When Women Pray Out Loud

Three years ago this month, I wrote about a powerful spiritual experience I had with a group of Jewish women I had never met.

It was early one morning in Medzibuz, Ukraine. I walked to the tziyun of the Baal Shem Tov to pray.

As I walked alone down the path, I heard women singing. It was very loud. I opened the door and I saw, right away, that it was overheated and packed beyond reason. There must have been a hundred women in a room that's about 400 square feet, standing wherever they could, amidst six large kevarim.

I was about to turn away to leave when the arms of a stranger pulled me in. And I entered something unworldly. A hundred women were chanting.

Twenty-four times they sang this verse from Tehillim.

Hoshia et amecha uvarech et nachalatecha orem v'naseim ad haolam.
Save Your nation and bless Your inheritance. Tend them and raise them up forever. (Ps. 28:9) 

Over and over, louder and louder, hands raised to the heavens.

Beside me, an old woman put her hands on the head of a young woman. A bracha that the young woman should find her zivug flowed from the old woman's lips.

After the 24th repetition, the prayer leader signaled the end.

Absolute silence.

Tears sprang up in my eyes. I heard weeping all around me, saw the precious faces of women I didn't know, wet with tears.

The collective prayer of these women raised me to transcendence. I was no longer in rural Ukraine. I was somewhere else, somewhere higher.

This is the power of women at prayer, when we are free to pray out loud. The lack of this has been a painful deficit for me for a very long time. I came to Ukraine and found it there.

Last night, almost exactly three years later, I found it again.

My husband and I traveled to Tiveria with one of my Torah teachers. She and I were hoping for a brief, private meeting with Rabbanit Leah Kook. Rabbanit Kook is married to the mekubal Rabbi Dov Kook and is the granddaughter of Rebbetzin Batsheva and Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.

We were told that the Rabbanit has kabbalat kahal, where she meets the public, from 6-7 PM. We arrived in Tiveria just before 6 PM and located the address we were given. We walked through a gate, down a dark path to a locked door.

There was one other woman already there waiting. Within a few minutes, two other women had arrived, including one older woman completely covered, except for her face and hands, in a shimmery grey cloth.

At 6 PM, Rabbanit Kook herself, wearing a purple snap-on vest cum apron embroidered with the words l'kavod Hashem Yitbarach (to the honor of God, the Blessed One), unlocked the door and, with a huge smile and good spirits, welcomed the five of us in. Up a short flight of stairs, we entered a small, simple room with a table, about 15 chairs and floor-to-ceiling bookcases, filled with sefarim.

More women came in while the Rabbanit stood by an interior door, held onto the doorpost, and prayed.  I was in that small room for about 35 minutes and I was completely, utterly and uncomfortably out of my element.

It didn't become clear until just before we left that we weren't going to be able to see her privately. Instead, we got a window into the power of what Jewish women's prayer can be when there are no men around.

It seemed to me that most of the women were regulars who knew exactly what to expect. I, however, was nothing if not dumbfounded. I felt like the most ignorant Jewish woman in the history of the universe. While the 15 or so women recited some text in a distinctive, unified cadence, patting their thighs to keep rhythm, I struggled to figure out what they were saying. Eventually,  nafal li ha'asimon (the penny dropped) and I realized they were reciting Tehillim.

The Rabbanit screamed Toda Abba! (Thank You Father!) a dozen times. She shouted Anachnu ohavim otach! (We love You!) over and over. And when she closed her eyes and screamed Moshiach! thirty times or more, I knew I had never seen anyone pray this way.

One woman brought a small vial of scented oil, which was passed around. Each woman said the bracha borei minei b'samim, blessing God for being the Creator of different types of fragrances, to which everyone else answered amen, before breathing in the scent. Brachot said out loud seemed to be a big thing, because the Rabbanit gave out cups of water and each woman who took one made a shehakol out loud, again with everyone answering amen.

The Rabbanit went back into the kitchen and brought out a large metal bowl, dinged from much use, filled with dough. In keeping with the mood of the room, she made the bracha for taking challah loudly. Then she did something (okay, yet another thing) I never saw before.

She took the bag with the challah that she had broken off and rubbed it on her knees and on her eyes and said, lo ko'ev (it doesn't hurt/it shouldn't hurt). Then she passed it around and everyone had the chance to rub the bag of dough on the part of her body that needs healing.

Everything I saw was so otherworldly that I'm sure I don't remember the exact sequence. I do remember that Tehillim 20 (Lamnatzeach Mizmor L'David) was recited at least 12 times, over and over, with the same cadence, the same specific emphasis on the final words Hashem hoshea haMelech.

When I agreed to go to Tiveria, I had no clue about any of this. Today, I have a completely different awareness of how one's relationship with Hashem, and with tefillah, can be.

Even if one is a woman.

We Don't Have Any Idea What Jerusalem Really Is

When my nephew, who is now in his early 30s, attended  Reform Hebrew school, he learned the story of Purim. He told me his teacher informed the class that if Mordechai was too hard for them to pronounce, they could just refer to him as Uncle Mordy.

I've often considered that story emblematic of what's so sad about certain forms of American Judaism. It's so watered down as to be tasteless pabulum, completely lacking the ability to engage the soul. Most Jews, I venture, have no clue about the depth, richness and vibrancy of authentic Judaism.

The other evening, after working at home for too many days in a row, I needed to air myself out. My husband and I went out to dinner. The meal over, I wasn't ready to return home, so we drove into Jerusalem to see if a certain Jewish bookstore was still open. It was after 10 PM when we arrived. Happily, the lights were on, the doors were open, the shelves were fully stocked and the cash register was humming.

Since we've made aliyah, I like to joke about the old days, referring to them as "back when we had money". Back when we had money, we would go into New York for a few days in June and go on a Jewish book buying spree. It's been years since I went into a Jewish bookstore with nothing specific in mind, just to see what's new that might catch my attention. My favorite thing to do in a bookstore is to scan the shelves and wait to see which books sing to me.

So we're in this Jewish book warehouse store in Jerusalem and everything I see is in Hebrew. Surely they must have some English books somewhere. I ask in Hebrew ?איפה הספרים באנגלית - where are the books in English? The clerk grunts, points and says something basically unintelligible to my ear. But he pointed, so I have a clue in which direction I ought to move.

Behold, there's a gorgeous wall full of Jewish books in English. Because I'm such a book fiend, many of the titles are familiar to me, but there are a few gems I long to own. A book titled The Soul of Jerusalem calls my name. It's the teachings of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach on Jerusalem, complied by Rabbi Shlomo Katz.

I'll be honest. I don't usually understand Shlomo Carlebach. His words sound magical and his distinctive phrasing - "Open your heart to the deepest of the deep, my sweet friends, my holy brothers and sisters" - are poetic and engaging, but I never feel like I've grasped the essence of anything he said. That fact notwithstanding, Jerusalem has its own magic.

I bought the book.

And it drew me in almost immediately. Late Friday night, I was reading and enjoying, if not the specific learning, the feeling, the spirit of the book.

Then, a passage stopped me in my tracks.

Sometimes, you take a Yiddele and you tell him, "You have to keep Shabbos, put on tefillin, do a few tricks here and a few tricks there and that's all there is to it. That is all there is to Yiddishkeit." - p. 65

And with this brief passage, it hit me. We have no idea. We don't know. We have been living without the Beit HaMikdash, without the Holy Temple, for 2,000 years. At best, we have a diluted practice of Judaism. We're in the same boat as my nephew's Hebrew school classmates. Even those of us who live religious lives. Even those of us who live religious lives in Israel, we only have an inkling. We don't know the true power of living in the Presence of the Divine. We don't know what it's like to live with the Beit HaMikdash at the center of Jerusalem and at the center of our Jewish lives.

We have stumbled along for 2,000 years, doing our best to preserve what we can preserve. We have bent to the will of our host countries. We have clung to what we can. But we've lost the heart of our heritage. We've lost the supremacy of being able to visit God in His palace. We don't have any idea what Jerusalem really is, what Judaism really is.

My soul bleeds over the distortions that people call Judaism today. I'm especially sensitive to the "hadrat nashim" indignities that are increasingly foisted upon women in the name of the Torah. In my weaker moments, they enrage me. But ultimately, they are lint on a satin dress. They are meaningless perversions. They are gnats, easily flicked away. They are not the ikkar, the essence, of Jewish life.

Pesach, which is just days away, is the celebration of an important geula, of a redemption, of the Jewish people. Pesach is a placeholder for the geula shalayma, for the full, complete and eternal redemption of the Jewish people. The coming of Moshaich and the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash will restore us to a true understanding of what Jerusalem really means, of what Judaism truly is.

Until then, we are engaged in a kind of playacting. We are holding a place until the real thing shows up. It's not meaningless, but it's not the whole story. No matter how strong our commitment to Jewish law, Jewish practice, Jewish life is, we need to remember that, without the Beit HaMikdash, without the presence of God in Jerusalem, we do not know, we cannot experience, Judaism in its fullest expression.

My we each be blessed to personally experience the restoration of the soul of Jerusalem, to which Reb Shlomo hints in this magnificent volume.

The Relentless Way History Repeats

When I was in graduate school, studying Jewish history, we learned about the lacrimonious theory of Jewish history - the idea that Jewish history is basically a millennia-long tradition of persecution.

This perspective, most closely associated with Kevin MacDonald, a controversial professor of psychology at California State University, ignores the miracles, the achievements and the glories of Jewish history in favor of the oppressions, expulsions and massacres of Jews throughout the ages.

I mention this because I have been thinking about Jewish history quite a lot lately. I've been thinking about it because I feel very much like I'm living through it. Of course, in a very real sense, we are always living through history. What we consider our daily lives today will someday be taught as history to the generations that follow us.

But the burden of history today is much heavier today. The sense that we are reliving the history of European Jewry in the 1930s is much stronger, more palpable.

In the early 1930s, when the Nazis took over in Germany, approximately 38,000 German Jews (about 7% of the Jewish population) emigrated, primarily to neighboring European countries. Sadly, many of them were later rounded up when the Nazis took over those countries as well.

Today, we watch antisemitic acts, acts of terror and death, on a very frequent basis. In January, four Jews were killed in a kosher grocery store in Paris. This morning, there is news of an attack in a synagogue in Copenhagen, Denmark. These are just two incidents in a swirl of deadly antisemitism rising in Europe. The echo of the 1930s reverberates loudly.

It's an eerie feeling, living my daily life - writing for clients, buying groceries, having dinner with friends, doing laundry, making food for Shabbat - and knowing that the Jews are, once again, being targeted for death, just because we are Jews.

Most of my life, at least in this lifetime, I lived in a protected sphere of relatively mild antisemitism. Decades ago, a friend from middle school accused me of being "such a Jew" because I reminded her about money she owed me. That's probably the worst incident of antisemitism I experienced personally.

Now, Jewish families in Europe (and in other parts of the world) are reassessing their lives and are considering the wisdom of staying put versus up and leaving. I'm grateful that I am already in Israel. I'm grateful that I don't have to agonize over whether to stay and fight or cut my losses and split.

I am profoundly aware that we are living in times when Jews are once again being forced to ask themselves difficult questions. The conversations that happened around kitchen tables in Berlin and in Frankfurt am Main, in Hamburg, in Breslau and in small towns throughout Germany in 1933 are happening again, this time in Paris and in London and in Baltimore and in New York.

Has the time come, yet again, to leave?

For those brave Jews who collect their worldly possessions and leave with dignity before things get much worse, and for the Jews who refuse to leave, and for the Jews who deny that there is anything to be overly concerned about, and for the Jews who have already left and resettled in the Holy Land... for all of us, may this be, finally, the very last time Jews have to leave anywhere.

May this be the final shifting of the Jewish population as we await geula together in Israel.

The Courage of Olim

In case you don't read the Times of Israel, click here to read my latest post. I discuss how humbling it is to be an immigrant lacking the skills necessary to communicate in Hebrew.

Spiritual Balm for a Jewish Woman's Soul - Part 3 (of 3?)

This is Part 3 of a blog-based conversation between me and dear friend and fellow blogger Ruti Eastman who challenged me to articulate what I think a Jewish woman's spiritual path looks like. You know, if it isn't going to include shul and all that.

I'd like to acknowledge at the outset that there are Torah-observant Jewish women who are happy with their roles. Not subjugated happy. Genuinely happy. That may even be the majority of Jewish women.

But I'll be honest. I'm tired of hearing all about a woman's spiritual path being defined primarily by her family and her home. I'm not tired of hearing about it because it's unimportant. I'm tired of hearing about it because it's incomplete.

Because here's the rub.

Not all Torah-observant Jewish women have husbands. Or children. Or even homes of their own. Or they did at some point but don't anymore. Or they don't yet, but hope to some day. How is a woman supposed to express herself as a soul if she lacks a husband, a child, a kitchen, a home?

My personal situation is blessed. I have a husband (a rabbi even) and, thank God, a healthy marriage. Though empty-nesters now, I have raised children. I have had my own home (and my own kitchen) for at least 30 years. I don't love my family and my home any less than other Torah-observant Jewish women do. But a marriage, a family and a home, as much as I love these precious things, was never enough for me. Not when I was building a career, not when I pursue intellectual goals and definitely not when I want to grow closer to Hashem.

Does that make me so out of the ordinary? I know so many women like me that I forget that not everyone's itch is so difficult to scratch.

During the course of this blog conversation, I've begun to articulate a paradigm, a new way of amplifying Judaism. This paradigm explicitly articulates multiple ways a Torah-observant woman can reach toward the Infinite, throughout all the stages of her lifetime.

First, some underlying assumptions: The most well-known, the most widely recognized Jewish rituals are generally in the male domain. What women do is often internal. Even our rituals in the physical world are often done privately. So it may seem like we're not doing much at all.

It occurs to me that defining the Jewish woman's role is tricky in the same way that defining what ought to happen at a Bat Mitzvah is tricky. For boys, the Bar Mitzvah, for the most part, is fairly well scripted. But a Bat Mitzvah can be recognized with a very wide array of events. Even for our own daughters, we did very different things because they are different people. We had leeway with daughters that I believe we would not have had with sons.

Hineni moochanah u'm'zumenet. Now I'm ready. I'm proposing this conceptual model as a way of illuminating the spiritual path of a Jewish woman, of answering the question, "What does a Jewish woman actually do?"

You might recognize it as a variation of bein adam lechavero and bein adam lamakom with one major difference. Beneath each category are some of the spiritual activities open to Jewish women. The lists are meant to be illustrative, not comprehensive.

BETWEEN A WOMAN AND HER FAMILY 

(Acknowledging that this path is not open to all women at all times.)

• Number One is definitely giving birth. Granted it's not exclusively Jewish. And my soul wishes that Judaism offered some kind of ritual for a woman to honor the moment of birth, the moment when one body becomes two (or more). Nevertheless, there is no denying the raw spiritual power of conceiving, nurturing and bringing forth life.
• Raising children and teaching them about Hashem
• Teaching Torah to your children
• Making/taking challah
• Lighting Shabbat and Yom Tov candles
• Taharat HaMishpacha
• Shalom Bayit - growing and working on self in order to contribute to a peaceful marriage
• Carrying responsibility for shaping the individual family members into a unit 

BETWEEN A WOMAN AND OTHER PEOPLE

• Chesed - general neighborly kindnesses as well as contributing time and/or money to organizations that specialize in acts of chesed
• Derech eretz - the requirement to treat other people with respect and honor
• Hachnasat orchim - bringing guests into the home
• Bikur cholim - visiting the ill
• Praying for the welfare of others
• Giving tzedaka (charity)
• Avoiding lashon hara (gossip and hurtful speech)
• Facilitating the spiritual growth of others, bringing them closer to Hashem
• Building community

BETWEEN A WOMAN AND GOD

• Learning Torah 
• Hitbodedut - ongoing, private conversation with Hashem
• Emunah - strengthening her belief that everything comes from Hashem
• Anticipating geula - actively, not passively, waiting for Redemption
• Hakarat HaTov - the absolute discipline of noticing and acknowledging Hashem's many kindnesses throughout the day 
• Loving Hashem
• Tefillah - in whatever form prayer works for the individual woman
• Singing and dancing to Jewish music
• Simcha - serving God with happiness

This model is a paradigm in development. I share it with the belief that we could strengthen a lot of Jewish women and bring them closer to God and to Torah if we spoke more openly about, if we placed more value, as a community, on the many ways that a Jewish woman can actively express the spiritual power of her soul.

How I wish someone had explained Judaism to me like this when I was a newbie.

Spiritual Balm for a Jewish Woman's Soul - Part 2

This is the next installment of a blogging experiment. My delightful friend for decades and fellow blogger Ruti Eastman and I are having a blog-based conversation about how, in the absence of many of the rituals and accoutrements that accompany Jewish men through their lives, Torah observant Jewish women express ourselves spiritually .

In my first installment, I wrote about being finished with shul and, to a large degree, with formal prayers in the siddur that were written with the assumption that the person praying is male. I asked for women to share how "we, as Jewish women, nurture our souls... what we actually do. How we invite the sacred into our lives. How we talk to God. How we live as spiritual beings without the accoutrements that surround Jewish men. How we experience the holy. What things we say, read, think, believe, study and touch that define our Jewish lives."

The most common reactions I got were from women who suggested that maybe I'll be happier praying exclusively with women, or finding a partnership minyan or just concentrating on Hashem and not thinking about the limitations of the ezrat nashim while I'm in shul.

I feel unheard.

Whenever I write about these issues, I hear from people who react, in predictable ways, to the questions Jewish women like me raise about our tradition. People sniff anything that smacks of feminism and jump in with their reactions to the issue of the role of women in Judaism. I've been having those conversations since 1988.

It's old ground. I'm don't mean to sound hostile. I am genuinely tired of people counseling me about how to fit in better with normative Judaism.

Normative Torah observant Judaism is broken when it comes to Jewish women. It's skewed so heavily toward the masculine that the feminine has trouble being recognized, let alone valued.

What I want now is a new conversation.

To be completely fair, we did get two responses on point.

One woman told us her spiritual energies are deeply connected to learning and teaching Torah. Another said that she concentrates on "compassionate outreach to cholim" and Spiritual Healing. 
 
That's what we're looking for here. How do we recognize the spiritual acts of Jewish women?

I know there are women who have it. Women who are surrounded by their own flavor of holiness. Who are completely content in their relationship with God, who have no need for shul, for daf yomi shiurim, for the whole male package.

But their voices are whispers.

Ruti and I are on a mission to locate, capture and amplify those voices. We want to empower Jewish women - converts, ba'alot teshuva, FFBs  as well as the not yet religious - with a positive articulation of the spiritual lives of Torah observant Jewish women.

Ruti recently sent me an essay by Rabbi Aron Moss of Sydney Australia in which he says, "Men have stronger bodies, women have stronger souls." He also writes, "Women are more soulful than men. While men may excel in physical prowess, women are far ahead when it comes to spiritual strength. Women are more sensitive to matters of the soul, more receptive to ideas of faith, more drawn to the divine than men. The feminine soul has an openness to the abstract and a grasp of the intangible that a male soul can only yearn for."

Very poetically expressed, Rabbi Moss. But it doesn't answer the question.

What do Jewish women DO to express all that spiritual power that rabbis tell us we have? How do the souls of Jewish women manifest in the world? How do we name, so that we can recognize, when a Jewish woman is engaged in a spiritual act? Further, there is tremendous valuing of the rituals of Jewish men. How do we create a culture where Jewish women's spiritual lives are clearly identified and also valued? What does it look like, sound like, feel like when a Jewish woman is expressing herself in the spiritual realm?

This is our quest.

Spiritual Balm for a Jewish Woman's Soul - Part 1

What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open. 
   - Muriel Rukeyser

If you're a Jewish woman who is completely content with your place in the Jewish world, my words are not intended for you.

But if you are a Torah-observant Jewish woman and there is a restlessness in your soul, a sense that things are not as they should be in your Jewish life, I am speaking to you.

I have written many times about things in the Orthodox world that infuriate me as a Jewish woman - the tendency to use collective language when referring exclusively to Jewish men, excluding women entirely, the subconscious misogyny that has otherwise progressive men making decisions that negatively impact women, the absolute disrespect of women evidenced in the women's sections of many synagogues, feeling marginalized on Simchat Torah and more.

These are all things that needed to be said, so I said them. But I am tired of saying them. I am tired of being hurt by these things. It is wearisome to be angry for decades. My soul needs something positive to rest on.

I was so often offended by what I experienced in so many Orthodox shuls over such a long period of time (e.g. having to enter through a small door in the back instead of using the main doors, not being able to see when the aron kodesh was open, not being able to kiss the Sefer Torah, not being able to dance and sing without worrying that some man was going to feel it was his right to silence me, not being able to hear the davening, not being able to see the Sefer Torah when it was raised during hagbaha, being completely disregarded in the delivery of the drasha, inferior seating, etc. etc.)  that it became all but impossible for me to pray inside a shul.

It gradually dawned on me that I'd had enough trying to accommodate myself to a model of prayer that really didn't work for me. Since so much of my discontent comes from synagogue-related experiences, I stopped going to shul. I am no longer willing to participate in an institution where the secondary nature of my presence is communicated so powerfully. I am no longer willing to be a passive participant, an audience member, in someone else's prayer service.

You're a woman who loves going to shul? Kol HaKavod. I have no issue with your choice. It just wasn't working for me. And, for the most part, I've been content crossing shul attendance off my list of Jewish experiences. But I've had a nagging feeling, a residue, of guilt. Am I being a bad Jew if I don't want to go to shul?

There's more.

I often resent the siddur. That's the truth. There are so many tefillot that were written with the assumption that the person praying is male, that it interferes with my desire to talk to God. In the morning, I am reminded of the importance of showing up to the Beit HaMidrash early. I pray in the merit of the Avot, the forefathers, but never in the merit of the spiritual power of the Imahot, the foremothers. The reference to brit mila in bentsching. Even the Shema, the central prayer of Jewish faith, references the gender-based mitzvot of tzitzit and tefillin. These are just a few examples.

I have a hard time transcending these recurrent reminders that I am not male. While trying mightily to speak to God in the language of the siddur, I find myself constantly needing to reorient my gender identification. I am perpetually alert, scanning the text, asking myself, "Am I going to have to step over my un-maleness to say the words of this prayer?"

A friend for decades and fellow blogger Ruti Eastman refers to the Orthodox shul as a Moose Lodge and the siddur as their manual. In so doing, Ruti intends no disrespect, nor is she minimizing the importance of the synagogue for men as a place of communal prayer. She's using humor to remind me that the Orthodox shul and the siddur are, really and truly, part of the masculine domain. Her humor helps me vanquish the last remnants of Jewish guilt I feel about the fact that shul and the siddur don't nourish my soul.

If I'm crossing shul and the siddur off my list of Jewish activities, what then is the substance of my Jewish spiritual life?

I have long maintained that we tend to confuse the masculine trappings of Jewish worship with Judaism itself. The tools of a Jewish man's observance, including tallis, tefillin, Sefer Torah, siddur, lulav & etrog, gemara, etc., are so concrete, it's easy to identify them as essentially Jewish. And they are. But only for a portion of the Jewish people.

I can understand the actions of the liberal Jewish traditions which have deputized women to be the liturgical equivalents of men. They saw an imbalance and, assuming that communal prayer was a central pillar for all Jews, made it possible for Jewish women to be included.

I get it.

But it's not my solution.

From the ancient words of Aishet Chayil to the controversy surrounding partnership minyanim today, in the Orthodox world, our identities as Jewish women have, in large measure, been publicly defined in contradistinction to Jewish men. We often say what Jewish women don't do, but we fail to emphasize what the spiritual life of an Orthodox Jewish woman actually looks like.

Jewish women are not simply Jewish men, plus or minus a few mitzvot. And whether she is ever a wife and/or a mother, the Jewish female exists as a soul in relationship with her Creator; she needs something more than a husband and children to define her spiritual life. As a community, we have failed at articulating, much less valuing, the range of possible spiritual paths for traditional Jewish women. Lacking much of the paraphernalia that defines Jewish men, the Jewish woman's pathway to God is often so subtle that it completely escapes our notice.

I want to help us notice. I want to write about the ways we, as Jewish women, nurture our souls. I want to write about what we actually do. How we invite the sacred into our lives. How we talk to God. How we live as spiritual beings without the accoutrements that surround Jewish men. How we experience the holy. What things we say, read, think, believe, study and touch that define our Jewish lives.

I want to hear from women for whom articulating the specifics of their spiritual path is effortless, and from women for whom articulating the specifics of their spiritual path is confronting. I can tell you what I do. But I want a follow-up essay to represent a broader spectrum of women's voices.

I invite you to comment below, or to email me at rivkah30 at yahoo dot com to share how you express your soul. With God's help, and with your input, I'll have more to say about distinctively feminine pathways to God.

The Pain of Exile

When I go to sleep at night, my head points towards Jerusalem. By bus, I can be at the Kotel in under an hour. By car, in even less time. My family members are all healthy and, to varying degrees, thriving. My best friend is also my husband. There is food in my refrigerator and money in my bank account. My brain and body function as they should and my soul is awake and striving. I am very blessed and I know it.

At the same time, there is a deep pain in the world. More accurately, there are many pains, many assaults on my peace of mind. The world is at the mercy of hateful, irrational, murderous enemies. Politicians would like to see my people disappear off the face of the earth. A threatening, worldwide epidemic swirls around us, as does the peril of global economic collapse. So many people hate my people. I can't bear to read the news anymore. Just scanning the headlines make me nauseous.

Among the Jews, each day I see new evidence of an alarming, treacherous imbalance of masculine and feminine spiritual energy, leading to all manner of corruption, exploitation and abuse. Much of it in the name of religious sanctity. Feh! On this point, I have restrained myself from writing more, fearing opening Pandora's box and creating an avalanche of ill will towards God and the Torah.

When I talk to my husband about these manifold pains of exile, he reminds me to look upon all this heaviness with my geula vision. So I tap into the part of me that connects with the approaching redemption of the Jewish people. I remind myself that, at the End of Days, we are being asked to give up our belief in any power other than Hashem. We must be cleansed of all idolatrous doctrines. In order to be ready to receive the power of a God-centered universe, we must cease having faith in any authority other than Hashem.

The pain of exile weighs awfully heavily on me some days. But then I remember that we're in the midst of Hashem doing His best to get us there quickly. All the chaos is meant to demonstrate that there is nothing to rely on besides Him.

When I remember, I whisper, "Ein od milvado." There is nothing, there is no one to rely on except God.

And my soul is soothed.

Learning More About Geula

Perhaps you've read or heard or seen something about the impending redemption of the Jewish people and you want to know more. Where do you turn?

I've put together this preliminary list of  blogs, books, videos and websites in English that can help you learn more. I'm sharing this catalog of resources with the hope that it makes it easier for you to learn and stay connected.

I'm definitely not claiming that this is a comprehensive list, but it is a beginning. If you know of a resource I didn't include, please comment below and I will happily update the post.

BLOGS (subscribe to receive updates by email)
Absolute Truth
Bat Aliyah
Dreaming of Moshiach
End of Days
Geula613 - last update Feb 2014
Geulah Perspectives
Mashiach's Wife
Moshiach Blog Network
Mystical Paths 
Rabbi Lazer Brody 
Rabbi Nachman Kahana
Shirat Devorah  
Tomer Devorah
Yeranan Yaakov


BOOKS
Avtzon, Gershon - Geulah: What We Await
Burgeman, Nechama Sarah Gila Nadborny - Princess of Dan
Fishman, Tzvi - Days of Mashiach
Kramer, Chaim and Avraham Sutton - Mashiach: Who? What? Why? How? Where? and When?
Morgenstern, Arie - The Gaon of Vilna and his Messianic Vision

Rivlin, Rabbi Hillel - Kol HaTor (The Voice of the Turtle Dove) 

Schochet, Jacob Immanuel - Mashiach: The Principle of Mashiach and the Messianic Era in Jewish Law and Tradition
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Survival Guide for the End of Days
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - 2016
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Talking About the End of Days
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Geulah b'Rachamim
Winston, Rabbi Pinchas - Talking abut Eretz Yisroel
Weitzman, Rabbi Yecheil - The Ishmaelite Exile

 VIDEOS
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim - Is This Achalta d'Geula?
Rabbi Pinchas Winston - Geulah b'Rachamim Music video
Geulah b'Rachamim Seminar Part 1
Geulah b'Rachamim Seminar Part 2
Geulah b'Rachamim Seminar Part 3
Rabbi Moshe Wolfson - Teshuvah: 5775 The Year of the Geulah!

WEBSITES
About Moshiach
Geula Watch Facebook group
Moshiach on Chabad.org
Please Tell Me What the Rebbe Said 

If you have found this list of resources helpful, please consider making a contribution to the Raising Awareness about Redemption campaign so we can create more content that helps Jewish people understand this stage of Jewish history and prepare themselves for the geula.

The Core Meaning of Geula

The mekubal and cheesemaker known as the Chalban (The Milkman)

Last night, I participated in a mind-blowing shiur given by Shimon Apisdorf in which he presented nothing less than the core meaning of galut and geula, as taught in the writings of the mekubel known as the Chalban (The Milkman). The Chalban is alive today and teaches in a kollel for kabbalists in Giyatayim. When he's not making cheese.

The shiur was over 2 hours long. It might take a bit of hubris on my part, but I'm going to attempt to summarize the essential message of the evening. It is this:

The process of galut (exile) parallels the process of death and the process of geula is its reversal.

Let's start with the process of death and how it parallels the exile of the Jewish people.

DEATH/GALUT STAGE 1: In the body, the first stage of death is when the neshama (the soul) leaves the guf (the body). In the first stage of galut, the Beit HaMikdash is destroyed, removing the neshama (the Shechinah) from the corpus of the Jewish people.

DEATH/GALUT STAGE 2: After physical death, burial follows. The parallel of burial for the Jewish people is physically being exiled, being sent away from the Land of Israel.

DEATH/GALUT STAGE 3: After burial, worms begin to destroy the flesh. This is a process of deterioration that all are powerless to stop. As contrasted with being masters over our own Land and having our own army to defend us, the parallel is the feeling of powerlessness that Jewish people experience in exile, under foreign dominion.

DEATH/GALUT STAGE 4: After the flesh of a corpse is gone, what remains is dry, unconnected bones that don't even recognize that they are part of something larger. This is the natural consequence of exile. We become focused on ourselves and we lose touch with the fact that we are part of something much larger and grander. We see only ourselves as individual ovdei Hashem.

The Jewish people have spent so many centuries thinking of ourselves as separate dry bones, that we've built walls around ourselves and our camps. These walls reinforce the perception that we have to defend ourselves from Jews who are different from us.

I want to stop and reflect on this point for a moment and say that, shortly after I made aliyah, I became aware, in a whole new way, of the significance of my place as part of the Jewish people. Yes, in America, I spoke of Klal Yisrael. But in Israel, I truly felt it.

Geula reverse the process of death and exile. So first we have to restore the body and then it is time to reconnect the body to the soul.

GEULA STAGE 1: The first stage of geula, of redemption, the first stage of reversing the exile, includes two processes that happen simultaneously.

The first process was rebuilding the tashtit - the infrastructure. As Mark Twain wrote in 1867, "Palestine is desolate and unlovely." Israel was a barren and uninviting land for close to 2,000 years while the Jewish people were in exile. Swamps had to be cleared. Roads had to be paved. Buildings had to be erected. Utilities had to be set up. Armies had to be established. The body of Israel needed to be rebuilt. Today, anyone can plainly see that the bones and the sinews have been knit back together.

The parallel process to rebuilding the infrastructure in the first stage of geula is kibbutz galuyot, the ingathering of the exiles. This is the returning of the body to the Land. The Jewish people have come home. Literally.

According to the Chalban, the Jewish people have, collectively, completed the first stage of geula. Will more roads be paved? Will new buildings be constructed? Will more Jews make aliyah? Yes, yes and yes, please God. But the goals of the first stage of geula have been sufficiently achieved. We are ready to move into the second stage.

GEULA STAGE 2: Returning the neshama to the guf. In this stage, the belief that Jews are separate from one another is replaced with an awareness that Knesset Yisrael, Am Yisrael, Klal Yisrael, the Jewish people, are all one. Geula is a waking up from the deep slumber of galut. The core issue in this stage of geula is achdut, unity, is seeing all Jews as part of the same global mishpacha.



The same idea, presented in a more Jewish context, can be found in these words from Rachelle Fraenkel, mother of Naftali Fraenkel, one of the three Israeli boys who were murdered in cold blood this past summer and one of the three mothers that Shimon Apisdorf called "today's Gedolei HaDor".



Practically speaking, in these last days before Rosh Hashana, we can (we must!) turn our attention to connecting with other Jews on a human level. Because we are all family. The Beit HaMikdash is our family home. And Israel is our home town.

The more we connect with Jews who are different from us, the more we help heal the world. And the closer we are to concluding the process of geula.

Now, who you gonna call and invite out for coffee today?

Seeing the Whole Picture

Today was one of those days when I fell in love with Israel again.This thought occurred to me in the bathroom of a restaurant.

Okay, restaurant is overstating it. It was a pizza joint. A few greasy tables out front. A tiny bathroom that hadn't been renovated in, well, in forever.

The bathroom was both cramped and, ahem... not overly clean. The lock didn't really work. Nevertheless I was so happy, because there was toilet paper. And when I went to the sink, there was running water and a small bar of pink soap.

I had a fleeting realization that something has switched in my head. Something I associate with living in Israel. I see things differently. So instead of being horrified that the bathroom wasn't up to snuff, I focused on how lucky I was to find toilet paper, running water and soap.

It's all a matter of perspective.

There's a concept that there is a heavenly Jerusalem (Yerushalayim shel mala) and there is an earthy Jerusalem (Yerushalayim shel mata). In the earthly Jerusalem, there are crummy bathrooms and greasy tables. In the earthly Jerusalem, there are thousands of rockets pointed at Israel. There are hostile enemies at every border. There are financial struggles, small apartments, washing machines that take two hours, insanely expensive goods and not one Target or WalMart.

Having said that, when it comes to understanding life in Israel, I believe that we must see both the shel mata and the shel mala. If you only see the shel mata part of the story, you're simply not seeing the whole picture.

The Yerushalayim shel mala - the heavenly Jerusalem, looks completely different. The destiny of the Jewish people looks different. Looking at life in Israel through the vantage point of shel mata is like seeing Disney World for the first time. Looking at life in Israel through the vantage point of shel mala is like taking the 5-hour Keys to the Kingdom, behind-the-scenes tour at Disney World.

Everything looks different once you understand the whole picture.

It's my contention that it's impossible (okay, very difficult) to live happily in Israel if you only see the shel mata. If you only see the harsh realities, life in Israel can seem untenable.

It takes a paradigm shift, the openness to understand that what we see with our eyes is only part of the story.

And it's not even the best part.

Time To Leave?

Many people, including Newsweek Magazine, are convinced that the situation for Jews in Europe has once again become intolerable and that, for Europe's Jews, the time has come once again to flee.

Today, I joined a Facebook group called Time To Leave. The group's mission is expressed in these two sentences. "There are rising violent anti-semitic attacks against Jewish communities around the world. We believe this is a wake up call for the Jews to come home to Israel now."

The group messages are primarily photos and news articles about antisemitic incidents and hate speech throughout the world. Let's say we all, including the Jews in Europe themselves, agree that the worsening situation in Europe is becoming intolerable and it's time to leave Europe.

What's the situation in the US? Here's where it gets tricky. From here in Israel, it's clear. Anti-Israel (a/k/a antisemitic) sentiment has exploded in the US over the past few weeks. Time. To. Leave.

Anti-Israel rallies have been held in the following US cities. These are just the ones I know about. There are likely others. If you click these links you'll see many hateful images and protest chants against Israel.

• Austin, TX
• Boston, MA
• Chicago, IL
• Columbus, OH
• Cleveland, OH
• Dallas, TX
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• Miami, FL
• New York, NY
• Olympia, WA
• Philadelphia, PA
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Portland, OR
• San Antonio, TX
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Tempe, AZ
• Washington, DC

There are currently terrorist training camps in 22 US cities. Interestingly, there is a very high correlation between the cities where there were anti-Israel rallies and the cities where there are known terrorist training camps. I'm thinking this correlation is more than coincidental.

Out of genuine concern, I posted the following query on my Facebook Timeline:

A serious question for my friends and family who live outside of Israel: I, and many friends (all olim), are actually much more concerned for the safety of our family and friends outside of Israel than for ourselves. We see the huge and rapid uptick in antisemitic attacks all over the world and it scares us. Just this morning I read about incidents in a clinic in Amsterdam and in a public school in Chicago. Over the past week, I've heard about at least a dozen in cities all over Europe and the US. Here, we know the enemy and we have an army and tools to fight and defend ourselves. Outside of Israel, Jews have no army. If you live outside of Israel, are you more thinking it's a passing thing related to the war or are you feeling at all unsettled by the bubbling up of anti-Jewish sentiment?

Without question, the saddest, most painful response came from an individual I don't actually know, but who echoes the feelings of so many of my American friends and family:

With all due respect to my friends and family in Israel, I beg to differ with you. I am glad that you feel safer in Israel, but the US is a much safer place at this time in history. Two reasons. One is that we do not have missiles fired at us indiscriminately and unknowingly. The USA does not have anything near this type of craziness. We do not have a terror state on our soil building tunnels under our feet infiltrating our land with the intent to kidnap and murder our women, children and soldiers.
Reason Number 2. The amount of post traumatic stress syndrome is undeniably huge and rampant in the Holy Land. Children are suffering tremendous anxiety and fear on a daily basis. There are not enough psychologists or social services to help them from a lifetime of trauma from sirens, safe rooms, and bombs falling nearby or in our neighborhoods.
I would not subject my children to that. End of comment.

It's not hard to understand why he feels this way. But here's the rub.

He's not reading the current trend, nor is he reading Jewish history, accurately.

Jews always, always, always stay too long in whatever galut to which we have been sent. We convince ourselves that "it's not that bad" or "it will blow over". And we tell ourselves it's still better where we are, where we've been for hundreds of years, than in the land God set aside for the Jewish people.

After all, in 1933, which cultured, urban German Jew was willing to leave Germany for the desert of Palestine?

Another Way To Look At It

When I listen to people speak about the war, they usually speak in terms of what they think ought to be done to solve the problem.

Often the solutions proposed are military, diplomatic or political. The opinion I hear the most frequently regarding what Israel should do next is an unequivocal one.

"Level Gaza," people say. Carpet bomb the place.

Or I hear that we should retake Gaza, pay the remaining Gazans to leave, destroy Hamas and then move Jewish families back in. Other people believe that diplomacy is the solution. Or that more funding for Iron Dome will help. Another ceasefire. And on and on.

There is no shortage of pundits and armchair quarterbacks and even deeply connected Jews who are desperately trying to think of a solution that will get us out of this mess. Suggestions fill the brains and the speech of so many. And they all, every one of them, have the same common flaw. They are all an expression of the idea that the solution to this matzav, this situation, this war, lies in the power of human agency.

כֹּחִי וְעֹצֶם יָדִי - My strength and the might of my hand

It's a fundamental flaw in our perception.

A month ago, just after the bodies of Eyal, Gil-Ad and Naftali A"H were discovered, I wrote a post about what I understood was going on behind the scenes.

A month later, I see the worsening distress in my friends and neighbors. Another soldier gone, another world lost. Another news story that paints Israel as the immoral aggressor, callously gunning down innocent children and mercilessly destroying the homes of ordinary Gazans. Another antisemitic episode on the streets of Chicago, Miami, Paris. It hurts so much.

There is work for the Jewish people to do here. It's spiritual work. The terrorists have their job. Their job is to humble us. Their job is to get us to the stage of acknowledging that we have erred by putting our faith in human agency.

Sure, if we're faithful people, we sprinkle our speech with expressions of "God-willing" and "Im Yirtzeh Hashem". And that's at least a start. The embarrassing truth though, is that when you really go deep, for most of us, it's mostly just lip service. We're all still trying to figure out which strategy is the right next thing for us to do.

At this stage in history, just before the Final Redemption, we are compelled, we are being pushed to the wall by current events, to finally, finally, let go of our faith in the efficacy of human effort. We have to come to believe, in the deepest place in our souls, Ein Od Milvado. There is none other than God.

Not like a bumper sticker.

Like life support.

We have no choice. We are being compelled, by the force of Jewish history and by the impending redemption, to finally wake up, open our eyes and say, "I get it now God. There is only You."

WAKE UP!! - Guest Post

A message from Bat Aliyah: This is a very special guest post, written by my daughter, Ariella Mendlowitz. It's strong medicine.

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For those of you who don’t know me, I typically am someone who keeps her political opinions off social media. Why? Because people who want to believe that Israel is an oppressor and Gaza is the victim are not people looking for information. Rather they are looking for more and more ways to criticize the Jews, to show the world that we are evil, money grabbers who want nothing more than to dominate non-Jews and we start by oppressing the weakest of the weak in our immediate vicinity. I know the truth, my immediate circle knows the truth, and most important: G-d knows the truth. So why waste my time?

When it comes to aliyah, I have a similar approach: people living outside of Israel, in my opinion, have every right to live where they so choose. There is no reason they should be forced to live in a country where they don’t speak the language, where the culture is so strongly contrasted against the one they know, where even the cuisine is of a different flavor (literally).

Just because I chose to make Israel my home nearly 5 years ago doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right place for everyone and I respect that. But my motto has always been: you should at least have in your heart the yearning to be in the Holy Land that Hashem promised to our ancestors thousands of years ago. If you do not choose to live here at this moment, never forget that, as a Jew, this is truly where you belong. The truth is that every Jew does belong here. But there is no point in me harping on you to make one of the biggest decisions to uproot yourself and your family from your friends, your memories, your comforts and come to an unfamiliar country. The important thing is I know the truth, my immediate circle knows the truth, and most important: G-d knows the truth. So why waste my time?

This is how I felt.

Until June 12th, when three of our boys (Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Fraenkel and Gil-Ad Shaer) whose names are forever imprinted in our minds, were kidnapped while waiting for a ride home for Shabbat. For three weeks, Jews around the world saw all kinds of unity: challah baking, concerts, rallies, endless acts of chessed, taking on new mitzvot and more! All in the merit that our boys should be found quickly, alive and unharmed. Then on June 30th (while I was in the middle of hosting a sheva brachot for a friend of mine), we got the shocking news that the boys had been found-dead, in a field. And all evidence pointed to the truth: that they had been killed within minutes of their capture and that all of our mitzvot, all our tefillot, all our hard work was for naught.

Shortly after their burial, when the Jewish world was still pumped with unity, doing whatever it could to help the mourning families, several radical Jewish boys allegedly brutally murdered an Arab kid, an act which was condemned nationwide, and especially by the Prime Minister himself, and was an embarrassment to Jews worldwide. What followed was absolutely unbearable: riots broke out in countless neighborhoods in Jerusalem, light rail stations were destroyed, Molotov cocktails and burning tires were thrown at police forces. Roads were closed down as a result, buses were not allowed to travel past a certain point, the light rail was out of service, preventing entry even to Jewish neighborhoods in the area.

With the riots came the rocket fire, more powerful and ruthless than ever. Cities miles away from Gaza, including where I live, started hearing the blaring siren, causing everyone to run in a panic to the nearest shelter, waiting for Iron Dome to take out the threat.

And then, the Operation began. First with the Air Force, taking out as many Hamas targets as it could, including tunnels, terrorist homes, weapon arsenals. We began an endless barrage of missiles, intending to destroy the terrorist infrastructure Hamas has spent the last nine years building up, since the land was emptied of Jewish presence in 2005. Only a few days later, the decision was made to invade Gaza on foot. The mission was no longer to simply restore a temporary peace, but to completely raze Hamas to the ground, removing every single missile launcher, discovering endless collections of guns and rockets (which would have been used to kill Jews) and destroying tunnels used for weapon smuggling or sneaking into Israel underground.

The mission has been in operation for three weeks with massive success on Israel’s part. To date, 30-40% of Hamas weapons have been discovered, over 240 terrorists have been killed, dozens of terror tunnels have been destroyed, and a mass attack which was planned for this coming Rosh Hashana was thwarted with the arrest of over 150 Hamas “employees” who confessed to the true reasons behind the tunnels. Yes, this has come at a price. We have lost over 40 of our brothers and several civilians. But it is undeniable that we are at a crucial moment in history, one which may see the very end of radical terrorism in the Gaza strip. This should be cause for endless celebration!

And yet… with the conflict in the Middle East at a perpetual high for the last six weeks, the world is in utter chaos. Let me correct that: the Jewish world is in utter chaos. Over the last month and a half alone there have been nearly 20 anti-Semitic acts around the world (not including the United States or Canada). These include incidents such as:

• anti-Semitic graffiti sprayed all over shuls and Israel culture centers in Argentina
• anti-Israel demonstrations in France where worshipers were trapped inside their shul surrounded by violent protestors
• stones that were thrown through the living room window of a Holland rabbi
• a rabbi in Morocco who was beaten mercilessly
• the destruction of Jewish cemeteries in Britain with tombstones uprooted and smashed to pieces. 

I’ve only chosen to write several of the incidents I read about that happened since the abduction of our boys. There are dozens more in 2014 alone, which you can read about here.

To my readers in Canada and America, I’m pretty sure right now you’re thinking, “Well, what do you expect? Europe has always had anti-Semites performing outrageous acts. Of course that kind of stuff happens there. But the Land of the Free, where the freedom to practice religion is a right? Nah, we’re safe. Canada, where our Prime Minister has vocalized unequivocal support for Israel? It’ll never happen here.”

It is finally time to voice the feeling I have been repressing for years now. Dear Jews in Canada and America, WAKE UP AND GET OUT FROM THE ROCK YOU ARE LIVING UNDER!!! 

History repeats itself, over and over and over again. We have been kicked out of every single host country we have ever lived in: Italy, France, England, Switzerland, Netherlands, Prague, Austria, Kiev, Vienna, Russia, Germany, Poland and more! Some of them have expelled us more than once! Each and every time, the Jews thought: this time we’ll be safe; this time we have high positions in the government; this time we are friendly with our non-Jewish neighbors; surely it cannot happen in this day and age.

Well guess what? It IS happening in "this-day-and-age"!

On July 26, a Pro-Palestinian rally was held in Chicago which boasted over 13,000 in attendance.

 

On July 28, the Torah V’emunah Shul in North Miami Beach was sprayed with swastikas and the Hamas name.

Also on July 28, an Israeli Discount Bank in New York City had its windows smashed and defaced.

On July 23, a bus stop in Thornhill, Ontario was sprayed with a swastika and Israel profanities.

I don’t care what you tell yourself that lets you sleep at night, reassuring yourself that ‘Never Again’ means never again. It doesn’t matter that you take off your kippah before going into work with your non-Jewish buddies. It doesn’t matter that you wear a sheitel so as to not stand out by wearing a scarf. It doesn’t matter that you don’t keep Shabbat or you send your kids to McDonald’s for a birthday party. It does not make one cent of difference that we live in 2014.

History is coming full circle.

Antisemitism is showing its ugly face once again, this time under the mask of anti-Zionism. When Israeli flags are burned in the middle of Toronto at an anti-Israel protest and you think “Oh, they’re only anti-Israel, not anti-Jews,” I have a newsflash for you: it is a very, very thin line.

With the position of President of the United States now filled by the most anti-Israel leader American politics has ever seen, with the countless anti-Semitic acts happening almost daily around the globe, including comments made on YouTube or Facebook, with the world shaking with the fear of the takeover of Radical Islam, it is so clear that something truly big is happening.

Why did I open this post describing in detail the reality those of us in Israel are facing today?

Because despite every rocket, despite every unknown tunnel, despite the fact that we are surrounded by our enemies on every border, Israel is THE safest place in the world for Jews. You may say I’m crazy, but I believe with unshakeable confidence that I am in the best place for any Jew to be at this time in history.

I will end with this: if you live in the West, if you think you are safe from any form of antisemitism that has plagued Europe for centuries, think again my friend. You were never meant to live outside of Israel.

If you think there is anywhere in the world is safer than Israel, if you are putting your roots in America, if you are establishing yourself in Canada, you are in for a very, very rude awakening.

And if, for whatever reason, my comments fill you with anger, if I have caused you to react with outrage at my claims, then I urge you, before writing or commenting, to take a long, hard look at the facts and then tell me: are you truly angry at me or are you too blind to see what is right in front of you?