Rebbetzen Tziporah

 I had a very interesting (okay, maybe it’s only interesting to me), experience today. I decided that I want to have a really beautiful picture of the Bais HaMikdash in my living room, right over the plant table, and to buy two smaller ones as well, one for my husband’s study, the other one for the guest room. So far so good. I had a specific picture in mind, one that my daughter gave me painted on a small block of wood. I called the manufacturer. He agreed to send me 2 small ones and a large one. Then the clashing premises came to the surface. He thought that I wanted 2 boxes of a hundred pictures each… for only 2,500 shekels….

Why am I telling you this? You certainly managed well enough without this vital information. The reason that I am sharing this is to tell you how the word “small” has no objective meaning. It is completely comparative. Like the word “only” and the words “long” and “short”.

The war has been going on a long time. Ten months.

Noa Argamon is “only” one captive –

The soldier who died trying to save her was the “only” casualty to fall in a very complex rescue. “Just” one.

The three weeks are “just” one small piece of the year. “Soon” it will be vacation. There are exceptions. They are Nedarim, vows. 

What happens when you make a neder is that you are forbidding yourself something that the Torah permits. The word for forbidden is “assur” which literally means “tied down”. This means that when Hashem brought the world into being, He allowed the illusion of “otherness” to exist. It is only an illusion. 

Nothing has an alternative address – everything has one root – Hashem’s will. He created what we call evil in order for us to meet it face to face, and utterly reject it. Its victory is its defeat. 

There are other things that are the opposite – they are muttar, literally untied. These things inherently have the power to draw you close to Hashem. Your inherent love of giving another person what they need (which has funny manifestations, such as feeding the animals in the petting zoo) is a force that draws you close to Hashem if you give it a chance, and put it in the right place and time. 

Why play around with this system? Why “tie down” something that is meant to be untied? The answer is that everything that I just wrote about Assur and Muttar is objective, and we live in the world of subjectivity. That’s why the Torah permits making a shavua (a commitment to do something the Torah doesn’t obligate you to do) or a neder (a commitment to refrain from something that the Torah ordinarily permits). This gives you the space to let the Torah enter the great world of the subjective. 

One of life’s most precious gifts is the ability to bring Hashem into any level of reality. If you are eating, checking out a new car, interacting with someone boring but good, you can change the entire experience by doing what you don’t really have to do (for instance reflect on how good it is to be alive as you take a second slice of watermelon, or committing to join the organization in which volunteers sign on to bring people to the hospital for treatments – or like a certain friend of mine, who has an extremely upscale extravagantly fitted car who enjoys driving brides to their weddings). 

You can also stop yourself from being who you don’t want to be by resolving to make fences that you take seriously (which is why my computer is filtered). When you turn this commitment into a vow, you are walking on thin ice, because we are so subjective that at times the person you are today is different than the person you will be tomorrow.   That’s not a problem, it is the way you are designed to be. That’s why the sages say, “It’s better to not make a vow than to vow and not keep the vow.”

The act of making a commitment changes you as soon as the words cross your mind, if you are sincere. This is why the same Talmud that advises you not to make vows, encourages you to do so at times of real back to the wall situations. Hashem sees you as the person you are going to be.

In case you are wondering why I felt a strong need to have a picture of the Bais HaMikdash, it is to help me be the person that I am not yet, but who I want to be. I want to be like the young man who called his mother from Azza. She asked him what he wants most when he comes home. 

He said, “Not food. Not a hug. Not a shower. I want to see a picture of the Bais Ha’Mikdash in every room. I want to see it in the universities and as logos. I want us to not forget what it is that we really want.”

Much love,

Tziporah