Dear Josep,

Last Friday I had the distinct pleasure of exchanging books with a friend of mine who also recently published her book.

Shira Chernoble is a pastoral counselor and massage therapist who has lived in Tekoa for many years. We actually know each other through my mother, because Shira treats clients in a center that is part of the El Halev complex where my mom works, but I got to know her in various settings around Tekoa, especially through her work with DoTerra (an essential oils company).

Her book, Heart 2 Heart Healing, is a collection of stories about individuals and families she has worked with in coping with grief, loss, and chronic illness.  As you can imagine, the stories are sad and painful, but they are also inspiring and uplifting, especially interspersed with Shira’s insights.

Unfortunately, Tekoa has known its share of tragedies in the time Shira has spent here. In 2001, Shira was the one to inform Sherri and Seth Mandell, after a long, harrowing, sleepless night, that the body of their son Koby had been found in a cave in the wadi nearby. You may have heard of the Mandells; they went on to establish the Koby Mandell Foundation, which offers healing retreats and activities to those who have lost family members to terror or illness. Sherri Mandell also penned two books about coping with her loss: The Blessing of a Broken Heart (winner of the National Jewish Book Award) and The Road to Resilience (released this past October).

Shira also wrote about three events that occurred during the time I have lived here: the death of Rabbi Menachem Froman, the controversial former rabbi of Tekoa; the murder of Dalya Lemkus in a terror attack in the fall of 2014; and about the sudden death of Hillel Rodich–an event that affected me very deeply, which I mentioned in the post about Jewish mourning customs.

The thing that struck me about the way Shira wrote about these events was her perspective as someone who is not afraid to confront this terrifying and painful subject. I remember in my work with OneFamily (another organization that helps terror victims), seeing what happened to families that were affected by terror, and the isolation they experienced because their friends just didn’t know how to respond, how to stand in the face of something so difficult and painful and be helpful in any way.

But Shira sees grief and loss as part of what gives life its beauty. That we do have this window of opportunity, called life, to touch each other’s lives, to give each other love, to experience the magnificence of God’s world–and the transience makes it that much more potent. It helps to believe as she does (and I do) that death is not an ending, but a transition, and that our loved ones live on and speak to us in various ways.

I want to quote one passage, from the story of Hillel’s family:

As this was occurring, Seth Mandell (father of Koby, described in the previous story); Eliyana, Koby’s sister; and a journalist “happened to be” walking in the wadi as well. They heard Hillel’s children screaming and rushed to the spring. They called an ambulance, and Eliyana took the children back to the Mandell home. Sherri Mandell, for whom it had been so significant that her friends and neighbors had lovingly fed her during her period of mourning, now fed these children, because they said they were hungry. When the children arrived at the Mandells, I also “happened to be” there when Hillel died, and that I, a trained grief counselor “happened to be” at the Mandell’s when a shocked Hadass came to pick up her children was not insignificant. I believe it was what Dr. Kubler-Ross called a “divine coincidence.” I believe that the presence of Seth and Eliyana, and then Sherri, and then me was Gd’s unfathomable way of embracing Hadass and the children immediately in the face of Hillel’s death.

I paused here, during my first reading, wiping away the tears, and stared at that last sentence. “Gd’s unfathomable way of embracing Hadass and the children immediately in the face of Hillel’s death.”

The tantruming toddler in me wanted to throw the book across the room and scream. God had just inflicted an unimaginable pain on this family. The enormity of it still floors me. I remember getting the notice on my phone, shortly before Shabbat, and literally sinking to the floor in shock. This scenario is one of my worst nightmares. How can we speak of God compassionately embracing, bestowing kindness, when He had just cruelly ripped these children from their father and this woman from her husband?

…And I guess we’re back to the allegory of the moon.

I wrote a letter months ago–in fact, it ended up the last chapter of my book, and that was no accident–about the paradox of believing in God’s ultimate goodness while being angry with Him for difficult things He’s put you through. A brief recap in case you couldn’t be bothered to click the link and reread it: The Talmud asks why the Torah requires a sin-offering as part of the Temple service for Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of the new month). For whose sin is it meant to atone, the Sages ask? The Talmud answers that it is God’s “sin.” God is asking our forgiveness for hiding the moon from us. And as I elaborated in that letter, the darkness of the moon symbolizes the illusion of evil in this world; that beneath everything, all is God, and all is Good, and evil, like the phases of the moon, is a mere trick of the light. God asks our forgiveness because for reasons we don’t entirely understand, He cannot bestow this light on us without illusions and filters–not yet. He must hide it sometimes. And He knows it is painful, and He asks us to forgive Him for inflicting this pain.

But when I thought back on that letter, I realized something else about that allegory. When we look at the moon, don’t only see its dark side. We see its light side, too–usually at the same time. Sometimes the moon is full and we see only light. Sometimes the moon is new, and we don’t see it at all. But for most of the month, there is an ongoing, dynamic interplay between light and darkness. Light and darkness are completely opposite, completely mutually exclusive, and yet they have existed side by side in the night sky since the creation of the world.

Can we be in the midst of darkness and cling to the tiny sliver of light, having faith that it represents the Truth?

I feel that there is a keyword missing here, one that isn’t faith.

The word is trust.

Can we trust God?

Can we trust Him, when we know that at a moment’s notice, He may very well take away everything we hold dear? Can we trust Him, that even if He prescribes death itself, or profound emotional or physical suffering, as part of our fate–this, too, is good? It seems so easy, so comforting, to believe in a God who will always protect you from pain and suffering. But God invented pain and suffering. And He allows it to inflict us no matter how faithful we are.

Thoughtful people of faith must grapple with this difficult truth. And they have–for centuries.

I remember struggling with it when crouching in the “safe corner” of our house during a rocket barrage a couple years ago, trying to figure out what to say to calm my frightened children. I knew it might be comforting to tell them that Hashem would protect us. But I also knew that I couldn’t promise them that. Why would Hashem protect us, and not Koby Mandell? Why would Hashem protect us, and not Dalya Lemkus, or the Fogel family, or Eyal, Gilad, and Naftali?

We don’t know. And in that corner, with the sirens wailing, I had to reaffirm an idea  that is far too complex to communicate to small children. The idea that if of all places those haphazard missiles could have landed, if one lands right here in our living room, there is no way to call that an accident of fate. It must be part of God’s plan. I had to trust Him that whatever He decides about where that missile would land, it would be for the ultimate good. And that He would provide enough light in the darkness for me to find my way–whatever that might be.

This is not easy. Not easy at all.

Anyway. I’m sorry to say that Shira’s book is only available through her. I might try and convince her to let me help her publish it through CreateSpace and/or make an eBook version so a wider audience will have access to it. I really think it’s an important and valuable read for anyone who has ever struggled with grief… which is, pretty much, every single human being on this planet.

Much love,

Daniella

Dear Josep,

As you and I have discussed recently, I have been experiencing a struggle in my relationship with God in the last number of years. There are many factors that played into this. Some were related to my own maturation and the deepening of the complexity in my understanding of what He is and isn’t. Some were the result of encounters with life situations, or with issues directly related to the Torah that sent me into something of a tailspin–having explanations that satisfied me intellectually, but not emotionally. As you can imagine, current events have brought that struggle to the forefront, and I find myself asking that same question, that ultimate question all people of faith struggle with again and again, phrased by Abraham when facing the destruction of Sodom: “Shall the Judge of all the Earth not act justly?” Why do good people suffer? Why does the all-powerful God choose not to intervene to protect the innocent?

If there is one thing I have been consistently learning in the past few years, it is how much of the distance and suffering I have felt in all relationships in my life come from suppressing and denying anger I feel towards the other. And how much can be repaired by simply giving space to that anger, and forgiving myself for having it and the other for triggering it (whether it was their fault or not).

You see, it is not that hard for me to acknowledge my anger and forgive someone who has hurt me, either intentionally or unintentionally, when he or she did something wrong. It is much harder for me to give space to my anger when it feels unjustified. Because what do I want from them? It wasn’t their fault, what right do I have to be angry? I am learning, however, that feelings don’t work that way. They are not rational and don’t respond to reason. I can’t make my anger go away by simply telling it that it doesn’t make sense. So it’s all right to feel anger even when the object of my anger truly did nothing wrong. You can’t choose what you feel. You can only choose how to respond. And when I choose to respond by suppressing and denying anger, it doesn’t actually disappear; it expresses itself in other, less healthy ways. It’s a question of how the anger can be given space in a way that is healthy, with trust on both ends that it won’t spell the destruction of the relationship. We get angry, we forgive each other, and we move on.

And the truth is that I get angry at God. I get furious with Him. Yes, I believe everything He does is for the ultimate good… but why does it have to hurt so much? God is all-powerful; couldn’t He have created a world where suffering was not necessary? Yes, yes, I’ve studied all the well-known Jewish sources that address this deep question; I know that God created the world as an act of His love, and that love is about giving, and God wanted to bestow the ultimate good on the world, and that that ultimate good is God himself, and in order for Him to do this, He needed to give us free will, and there can be no free will without the existence of evil to choose against. But He is still all-powerful and this arrangement of the spiritual universe is all His creation; couldn’t He have changed it so suffering wasn’t necessary?

There is a debate in the Talmud between the two great schools, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, on whether it was easier for man to have been created, or not to have been created at all. They both agree in the end that it would have been easier for man not to have been created. From my vantage point, here in the Middle East in these days of instability, violence and despair, this conclusion seems clear. Thanks a bunch, God, for all this ultimate goodness stuff, but really, I’d rather have nothing than to have to tolerate and witness so much suffering.

And that kind of thinking made me feel so ashamed of my lack of gratitude. God gave me so much, blessed me with so many wonderful things, and this is how I thank Him, by wishing He’d never created the world in the first place? Don’t I believe He knows what He’s doing? How could I possibly be angry at Him?

Something in that magic, soul-cleansing power of the High Holiday season, however, opened up a path for me. I realized that I needed to accept that it was okay for me to be angry. God may have made the world to bestow His ultimate goodness on it, but He also made us with a limited capacity to see and understand His plan, precisely so we would not remain complacent in the face of injustice. Didn’t God name our forefather Jacob, and our entire nation after him, “Israel”–“He who struggles with God“?

So I started letting myself be angry–and expressing that anger. For many years, I haven’t really been speaking to Him freely the way I used to. I was brogez, to use the childish term from Israeli kindergartens for not being on speaking terms. I understood that my silence was not constructive; that it was better to spew anger at Him than to say nothing at all. So I started speaking my mind. Even when all I could say was, “Why are You doing this to me?” Even when whatever it was was something petty and inconsequential. I know that God cares about everything more deeply than I could possibly understand. There is no such thing as pain so small that it doesn’t matter to Him.

On a Thursday night during Succot, we received the tragic news of that horrible terror attack in Samaria in which a young Jewish couple was murdered by terrorists right in front of their four little children. It was especially difficult because the couple was pretty well-known in the religious community, and I know several people who knew them personally. After Shabbat, we received more awful news–two Jews stabbed to death in the Old City of Jerusalem, the wife and two-year-old child of one of them injured and in the hospital. (As I’ve mentioned, the situation has only deteriorated since.) Naturally, I was very upset about these things, and started to feel the crushing fear of yet another escalation in violence and what it might mean for us. I wrote in a previous entry about the concept of “chosenness”; I felt anger and despair over the persecution that seemed to be built in to that role. Why, why, why? Why does being Jewish have to entail such constant suffering?

But then, on Simḥat Torah, I stood in front of the ark (the cabinet where the Torah scrolls are kept), and read out the passages we recite before taking the Torah scrolls out and dancing with them. And I remembered that as much as being Jewish entails constant suffering, it also entails so much of the deepest joy. As I danced with the Torah scroll, hugging it to my heart, offering it to my kids to kiss, I felt the profoundest sense of purpose and mission, and that brought me such elation. And I looked into my heart and suddenly saw something there I hadn’t seen in a long time. I did not feel that I was struggling against God. I felt that I was struggling with Him–together with Him. That even these terrible tragedies and this awful suffering was part of His plan for ultimate good, and that it was really for my good too, even if I couldn’t see it. And that by taking part in this mission He gave to the Jewish people, I was partnering with Him in the act of bringing the world to a place where He will one day be able to bestow His ultimate good.

And I realized that I had forgiven Him for the pain He causes me.

Months ago, I read an intriguing article by Rabbi Ari Kahn about the period between Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israeli Independence Day (or, as I call it, Israeli Emotional Roller Coaster Week), in which he talks about the Talmudic commentary on God’s instructions for the Temple sacrifices on Rosh Ḥodesh, the first day of the new month. He writes that we are commanded to bring what the Torah calls a “sin-offering” (hata’at) on Rosh Ḥodesh, but unlike every other time we are commanded to bring this type of offering, there is no sin listed that we are atoning for. The Talmud explains that God asks for a sin-offering on Rosh Ḥodesh, not as an atonement for a sin of ours, but a “sin” of His–the “sin” of diminishing the moon.

Now obviously, this is not literal. God does not commit sins, and diminishing the moon seems to be a silly thing to be “apologizing” for. But there is a deep allegory here. The Jewish people is often compared to the moon, its phases representing the ups and downs we have experienced throughout our turbulent history. In Judaism we talk about God “hiding His face,” referring to times of great darkness and evil, where His goodness is not easily found. In contrast, there are times of “revelation,” when it is much easier to see His hand in the events that are transpiring around us. The thing about the phases of the moon is that it looks like the moon is waxing and waning, growing and shrinking, appearing and disappearing. But it isn’t. The moon remains exactly the same. The phases are an illusion, a trick of the light.

What the Talmud is saying is that God created the world exactly the way He wanted in exactly the ideal way. And He knows that the moon is always there. On Rosh Ḥodesh, He apologizes for the trick of the light, for the illusion that we humans perceive as the waxing and waning of the moon. He is asking us to forgive Him for hiding Himself from us without helping us understand why He does this. He does it because it is really for our ultimate good, but He knows we can’t know or experience that. So He asks our forgiveness for the pain of the illusion of darkness.

When I read that article I was floored. The concept of “forgiving God” seemed crazy and radical. We are the ones who are supposed to be asking for forgiveness! We are the ones who are imperfect and are constantly falling short of our potential and making bad choices! God is just doing His job! He is the very definition of all that is right and true! How on earth could we have the arrogance to think there was any need “forgive” him?

But now I understand. It is not God who needs our forgiveness. It is we who need to allow ourselves to forgive Him. And to forgive ourselves for feeling anger and despair when He hides His face.

And when I remembered that article, I realized that God was hearing my anger, and asking me to forgive Him. I still don’t understand, and the darkness still hurts. But knowing He knows my pain and “wishes” it was not necessary helps me feel that we are on the same page.

So I forgave God. And He forgave me. And something, some wound that has been festering in my soul for years, seems to have started to heal.

Love,

Daniella