Dear Friends, Back from Uman:
I just got back from Uman and I have to tell you about this incredible trip. When I say incredible, I mean it in every sense of the word.
Instead of taking a flight to Kiev, which is just a few hours from Uman, we had to go through Moldova, which is south of the war area which has made Kiev a frontier in the war between Russia and Ukraine. The flight was delayed by about an hour, and no one was particularly surprised since we were flying "Hi Sky" – an airline that will bring you back to what air travel must have been in the 60s. When we arrived in Moldova, we passed through a country that similarly seemed to have stopped the clock.
When I researched it, I found that it was one of the smallest and poorest countries in Europe. The city we stopped in was Kishinev. Does that name ring a bell? In the pogrom of 1905, about 69 Jews were killed, (the exact number is unknown) and hundreds wounded. In the pre-holocaust world, that was the trigger that influenced many of your forebears to finally decide that Europe will never be a place where Jews are comfortable, and to escape the persecutions and poverty by heading to the new world.
Today it is an archetypal small town, with deceptive serenity and an aura of forgotten times. From there, we went to the border with Ukraine. The passage took several hours with many passport checks, luggage inspections, etc. When we entered Ukraine, however, we discovered a country that was in the same century as the one in which we live.
Our first stop was Medzhybizh, where the Baal Shem Tov is buried. The accommodations there were luxurious and plentiful, far from what the Baal Shem Tov could have ever imagined. We saw the forests on the way, and once we were in a place untouched by passing times, it was not hard to envision him there, encountering Hashem heart to heart. Before getting there, however, we visited the spring from which he drew water and where he would immerse himself using it as a mikvah.
The last time I was here, it was just that! Only a spring in the middle of nowhere. This time it was transformed into one of the most beautiful spots I have ever seen in my entire life. Flowers, green spaces, and the spring itself, dotted by small wooden structures, and an indoor mikvah for men that was clear, blue tiled halfway, so it gave the feeling of being literally in the depths of the sea. My husband told me that it was like immersing in ice.
We stopped in the old Beit Midrash where the Baal Shem Tov had prayed, and his presence was also very much embedded in the walls, but nothing touched the feeling of joy and connection that we all experienced at the tomb itself. There were several other groups there, but we felt very much as though we knew each other. When someone recited the name of the hostages, everyone was with them as well as being with each other.
The next morning we headed out to Breslov, where Reb Nosson is buried. He was the one who wrote down all of Rebbe Nachman's teachings. He became Rebbe Nachman's chief disciple, with him from when he was 22, and like Yehoshua who never left Moshe, Reb Nosson never left his rebbe.
The tomb has an engraving that says it all very eloquently: "THE GREAT LIGHT, THE LOYAL STUDENT." I was moved by both phrases, since they were so absolutely true. Being a mirror is not an easy role, and demands a great deal of humility. The tomb is located on top of a high hill from which you can see the expanse of what your ancestors knew as home, if they came from Eastern Europe.
Then we were finally in Uman. When the trip was organized, the word "Uman" is what drew me to thinking seriously about going. My husband had never been there, and this was still another draw. The organizers, Peretz and Chava Rubel, were the most relaxed and present hosts you could imagine. They had to deal with stony-faced Ukrainian drivers who had no problem with telling us that an 8-hour trip without air conditioning was just the way it is, and more...
The Hoshen hotel in Uman was similarly beautiful, the food a dream for those of us who never cook meals in which there is more than the classical choice of "take it or leave it."
At about 12am, after a few hours of sleep, I knew that I wanted to be at the kever. The instructions that I received were to go left for a short time and then make an immediate right at the Hotel Orot which I would recognize easily. Those of you who know me will not be surprised at the next episode.
Uman is completely dark at night. The reason is that the war had led to the government putting a curfew on anything that attracts potential enemy attention. I did not see the Orot hotel. I kept walking. The street curved and took me to what turned out to be Parts Unknown. I realized that I had gone much too far, but I entertained the (what turned out to be futile) hope that I would see someone and ask how to get to the kever.
The truth is, that after about 20 minutes, when I came to a lake, I realized that I was lost. I hadn't seen another person, and only a handful of cars passed. By this time, I was honest enough to admit to myself that I was enjoying the darkness and the silence, and the solitude it provided.
I walked further and saw the same tour bus that we used, (Yanis Tours) parked in all of its non-air-conditioned glory in front of a Jewish hotel called Ohr Ganuz. No one was around, but by this time I realized that I was getting deeper and deeper into Uman, having passed the area and now finding myself in a residential area. I turned back, and saw a gas station.
When I entered, hoping to ask directions, I realized at once that the elderly Ukrainian fellow looking at a car with a facial expression that would make a piece of wood look animated, was unlikely to speak English or to feel any particular need to relate to my presence. I went inside and saw a young couple. They seemed far more "with it". The young woman spoke English, as things turned out, she had spent a year studying in London.
I explained to her that I was looking preferably for the Rebbe's tomb, but if that was too far, for the Hoshen Hotel. She took me to the tomb, and on the way, she told me about her life. She is not Jewish and always considered religion as sort of folklore. Her family went to church on Easter and that was about it. Her friend (the young man with whom I saw her) has a sister who became a Muslim. She has no desire to move towards Islam but the sister's conversion made her ask the deep questions about the world being a creation, and herself the proud possessor of a soul.
She speaks to G‑d. She told me that she wants to get out of Ukraine even though she loves it, because the war is so horrific. It has been three bad years. She wants to visit Jerusalem and to go to the "Wall where everybody cries". I gave her my number and address, and hope that one day I will pick up the phone and hear that the person on the other end is my new acquaintance, Dasha.
I hadn't grasped what she told me until she put it into words. The gas station is the only store open at night because of the curfew. That is why she and her friend were there for coffee rather than at a restaurant or coffee house. She was not there 15 minutes earlier. Hashem brought us together.
And yes, the kever is only about 5 minutes from the hotel….
By the time I left the kever and headed to a welcoming soft bed it was about 2. I will tell you more in my next letter, because this one is too long already.
Love,
Tziporah
[Note: It seems that, due to technical difficulties, many of you did not receive the previous mailing titled 'After'. I have included it here. My sincere apologies, both to those who are receiving it late, and to those who are receiving it again. - The admin]
After
One of the most striking pesukim not just in this week's parshah, but (for me) in the entire Torah is, "And it was after the plague". The expected comma introducing a clause that tells you what happened next is conspicuously absent.
Perhaps it is to tell you that life continues with meaning after the plagues play themselves out. After the blood libels and the inquisition, after the holocaust, after the kind of destruction that we no longer can even grasp, the destruction of the Bais HaMikdash, there is a next day.
Pessimists and cynics will be happy (or at least as happy as they allow themselves to be) to tell you that this kind of meaning is just a human construct. We go on living because we are not dead. This is far from the way things are. Everything in the world, including the inanimate world, the world of vegetation, and the animal world, is geared towards survival. Death is always the enemy. Just as (what I found to be) an interesting aside, biologists discovered that plants have a way of "talking" to insects letting them "know" when they will benefit the most from doing their favorite activity, eating… The Parshah continues narrating the way the land will be apportioned. And then you get to a fascinating contrast between the unspoken cynicism that some of us feel, and the truth of Torah.
Tzelafchad's five daughters demand a portion in the Land. They want to continue, to inherit, to have a piece of the action of Olam HaZeh, the way Hashem determined it should play out, with each tribe defining this world in its own way, following Hashem's directives! Hashem's response is to tell Moshe to give them what they asked for.
Their demand is often twisted. They are presented as the frustrated feminists of the ancient world, demanding that the borders that Hashem created when he made two genders be torn down. When you look more carefully at the narrative, you will see that they didn't try to "break the glass ceiling". They were very open in saying that if their father had left sons, then there would be no reason to make a claim—the land would remain with their family.
Olam Hazeh, this world, is where the action is at. It's where your ability to choose is tested, and where challenges have meaning. The tricky part of this equation is that the bold striking beauty of challenge is sometimes tarnished and blackened. Sometimes we fail.
Eretz Yisrael was far more challenging than the desert was. It's a place now, and was a place then, where humans had to struggle to survive. They had to work the land, contend with changing weather, deal with hostility, meet the reality of being with other nations and not degenerate into the kind of society that comes out of a sociological blender in which uniqueness disappears. In order to deal with all of this, the text introduces another story that at first seems unrelated to Bnos Tzelafchad.
Moshe is concerned about his people's future. It is now clear that he will not be the one who leads them into the Land and guides them through their struggles. Hashem answered his prayers by telling him to appoint Yehoshua as the next leader, and needless to say (by the way, did you ever find that that phrase is by its nature always redundant? So did I, but as you see, that didn't stop me from using it!), Moshe obeyed Hashem's command. He was also able to give Yehoshua "some of his glory" a phrase that is very difficult to grasp. Moshe was compared to the sun. He brought light, energy, warmth and clarity with him. Yehoshua was compared to the moon, whose light is just a reflection of the sun's light. It is that kind of light, that kind of leadership that the Jews needed when they would enter Eretz Yisrael.
Yehoshua had some of Moshe's glory, some of the purity of his light, but it was different in ways that made it the kind of light needed. Moshe's light was a gift from Hashem. It came down from the kind of place that words can't describe. His prophecy was on a plane that was never reached by any other prophet. Yehoshua wasn't Moshe, nor was he meant to be Moshe. He stood on terra firma—the literal ground of this world, the world of struggle and challenge. The world that you and I stand on throughout our lives. He had to find Hashem's light in this world. The Name that we use for Hashem's presence in our world is "Shechina", which literally means the one who dwells with us (the same root as shachen, a neighbor). This world, the world of challenge, is the one in which we now face the exile of the Shechina, meaning although Hashem is unchanging, sometimes the depth of confusion that living in galus brings, makes us unwilling or unable to find Him.
One of my husband's chevrusas is Rabbi Karmel, the son of the famous Rabbi Karmel who edited and published Michtav Me"Eliahu. He teaches in a yeshiva for beginners in Bnei Brak. Yesterday (literally!) one of the students came in before davening looking terribly distraught. He approached him and asked him what happened. The boy told him that he had just spoken to his mother, who told him that his father had died. His father, a non-Jew was the head of the PLO offices in Germany. Rabbi Karmel didn't know what to say. Davening had already begun, so he put his arm on the boy's shoulder, and joined the tefillah. When he reached the blessing, "You have granted humans knowledge", he pleaded with Hashem to give him the right words. After davening he went over to his student and said, "Look how deep the galus haShechina is!" and it was time for both of them to weep.
We are also in deep galus, even though it is not usually as evident or as dramatic. It's the time of challenge, a time when our love for Hashem, and our awareness of His presence inside us can find a place here and now, in our real world if we are open and willing to seek Him.
Love,
Tziporah]
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