinds of answers to this loaded question) or if you are in a life situation where you have the means to have some guests, this question includes how you felt during the planning of the 4 meals, shopping (which can be elating or draining depending on your stress level and on your budget), serving the guests while hoping that somehow the atmosphere will be warm, and that the people who are with you will feel your care. 

If you in Plan B, meaning that you are in a life situation where you are a guest, or this includes how you felt about yourself and others as you were examining your phone hoping that someone who you really want to spend time with invites you, and that if they do that they somehow strike the right balance in making you feel visible and welcome without leaving you feeling like either a burden or a piece of furniture.

If you are living at home, was the holiday as inspired as you wish it was? Did you wonder exactly what your role is as a (gulp) adult?) Your answer may have to do with the way you felt in shul. Did you have a good place, was the tefillah enthusiastic, did the words of the machzor speak to your heart? Were the other women friendly? Did you end up with a seat behind a pillar?  Did you manage to look the way you want; cool but not ostentatious, original but not bizarre? Did the rabbi speak before the shofar blowing leaving you wondering why you didn’t think more about its significance until you have less than a moment to let it pierce through all the layers of distraction (both the conscious and unconscious kinds?).  

If any of the above answers occupy much of your inner space, then there may be little room for the only answer that is real
“I don’t know. Ask me next year.”
Covid. Surfside. Meiron.
Beautiful weddings. Incredible moments of growth and joy
Sweet ordinary days
Days that may have redefined you, opened up places that were closed, changed things taking you where you never believed you would reach.
You may be wondering why I am writing a belated (and rather guilt provoking) message about a day that has already passed. The reason is twofold (what an archaic word. When was the last time you heard if from someone under 60?)

1. Rosh Hashanah is referred to as “The day the world was born”, but it isn’t. It is the day that the first people were created. Each of you is a world. Your body follows the same pattern as Adam and Chava’s bodies down to the last subatomic particle in your DNA. The place from where Hashem took the earth is the same place where thousands of years later, the alter in the Bais HaMikdash was built. Your soul is in the image of your creator. You can define the world outside your own mini-world. You can elevate it or degrade it. You will be presented with all sorts of new possibilities this coming year. It’s not over till it’s over as Yogi Berra used to say.

 

1. What you do is important. The Jews are .0005 of the world’s population. Our influence in the moral and spiritual realties can’t even be estimated. You make a difference with every response you make. And for that reason, its enormously important for you to realize that you are a significant, beloved, central part of the ongoing picture. You are able to still redefine who you want to be this year. You have time until Yom Kippur to delete the limitations, the painful failures, and the callouses you may have added to your formula for coping with life.

 
Tshuvah is not grim and guilt providing. It brings Hashem back to your life, as you reach out.
Its great! It is the only way to have time reverse. It’s a miracle. Enjoy every precious moment.
​
Love,
Tziporah  

Dear friends,
​
By the time you receive this email, you will practically be feeling the mixture of inner joy, anticipation, and awe of the moment the shofar blows, the connection you feel to Hashem, and to the people you see in shul, (even if you barely know each other) makes wishing each of them a good and sweet year feel normal instead of socially awkward. Even though at that point, the sweetness of honey is still in your mind and your heart, you can almost feel its sweet delightful flavor on your tongue. 
It’s more than a new year. It is the head of the year that will set the tone for the way you relate to the coming year. A good way to begin is with the realization that noone but Hashem can actually give you a year. It is a wonderful gift. Rabbi Avigdor Miller would tell his students that the best preparation for the new year is looking at the way Hashem has given so much in the past year, and the years before that.
The parshah that is always read at this time of year is Netzavim. It begins by telling you who you are and where you came from “You are standing before Me today…” This isn’t a one-time event in our history, it IS our history, moment by moment, person by person. Each one of us is constantly standing before Hashem. Each person simultaneously remains themselves- individual and unique, and at the same time, part of the whole. The Torah delineates each gradation of Jews from the heads of the people, to the water carriers. Each one is equally part of the whole even though (certainly to the outer eye) they don’t have equally as important functions. Eah person is a miniature version of the nation as a whole. There are parts of you that are more important -the mind, the lungs, the heart, and there are parts of you that are less important – the finger, the toe, the eyelashes. All of the parts, are, however, equally as much a part of the body. 
 
Probably the most extreme example of this division on the basis of function is the “heads” and the feet.  They are both necessary for the body to function in a genuinely human way. You have a mind, but you also have to be able to take your thoughts and aspirations and actually take them someplace. You have to walk your walk. There is a part of you that takes in reality and interprets it, and everything that happens next, depends on your interpretation. The mind is the navigator, and if you don’t let it inform the heart, you may find yourself groping. Your will and the narrative that your mind created about who you are, and what Hashem has planned for you has to eventually get down to your feet, to the part of you that is willing to actually do something.
When I was in seminary in Bnei Brak, things were run differently than they are now. We were expected to take care of ourselves. Other than the rabbis and the teachers, the only staff that I recall was the Aim Bayis, the cook, and, the secretary. We were expected to clean up after ourselves, and when the cook was off for holidays, we were also expected to cook. Back home, as a rather spoiled only child I was used to doing:
Nothing at all! No dishes. No bed making. Nothing…..
The Israeli girls were very patient, and they gave me the skills to get along without an entire staff. One day, when I had kitchen toruanut (duty), one of the girls wrapped up some of the unserved leftovers. When I remarked about it, she said, “I’m going to give it away”. When I asked her more questions about the charity that she would be donating it to, she looked surprised. She was going to give it to one of the beggars who sat on Rabi Akiva Street, Bnei Brak’s main thoroughfare. I was horrified. “You can’t let yourself get involved with him! You don’t know what who he is!”. She was calm as she accepted still another demonstration of how Americans are a different breed. “What’s the worst thing that can happen when I give him the food package?” she asked. “Maybe he won’t want it. Maybe he’ll just throw it away”. “Well, isn’t that what would happen if you don’t give it away? Weren’t you planning to throw it in the garbage? 
A lesson learned. Don’t be afraid of people who have not been given what you have, and what you take for granted
People who have less than you come in many forms. I was just reading a book called a “A Tap on the Shoulder” another well written , well researched biography by Yonason Rosenblum about the life of Rabbi Meir Shuster. Throughout what may be called the Golden Age of teshuva, he was there. He spotted them from across the Kotel Plaza; young travelers who want more than just getting through the day. His opening remark was, “Do you have the time?” which often led to an invitation to hear a class, experience a shiur, or meet a rabbi. He identified those who were spiritually impoverished and were on the lowest rung of the ladder. He introduced them to the spiritual Big Boys, who are on top.  He was relentless, perusing his “prey” wherever he had to go to open an uncertain or reluctant student that something transformational may happen. He lived for making all of the parts come together, all of Hashem’s People accepting Him as King.
Rosh Hashanah is the head of the year - demanding and awesome. You see Hashem evaluating you, not in comparison to some mythic perfect person, but in comparison to who you are, and who you can be. He will commit to giving you whatever it is that you need to continue the journey that you make with your eyes closed, unaware of what the final destination will be, but aware that you are being led by One who loves you.
Have a Shanah Tovah 
Tziporah

Dear friends,

It’s a busy time. 

For some of us, being considerate, kind and empathetic comes easily, and for others it is the equivalent of a five-hour trek. This month, Elul, is called the month of compassion and forgiveness. 
Next letter, I will be more practical, and tell you what works in making this happen. This letter is just a sort of road map. 

If you want to use the spiritual force that the month contains, you can do so by finding the part of you that is genuinely compassionate. It’s not easy. You can become hardened to events that don’t touch your life directly, or tragedies that happen to people you don’t know, and this is natural. The first step may very well be learning to be compassionate to yourself. When the Old Girls come by, some of them have. 
Do you think that we humans as a group are kind to ourselves? I don’t see much evidence for this. We treat our bodies badly by denying it what it really needs (you know the canon-sleep-excursive-wholesome food in reasonable amounts). Do you? The way we treat our souls can be even less compassionate. Your soul is beautiful, full of light and eternal. It finds expression through your body.

It’s easy to forget. Your love of pleasure like mine makes taking care of your body a challenge. Your love of dominating, winning, coming out on top no matter who you put down, makes taking care of your soul difficult. Elul is the time for being good to yourself.

There are 13 attributes of mercy that Hashem revealed to us when He forgave us for building the golden calf. They reveal the core of what humans can grasp of Hashem’s relationship to us. The first two invoke His Name twice (Hashem! Hashem!). Rashi explains that this is to tell you that He doesn’t change. His compassion for His creations that inspired the world from its very beginning doesn’t change. Even though He created a perfect world with perfect people in it, and ended up with the world as you see it, His compassion and love for His creations is unchanged. 

You can reasonably ask why then so many things happen that seem to point in other directions? 
The one thing that you can easily observe when you look at the world is that everything has a purpose. The ecosystem is elegant, elaborate and still largely unknown. I went to the aquarium last week. There are fish that defy conventional description. Their colors aren’t like any of the colors that I know words for (and I grew up with Crayola 64 colors!). Humans are the most complex of all. He gave us the ability to make free moral choices, which by definition means that bad choices will be made. You can ask yourself, when you encounter painful situations, the only question that really matters-what can I do to make things better, more aligned with the compassion that is the deepest part of me.

My husband and I were in a taxi headed north. It was hot the way Israel can be hot. On the side of Highway 1, the Jerusalem -Tel Aviv highway we saw an older man in a wheelchair on the curb of the walkway. We asked the driver if we could stop for a moment to see what was happening-he was completely alone, the sun was beating on him, and the cars were the only sign of life nearby. The driver, being Israeli cut through 4 lanes of traffic. He went with my husband to investigate. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t speak. The driver took charge of the situation, and using hand signals got the man to more or less direct him to Kiryat Moshe, and leave him in a synagogue there. The entire episode took about 10 minutes. The driver apologized (!) for taking so long, and offered to deduct some money from the cost of the ride. My husband said that we want to do the opposite, to give him more money for what he did. He turned towards us and said, “I won’t sell this mitzvah for any price”.

I wish I was him, but I am me.
And you are the one Hashem made, who can do
What only you can do
Have compassion for others,
And for your sweet unique and beautiful Souls
 
Love and have a wonderful Elul,
Tziporah

​Dear friends,

Still another shocking incident of Jew hatred took place today. Are you still shocked?
I don’t know the Chabad rabbi who was stabbed in Boston,  but I do know that the only reason that he was attacked is that he is visibly Jewish.

We are not the only minority to have to cope with that status. It’s normal for people to be wary of strangers, to dehumanize them and relegate them to a place called Less. It’s also normal to want to get out of that place and to claw your way up to the top. This combination of conflicting will can easily be toxic. This is a reality that has touched the lives of both Jews and Blacks.

The BLM movement is dealing with a problem that is nonetheless very different than anti- Semitism. People treat Blacks as perennial strangers in a society that others engineered, strangers who have been exploited and who have been robbed of the natural connection to their roots leaving them with no place either in their original society or in the one that they have helped build. The resulting feelings have led to what you see today wherever you look. The way out isn’t hard to see either. When you look at President Obama, you see a winner. He succeeded in using what the society has to offer (which is a great deal in the world’s wealthiest and most powerful country) and making it to the top. This meant learning the culture, getting a real education, and developing an ethos that echoes the voice of America, a place in which for him (and for so many) being Black or White is not the ultimate statement of Self.  In this sense, he is far more of a WASP than I am. 

This method doesn’t work for Jews.

We too are perennial strangers. The vast majority of Jews can’t trace their family’s presence in America earlier than to the 1850s, way after the first slave ship entered American waters. We played by the rules, learned the language, culture, loved the ethos and gave voice to the American dream via our disproportionate pence in the media, films, and literature. We are hated.

We are hated for our successes and despised for our winning the game. We are perceived as separate, “other” and clannish while the same time being “pushy” in integrating to the society in which we live. The perpetrator of today’s stabbing no doubt hated the rabbi (who he probably didn’t know) for the confused reasoning that inevitably accompanies anti-Semitism.

Is there a way out? 

I think I have one, if you can excuse the arrogance that saying these words reflect.
The Torah is the basic system from which every society that has chosen to make moral living their ethos.  Wherever Jews have lived, the assumption that human life is precious, property belongs to its owner, a family means a mother and father who are loyal to each other and have children who know who their parents are, society with courts that are there to mete out justice to the best of their ability, that recognize that G-d is the acknowledged  source of all reality; He may not be cursed. They know that animals experience pain and may not be randomly tortured for no reason, and most significantly, there is awareness of accounting for who you are at the end of the day.

Something tragic happened in America.
Anti-Semitism is a symptom of not only hating Jews, but rejecting all of the above.
The only answer is to build wherever you see destruction. To respond with morality wherever you see moral chaos. To remember that you once stood before Hashem on Mount Sinai, and your light will go on shing regardless of all of the overt and covert efforts to put it out.

On a personal note, my dear friends; My husband, Dovid ben Sarah is having a pacemaker put in on Tuesday. Please, please daven for him
​
And for all of us
In Miami and Meron
In Paris and in Gaza
You are there
If you know it or if you don’t
With the part of you
That stood at Mount Sinai
And still wants to be 
Yourself.
 
Love,
Tziporah 

​Dear Friends,
I just heard this fascinating podcast, and it's really worth a listen.

Rabbi Hanoch Teller needs no introduction. I'm sure you can only gain from his informative and educational talks.

love Tziporah

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/id1541070534

Dear friends,

The school year is ending, and the last few weeks are Baruch Hashem very hectic. I find myself looking at the girls in Bnos Avigail and giving myself permission to see their genuine inner beauty. During the school year, they are in process. They are continually “becoming”, and it’s only at the end of the year that I see them as they are - almost finished products. Choosing how to see them is an art that you learn.  

Noticing this got me thinking back to the story of the spies which was the Parshah several weeks ago. The basic rule concerning the punishments that the Torah metes out is that there are ways to reverse choices that you made. It gives you a way to have a new beginning, and to dealwith reality. When you build a wall that keeps your recognition of Hashem’s presence out, you will find that you can’t see through the wall. The worst punishment meted out to the generation of the desert is the punishment that was the result of sending spies to help them see if they could enter the land, and ultimately it was their negativity that doomed them. 

As you know, the result was a disaster. The awesome beauty, fruitfulness and hidden “something” that made the land one in which people of enormous stature just seemed to demand a “yes”, could be interpreted in very opposite ways. One way would be to step back, and say, “This is what Hashem had promised us all along. From the first time He spoke to Avraham to when we left Egypt the constant refrain was “I will give you the Land’. It was our greatest joy and hope.

Possibility two is “This isn’t going to happen. No way. No how”.

Did you ever feel like you are facing choice one and choice two? On one hand you know that Hashem is in control, and that He made commitments to us as a people. On the other hand, when you are nervously eating popcorn and watching (for instance) the election results, is it really all that easy to surrender your desire to be in the cockpit? To make the decisions and to feel the drama of being part of the ongoing play? The first step may be looking at the situation in all of its awfulness, at other people with all of their flaws, and the next step can be getting into your Me (or Us) against the Bad Guys.  

The road that leads to bitachon isn’t easy. The word halachah, as you know, means the path to walk. The laws against speaking lashon hara are specific, numerous and strict. The way they function is to make you aware of the fact that you are constantly making choices. When you choose to speak negatively about other people (R. Nachman would add speaking lashon hara about the world itself sweeps you into the vortex of negativity (often disguised as sophistication) that makes it impossible for you to see good.

I had a marvelous Shabbos that brought home this truism. I was visiting with my son in Raananah (no, he doesn’t live near the newly elected prime minister who also calls Raananah his home). Two synagogues there decided to unite. One is a synagogue in a neighborhood that was started about 40 years ago. The members are no longer young, and the large building is no longer full. The other congregation is one in which lots of young families who moved to Raananah relatively recently needed more space than their tiny rented premises provided. I was there for their first joint Shabbos in the big shul. It was such a positive experience. It was full not only of people, but of life. The newcomers were anxious to show real respect to those who had dedicated so much of who they are to the shul, and the older members welcomed the energy and full seats in the large room. There was a giant kiddush at the end, with singing, dancing and most of all closeness and inclusion.
​
I have often heard of synagogues that split, and seeing the opposite made me aware of how much positivity, and its “offspring,”, optimism changes everything. The cause of this kind of positivity isn’t naïveté. It is seeing Hashem’s Hand when He makes you change course, and looking for His light in everyone else’s’ heart.
 
Love,
Tziporah