The symphony of broken hearts: Shalosh Seudos at Hadassah Ein Kerem

We had just finished making kiddush last Shabbos afternoon. While preparing the last few things for the meal and getting ready to wash hands, my two younger boys started playing a little bit of a wild game. They took the knives from the table and started throwing them as if they were attacking terrorists. From the back of my eye, I noticed their antics. However, I wanted to get moving with the meal and did not pay serious attention to their potentially dangerous game.

Well, after washing and sitting down at the table ready to make “Hamotzi”, I suddenly heard my 5-year-old daughter, Leah, crying. Oh no! One of the knives hit her in the left eye. My wife ran to comfort her. I quickly made Hamotzi and realized that my daughter was not opening her left eye. Shortly after, we quickly ran to the emergency room in Beitar.

The Arab doctor looked at her and said we needed to take her immediately to the hospital. Meanwhile, Leah had begun to open her left eye and, Baruch Hashem, was able to see. However, her eye was very red, there was a visible knife cut on her eyelid and she desperately  needed to be checked out. So, escorted by a  Jewish volunteer from Magen David Adom, Leah and I went into an ambulance, driven by an Arab driver on the way to the hospital.

I did not know any of these people but we were all singing together so beautifully with such purity. For a moment I opened my eyes and took a mental image of the moment. The Chassidim were singing across from me. Next to them, the Chardali was shaking back and forth with closed eyes, his payos flying. And behind him stood a litivishe bachur with his eyes closed and hands lifted to heaven. This is not the type of Shalosh Seudos I was imagining when Shabbos started. However, this was the Shalosh Seudos for Parshas Shekalim, 5786, at Hadassah Ein Kerem.

Yes, it might be that a hospital dining room in Israel is the only place in the world where all these different types of people can come together in such a sweet, pure and beautiful way. Because at Hadassah everyone davens together in one minyan. Everyone eats together and everyone sings together. At the hospital, all the external differences seem more trivial. Because people who are spending Shabbos at the hospital ( or who surprisingly come in the middle such as myself) are often a bit broken. Their egos have been greatly deflated .  But instead, you have a revelation of the true essence of Am Yisroel. The part of Am Yisroel that is one with each other and one with Hashem. The barriers of arrogance that often separate us have been destroyed in the hospital dining room. All we have left is the pure essence of Am Yisroel’s essential unity with each other and Hashem Yisborach. The atmosphere reflected this. And the singing of the zemiros at Shalosh Seudos revealed this!

It really seems that since 5780 ( 2020) Hashem has been really shaking things up. First there was Karona, then the war between Russia and Ukraine followed by October 7th and  the subsequent war here in Israel. In Chazal, the term for arrogance is “Gasei Ruach” . The Maharal explains that the idea here is that arrogance takes something of “Ruach”-spiritual and turns it into “Gas”, something coarse. We all have in us a deep spiritual essence that deeply loves each other and Hashem. Sometimes, however, there is the more coarse external part of us that hides this. Maybe Hashem has been shaking up the world the past few years because he wants us to remove our external peels and begin to reveal our true deeper essence. Maybe He wants us to reveal the part that is one with Him and His beloved nation. The part that I saw last Shabbos at Hadassah Ein Kerem.

— Ariel