My Personal Parsha

It’s been 2 ½ years since arriving in Israel, and 6 months since becoming an Israeli citizen. During the last couple months, I have struggled with internal malaise – a sense of anchorlessness, an identity crisis of sorts — which has been impacting both my emotional and physical state.

This feeling is accentuated by the fact that practically speaking I am at a bit of a crossroads in life. My daughters are adults now and need me much less than ever before. My younger daughter recently moved into an apartment with roommates near the university she attends. I am proud of her resilience, compassion, and ability to make her own path in life. After many turbulent teenage years where she and I clashed, with this move towards more independence, I am hopeful for the first time in a while that we can build a meaningful and sweet adult child-to-parent relationship. We’re off to a good start!

My older daughter, having moved to Israel recently after graduating from college in the US, is living with me for the first time in many years, and I feel so grateful that we have this opportunity to catch up a bit on the years we missed and enjoy each other’s company before she takes her next major life step. And up till now I think we have successfully been able to balance that while honoring our respective independence. I am proud of the consistently principled, generous and industrious way she engages the world.

The fact that I still don’t have a life partner also exacerbates my sense of drift. Don’t get me wrong . . . my life in Jerusalem is enriching and expansive: With the ability to fully inhabit my deepest self as a Jewish woman, the endless opportunities for learning, connection and spiritual growth, and my truly unique and loving community of friends, I am blessed with emphatically more than I could ever have dreamed of at this stage of my life.

But I am not ashamed to admit that I deeply yearn for more: To have a single person in my life who has my back as I have his, where we are each other’s priority in love and friendship, to share a life vision with someone and execute it brilliantly together, and to have someone really know me, to see the richness of my human consciousness, the full symphony of how I live life and the imprint I make.

My last serious relationship set a new standard of possibility for me in love, but also disappointed in significant ways. The aftermath of it still occasionally leaves chemtrails in the sky that on some days reads: U n f i n i s h ed   B u s i n e s s, other days, simply  H u r t, echoing painful relationship traumas of my past, and still other days, C h e r i s h   t h e  G i f t s   R e c e i v e d.  I certainly am not ready to call off my search for a soulmate and am getting to know a new prospect as we speak. As always, though, I generously leave myself the option of aborting mission at any point along the way.

And finally, the backdrop of the ever-growing number of enemy war fronts here in Israel coupled with the war against antisemitism abroad fills me with an even greater sense of uncertainty. Our nation’s finest young men and women are fighting for their second consecutive autumn and winter, as the burning, parched sands of summer have long turned into muddy sinkholes. Families who lost loved ones on Oct 7 and during those early weeks of war have already lived through their year of אֲבֵלוּת (mourning) and one-year Yahrtzeits. For these families, while the shock perhaps has abated somewhat, the pain and longing are still very raw. Virtually every day we see more smiling baby faces of soldiers killed in battle. How is it possible that each young man, one after the other, emanates such bright light from his eyes? And who can forget for even a moment our brothers and sisters still languishing 50 meters underground in Gaza. They all deserve to come home, even if it is only for a proper Jewish burial. Lastly, almost every week there is another terror attack. Two weeks ago, a 12-year-old boy, Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simha, was tragically murdered while riding a bus from Beitar Illit to Jerusalem after a simcha. Just glancing at his picture (below) brings tears to my eyes and casts long shadows on my heart. He is forever frozen in that oh-so-particular 12-year-old innocence/sweetness captured by the photo, which would likely soon have morphed into the more self-conscious awkwardness of a bar mitzvah, and then later, the beginning edges of manhood. If he’d only been given the chance . . .

As I’ve always done historically during periods of inner turmoil, I try to center myself and cope by intentionally turbo-charging צדקה וחסד (charity and acts of kindness), reaching upward towards Hashem, and learning and growing. I have dusted off (literally .  . Jerusalem has so much dust!) a few select books that made the cut for my Aliyah lift that had been on my bookshelf in NY for decades and added some new ones that on this past Rosh Hashana, I committed to learning from a bit every day. I have essentially immersed myself in my own private microcosmic battle plan. Here is my cache of weaponry:

The Untethered Soul, Michael Singer;

The Power of Now, Eckart Tolle;

Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide, Aryeh Kaplan;

Gate of Trust (שער הבטחון) – חובות הלבבות (Duties of the Heart), Rabbi Bachya ben Yosef ibn Pekuda; and

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)

Singer and Tolle reinforce each other in re-re-re-re teaching me to quiet the rants of my mind, which is to say, clear the illusions, making way for the light, pureness, and peace of the soul’s original state.

Kaplan provides a quick and easy start to meditation for a recovered meditation-resistant woman like me: Mantra or הִתְבּוֹדְדוּת meditation, which apparently was practiced by the Ari (Rabbi Isaac Luria) and then later by Chassidic leader Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. I have dutifully taken on Rabbi Nachman’s suggested beginner’s meditation by focusing on and saying the words ריבונו של עולם (Master of the Universe) over and over and over again until my thoughts quiet.

Gate of Trust – שער הבטחון, impressively written in the 11^th century is the 4^th Gate of the Chovot Halevavot series. I have learned the difference between אמונה (faith) and בִּטָחוֹן (trust) and in reading just a few pages a day, am making slow headway toward a topic (בִּטָחוֹן) that frankly I have struggled with my whole life. I can see my orientation shifting ever so slightly. Interestingly, Tolle’s description of psychological time as an obstacle to G-d dovetails perfectly with many aspects of pure בִּטָחוֹן. Our challenge is to walk along the ‘razor’s edge of Now’, Tolle extols, so completely present that problems/suffering cannot survive in us. Observing trees or beautiful flowers, they are not anxious about tomorrow or depressed about yesterday, but live with ease in the ‘timeless Now’ and are provided for abundantly by G-d. This kind of tranquility is available to us humans too, says Rabbi Bachya:

וְהוּא הַבִּטָּחוֹן עָלָיו בְּכָל דְּבָרָיו, בַּעֲבוּר מַה שֶׁיֵּשׁ בּוֹ מִן הַתּוֹעֲלִיּוֹת הַגְּדוֹלוֹת בְּעִנְיַן הַתּוֹרָה וּבְעִנְיַן הָעוֹלָם.

to rely on Him in all his matters. For by doing so, there will be great benefits, both in Torah matters and in worldly matters.

וְתוֹעֲלוֹתָיו בּוֹ בְּתוֹרָתוֹ, מֵהֶן: מְנוּחַת נַפְשׁוֹ וּבִטְחוֹנוֹ עַל אֱלֹהָיו יִתְבָּרֵךְ

The first benefit is that בִּטָחוֹן causes a person to be free from worry, allowing him to devote his energy to serving G‑d:

But of all the books I’m immersed in, the most striking parallels and relevance to both my personal challenges and our current struggles as a nation have been from Tanach itself. As I’ve studied the parsha each week over the last couple months — filled with the personal sagas of our fully human and imperfect אבות ואמהות  (forefathers and mothers) and the broader narrative of our development to becoming a nation — I am struck at how prescient and instructive these stories, and their interpretations are today as they were thousands of years ago.

I was already squarely in my ‘inner funk’ in early November when I traveled back to NY to visit family. As was the case on previous trips, even as I arrived by taxi from the airport to my old neighborhood (where my sister still lives), I felt an uncomfortable dissonance. The streets and landmarks were very familiar yet strangely foreign at the same time, and for the first few days of my trip I had this strong feeling of wanting to turn around and return to Israel immediately. Was I afraid something important would happen בארץ that I would miss? Though it was very lovely spending time with family, privately, my identity dysmorphia flourished while I was away. Where is home? Sometimes I feel like I don’t fully belong anywhere or to anyone anymore.

Still in NY, as I studied Parshat Noach, it was hard to ignore how at times my insides actually felt like a broken sailboat in stormy seas. The reminder of how Hashem destroyed the entire world except for Noah’s family floored me as if learning it for the first time. Post flood, a ‘covenant’ of sorts was struck, with G-d’s promise never to wreak total destruction on the world again coupled with our entrance into an era of human refinement. A fresh start for humanity was good, I thought. I was grappling to find one within myself.

Upon returning to Jerusalem, sleep was elusive. Some nights, sleep evaded me completely, as I struggled/wrestled with something profound. The only parallel I could come up with descriptively was the idea of fever dreams, though I was not sick nor running a fever. Other nights, I would sleep a couple fitful hours and inevitably wake up in the mornings feeling unrested and with stiff and aching hips. Certain days, it was even hard to walk.

By now, I was studying Parshat Vayeitzei. As a framework, it made sense to me according to Kabbalah, that while Avraham’s מידה (key characteristic) was חסד (Lovingkindness), and Isaac’s, גבורה (Strength/Restraint), Jacob’s מידה of תִפאֶרֶת/אֶמֶת (Glory/Truth) represented the balance or synthesis of the מִדּוֹת of his father and grandfather. Jacob’s מידה allowed him to accomplish our highest mission in life as humans (hence the glory), which is to be invested fully in this physical world while bringing holiness, G-dliness, and light down from the heavens into ourselves and into the mundane of our lives.

In Vayeitzei, having escaped his angered brother on his way towards Haran, Jacob, alone in the dark, fashions a pillow out of stones, and goes to sleep.

The ladder in Jacob’s dream is symbolic of this very real exchange between earthly matters and the divine. We tend to perceive both ends as concretely separate but in essence they are not. Jacob discovers G-d unexpectedly, in the midst of fear, running from one challenging relationship right into what will turn out to be another one (with Laban). These unexpected encounters with G-d are open to us too.

The following week, studying Parshat Vayishlach, more parallels emerged. Jacob is about to meet his brother Esau for the first time in twenty-two years and has discovered that Esau is accompanied by 400 men. This frightens Jacob into believing there will be violence and that either his life or his brother’s hangs in the balance. Here again sometime between night and dawn, Jacob has a wrestling match with an unnamed adversary – a man? an angel? The angel could not overcome Jacob, so he touched Jacob’s hip joint, dislocating it. The angel than said to Jacob: “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have striven with (an angel of) G-d and with men and prevailed.” He then blessed Jacob.

וַיֹּ֗אמֶר לֹ֤א יַֽעֲקֹב֙ יֵֽאָמֵ֥ר עוֹד֙ שִׁמְךָ֔ כִּ֖י אִם־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל כִּֽי־שָׂרִ֧יתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִ֛ים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁ֖ים וַתּוּכָֽל:

Jacob then limped to meet Esau. And, instead of violence like he had feared, Esau ran towards him, embraced him, fell upon his neck and kissed him. The brothers then wept. A turn of fate. A miraculous outcome.

Indeed, in the weeks surrounding Parshat Vayishlach, we were also experiencing what seemed like a genuine turning point in the war here in Israel and with political developments around the world, after a year in which most of us experienced varying levels of desperation and fear. Miracles that included:

• Hezbollah and Hamas severely impaired militarily
• Trump Elected
• Syria toppling
• Iran weakened

And, on a personal level, my sleep has begun to improve, and the hip pain no longer hampers my walking. I am less fearful of belonging nowhere because I focus on the fact that I belong to my soul, which is directly connected to G-d. And because of that, miracles in my life could be right around the corner.

Indeed, we — עם ישראל — inherited our spiritual genes from Jacob, allowing us to survive 4000 years of untold difficulties and existential threats right up to the present time. Our name as a people is not Bnei Avraham or Bnei Yitzak, but rather Bnei Yisrael. Both on the individual level and as a nation, we may get our entrepreneurial spirit and drive from Avraham, and our sense of duty and continuity from Yizchak, but our tenacity? That’s from Yaakov Avinu and it has been the key to our eternity.

Seeing the menorahs all around Jerusalem lighting up the streets and cobbled walkways and having been invited to חגיגות (celebrations) nearly all of the 8 days of Chanukah, one cannot help but be in awe of our tenacity as a people, our capacity for joy and faith that no challenge or catastrophe can take away from us. From one light to the next, we illuminate our future, which, with G-d’s help, will be full of miracles!

!! חנוכה שמח

Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha murdered by terrorist Dec 11, 2024

לעילוי נשמת מלכה בת חנוך

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