Bereshit

 So last shabbat we started reading the Torah from the beginning again, from Bereshit. I read it at home, as I do not go to synagogues these days, and was so bothered by everything that was told there. 

As I was reading about Adam, Eve and the apple (it wasn't an apple, you know) I was thinking - first, how did the snake know that G-d told Adam not to eat from that tree, the Tree of Knowledge? What was the snake that gave him such knowledge, and why did he abuse that knowledge?

Second, I think it's the first time I realize that Eve never heard G-d's command not to eat of that tree directly. She only heard it from second hand from Adam. This fact in itself can be a cause for confusion. But I do not think it's a good enough excuse to get her off the hook. As I was reading the words in the Torah telling how she looked at the apple (let's call it an apple from now on just for simplicity's sake), and how she used her own judgement to decide whether it's good or bad, contrary to G-d's judgement of it as a fruit that is not good for her and Adam to eat - I felt furious. How could she?! What Hutzpah! And not only that, she also suggested it to stupid Adam, who heard that prohibition directly from G-d Himself. I know, yes, I know that we are all doing it in so many ways in different areas of our lives and I think that modern society does it big time (saying that certain things are legitimate and good when in fact G-d said they are not), but if only she were more humble, knowing that G-d's judgement is and forever will be far superior to her own, or to the snake's. And then how they diverted the blame from themselves, 'it was the woman YOU GAVE Me'. Adam doesn't only blame the woman, he blames G-d for giving him that woman. My gosh. 

And then the story with Cain and Abel - and the mystery of what Cain told Abel in the field. Readers of translations miss something very dramatic that appears only in the Hebrew text: when the Torah says that Cain spoke to Abel, the text says: "And Cain spoke unto Abel his brother", and then there is a big empty space before the next verse. It's like the Torah omits the words spoken by Cain, but does not obliterate the space they take. The space is there, but the words are missing. This is very mysterious and I was wondering to myself, first - why didn't the Torah tell us what were the words spoken by Cain, and second, why did it make it a point to leave a blank space in place of those words? A mystery. I still have to think about it, I'm not sure I have a good enough suggestion for this mystery. 

And then for the first time in my life I realized that Cain was not all bad - he actually repented for his sin, he acknowledged the gravity of his sin and regretted it, so much so that G-d put a special protecting sign on him, to make sure no one will kill him in retaliation. This shows that if we repent, no matter how grave our sins are, G-d accepts us and loves us. Anyway, it is also interesting to note that the seed of Cain, all his descendants, died eventually in the flood. How do I know it? Because the only people surviving the flood were Noah and his family, and Noah came from Cain's younger brother, Seth. But who knows, perhaps Noah's wife came from the seed of Cain? G-d knows. 

Anyway, one more interesting insight, not sure it's mine, I think I read it somewhere, is that Lemech, one of the descendants of Cain, called his sons with names that are with the same root letters as Abel. Yaval, Yuval, Tuval Cain. Interesting. I think this in itself also shows how deep Cain's regret and repentance were, if even his descendants call their children by names reminiscent of Abel. 

Today, back then, it was Succot. 

Human impact

I wrote here a few weeks ago about a person who has some kind of developmental delay/mental problems, that has been hospitalized for many long months with diabetes. I sometimes go to visit him, talk with him, try to make him happy. A few weeks ago one of his legs was amputated, and last week the other leg was amputated. The first amputation was really hard for him to accept, mentally and emotionally, but he got over it and the second amputation was easier for him to accept and emotionally process. When I visited him he was smiling, joking, and was mentally clear some of the time, which was very encouraging for me to see. 

So in the past few days I went to visit him at the hospital again. He was supposed to be released yesterday, but the staff decided to wait a few more days and since he is all alone there most of the time, someone needed to go there so I went - I went last week and I went again today. When I did, I had my recorder with me, and I played for him some music. He is a Haredi person, so I played all the religious songs that I know, plus a few Israeli classics like Naomi Shemer's songs, and more. He was singing with the recorder, and it was nice to see him like this. 

Now it is the 7 day holiday of Succot (Feast of Tabernacles), so I have these days off work, and I'm free to do as I please. So today I went there again to visit him, and after I fed him, the nurses told me that he has to go to another floor of the hospital (Hadassah Ein Karem) to go through dialysis. I have often heard this word, dialysis, but I never bothered to learn what it really was. I only knew that it was some procedure that is done to people who have renal failure - problem with their kidneys. So I asked them if I could go with him, and they joyously said: Yes! 

I went with him. It was a large room with many sofas, and on each sofa there was one person lying down, covered with blankets and freezing, usually closing their eyes. It seemed very serene and peaceful so I realized it does not hurt them, it does not cause them pain. The staff there guided us to a certain spot (no sofa, he came with his hospital bed) and after they connected him to some tubes, the process began. The tubes soon filled with blood, his blood, and I realized that all of his blood is being extracted from his body, purified in the dialysis machine, and then returned to his body again. The machine purifies the blood and replaces the function of the kidneys. I am thankful now even more than before to have working kidneys. I realized that such people cannot travel because they have to go to the hospital three or four times a week to do that, each time for 3-4 hours. They are not free in this sense. 

So the process started and I realized it was going to take a long time. After talking with him and laughing with him a bit, I took out my recorder and started playing (after asking permission from the staff, of course). I realized everyone there enjoyed it - patients, their family members and the staff. It was a refreshing change there, I guess. After playing for him for some time, I started moving around between the other patients and talking with them, then playing to them songs that they asked for, etc. 

After a while I came across one lady who was lying pale in bed, not in a sofa, and looking half dead. I talked with her and realized that she came from the same department as 'my' patient. We talked, but I didn't expect this talk to last for more than two sentences, because she really seemed half not-there anymore. But she surprised me deeply when she started talking and talking and telling me the whole story of her life. I think I spent close to two hours with her. She is very fair skinned, with blue eyes, but she told me that she speaks Farsi, the language they speak in Iran. How come? Before the revolution, she and her Iranian born husband lived there with their children for 8 years, and her husband was employed as a dentistry professor at a local university. She was an interesting person to talk to. After talking so much, I played for her some music and she was so happy with it. She asked for this song and that song. Then I left her, returned to 'my' patient who was lying quietly in his bed, and played to him. Then she called me back to tell me something. I went to her again and she said: "A few days ago I heard someone playing the recorder up in the department, now I realize it was you. You play very nicely. You should know that on that day, two people in the adjacent room to mine were arguing and quarreling loudly for a long time, but as soon as you started playing, they fell silent and stopped fighting completely". She was very serious and honest, and too weak to make up stories, so I know she was telling the truth and didn't just try to make me feel good. It made me so happy. 

I wrote here about my Rosh HaShanah experience - how a random woman in the street unknowingly led me to a place that later helped me find my way to the Kotel. She had no idea of the impact her very existence had on my Rosh HaShanah experience. What the lady told me today is an example of something similar - sometimes you go somewhere, you do something, and you assume that aside of that which your eyes can see there is no other impact to anything you do. So if you go to play to people, their immediate reaction is all you see and that's it, but perhaps, just perhaps, the story does not end there, and the impact of what you do goes further than what you think. I was so so happy to hear what she said, really, it is something I hope I'll remember. It is worthwhile to remember. 

Something else that happened in this context - I was at the hospital also on Shabbat. One secular lady who visited her family member and had seen me playing a couple of days earlier asked me, innocently, with a smile, 'What, no music today?' I told her that I do not violate Shabbat. This is a pun in Hebrew, a game of words, because the word for desecrating the Shabbat is Lekhalel, and the word for playing the recorder is also Lekhalel. So we laughed at the pun, but then she wanted to hear why playing the recorder is a violation of Shabbat. I explained to the best of my ability, explaining the difference between the written Law and the oral Law, and how we are committed to observe both. This led to more questions and more answers and to a whole discussion in which I told her that the proof that the Torah is true is the fact that she and I stand here, in Jerusalem, each of us having a Hebrew name and we speak to each other in our ancient ancestral language after not being here in our land for 2,000 years, her ancestors returning here from one end of the globe while mine from another. I don't know what would the impact of this talk be, but I think I left her with some food for thought, and another great thing was that this conversation was taking place in front of a secular nurse, and... who knows. We do things, and we cannot imagine the impact they have down the road.

When she referred to the oral law and the rabbis commentaries of the commandments, she said it is like a 'broken phone' - things not passing well enough between the generations, but I immediately replied, with passion, that it is not like a broken phone at all - it is like a relay race in which each 'runner' (each generation) passes the burning torch to the next runner, and the proof is that the torch is still burning! The fact is that after 2,000 years, we still keep all parts of the law - the written and the oral ones.

I also told her that the Torah is like poetry, not like prose. Unlike in prose, in which you can use as many words as you want and there are no limitations, in poetry every word is well thought of, the space is limited and each word and phrase have several layers of meaning. It is as poetry that the Torah should be read and interpreted and even Moses refers to it as 'this book of poetry'. I hope it would help her start to investigate. 

So now is the holiday of Succot, the Feast of Tabernacles. It is a beautiful holiday that I remember from my childhood. My father used to always build a sweet, cosy Succah (booth) for us to eat and spend time in. We decorated it and it was so much fun. We then did succha-hopping between the different succot of our friends and each friend showed off their cool nice succah. It was so nice. I still remember how my dad made holes in the ground to stick the wooden planks in. I still remember these wooden planks of our succah, their texture, their feel when I touched them, their size, the holes they had in them on their smooth-rough surface. I miss having a succah. I haven't had a succah since, even though I visited and ate at many. 

This year, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the whole atmosphere is less festive and colorful, but still, you see a lot of Succahs and it makes me happy. Some succahs are public, so yesterday I took my computer and wrote there some thoughts and insights in some special files that I keep on my computer. It was in the French Hill, which I love. It was nice. I love the French Hill and would like to live there. 

The universities in Israel decided to have the whole school year online - not physically on campus. I thought to myself that if only the library would be open, I would be happy, because I love the Mt. Scopus campus, I felt at home there from the first time I set foot there, there is something there that has always felt like home to me, and it would be nice to have it almost all to myself, with a few more people using the library. So I called the library, expecting no one to pick up the phone, but surprisingly, someone did. They said that currently, they have no idea how things are going to turn out, and that at the moment the library is closed to visitors - and that I should call again in a few weeks, once the picture gets clearer. I wouldn't mind being there 2-3 days a week, working on my projects and my regular work. I work from home anyway, so I can work from anywhere I want - and I just love this campus. My favorite synagogue in the whole world is there. There is such a spiritual atmosphere there, I can just sit there for hours, breathe, connect to HaShem, and be. Unfortunately, the synagogue there is also closed these days. I wish I could have this whole campus for myself, with a few other people so that it won't be too empty, but not too many of them, so it won't be too crowded, and I wish I could sit in that synagogue alone for a few hours, just looking at the view, breathing the air, praying. Maybe one day.