Rebbetzin Tziporah – Ve’He She’amda

 
Dear friends,
There are some scenes that you know, even as they happen, will never really be forgotten. 

THE VIZHNITZER TISCH – But first, 
AN INTRODUCTION

On one hand, the war is always with us; the building is full of girls who were in seminaries in Ofakim and who are “visiting” Yerushalaim in the meantime to avoid the nightly horrors of living on the edge.

On the other hand, the flow of life is so real. Hashem begins each day with a symphony of birds, and ends each one with a beautiful sound and light show as the Yerushalaim sunset and the sound of the animals retiring to their lairs in the forest below Shaulson Street combine. 

The girls from Ofakim are well dressed, are learning, and had I not known what brought them here, I would never have tasted the bitter flavor of displacement. 

I received a letter from a friend. Her friend, Rachel Weisbord, is in Gaza. She spoke about the ongoing surreal battles that are taking place there. The days are relatively quiet. The nights are not. The fighting begins at about 11, and continues until dawn. The worst times are between 2 and 5. Those are the hours in which every night of the last week, two or three soldiers died.

She implored us to say Tehillim. If you “happen” to be up at those hours, then put in a perek or two. It’s easy to just relegate the request to “more Tehillim for the Matzav”. The word Matzav (literally situation) is one that in Israeli means “a situation that we can’t escape, one in which we have to keep on living and, at the same time, live on another plane.”  As those of you who are more chilled know, it is also a word used by kids to describe turning a lull into something alive and exciting. Music. Food. Something different.

DO YOU FEEL THE WAR IN BNEI BRAK?
This past Shabbos, I saw how sometimes the borders are crossed. You could think that Bnei Brak is in another world – one in which serenity, Shabbos, tefillah and limud are the only realities that matter. This is what we felt on Friday night. The girls went to see some of the people on Rechov Rashbam, the Kodesh Kedoshim of Bnei Brak, where time stands still and you can still hear echoes of the Steipler, the Chazon Ish and Reb Chaim. You can step into the Ezras Nashim of the Lederman shul, and see women in the downstairs area learning and teaching mussar, saying Tehillim and experiencing olam haba in olam hazeh. They visited with Rebbetzin Berman and Rebbetzin Weintraub who took them to places that are hard to visit in what people call “the real world,” both of them with a generous dollop of friendliness, normalcy, and genuine desire to give the girls whatever they can receive.

It would have been easy to forget the war.
Until we went to the Vizhnitzer Tisch. We heard the singing several minutes before we saw its source in the large building on Rechov Shlomo HaMelech. About 2,000 chassidim were singing “Ve’He she’amda.” They were dancing in place, with every repetition growing stronger in their belief/knowledge that, “[And] it is this (the covenant) that stood for our fathers 

And us
That it wasn’t only one who stood against us to destroy us
But in every generation, they stand against us to destroy us
And the Holy One blessed is He rescues us from their hands.”
 
The singing went on for 5 minutes and didn’t stop. The women upstairs (who also had bleachers and saw everything through one way glass) were there. Not by singing or dancing, but by total unification with what was happening a floor below them. We all knew the truth. We will be rescued again.   

It may not be easy or painless, but it will definitely happen. It’s important that we live each moment with a strange mixture of awe and love, of pain and hope.
 
CAN YOU DO THIS EVERY DAY? FOR REAL?
Making each day count is the inescapable message of the Parshah. Sara was at 100 a person who had taken every day with her, and became more with each passing day. She was similar to a 20 year old, who has the breadth of thought to choose her own direction (which is why we are accountable to Hashem at that age. The Zohar calls it the birth of “gadlus d’mochin”, the ability to have an expanded mind, one in which there’s room for more than physical wants and self-centered impulsivity.)  She was at the same time like a seven year old. 

Do you remember being seven?

I do. One of the things that I recall is the absolute trust I had in my parents. It would never have occurred to me to ask to go to a different school, move to another neighborhood, or make any real change in the life they set out for me. Bedtime, food, and other places of juvenile discontent were certainly there, but changing the entire system or framework was not even a thought. Having Sara’s wisdom, her profound spiritual capacity and her trust in Hashem no matter where He led is something that she achieved

Every day
With no days off.

I hope when the war ends, that I can feel that I was there. Not on another planet, but really there. With the emunah and with the feelings of unity that must never fade. I read about the changing climate in the countries that pride themselves in their tolerance, sanity, and acceptance. Hashem is there with all of us, we are all part of His covenant. I saw a clip of a young man with a kippah on his head, a bit of a beard – clearly one of us – standing in the midst of a demonstration of what was approximated as having 100,000 participants united in their hatred for us. He was standing alone singing Am Yisrael Chai without stopping, until the demonstration slowly faded leaving him still singing.

That’s how it will be for all of us in the end.
And He will save us from their hands.

Once again, below is the link to the spreadsheet where you can sign up to say a perek (or a few) of Tihillim between the hours of 2am and 5am IST (7-10pm EST).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HabGk9Y0CamX3coSc9SDvBlO87k6UHmtpYmPNd6TApM/edit?usp=sharing

Good Shabbos, and Besuros Tovos,

 - the Admin