Parshat Chukat and Techiyat Hametim: Shir by Esther Wein, Rav Moshe Shapiro's Teachings

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To My Holy Nation #8

Am Yisrael,
My beloved nation.  My wells of love for you are so deep- yearning to reunite with you.  Walk with Me as in our bridal days.  Feel the light I am surrounding you with in these times of darkness.  Be humble before Me.  Please do not take My name in vain.  Do not call out to Me only in your time of need and then vanish from Me. My nation, seek Me at all times. Seek Me in all of your ways*.  Know that only I guide your footsteps.  Don't let yourself be trampled by the forces of tumah that are awaiting your vulnerabilities during this time. Bind yourself to Me strongly with all that you have, and fill yourself with Knowledge of My Presence.  Let yourself be humble before Me.  Don't make yourselves into warriors for your own causes that are not with My blessings.  Let yourself be clear of your path through My light.

Practical advice? Let yourself Feel Me.  Let me work through you and be an expression of you to the world always.  Abide by All My Torah, Mitzvot and all the Chukot. Don't think that any mitzvah is less important than another. Love each and every mitzvah the same!!! Don't pick and choose. Know that the secrets of how the mitzvot bring forth their light is very mysterious- beyond human perception. Be patient as Moshiach is waiting in the wings.  Love you fellow Jew as much as you love yourself.  Go out of your comfort zone to do a chesed for another.  Don't be stuck in a life pattern that does not allow growth.  Seek me out.  Talk to Me with every opportunity that you have and through this we will build a relationship of oneness.  From this you will come to experience Me more and come to understand a little more of My manifestation in the physical realm and how I interact with you.  Don't get stuck in the past of what was.  Let yourself move forward in my light.

*בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך ובכל מאודך

Unbelievable emunah, courage, and strength from Eva Sandler

Eva Sandler 3 months after the murder of her husband and two sons in Toulouse, May all the mourners of Zion continue to be comforted http://jewishmom.com/2012/06/27/eva-sandler-3-months-later/  Thank you Jewish mom's blog for posting

Week’s Energy for Parshas Chukas- Rav DovBer Pinson

Re-Entering Life by Rav DovBer Pinson

 In this week’s Torah reading, Miriam and Aaron, sister and brother of Moshe, pass on. The Torah then speaks of the Tuma/impurity of death and the ritual purification of the Parah Adumah/ Red Heifer for those who have come in contact with death.

The Torah reading opens with the words; “Hashem spoke to Moshe… take a perfectly red unblemished heifer… slaughter it… The heifer shall then be burned…Anyone who touches a human corpse shall become impure…(if) he does not purify himself, he has defiled the Temple…Take for that impure person from the ashes of the burnt offering (the red heifer) and it shall be placed in a vessel with spring water…take the hyssop and dip it into the water and sprinkle it on him…”(19:1-18)

This, in short, is the ritual of purifying a person who has become impure through contact with a corpse. There is a sprinkling with a solution of the red heifer ashes and spring water on specific days, followed by immersion in a ritual pool of water.

Tahara/ Purity and Tuma /impurity are intrinsically related to the life/death cycle, and are clearly unrelated to personal hygiene or disease. Tuma is connected to all forms of “death” and the mortality of life, both literally and figuratively. Conversely, Tahara is connected to “life,” both literally and figuratively, and immortal forces of life, such as the Temple and spring water.

Life is movement and possibility. Death is an ‘end’, a state of stagnation.

In death, at least in the physical realm, there is a stopping, a ceasing of hope, a cessation of movement and possibility. To be impure implies a connection with a ‘hopelessness’ consciousness. Purity, on the other hand, is all that is related with life, fluidity and newness, and all that stems from a place of possibility and hope.

The Beis HaMikdash/ Temple functioned as a place ofHischadshus/Renewal. It served as a space in which one could recapture a sense of awe in creation and the Creator. To enter the Temple, one had to be ritually pure, vested with life and possibility.

Every moment in creation is brand new, freshly born, from Ayin/pure potential, no-thing-ness to Yesh/existence.
Each breath, a new Divine enlivening force enters, and is exhaled into creation.

The Temple, being the epicenter of all space, is the place in which this renewal spirit is realized. As a demonstration of this reality, the Showbreads never grew stale, the bread in the temple always tasted completely fresh even if baked a week before.(Chagigah 26b). Everything of the Temple was fresh and new.

The Temple in Jerusalem was built upon the site on which Yaakov/Jacob once slept and dreamed of the ladder and angels. (Bereishis. 28:12-18).When he awoke from this dream, he proclaimed, “Surely Hashem is in this place; and I knew it not.” If Yaakov had been aware of the holiness and purity of the place on which he stood, he would not have been able to sleep. Sleep is a minor form of death, static, stagnant – Yaakov was troubled that he had not tapped into the renewal spirit of the place and was able to go into a space of ‘death.’

Though the ultimate mystery and paradoxical nature of the Red Heifer is beyond our comprehension (Midrash Rabba, 19:3) the specific symbolism is very pronounced. Ashes and water are mixed and sprinkled. When ashes and water mix it creates a form of soap, a cleansing, but there is something deeper occurring. Water is fluidity and life, pure and renewed.

Water is the primordial state of creation, when creation exists in the cosmic womb as pure potential. Ashes represent the end of an old and the potential of a new, the dust returns to dust and thus a new cycle of life begins.

There is Afar/earth and there is Eifar/ dust or ash. (Bereishis, 18:27)Earth represents the Ayin/ no-thing-ness of the Yesh/ existence, as the earth contains the potential of vegetation, yet, Eifer/ash is the deeper Ayin, the Ayin that is relatively beyond Yesh, pure potential. The ritual sprinkling of ash and water reconnects us with the cycle of life and potential of the new.

With all this symbolism and ritual though, it is imperative that we remember, in the words of our Sages “The corpse does not defile, nor does the water purify, rather it is a Mitzvah of the King of Kings.”

Ultimately, it is our connection to Hashem, the source of all Reality, of all Life, the One who brings death to the living and brings the dead to life that offers us renewal, hope and thus Tahara, a fresh breath of life.

 To live in this world is to be touched continuously by both life and death.

All people experience some form of death within their lifetimes, unfortunately it is often tragic and heartbreaking.

Sometimes it is a symbolic death, an ending.

In either sense, death can seem a hopeless ending, a place that is cut off from all possibility of growth.

The energy of the Torah reading this week is the infusion of openness and newness into a place of hopelessness.

Just as ashes return to the earth and begin a life cycle anew, the ashes of the red heifer mix with the water to create a state of purity and life, allowing those who have been in contact with death to find new breath and life in their future.

To move forward from a place of Tuma, we must first immerse in water – fully enveloping ourselves in our primordial state, and reconnecting with the unity of Hashem, source of all – both life and death. From this place of oneness we can find our innate breath and source of life and move forward into life and hope.

This week become aware of how a death, real or symbolic, may be holding you back from life.

This can even be a holding on to a perception, or a way of being, that can be preventing you from growth and forward movement.

Be open to newness of ideas, and new ways of approaching the old ideas.

Come back to your life with an open mind, an open heart and the constant possibility of forward movement.   http://iyyun.com/

Hester Panim- Hashem Where are You Hiding?

Hester Panim:  by Rabbi Pinchas Winston ***

"I will become very angry at them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My face from them. They will be devoured, and plagued by many evils that will distress them, and will say, `Do we not suffer because God has left us?' " (Devarim 31:17)

Hester Panim is a commonly used term in the Torah world. Literally, it means "hiding face," but it refers to concealed Divine Providence, not the lack of it, just the concealment of it. For, a fundamental of fundamentals is that God always runs the world, even recreating it anew each moment. It's just that, when we merit it, we get to watch Him do it.

Well, not exactly see Him recreate the world each second, but to at least see or sense that He is behind everything. Today, the average person either doesn't believe in God, or at least doesn't believe that He is involved in the everyday affairs of man. He lives his life as if God has little if any interest in his life at all, and therefore lives as he sees fit.

Even religious people may have difficulty being real with the reality of God operating on all levels of existence at every moment. They may believe that He is always watching and keeping track of our behavior for the sake of the Final Day of Judgment and Eternal Life, but as far as everyday life is concerned, He has better things to do than actually help or deter man's daily activities.

One of the fascinating things about Hester Panim is that it does not affect everyone the same way. Indeed, two people can be standing side-by-side, and yet not feel the same level of impact of Hester Panim, one strongly feeling the Presence of God while the other feels and acts as if God is billions of miles away, at least.

This is why Dovid HaMelech can say:

Should you but conceal Your face, I would be confounded. (Tehillim 30:8)

Conceal not Your Presence from me ... (Tehillim 27:9)

both verses implying that God did not conceal Himself from Dovid HaMelech, though He did from others.

This raises the question about the true definition of fear of God. Is fear of God only the basis of a belief that God keeps track of all that we do, and will one day judge us for it, or is one's sense of Godly involvement in everyday life a part of it as well? In the case of the former, it is easy to forget about God during times of spiritual crisis, but in the case of the latter, it is impossible to forget about God at any time.

With Rosh Hashanah just next week, b"H, this is an important question to address, since our understanding of the concept of Hester Panim determines how reliable we are as people, from God's perspective. This not only affects out judgment every Rosh Hashanah, but it also affects how intimately God is prepared to work with us in everyday life.

What exactly is Hester Panim?

When it comes to something in the physical world, hiding can be a local thing, or it can be that, for all intents-and-purposes, that which is hidden might as well not exist at all. For example, there is a solution for every problem, but sometimes it remains hidden for generations, and though it may be eventually discovered, its discovery will not help the many generations that are long gone.

But, when it comes to God, hiding can only be a local thing. This is because the entire existence exists within God, and even should it cease to exist, God will always exist. Therefore, by definition, to be aware of anything in Creation is to be aware of God on some level, the only question being, on which level?

For, as it is well known, man possesses both a subconscious mind and a conscious one. As if life wasn't complicated enough already, as much as we may be aware of at any given moment in time, there are things going on in our minds that we are not cognizant of, even though they affect how we perceive things and our reactions. Psychiatry, a huge and generally lucrative profession, is testimony to that, and it often tries to bridge the very large gap between the subconscious and conscious mind of a person, especially when they are in conflict with one another.

Furthermore, the Talmud tells us that, just prior to birth, an angel teaches us the entire Torah, after which he makes us forget everything by tapping us on the upper lip just before being born (Niddah 30b). What is the point, if we're going to be born without that knowledge in the end anyhow?

Because, obviously, we are not born without the knowledge, but rather, it remains with us, on a subconscious level. The point of learning Torah, as we have discussed in the past, is to draw that knowledge, idea-by-idea, from the level of the subconscious mind to the conscious mind. And once we do, there is always a sense of, "Ahaaaah," as if we are merely recalling something we had already known, but simply forgotten.

Outreach, therefore, is not about teaching Torah anew to unaffiliated Jews, but about bringing what they already known on the subconscious level to the conscious mind. The more a person does this, the more attached they feel to the knowledge, and the more they become one with it. Eventually, lifestyle changes because personal perspective has changed, reducing the effect that doubt, and therefore Amalek, can have on the person.

And, all of that knowledge is really just knowledge about God. If it remains on the level of the subconscious, then God remains on the level of the subconscious. As more of the knowledge is brought from the depths of the subconscious to the conscious mind, the more conscious a person becomes of God, and the more he can relate to His reality even on the level of the body.

Hester panim, therefore, is really all in the mind. But, that doesn't mean that it is imaginary.

In fact, it is like what happened to Pharaoh when God hardened his heart: the result may have been a harder heart, but it was his head that God worked on. For, a person responds to reality based upon his perception of it, and his perceptions are based upon his assumptions about life. If you know what they are, then you can create situations that will compel a person to perceive reality a certain way, and therefore, respond in a particular way. This is what makes conspiracy possible.

Human beings have to work very hard to conspire against people successfully, because they can't know every last assumption people have about life, and therefore, they cannot dictate every perception they will have. They can only work in a general sense, which is why some people are able to detect conspiracies and break through them.

But, for God, it is a different story. He knows everything and controls everything. He knows exactly how people think and He can manipulate reality completely and perfectly in order to take advantage of people's assumptions about life, so that they will be compelled to see things as He wants them to. And that is the basis of Hester Panim.

So, for example, if a person's desire to partake of this physical world overcomes his desire to be close to God, then God will present the world to him in such a way as to make it appear he can have what he wants and not worry about repercussion. He may have to contend with man-made laws and rules, but occasionally, when he gets away with what he has taken illicitly, it will truly seem as if he succeeded.

And, if people come to worship science as a religion of agnosticism, using it to question the existence of God or His involvement in Creation and history, then the world will appear scientifically in such a way as to feed such people's assumptions about the physical world. As the prophet warned:

For the ways of God are straight; the righteous walk in them and sinners will stumble over them. (Hoshea 14:10)

How do two people walk the same path with dramatically different results? It must be that one sees safety where the other sees danger, benefit where the other sees loss, potential gratification where the other sees misery, and when it comes to Hester Panim, one sees randomness where the other sees Divine genius. It must be that the two of them have two different sets of assumptions about life.

Taking advantage of people's mistaken assumptions about life and about God within it is what Amalek does best. As Rashi points out, he divides the Name of God, but as Kabbalah explains, that means that he makes life appear Godless to those who can be duped. That is why the Torah says about Amalek:

He confronted you on your way, and attacked the feeble stragglers who trailed behind you, while you were tired and exhausted. He did not fear God. (Devarim 25:18)

Feeble, but not physically feeble, but spiritually so. They were the ones who could be impressed, or intimidated by Amalek's smoke-and-mirror's routine, because they had not done their homework to spiritually inoculate themselves against Amalek's psychological attack. To such intellectual stragglers, God seemed distant at the time, at best.

The good news is that, if Hester Panim is a matter of the mind, then man can work with that. If when God hid Himself he really hid from everyone equally, and not just in the recesses our mind, then righteous and evil alike would have to live with the same spiritual reality, though the former would trudge forward spiritually like loyal soldiers, learning Torah and performing the mitzvos because that is what Torah-Jews do, rain or shine.

In fact, sadly, that is the way many Torah-Jews live today, leaving God hidden on other, deeper levels of consciousness. I'm not talking about people who sin as if God is not watching, for that is not being a Torah Jew, even if, on the outside, they look like one. Everyone has their weaknesses, and people who believe that Torah came from Sinai are no different. However, they have a tougher time giving into weakness, and if and when they do, they know that they have to do teshuvah for it.

But imagine sneaking up on some close friends, who happen to be waiting for you, and not knowing that you are in the room, they talk about you. To your delight, they have only good things to say, but not knowing that you are in the room, they do not connect to you the same way as they normally do when you are before them. Indeed, if you remain hidden long enough, eventually they are bound to forget about you.

The same thing is true about many Torah Jews who do everything they can to do the will of God, but connect to Him as if He is not in the "room." Their loyalty to God and His Torah, "in the meantime" is admirable, but their sense of His Being is lacking, evident by the lack of enthusiasm they have in general, and when performing mitzvos specifically. Though they would never willing transgress the will of God, they don't show the proper enthusiasm when observing it.

That was what Dovid HaMelech wanted to avoid. He wanted to feel the Presence of God wherever he went, as if he was in the House of God seven days a week, 24 hours a day. On Rosh Hashanah, we are evaluated for how hard we tried to make this reality our own, and rewarded for how successful we were, by having an even greater experience of Shechinah - Divine Presence - in the upcoming year.

Last week, I had an interesting experience. I was called up for an aliyah, after which I stood to the side while the next person, called up after me, had the Torah read to him. As is my practice, I held on to the top of the Aitz Chaim closest to me, while following in the Sefer Torah as it was read (as opposed to in a Chumash). I love looking into a Sefer Torah.

However, this time, as the one reading continued, it began to occur to me how fortunate I was to be there, that I believed in Torah, and that I was able to live by it. I felt so fortunate to be part of a minority of people in the world today who know that Torah comes from God via Mt. Sinai and Moshe Rabbeinu, and some tears began, on their own, to well up in my eyes. And, for that brief moment, I had a tremendous feeling of Shechinah.

When I thought about the experience later, I was amazed at how intense a moment I was able to create by a single thought, albeit at the right time in the right place. I was amazed at how easily Hester Panim can be turned on or off, controlled by what a person believes and thinks about in life.... Thanks for reading.

Pinchas Winston 

***An important piece by Rabbi Pinchas Winston to ponder, and is especially during this period of Tammuz/Av.  I added the bold and italics as especially important points that stood out in my own reading.  I hope Im Yirtze Hashem to ponder some of these concepts with the readers during these next two months.  Check out Rabbi Winston's blog for many other deep insights into the world and the times http://www.thirtysix.org/Thirtysix.org/HomePage.htm

A lesson In Gratitude towards Hashem- Why the well of Miriam disappeared? Parshat Chukat

http://www.dailyhalacha.com/WeeklyParasha.asp

To my holy nation #7

To Am Yisrael,
Time is drawing very near.  There is no more time left to waste! The clock is at zero awaiting the final redemption.  We need to return to the one above who created light from darkness and separated heaven from earth.  Who are we to say that we are above this that we we can't return to the one who created the Whole World.  Think about this for a moment.  If this is not the root of ego we have a lot to ponder.  Ponder quickly as there is NO MORE time.  The world is at its last breath as we know it to be.  Foundations of all that existed and seemed to hold True will soon come crashing down among us. Return to the womb of the one who created you.  Have a little humility.  Perform His wishes, His desires, as it is Only because of Him that you exist every moment.  Know this deep in your bones.  Hashem created you with freedom of choice to look before yourself... to seek, yearn, and discover what is Truth.  "I have placed before you a blessings and a curse.  Choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19)  To be in alignment with the will of the creator or G-d forbid be against.  I created with you with 100% free will.  You need to seek yourself and discover that the Purpose of Creation is to choose the path of life- of Eternal Life.  One that will be forever connected to the source.  Be a witness to the Geulah.  Know that it is I who am bringing you back.  The time is running out.  |Let yourself be a vessel for my light in the world.  Keep ALL my mitzvot and cling to my Torah.  Know this is Truth.