This blog post is dedicated to – or more accurately inspired by – Ruti Mizrachi and Debbie Hirsch.
Many years ago I studied in Theater School. We did a lot of improv, and one of the many improv principles we worked with was called “yes, and.” In improv, it means you take the lead from what someone else in the scene says and run with it, you don’t reject it or shut it down. That would kill a scene and doesn’t move the action forward.
For example, if your fellow actor said “You are a cow”, the appropriate response would be to say “moo”, and perhaps kick them, but not to say “I am not! I am a person, that’s ridiculous!”. That just reminds the audience that it’s all make believe and silly and that spoils the fun for everyone.
As one of my wise friend-teachers reminded me this past year, however, all principles in improv translate into life, including “Yes, and.” We can reject or shut down a person’s flow, idea, sentiment or opinion, or, we can choose to embrace it even as we shift the tone into something that better suits our own style.
“Yes, darling, we could have waffles with lots of syrup and ice cream for dinner….. Or we could have healthy lasagna and make a waffle and ice cream party for dessert on Sat. night. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
I was recently included in an exhibit in our local community center of “Female Professionalism.” There are 12 “female professionals” included, each interviewed, profiled and photographed. The point of the exhibit is to demonstrate the artists’ understanding of what each of these 12 women bring to our chosen careers, specifically as women. They featured 12 different qualities, expressed as icons, and chose 3-4 to place alongside the photos of each subject, based on her story and personality. I didn’t know which of the 12 they had chosen to put next to my name until the opening of the exhibit. The names of them are each in Hebrew. One of the icons next to my photo can best be translated as… “Yes, and.” I don’t remember the precise phrasing in Hebrew, but it translates loosely into “saying yes and then figuring it out afterwards.”
Just as you learn a new word and suddenly see it everywhere, I find that when I learn something new about myself, I suddenly see its manifestation every day, around every corner. And while I no longer participate in Improv, I guess the principle has stuck with me.
Today, a colleague gently, kindly and humorously pointed out a mistake I had made in Hebrew. In a professional message. To everyone I work with. He waited until it wasn’t in the moment and was soooo careful not to embarass me. It was good he corrected me, but the usage was ghastly enough that I am fairly certain this won’t be the mistake I make in the future!
My coworking space is located in a building with a beautiful gym on the floor below us. And this past week there were some problems with the hot water in what are usually the best showers in Gush Etzion (towels provided!) I wrote to everyone warning them that there were problems with the hot water that are being worked on. So for the next few days it would be advisable to check the water in our kitchen tap before relying on the hot water “below.” Only if you spell “below” with a tav instead of tet, it actually says “to (or for) death. As in: “You should check the water in our kitchen tap before relying on the death showers.” I am certainly in the wrong tribe to be making that particular mistake!!!! Everyone else clearly knew what I meant, but it still makes me laugh at myself just to think about it.
My well meaning colleague handled it just right, but you might think today is the day I would feel least confident about my “always an olah” Hebrew….
Not an hour later, the Vice-Principal of one of my sons’ Yeshiva high school called me. In Hebrew. Now is the intense time of year when bewildered and busy parents try to figure out the “perfect” high school for their son. (The girls’ schools will start their own intensity very soon.) This process includes evenings at each school to hear from the administration, sometimes students, sometimes teachers, and sometimes parents, about what makes that particular high school unique. The Rabbi wanted to know if I would agree to speak at my sons’ school in a number of hours to prospective parents. “Just for a few minutes.”
I said yes. I don’t think I said “Yes, and…”, in fact I don’t think I did much thinking. I LOVE the school for them, they are happy, I want to show the administration how much I appreciate them, and I hope my sons will be proud. So yes. I have to laugh at myself that I didn’t even stop to consider that I had just been schooled on my own or horrific or morbidly humorous Hebrew mistake, depending on your view.
I was slightly tempered by my son asking “You are going to speak at our school in Hebrew?!?!?!??”
But it was only as I watched the second hundred parents – Israeli parents – file into the cavernous Beit Midrash of the High School that I had understood what I had done. I instantly got incredibly nervous and I thought that my heartbeat might be drowning out the Principal as he spoke before me.
I only spoke for five minutes. Tops. I didn’t use any spectacular vocabulary, and I didn’t make any major faux pas – that I have yet to be told about. I think the Yeshiva wanted to let English-speaking parents know that we are a big part of the school (we are) without switching to English, and I think they weren’t interested in a lofty speech. They wanted parents to see that the school has a heart and that it can make this old bird get gushy just talking about it in her second language in a room full of strangers in just five minutes. Which it can, and it did.
I hope the school is happy. Many parents thanked me, said it was “emotional” (less than five minutes, I mean it.) and had lots of questions, hoping I could help them with the herculean task of intuiting which school is the perfect fit for their unique child.
But I showed myself that I could do it, and the same incredulous son who asked if I would be speaking in Hebrew?!?!?! ended my evening telling me that he was really proud that I spoke at his school tonight. So I don’t know if I got the Hebrew completely right, but I do know that I demonstrated for my teenagers – without theater classes – that there is a power in “Yes, and……”
I am a member of a stepmoms group*. I don’t know how I wound up there. But many of the women who choose to post are asking for advice on how to deal with stuff they can’t change or fix. Because they are just so frustrated and don’t think anyone else will get it. I remember knowing I should just “let it go.” And I also remember how incredibly impossible that was “just” do.
I have worked hard on many things in my life but few with the same level of focus and drive as trying to be a good stepmother. And that has always been true because I have loved my stepson with all my heart since the day I met him. I didn’t come to love him because he was my husband’s child. I think that would have been really hard. In my case, I had a chance to fall in love with him, completely, before it was at all clear that marrying his father was even going to happen. I did then, and I do now. And he got it when he was four, and he gets it now that he is this amazing young adult. Who thank g-d, still needs his mom, his dad… and his stepmom.
I can’t respond to every infuriated stepmom that posts, and I don’t think most of them want to hear “suck it up” or “let it go” just one more time. So I posted some advice, of my own, that I wish I could have told me way back when. When it was still visitation schedules, poisoning of the child, conflicting messages and loyalties, child support and lots and lots and lots of stress.
Because of the overwhelming response, I am adding that advice here. I hope it helps someone. Writing them out felt like giving myself a present (myself in her early thirties), and was far more “healing” than I would ever have expected.
I hope someone who needs to hear these words finds them and it makes their personal challenge a little bit easier.
1. Stop asking if being flexible/giving/generous is doing the right thing to or for BM. It’s NEVER about her. It’s always about the kid(s). And sometimes being the good one is great for them, when you bend and give in and spare them embarassment/hassle/stress. And sometimes it causes you to feel so stepped on and angry that you can’t parent them lovingly if you say yes. And that is the marker for when you should say yes and when you should say no.
2. Don’t ever expect BM [Bio-mom] to listen to you, care what you think, or do what you think is “reasonable.” You can’t control her, chances are she won’t, if she does it’s a nice surprise, but just let the expectation go and work on yourself and your marriage. Because that’s what you can control.
3. You can’t discipline your own kids in the house with stepkids there and not discipline them. The dynamic will NEVER EVER EVER work. So don’t try. Rework your understanding with your husband. Because either you have total rule in your house or you don’t. For all kids. Period. You wouldn’t let a playdate come in and run around your house with scissors. You just wouldn’t. So figure out a way to have dominion over everyone while they are there. Period.
4. Don’t expect major family-dynamics changes without a therapist/rabbi/priest/counselor. No one likes to change. Nothing someone else says is going to change that. Minor changes in YOURSELF you can make. Family dynamics? Nope.
5. Your stepkids hate that their parents are divorced. They didn’t ask for it, and it sucks for them. No matter how much you think it sucks for you, it always sucks worse for them, because they absorb your stress in addition to their own. Even if they hate their parents together and love you. LOVE YOU, they hate having divorced parents. And they will hate it for the rest of their lives and will hate it differently and anew with each stage of maturity.
And that will exhibit itself with all kinds of interesting behaviors. Even in kids that were angels in some different phase. You can’t control it. Try not to resent it. Try to empathize. Try to understand and have compassion. Because they didn’t make you choose to step into the complicated mess that is their childhood, you chose to.
6.Your husband has to back you up. That’s the deal. You put up with endless crap as a stepparent because you are wonderwomen and rock stars and love them. And they have to back you up. That’s the payback. And if they don’t think it works that way, draw a red line, find some articles on line, go to a therapist, whatever works. Or don’t marry him. Because that’s the deal. He can disagree with you behind doors and talk it out with you. But you have to be backed up or the rest of the giving giving giving just doesn’t work. That means with his parents, with BM and with the kids. And the mailman and teachers too.
7. THE BEST IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR:
One day, someday far far away, your stepkids will get it. They will. They will get who gave and gave. They will get who is crazy and who is not. They will get who is working on it. They will get who put them first. They WILL get it. One day. It might not be until they are 30 and parents, but they will. So hang in tight, love them with no expectations of return, suck it up suck it up suck it up, and this too shall pass. Your moments of crying from joy and return on investment WILL COME.
*If you feel that being a member of the FB Stepmom Group would be relevant and helpful to you, please contact me and I can send you the information.
It’s 8:30 and the house is quiet.
All of the little people in my house are tucked in bed, asleep, or on their way.
There is mess all around me, the whirlwind that was the past three hours, but I don’t mind. I can clean it up leisurely, at my pace, in quiet.
Quiet.
This reminds me of days past, when I had children ages 5, 4, 4, 2… and a newborn. I would live for 8:30, surviving getting through 5 pm, knowing that if I just stayed patient, dealt with it all, that eventually 8:30 would come.
And it would be quiet.
It’s different now; this 8:30 is just the calm before the second storm. A high schooler at a late night school program. Three boys playing baseball hours away. They will all come home at 10:30 and want food, attention and love. Adrenaline making it impossible to shuffle them off to bed at a reasonable hour. They may just tuck me in.
I miss the quiet solitude of 8:30. Most nights it is a hive of noise and activity until I finally say “enough”. They still go to bed before me, but just by minutes.
I know that there will be a time in the not-so-distant future when 8:30 will be quiet again.
Quiet.
Quiet with no storm to follow….
But I know I won’t find it nearly as blissful as I do now.
Welcome everyone! “Those who can’t find time to blog, digest others'” ?? Does that work?
In an effort to break my long hiatus, I have taken a turn at sharing with you some of the best out there in the world of Jewish Blogging, by hosting this week’s Havel Havelim, the long running, weekly international Jewish blog carnival that has been appearing for well over a decade. It was begun by Soccer Dad who no longer blogs. He coordinated it for quite a while, but now we use our facebook page to coordinate and publicize it.
Next week’s Havel Havelim will be hosted by Chaviva Gordon-Bennett, at kvetchingeditor.com, a fellow member of Neve Daniel’s “Har HaBloggerim”, even if it is only in an honorary way, for now…please read and be inspired to join us. You can send in your links to Chaviva with a one-line description of your post and HH as the “subject.” Our weekly deadline is before Shabbat.
This certainly has been a week of ups and downs. There was yet another terrible attack on Jews, this time in Copenhagen. Here in Israel we suffered some terrible losses this week; we lost Michael Golumb, z’l, a known figure and special neshama from Moshav Mevo Modiin, a real national treasure in MK Uri Ohrbach, z’l, and the tragic death of little Adele Chaya Bat Adva Biton, z’l .
Yet we also “nichnas Adar”, and I hope that you were able to do so “marbim b’simcha” as much as I was. And lastly, here on our “Har” (yes, of “bloggerim) we enjoyed some lovely snow and snowdays, with sledding and snowmen and more… I am so glad they were home, and I am so glad they are going back to school in the morning!
To see some wonderful pictures of our recent snow, check out the Real Jerusalem Streets’ 16 Photos Snow in Jerusalem.
The Muqata gives us his own personal reflection on MK Uri Orbach, z”l, and our national loss here.
One of the things that MK Orbach was known best for was his ability to love- and include – all Jews. He lived his life trying to avoid anyone feeling like this post in Shiloh Musings, “Like a Foreign Alien”.
Ester shares her heartbreaking account of Adele Chaya Bat Adva Biton at It’s All From Hashem – in Blessed Be the Perfect Judge.
First One Through has a post about the recent “Je Suis“ rally in France, here.
And Miriam’s Words are her “Two Cents” about the many attacks on Jews around the world recently – here.
Batya describes the new party in Israel’s upcoming elections that may just surprise everyone, here.
… and her update on the Shaar Binyamin shopping area here,
…her wonderful Pesach Haggadah book review here (I’m convinced and want to go get my copy, Batya.)
Tzivia talks at Adventures in MamaLand about Baalei Teshuva, non-religious parents and feelings of shame and distance with gripping honesty, here.
She also writes about adjusting to Sundays in Israel as an olah here. Every immigrant I have ever spoken to has said that Israeli Sundays is one of the hardest things to adjust to, and olim commiserate over this decades after aliyah.
.. and Rabbi Reuven Spolter offers us an audio shiur on Parshat Terumah over at Chopping Wood.
Leora Wenger, a former neighbor, friend and all-around wonderful person gives us the Jewish Book Carnival
here. Think of it as a digest in a digest, so to speak.
Ruti Mizrachi, a current neighbor, friend, and all-around wonderful person tells of her “Only In Israel Moment” – this week. (Because I know she finds a way to engage and touch everyone she sees, I have no doubt she experiences such moments often.)
… and with blessing us all with a week of more ups and fewer downs, I am going to finish off with Chaviva’s fun GIVEAWAY over at Kvetchingeditor! Maybe it will help you get into the Adar spirit. Maybe it will inspire you to email her and join next week’s round up. I hope both.
And PLEASE leave your comments here and at each blog and let us know that you stopped by. Chodesh Tov to you all!!!
I am a little tired of prefacing blog posts with excuses and explanations of my lack of posting.
Today, I am only posting a recent piece in the Jerusalem Post Blog by Varda Epstein, to explain my absence… more of my long and wandering thoughts on this life-changing experience in future blog posts…
Count the Stars: Finding a Glimmer in the Darkness
In the wake of the heavy pain that gripped the Gush Etzion community, a novel sort of summer stock group was founded by
Sharon Katz under the artistic direction of
Toby Klein Greenwald, both of Efrat. Raise Your Spirits (RYS), would produce musical theatre by and for women only. And 13 years on, the brave little theatre troupe is still putting on shows for women who come from all over the country to get a dose of theatre for the soul. The troupe is currently in production with
Count the Stars, the Journey of Avraham and Sara, set to premiere on December 3, 2014.It seemed only appropriate then, for me to interview the two principles of this show, Avital Macales (Avraham) and Rachel Moore (Sara), the two “stars” who feature in Stars, an original musical written by Katz and Macales, and directed by Klein Greenwald. I thought the best way to explain this feisty theatre troupe would be to have the actors speak for themselves. As it happens, I had an in: this is my second time around as a cast member ofanRYS production. So IhadAvital and Rachel come by and we had a nice long chat.I want you to get a real feel for what this is, so get yourself a nice hot cup of tea, sit back and relax, and get to know these two women who are bringing their own brand of light to the fore, to banish the darkness and raise the spirits of their sisters.
Rachel Moore, left, andAvitalMacales
VE: Avital, how did you end up in the performing arts?AM: I come from a musical family. Music was always a part of my home. But as a teenager, I was shy and quiet, and not many in my grade knew who I was and I didn’t know who I was. Also, this was in the 90s, and there still weren’t many artisticmegamot [high-school majors], so there was nothing I could do in theatre at school.Then when I got to my senior year we put on The Sound of Music. I auditioned and thought, “Maybe I’ll have a chance to be Leisl.” ( Far right, Sharon Katz, left Deena Lawi)
I was cast as Maria.
I decided to keep my role a secret from my mother until she sat there in the audience on opening night and realized it was me on stage. I kept the rehearsals a secret all that time and during the rehearsals I was developing into the real Avital. I began coming out of my shell, and that was the beginning of the rest of my life. The beginning of who Avital is today.
VE: Rachel, how about you? What’s your background in the performing arts?
RM: I started singing when I was about eight. I sang in my shul choir, and at a young age was apprenticed to the cantor, a woman. I started private lessons when I was twelve, thinking I would go into chazzanut. I was lucky to have as my teacher, Elizabeth Coss, a soprano at the Metropolitan Opera and a big advocate for classical training. She was friends with Pavarotti. I was twelve, mind you, and I said, “Whatever you do, do not make me sound like an opera singer.” (Laughs)
So I sang wherever I could; whatever musical theatre came my way, whatever choirs I could find; but mostly I focused on private lessons for over fifteen years – until my fifth child was born. I continued to study privately in Boston, Montreal and eventually in Israel.
I was in high school when my family moved to Boston, so I was able to participate in the Boston University Theatre Conservatory summer program. Many of the participants are professionals with agents and budding careers. It’s a very intense program where you are treated like a professional (child) actor and the staff is brutally honest – it was great training.
Some time after graduating university I began the process of making Aliyah. I came on a pilot trip and auditioned for singing teachers. I was fortunate to find Judi Axelrod and moved to Jerusalem to work with her and to prepare for entry to conservatory.
I became more religious and at one point Judi said, “You’re preparing to audition for conservatory and I think you can make it if this is what you decide to do, but I want you to think about whether this is still what you want.
“If you study opera, you will have to leave Israel, Shabbat will always hurt your career, and you’ll be lucky if you can have two kids, because that’s the life of an opera singer.”
Rachel Moore with daughter Shira and Avital Macales
So I took a deep breath and made the decision not to go to conservatory. It was a big moment for me to decide this would be a hobby and not a vocation after so many years. And then I basically stopped singing altogether when my fifth child was born. I didn’t realize I would be taking a decade-long break from music and theatre!
Other than, of course, watching.
And… it’s been amazing for me. Amazing to be back! I didn’t realize how much I would miss it. It was part of a different chapter of my life. It’s life-changing to have it back.
VE: Avital, what about the kol isha issue, the prohibition against men hearing women—other than close family members—sing?
AM: I came from a circle where it was a complete given. It was completely natural to me to sing in front of women only. In recent years, I began to better understand the complexity of [Kol Isha], and I challenged myself more about whether or not I wanted to get out there and perform in front of mixed audiences. I wanted to see where my boundaries were, as my understanding grew. After much thought I came to the decision that I’m still going to sing only in front of women and my personal reason is… Gosh, this is where it gets a bit tough… There’s a certain intimacy that I want to bring to the stage. I want to be completely intimate with my audience, and I don’t want anything to block that. I just want to be completely open, and I feel completely open in front of an all-women’s audience.
VE: What does RYS mean to you?
AM: RYS is unique in my eyes because while there are now quite a few theatres for women who put on musicals, RYS is one of the only ones who put on biblical musicals. It seems that as you go more to the right on the spectrum, religiously, there is less of a tendency to adapt a biblical story into a play because it is almost taboo to give righteous biblical characters a face, and to give a psychological and emotional interpretation to the biblical text. So RYS is one of the few who does that, and at the same time has clear boundaries based on Halacha and takes into consideration the geist of the target audience.
Cast members Racheli Ettinger and sister Chaya Lapidot
VE: Rachel, what is the scope of your part? So much dialogue, a lot of staging to memorize. I mean, how many pages is it? How many hours?
RM: Every word and every line and every thing that’s asked of me is a gift. Every single one, so I’m not really looking at it as this huge heap of how am I ever going to get all of that, but rather, I don’t know if I’m ever going to do this again.
So I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about whether I can learn it all. I spend time worrying that I can do justice to the other people, who have worked so hard and have learned so much and are so amazing and have been doing this for ten years, twelve years, and I’m just coming in, that I feel like I owe it to them.
To be performing in this show together with both of my daughters (Michal Moore, Ishmael, and Shira Moore, Yitzchak) is the opportunity of a lifetime for me. I never imagined it possible to have a theater experience that was such a supportive, kind, generous, holy group of people. It is like a dream.
The cast of Count the Stars
VE: What’s next for Rachel Moore?
RM: I hope I am blessed with lots more opportunities to perform. I don’t know where, but I will not be on a ten-year hiatus ever again. That will not happen.
VE: Avital, how did you end up in the RYS theatre troupe?
AM: It was very unpopular for religious girls in my circle to consider the performing arts in general, so it wasn’t an option for me. But after I finished high school I met a girl from Efrat in sherut leumi (national service), and she said, “We have a women’s theatre.”
And I didn’t even know where Efrat was. But she said, “You must come audition for ‘Ruth.’”
With some encouragement from my mother, I had just begun my studies with Nomi Teplow of Ginot Shomron. She’s wonderful.
So I did audition, but I thought, why am I auditioning? I live in Rehovot, what am I going to do with this play in Gush Etzion? I don’t even know how to get there.
But I went anyway, I got in, and the rest is history.
And all I knew was that there was something bigger than me that was making me willing to endure all this sacrifice that I was making. Wanting to be on that stage, on the Raise Your Spirits stage, was bigger than I could understand. In fact, if we rewind a little bit, the first Raise Your Spirits show that I saw – and frankly, the only one I saw, because after that I was IN the shows – was “Noah.”
At the end of that show that evening, RYS director Toby Klein Greenwald invited everyone onstage to speak to the actors, so I went over and I said hello to Noah and “his” wife Naama, when this strange voice came into my head out of nowhere, and said, “This is going to be your stage one day.”
Younger cast members have girly-girl fun in between rehearsing their scenes
VE: So what was it like, writing a musical?
AM: More than any solo, more than any lead role, creating this musical has been the epitome of so many things that I love, in one project. I love Tanach (bible), emotions, writing. I love composing, singing, and drama, and I got to do everything in one project.
There was a learning process, a lot of learning. We read any book we could get our hands on, looked at any website we could find. We learned, studied, thought, and analyzed. We spoke to scholars. We did all these things until we had our artistic idea, because you could take the same story and do it 70 different ways. So we had to choose our way.
And I found that I was putting my own stamp on Avraham’s story, because it could be told in many different ways, but that this would be my own journey that I’m going through in this particular period: the journey of singlehood.
Avraham wants to become a father. Avraham and Sara want to become parents on a universal level. They start a new nation, but they also want to become parents because they’re human beings and they want to have a child. They want to nurture, give. I want to become the head of a family too.
After I began co-writing this show, I started looking up at the skies whenever I despaired. I was searching for stars.
I’m looking for my stars.
There was a night I went with my family to payashiva calltoRacheli Frankel, the mother of one of the three boys who were kidnapped and killed. It was a dark night and there were no stars and I just wanted one star. I just wanted one star to glimmer and to… there’s a line in the show, “We searched for a glimmer to console us,” and there was not a single glimmer in the sky.So Avraham’s story of counting stars is my story and the Jewish people’s story, of just finding glimmers here and there: reminders thatHashem is here, “I’m here. You may not always see me. You may be in a dark time, but I’m here.”
VE: And now you’ve co-written Stars. You’ve watched this thing grow from a glimmer to something real.
AM: Yes! It was all about the connection between my heart and my mind. As if my heart and mind connected and then flew forward.And I want to write at least a hundred more musicals, a thousand more musicals!
I want to inspire people.
COUNT THE STARS – The Journey of Avraham and Sara
Opens December 3
Gush Etzion Community Center
For more information:http://www.raiseyourspirits.org/count-the-stars.html (All photos,Bati Katz. Poster design, Chana Singer)
Click here to see the original at the Jerusalem Post
Everyone I know that has a blog, or uses any social media at all, seems to have had a lot to say in recent weeks about the horrible tragedy(ies) of the past few weeks. I have been keeping quite quiet (yes me, quiet). I haven’t felt that there was anything that hasn’t been said by lots of other people. And the truth is that I have been so heartbroken and sad that there has been little room for me to think or feel anything else. There isn’t much to say about that other than “I am heartbroken and sad”, which I did.
Having a chayal boded (a “lone soldier”) living with us helped me feel like I was taking care of my own little corner of the IDF. Helping in our own way. That will be a topic for another post, at another time.
Everyone around me here in Gush Etzion has been helping in their own way, heroically, going so above and beyond. They did because Eyal, Gil-ad and Naftali were all of our boys… but they also did because that’s what people here do. It is one of the many reasons we are just blessed to be where we are. I wrote a dvar Torah for work this week, but I have decided to share it here too. This is what I finally have to say…..
Some thoughts on Parshat Balak:
What a difficult week it has been for Am Yisrael. When I sit down to prepare this week’s email, I am immediately struck by just how full of hope we all were just one week ago.
For the past several days it has been difficult at times to work, concentrate, move on with business as usual. As some of you know, I spend a fair amount of time on “social media”. As a result, one of the hardest part of contending with this tragedy, for me, has been the amount of hate expressed around the world. Two “bad guys” committing an inhuman criminal act was made far worse by the apparent dismissal by some and outright celebration by others.
But our one constant as a nation is always the study of Torah, and as Meryl Lee Avraham [my colleague, mentor, teacher and friend] expressed so beautifully last week, “It is amazing how every week when we read the parsha, we can find relevance and insights to what is currently happening.”
In this week’s parsha, Balak, King Balak from the kingdom of Moav petitions the grand wizard Bilam from the kingdom of Midian to curse the Jews. Balak has seen the Jews’ military success as they have forged their way to Israel. He is worried about our numbers, and has seen that military acumen is not going to be a successful way to stop Am Yisrael. He asks Bilam to curse the Jewish people.
It makes sense; since Moshe’s relationship with G-d is clearly helping Am Yisrael, certainly a different Navi should be able to counter that better than swords and arrows. Bilam makes it very clear from the beginning that he can only say what Hashem tells him to. He brings sacrifices to G-d, but instead of curses, only blessings spill forth from Bilam. After several attempts to change location (maybe they need to find Moshe’s “magic mountaintop”?) it is clear this just isn’t going to work. “Mevarechecha Baruch v’orerecha arur”, “Blessed are they who bless you, Accursed they who curse you.” (Bamidbar 24:9) is Bilam’s reminder in his blessing, to the promise made to Avraham by G-d.
Almost the entire parsha is taken up with this strange story which seems to be about our enemies, not us, and a thwarted attempt to foil our entry into Eretz Yisrael through a spiritual plot, rather than a military one. However, the end of our parsha begins a different narrative. It describes the inappropriate relations that the Israelite men were having with Moabite women. It what seems like an abrupt change of subject, that begins with “So, while this was going on [with the non-Jews] and the Israelites were in the place called Shittim, they started being inappropriate with the women of Moav. And these Moabite women enticed them to join in some Baal Peor worship, which made Hashem very, very angry – “Yachar Af”, incensed.
The result of this was a plague in which 24,000 Israelites died!
Not only is this particular chapter added on after a long, fluid narrative, but the rest of the story of their relations with the Moabites continues immediately after in next week’s parsha, Pinchas.
So why is it here? Why not just tell the next story… next?
The Midianites and Moabites aren’t really allies, but they form an alliance of sorts in an attempt to destroy Am Yisrael. We are told a great deal, in detail, about the Ancient non-Jewish world’s perception that they cannot destroy us militarily. That our real power comes from our bond with Hashem. So it is there that they will try to undermine us, and bring us to our knees. It specifically states that Balak’s concern was our size, our numbers: “…they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land.” (Bamidbar 22:6). Balak’s efforts, through Bilam don’t work. He can’t cut down our numbers. He cannot get the greatest spiritual guru of the age to curse the Jews. Hashem just won’t let it happen.
… And still, a few lines later, Hashem strikes down 25,000 of our men? How can that be?
The answer, was that the only way for us as a people to be cursed was to bring it upon ourselves. No nation can come from the outside and truly address the “Jewish problem”, or find a successful “final solution”. Military might won’t work, spiritual leadership won’t work. No tactic can help an outside people or force destroy the Jews. We all know that this has been proven out over thousands of years. Certainly not for lack of trying!
The reason it is so important for the parsha to include the plague at Shittim, the licentious behavior of the Jews, and its disastrous consequence is to remind us that we are not invulnerable. We are our own worst enemy. The non-Jews cannot curse us no matter how hard we try… but if we stray from Hashem’s ways, become comfortable and are “romanced” by the world’s peoples, cultures and religions, we won’t maintain Hashem’s protection. They can’t take it away from us; we can take it away from ourselves.
The past few weeks have been so trying, such a strain. We maintained such hope. Everywhere around me the people of Gush Etzion have been looking for every opportunity to do more mitzvoth to merit the safe return of our boys. There have been extra shiurim, gatherings to say tehillim, chessed drives, and more, all in the merit of Gil-Ad, Naftali and Eyal. At times it has felt like the support for the terrorists involved was shockingly overwhelming. Worse, the silence and apathy from much of the Western world felt isolating. The reminder that there are so many people out there who still want to curse us, to bring us down, to drive us out, added great insult to injury.
But we came together as a people, clinging not only to each other, but to Hashem’s ways. It is in the studying of Torah (to prepare this) that I have found the most solace in a most difficult week, and it is in the studying of Torah that we will guarantee ourselves Hashem’s ongoing protection.
We couldn’t do enough to save those boys’ lives. But we know the warning encased in the last narrative of our parsha. We do not run into the arms of a different people, seeking approval and connection there. We respond to the greater attempt to once again address the “Jewish problem” by crying out to – and clinging to – Hashem.
May the tremendous Achdut, unity, and swelling of mitzvoth that were there the result of this terrible tragedy remain an indelible imprint to bring blessing to the memories of Eyal, Naftali and Gil-ad, z’l. — Shabbat Shalom.
If you are taking out time from your busy Pesach prep to read this, well, I am honored.
It seems that our family ends up with all kinds of interesting hospital visits around Pesach time. I don’t think it is a coincidence. Springtime + school vacation can equal broken legs, noses, bumps, scrapes, etc….. not to mention the fact that 6/8 of our children are Pesach babies! Thank G-d, so far this year all are healthy in our home this year, ptfu ptfu; so far, so good.
My son went for an MRI last night. This is not due to some recent malady, but rather a stubborn pitcher’s elbow that doesn’t seem to want to go away. The prescribed treatments so far haven’t seemed to work. He has been eager to have the MRI, and impatient with the process that is Israel’s socialized medicine. The MRI for him symbolizes our increasing attention and management of his problem, taking it seriously, and an intensified effort to get whatever treatment is going to help him make it “to the majors” in baseball someday.
There were two noteworthy aspects to the MRI. The first is that it was scheduled for 6.30 pm and happened closer to 11 pm. Not noteworthy at all, but sadly typical, right? The administrator at the hospital in the MRI department called us four separate times, each to alert us of the delay and to tell us to come later (and later, and later) to spare our waiting around in the hospital. A true Pesach miracle: the hospital went out of their way to be sensitive to us and reduce our wait time! What I love most about this is that the first time I told this kind man on the other line how busy we are getting ready for the holiday and how much I appreciated the heads up, so he took it upon himself to keep updating me. That Pesach informs hospital procedure is one of those little “only in Israel” moments that just never get old in this amazing country.
My son was shocked to learn that the procedure wasn’t simple, and that the IV he had to have for it hurt. He wasn’t being treated, and he had been looking forward to getting more information about his injury and closer to recovery. So to find out it was going to be annoying and painful was a big shock. He was upset, uncomfortable and scared. I did what I could to reassure him, and now that it is over, he is relieved and smiling (although exhausted).
But I see in this a true Pesach lesson, and the MRI is going to be my “teachable moment” at the Seder this year.
Very often in life when Hashem gives us something wonderful and special, we have to experience a great deal of discomfort first. Childbirth is an example that naturally comes to mind for me. But it is true for many other times in life too. For some, an excrutiatingly difficult divorce is the necessary pain before finding the love of one’s life, and many years of marital bliss. I had to have a procedure on my toe this week (you don’t want the details, I promise), and it hurt so much to have it done that I put it off for at least a month. And after a month of suffering and one day of pain, everything feels great now. The process can be true for a move, getting a PhD, or losing weight.
To heal, we often go through a great deal of pain, and it has to get worse before it gets better. I don’t know if the reason is, as the Rabbis teach us, that we need difficult transitions to strengthen us enough to cope with a new reality. Or if it is a test and then a reward. Or, if it is simply the truism that change means coming out of ones “comfort zone” – and doing that is almost always painful. It is probably all three.
Leaving Egypt was painful and difficult. We weren’t zapped and then just left. We had to learn mitzvot, follow commands, get out of our slave mentality, stand up to our former masters, pack up in a hurry and run away (I can’t even pack up my kids quickly to run to the corner store, never mind out into the desert) .. and then choose between what must have seemed like certain death by drowning or certain death by oncoming Egyptians.
Lehavdil*, sometimes preparation for the Seder and the holiday is painful and difficult. I hope it isn’t for you! But Hashem is there in the pain, in the transitions. Our natural world is constructed that way to help us learn about our spiritual world. I think that leil haseder is about choosing to relive the pain and the transition of yetziat mitrayim in order to better appreciate the redemption and healing that followed. I think this is obvious to most, but I wonder if the MRI’s, toe procedures and childbirths in our lives can help us truly empathize and experience that process on an emotional level.
Chag Kasher v’Sameach. May you have an uplifting and transformational Pesach.
*Lehavdil is an expression that is hard to translate. My best effort is to say “Similarly, but of course not the same!”
I have had some interest from Kveller to possibly blog there. Which is a big honor. Since I currently don’t have time to blog here, I assume taking that on just now would be a supremely bad idea. It’s nice to be asked… maybe one day. Kveller asked me to submit a sample piece, perhaps on how the 8th child is different.
The answer is, of course, that they are all different. Bringing a baby home to no children is just as unique a circumstance as bringing home a baby to four children (under the age of 5) or bringing home a baby to a house full of pre-teens that talk back and lecture you. I didn’t say they were all the same, I said they are all consistently unique.
… But when it is baby #8, one stark difference is that Ima is only sitting down now that he is 4 months old (!!!) (coincidentally when I should be Pesach cleaning and not procrastinating) to finally explain the baby’s name, Yehuda Chaim.
Rav Chaim Lifshitz, z”l, was a tzaddik, and an important Rav and teacher in my husband’s life. He passed away last year. He was a brilliant man, studied directly with Piaget, and was a renowned handwriting analyst who had questions sent to him from around the world. He was also the father of our Rav, about whom I have written here. I never met him personally, which is quite sad. But he read our handwriting while we were dating and was astonishingly accurate in terms of how and why we would be a good match and what our primary challenge would be if we got married.
I am blessed that the majority of our small family’s members that would have a baby named for them have been memorialized by family already, or are alive and well. Remembering Rav Lifshitz in this way was important to my husband, so this is what we did. We were honored to have his son, our Rav, present at the brit milah to talk about his father and his amazing qualities.
I knew I was having a Chanukah baby, and a boy. I still didn’t think Matityahu was a good idea. Looooots of name for a very tiny person.
Yehuda was also a Maccabee, and that was one reason I thought of naming this little boy Yehuda. And that was before I knew he would be a headstrong and fierce fighter even during pregnancy and delivery.
The real reason I was set on Yehuda comes from Leah’s words in the Torah when her 4th son is born. She says “HaPaam Odeh Li Et Hashem” (Parashat Vayetze). It says directly in the Torah that this is the reason she named him Yehuda. Rashi explains to us that Leah knew that Yaacov was to have 12 sons who would become the 12 tribes, and therefore the future of Israel. She also knew Yaacov had 4 wives. Doing the math (apparently Leah was taught math ) she reasoned that her fourth son meant she got more than her “fair share” of Yaacov’s legacy.
I don’t think Leah felt like she got much of any fair share in the marriage/love department. But when it came to having kids, she recognized blessing – the special blessing that feels like it goes beyond destiny, or logic, or even-handedness by the creator. Just a blessing. So his name expressed her gratitude.
In some irrational recesses of my brain and heart, I used to feel at many times that I was blessed with easy fertility and a stepson and such a house-full of children as some time of “consolation” for the twelve hard years I had to be exiled from Israel and living in New Jersey.
No, I am not comparing Leah’s “My husband meant to marry my sister not me and now I have to live with him adoring her as his new wife” hard to my “Stuck in suburbia with a Target 10 minutes away” hard. Everyone’s hard is different, and for me, twelve years forced to live outside of Israel because of a decision my husband’s ex wife made was hard.
We finally came home, returned to Israel, and chose to settle in our favorite place outside of Jerusalem’s Old City Walls, which is the hills of Judea, “Harei Yehuda“. This place means so much to me. The hills of “Yehuda” are an ever present gift outside my window, one I appreciate ten-fold precisely because of the time I couldn’t be here.
After being blessed with our return, I feel “dayenu moments”, as we refer to them, every single week, if not every day. Singular moments that in and of themselves would each be enough to say “dayenu” – to make all of the struggles of aliyah – twice – totally worth it, just for that one moment.
So when we finally made it home, and the kids are finally settling into life here, and I can finally feel like we are really here, really home…. Hashem blessed us with another healthy, happy baby. And he feels like that “extra portion” that was just a gift from Hashem. Of course they are all gifts. Yet, at 41, with a full house, my youngest already 5 1/2 and a busy, heaping full plate of noise and hugs and love and mess and holy holy chaos… “Hapam Odeh li at Hashem”.
This time is just “Thank you”… hence, the name “Yehuda“.
The Judean Hills, or “Harei Yehuda”
Readers,
I have once again been failing you. The baby is 5 weeks, Chanukah vacation and Israel’s crazy snowstorms are over, but with our chayal boded home from the army and my stepson here, I am feeling a little like “ima2nine” and trying to love the insanity.
I hope to have a post up next week about the baby’s name and then a post up about how things are different this time around. I don’t think anyone needs to read posts about how “I am not perfect” or “we all have our mommy days” or even the funny/stupid/messy things my kids got into today…. I think everyone already knows that.
So while you wait for the baby to give me more than one second to myself for me to get my act together, please enjoy the following educational guest post about Irene Sendler. Being a Chanukah baby, we named him after a hero; please enjoy Laurie Rappoport‘s piece about one of the heroes don’t often hear about:
Irena Sendler — Recognizing Unsung Heroes
In recent years it’s become popular to encourage children to adopt projects that will allow them to impact on their own educational experience above and beyond traditional schoolwork. Such projects traditionally take the form of genealogical research or a study of a particular individual whose life can serve as an inspiration to the student as well as to his or her family and friends.
One such assignment turned out to have implications above and beyond the lifetime of the project itself and has, to date, impacted on thousands of people worldwide.
In 1999 a group of Uniontown Kansas students were presented with an assignment that directed them to research and report on a historical episode of interest. None of the girls were Jewish but they decided to examine the Holocaust. A chance remark about a Polish woman who had saved over 3000 lives launched the girls on a long-term project that would, in the end, result in a website, a book and an award-winning performance.
Irena Sendler lived in Warsaw when the Nazis invaded in 1939. She joined the Zagota underground and, together with other Zagota members, devoted herself to helping Jews escape the Nazi dragnet.
In 1940 the Nazis constructed the Warsaw ghetto and interned over 400,000 Jewish in the small area. As a social worker employed by the Warsaw municipality Sendler was able to obtain documents that enabled her to freely enter the ghetto and she ferried in food and medicines to help the desperate Jewish residents.
Sendler quickly realized that the small amounts of food that she was able to bring in were not making a big enough impact on the situation and she decided to smuggle children out of the ghetto and find them hiding places where they could live out the war. With the help of other Zagota members Sendler sedated young children and smuggled them out in bags, toolboxes and even under garbage in garbage carts. She led older children out through tunnels and hidden passageways.
When Sendler began her work she concentrated on bringing out street children and orphans but as time passed she began to work to convince parents to allow her to take their children out of the ghetto. These decisions were nightmarish for the parents who had to decide whether their children had a better chance of survival with them, in the ghetto, or with strangers on the other side of the ghetto walls.
Sendler and her comrades from the underground located hiding places for the children who had been smuggled out of the ghetto — in convents, orphanages and with sympathetic Polish families. Sendler carefully recorded these names on pieces of tissue paper and placed them in glass jars which she buried in her neighbor’s yard. All together it is estimated that Sendler helped save over 2500 children.
In October of 1943 Sendler was captured by the Gestapo and imprisoned. She was tortured but she didn’t reveal any information about the children’s whereabouts or about her Zagota friends. The Germans scheduled Sendler to be executed but Zagota members bribed a German guard and secured her release.
Sendler was honored by Yad VaShem in 1965 but after she returned to Warsaw her story was forgotten. It was only when the schoolgirls in Kansas began to investigate the story that Sendler’s actions became widely recognized. The Irena Sendler project, Life in a Jar, led to the creation of the Lowell Milken Center that has propelled other students to research “unsung heroes.” It serves as an inspiration to parents and teachers who want to motivate young students to stretch themselves and take responsibility for their own meaningful educational experience.
We are finishing up the storm of the century here in Neve Daniel, our little mountain in the Judean Hills (Har HaBloggerim)… it has been one more experience of many that is a window into how true community can transform a place, and transform people. The trading of goods, offers of heaters, and of all kinds of help of all kinds shows the power of this place as people see each other’s problems as their own and opportunities for chessed.
The coordinator of youth programs in Neve Daniel has been advertising that she has a cadre of teens ready and willing to help today. Someone organized some Torah learning for kids this afternoon, the librarian decided to open up for the bored, and those who managed to get out by car today have offered rides to others before leaving the yishuv.
As the social being and true extrovert that I am, all of this community sharing is like a dream for me. At the same time, as a part of any community, you invite upon yourself to share in the pain and loss of others, just as much as their happiness. Just as others share in your problems, their sadness becomes yours.
Like most of us, I am a part of different communities, like circles on a Venn Diagram of my life. One is my beloved mountain here… but another is my [Jewish] blogging community.
Both communities have been rocked by the loss of Stella Frankl, wife of our own Yarden of both Neve Daniel and of his blog “Crossing the Yarden.” It hurts all of us, and many of us have written about his loss – and his heroism.
So it makes the pain even worse to learn of Phyllis Sommer’s loss of Superman Sam. Of the world‘s loss of Superman Sam. Phyllis, you have shared your life with us on line, and you have shared your families struggle and pain. And now we share your pain, too. Phyllis and I have never met, nor do we have that much in common. But through her blog her heartache hurts me too; her Sam has touched my heart, her loss is shared, and her tears are mine.
It would be so much easier if bloggers could drop off a cup of sugar or update a fellow writer on the roads or electricity, like a neighborhood community in a snowstorm can.
But what we can do is spread the word and pay tribute to those loved ones so dearly missed. Please visit Phyllis’ blog and lend your support however you can.
Baruch Dayan Haemet, and Goodbye, Superman Sam. 
