Hitzei Yehonatan on Parashat Shelach Lecha

Once again, thanks to R. Yehonatan Chipman and his outstanding blog Hitzei Yehonatan...

Tzizit and Shabbat

Originally posted On TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 2006

by R. Yehonatan Chipman

Shelah Lekha

As I wrote at such length last week, I shall present here (also belatedly) only a brief teaching. As we enter the last quarter of the year, and the rather mysterious portions of the Book of Bamidbar (Numbers), I will depart a bit from my earlier practice, and bring some later Hasidic teachings as well as those from the first generations. One figure who has enjoyed a particularly impressive revival in our day is R. Mordechai of Ishbitz (Iszbica), regarded by some as perhaps the most theologically radical thinker in Hasidism, and as such popular among certain circles today. As we mentioned in passing in an earlier page, he was a disciple of both R. Simhah Bunem of Psyshscha and R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk—the latter a truly enigmatic figure, a kind of culmination of the quest for truth and rigorous self examination taught in the school of Psyshcha. The Izhbitzer, together with R. Yitzhak Meir of Ger (Hiddushei ha-Rim), is generally considered one of the two great heirs of the Kotzker heritage. The following teaching about tzitzit is taken from his main work, Mei Shiloah (Shelah Lekha; 1995 ed. B’nai Berak, Vol. I, pp. 152ff.):

“And they shall make themselves fringes…” [Num 15:38]. The reason why the portion of tzitzit is adjacent to that of the man who gathered wood [on the Shabbat; above, vv. 32-36] is that tzitzit allude to fear, as is said, “and you shall see them and remember [God’s commandments]” [v. 39]. And Shabbat alludes to the great time (godel tekufot), for it alludes to a day that will be entirely Shabbat. And then all fears shall be removed. As is stated in the midrash (Sifra; Behokotai 3.3), “I shall walk about with you in the Garden of Eden” and “mitzvot will be abolished in the future” [Niddah 61b]. And the wood gatherers thought that there was no need to make use of the attribute of fear on Shabbat. But in truth at this time, before the “sorting out,” one needs to make use of fear, and in particularly to perform acts.

The covert assumption here is that the mitzvot, and the “attribute of fear”—that is, the fear of Divine sanctions which provides a kind of lower-level motivation to observe the mitzvot—are in some sense temporary, limited to this world, to the present human condition. The Izhbitzer here anticipates an eschatology, a “great time” or “age of [spiritual] greatness,” when all rules and all behavior based upon fear of punishment—in a sense, perhaps, some of the sense of distance between man and God itself—will be abolished. This is of course radically opposed, e.g., to the Maimonidean idea, listed as the 9th principle of the faith, that the Torah as given will never be changed. Here, we hear echoes of the Kabbalistic ideas of the Torah as a mystical entity, assuming different faces and manifestations in different cosmic aeons. We find here a far-reaching eschatological vision, of a change in human nature itself.

“And they shall make themselves tzitzit.” The matter of tzitzit is also called gedilim. And tzitzit is indicative of fear, that a person should not be clever in his own eyes, to transgress the words of Torah even by a hair’s breadth. And he should take care to be clean also in the eyes of other people. And gedil [through a pun on gadol, “great”?] indicates the era when man need not be fearful of those who prosecute him with hatred, but he shall be firm in his mind against them.

The connection of tzitzit with yirah seems to be related to word-play between yirah, “fear,” and re’iyah, “seeing.” Seeing plays a unique role in tzitzit, whose entire function is to be seen (“that you may see and remember”), and which triggers a chain of visual associations. Thus, a well known midrash (Numbers Rabbah 17.5) has it that: “The blue is similar to the sea, and the sea is similar to the firmament, and the firmament is similar to the Throne of Glory…”

And in this portion there are six matters of which King David spoke in the Book of Psalms [19:8ff.] … “The ordinances of the Lord are upright, rejoicing the heart” [v. 9]. “The ordinances of the Lord”—that is, the edicts and proscriptions of God, even though they seem like [stern] edicts, are in their depths filled with compassion and love. And this corresponds to the passage of the wood gatherer. For even though regarding the Shabbat God, may He be blessed, ordered several proscriptions, of which it is said “those who profane it shall surely die” [Exod 31:14], this is because within the Shabbat there is a profound good, and He fears lest they not accept it in its wholeness. Hence the Holy One blessed be He warned not to lose this goodness, but to accept it in its fulness, just as a father chastises his son out of his love.

Here he addresses a certain tension within the idea of Shabbat: the seeming contradiction between the strictness of the rules of Shabbat, and the harsh sanctions attached to it—the sense of overwhelming detail, of there being so many rules to follow—and the concept of Shabbat as a day of joy and pleasure, a celebration of love between God and Israel. This is a familiar difficulty for many modern Jews who first begin to observe Shabbat, or may even be daunted from trying because of them. In his day the Enlightenment was already well under way even in Eastern Europe, and even the smallest shteitl had its local apikoris (“heretic”) who had thrown over the traditional strictures; hence, the modernist critique of Shabbat was not unfamiliar to him. His answer, based upon a kind of mystical consciousness, is that the numerous details are somehow part of the structure that makes it a source of blessing.

“The commandments of the Lord are pure, enlightening the eyes” [ibid.]. This corresponds to the chapter of tzitzit, for tzitzit are indicative of fear. And by means of the fear that a man has, by this God will enlighten his eyes. As it states (in the Midrash) [in b. Menahot 43b], “Whoever is careful about the commandment of tzitzit shall receive the face of the Shekhinah…”

***

Check out Ishbitz / Modi'in posts and other great divrei Torah at Torah Place

A tribute to Rabbi Mickey Rosen z"l

The following moving tribute is taken from R. Yehonatan Chipman's outstanding blog, Hitzei Yehonatan:

A Man of Prayer: A Tribute to Mickey Rosen

by R. Yehonatan Chipman

posted Dec. 12, 2008

When I moved out of the Emek Refaim neighborhood a little over six months ago, I had planned to write an essay “After Ten Years,” about various aspects of the milieu I was leaving; a large part of which was Yakar, the synagogue and religious-cultural-study community to which I belonged. But somehow, there were a myriad of other concerns, and I kept putting it off. But now events have caught up with me. Two and a half weeks Rabbi Mickey Rosen, the founder and moving spirit behind Yakar, collapsed, and this past Sunday night, 11 Kislev (December 7th), died. The following are some thoughts about the man and his life-project.

Rav Soloveitchik used to say that, whenever someone dies, we suddenly realize how little we know about him; applying the verse, “from afar I saw God,” to the mystery of human personality, he commented that, when someone dies, a person whom we might have seen and met regularly, perhaps every week or even every day and whom we thought we knew, suddenly becomes an enigma. All the more so a leader, a creative personality, one who so clearly forged his own path and bucked the conventional path, as Mickey Rosen. Who was he? And am I at all capable of conveying the wonder that was this man?

Perhaps we should start with the simple fact that, to everyone in the community, he was simply “Mickey”; he never stood on ceremony or asked to be called “rabbi.” He had a deep sense of modesty, that turned the focus away from his own role, standing, and authority, to the goal—the quest for God and knowledge of Torah. Another sign of his modesty, that I discovered while preparing this eulogy, is that a Google search under various possible names failed to turn up a single photograph of him on the internet.

I have entitled this essay “a man of prayer” because prayer was a central part of whom he was. Under his leadership, a special style of prayer was developed within the Yakar community. People sometimes think of Yakar as a “Carlebach minyan.” While Shlomo’s niggunim certainly played a role there (and Shlomo himself taught regularly at Yakar during the last years of his life), the davening there was not simply a string of “happy-clappy” or upbeat songs. Rather, music served as an avenue towards creating a meditative mode that prepared the soul for the act of prayer. Mickey was deeply concerned with the sincerity and authenticity of prayer at Yakar. When he led the davening, he tried with all his being not to strike a false note, steering a path between the Scylla of superficial enthusiasm and the Charybdis of either rote reading of the words or cloying sentimentality. The essence of prayer, for him, was not so much beseeching God for one’s needs, nor praise and extolling God as such. More than anything else, it was the yearning for communion, the quest for God’s presence.

Early on—perhaps the second or third year that I davened at Yakar, when I was just beginning to join the roster of those who led the Shabbat morning prayer—Mickey took me aside and said to me that I was beginning to understand the most essential thing: that the role of the shaliah tzibbur is not to impress others with his vocal power or musical virtuosity, but to lead the community. Needless to say, this vision is diametrically opposed to the usual notion of the cantor as a kind of sacred performer, with a good voice, a broad repertoire of compositions, and an ability to execute difficult compositions. To Mickey, the best hazan was the one who left behind his ego, and davened with simplicity and a whole heart, and was focused on taking the congregation with him.

The night after Mickey fell ill three weeks ago, on a Thursday evening, there was a prayer session at Yakar dedicated to his recovery. Such occasions usually involve the simple recitation of Tehillim aloud. Here, the reading of Psalms, led in turn by his three sons, alternated with the singing of many of the slow, meditative melodies he so loved. I saw in this a kind of tribute to him, and an impressive demonstration of the religious culture of the community he had created. There were, among others, Nishmat kol hay (“the soul of every living thing praises Your name”), which Mickey led every Shabbat morning; Yedid Nefesh; and Peli’ah da’at memeni, from Psalm 139:6ff.—possibly his favorite biblical text, which I think of as a kind of motto reflecting his path (these words are also inscribed in relief on the ceiling molding of the prayer room at Yakar):

It is beyond my knowledge/ It is a mystery; I cannot fathom it/ Where can I escape from Your spirit?/ Where can I flee from Your presence?/ If I ascend to heaven, You are there/ If I descend to Sheol, You are there too!

Mickey was interested in Hasidism, but of a very special type. He sought a Hasidism without the personality cult of rebbes, and without the trappings of a Kabbalistic superstructure; he sought in Hasidism a teaching as to how to be a better person and a better Jew—and found it in the school of Psyshkhe (Przysucha), in the figures of the “Holy Yehudi,” R. Simhah Bunim of Psyshkhe, and in R. Menahem Mendel of Kotzk: a school which demanded a rigorous spirit of truth, of honesty with one’s self, of authenticity, of eschewing conventional models of piety or external ecstasy. Indeed, an important part of his intellectual legacy, at least in the narrow sense of publications, is the book he wrote on this subject, published less than a year ago: The Quest for Authenticity: The Thought of Reb Simhah Bunim (Jerusalem – New York: Urim, 2008).

What is Yakar? Yakar is a unique kind of institution, founded in London in 1982, and begun in Jerusalem ten years later, when the Rosen family came on aliyah; last year a branch was started in Tel-Aviv. The secondary title on its logo, “Center for Tradition and Creativity,” tells much of the story. The idea was of a center that would combine the activities of synagogue; Beit midrash/learning community; a center for arts and music; and an arena for social concern.

One might explain the underlying thread animating this concept in terms taken from this week’s parashah: In Vayishlah, the two brothers, Yaakov and Esau, meet again after a separation of 22 years. Traditionally, this scene is read as one of pro forma reconciliation, colored by a deep-rooted underlying suspicion, with the idea that “you go your way and I go mine,” seen as symbolic of the tense relationship between Jewry and the non-Jewish world. It seems to me that Mickey was one of those who dreamed of a better way: he loved the Western humanistic tradition, and dreamed of a Judaism which drew upon the best that Western culture had to offer; he was committed to the values of democracy, tolerance, and the dignity of very human being, and sought a genuine reconciliation between the children of Israel and the children of Ishmael.

Thus, alongside Shabbat prayers and classes and lectures on various aspects of Judaism, Yakar hosts various cultural events: there is an art gallery, with rotating exhibits, in the upstairs hall; various musical events (I remember once, particularly, a lecture on Shostakovich and the Jews; there is also an acapella choir); poetry slams; and various lectures on the long summer Shabbat afternoons which, alongside series on Jewish thought, have included lectures on notable Jewish fiction authors.

But Mickey was also misunderstood by some people, on several different levels—first and foremost, perhaps, that of his social concerns. In a contemporary Israeli Orthodox milieu that is predominantly nationalistic and hawkish on the Arab-Israel conflict, he was that rarity, an outspoken supporter of peace with the Palestinians, and an advocate of human rights. An important feature of Yakar, both in Jerusalem and in London, was a Center for Social Concern, a forum that sponsored public discussion of controversial issues, and invited spokesmen from all viewpoints. It must have been one of the few places under Orthodox religious auspices in which Palestinian spokesmen were regularly invited to participate in discussions of the burning national conflict here; at one point, Yakar also held a joint Midrasa/Bet Midrash, at which Jews and Muslims together studied sources of both traditions, at an effort at mutual understanding. The Center is headed by a former South African, militantly anti-apartheid journalist, Benjamin Pogrund.

Alongside his political convictions, Mickey believed in principle in pluralism and tolerance, and had a great deal of curiosity about different people and different viewpoints. He seemed to enjoy inviting diverse people to Yakar, and enjoyed the role of interviewer, which he performed with great aplomb.

Another point on which he was criticized by some had to do with feminism. When the new “Orthodox feminism” began to emerge, and particularly with the creation of Shira Hadasha, he was criticized by some for not giving aliyot to women, or even at least having the men and women side-by-side, with a mehitzah running from front-to-back of the synagogue; instead, Yakar maintains the more traditional front and back arrangement of men and women. But while Mickey had the highest respect fur women’s intellect and their spirituality, he never accepted the standard “PC” line on such issues. In essence, his approach to halakhah was rooted in a traditional model of Jewish religiosity, and he clearly was not interested in the “sexual politics” of halakhic change. Women gave shiurim in Yakar, and women were welcome to recite Kaddish for a loved one. But the important thing for him was the spiritual path, the quest for intimacy with God, not political statements or positions about gender.

At the funeral, his wife Gilah (a learned woman and a distinguished Torah teacher in her own right) spoke of certain things which were perhaps not widely known or publicly discussed: that Mickey suffered, through much of his life, from a serious degenerative disease (which may also have hastened his death). Despite the pains and limitations this imposed, he never felt sorry for himself: he saw life as an arena for action, for working, for accomplishing things. To paraphrase her words (I quote from memory): “He dreamed, and he worked and he accomplished; and again he dreamed, and worked and accomplished—until almost the very end. Until a few moments before he collapsed on that Wednesday, he was busy working. He saw each day as a gift from the Almighty, and pushed himself to the maximum.” A small example: he did not have powerful lungs, possibly related to his physical condition, and was unable to project his voice as strongly or as well as others. But this did not discourage him from leading public prayer at Yakar; instead, he developed his own gentle, quiet style of prayer that created a unique ambience.

More than anything, he was his own man, and had his own inner compass; he was a non-conformist, what might be described as an “English eccentric” in Rabbinic garb; oblivious to “trends,” he had a clear vision of what Yakar was meant to be, as a center for a certain type of Jewish cultural, religious and ethical renewal (joining, in his own modest way, the tradition of such people as Rav Kook and Hillel Zeitlin.) May his life-work continue and flourish after him.

May his memory be a blessing.

Parashat Shelach Lecha - The Hidden Torah

by Elli Sacks

A chassidic text study followed by a short d'var Torah

The Sin of Superficiality

Text: Mei ha-Shiloah (Shelah Lekha; 1995 ed. B’nai Berak, Vol. II, p. 96.):

In our first posting, we look at a teaching of the Mei ha-Shiloah that accounts the sin of the Spies to their failure to look for the deeper meanings of the Land of Israel that they were sent to scout out. One of the basic tenets of the Ishbitzer's worldview is encapsulated here: that the physical world we see and interact with on a daily basis is a necessarily distorted representation of the true hidden inner essence and the deeper meanings contained within all physical things. This almost Platonic view of a bifurcated world is similarly reflected in two of God's crowning creations - humankind and the Torah.

The Torah too has a double existence, composed of the physical written words that "clothe" and necessarily obscure somewhat the meanings of the inner, essential Torah -- known in the Ishbitzer's nomenclature as Divrei Torah. Divrei Torah reflect the thoughts of God, thoughts which are too deep for humans to grasp, and thus can only be approached through the mediating influence of words. Likewise, humankind is a bifurcated species. Humans have both a physical surface-existence and a deeper "root"-existence imprinted upon their being by God, their Creator. The challenge in life, according to the Ishbitzer, is for humans to to connect with their own inner selves, the root of their existence, which is unique for each individual. According to the Ishbitzer, by shedding all the trappings of personal self-interest and walking in simplicity and humility, we can attune ourselves to the voice of God that calls upon each of us to fulfill His will. And because each of us has a different root existence, God will call on each of us to fulfill His Will in slightly different ways. Without any further introduction, here is the text:

"And the LORD spoke to Moshe saying: ""Send out for yourself men who will spy on the Land of Canaan,... and they returned from spying the Land at the end of forty days...." This is likened unto scripture (Psalms 119:18) "Uncover my eyes and I shall gaze at hidden things from Your Torah" and in the Zohar (Behaalotechah 152a) "Those things which are hidden underneath the garments of the Torah."

Commentary: The Ishbitzer Rebbe begins, as he so often does, by using a verse from Psalms as the springboard for explaining the deeper meaning of a verse within Torah. We see that he is particularly interested the words "spying" in the passage from Numbers, and in "uncovering" in the passage from Psalms. In effect, he is drawing a parallel between the secrets of the Land -- those things which must be spied upon to be revealed -- and the secrets of the Torah which can be uncovered when one properly prepares his or her soul to hear the word of God.

"The root of Eretz Yisrael is explicit in Divrei Torah*, and there it is revealed that Israel is a land which is always in Hashem's thoughts and intentions. That is why the Samaritans had no assured existence in the Land until they learned the law of the God of the Land and started upholding Divrei Torah.

The "root" of Eretz Yisrael, the source of its existence, is one of those hidden things, one of those secrets of the Land. This is not superfluous, as until now it has been referred to in the written Torah as the Land of Canaan. But the Land, no matter its written name, is always Eretz Yisrael in the thoughts of God, in what the Ishbitzer terms "Divrei Torah"* . Throughout the Mei ha-Shiloah, he uses this term to mean something akin to "the essence of Torah", something that goes beyond the mere halakhic import of the written words. Here, the term seems to indicate a hidden, primordial first principle synonymous with a blueprint for the world. The Land of Israel is already present in this blueprint, indeed God will always be preoccupied with it. Further expanding upon his initial metaphor, the Ishbitzer notes the deep connection between the "Law" and the "Land". Those who wish to permanently settle in the Land, must understand its Law.

But these Divrei Torah (which were established in secrecy) are utterly concealed by the outer garments and can't be readily seen. Even in the explicated Divrei Torah, one cannot fully penetrate the garments to see to the depth of their essence, because the outer garments appear like a yoke and a heavy burden. Nevertheless, the one who seeks Hashem and prays to his Exalted Name to uncover his eyes, he will gaze upon the wonders of the Torah, those things that are called the hidden inner garments of Torah, and he will realize that it's entire nature is one of love!

The Ishbitzer uses the kabbalistic metaphor of "garments" to note the difficulty of penetrating the words of Torah to their deeper import. Garments symbolize the outer aspect of Torah (the words) that conceal the true essence of Torah (the deeper internal meanings). And yet, the garments are the medium through which the essence of Torah is expressed in the world -- they are both the filters and mediators of human understanding of Torah.

In the quest to find God, "one must reach beyond the externals to the true inner nature of things." The outward appearance of the Torah contains strict laws and harsh judgments, which often seem like heavy burdens for those who bear the yoke of mitzvot. But when one prays to Hashem for understanding, s/he will realize that the inner, true meaning of Torah is singularly about Love! Once again, the metaphor extends to the Land of Israel, whose outer appearance seems so harsh, but whose internal paths are paved with love.

Thus Moshe our Teacher commanded the Spies to look to the innermost depths, indicated by the use of the verb "ve -yaturu" -- to spy upon. If they had only done so, they would have seen that the essential nature of the land was very good, indeed. But the Spies only looked superficially at the outer garments and it appeared to them like a "land that devours its inhabitants." If only they hadn't waxed angry and instead had prayed to Hashem to uncover their eyes, they would would have seen the wonders of the Torah. They would have recognized that the innermost depths are populated by explicit Divrei Torah, and that beneath the garments, all is fraught with love.

Having layed the conceptual groundwork, the Ishbitzer can now return to the initial verse and expound upon the leitmotif of this teaching, the verb "ve-yaturu" -- to spy upon -- which, the Ishbitzer tells us, means to look to the inner essence of things. He subtly hints as to a double meaning in the word. The root of this verb (t.o.r.) is similar to the word "Torah", which literally means "instruction." Thus, the he identifies the verb "spying" with "seeking instruction", i.e. looking for the deeper meanings within.

The Spies looked at the external trappings of the Land, and saw only the difficulty in taking possession of this "land that devours its inhabitants." Had only the Spies looked inward, they would have seen the intrinsic connection between the Land of Israel and love that Hashem had cultivated for them there.

______________________________

So, according to the Mei ha-Shiloah in his radical re-reading of this episode, what is the sin of the Spies?

Amazingly enough, the sin of the Spies, the sin for which the Children of Israel were nearly eradicated and consigned to wander the desert for the next 39 years, was the sin of superficiality! The Spies are not singled out for a lack of faith, nor for turning their backs on the destiny that Hashem had prepared them for when He took them out of Egypt!! They are not even criticized for weakening the courage and morale of their brethren when they make their devastating report!!!

All that is secondary. For the Ishbitzer, the primary mitzva (especially when we are faced with difficult choices) is to be able to look into our souls and find these Divrei Torah -- the inner meanings of Torah -- within the Tselem Elokim, the Divine Image that is housed deep inside each of us. The goal of religious experience is to connect with these Divrei Torah, and when we do the paradoxes of the universe unravel before us, the antimonies of life become harmonized, and we are finally able to hear the voice of Hashem - the voice that calls on us constantly to fulfill our appointed mission.

The Spies did not understand their mission. They looked neither inside themselves, nor for the deeper inner meanings of the Land of Israel. Rather they came, they saw, they gawked at some giants, took a few mental snapshots, snipped a few enormous grapes as souvenirs, and returned 40 days later with trinkets in hand and ready to present their slide-show to the Children of Israel. They were, in every sense of the word, TOURISTS. The modern Hebrew word for tourist "tayar" is derived from the same root as "ve-yaturu", but when Hashem used the verb he had an entirely different definition in mind. He meant the "ve-yaturu" consistent with the word "Torah", the command to look inwardly with depth.

By failing to look inward, the Spies failed their own calling. And in failing their calling, they doomed not only themselves but their followers to lives of superficiality and disconnection with the Land that was meant to support them -- the land that was supposed to connect them through love to both Hashem and to their brethren.

In our own lives, this teaching should be seen as a serious wake-up call. In the game of life, Hashem demands that we be TORAHISTS and not TOURISTS! Each of us is commanded to look deep within and to heed our own individual callings, for that is the reason we were created. If we fail to do so, as in the case of the Spies, the results can be devastating!

Shabbat shalom,

-Elli-

***

Check out Ishbitz / Modi'in posts and other great divrei Torah at Torah Place

By Way of Introduction

by Elli Sacks

The year 1996 was, by far, the most difficult year of my life.

It had started on an amazing high point when I finally realized a personal dream, arriving in Israel and making aliyah on February 11th of that year. And it came crashing down two weeks later, when two of my closest friends -- Matt Eisenfeld ztz"l and Sara Duker ztz"l -- were killed in a brutal terrorist attack that left 26 people dead in the center of Jerusalem. A fortnight after I had arrived in Israel I was accompanying two caskets, draped in American flags, on an El Al flight that would take my friends back to their ultimate resting place in Avon, Connecticut.

To call Matt and Sara "my friends" is to vastly underestimate their importance in my life. Sara was my first serious girlfriend, and our relationship (rocky as it was) spanned a period of some two years together. I loved her deeply, and though our relationship as a couple was probably doomed from the start, I never lost that love for her as a person. After our romantic relationship ended, she remained a friend, and someone who I believed would forever play a part in my life.

As close as I was to Sara, I would have to admit that I was even closer to Matt. Matt was my spiritual brother. We worked together, learned Torah together, laughed together, jogged together, hiked together, read poetry together, and sang together in a Jewish a capella group that we both helped found. In college, we even drank wine and serenaded women together. Matt and I shared the inner workings of our souls -- our souls were bound up with one another. When he died, part of me died as well.

I spent much of that year crying, but I was eventually able to "return to life" thanks to the support of a wonderful group of friends (warning: your names will probably appear in this blog before long) who were able to connect me back with the "root of my life." Though I was temporarily living in Bnei Berak, I would relish the opportunity to travel to Jerusalem and daven at Yakar, where the eclectic and brilliant but profoundly humble rabbi, Mickey Rosen ztz"l, would infuse the melodies of the davening with such tremendous pathos that it moved me to tears. I would leave shul crying, but with the right sort of tears -- tears that connected me with my fellow petitioners, tears of which I was not ashamed. It felt so good to cry this way, as opposed to the bitter tears I often shed in solitude.

And all of this brings me around, by way of introduction, to how I first discovered the Mei ha-Shiloah (for a free pdf version of the sefer click here.) It was in one of Mickey Rosen's impassioned Friday night drashot that I first heard of the Ishbitzer Rebbe, R. Mordechai Yosef Leiner. I was intrigued by his portrayal of this Chassidic tzadik who eschewed the role of intermediary between God and his chassidim, demanding instead that people must stand before Hashem as individuals and bring their own unique personalities to bear on their service to the Eternal One. The Ishbitzer demanded in his followers not allegiance, but rather an honesty to their truest selves and a commitment to authenticity. This resonated deep within me. In the fall of 1997, I signed up for a beginner's course on Mei ha-Shiloach taught at Mechon Pardes by a wonderful teacher named Mimi Feigelson. (It was only much later on that I learned that Mimi had received personal semichah from Shlomo Carlebach. It would be years before she would assume the title "Reb" before her name.) The course only lasted a short while, but it played an immense role in my spiritual development.

What first impressed me about Mimi was that, for her, the texts of the Mei ha-Shiloah were not the cryptic linguistic puzzles that appeared to my eyes. For Mimi, each teaching of the Ishbitzer was a challenge to us of how we could live our lives differently. There were no codes to crack, rather words to reflect upon and then wait. Patience was definitely a part of learning Mei ha-Shiloah -- learning how not to rush in and begin deconstructing the text, but rather allowing the words to slowly work their way into you.

This lesson, Mimi expressed in a humorous and stunning reading of the words of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:5): "Ve-hayu ha-devarim ha-eileh asher Anochi metzavchah ha-yom 'al levavekhah." "And these words, which I command you this day, shall be upon your heart." But how do we internalize the words which Hashem has commanded us "upon our hearts"? Leaving aside the usual metaphors associated with Torah learning, Mimi conjured up the incongruous image of a baked potato, upon it a slowly melting pat of butter. And in that moment of madness, all suddenly became clear. We learn these teachings to place them upon our hearts, to meditate upon their meanings, and to allow them to slowly sink in to the core of our very being...