Rebbetzen Tzipporah – Hard As Splitting the Sea

Dear friends,

Lilly’s sheva brachos were wonderful. I realize that you probably don’t know who Lilly is, nor do you necessarily feel overwhelming curiosity about her sheva brachot.

Lilly is my bat bayit – a student who sort of adopted my husband and I as foster grandparents/Rav Rebbetzin figures. Her parents are salt of the earth out of towners, members of Dallas’s frum community and pleased as punch to have their oldest child marry a young man from Denver who has dug his roots here in E”Y. 

The shidduch was made by Reb Shalom Katz, a man who also crossed the Reed Sea along with the rest of us, and ended up here with his wife, Ella, whose point of departure was England. The Talmud tells you that finding your marriage partner and your livelihood (when was the last time you heard anyone use that word?) are as hard as splitting the Yam Suf.

For whom?

G‑d who makes particles with 186 functions? Who sustains entire galaxies that are outside of our capacity to reach or see? G‑d who chose a specific people, the Jews, whose souls were created even before the blueprint of reality, the Torah, was brought into existence? The word ‘hard’ obviously doesn’t convey what it does when you use the word to describe human endeavors.  

It means that Gd used His wisdom to create a world in which it would be hard for us to discover His presence behind the mask of nature, free choice, and love of evil. The laws of nature that were put into motion in the 6 days of creation are meant to serve as an opaque covering hiding His presence. He programmed the Yam Suf to split when it did to begin with (in fact Popular Science Monthly’ take on it is as follows:

THE TIDE-PRODUCING FORCES

 

The tide-producing forces of moon and sun can be computed from well-established astronomical data, and there are no uncertainties connected with their determination, at least to a moderate degree of refinement. In this place it is necessary to say only a few words descriptive of these forces. The tide-producing force of the moon upon a particle of unit mass is the difference between the moon's attraction upon this mass and upon a unit mass situated at the earth's center.)

Hashem’s plan for the Jews was included in the Great Plan called reality. Finding the right person is also the result of many hidden plans within plans. My mother’s parents came from Russia with the great immigrations before WW1. They were teenagers, traditional, and hungry for making it somehow. My father’s parents come from a background that sounds similar but was very different. 

They too were from Russia, spoke Yiddish and had strong Jewish identity. They were much more affected by the lifestyle of their birthplace. My father sang in the Workman’s Circle choir in Madison Square Garden. They had little in common with my mother’s traditional family, and in order to arrange for my parent’s shidduch, Hashem had them cross paths when they both were looking into summer rentals at the beach.

Yisro, the hero of last week’s parshah was Moshe’s Midianite father-in-law, a religious seeker who had tried every means of finding G‑d. He joined Moshe and his people when he heard of two events. The first one was the splitting of the sea. 

G‑d who makes the rules, can also break them, and can let His design for His people touch the lives of every other person in the world (the splitting of water was universal. In fact, it is very much a part of wide-ranging traditions).

There was another great match that came into fruition.

On Rachel Imenu’s yahrtzeit I met Sapir Cohen. She had been a hostage, held by Hamas, and ironically it was there that she became closer to Hashem, bringing Him into her life by saying Tehillim again and again by memory. Her mother has been making moves in the same direction during her captivity, obviously without there being any contact between the two of them. 

When Sapir spoke, she told us of Sasha, her chassan, who was still in Aza, captive just as she was, but it was not known if he was still alive. We said Tehillim for him, in the large room in the Ramada hotel. There were hundreds of girls there, representative of all of the English-speaking seminaries.

He was released this week

The other event that turned Yisro’s inner life upside down was the battle waged by Amalek. They were just as aware of how the sea split as he was, but what to him was a wonder, to them was a threat. Their core belief was that strength is everything. Spiritual belief is weak, trust in Hashem is an escape from the raw worship of strength. 

The tricky part of their belief is that the moment that you live in always feels vivid and real, and in the short term the illusion that the winners are the ones with the biggest muscles (physically, technologically, culturally or intellectually (think pre-war Germany) are the winners feels true. The sun stood still (which was experienced by the rest of the world). It informed them that their Hashem is there, involved and aware.

There are two ways to be awakened. One is through watching the sea split. The other is through fighting Amalek who is alive and well inside most of us, and letting Hashem bring you victory.

 

Love,

Tziporah