Dear friends,
The last day of Chanukah is like all finales – both a dramatic farewell and a realization that the time has come for readjusting to life the way it’s meant to be lived, without the high drama. You can keep the light, but the brilliance of the menorah and the holiday feeling will fade, as they should, leaving only the light to inspire you in Ordinary Life. The truth is that you choose the way your Ordinary life feels, just as much as you choose how to let the exceptional moments touch you.
Every so often, it’s good to think about the menorah in the Bais Hamikdash even though today your menorah is back home on the bookshelf. When you look at your menorah, if you were to see it as it was back in the Temple, it would have 7 branches.
Today we have a ninth light, the shamash, the one that is used to light the others. In a certain sense, the shamash is like the kohein gadol, whose job it was (among others) to light the original 7 lights of the menorah. Was he just sort of living for others? Not really – the person he became was the person that he wanted to be.
When I came to Israel in 1966, it was just me. I am an only child. My parents married late (even by today’s standards) and soon after their marriage the war broke out and my father joined the American army and served for the next 5 years. I was born the year after my father came home, and at the time my mother was 46. I had no plans to stay in Israel beyond the school year.
As an only child, I wanted to loosen some of the bonds, but also couldn’t imagine living outside the nest. In the course of the year, things changed. Some were subtle, such as the way I fell head over heels in love with Israel. Others were overt and surprising, like my parents agreeing to the shidduch my teacher suggested for me. The combination of both led to my first husband, Dovid Heller, and I returning to Israel a month after our wedding. We were very sure that we would stay for two years and no longer. Until we didn’t.
One year led to the next. The babies came one after another, and my parents adapted to the role of long-distance grand-parenting. The first one, Rachel, was their dreamed of princess. The next and next and next were surprises, unknown people, more than they could have imagined. After my father’s passing, my mother came more often and eventually made Aliya.
Hashem’s design was that our next-door neighbor asked me if I knew someone who would sublet their apartment. It was too small for their growing family – just a living room, kitchen, and one bedroom. I did. My mother lived right next door for many years. One of the great surprises was that she had little need to escape into the orderly quietude of her apartment. She loved the noise, the constant “happening”, and also enjoyed hosting the crew Wednesday afternoon for a civilized lunch. Napkins.
Matching everything. No getting up from the table. A bit different than the somewhat unsophisticated, loud, and unpredictable (and arguably a bit barbaric) scene next door. She loved it.
The kids grew, and she lived to see some of the weddings. There is no way she could have predicted having the kind of family that no longer can fit into our living room when we make a party. When I think about her role, (she was involved, but the differences in age and culture made her a mixture of an actor and the audience), it was very much like that of the Kohein Gadol.
It’s not so bad to be the one who lights the candles. It didn’t bring a great deal of recognition on a daily basis, however, when you step back you see the picture that you can’t see when you are in the picture.
SEVEN AND EIGHT
With Chanukah still in the air, the number eight is very much with you. The Talmud tells about a rather unusual combination of seven and eight. It says that there will be seven shepherds and eight princes. The context is a description of history’s outcome.
The seven shepherds put Dovid in the center, with the tzaddikim who lived before the Great Flood, namely Adam, Shett, and Metushelach, on his right, and on his left, Avraham, Yaakov, and Moshe. You may be wondering, why Adam, Shett, and Metushelach? What do we really know about them? We know that Adam contained all of what later can be described as human potential. Shett was the one of his three sons who wasn’t destroyed by his own tragic choices. Metushelach was a tsaddik who was so great that Hashem postponed the Flood until the seven days of mourning after his death had passed.
The meaning of his name, Rav Hirsch explains, is that it is a contraction of two words: mettu (they died) and shelach (send away). He lived as a hermit, looking in disgust at the world around him. After the great flood, the restoration of human potential returned slowly, with Avraham being the first to shift the way things were going from being more and more distant to drawing closer and closer to Hashem.
The process was completed by Yaakov, who turned a family into a nation, and Moshe who gave the nation the Torah by which the nation can live. What happened to Yitzchak? He is not mentioned because when the end of the story comes closer, he leaves the group to plead for the rest of us and to save us from gehennom. The eight princes of Adam (humankind) are Yishai, Shaul, Shmuel, Amos, Tzefania, and Tzidkiyahu followed by Eliahu and Moshiach. Some of the eight are prophets and other leaders.
What is relevant to us is that Dovid was in the center of the shepherds. His trait is called Malchut, which means kingship. His regality wasn’t self-directed. It was always towards bringing the Jewish people closer to being aware of Hashem’s rule. For that reason, in Tehillim, he is compared to the sun, which gives warmth light, and energy.
You may very reasonably wonder why I am telling you this. The reason is that a person whose trait is Malchut, to quote the Zohar, has nothing of himself, no ego involvement. He is focused on those who he affects.
This takes you back to the kohein, and to my mother, and to what you may be in your life as a woman.
Love, Tziporah
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