A Weekly Byte...From Isralight (Chayei Sarah 5767)

SPARKS by Rabbi David Aaron, Founder and Dean of Isralight

Making every day count The key to making life worth living

One day as I was waiting for a friend, an old woman sits down next to me. Suddenly she jumps out of her seat, turns to me and yells, "I should have never left Mexico!"

I look at her and ask, "When did you leave Mexico?"

"Thirty years ago!" she cries. "And I regret it every single day of my life!"

You would think that after 30 years a person would finally get used to where they were. But people often live in the past.

One of my students, age 28, told me that his father insulted him when he was age 12 and till this day he continues to feel hurt and angry. I explained to him that although his father hurt him when he was twelve he has allowed his father to continue to hurt him for another sixteen years by holding on to the pain and constantly remembering it. I suggested that either he confront his father and try to make peace or simply let go, forget it and go on.

Not only do we often live in the past and obsess over what no longer is we also waste our time by worrying over the future or escaping into our fantasies of what will be.

Imagine that you finally take that vacation to Bermuda you had always been dreaming about. You are lying on a gorgeous beach next to the clear blue sea but your mind is a cesspool of memories and worries. Although your body is in Bermuda your thoughts are still back in the office. In your mind you are consumed in the argument you had last week with your boss hearing every mean sentence he said over and over again. And then you are ridden with anxiety as you envision the confrontation and anticipate every insult he will surely hurdle at you when you return. At the end of your vacation to Bermuda all you can say is that you were there but you were not present.

Even the simply pleasures of our daily life are sacrificed by our inability to stay focused in the now. How many times do we eat a delicious meal without enjoying even one bite because we are lost in our thoughts thinking about what will be tomorrow?

We can be so addicted to thinking about the future that when the future is finally present, we will be absent ? because we will already be thinking about what comes next. Why dream our lives away? Why suffer over what was but no longer is? How can we stop living in our fantasies of the future or in our memories of the past and start living in the now?

The Torah (Bible) tells us that Sarah lived for 127 years. But the verse is very strange. It literally reads, "And the life of Sarah was 127 years, these were the years of the life of Sarah." This is a very bizarre verse, at first glance difficult to decipher. But the Sages explain that the days of Sarah's life equaled the days that she actually lived. In other words, a person may die at age 127 and even though their life lasting 127 years they did not live 127 years. They may have only lived 10 years of life and wasted the rest.

So how can we choice life and make every day count?

Torah teaches that the secret to life is kavanah, Hebrew for "intention" or "attunement." Kavanah can also mean "focus" and "concentration." To live the life of Kavanah, for example, requires being a "concentrated" human being, concentrated on the here and now. Then life comes alive. Most people, however, live divided lives: We are here but our mind is over there; we live now but our minds are on later or yesterday. We need to give our undivided attention to the present because this is when life is happening, right here and right now. Here and now is the only place and time we can meet each other and meet G-d. Now is the time for love. Our memories of the past and our dreams for the future should be used only to the extent that they help us love each other and do good now.

The true gift of life is the present

Rabbi David Aaron ------------------------------------------------------------ Small Tastings of Torah, Judaism and Spirituality Rav Binny Freedman, Director

Portion of Chayei Sarah

His eyes haunt me; looking out as they do from a picture taken over seventy years ago. Just one drop of one story amongst a sea of pain.

His name was Martin Stiebel, and his picture is one of many that hang on display in the museum at Dachau, the Nazi regime?s first and longest standing concentration camp.

To see his picture, visit: www.google.com and do a search on Martin Stiebel Dachau.

He was born in 1899 and in 1933, the year Hitler rose to power, he was working for one of the many political organizations in Nuremberg trying to bring more freedom and equality to a post World War I Germany, rife with poverty and suffering.

Being a spokesperson for a political group that was odds with Nazism, he, like many innocent German Jews of his day, did not see the writing on the wall. He was arrested in 1933 and sent to Dachau, where he was publicly humiliated and brutally treated immediately upon entering the camp. He was one of those rare few who attempted to fight the Nazi machine, even from within the camps.

Upon arrival, Jews were herded into a long barracks where they were stripped of every last piece of clothing and every belonging they owned, after which, amidst a hail of kicks and blows they were run through the camp and out into the open roll call area. Old and young alike, they were made to run and roll, up and down for hours upon hours , even forced to drink from puddles of swill on the ground, until the weak and the old eventually collapsed. Of course, that was all the Nazis were waiting for....

Stiebel was caught attempting to smuggle out secret notes on what was really going on in the camp, and in November of 1933 was thrown into an isolation cell.

Recall that in 1933, the Nazis still had to present a veneer of respectability and legitimacy. (In fact, until finally removed from his post, the chief German prosecutor for the area filed charges against a number of Nazi officers in the camp for deaths that were presented as suicides but which he felt to be murders, and this as late as 1935.)

Subjected to daily beatings and torture he refused to sign papers attesting to his own ?guilt? of whatever fabrication the Nazis had invented until eventually he was found ?hanged? in his cell in April of 1934.

Just this week, I had the opportunity to visit Dachau which today still stands just outside of Munich. You can still walk across the same path the prisoners were run down as they entered Dachau from the train tracks, and cross over the Wormen River where prisoners were thrown into the icy water in the midst of the freezing German winter, at the whim of an SS guard....

And as you enter the bathhouse where prisoners were forced to undress and surrender anything they had left in the world, Stiebel?s picture hangs on a wall as testimony to one lonely story of so very many painful stories.

And with all the different images that assault the senses in that terrible place, for some reason, his picture stayed in my head.

Looking at the hooks near the ceiling where they hung prisoners by their arms which were tied behind their backs, I wondered if what was going through Martin Stiebel?s mind amidst all that pain.

And looking out at the infamous, huge open area in front of the barracks where prisoners were made to stand for hours on end, near naked in the bitter cold, or forced to do knee bends wearing heavy greatcoats in the blistering heat of summer, I couldn?t help but wonder where Martin Stiebel might have been standing, trying to stay up on his feet amidst the terrible blows that might have come his way.

And most of all, I couldn?t help but wonder, opposite the torture cells of the Gestapo, how a Jewish bureaucrat, all alone in such a terribly lonely place, managed to stand up to the might of the Nazi regime for six long months.

By the mid 1940?s, the Jews in the camps had a sense of what was coming. After years of Nazi oppression in the ghettos and the work camps, they knew their enemy. But in 1933, prisoners taken to Dachau could not possibly have imagined the horrors that awaited them. How does a person who wakes up in a Democratic world of rights and laws, find himself by mid-day in the darkest version of hell we cannot even begin to imagine, and still stay sane?

How long did it take Martin Stiebel before he finally realized no-one was coming to hear his case and fight for his rights? How long before he fully understood that he had been a human being one morning and was now in the hands of animals? What kept him going those six long months, when one signature would have at least ended the horrible torture? (It is now accepted that ?suicide by hanging? was the result of the Nazis not being able to secure a ?confession?). Could there have been some light, some dream that kept Martin Stiebel going?

Is it possible to bring light even into the darkest of places?

This week?s portion, Chayei Sarah, finds Avraham in what should have been one of the darkest points of his life. An old man, he has just lived through what seems to have been the greatest challenge of his life: the binding of Isaac, which occurs not long after his battle against no less than four kings.

Indeed, it would appear Avraham?s life has been one long challenge: having to leave everything he knows behind to journey to a far off land at the will of G-d, only to be forced to leave almost immediately upon arrival, due to famine, sending him down to Egypt in search of sustenance. And then the departure of his beloved nephew Lot, followed by the forced exile of his son Yishmael when he is forced to choose between his wife and his son.

And this week, coming home from this latest ordeal, only to find his beloved wife Sarah, his life partner, dead.

All of which is what make a particular verse in this week?s portion so very strange:

?Ve?Avraham Zaken, ba? bayamim, va?Hashem beirach et Avraham bakol.?

?And Avraham was old, well on in years, and Hashem blessed Avraham with everything.? (Bereishit (Genesis) 24:1)

How can the Torah tell us Avraham is so blessed, when he has literally just buried his wife? Especially when the Torah makes it abundantly clear that this was a terribly painful loss for Avraham who ?mourns her and cries for her?. (23:2)

And what does it mean that the Torah tells us that Avraham is blessed ?bakol?, with ?everything?, when we know that Avraham just lost is wife who must have meant ?everything? to Avraham!? So if you?ve just lost everything, you should now feel as though you have nothing, yet specifically at this juncture the Torah tells us that Avraham has been blessed with everything!

Equally interesting is the fact that this verse introduces Avraham?s desire to find a suitable wife for his son Yitzchak. Which again, means there is something Avraham feels is lacking, so how can the Torah tell me he has ?everything? when he is about to send his trusted servant Eliezer to find and bring back what is obviously missing (a bride for Yitzchak)!?

And most fascinating is Rashi?s comment on this verse pointing out that the numerical value (gematria )of the word ?bakol? (everything) is 52 , which is the same as the word ?ben? or son, implying that when the verses says Avraham has been blessed with everything it is referring to his son Yitzchak (hence the explanation of why this verse leads into the story of Avraham?s desire to wed his son....).

But one has to wonder, why, if Yitzchak was born in last week?s portion and has been alive for quite some time, why the Torah feels the need to express this blessing now?

And why does Rashi who according to his own description of his commentary is attempting to arrive at a contextual and basic (P?shat) understanding of Torah, choose to explain this verse in this way?

In order to understand this verse and respond to some of these questions, we need to understand what a blessing is really all about.

Most people think that when I make a blessing I am thanking G-d, but that is not actually correct. ?Bracha? (the Hebrew word for blessing) does not man thank you. We have a word ?Todah? or ?Nodeh? which means thank you, and we use it often both when we pray as well as after we eat (?Nodeh lecha? we thank You....?). So obviously ?bracha? (blessing) has to mean something different.

In fact the word bracha means to increase; hence when we are told that Hashem (G-d) has Blessed ? Avraham with everything what it means is Hashem has increased Avraham?s wealth or future, by giving him in this case, a son, Yitzchak.

And this makes a lot of sense. After all, what is it I am trying to do when I say a blessing? I am trying to increase Hashem?s presence in my life. I can choose just to eat a piece of bread, or I can choose to use that bread as a vehicle for deepening my relationship with G-d.

Most people don?t think twice when they bite into a soft piece of fresh bread, other than to relish its taste. But the Talmud tells us the reason the blessing over bread contains ten words is to remind us of the ten processes involved in transforming a barren piece of land into a wheat field that eventually yields the bread one is about to eat.

Contrary to our modern ?wonder bread off the shelf? mentality, it takes a lot of work to make bread: You have to plough and then sow a field, then reap the crops, and thresh and winnow and sift the grains and eventually crush the wheat into kernels and produce and then knead the dough until finally baking it into bread. And all this is completely dependant on rain and sunshine....

And by seeing myself as a partner with G-d in producing this bread I increase Hashem?s presence in my life and thus in the world.

As such, our verse which describes Hashem?s blessing of Avraham with everything, is as much about how Avraham chooses to see the world Hashem gives us, as it is abut what Hashem actually bestows upon Avraham.

And maybe that is why this verse appears here, after Sarah?s death, just as Avraham is contemplating the fact that he will have to marry off Yitzchak on his own, without Sarah. Maybe part of what makes Avraham who he is, is the fact that even here he can still see that he is so blessed. And especially now, after coming back unexpectedly with his son Yitzchak still alive by his side (despite the initial assumption that Yitzchak would be bound to an altar), Avraham can choose to wallow in the loss of Sarah, or revel in the joy of Yitzchak.

Ultimately the only real choice we have in this world is how we choose to look at the world. And Avraham is blessed ?bakol?, with ?everything?, only because he chooses to focus on seeing Hashem in his life, as opposed to focusing on where Hashem is hidden from his life.

As we exited the museum, I noticed across the wide open area where the shouts and screams of roll call used to fill the Dachau air, a few young folk in what appeared to be Israeli army uniforms. I rubbed my eyes to be sure I wasn?t imagining the image, but as we got closer, sure enough we encountered a small group of Israeli army officers who were in Germany on a military liaison mission with their counterparts in the German army.

When they realized that their trip itinerary did not include a visit to Dachau, even though they were to visit the industrial zone nearby, they insisted on being taken to see the camp.

It was a cold day in Germany but these young officers were touring the camp without coats on so that people passing them by would see their Israeli army uniforms (which they were wearing as part of an official visit).

When we entered the barracks, their guide was explaining that the cubby holes for clothing in the middle of the barracks were built because the prisoners were forced by the Nazis to sleep at night without their clothes in the bitter cold nights of the German winter.

And I couldn?t help but be in awe of the powerful fire of spirit that must have burned in Martin Stiebel?s heart to be able to withstand all that he endured in those dark days.

A few moments later, in front of the crematoria as I shared a memorial prayer with those Israeli soldiers in Dachau I realized that while overwhelmed by the images of so many thousands of Jews suffering , I could choose as well, to see the image of Israeli Army officers with a Jewish flag on their sleeves stomping their boots in the cold on the dust that remains of the Nazi empire....

It is indeed possible to bring light even into the darkest of places, if we so choose.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rav Binny Freedman

Isralight | P.O. Box 880943 | Boca Raton | FL | 33488-0943