TZIPORAH: Mesiras Nefesh and Love

TZIPORAH:  Mesiras Nefesh and Love

Dear friends,

It’s happening!

Chanukah is upon us. What joy!

There isn’t any joy like the resolution of doubt, the Talmud says, and seeing the light in the Bais HaMikdash was light in the darkness, which is the ultimate resolution of doubt. No one could have predicted the miracle, least of all the Maccabees who entered the war with the assumption that they would lose, but that no matter what has happened in the here and now, they would win in the ultimate and only really meaningful way that the word win can be used.

 

If you were there, how would you feel? Amazed? Shocked by the affront to the way you see life? (After all we are very addicted to thinking in terms of rational cause and effect – CNN would not have predicted the Jew's victory…)

Would you be full of joy? I am not sure where my mind and heart would be, but I hope that they will both be full of love for Hashem.  When you love Hashem, the word love can take on transformative dimensions, and it is not just a word used to describe a passing moment of inspiration. It can be an entire way of living, thinking and being.

I just finished writing a new book, “Infinite Love”. I wrote about how the love of Hashem isn’t distant or abstract, it’s a dynamic relationship rooted in a profound reciprocity.

Rambam talks about this kind of love in a way that at one time didn’t resonate with me. “What is the appropriate love of G-d? It is to love Him with great, overwhelming and intense love until one’s soul is bound up in the love of G-d, and one is constantly preoccupied with it as though lovesick.

The idea of being lovesick may sound poetic, but it has an intellectual dimension as well. Love of Hashem, Rambam explains, isn’t just about feeling. It’s about knowing. To truly love Hashem, you have to seek to understand Him through learning, reflection and action. The more you give yourself permission to see the wisdom and kindness embedded in creation, in your personal history and in our nation’s history, the more your love grows.

A secular thinker, Emanuel Levinas, framed the love of Hashem as a call to responsibility. It draws us out of ourselves, compelling us to see and respond to Him and to the needs of other people. He had no knowledge of Torah to guide him. We do. The book has story after story telling you how this can happen. 

This is what people like the Macabees felt when they went to war. The mesiras nefesh that they were willing to extend for the rest of Am Yisrael as well as themselves, for Hashem as well as His people, is what the love of Hashem is about.

Chanukah is a good time to think about what loving Hashem means to you. How does it influence the way you think, act, and relate to others? Your family, the easy to love people in your life, and the others… These are questions worth sitting with, not because they have easy answers, but because they shape the kind of person you become.

In Shir HaShirim, a metaphoric poem that takes these ideas and colors them with deep profound concepts clothed in passion, you also get a glimpse of what loving Hashem is about, and how much you really want it.

This year we have seen so much!

Last week many girls from Bnos Avvigail volunteered to go Har Gilo, a neighborhood in southern Yerushalaim near Kever Rachel. They were there because Miriam Adani, the legendary “gatekeeper” of Kever Rachel had an idea. She has appointed herself to be the one in charge of raising the funds for the elegant furnishings, orderly sfarim, and sponsoring a kollel at the kever. Many people come to kever Rachel when they are brokenhearted and have nowhere to turn. They find comfort here, and often experience that they are heard even by the terms that we humans use. 

The families of the hostages, the fresh widows and orphans, and the people who witnessed the horrific murders done on the first day of the war are people who are now part of her ever-growing “family”. This year, she decided that instead of asking girls to help her put together gift packages for the soldiers who guard the kever, she would ask girls to make gifts for the rest of the “family”. 

When we got to the social hall of the local synagogue (I think – it might have been a community center), we discovered 4 enormous tables with hundreds of menorahs, candles, toys, placards with the right brachas, raincoats, toy pillows, and of course, candies. One table was for the people of Be’eri. They suffered 100 deaths of the members of their left-wing kibbutz on the war’s first day, with many of the survivors taken hostage. 

They are now in the process of rebuilding and have decided to put mezuzot on their doors, and to celebrate being Jewish, which is a tremendous ray of real light in the midst of deep, deep darkness. Two tables were for widows and orphans, and one for soldiers. In two hours they were done, ready to go.

The girls were all very thankful to her for allowing them to do what they did. They felt the simchah that comes when, consciously or not, you discover your own G-dliness.

 

Happy Chanukah! Enjoy the light! Keff it up (if you don’t know what that means ask an Israeli)

Love, Tziporah