Now I know the beauty

ספר בראשית פרק יב
(יא) וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר הִקְרִיב לָבוֹא מִצְרָיְמָה וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל שָׂרַי אִשְׁתּוֹ הִנֵּה נָא יָדַעְתִּי כִּי אִשָּׁה יְפַת מַרְאֶה אָתְּ:

Genesis 12:11. And it came to pass, when he came near to enter to Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, Behold now, I know that you are a pretty woman to look upon.

Had Avraham not been aware before of how his wife looked? Yes, but he was now looking at her through the eyes of Egyptian society and seeing her afresh.

For me, two important points emerge:

1) Let us use anything we can to refresh our eyes to the beauty of what is around us - even if it is Egyptian society. Even sources that are debased in some way might be able to teach us to see the beauty of G-d's world in a new way. The world of art, though flawed, can do this.

Let us always refresh our eyes to the beauty of the world. Every morning, press that existential F5 button, wake up, חדשים לבקרים, רבה אמונתך

2) Perhaps we may deduce that Avraham was used to looking at inner beauty, not externals. Perhaps he did not even know how attractive his wife was physically, for he was involved with her soul. Now he was forced pragmatically to reevaluate her physicality, so as to prepare for the dangers it might bring to them in this new land.

In the movie "Prelude to a Kiss," a lovely young bride switches bodies with an old man. The groom is in love with his new wife, but she now comes in a very unattractive wrapper. He struggles with this; there is a barrier between then. Then during one profound scene, we see him break through the externals, entirely aware of the person he loves within; able to love her and reach out to break through the barrier.

How much do and should externals mean to us, in the day to day, or in searching for a life partner? In Taanit 20b, an arrogant rabbi runs into a hideous man on the road, and says "How ugly you are! Are all the citizens of your town as ugly as you?" His fellow replies, "I do not know! Go and tell the craftsman who made me, How ugly is the vessel you have made!" Attempting to interpret this exchange could lead us down several paths, but what strikes me is that the ugly man is reminding the rabbi of G-d. "You are lacking in a sense of G-d at this moment, for were you mindful of G-d, you could not speak like this. Could you stand before G-d and speak of an ugly vessel? Ignoring inner parts? Go talk to G-d and let us see you speak in this fashion!"

Just as Hillel says, The bride is always beautiful. If you cannot see the beauty of a bride on your wedding day, clear out your eyes; employ your inner eye.

No, we are not built to ignore externals, they are a part of our lives. But let us, just for a moment, try to see what's inside, the beauty that shines within. We might be surprised.

Haman the Ungrateful

As R Shalom Arush points out, Haman's evil lies in his not being satisfied with his life. Haman says in Esther 5:13:

וְכָל זֶה אֵינֶנּוּ שׁוֶֹה לִי בְּכָל עֵת אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי רֹאֶה אֶת מָרְדֳּכַי הַיְּהוּדִי יוֹשֵׁב בְּשַׁעַר הַמֶּלֶךְ

Yet all this avails me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.

Haman had so much - supportive wife, many children, friends, high position, wealth, but he cared about none of it because he was eating himself up alive over another person. This is the essence of Amalek. Being ungrateful means you are seeing daily miracles and scoffing at them, belittling - which is what Amalek, Haman's ancestors, did after the miracles in Egypt.

My friend Mosheh Givental pointed out to me that we Jews go by three names: עברים - meaning we are boundary-crossers; ישראלים, we are Godwrestlers; and יהודים, we are thankers - Jew coming from Judah, whose name came from his mother's decision to stop pining after Jacob's love, after her lack, but thank instead for what she had.
The person known most prominently as the יהודי in the Tanach is Mordechai. Mordechai the grateful (though I don't know if we necessarily see this trait explicit in the megillah - what do you think?)

Hold him up against Haman the Ungrateful and contrast.

The joy and gratitude of Purim prepares us for the דיינו of Pesach. And that is freedom - where no matter what happens in our lives, we hold on to our inner practice of gratitude.

The Bearable Lightness of Being

Midrash Tanhuma on Ki Tisa:

Since he came down and approached the camp and saw the calf, the written letters flew away from them and were found to be heavy on Moshe's hands, immediately (Exodus 32:18) "And Moshe's anger burned and he threw the tablets out of his hand"

Interesting. A bunch of letters chiseled into the stone allowed Moshe to be able to carry these huge stone tablets . In their absence, the tablets just became lumps of stone and Moshe dropped them (the Midrash changes our understanding of the verse that Moshe flung them down in anger; but see discussion here)

I see this Midrash as a metaphor for life. The tablets are our lives, with all of their challenges and burdens. The letters, our spiritual life - Torah learning, awareness and mindfulness, prayer and service of G-d. If we invest in keeping those letters nice and sharp, they can carry our lives for us and we can feel light and clear at every moment. If we let them drop and fade, whether out of laziness, anger or pain, we risk life becoming a heavy burden to schlep around. That's been my experience, anyway.


It reminds me of the Hassidic tale of the man who hitched a ride on a wagon. The man sat there with a huge bag on his knees. The driver said: "Why don't you put your bag down on the floor?" The hitchhiker replied: "You've been kind enough to take me, I don't need you to take my bag as well."

I think we can drop our bags - our baggage - and trust that if G-d can carry everything else, G-d can carry our bags for us too. We're not being helpful when we schlep all that stuff around, just foolish.

Thus, too, the ark was said to "carry its bearers" rather than the expected, that the bearers carried it.

So our job is to invest in our spiritual lives, and then they will carry us, G-d will carry us, our baggage, and all those things that currently feel so heavy. We have "wings of spirit", as Rav kook writes, and with them we can soar.

Mindful Matzah

Until now I was aware of only two kinds of eating in the Jewish calendar - not eating i.e. on fast days, and eating a lot as part of a mitzvah, on Shabbat/Yom Tov and especially Purim (also on erev Yom Kippur it's a mitzvah to eat).

But now I see that Pesach is a third way - a week of simple food, avoiding all those baked goods we like to eat, a week when the food is different and it draws our attention to how and what we eat. The point is not to imitate our usual fare with Pesach bread rolls and Pesach bizzli but to see what happens when things are different, when we lack the usual variety of consumer products. Mindful eating.

Which is why, much as I dislike the whole kitniyot thing, it actually serves a purpose at least in Israel, as it severely limits what you can buy in the supermarket; which keeps up the spirit of limited diet on Pesach. Food for thought?

Chag sameach.

ויספר משה לחתנו And Moses told his father-in-law

I love to learn Parsha with a chabura (group) of people, where we just read the text carefully and discuss together without preparing in advance. It's great - things pop out at you that you never seem to notice when learning on your own. I highly recommend it.
Here's something I noticed this week in one such group learning session. At the beginning of Parshat Yitro, Yitro comes to visit Moshe because he has heard of all the miraculous things that God has done, specifically the Exodus from Egypt.
But then Shemot chapter 18, verse 8 tells us:

And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and all the hardship that had come upon them by the way, and how the Lord saved them.

Yitro's reaction is:

And Jethro rejoiced because of all the goodness which the Lord had done to Israel, whom he had delivered from the hand of the Egyptians.

It seems superfluous for Moshe to tell this story over to a person who has already heard it! What can we learn from this?

We could take three possible directions: 

1. The rumours of the miracles had spread to Midyan. Rumours have a way of spreading, as the Talmud in Sotah colourfully describes it, by gossiping women spinning tales by moonlight, or as the Talmud in Baba Batra says, simply things get around, "For the bird of the heaven shall carry the voice"
   BUT you don't just want to rely on a rumour, it's important to check the veracity of it from someone who was there
   
    
2. When you hear a first person account it has an entirely different effect than hearing the generalities. This happens to us all the time - we hear of a disaster and it's just numbers: 250 killed in a plane crash, 50000 killed in an earthquake. Our brain registers, but our hearts remain untouched. But when we hear one individual story, tears come to our eyes. Yitro's reaction is one of rejoicing, but the word used ויחד is odd. The rabbis translated it as goosebumps - a powerful reaction of awe and wonder. To hear it from the horse's mouth so to speak, was almost to relive it. אינו דומה שמיעה לראייה - hearing is not like seeing. We see this also when Moshe is up Mt Sinai and the people are worshipping the Golden Calf below. God says (Shemot 32:7-8)

Go down; for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves;
They have turned aside quickly from the way which I commanded them; they have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it...

So he knew about this - who would doubt the word of God? Yet only when Moshe SAW the calf and the dancing did his anger burn and he dropped the tablets. 

3. The third angle we can take on Moshe's retelling is less about Yitro's need to hear and more regarding Moshe's need to tell the story over. When we tell a story over to an outsider, it helps us to understand what we have been through. It helps to organise our thoughts and may be cathartic, as in psychoanalysis. It makes a difference who we are speaking to also - here, Yitro was a powerful religious figure, also a leader, and Moshe could speak to him as a peer and share all of the emotions regarding everything he had just been through - including the hardship. I wonder how long that conversation took - perhaps they sat in a tent all day, eating Manna, smoking a nargilla, in one of those unforgettable ten hour conversations that make life worth living.

Perhaps that is also why Yitro was the one who a few verses later suggested to Moshe that he needed to lighten his burden. He most deeply understood what Moshe had been through and where he was at.
This is an early example of coaching - a deep listening followed by advice to match where the person is!


And it is interesting that all this takes place just before the tremendous revelation at Sinai - an event which in Jewish consciousness takes its place in import alongside the Creation of the World. At the Creation, God speaks ten sayings, but there is really no one to talk to - God is saying them to Him/Herself.
לולא מסתפימא I would say, God is lonely.
Now at Sinai, God gets to "do a tikkun - have a healing experience" so to speak, when S/He can say ten things to 600000 people who are listening attentively. We all need to speak out our truth to another, and this is to be not alone.


Commentary
by Hyam Plutzik

(Once, when I entered the Holy of Holies to burn the incense, I saw the Lord
of all Hosts sitting on a high and exalted throne, and He said to me:
"Ishmael, my son, bless me." —The Talmud)


He is lonely then within the pale of the palace
The Enthroned Will, whose fingers must ever shore
The pitiful islands against the destroyer of all.

To guard the breath of the violet for its time
And Helen’s face, and the gay moment the sun
Touches the street in the town where children play.


To shape and reshape forever the crumbling substances
Yet see the ruin so quickly, the figurines
Wasting in air, the brush-strokes graying like ash
If only once out of the flow, the river,
To make the lasting, the perfect – O to create
What will endure for all the creator’s time.

Lonely, lonely in the pale of the palace.
Once there were others, rivals, Ammon or Zeus.
Brother or foe, to bring the blood to the face,

Or who fashioned himself a mate out of the ground,
For eternity, his paltry thousand years.
But to shape and reshape forever the dust, the dust.


III
And the desperate tricks, the man or the nation beloved.
The disguises: dream or fire or a cloak by the gate
Of an unknown city, beyond the candlelight's friendship,

Where the guard cries out who goes, and sees no thing
But the darkening sand and a desert bird wheeling
With the cry that a gull makes on an empty coast.

O he is lonely in the pale of the palace¬— The Enthroned
Will, whose fingers must ever shore
The pitiful islands against the destroyer of all.