Bat Aliyah

How Do We Know Moshiach Will Reveal Additional Torah Insights?

2026-05-30T23:44:23.779+03:00

(NOTE: Hebrew terms are translated at the end of the text.)

To answer the question "How do we know that Moshiach will reveal additional Torah insights?" we must first consider two preceding issues.

We need to understand what happened to Moshe on Har Sinai. We also need to understand the difference between the first set of luchot that Moshe destroyed when he witnessed the Chet haEgel and the second set.

What happened to Moshe on Har Sinai?

According to the Bible and Jewish tradition, Moshe ascended and descended from meeting with Hashem on Har Sinai multiple times. In Shemot 19, there are multiple ascents mentioned.

For our purposes, we will focus on the three 40-day periods connected to receiving the luchot:

1) Moshe’s first 40-day period to receive the first set of luchot

And the Lord said to Moshe, "Come up to Me to the mountain and remain there, and I will give you the stone tablets and the Torah and the commandment, which I have written to instruct them." (Shemot 24:12)
Moshe came within the cloud and went up to the mountain, and Moshe was upon the mountain forty days and forty nights. (Shemot 24:18)

2) Moshe’s second 40-day period to pray for the Nation of Israel

It came to pass on the next day that Moshe said to the people, "You have committed a grave sin. And now I will ascend to the Lord; perhaps I will be able to atone for your sin." (Shemot 32:20)
So Moshe returned to the Lord and said, "Please! This people has committed a grave sin. They have made themselves a god of gold. (Shemot 32:31)

3) Moshe’s third 40-day period to receive the second set of luchot

So he [Moshe] hewed two stone tablets like the first ones, and Moshe arose early in the morning and ascended Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and he took the two stone tablets in his hand.( Shemot 34:4)
And he was there with the Lord for forty days and forty nights; he neither ate bread nor drank water, and He inscribed on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. (Shemot 34:28)

What were the differences between the first set of luchot that were destroyed and the second set?

The first set of tablets were carved by God, written by God and given before the rupture of the Chet haEgel.

Now the tablets were God's work, and the inscription was God's inscription, engraved on the tablets. (Shemot 32:16)

The second set of luchot, after the sin, was carved by Moshe, not by God.

And the Lord said to Moshe: "Hew for yourself two stone tablets like the first ones. And I will inscribe upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. (Shemot 34:1)

Producing the second set was a joint effort between Hashem and Moshe. Moshe carved the stone himself, though Hashem wrote on them.

The first set were completely Divine. The second set represented a partnership between Divine and human effort.

There is a Talmudic teaching that if the first set of luchot had not been broken, the Nation of Israel would never have forgotten a word of Torah. (Eruvin 54a)

The clear implication is that the first set of luchot contained a higher level of Divine revelation. The first set of luchot represented spiritual perfection given as a gift from Hashem. The second set required human struggle and repentance in order to achieve holiness.

The first set of luchot was superior because they were entirely Divine, given before the sin and associated with perfect spiritual clarity.

The second luchot came after human failure and required human participation in the process of understanding God’s Word.

How Do We Know Moshiach Will Reveal Additional Torah Teachings?

Having demonstrated that the second set of luchot was fundamentally different in nature, less complete and on a lower spiritual level, now we return to our original question.

Some of what was revealed in the first set of luchot has been obscured throughout human history, since the giving of the Torah. That knowledge will only be revealed at the End of Days, through the teaching of Moshiach.

We are not speaking here of a new Torah that will replace the existing one. We are speaking of teachings that will reveal hidden dimensions and deeper understandings of the Torah we already have, as well as secrets embedded in the Torah that will become readily accessible to all who study it.

The prophet Yeshayahu speaks of the Messianic era as a time when:

...the land shall be full of knowledge of the Lord as water covers the seabed. (Yeshayahu 11:9)

The implication is that Divine wisdom and Torah knowledge will expand dramatically.

Another source, this one from the midrash:

“The Torah that a person learns in this world is vanity compared to the Torah of Moshiach.” (Kohelet Rabbah 11:8)

The implication is that, once Moshiach is with us and teaches us his Torah insights, our understanding of Torah will be unimaginably greater than what we have now.

In his Mishneh Torah, the Rambam explains that, in the Messianic era, all of Israel will have deeper knowledge of the secrets of Torah and a profound understanding of God.

“In that time… all of Israel will be great sages and know hidden matters, and they will attain knowledge of their Creator according to human capacity.” (Mishneh Torah 12:5)

The Arizal taught that the mystical insights we learn today through kabbalah and Chassidut are preparation for the fuller revelation of Torah that will come to us through the teachings of Moshiach.

In conclusion, the Torah itself is eternal, but humanity’s understanding of it is not complete. Moshiach will reveal the fullness, depth, inner meaning and divine wisdom already contained within Torah from Sinai that has been hidden from us since Moshe smashed the first set of luchot.

Hebrew Terms:

Arizal – Rabbi Isaac Luria, 16^th c. kabbalist from Tzfat
Chet haEgel – the sin of the Golden Calf
Har Sinai – Mt. Sinai
Hashem - God
Luchot – tablets
Midrash - classic, ancient rabbinic commentaries
Moshe – Moshe
Moshiach – Messiah
Rambam – Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, among the most prolific and influential Torah scholars in the 12^th c.
Shemot – Book of Exodus
Yeshayahu - Isaiah

Seven Arguments for the Oneness of God

2026-05-20T13:02:47.773+03:00

Over the last several weeks, one of my study partners and I have been learning a chapter of Duties of the Heart by R. Bachya ibn Paquda. In this chapter, he makes seven arguments for the Oneness of God which is, of course, a foundational Torah idea.

I found the density of his words calling out for simplification. Here, I've tried, as best I can, to present ibn Paquda's arguments in more straightforward language.

The book was written in the 11th c. His original audience was observant Jews living in Spain, which was then a Muslim country. In particular, he was speaking to observant Jews who, while ritually observant, were lax in the attendant "duties of the heart" such as emunah, humility and love of God.

Here is my summary of his seven arguments for the idea that there could only be One Creator and Sustainer of the world.

1. Everything that exists came into existence by a creator. Pick anything that exists in the world and trace it to its point of origin. At some point, you run out of causes for a thing that exists and you come to a Singular Cause of Causes. That is God.

2. Everything in the world works together. The universe functions like one coordinated system. Every part functions as part of a greater whole. Nothing exists independently. That points to one Creator, not to multiple gods. The patterns and harmony in creation suggest a single wisdom guiding everything. A unified design points to one Designer.

3. Nothing can bring itself into existence. It is impossible to conceive of a world that was brought into existence by a Creator who was less than one. One is the smallest number of Creators it is possible to believe in.

4. If there were more than one Creator, there would be something that differentiated each one from the others. Each would have more or less of some qualities in order to differentiate one from the others. Therefore, if there were more than one Creator, each would necessarily be limited. Whatever is limited is finite. Whatever is finite cannot be the ultimate Creator.

5. The idea of plurality can only exist if there is an idea that there is a quantity that is less than plural. Anyone who asserts that the Creator is more than one has to concede that there is a unit smaller than “more than one”. That unit is one. And One necessarily precedes the idea of plurality.

6. A perfect God cannot be divided. Anything divided into parts is limited and dependent. God is perfect and unlimited, so He cannot be made of parts or separate beings.

7. If there were more than one creator with the power to create the world alone, there would be no need for more than one creator. If creation could not have happened without cooperation among the multiple creators, then none of them alone was perfect, whole and complete.

Is my summary perfect? Likely not. My goal is to simplify ibn Paquda's ideas and to bolster those who want to believe in a single, unified Creator and Sustainer of the world.

The Seed. The Sprout. The Tree. The Fruit: A Metaphor About Israel

2026-05-15T14:05:47.663+03:00

The Seed. The Sprout. The Tree. The Fruit: A Metaphor About Israel

Guest Post by Lisa Cain Hammerman

For many years, I have held on to an image of our Nation as the seed which is the tree which ultimately will bear the fruit. This is also borne out by scripture, where we see that G-d compares us to the tree in the field (Deuteronomy 20:19).

Years ago, I learned that at the period of time of the destruction of the Second Temple, it became obvious to those who had clear vision, that we were about to be exiled and dispersed among the other nations, as prophesied. Though flawed in many ways too numerous to count here, the dominant rabbinical figures of the time did what they had refused to do for centuries. They began writing down and cataloguing rabbinical rulings and debates in book form.

Up to then, the knowledge had been passed down faithfully, as an oral tradition. The consequence of their foresight was that, despite the enormous trauma of the exile and dispersion of the Nation, there was a clear path to preserving the observance of of Torah which every community would be able to follow. This came at the expense of Torah being a dynamic and living thing, which is how it had been up to then.

Now, here comes the metaphor.

I envision the Jewish nation in exile as a seed. By committing Torah knowledge to a written tradition, it became encased in a hard shell, and protected from the abuses of the millennia. The seed did an amazing job of preserving our beloved Torah life, allowed us to communicate with each other and feel a kinship across many continents and countries with many different cultures and languages.

We were not ROOTED anywhere, but we were protected very well.

When the Nation returned to its Promised Land, it began to root in the soil. And this began a process of germination.

What happens to a seed during that process? It actually looks like it is rotting, but it is nothing of the sort. However, the hard shell breaks open, and the seed begins to send out roots and branches. Very tender at first. But growing all the while.

We are that seed, and we here in the Land are that tiny sapling. And ultimately, I am 100% sure, we will become the fruitful tree that we are meant to be in our Land.

Here’s the thing which blows my mind. The seed, the sapling, the tree and the fruit… all of them share the SAME DNA.

Yet they do not appear to resemble one another when observed without that context.

And here is the lesson; the diaspora Jew and the Torah do not resemble the Jew and the Torah in the Holy Land, even though they share 100% of their DNA. Because the Jew in the Holy Land is a growing, breathing and developing thing, which is no longer encased in a hard shell. The soil nourishes these Jews, and they are evolving and developing in ways which we can not predict because too many centuries have passed since we were that organic, living tree. We lack proper context and perspective.

For me, it is important to remember that, since we lack context about how that tree is supposed to actually grow, we can’t judge it by the seed. It cannot, by its nature, resemble that ossified, hard, closed thing. Even if they are, in essence, the same genetically. The same applies to the Torah as it is lived and experienced in the Land. It is breaking out of that shell, and becoming something far more alive and breathing, but ultimately it will not resemble the Torah we have seen.

It’s very exciting. But I am sure that for many, it will be bewildering and even off-putting. They will not know how to maneuver in the world of Torah as it lives and breathes in its own Soil.

I belong to a generation of transition. I think that it is part of my journey to become open minded and hearted so that I will be able to connect with Torah as it evolves in its own Land. It is going to be amazing and it is not going to look like anything we think we know!

The Thinness of Time

2026-04-10T15:24:00.000+03:00

The Thinness of Time

There is tenderness now
in how I hold time.

There is time yet -
though it wears thinner than it used to,
threadbare,
the weave giving way to light,
like the roof of a sukkah
in late September.

So much has been spent.
Memory is thick with chapters already written,
choices already chosen.
A mountain of days gathers behind me.

It’s a long way back to the beginning
when time spilled over the edges.
Abundant.
Lavish.

Days are held together now
by habit and history,
by memory and old music.

The heart’s pull,
the wanting,
grows softer.
What has been placed
in my keeping
is enough.

© Rivkah Lambert Adler 2026

The Thorniest Privilege

2025-02-10T16:03:00.008+02:00

Photo by Maria Lupan on Unsplash

No one would call it cozy exactly,
living here.

Some days are spiked
and piercing.
Our tears are fire,
Spilling out,
burning the soul.

Oh! But remember!
Moments (so many!) when our joy
is too vigorous to contain,
evoking deep-throated delight
And honeyed tears.

Living in the Land is
the thorniest of privileges.

It just is.

First-Timer's Guide to Taking a Mano Cruise

2024-11-21T15:50:00.015+02:00

Having just returned from a Mano Cruise, I want to share my impressions and offer some tips I wish we had known in advance.

If the name Mano Cruise is not familiar to you, you probably live outside of Israel. Mano Cruise is Israel's (only?) cruise line with a total fleet of one cruise ship and a maximum capacity of 2000 passengers.

The Boarding Process

During the war, the Mano ship (the Crown Iris) leaves from Ashdod rather than from Haifa. The train stops in Ashdod and a Mano rep will guide you to the port. Convenient private parking is available for 40 NIS/day.

Once you get to the port area, you'll be asked to show your passport. From there, walk 3-4 minutes to the free shuttle buses that take you to the terminal. Luggage is stored under the bus.

Once at the terminal, you queue up to check your luggage and get your all-important Mano card which is also your room key. Your luggage will be tagged with your room number and, by the time you board the ship, your luggage should be at your door.

Items you didn't check are scanned and then you go through Passport Control. There's a duty free shop in the terminal and also a Passport Card representative in case you haven't already bought travel insurance.

Once you step outside the terminal, the ship is right there. Just before you board, you will need to surrender your passport. You can pick it up at the end of your cruise by going to the Reception desk with your Mano card.

In all, the boarding process was very efficient. It took us less than 30 minutes from start to finish. Everyone boards on Deck 2. Your Mano card will be scanned each time you enter and exit the ship.

Things We Eventually Figured Out

Your room and three meals a day are included. Everything else costs extra.

Literally everything else.

There are seven bars on the ship and they all offer the same basic menu.

To purchase hot or cold drinks, snacks, alcohol, popcorn, cotton candy, etc., you need to add money to your Mano card. If you have a balance at the end of the cruise, you can get a refund from Reception desk the morning you disembark.

The only place on the ship to refill a water bottle with something other than tap water is near the bar on the 10th floor.


The cold water station

Late at night, you will get a schedule of events for the next day slipped under your door. It will be in Hebrew unless you go to Reception and ask that an English version be delivered to your room. Kiosks throughout the 5th floor have the daily schedule and other information in English.

Walk around each deck (there are 11 in the ship and nine are accessible to passengers) to get oriented. To get to some function rooms, you have to walk through a corridor of cabins.

If you have a bigger than average, ahem... caboose, some of the cup seats will be a little tight. But there are plenty of other seating options all over the ship, including cushioned window seats.


These seats can be a tight squeeze for some.

The Food

For kosher consumers, the big draw of a Mano Cruise is that all the food served is kosher. There is plenty of variety, although many options appear over and over at every meal. Breakfast was virtually identical each day, as were the salad selections at every meal.

We ate in the largest dining hall called The Seven Seas. Other guests were assigned to smaller dining halls where I was told that the same food was served.

There are no numbers on the tables even though your Mano card will have a table number on it. Guests are free to sit anywhere and table sizes ranged from 2-8.

OPINION: The prepared foods are tasty, but there were many dishes that were served lukewarm or even cold. This is a common problem with buffet style dining where hundreds of portions are prepared in advance and not unique to Mano.

IKEA, I'm looking at you.

There is a fresh preparation station that served omelettes at breakfast and grilled meats for lunch and dinner.

Some packaged foods in the Duty Free shop did not appear to have a hechsher.

You can get coffee and black tea at breakfast. Any other time of day, you have to buy hot drinks at one of the bars. There are also carafes of orange drink (not juice) at breakfast.

Only cold water is served at lunch and dinner. For other drinks, such as soda or juice, you have to buy a drink package or pay for them individually with the balance on your Mano card.

You can order sugar-free and/or gluten-free desserts from the wait staff.

There is no place to wash for bread in the Seven Seas dining hall. You have to leave the dining hall and wash in a nearby bathroom. A washing cup is provided.

There are five specialty restaurants serving other cuisines. The cost for a full meal at the restaurants we saw was 25€ (about 100 NIS) not including a tip. Since we had already paid for our meals, we did not eat in any of these restaurants.

The Classic Room

We booked a Classic Room, the smallest and cheapest kind. Ours had a window, which we were not expecting, and that was a nice surprise.

The two beds in the Classic Room can be pushed together or separated. The advantage of separating the beds is that it is easier to get in and out of bed. Floor space in a Classic Room is at a premium.

Once you've unpacked, you have to store your luggage in your room, so you might want to consider bringing soft luggage that can be reduced to a smaller size when empty.

We found the beds decently comfortable, although only flat sheets are used, so if you toss and turn, the linens will come completely undone.

The water in the shower was hot HOT HOT and the water pressure was surprisingly good.

Classic Rooms have a USB port and plugs for Israeli connections near each bed. Other plug types can be accommodated in other parts of the cabin.

Classic Rooms do not have a safe in the room, but the higher end rooms do.

The bathroom in our room was raised and required taking a big step to enter and leave the bathroom. For those who are mobility challenged, that could be a hassle, especially in the middle of the night,

What Some People Told Us They Brought

Immersion heater and a thermos to have hot beverages throughout the day without having to pay 3-5€ each time.

Triple plug extenders to be able to plug in more than once device at a time.

Non-slip bathmat.

Power banks to charge phones.

Filter pitcher to filter drinking water.

Sugar-free sweetener of their choice.

The Ship

The ship is clean and in good repair. We had some loose tiles in our shower and they were regrouted before we even reported the issue.

There are over 600 crew members, mostly from the Philippines and India. You can hardly walk 2 meters on the ship without seeing a crew member. They were uniformly friendly and accommodating and everyone we interacted with spoke English. The young woman checking our Mano cards before each meal picked up a few words of Hebrew and said, "L'hit'ra'ot Mami," unironically every time I left the dining hall.

The ship was constantly being cleaned. Our room was refreshed twice a day.

There is a small synagogue on the 5th floor. The men's section had about 20 seats and the women's section had about six seats.

The ship's synagogue. Photo credit: Tatyana Yassenov

There are three pools and a jacuzzi. All are outdoors on Deck 10. The pools are small and access to the main pool is with a ladder, as opposed to steps. The other pool is accessed by climbing up to the 11th floor deck and shooting yourself through a twisted yellow water slide.

Yeah, we didn't do that. In fact, since our cruise was in November, we didn't use the pools at all. The jacuzzi, when it was in use, was packed. I can only imagine that, during a summer cruise, the small pools would be hopelessly overcrowded.

The main pool which I think was filled with ocean water.

The jacuzzi, emptied at night.

There are three sets of elevators - one in the front, one in the middle and one in the back of the ship. They are small, slow and often packed. Leave extra time if you need to be somewhere else on the ship at a particular time.

During luggage loading and unloading, the middle set of elevators cannot be used by guests.

OPINION: We found navigating around the ship confusing at times. When exiting the elevators, we were never sure which direction to turn to get back to our room. There is signage, but it's limited.

OPINION: If you don't drink, gamble or speak fluent Hebrew, the activities on the ship are limited. Unless you appreciate a good towel-folding workshop.

OPINION: The evening entertainment is cheesy and often not tzanua.

The gym, located inside the Wellness Center, is small and the free weights only go up to 10 pounds. On the other hand, I regularly clocked 6-7000 steps a day just moving around the ship.

There are a couple of rooms where games can be played and games are available from the Reception desk.

If you misplace something on the ship, there's a lost and found at Reception, We were easily able to retrieve my husband's hat which got waylaid somewhere along the way.

We definitely felt the movement of the boat more than on a larger cruise ship, but it wasn't hard to manage. Our room was on a low deck and in the middle of the ship which is ideal for avoiding seasickness. Movement is said to be most pronounced in rooms at the front of the ship and on higher floors.

RUMOR: Returning passengers get a 10% discount on future cruises.

WiFi Access

Hold your nose and pay for WiFi access if you can't be completely unreachable. It's not cheap.

Here's my best tip:
Put your phone on airplane mode when not in use. You can download email and WhatsApp messages while online and read them offline. You can also respond while offline and your response will be sent the next time you log in.

To log in, you will need to create an account using the number on your Mano card number and a password. Every time you log in, you will get an update on how many MB of data you have left.

We didn't stream any video and only logged in to check messages and respond to what was most urgent.

Kids Programming and Wellness Center

These things exist on the ship. We have no personal experience with either of them.

Disembarking Process

Expect to tip 5€ (about 20 NIS) per person per night for housekeeping and the same for wait staff in the dining hall. For our four-night trip, we paid a total of 80€ (about 315 NIS) in tips. You'll be given an envelope in your room the night before disembarking and one on the table in the dining hall at your last dinner. Rumor has it that tips are split among all crew members.

Your luggage will be collected the night before disembarking and brought to the terminal for you. This is optional but very helpful so you don't have to schlep your luggage while disembarking. Keep a small bag or backpack for the things you need the last night (i.e. toothbrush, pajamas, etc.) and your valuables. You will retrieve your luggage at the terminal after passport control.

Remember to pick up your passport from Reception the night before disembarking and also getting reimbursed for the balance on your Mano card.

After you collect your luggage, a shuttle bus will take you to the parking lot which is a short walk to the front entrance where you can get a taxi to your final destination.

For more information, there's a Facebook group called Sailing with Mano Cruises - English Speakers Q&A (https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1GyoHkAKeX/) which I just found.

If you've been on a Mano Cruise and have more to add or want to offer a correction, please comment below.

The Paradox of Redemption

2024-10-18T02:10:00.005+03:00

The Paradox of Redemption

Just as the seventh plague rained down
Hailstones and fire – an unnatural mix -

Light and darkness
Are holding hands now.
Knit together in some Divine, inscrutable pattern.

Grief and relief.
Misery and miracle.
Anguish and exhilaration.

How am I meant to contain this paradox?

Breathe into my ear, “It’s Redemption.”
Help me hold onto the fiercely shaking rope
just a little longer.

Winter in Jerusalem

2024-09-11T12:55:00.003+03:00

Winter in Jerusalem

The rains will return soon. This
year I will notice the wet stones
of Jerusalem
and call them art.

I will cherish the sweet, fat flesh
of February’s yellow peppers
the same way I admire
the sunlight that
illuminates the arcs of water
my arms draw in the air
when I backstroke my way
through July.

Soon, I will burrow into my warm boots and grey sweatshirt,
thin and soft with age.

I will inhale the strawberry scent that perfumes
Israel’s winter.
I will fill my husband’s belly with soup.
I will kindle the lights of Chanukah
with visitors I love and
cry when they
leave.

And I will bless You,
Master of All, for inviting me to witness
another season.

But I’m Old Now

2024-03-31T08:32:00.003+03:00

But I'm Old Now

But I’m old now. Not
walker with green-yellow tennis balls old, not
yet.

But those who were young mothers alongside me are
grey (or white-haired) now.

Our faces, lined with lives more lived than not yet lived.
Our jowls, softened with years.

Each summer, I float in blue pool water on my back,
face tipped to the sun.
The joy of it makes me weep. I
take less for granted.

A good day is when I can
read for six hours and not trouble
to work. I work

sometimes, but my career is more past
tense than future.

I found myself
long ago.
My soul
dominates mostly these days,
except
about pizza, the body
still holds sway.

Just as I failed
to learn the stories of my own grandparents (I should have forced them to tell me
their secrets),
my grandchildren
won’t know me. Not really.

Afternoon naps are more frequent and
sweeter. And

even so, I have work yet to do. I’m making plans

Still.

Ninety-Seven Days

2024-01-12T14:27:00.004+02:00

Ninety-Seven Days

Ninety-seven walk through glue days.
In a row.
Soul rubbed raw.

For better or worse, the inside of everything is showing now.

My eyes are dust. The harshest images
defy tears.
I cry only from that which is tender.

Too much of this. Not
Enough of that.

Half my heart is severed.
And half soars towards redemption.

Finally.

Bearing Witness... While We Still Can (A Photoblog)

2024-01-04T23:49:00.001+02:00

This is a map of Gaza and what Israelis call Otef Aza, the Gaza envelope. These are the Jewish communities that wrap around the border of Gaza and are within 7 Km (4 miles) of the rocket launchers in Gaza.

Today, along with dozens of other English-speaking Jews from the Greater Jerusalem area, we visited five of the sites connected with the massacre of October 7.

Our first stop was Kibbutz Be'eri, one of the communities that was the hardest hit. While waiting for kibbutz member Yardi Tzemach to show us some of the devastation of his community, I noticed on the sign that Kibbutz Be'eri was established in October 1946. That's nearly two years before the founding of the State of Israel.

The pastoral Kibbutz Be'eri had 1200 members prior to the morning of October 7, 2023. Twenty-seven hours later, approximately one in 12 kibbutz members were dead.

By the time our group arrived in early January, the bodies and blood had long ago been cleared away. This sign, as well as the Hebrew spray painted on the house announces that ZAKA, Israel's leading non-governmental rescue and recovery organization, certified the house as free of human remains.

What remained were the devastating signs of total destruction. Aside from the live artillery fire from the nearby war in Gaza, the first sound that impacted me was the jangling of nearly 50 pairs of human feet walking over shattered roof tiles. If you have ever been to Israel, you will likely recognize these as the mangled remnants of the distinctive orange roof tiles common to Jewish communities throughout the Land.

I bent over and took possession of a small piece of one of the tile fragments from one of the worst-hit homes, a somber souvenir.

Amidst the utter rubble, it is still possible to pick out what was once the family's oven and dishwasher, with dishes still inside.

Over and over, I was struck by the artifacts of normal life that somehow survived - spots of color amidst so much charred grey.

We heard the story of Yardi's brother Shachar who was one of a small number of men who fought against the terrorist invasion until 2:30 in the afternoon. Shachar was killed at the site of the kibbutz clinic just 30 minutes before the IDF arrived.

Our second stop was Shokeda, a religious moshav very close to Be'eri that was saved by an open miracle. On the morning of October 7, which was Shabbat as well as Simchat Torah, an IDF helicopter was downed, hit by Hamas fire, and landed in the fields of Shokeda. Fifty IDF soldiers emerged from the downed chopper and killed dozens of terrorists before they made it into the entrance of the moshav.

There's a lot of empty land in this part of Israel. Our next stop was a huge tract of land where thousands of cars that were shot or burned on October 7 were brought. At this site, mounds and mounds of burned out automotive carcasses were visible.

And in the middle of all of them, someone climbed up the pile of automotive rubble and planted an Israeli flag.

About six weeks ago, an unprecedented decision was made to bury the cars still believed to contain human remains.

From the car yard, we went to Re'im, the site of the Nova music festival. All across the site are small memorials to the nearly 400 festival goers who were murdered there.

This memorial marked the spot where the dead body of one of the bartenders, Yaron Efraim, was found.

Throughout the field are poles with pictures of the victims.

Some of the poles are further decorated with small remembrances, such as stones and candles.

On this sign bearing the names of the 394 victims, three additional names are handwritten on the bottom left.

Our last stop was just outside of the religious moshav called Shuva, not far from Netivot. In the early days of the war, one family of brothers started feeding soldiers coming directly from the battlefront in northern Gaza. Their early efforts have blossomed and now the site feeds thousands of soldiers each and every day.

After a very hard day, bearing witness to bitter barbarism, being pounded again and again by the price our fellow citizens - the maimed and murdered, the burned, the injured, the captives and the displaced are paying - Shuva was a carnival.

We dropped off the bags and bags of purchases we brought to donate to the Shuva store, where soldiers can come and take anything they need - from tea bags to toiletries to thermals.

Joyful music played. Volunteers cooked and served burgers to the soldiers. We heard from one of the brothers about how their humble project has grown and grown and how the people of Israel just want to help.

This sign reads: v'ahavta l'reacha kamocha - Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
Rabbi Akiva says: "'You should love your fellow as yourself' is a basic principle of the Torah.”

It was, finally, at Shuva, enveloped in so much kindness, that I was overcome with tears. Click here to donate to the inspiring Shuva Brothers project.

Today, I witnessed the consequences of some of the most debased actions of humanity.

And I ended the day so fiercely proud of the inherent goodness of my people who, though battered and bleeding, want nothing more than to help.

NOTE: The government announced today that they will start allowing displaced citizens to return to their homes in certain parts of Otef Aza as early as mid-February. These trips will only be available for a short time. To join a trip scheduled for late January, contact Rabbi Moshe Rothschild at rabbimoshe@israelalliance.org.

Today I Borrow Strength From The Future

2023-12-01T13:05:00.003+02:00

Ariel, Shiri and Kfir Bibas, Israel's most well-known hostages.

GUEST POST by Syma Steinberg Davidovich

I made the choice to peek in on the news during the “ceasefire”.

I thought that seeing hostages returning home would give me something to celebrate. My lips say thank You but my limbs speak other truths. My eyes leak and leak with salty, oh so salty! tears.

While I am grateful for every soul back in our borders, I am horrified by psychological warfare. My mind and heart travel to places that threaten my equilibrium. I’m distraught by parents forced to wait for their children to walk off the ambulances that deliver them to their safe embraces - how excruciating those moments of wait are!

My breath skips when I see Rimon Kirsht Buchshtav refuse to follow orders to smile and wave at her captures and instead with one look and gesture - energetically slaps him in the face.

May he rot in hell.

This is no less heroic than those small children who do smile and wave - how much strength does it take to do this for the cameras of the world stage???

I look at my beautiful ginger-haired babies and my heart aches for Kfir and Ariel and their mother Shiri; their names echo in the chambers of my twisted dreams.

How strong are our people! My voice is hoarse, screams left unscreamed, not even surprised by the terror attack in Jerusalem killing three and wounding others yesterday. (There is only truth and no chuckle to the joke - we cease and they fire.) Our enemies are many. Thank you HaShem for the revealed and hidden kindnesses and miraculous salvations taking place all around us.

My Chanukah box has been left, abandoned in the closet. I’ve been unable to muster the strength to pull out my decorations as I normally do on Rosh Chodesh Kislev. Today I pull it out. Today I borrow strength from the future. Today I unwrap the symbols of my faith — my ancestral DNA is packed with victories over all other heinous enemies and nations that threatened our survival. I dust off the chanukiyahs and remember that small lights conquered vast and deep darkness.

This is a war that has been won by our people many times, and I renew my conviction that we are participating in the last and Final Battle, and I know that it only ends in Hashem’s Glory. I can almost say “dayienu”when I pass the billboard covering the tallest hotel in the center of Jerusalem proclaiming “Shema Yisrael. HaShem Elokeinu. HaShem Echad.” a mantra that has been reverberating louder and more prominently throughout the generations and into this now moment, keeping to the beat of my heart.

I purchase pure olive oil to remind me of how abundant and prosperous and anointed and absolutely royal we all are. I breathe new life into our home full of this holy holiday spirit, and prepare to greet the Shabbos Queen, grateful that She is near again, and pray for more miracles to manifest.

Please HaShem, take these fragments of unfinished prayers and form them into a song of praise and hope.
Our home is blessed with the smells of holy rituals and traditions and the tears that continue to leak from my eyes, taste a little less salty.

GLOSSARY

Rosh Chodesh Kislev - the first day of the Hebrew month of Kislev which generally falls in late November/early December. Chanukah begins on the 25th of Kislev.

Chanukiyahs - A reference to the 9-branched Chanukah menorah, as distinct from the 7-branched menorah in the Holy Temple.

Dayienu - Literally "enough". Dayienu is the refrain from a cherished song in the the Passover Haggadah.

Shema Yisrael HaShem Elokeinu HaShem Echad -Literally "Listen Israel! The Lord is Our God. The Lord is One." Shema is the most basic and lifelong expression of faith and the one Jews teach their children as soon as they can speak.

Raw

2023-11-24T11:39:00.000+02:00

Since the war started, I haven’t known what to say when, in greeting, a person inquires, “How are you?”

For weeks, I’ve been avoiding answering by saying, “Next question.”

It just occurred to me how I’m feeling.

I’m utterly raw.

I cry watching videos of soldiers on 12- or 24-hour leave surprising their children, grandmothers, parents and siblings. I cry watching videos of the endless kindness pouring out of my people. I cry when a non-Jew openly acknowledges that we Israelis are the good guys in this existential war.

These tears are prayer.

I feel sick reading about the moral darkness that exists in our world. I feel sick seeing people tearing down posters of hostages with a sense of righteous indignation. I feel sick witnessing the crude illiteracy of so many who actually believe they are standing up for what's right.

I wake up thinking about whether the women in captivity are sitting in bloody clothes when they get their periods, whether they are still being raped and how any of the hostages will recover any semblance of a normal emotional life if they get out alive, please God.

And I use my words and my imagination to manifest the Final Redemption as the concluding chapter of this nightmare.

How am I?

I’m raw, perpetually alternating among competing emotions that cannot coexist.

My heart is in a ceaseless tug of war.

Literally.

Days of Darkness and Also of Light

2023-11-16T18:31:00.004+02:00

There was a terror attack near our home today. Three noxious beasts left Hevron this morning in a vehicle packed with axes, guns and copious amounts of ammunition. They were stopped at a security checkpoint before entering Jerusalem, the same checkpoint we pass through every time we travel to meet friends, go to a doctor's appointment or see a movie.

All three savage terrorists are dead now. Before breathing their last, they managed to inflict gunshot wounds on five security officers. One of the soldier who was guarding Jerusalem died of his wounds. Others, including two civilians, were treated at the scene.

These repulsive, reprobate gunmen clearly had aspirations of killing lots of Jews today.

I found out about it as I was leaving for my volunteer shift at the local charity bookshop. The northern gate was closed, all the WhatsApp messages said. Try leaving through the southern gate.

I sailed through the southern gate. There was no traffic on the main highway. Five minutes later, I pulled into the neighboring community where the bookshop is located.

It was clearly not business as usual.

The yellow entrance gate was tightly sealed and the area was thick with army vehicles and security personnel. They denied entrance to the delivery truck in front of me. I was permitted to enter only after the officers checked my trunk.

The shift was a bust. None of the usual hum of customers, coming to stock up on reading material for Shabbat.

I left early.

As I reentered my community through the southern gate, I was rerouted by strategically placed roadblocks, clearly intended to slow entering vehicles. Right across from the guard house was a soldier, hidden behind sandbags, his gun loaded and pointed right at me.

And I was grateful he was there.

It's not normal, the things we get used to.

A few hours later, a soldier mom in our community posted that she and her husband were given last-minute permission to go see their son on his base in the south.

"Anyone have extra food for soldiers??" she asked.

The replies flooded in.

"Ok, I'll make cookies now."

"I'll make rice."

"I'll make a tomato salad."

"I have care packages ready to go. How many and where to drop off?"

"Grilling eggplant for you."

"I just took out shnitzel and challah rolls."

"I have gluten-free tehina sticks I made for chayalim (soldiers) in the North. You can take it and I'll make more."

Points of light...

...in an otherwise dark day.

This Bread Is Moldy And I'm So Proud Of My People

2023-10-22T19:46:00.006+03:00

My brain on Day 16 of war.

I need frozen broccoli and I should go say ten chapters of Tehillim (Psalms).

The laundry basket is overflowing and the images of burned bodies I accidentally saw on social media are seared into my eyelids.

Our safe room needs to be stocked with bottled water and non-perishable food and how will life change when Moshiach (the Messianic Redeemer) comes?

I’m learning more Torah than ever before and maybe I can make challah rolls for chayalim (soldiers) on Thursday afternoon this week.

We need milk and how will I react if one of the bodies identified will be someone I know personally?

I have a work deadline to meet and if I die al kiddush Hashem (as a Jew in the Land of Israel) during this war, what will my soul experience?

I hear birds chirping and what will happen if Hezbollah opens a front in the North?

I should take a sweatshirt and please Hashem release the captives!

I shouldn't forget to take my vitamins and will I ever see my relatives in America again?

I'm looking forward to the winter strawberries and cauliflower and we need a plumber who isn't on miluim (reserve duty).

Have we bought enough bottled water for our war supply and I've been to the toilet five times this morning because that's how I experience stress in my body.

I need to go to a medical appointment in Jerusalem and I'm going to say Tefillat haDerech (the prayer for protection while traveling) with extra kavanah (focused concentration).

These sheets need to be changed and what is I24 News reporting today?

I can't keep up with my WhatsApp messages and are the hostages being tortured?

I have so much work to do and should I judge people who openly side with our enemies as malicious anti-Semites or merely misguided?

I need to charge my phone again and how are we supposed to understand the massive intelligence failure?

I need a shower and is this the war of Gog and Magog (the final war according to Biblical prophecy)?

This bread is moldy and I'm so proud of my people.

An Art Story That Is Also A Jewish Story

2022-02-27T23:15:00.005+02:00

Walking in the shuk in Jerusalem today, DH stops me at a vegetable stand. We have been to the shuk hundreds of times and I have never noticed this vegetable stand. Its walls are covered with photos of holy people.

All of them are men.

Then DH points something out to me. Could it be that there is actually one picture of a holy woman among the dozens of men?

When we lived in Baltimore, I had a small art collection. It was my personal rebellion against the overwhelmingly masculine images in the world of Jewish art. This was way before erasing women from magazines and advertising and vandalizing billboards with women's faces was commonplace. I was tired of seeing Jews represented as if we all looked like this:

Making aliyah required us to downsize significantly. We had to reduce our possessions from those that filled a normal American house to what would fit in a small Israeli apartment. Many of the art pieces in my carefully curated collection of Jewish women doing Jewish things had to go. I sold them for very little during one of our uncluttering sales.

I kept only my favorites, like this one:

This is who I hope to become some day - a God-fearing old woman who sits and recites Tehillim (Psalms) by candlelight.

I also kept this one. It's a Michoel Muchnik image called "Challah Ladies". It features the backs of two women baking challah.

And, of course, I kept these two needlepoint works that were done by my mother A"H.

All the rest, and there were at least a dozen more, I sold for next to nothing or gave away.

Until today, when two of the pieces I parted with almost 12 years ago were restored to me by a kind and generous friend in Jerusalem, to whom I had sold them back in 2010.

This image was done in 1966 by Ida Libby Dengrove. Can you imagine an image like this being created today, with a young girl reciting havdalah while her brother holds the kiddush cup and her mother holds the candle?! What connects me to this work even more is that Dengrove passed away from complications of Alzheimer’s at the age of 86, exactly my mother's A"H age and cause of death.

Also restored to me today was this grand (36"x24") work. It's a numbered lithograph, also by Michoel Muchnik. It's called "Elisha's Blessing" and is based on the story in Melachim Bet (II Kings) 4:1-7. It's the only Tanach-based work I ever owned.

The backstory is that there was a young and destitute widow who Rashi identifies as the wife of the prophet Ovadiah (Obadiah). A creditor threatens to take her two sons into slavery if she does not pay her debt, but all she has in the house is a small jug of oil. The prophet Elisha instructs her to gather vessels from all her neighbors and start pouring from the small jug of oil she has. Miraculously, the oil continues to pour out and fill every vessel she borrowed. The miraculous abundance ceases only when she runs out of vessels in which to pour it. Elisha then advises her, "Go sell the oil and pay your debt; and you and your sons will live with the remainder."

I close with words I never expected I would write someday - a quote about art credited to 19th c. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

Death Comes. The End. (Part II)

2022-02-01T08:06:00.007+02:00

Bluectomy
January 27, 2022

My sister does not eat blue M&Ms, so I go through her ziplock bag of M&Ms and pull out all the blue ones. I tell her I am performing a bluectomy.

This is the most successful thing I do for anyone today.

When we arrive at Mom’s, she’s asleep. We fail to rouse her. After 15 minutes of trying, I sit down to say some Tehillim by her bedside. Every day, I drop a coin or two in a tzedaka (charity) box in the merit of her soul. There isn’t much I can do for her anymore.

The CNA comes in while we’re there and she brings a bowl of what we think is puréed hamburger for Mom’s lunch. I think about how the pleasures of this world are over for Mom. She’s already left all that behind.

It makes me want to appreciate this world more while I’m still here, even though I believe the pleasures of the next world far exceed anything available to me here. I’m not ready to prove myself right just yet.

I publish Part I of this journaling exercise and I am blown away by the number of people who tell me they have lived this exact experience. I tell L we have just been admitted to a club we didn’t know existed - the “Waiting For A Parent To Die” club.

L and I have been doing the daily Wordle so I tell her about the Mom/Wordle dream I have.

In my dream, you start with five green squares and have to work your way down to five grey squares.

Because dying is the mirror image of being born.

Feeling All The Things

January 28, 2022

Last night I tell E I don’t see myself getting on that plane Sunday night and we discuss whether he should go home without me.

While she’s out grocery shopping this morning, L texts and asks me to call her. The hospice nurse has been in touch with her twice already this morning. Mom is showing signs of a dramatic decline.

We unload the perishable groceries and rush to Mom’s bedside. Feeling all the things.

We see some of the signs. The blood is leaving her extremities. Her skin feels clammy and her limbs are cold. She hasn’t spoken a word since yesterday. She stopped eating.

E says viduy (an end-of-life Jewish confessional prayer) and the hospice nurse tells us at this stage she isn’t expected to make it through the weekend.

She opens her eyes and looks straight at me but doesn’t say a thing. She lifts her right hand in a wave and I so want to believe she is waving at the souls waiting to receive her. Later, she lifts her left hand in the same brief wave motion.

It’s erev Shabbat. We can’t stay by her bedside indefinitely. She’s sleeping now, but was agitated enough, trying to climb out of bed. We get her something to calm her down.

Now she is sleeping. And when I walk out to get ready for Shabbat, I understand that it may well be the final goodbye.

Chee-Pop

January 29, 2022

Shabbat passes on edge, waiting for the call that doesn’t come. After Shabbat, we learn that hospice has reclassified her from being in transition to actively dying.

After havdalah (the ritual that marks the end of Shabbat), we drive to Mom and walk through the quiet and empty halls to her room, already feeling the heaviness of death.

She’s mostly still, with the endless chee-pop sound of the oxygen tank in the background. The TV from next door can be heard from the doorway.

Mom starts making a gurgling sound and it’s scary not knowing what to do. I step outside because my fingers are itchy to write. When I step back in, L has done research and tells me it’s the death rattle. The website assures us that it isn’t painful for the dying person and sounds worse than it is.

Emily and Betsy, residents of the memory care unit, hover near Mom’s door. I ask them to please not go in. They introduce themselves, shake my hand and say, “I’m sure we’ll meet again.” Then they quietly walk away. I am not at all sure we will meet again.

Right now, listening to the chee-pop and the intermittent death rattle, the dying seems about a million times worse than the death.

We go to her side one at a time. I wish her a peaceful transition, as sweet as possible on all levels, with nechama (comfort) all around and, in so doing, I repeat wishes that have been shared with me.

I gently kiss her forehead and somehow, I manage to walk myself out of the room.

I do not expect to see her alive again.

First, I Curse

January 30, 2022

It’s 6:51 AM. I can’t fall back to sleep. My eyes are closed and I see a white light opening. The opening is not big and it does not last for long, but I want to believe it’s an echo of what Mom is seeing now.

I fall asleep on the couch where I go to say Tehillim after falling back to sleep in bed proves unattainable. I hear my sister on the phone and I wake up to an update.

Twelve to 24 hours they say. Come now if you want to see her before she goes, if you want to say goodbye, if you want to call a rabbi to pray. We agree among ourselves that we’ve already done all those things.

Barely an hour later, it’s over.

I call H, who is at work. Then I tell the kids.

E has agreed to act as her shomer (guardian) until the funeral home arrives to take her body into their care.

Moments before the call comes in, I make a bracha (blessing) after my breakfast. That will be my last bracha until after the burial. Now I am an onenet (a mourner between death and burial).

Very quickly, we discover that the Jewish funeral home is not prepared to honor their commitment for a fully Orthodox funeral. Their excuses are lame. I am livid beyond measure.

First, I curse.

I curse a lot.

Then we activate our network. We contact every Jew we think can help.

We do our best to get our mother's body transported from the non-Jewish funeral home's holding warehouse where she has been taken and get her where she belongs, with a shomer to stay with her through the night.

It takes hours. Dozens of calls and texts all over South Florida, Baltimore and Israel. Many curse words spill from my mouth into the air of my sister's kitchen. I can't cope with this level of indifference.

Finally, with the help of Chabad (God should bless the Chabad network all over the world), transport is arranged and the indignity is beginning to be ameliorated. I weep with relief when the local Chabad rabbi tells me that, by midnight, my mother will be where she is supposed to be and a shomer has been arranged.

I think the worst is behind us.

I am so wrong.

So Cold
January 31, 2022

I wake early so we can call and arrange for the burial today. Before 9 AM, our hopes are dashed. We are fed a litany of obstacles.

I know this isn't Israel, or even Baltimore, where such things would never happen, but I refuse to accept that nothing can be done today. I make some more calls. A family friend of a friend is sympathetic. In 45 minutes, he has solved the problems the official funeral director could not.

We are scheduled for a burial at 2:45 PM. We arrive at the cemetery and realize that the funeral home's general manager is aware of our case. He tells me he saw my Facebook plea for help. He shows us more compassion in one minute than we received from our assigned funeral director in the past 24 hours.

We are asked to identify the body. Originally, L and I decide that E will do that for us, but somehow, the three of us spontaneously walk, three abreast, to the open casket, holding hands for strength. I have tried to avoid looking at dead bodies my entire life. Today, I look at my dead mother's face. I see clay fragments over her eyes and mouth, a symbolic reminder of the end of desire.

I touch her cheek.

She is so cold.

There are just four of us graveside and another 12 on Zoom. Just family. The funeral home sends every available Jewish man to the grave site to help make a minyan (prayer quorum). I note this gesture with appreciation.

E officiates at our tiny graveside service as if there are dozens of people present instead of just the four of us. He delivers a eulogy that is often funny and also deft in its avoidance of a sensitive family hot spot.

These words, the memories I share here, are my eulogy.

There is no ordinary shiva. Nearly everyone who knew Mom is already in the World of Truth. E and I are going home. Between Shabbat and bidud (quarantine), there will be no formal shiva.

Last night, while speaking with an old friend, I decide that the turmoil of the past 36 hours has been a way for me to earn a measure of spiritual merit. Hashem Himself caused the hardships thrown at us. Please God, my fight to preserve my mother's dignity restored something missing on my spiritual scorecard.

Rest in peace Ma.

Your work here is done.

Death Comes Slowly Sometimes (Part I)

2022-01-26T21:52:00.250+02:00

Hospice Calling
January 4, 2022

The first day I arrive from Israel, L takes me to buy some kosher food. We bring it back to her house where I crash for a brief nap and then we head out to the hospital. Eight days ago, when I was still in Israel, L video chatted with me when she was in Mom’s hospital room, so I could see what Mom looked like.

Somewhere in her hospital journey, someone took out her dentures. Mom, who is now 86, has had dentures as long as I can remember. There are a few pictures of her in her 20s with her real teeth, but if I had to guess, I would say she has worn a full set of dentures for at least 50 years.

The first time seeing her without teeth is exceedingly jarring. I feel anxiety rumbling in my belly as we take the hospital elevator to her floor. She has just been sent back to the hospital for an evaluation after two days in rehab. The professional staff quickly realized that rehabilitation was not, in fact, a realistic goal for Mom.

L and I walk into the hospital room together. Not 30 seconds later, a nurse comes in and says that only one visitor at a time is allowed. Since I had just arrived, L defers and steps out.

I have a speech prepared actually. I sit next to Mom, whose eyes are closed and I put my hand on her arm. I speak directly to her soul and I speak about things that I never would have had the courage to say to her in her previous, normal life. I talk about the eternality of the soul, about the pleasures of the World to Come, about techiyat hameitim (revival of the dead) and how one day we will be together again and we will be whole spiritual beings then, without any of the diseases of this life.

Her breath twitches at times and that scares me some. Her toothless face is disquieting. She only looks like Mom from the nose up.

I recite some Tehillim (Psalms) from memory and then remember the app on my phone that has all of Sefer Tehillim (Book of Psalms), so I use it to say a few more chapters with which I am familiar.

I am content with the way I have spent my time with her during this visit. I get up, kiss her forehead and step out into the hallway to give my sister a chance to be with her.

L asks me to call a certain number and speak to a woman from hospice while she spends time with Mom. We already know that Mom’s doctor recommended that she be evaluated for hospice services and they want to hear more from us about Mom’s condition.

Hospice turns out to be the answer to an unspoken prayer, because shortly before, we were completely baffled about what to with Mom once she gets discharged. Suddenly, hospice offers us support and a direction. Just over 48 hours later, she will begin the next stage of her journey as a hospice patient.

Those Crazy Hats of Yours
January 5, 2022

By now, we know the rule is that only one person is allowed in her hospital room at a time, so I go in first, while L goes to rehab to pick up what Mom left behind when she was transferred back to the hospital. Mom has been relocated to the orthopedic ward which, ironically, is very far from the lobby. I’m walking with a cane because the combination of a 14-hour flight and walking miles through two international airports has put a strain on my right knee. I look more like a patient than a visitor as I hobble to the elevator that takes me to the orthopedic ward.

Mom has a private room now and we can tell it’s a nicer ward than where she was yesterday.

She’s sitting up when I walk in and she says hello. I’m a bit taken aback because I wasn’t expecting actual conversation, but for the 25 minutes or so we spend together, she is more present than she has been in months.

I talk about my grandchildren and ask if she wants to see pictures. She says she does and when I show them to her, she pronounces them “cute”. She asks about the Bluetooth device in my ears and I tell her that I have some hearing loss and they help me hear her better. She points to the patterned hat I’m wearing and teases me, saying, “Those crazy hats of yours!”

I ask her about how much she sleeps and she informs me that there’s not much else to do. If her words ended in emojis, there would have been a winking emoji right there. She shows me the kit of self-care products they have given her, including a travel size tube of toothpaste and I joke that she doesn’t need that because she has no teeth. She asks if she can take these things with her, “wherever I’m going to live.”

We’re not debating an obscure Talmudic conundrum or sharing deep emotional secrets, but my mother, who has been sleeping 23 hours a day, is awake, sitting up in her bed and communicating with me.

L texts me that she’s back and waiting for me to come down so she can go up. I tell Mom that I am going to go and L is going to come up. I kiss her and tell her I love her. The brim of my “crazy hat” hits her in the face a little and we laugh.

I hobble back to the lobby where my sister waits and I say, “She’s unusually alert today.”

After L’s visit, I am sitting on the bench in front of the hospital, talking to E who is still trapped in Israel and L comes out. I see tears on her face. She, too, was able to connect with Mom in a way that hasn’t been possible in some time.

We know this visit was a gift, a blessing. We know that we might have just witnessed the last wisp of her personality, expressing itself in this world.

Her Last Manicure
January 11, 2022

Before the pneumonia, even during her months in memory care, Mom always had long, polished nails. Just like I can’t picture her in the past without dentures, I can’t picture her without manicured nails. It was her signature look.

Two or three times, when she visited us in Israel, she would have her nails painted blue and white, with an Israeli flag hand-drawn on the nails of her thumbs and ring fingers. She got a lot of attention from our friends and from random strangers who noticed her Israeli manicure and on Facebook when I posted a picture.

Today, I sit with her in her hospice room, look at her hands, I think, “Mom has probably gotten her very last manicure.”

She has lost more than 30 pounds in the past few weeks. Her physical needs and wants are exceedingly minimal. L points out how bony her face has become.

She continues to sleep during most of my time with her. I continue to thank her. For giving birth to me. For letting each of her children choose their own paths. For my love of reading that surely came from her. For her pride and willingness to read the stacks of articles I wrote and would save for her visits to Israel.

I thank Hashem that she’s not in pain and tell her that there are people praying for her all over the world. I watch her mouth move as if she’s speaking, but no sound is coming out. I tell L I think she’s having a conversation with souls in the next world. She agrees with me.

I think of the phrase “a fragile house of clay” and picture me lying in a bed like that someday, with one of my daughters sitting by my side. To the extent that we get to choose, I think I’d rather go suddenly.

Because Mom had Alzheimer’s before the pneumonia, we don’t know how much she understands about her current situation. We hope she is more soul than body or mind now, spending most of her time in some blissful, liminal world before her transition to the next world.

She is 86 and her life, which was becoming increasingly small before COVID, became practically microscopic while she spent 18 months in her apartment, alone but for visits from L and a series of part-time aides who came a few days a week at first and eventually every day.

Mom is mostly docile. She is not attached to oxygen. She does not need pain medication. She still eats a few hundred calories a day, fed to her by kind hands and kind hearts, people who have been sent by God to care for those taking their final journeys.

These are the blessings of the end of life.

Red Peppers and Good Enough
January 12, 2022

L and I sit and talk about random Mom memories. How the red peppers she loved are the only color peppers I don’t eat. How we line our trash cans with extra bags like she did and how when we shop, we hear two voices – our father saying, “Buy the best you can afford,” and our mother saying, “This kind is good enough.” How she might have felt in the early years of her marriage to our father. How she traveled the world with another man in her 70s. How things that hurt me growing up might have looked to her and why it’s possible to forgive when I consider things from her perspective.

It’s shiva type talk, even though she isn’t dead yet. It’s helping us grieve.

I’m Waiting For L
January 13, 2022

On the way to hospice, E predicts that today, we will get a bit more of a reaction from Mom than we have been getting. As we enter the hospice building, after checking our temperature and answering the standard COVID screening questions, we meet first with one of the hospice social workers. We learn that Mom has been approved for two extra days, so she won’t move back to her memory care facility until Wednesday morning. Hopefully by then, the COVID breakout in her unit will have passed and we will be allowed to go see her there.

L goes into Mom’s room first and E and I follow shortly. L and E tend to speak to her loudly, to try to get her to open her eyes. Today, they have some success. She opens her eyes briefly and we tell her who we are.

When we visit, we each get some alone time with her. Today, I go first. I tell her it’s okay to sleep because I am speaking to her soul. I try to send her some of Hashem’s light with messages of love and appreciation.

I say Esa Einai (Tehillim 121) out loud, both because it is one of the first chapters of Tehillim I learned by heart and also because there is a commentary on the last verse that says tzetcha u’vo’echa (your going out and your coming in) is a reference to leaving this world and entering the World to Come. That seems fitting to say to a woman lying in a hospice unit.

The Lord will guard your going out and your coming in from now and to eternity. - Tehillim 121:8

I do some hitbodedut (personal prayer) out loud, asking Hashem to make Himself known to her. I thank Him for making her my mother. I ask for a gentle transition, filled with light and sweetness and I am not at all self-conscious because I don’t think she hears or understands me with her ears.

I tell her H isn’t able to come but that he will send a message to her so she can hear his voice.

I thank her again for the gift of not judging any of her children as we each chose a lifestyle different from hers.

I sit quietly and think, “I was conceived, carried and brought into this world by this body, now lying in a hospice bed.”

And then I stop thinking and just sit.

Mom starts moving her hands. I notice they shake. She seems to want something. I ask her if she needs anything. She says, “I’m waiting for L.” I’m shocked when I can understand anything she says.

I tell her L is sitting outside and I can get her. I lean over her bed, stroke her bony face, kiss the little bit of flesh that remains on her cheek, tell her I love her and then I’m almost positive I hear her say, “You can go now.”

I step out into the hallway where my sister is sitting with my husband and I repeat what Mom just said. “I’m waiting for L,” and “You can go now.” I’m laughing and crying at the same time.

As is our pattern, L and E also have a little alone time with her. During his turn, E calls us in because Mom was trying to get out of bed. L puts her back in bed and I get the nurse who comes to help. Mom needs some nursing care and so we prepare to leave. We say, “We love you Mom,” and she says, “Love you.”

I wipe away tears and then we go to Walmart to find comfort.

Yellow Brick Road
January 15, 2022

On Shabbat afternoon, as I read my fourth novel since arriving, I wonder what the proper way to behave is, what is one supposed to feel, when one’s mother is dying, but not imminently?

We go for a visit after Shabbat. As I sit by her bedside, noticing that her face is constantly in motion, even in sleep, I recognize the music playing in her room is a musak version of Elton John’s Yellow Brick Road.

Oh, I've finally decided my future lies
Beyond the yellow brick road.

Seems prophetic. Or melodramatic. Not sure which.

I play a message from H who can’t be here but wants to say goodbye. I play it twice for her even though she’s sleeping and what she says is, “Okay.”

I trust Hashem and His timing, but it’s hard to see her unchanged visit after visit – dying, but not today. Only emunah helps me accept this extended time when she is barely herself, but not yet gone from this world.

Is she dreaming during the 23+ hours a day that she is asleep? Is she experiencing the next world and then being sucked back into this world when we visit and try to awaken her?

Thinking about her makes me want to scream, “I’m alive! I’m still alive!” Her dying intensifies my experience of living.

Twenty-seven years ago, I flew to my father’s deathbed. I had a 10-week-old baby with me, a four-year-old back home and a new, full-time job set to start on a few days. I came to say goodbye, but I could not stay.

Today, my considerations are different and we made the decision to stay for the duration. Now I can stay.

Now I must stay.

Lorna Doones
January 16, 2022

There’s a snack corner for visitors in hospice and every time we go, L and E each get a pack of Lorna Doones. It’s become a ritual.

This morning’s visit is a little different because we are all in the room together. She opens her eyes and looks straight at me and L preserves the moment in a photo.

She hardly looks like herself, though she says a few tiny things today that sound like her. She hardly says more than a word or two at a time, but today we all hear her say a few words and then we automatically repeat them to each other, not because they are profound, but because they are so rare and, therefore, precious.

There isn’t much any of us can do for her anymore. Her needs are so minimal. I hold a cup of water for her, put a straw in her mouth and say, “Good job” when I can see she has managed to suck some water up through the straw.

Blessed Are You O Lord Our God
January 17, 2022

I didn’t sleep well last night, old memories rolling around my brain.

I’m very young and very sick, not hospital sick, but home-in-bed sick. Mom returns to my room again and again and gives me a tiny amount of water to drink each time.

I’m a bit older and I have allergies to moss, mold and ragweed that exacerbate my childhood asthma. Every Monday afternoon, Mom picks me up from school and takes me to get an allergy shot and then she takes me to White Castle.

I know what you’re thinking about White Castle, but keep it to yourself.

Don’t yuck my nostalgic yum.

It’s Chanukah c. 1966. We are in our childhood home. In my version of this memory, only Mom and I are present, but that might not reflect reality. She stands at the front window of the living room near the electric Chanukah menorah (the one with orange bulbs), a square of paper towel she has recently torn from the roll perfectly balanced on her head.

She recites, “Blessed are You O Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who has sanctified us by Thy commandments and commanded us to kindle the lights of Chanukah,” and twists some bulbs until they are illuminated.

This is the most explicitly Jewish thing I’ve ever seen my mother do. Four decades will pass before she will stand next to me and light Shabbat candles in my home in Israel.

Mom never, not once, expressed disapproval or any level of discomfort when I pivoted towards a more Jewish life back in the 1980s. When, in 2010, I tell her we are moving to Israel, she says, “Then I guess I’ll just have to fly there to see you.”

And so she does.

L reminds me about the Barbies Mom buys us when I am four and she is six. I don’t remember the original acquisition, but I remember the Barbie clothes she makes for our dolls. I picture the blue skirt and matching vest with the gold rickrack she makes for me when I’m in 6th grade and that I wear on class picture day.

When I am 12, she takes me to visit her friend Adele. Adele gives me the traditional slap on my cheek when I get my first period.

I help Mom unpack the groceries and put them away. I am excited because now my brother and sister and I will each get a whole paper Dixie cup full of M&Ms from the new bag she just bought.

She flies with Dad from Florida to College Park to see me when I am an undergraduate student. She comes back for my undergraduate and doctoral graduation ceremonies, for my adult Bat Mitzvah at a Reform congregation in Baltimore, for the births of my children and for their bnot mitzvot and she is at every one of my three weddings. When my first child marries in Israel in 2014, she is there.

It’s October 2021 and I’m in Florida to help L close out Mom’s apartment. We alternate between days spent dealing with her remaining worldly possessions and financial obligations and going to visit her in the memory care unit into which she has just moved.

My last day in Florida, L and I go to see her. Even with her limited cognitive abilities, she understands that I am leaving to go back to Israel. When I say goodbye, she starts to cry and waves me away. This is only the second time I have seen my mother cry in my entire life, and I am already a grandmother myself.

It breaks me.

When I visit Dad on his deathbed, pancreatic cancer riddling his body, he is unrecognizable. I am certain it is him only because of his voice. My father, who has been dealing with severe mental illness for the past 12 years, is extraordinarily, uncharacteristically, lucid. We talk deeply and completely. We talk about love and about death. He tells me death is a part of life, not to be feared. My 10-week-old daughter is pink and squirmy next to his jaundiced and dying body.

His mind and his personality are fully intact. It is his body that is failing.

When I visit Mom now in her hospice bed, we think she knows L and I are familiar, but she often doesn’t know our names anymore. Like Dad, at this stage, she looks nothing like she did in life. Unlike Dad, there’s nothing life-threateningly wrong with her body. She is not in pain. She is not on oxygen. But her brain is fizzling out.

Minimal Life Force
January 18, 2022

Just L and I go to see Mom today. She is more agitated than she has been. At some point, she is looking up at the ceiling and seems to prefer that to looking at either of our faces. We wonder aloud to one another who she sees up there.

The list of things she can do for herself is tragically limited. Despite the fact that her hands shake, she is able to scratch her own face. She can move the blanket down below her shoulders.That’s practically the whole list of what she can accomplish without assistance.

She is alive, but sustained by the seemingly barest level of life force. She will die in bed without her feet ever hitting the floor again.

She talks a lot today, but we can’t understand most of what she says and, truth be told, we’re not sure it’s intended for us anyway. I cling to the hope that her soul is trying to communicate with souls she recognizes in the next world, but it could also be the delirious chatter of her dementia.

A made a video for Mom, telling her a story that involved how much she appreciated a special gift Mom gave her a decade ago. We play it and Mom’s eyes flutter, but we don’t know how much she understands. The sweetness of the video makes L and me cry.

Today is L’s birthday. We have four more hours to go before we can breathe a sigh of relief
that Mom didn’t die on her birthday.

Death comes slowly sometimes.

This is one of those times.

The Fifth Commandment

January 19, 2022

The fifth commandment is honoring one’s father and mother.

There isn’t a lot I can do for Mom anymore, at least not in the physical realm. The limited physical care she needs is being handled by trained nurses.

This morning, I thought of something I actually can do for her. This coming Shabbos will be our third Shabbos here, and there is no way of knowing how much longer E and I will need to stay.

It’s unsettling to be away from home for weeks at a time, with no known end date. Things come up and have to be postponed or missed entirely. We need to rely on others to get basic things done that we aren’t there to do for ourselves.

There is also a constant cultural divide to endure. I face challenges daily. I am attracted to and repelled by the consumer culture here in equal measure. Dozens of times a day I have to tell myself, “No I don’t need to buy that,” even though my id is screaming “Want it! WANT IT!!”

I actually consider how pleasant life could be if we lived here. I completely and utterly covet my sister’s house.

It’s far better for me to be in Israel where the acquisitive energy is significantly less intense, where my soul is nurtured so much more readily, where God and Torah and Moshiach are more easily accessed.

Staying here is a gift for my mother. It’s a partial fulfillment of the Fifth Commandment.

It’s what I can do for her now.

Dying In Bed

January 20, 2022

I sit in my sister’s living room waiting for the chicken soup I am preparing to be done. Tomorrow will be our third Shabbat here and I have grown weary of turkey sandwiches so I tap danced my way around a non-kosher kitchen and, with a few brand new pots, utensils and foil pans, I’m kind of making Shabbos.

Mom is resettled in her old room in memory care, still a hospice patient. There has been very little change in her condition since I’ve arrived and I’m starting to doubt my decision to stay until the end. What if it’s months instead of weeks?

Immediately as we walk into the memory care unit, we come upon the hospice social worker who has just been assigned to Mom’s team. We have a million questions for her.

As we stand huddled in the hallway talking, a memory care patient breaks into our huddle. One of the staff members tries to distract her and enthuses, “Let’s go bake some cookies!”

The other patient says, “I don’t want cookies. I want to know what’s going on!”

We are all amused, but we walk away and regather further down the hall just the same.

Mom is back in her old room, this time in a hospital bed that looks like it’s from 1947. She’s wearing her own clothes. She opens her eyes when L speaks to her but she has trouble focusing them when she turns her head in my direction. Or she doesn’t want to look away from L.

I’m not sure.

Sometimes we talk about how much harder this is for us than it is for her, but we don’t really know.

She’s not in pain, not agitated, not on oxygen. Nevertheless, chances are, she’s going to die in that bed.

It’s deeply humbling.

Hours later… a horrifying thought. What if that’s my future? What if I, who live so essentially in my own mind, develop dementia at some point? What if I’m the one lying in a hospital bed in a memory care unit, barely able to recognize those I have loved my whole life, even as they stand around my bedside? What if the very act of coming to see me makes them anxious or sad?

I can’t dwell on this thought. It’s too stark.

She Chuckled

January 21, 2022

I make a list of all the variables involved in staying or going and talk them out with L, E and A. Mom’s condition has been pretty stable since I arrived, but if we leave, there’s a good possibility we won’t be able to get back for the funeral because of COVID and quarantine.

We decide to reassess in a week. E and I have enough medication for 13 more days and are looking for ways to get more without US health insurance.

On the ride over to see Mom, it’s 78 degrees. The car windows are open and the air feels so delicious blowing on the back of my neck that it makes me want to cry.

We’re missing, or rather not missing, very cold and rainy weather in Israel.

Time moves slowly where there isn’t much to do. In the novel I read this morning, there is a scene where the main character gets word that her elderly mother is dying in a memory care unit.

Art imitates life.

When we arrive, we are able to wake Mom. She talks a little, communicates that she’s comfortable. E tries a bit of humor on her and she chuckles. She chuckles again when he tells her it’s almost Shabbat.

I explain to her about the oxygen that’s coming to help her breathe more easily. She asks, “When will I see you?” I remind her that we are here now, L will come tomorrow and then we will come on Sunday.

We straighten up her room a little and find the folding chair, so now everyone has a place to sit. Mom turns over and goes back to sleep and we sit quietly near her bed.

It’s actually kind of peaceful.

There’s a book with a pair of her reading glasses by her bedside. It’s a scene from another life. She hasn’t been able to read in half a year or more.

An acquaintance tells me, “Although the body is not what we recognize, the soul is still intact.”

That comforts me.

Three Weeks Now

January 24,2021

Sometimes I feel I’m doing this all wrong. I’m not thinking of Mom 24/7. I’m not sitting by her bedside for hours a day. I’m imagining myself in my own kitchen. In my own bed.

I’ve been here three weeks. Her death seemed more imminent then than it does now. She’s still on hospice, but the nurse cheerfully reports that she’s eating and drinking better. L says she looks better. Not like herself, but not as much like a corpse.

We expect to get a sense tomorrow about how things are progressing so we can make a decision about whether or not to go home for a bit. I did some research on one of E’s prescription meds and the cost for uninsured patients is over $900. So that’s a factor.

I wrestle with guilt. I fly thousands of miles and stop my life for three weeks and still, I worry I am not doing enough.

Does she know me when I am with her? We think she knows, she recognizes, something familiar when we visit, but she doesn’t say my name anymore. L has been taking care of her for all these years, while I’ve lived 6000 miles away. Hers is the last name to go.

One of the hospice nurses reminds us that Mom’s journey is her journey. We can’t take it with her.

We ensure she gets compassionate, skilled care. We monitor what goes on with her medically and ask a lot of questions. We visit and touch her face and her hands and kiss her and tell her we love her. We say Tehillim and sit by her bedside and ask HaShem to make her transition a peaceful one.

We thank God she’s not in pain or distress. She sleeps all day in relative comfort. She’s clean and fed.

Almost all of her meds have been discontinued. She has oxygen now so she doesn’t have to work so hard to breathe.

And if we decide to go home for a bit as her journey progresses, I pray that Hashem gives me the strength to say a goodbye filled with love and then to walk out of that room.

It Hurts. Make It Stop.

January 25, 2022

The hospice nurse did an evaluation of Mom today and gave us the okay to go home for awhile.

When we go to visit, Mom is agitated. Her oxygen cannula is dislodged and won’t stay in when I try to replace it. E calls a CNA who finds a way to readjust it and we watch as the unit nurse gives her morphine mixed with Ativan to help her calm down.

She faces L and actively reaches for her hand while I hold the other one. She looks at L a lot. L says it’s because she speaks louder but I know it’s because L has been taking care of her for years. She deserves it.

I’m the one who left.

In 1979.

Forty years later, this place haunts me with familiarity. The names of exit roads on I-95. The way the rain comes suddenly and disappears just as fast. The endless strip malls. The endless palm trees. The endless flatness.

Mom says someone is coming tonight to pick her up and take her home. L asks where home is and she shrugs with the not knowing.

The hospice nurse gives us a booklet about what to expect at the end of life. The book says it’s common for a dying person to speak of taking a trip or packing a suitcase or going on vacation as a precursor to leaving this world.

I have to catch my breath before I can read the next sentence.

The woman lying in that bed has been my mother since the moment I was conceived. But now, it’s all about her body and her soul going their separate ways.

I am a mere witness.

It Won't Make Sense Until You Realize That It's A Spiritual War

2021-11-04T22:28:00.010+02:00

I who have made my living with words find words inadequate to describe the experience of being alive while the world is literally breaking apart.

Do I need to see one more horrifying video about the police state that exists in Victoria, Australia? Do I need to hear one more testimony from someone whose life was ruined or hear one more brave physician speak about the adverse effects they are seeing in their clinical practice? Do I need to watch one more healthcare worker escorted from the workplace because they refuse to comply with a vaccine mandate? Do I need to watch one more parent express delight (I shudder!) that the jab will soon be available for their 5 year-old? Do I need to hear one more otherwise rational person lose his composure over a family member/friend/neighbor/colleague/stranger who is not masked or who has chosen not to vaccinate? Do I need to see another screenshot of heavy-handed censorship? Do I need to listen one more politician lie?

No, I do not.

And yet, I am, in equal measure, obsessively drawn to, and acutely repelled by, the mounting daily evidence that our world has lost its collective mind.

Compulsively, I ask myself unanswerable questions.

How is it possible to not see the heavy-handed oppression, the insufferable censorship, the tyrannical mandates that cannot be justified from a public health perspective?

How can people remain blind to the chaos that has overtaken our world?

How are they tolerating blatant discrimination and the stripping of civil liberties with nary a peep?

How can all this have devolved so quickly?

Why is Hashem allowing this evil to prosper? What long game is He playing?

The only thing that soothes my distraught soul is learning Torah and, occasionally, prayer. When I learn Torah, I peer into the deeper unity that exists beneath the absolute hollowness that passes for reality. I connect to the eternal Master of the Universe and I am reminded of the rock bottom reality of אין עוד מלבדו – there is nothing except God.

Most of the time, our perception is hopelessly distorted. The chaos is not about the vaccine and everything that emanates from it. That’s just the most external layer. That's just the physical manifestation of a spiritual reality.

Hashem is dismantling the world. He is showing us the absolute rot that lies underneath what we have accepted as reality. He is doing us a very great favor, though the cost is painfully high.

Like a kitchen renovation that begins with demolition, He is preparing us for the glory of redemption. Before He can rebuild, what exists must be obliterated. That’s the agonizing process through which I believe we are suffering.

Since it's a spiritual war, our response must be a spiritual one.

This stage, this anarchy, won’t last forever. I’m not a prophet and I don’t know how bad it will get before it gets better. But I do believe this:

My Judaism

2021-10-26T21:11:00.007+03:00

My Judaism is singing with my husband’s Friday night kiddush because every single person
who makes kiddush has a different tune and I like his best of all.

My Judaism is the particular way we sing bentsching and the idiosyncratic way we make
havdalah and the handwashing song we made up when our kids were young that they find
humiliating now but is still so sweet in my ear.

My Judaism is my hands kneading challah dough in my kitchen in Israel because I dreamed
of that for so many years before we could come and also the motzei that I make on the challah
that I made, no matter who sits at our Shabbat table because we looked it up and I can.

My Judaism is bentching my children on Friday nights when they are with us because they are
with us so rarely now that they are grown.

My Judaism is the words of Tehillim that are worn into grooves in my brain because I am
friends with many chapters of Tehillim, which is really surprising considering how I mostly
avoid the siddur and definitely avoid shul whenever possible, even though my husband is a rabbi.

My Judaism is picturing every doorway of my home when I say Shema in bed at night.

My Judaism isn’t shy AT ALL about alerting others that something - a prayer, a mechitza,
a comment, a seating arrangement, an opinion - slights women.

My Judaism is teaching others something I learned and that I find fascinating
and I want someone else to find it fascinating as well.

My Judaism is giving charity because I really believe that’s what God wants me to do
and my Judaism is not being shy about asking the people who come to my door to ask
for money to pray for the people I love.

My Judaism is studying a chapter of Tanach a day, knowing it will take years to finish.

My Judaism is Jewish books and books and books, on every surface.

My Judaism is the view of the rolling hills of Judea from the back porch of my apartment
in the portion of land that was given to the Tribe of Yehuda.

My Judaism is emunah and more emunah and gratitude always because that’s how
I feel closest to God.

My Judaism is crying from joy and crying from the privilege of living in the Land of Israel.

My Judaism is the song of Jerusalem, the music of saying Yerushalayim.

My Judaism is craving awareness of God, always and always.

My Judaism is the tingle of the breath of Moshiach constantly on the back of my neck
because I really really really believe he’s that close.

Dip The Apple In The Honey And Other Rosh Hashana Witticisms

2021-09-09T04:24:00.003+03:00

There is an almost universal custom of dipping a slice of apple in honey on the first night of Rosh Hashana. There's a popular children's song about the custom that our kids learned in pre-school...

Dip the apple in the honey
Make a bracha loud and clear
Shana Tova u'Metuka
May you have a sweet New Year!

Somewhat less well-known but still widely practiced is the custom of simanim - symbolic foods that are associated with a wish for the new year. For example, pomegranate seeds are often eaten, and the accompanying prayer asks God to grant us as many merits in the upcoming year as a pomegranate has seeds.

Some of the traditional simanim use a play on words in Hebrew. For example, a date in Hebrew is a tamar. As we get ready to eat a date, we ask that our enemies should perish. The word for perish in Hebrew is sheyitamu, which sounds (a little) like tamar.

There are about 8-10 traditional simanim, but many families incorporate amusing simanim that go way beyond the traditional ones into their Rosh Hashana celebrations.

The most common one is a plate of raisins and celery, which express the wish that this year, Hashem (God) should give us a raisin celery (raise in salary).

I know. Groan, groan. But truly, the Jewish people excel in puns and other Rosh Hashana witticisms.

Our South African friend Alvin serves biltong, a kind of South African beef jerky, at his Rosh Hashana table and expresses the hope that the Third Temple be biltong (built on) the Temple Mount speedily in our days.

Yehudit L. serves her family, "tiny Bounty bars so it should be a bountiful year, candy hearts to learn Torah with love, chocolate coins for parnassa (livelihood), chocolate rocks for a rockin' New Year and gummy bears to help us bear any difficulties sweetly."

Anitra K. finds her inspiration in the produce section of the grocery store. Her simanim include:

French melon - May we go on vacation and stay at a beautiful French milon (milon is Hebrew for a hotel)

Kale - Hashem should yaKale (lessen) our sins.
Apricot in Hebrew is mishmish which sounds like mamesh which in Hebrew means really, truly as in, "Hashem should mamesh make our dreams happen."
Figs - may we have the wisdom to FIGure out the secrets and ways of Hashem.

Anitra added her spiritual insight to the custom of creative simanim. "I believe the true essence of making these blessings with word play is to understand the power of the spoken and written word. The alefbet (Hebrew alphabet) is made up of 22 letters. Our Torah is a combination of these 22 letters. The world is in the Torah.

"Hashem is Creator of the world. Yet we mangle words and letters to create new meaning and expression to our lives. We, together with Hashem, create our world. Playful, funny, spiritual blessings. Words can break you, even kill your spirit and declare war. Yet they have the power to lift your spirits, build you up, heal you and proclaim peace."

Back on the lighter side of simanim, Emma S. creates new ones each year. This year, she created the idea of smashing the beads on candy necklaces to "smash bead-ud" (bidud is Hebrew for quarantine).

She also employs donuts in the hope that, "this year, 'do nut' be mean or judge anyone" and red candies to "make sure you are 'red'y to excel in all you do."

Michal S. gives her kids marshmallows, so they should be soft-hearted, gummies so they will show flexibility in the coming year, meringue or Hershey kisses so the year will be filled with lots of kisses and affection and smile cookies so they should have a year of happiness.

At our meal on the first night of Rosh Hashana, Reuven Ashenberg shared a whole slew of extra simanim. They were crafted together with Rabbi Meir Weiner and definitely flow in a wholly spiritual direction. Here are a few from their collection.

Figs - Let's FIGure out ways to come closer to Hashem.
Let's FIGure out ways to come closer to one another.

Nuts - We are NUTS about Hashem.

Lotus cookies - Let us (Lotus) do chesed (kindness) for one another.
Let us have a good and better relationship with You Hashem.

Raisin - Hashem gives us a raisin (reason) for a purpose in our lives.

Lettuce - Let us always remember Hashem loves us.
Let us all be together in achdus (unity).

Pickles - Hashem should help us get out of our pickles we get into.

Abi M.'s kids love when she serves cola as one of their simanim - shenishma et kol Hashem (so we should hear the voice of Hashem). Kol in Hebrew means voice.

Perhaps my favorite siman also involved a bottle of cola. A woman named Sarah gave her husband a bottle of Coca-Cola because, in the Biblical story of Avraham and Sarah, God tells Avraham that whatever Sarah says to you shema b'kolah - listen to her voice. (Genesis 21:12)

Also from the Ashenberg-Weiner team, orange you glad Hashem will forgive you? Orange you glad to be living in Eretz Yisrael?

Now, orange you glad I shared some of these with you?

Kfar Chabad: A Photoblog with Commentary

2021-08-30T23:07:00.014+03:00

With summer drawing to a close and many responsibilities of the New Year looming, my husband and I took a few hours off and drove north to visit Kfar Chabad (also known as Kefar Habad :-) today. Neither of us had ever been there and we love exploring new places in the Land of Israel.

As we entered Kfar Chabad, my first thought was, "All Rebbe. All The Time."

Our first stop was the replica of 770, the World Headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch movement, located at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

Here is a close-up of the front entrance. It's hard to see in this photo, but it says 770 in the white tile on the lower right, two tiles up from the top step. If you're reading this on a phone you can pinch the photo to get a closer look.

Below the stained glass window above the front door, it says Beis Agudas Chasdei Chabad - Ohel Yossef Yitzchak Lubavitch in Hebrew then in English.

We weren't sure if we were allowed to enter, but a kind man who was headed inside told us it was fine. Turns out there's a sort of guest reception room as you enter on the right. The man in charge of welcoming guests told us that the Rebbe instructed his followers to build this replica in 1986. He invited us to sit down and watch a video of the Rebbe speaking about the importance of Eretz Yisrael and of him giving brachot to people from Israel who went to see him during Sunday Dollar Days.

I was especially moved by the clip of a family who approached the Rebbe during Sunday Dollar Days during the Gulf War in 1991. The father said the family was supposed to visit Israel for their son's Bar Mitzvah but the boy's mother was afraid to go. The Rebbe urged them to have no fear. That advice truly resonated with me, given the precarious state of affairs in Israel today.

In the same room as the video, in between welcoming guests, our host, who was also a sofer, was writing a Sefer Torah.

He offered us a very special privilege. Although the Rebbe never visited Israel and never physically entered this building, there was a room set up for him that they call "The Rebbe's Room." Our host unlocked the room for us and allowed us to sit in there and recite a few chapters of Tehillim and just speak to Hashem.

Even though I know the Rebbe was never actually in that room, I felt an unanticipated sense of awe and reverence entering the otherwise empty room, and a sense of real privilege to be allowed to pray there for a few minutes.

Since it's so close to Rosh Hashana, our host offered us another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to write a kvittel (a note) that would be brought to the Rebbe's grave in New York. In my husband's hand, we asked for healing for family members who are ill and for blessings of health, shalom and parnassa (livelihood) for us and those we love in the upcoming New Year.

Before we left 770, our host had one more chavaya (experience) for us. He returned to the table where he had been writing a Sefer Torah and asked for our Hebrew names. My husband's Hebrew name begins with the letter alef, and the very next letter he was writing was, indeed, an alef.

He wrote two more words and then asked me my Hebrew name. When I told him the first time, for some odd reason, I left off my second name. He asked again, and he showed me that the last word he wrote had a resh and a yud which are my Hebrew initials. The word also has a gimmel and a lamed, which are initials in my father's (A"H) Hebrew name. This is the word he "just happened" to be up to while we stood next to him at his writing table.

Talk about chills.

I knew there was a bee farm in Kfar Chabad because I had written about it years ago when I did some work for an Israeli tour company. We weren't so interested in the children's activities (or seeing bees up close and personal to be honest) but we wanted to visit the honey store on the site of the bee farm, so from 770, we drove around until we found it.

The store is in a quite unassuming location and is filled with honey-themed gifts for the New Year, like these honey-filled candlesticks and beeswax candle gift packs.

We ended our visit with a quick lunch at Zalman's Pizza Bar where we saw a young boy wearing a Yechi Adoneinu kippah. Hamaven yavin is all I'm going to say about that.

One final image. Across the road from Zalman's was another dairy restaurant called Gitteleh...

... as in Shtiseleh.*

The whole excursion, including travel time, took us five hours and we left feeling that, however briefly, we had entered another world, one where God and Torah and tzedaka and acts of kindness are palpable. All in all, a fine outing for Elul. Highly recommended for locals and for tourists, as soon as Hashem allows the borders of Israel to reopen.

* Just kidding. There's no connection. I was just trying to be clever.

The Dark Nights of My Soul

2021-08-29T16:00:00.004+03:00

There have been segments of time during which I read Holocaust memoirs obsessively. I would close the cover of one and, in one smooth motion, open the cover of the next. Many are structured similarly, beginning with descriptions of the author's carefree life before the Nazi party came to power and transitioning into the very gradual intensification of restrictions.

"During the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship, government at every level—Reich, state and municipal—adopted hundreds of laws, decrees, directives, guidelines, and regulations that increasingly restricted the civil and human rights of the Jews in Germany." - The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The days through which we are living, and what has happened to the social fabric of society, are positively dystopian. Life, at least here in Israel, has become characterized by government control, loss of individual freedoms, medical tyranny and the absolute squelching of divergent opinions.

The level of invective directed at people who advocate alternative ways to treat COVID-19 has sunk to shocking, truly shocking, lows. I've begun to amass appalling examples of verbal tirades flung at individuals who think differently.

Fellow citizens have actually suggested that unvaccinated people should no longer be admitted to hospitals. They have accused them of being "selfish idiots" and uncaring individuals who are responsible for the decimation of the Jewish people. There's an "academic study" that suggests that individuals who believe there is something more to the COVID-19 story than is being reported in mainstream media are suffering from psychopathy, Machiavellianism and collective narcissism.

Meanwhile, voices expressing other perspectives are comprehensively banned.

The Israeli government has imposed more than a dozen draconian restrictions on citizens, beginning at age 3, who have not had multiple doses of the COVID-19 shot, prohibiting them from participating in many ordinary aspects of society such as accessing libraries, gyms, public pools, eating at restaurants and attending academic institutions. Even gatherings in private homes are being regulated.

Businesses and non-profit organizations that violate these prohibitions are subject to enormous fines. Police resources are being diverted to monitor the heavy-handed restrictions that have been imposed on ordinary citizens.

All this for a virus that is named as the identified cause of death for .0007% of Israel's population.

And it's about a million times worse in Australia where there is a nightly 8 PM curfew, stiff fines for people who are outside without "a valid reason," where weddings are now illegal and only one person per household can leave the house a day to shop for groceries, among other relentless restrictions. This is happening in a country where there have been 999 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the past 18 months, among a population that exceeds 25 million people.

To put it simply, as a friend who has gotten the first two doses and is now hesitant about getting the booster wrote to me privately very late one night: "Something is definitely wrong."

For every fact shared, there is someone claiming the precise opposite. We are literally living in the time the gemara (Sotah 49b) describes as, "In the period preceding the coming of Moshiach... Truth will be lacking."

And I haven't even touched on the political and social chaos that reigns in other countries.

If I follow the links I receive every day, if I watch every video, listen to every voice note and read every article analyzing the calamitous present and the fearsome social future we face, I would have no time to do anything else. I worry that I would descend into a kind of spiraling madness. How does one retain one's sanity in the face of so much evil?

Like many, I have suffered through my share of dark nights of the soul.

I can try to escape reality by immersing myself in meaningless novels or watching endless clickbaity videos on Facebook about amazing desserts you can make with stale popcorn or what shoes are now out of style or how to cut your own bangs.

Or I can get real with God.

I can accept the only explanation that makes sense to me - that God is accelerating evil in the world in order to bring geula faster.

When I gave birth to my second daughter, she was in some danger and the medical staff was anxious to get her out. I was given Pitocin in order to accelerate my labor. It made the labor much harder, but also faster.

When Moshe went to Paro and asked for the Israelite slaves to be set free, Paro responded by taking away the slaves' straw and requiring them to make as many bricks. It made slavery harder, but it also ended it faster.

"You shall not continue to give straw to the people to make the bricks like yesterday and the day before yesterday. Let them go and gather straw for themselves.
But the number of bricks they have been making yesterday and the day before yesterday you shall impose upon them; you shall not reduce it, for they are lax. Therefore they cry out, saying, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'
Let heavier work be laid upon the men; let them keep at it and not pay attention to deceitful promises.” (Shemot 5:7-9)

The principle is the same here. We are being pressured at a rapidly increasing rate, in order to get us to the finish line sooner.

In the meantime, staying connected to Torah has been my lifeline.

Over and over again in Tehillim, David HaMelech reminds us that God will vanquish evil, judge evildoers and bring them to justice.

Chassidut reminds me that what we see is only the minutest percentage of God's playing field.

The promises of the messianic era soothe my soul in the darkest nights.

And ultimately, it is only emunah that sustains me.

Watching The World Fall Apart

2021-08-18T23:32:00.004+03:00

Lately, when someone asks, "How are you?" I often reply that I don't know how to answer that question. I'm not being flippant. I'm expressing the fact that, these days, I feel like I'm simultaneously living in two levels of reality.

On one level, despite some minor inconveniences and daily, cringe-inducing news updates, I am well. The Facebook Watch algorithm feeds me a steady diet of videos about people with truly mind-boggling health challenges and I thank God every moment that I have none of these. There is no end to the blessings Hashem has bestowed upon me.

On another level, in some inchoate manner, I feel like I am watching the world fall apart. And that, naturally, leads me to thoughts of redemption.

A few weeks ago, I put some thoughts together and gave a talk about seeing current events through a geula lens. And I keep thinking about one of the points that I made.

In order to prepare ourselves for the arrival of Moshiach, which will be a more spiritual form of leadership than we have ever experienced, we have to bring an end to our reliance on anything that is not Hashem. This includes the government, the medical system, the education system, the media and even daas Torah.

COVID has proven to be an excellent tool for decreasing reliance on every one of these systems of authority. This becomes ever more clear, as they continually deliver a string of lies, censorship and manipulations. If you're feeling bewildered, it's because you're being lied to.

Constantly.

Think about how the rules change so often that ordinary, law-abiding citizens cannot figure out how to work within them.

Think about how the mainstream media tells one story and the alternative media has a completely different narrative.

Think about how polarized we are, how we have been divided, how impossible it is to talk to anyone who doesn't share your opinion.

Think of how much is in perpetual flux.

That makes it easier to understand why sometimes I feel like I'm walking through glue.

Paradoxically, if I can stay focused, I recall that evil intensifies before redemption. There are three main reasons for this.

First, we are taught that, toward the end of the final exile, God will hide His Face even more. Recall that labor pains are the most intense just before delivery. In the spiritual world, the increase in evil is a sign that evil is about to give way to the redemption that is waiting to emerge.

Second, when evil increases so much that it’s easy to see, this is good news - because many people will identify it for what it is. Having recognized it, they will abandon evil and turn to good. This is the rectification of the sin of Adam in Gan Eden when evil was joined with good. Now, at the End of Days, good and evil must be once again separated.

Third, when people contend with evil, they become stronger. Think of the evil as a counterweight that forces people to exert effort to overcome it.

In a talk called “Why There is Darkness Before The End?”, Rabbi Mendel Kessin taught:

“The world’s envelopment in darkness means that the struggle is greater and so the potential reward, the merit is greater. Truth is concealed and yet one still struggles to do a mitzvah, to have emuna—faith, bitachon—trust in G-d? In an environment where most have abandoned G-d, the one who prevails has great merit. The reward is so great, it can 'fill up the amount of tikkun left (to do).'"

The challenges are meant to push us to do teshuva - to come closer to Hashem in preparation for the era of the leadership of Moshiach.

Further, we are meant to lose faith in anything that isn't Hashem. That means that all human institutions have to fail us. It's part of the plan.

The more we strengthen ourselves spiritually during this time of darkness, the more we are doing to prepare for the world of Moshiach and the greater will be our personal reward - davka because it's hard!

Don’t get too wrapped up in the news cycle. See the revelation of evil for what it is – the beginning of the end.

The Whole World Is Confused About Gender And I Think I Know Why

2021-07-18T17:49:00.003+03:00

Identifying The Problem

Gender has become a knotty problem, at least in the West. News, entertainment and social media outlets are full of stories about people who identify as transgender, gender-fluid, non-binary, genderqueer, agender, gendervoid. By some published accounts, there are now as many as 60 or 70 terms to describe gender expression.

Email signature files announcing a person's preferred pronouns are becoming increasingly common, even in corporate settings. There is a related, shocking social trend, documented by Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier in her book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters of unprecedented numbers adolescent girls and young women declaring that they have gender dysphoria.

In the Orthodox Jewish community, another wrinkle in this gender confusion appears in the ridiculously offensive erasure of women in all public spaces. I watched a new Tisha B'Av video whose central message is the importance of unity among all Jews... and not a single woman appeared in hours of footage. The irony of calling for Jewish unity while erasing half the Jewish population is staggering.

Proposing An Explanation

There is a prophecy in Yermiyahu (Jeremiah) that promises that geula (redemption) will restore the power of feminine spiritual energy and will bring a major upgrade to the stature and dignity of women. The prophecy is found in Jeremiah 31:21:

“For the Lord has created something new on the earth, a woman shall go after a man.”

The last three Hebrew words of this verse are “nekeva tisovev gever”. These words have been variously translated as: a woman will encircle a man, a woman shall go after a man and/or a woman will court a man. In all cases, something new and positive will happen with the status of women at the time of the final redemption.

Chaim David Targan, a Tzfat-based kabbalistic healer and mystic who works to help bring the redemption, explained that prophecy of “nekeva tisovev gever” does not mean a battle between the sexes.

“‘Nekeva tisovev gever’ does not mean that women will dominate men. It means that the feminine energy, which has been repressed since Adam HaRishon (the Biblical Adam) will surface again as a full partner. This refers to both women specifically, but also to the feminine energy in men themselves.”

Eventually, explained Targan, the spiritual energy of women will be a crucial aspect of geula.

“Women have always been closer to Hashem’s perfected will, but the more aggressive, dominant energy of the masculine has dominated history. Male energy is about doing. Female energy is more about being – which is a higher level.

"In the pre-geula world, our focus has been achievement – doing mitzvahs and building a better world. In the times of Moshiach, the focus, as we all know, is to know Hashem. This is more a state of being (i.e. feminine) after the perfected action-oriented life (i.e. masculine) of the pre-geula world."

There is a well-known story from the Talmud (Chulin 60b) that, at the beginning of Creation, God created the sun and the moon the same size. The moon, as it were, objected to the wisdom of this decision, saying, "Two kings cannot share the same crown." God, as it were, acknowledged the correctness of the moon's argument and, in response, reduced the size and radiance of the moon.

The moon represents women and the sun represents men. We therefore can conclude that men and women were originally created equal but that feminine spiritual energy was diminished in some way. The Moon's Lost Light: A Deeper Torah Perspective on Geula and Feminine Equality by Devorah Fastag elaborates on the spiritual significance of this contraction.

In our days, the most significant point is that, as we get closer and closer to full-blown geula, there is a shift happening in the balance between masculine and feminine spiritual energy.

It's my contention that the gender confusion we are witnessing is the tumah or klipah (the impure spiritual forces) side of this shift toward the strengthening and the increasing influence of the feminine. People are responding to what's happening in the shifting balance on a spiritual plane without consciously knowing what's driving their behavior. They are responding to something, but not in a healthy way.

Further, I suspect that the escalating erasure of women is driven by the same dynamic - an unconscious push back against the strengthening of the feminine in the spiritual realm.

If my contention is correct, it doesn't change all the painful things we're seeing and experiencing, but it does give it context. It does help us understand the fact that the whole world is befuddled about gender identity and expression is not a random occurrence but is, in fact, very much related to geula.

It will take increasing Messianic light to show the world how to cope, in a mature and spiritually healthy way, with what they unconsciously and intuitively sense, but do not understand.

Until then, we wait, and watch as the world becomes ever more snarled up over questions of gender.