Rebbetzen Tziporah

 Dear friends,

For the Bnos Avigail crew this is also a farewell letter. I am happy to stay in touch, but life for you is moving on to the next stage, and even for those of you who are staying on for shanah bet, the sem bubble is no longer your shelter from real life.

Real life is good!!!!!

On the way to the Old City on Shavuos the thought struck me again and again. How can you compare the dress rehearsal to the drama of being on stage? Shavuos is the happiest of yomim tovim (at least in my opinion). While succot is called “zman simchaseinu”– the time of our happiness, when it is over (after shemini atzeres/simchas torah that let you hold on a little more), it is over. Shavuos is never really over.

I am not the only one who came to this conclusion. The estimated 100,000 folks who (tried to) daven at the Kotel were pulled by the same magnetic force that I was. It’s the same force that some two million of us felt when we all said naaseh v’nishma. 

Nothing really matters the way that that matters. When I saw the girls waiting for the slower group (namely me and several others) at the hospitality tent near Shaar Yaffo, I was surprised at how naaseh the moment felt. Here were volunteers, wealthy contributors, members of the city government and the authorities in charge of the holy place doing everything that could be done to welcome us. 

The food and drink was real, generous and far more than a gesture. For me, and BA the next stop was the Eliahu HaNavi synagogue (a place I had never been to before) where about a hundred or so women were there to learn some of the torah that we were all given. It was like standing in a nut store being able to taste the pistachios before actually buying them. 

We got to the Churva in time to pack ourselves in. The 20-minute long hallel was sung and recited with unity and joy making the sardine like atmosphere bearable for many of us (but not all, some disappeared to parts unknown, at least to me). The scene at the Kotel at the very end of the day, when you couldn’t really call it Shavuos any longer was one in which those who were there felt like one family.

It’s ironic that understandably Shavuos just didn’t make it to galus America the way Pesach and Chanukah did. I would imagine that the vast majority of us members of the tribe in the Land of the Free never even heard the word. Besides meaning weeks, it also means oaths, recalling the promise that everyone’s soul made before being allowed to enter their body and descend to this world. We promised to be righteous.

Every single one of us wants that more than they want anything. We need to feel that we are living as good people, and no matter how much we stretch the definition of “good” so that it fits the worst choices humans can make, we still end up defending the inner drive for righteousness. The Sfas Emmes calls it the “nekudah pnimis” the inner point that always goes towards its source

I find myself thinking, not about what torah lets you learn and the way it gives you genuine connection to Hashem, but what it lets you become.  In the course of living, you all will have questions—some spoken, many carried quietly in your hearts—and once you let the torah speak to you, concretely and addressing your real world, the one you create every day, you find that you have different questions entirely. Better ones. The kind that will keep you awake not with worry, but with wonder.

Seminary reveals them. And what I've seen revealed in each of you this year has been nothing short of extraordinary. Your doubt has deepened your faith, your struggles have strengthened your compassion, and your questions have sharpened your desire to learn. This is just as true for the rest of us, who are not leaving the bubble. You've learned that bringing torah into your life isn't about having all the answers—it's about being brave enough to sit with the questions that matter, look more and learn to ask those who are the living mesorah.

The world you live in is a hungry world. It’s hungry for what you carry when you let the torah speak to you and through you: not certainty, but presence; not perfection, but authenticity; not solutions, but solidarity. 

You can bring dveikus and Kiddush Hashem with you to your work and to your house, with your friends, and with the strangers you meet along the way.  Some of you are baalei tshuvah, some are the kids of baalei tshuvah, and some of you haven’t quite gotten there yet, you delightful FFBs!

Much love, and hopes that shavuos stays with you,

Tziporah