The Quixote Principle: A Sermon For Hanukkah

The Quixote Principle: A Sermon For Hanukkah

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

December 15, 2017

In Memory Of My Father, Zev Heilman Z”L

I went to see Man Of La Mancha a few nights ago.  It was snowing all day and the roads were treacherous, but this play has a special draw for me and so I went.

Man Of La Mancha has always been like that for me, at least since I first heard the original Broadway cast recording.  I was in high school then, and the play’s idealistic—quixotic, you might say—message, told in music, hit home with me right away. Not long afterwards, I was fortunate enough to see a production of it in Los Angeles, with the original stars, Richard Kiley and Joan Diener, in a performance that had an almost religious effect on me.

The story of the play is based on one of the oldest and most famous novels in world literature (some actually call it the first modern novel), Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote.  Since its first publication 400 years ago, it has entertained, amused and inspired generations of readers in any number of languages and adaptations. I first read it in Hebrew, in a children’s, abridged, version. 

But there is yet one more level to my appreciation for this beautiful story.

When I was a child, my father was a teacher at a vocational high school in Israel.  One day—I’m not sure why I didn’t go to school that day—my father took me to work with him.  I didn’t actually go into his classroom when he was teaching, but through the keyhole I could hear him talking about Don Quixote.  I saw him waving his arms, probably imitating a windmill, bringing to life this most memorable scene from the novel.  From that moment on, I learned to be as enthralled as my father was, by the story of a man in whose imagination windmills turned into giants, and who saw in a common innkeeper’s daughter, an elegant lady to be admired from afar.

Don Quixote’s imagination runs wild on him. Psychologists have been quick to analyze the delusional and dysfunctional man that he must have been, and have even named a psychosis after him: The Quixote Principle.

But Don Quixote, the man, is far from mad.  Yes, he is a figment of his creator’s feverish imagination, but his sense of fairness, equality and justice are far from wrong.  Aldonza, the woman who, in his fantasy, transforms into the fair Lady Dulcinea, is taken, abused, and demeaned by men who are attracted to her beauty and gender.  Is rescuing her from her tormentors such a mad thing to do?

And perhaps he did see giants that he felt needed to be felled.  Does that make him mad?  I’m not even speaking of modern-day, giant corporations that prey on human frailties—for example, the food and beverage industries that tell us that sugar is yummy, that Coke is “the real thing,” and that you, too, can turn from a common geek into a sexy hunk if you just quaff the right beer. And I am not referring to supersized ego politicians who would have you believe that, if only you voted for them—no matter how bad or even criminal their past and present behavior might be—the world would be a better place.  But aside from them, there are other, real, giants in the world—disease, ignorance, prejudice and terrorism to name a few.  Does it make a person mad to fight these giants and defeat them once and for all?

Maybe Don Quixote was mad.  Maybe all the evil he saw around him did affect his brain. No matter how many times he fell, he rose and rose again---“To right the unrightable wrong,” until he could rise no more.  Maybe that is a kind of madness.

Cynics would have us believe that reality cannot be changed.  Things have always been bad.  There is, and always was, immeasurable cruelty in the world. And there has never been, anywhere, a time of peace longer than a decade or two, and that only due to one side having superior military strength. 

You might as well be tilting at windmills if you think otherwise.

In Greek mythology, heroes fall because it is their preordained, unavoidable, fate to fall.  Trying to change anything is useless. One of the most famous myths tells that, at his birth, Oedipus was abandoned to die on a barren cliff.  Why? Because a soothsayer foretold that he would one day kill his father and marry his mother.  I know—gross.  But that’s exactly what happened, at least according to the myth.  The message of Greek mythology is that defying fate and the will of the gods can only lead to misery and pain.  We might as well give in right from the start.

But in another land, at just about the same time, other stories were told.  These taught that there can be change; that justice should be—must be—pursued; and that all people deserve the benefit of dignity, equality and respect. The stories that we the Jews told were about freeing slaves and feeding the hungry. The Bible—the written record of that vision—is all about people who do argue with powerful men—the Pharaohs and emperors of the world; it’s about simple men and women who defy fate, who confront evil, who demand justice even from God, the almighty Creator of the Universe.

That the two cultures were headed toward a violent clash is therefore no surprise.  The clash took place in the second century BCE, in the form of the Maccabees’ Rebellion. More than it was about control of Israel—then called Judea—this revolt was actually about two opposing world views:  On one side, the Greek system, which demanded unquestioning submission to gods and kings. On the other, the Jewish view, which upheld that freedom is an inalienable human right.  More than the Maccabees fought for a piece of land, they took up arms to fight for religious freedom, for freedom of thought, for the freedom to question, to doubt, and to make real once-impossible dreams.

The Maccabees accomplished their mission.  They defeated the mightiest army of the day.  Under Judah the Maccabee, freedom was restored; and the Temple in Jerusalem—the temple that the Greeks had defiled by placing a golden statue of Zeus in it—was rededicated.  The Maccabees then instituted an annual celebration to commemorate the amazing victory of the few against the many, and they called it Hanukkah—the Hebrew word for “dedication.”

Two hundred years later, it was the Romans’ turn. The Romans went even farther than the Greeks:  They destroyed Jerusalem and burned the Temple that stood in its heart.  Forbidding the Jews to ever rebuild, they tried to make us forget our national roots and our history. 

But like Don Quixote, we rose, and we rose again.  For two thousand years, nation after nation tried to destroy us, but without success.  And a mere three years after the Holocaust, which saw one half of the world’s Jews annihilated, we rose yet again, and we established a new state in the land of Judea, the State of Israel.  And even though the Temple has not been rebuilt—there is a Moslem mosque standing on its ruins today—the city of Jerusalem is once again Israel’s capital, the seat of its government and the center of Israel’s spiritual, political and cultural life. 

I can see the appeal that Cervantes’s novel, Don Quixote, had for my father. From a letter that he received at the end of the Holocaust, my father learned about the tragic loss of his entire family.  Though he never quite recovered, like Don Quixote he never abandoned hope. Dedicating his life to rebuild that which the Nazis destroyed, he started a family, built his own home, and became an educator for hundreds if not thousands of pupils—me among them—teaching Jewish history and literature, Hebrew and The Bible.  Throughout his life, my father kept before his eyes the vision of the frail old man of La Mancha, a man who truly believed that, “To fight for the right/Without question or pause/To be willing to march into Hell/For a heavenly cause” was a mission well worth dedicating your life to. 

So tonight, on the very day that my father would have turned 101, I want to say, Happy birthday, Abba; I hope you know that I have not given up the quest, that I have dedicated my life to the same ideals you held high: freedom, justice and the undying love for our people; that Hanukkah for me is more than about a miracle that happened two thousand years ago.  Like you, tonight I celebrate a long string of miracles, the wondrous miracle of our People’s survival against all odds, despite all our oppressors.

And truly, I believe that the world is better for this.

May the lights of Hanukkah continue to shine brightly throughout the long, dark nights of this season; may they inspire us never to lose hope, to continue to dream, to carry on our noble quest for what is right, fair and just, and, hopefully, in our own day or in the days of our children, “To reach the unreachable star.”

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman

November 29: A Day To Remember

November 29: A Day To Remember

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 30, 2017

I know it isn’t Purim yet.  That jolly holiday of Hammentaschen (those wonderful poppy seed- or jelly-filled pastries), of make-believe and masquerades, won’t be for another three months or so. But Jewish history is filled with miracles, of days designated to be days of sorrow but which, somehow, at the very last minute, turn into joyful celebrations instead.  And this evening I want to talk about one of those days: November 29.

Though it isn’t my birthday, I owe my life to that day, and to the heroes who made it happen.

The story goes back to 1944, but before I get into the story itself, you need to know something about my mother. 

My mother was 16 when World War Two erupted and the Germans invaded Poland.  Within a month the Germans overran the entire country, including her hometown of Katowice, in the southern part of Poland, not far from Krakow.  The roundup of the Jewish population began not long afterwards.  My mother’s journey of persistence and survival took her to several ghettoes and prisons, and took nearly five years to complete.  She escaped four times from the grip of the Nazis, and finally succeeded in reaching Israel—called Palestine at the time and under the control of the British—in March 1944. 

Holocaust survival was often a matter of luck and chance, but in the case of my mother—as well as a few hundred others—there was yet another reason.  They were all members of Ha-No’ar Ha-Tzioni, a Jewish youth group that was organized yet before the war in order to prepare young men and women to make aliyah to Israel, to teach them the crafts and skills that they would need as they began a new life there. When the war broke out, however, the mission of this youth group changed drastically: they would resist the Nazis and establish escape routes for themselves and for their families.  They organized into small units, each with its own dedicated purpose: to obtain weapons, forge passports, establish escape routes and set up safe houses along the way.  My mother was put in charge of one of those units.

They called themselves Nasza Groupa—“Our Group”—a simple name that belies the complexity and greatness of who they were and what they did.

Three other members of this group were Emil Brigg, Danuta Firstenberg and Olek Gutman.  They were higher up in the group, and their mission was to contact members of the Haganah—the organization that later became the Israel Defense Force.  By then, the Haganah had set up a cell in Budapest, and from that secret location its members were coordinating rescue and resistance operations throughout Eastern Europe.

Along the way, however, the three comrades, Emil, Danuta and Olek, were given another assignment, with fateful consequences.

There was a man by the name of Victor Janikowski, a Jew who, along with another Jewish kapo—or Nazi collaborator—tricked Jewish refugees into giving him as much as $2000 a person (!) to lead them to safety.  Janikowski, however, pocketed the money and secretly delivered the refugees to the German police.  Soon his actions became known to members of the Groupa.  Emil, Olek and Danuta (with assumed Aryan names and forged papers), were assigned to find and kill Janikowski.

It was a dangerous mission, and though they ultimately succeeded, the three were soon discovered and arrested by the Gestapo.  They were brutally tortured for twenty-one days, but did not break and did not give away what they knew about the Haganah cell in Budapest and about their other contacts.  Had they betrayed their friends in the Groupa, there is no doubt that only a very few would have survived.  Only three weeks later, when they were sure that everyone else had managed to escape, did the three finally give up the information sought by the Nazis.

“You will all die tomorrow,” a Nazi officer informed them.  They were even shown chalk marks drawn along a brick wall, where they would be made to stand and be shot the next morning, the morning of November 29, 1944.

But that was not to happen.  Around midnight, these Jewish heroes of the Nasza Groupa heard the rumble of tanks driving past the prison.  A few hours later, more tanks, going in the other direction.  Then a complete silence, broken sporadically by scattered machine gun fire.  As morning broke, still more tanks arrived.  Looking through a window set high up in the cell, Emil saw that these were Russian tanks. They were saved.  It was November 29, and it also happened to be Danuta’s birthday.

A day designated for sorrow had turned instead into a day of liberation and celebration.

But the story of this date does not end here.

Exactly three years later, a vote was held in the United Nations.  On 29 November 1947 (70 years ago almost to the day), the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states:  A Jewish state and an Arab state.  The Jewish government accepted the decision; the Arabs rejected it, but the State of Israel was now on legal footing, and half a year later David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, would declare its independence, reestablishing for the first time in 2000 years a Jewish homeland, in its historical birthplace, for the dispersed and dispossessed Jewish People.

Perhaps—as some believe—certain days were designated by some higher power to be special days.  If so, then November 29 must be one of them. 

On the political stage, the Partition vote is still source of debate and contention, perhaps even more so now than it was then.  But the date is also marked annually by survivors of the Nasza Groupa and their descendants, who for several decades now have been gathering every year on or around November 29^th to celebrate and retell the miracle of their survival. 

There is an epilogue to this story: After making his way to Israel, Emil Brigg joined the Israel Defense Force and, following the 1948 War of Independence, was awarded the army’s highest award, Gibbor Yisrael, “A Hero of Israel.”  He passed away in 2002.  May his memory be a blessing.

For two years, Olek Gutman, who changed his name to Alex Gatmon, conducted revenge operations against SS officers.  Later, after serving in the Israeli Air Force, he joined Israel’s fabled secret service, the Mossad, and helped capture Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the Nazi Holocaust.  He also was instrumental in the clandestine rescue of 35,000 Jewish refugees from Morocco, bringing them to safe harbor in Israel. He died in 1981.  May his memory be a blessing.

Dina Gilboa—the Hebrew name Danuta Firstenberg adopted in Israel—lived a long life and established a thriving family.  She died last year.  At this year’s Nasza Groupa reunion and commemoration, held just earlier today in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dina’s daughter, Shuvit, spoke about her mother.  May her memory be a blessing.

L’havdil—to make a thousand separations— with God’s help we will celebrating my mother’s 95^th birthday this coming January 1.  Last month, her eldest great-granddaughter, Opal, now 17 years old, went on a school-sponsored trip to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.  The airport she landed in was—of all places—Katowice, my mother’s hometown.  Way to close a circle!!!  She—fourth generation survivor—also spoke at the commemoration today, relating her experiences and reactions to what she saw, heard and learned.

And so it was that a day, the 29^th of November, had turned from sorrow to celebration, from devastation to renewal.  It could have ended otherwise, but instead it became the beginning of a new life—not only for me, but also for the State of Israel and for the entire Jewish People.

On Purim we hail Esther as the great hero who saved our people from imminent destruction.  The truth, however, is that we are here today because of so many heroes, so many who gave their lives so that we could be here; so many men, women and children who endured untold torture and suffering to ensure the survival of our people.  May their lives and deeds become a testament to human endurance in the face of devastation, and may we be worthy and deserving to carry forward the great responsibility they passed on to us: the continuity of the Jewish People and its epic legacy.

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman

Overcoming Fear: Vayishlach

Overcoming Fear: Vayishlach

Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 30, 2017

Psychologists say that human beings are born with the capacity to fear.  Fear, you might say, is built into our DNA; it’s part of our defensive mechanism.  We are afraid of dying, afraid of falling, afraid of being hurt.

Granted, some fears are learned.  We learn from eating bad or spoiled food that it might kill us.  That’s a good thing to learn, and has led to many discoveries and inventions—such as refrigerators, and not to eat mushrooms we do not recognize.

Some fears are triggered at a later stage in our life, perhaps as a result of an experience we just had.  Fear of the unknown is perhaps one of those fears we are all born with—and quite possibly the one that we are least capable of controlling.

We learn about all sorts of dangers from our parents and teachers, and certainly from our own life experience.  Some of our fears may even turn into anxieties, or neuroses.

Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, had much to fear, not least being his twin brother, Esau. Esau couldn’t be trusted; Jacob knew that.  He was impetuous and quick to rage. Additionally, however, a fact that everyone knew was that once provoked, Esau’s thirst for revenge was insatiable. Nearly twelve years after tricking his brother into selling him the birthright for a bowl of stew, Jacob had to flee and seek refuge in a foreign land because of Esau’s ongoing murderous and smoldering rage.

One can only imagine Jacob’s distress that first night away from home—the first time that he could remember not being surrounded by his mother’s love and protection. 

But Jacob was a smart lad.  From his mother’s side of the family, he learned to barter and negotiate—skills he found useful in his dealings with Laban, his mother’s brother.  And he knew enough to sense jealousy when his in-laws began to envy his success and tried to trick him, much as he had—years earlier—tricked Esau.

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4—36:43), it is 20 years later, and Jacob is returning home.  Only now he has even more to fear than ever before.  Esau, Jacob learns, is coming at him with a large contingent of armed men on horseback.  And whereas when he left he had nothing but the clothes on his back, he is returning as a wealthy and successful man, with a family, including women and small children, and many flocks and possessions that he needed to protect.

Jacob resorts to tactics he knows well—flattery and bargaining.  He sends gifts to his brother; he tells Esau that seeing his face is like seeing God.  But at the same time he also takes no chances, and he divides his family into two camps—hoping that, if Esau attacks, at least one group might survive.

But that’s only the beginning of Jacob’s travails at this point in his life.  Even though he successfully staves off the danger posed by Esau, he still has to face the uncertainties of survival in a land filled with people who lived by the sword, people who first took what they wanted and only afterwards said please.  Life will not be kind to Jacob: Vayishlach contains the stories of the rape of Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter; the brutally savage revenge exacted by two of his sons, Dinah’s brothers Shimon and Levi; the death of his father, Isaac (and, according to the rabbis, his mother, Rebecca) as well as the death of his mother’s nurse, Deborah, his last remaining connection to his past.  Worst of all, Jacob’s beloved wife, Rachel, dies in giving birth to Benjamin.  Bowed by grief and sorrow, Jacob becomes withdrawn, powerless to control his sons and warn them against the greed, the jealousy and rivalry that he sees rising among them.  Jacob is now even more fearful than ever—afraid for his family, afraid for himself, afraid for the future he took such care to attain and secure.

In his beautiful and often-quoted poem, “Life Is A Journey,” Rabbi Alvin Fine describes the evolutions of the soul.  “From grief to understanding, from fear to faith,” he writes.  It’s an important lesson, one first taught by Jacob.

Having lost so much, Jacob could have given in to his sorrow.  He could have given in to his fear and taken flight once again.  But instead, he chose to fight.  He spends a long night on top of a barren mountain and wrestles with an unknown being—some say it was his own conscience, others that it was Esau himself.  At sunrise, the mysterious stranger admits defeat and grants Jacob a blessing—and a new name, Israel.  “For you have struggled with men and with divine beings, and you have won,” the angel explains the name.  Jacob is now armed with new confidence.  His grief has turned to understanding, and his fear has evolved to faith.

Jacob knew about faith.  He heard about Abraham’s blind obedience to God’s commands; he knew about Isaac’s submission to his fate.  His would be different. His faith is conditional. When God promises Jacob protection along his path, Jacob bargains:  I will worship you, “If you protect me.” Later, uncertain of God’s memory, Jacob, like a child, reminds God of this promise.  At this point, however, he finally begins to understand what true faith really is. 

There is too much of the realist in Jacob.  He will never leave up to chance—or fate, as the Greeks called it—or even to God, the important matters of life.  The business of survival, for example.  But from this moment on, Jacob understands that he is part of a long process.  Just as Abraham and Isaac each had a role to play in the evolution of the Jewish People, so does he now. It will be Jacob’s role to teach his children about walking with God at their side, with God in their hearts, with God’s laws guiding their lives.  He will teach them about faith.

Jacob’s—Israel’s—faith is about hope, about not being afraid, about survival against the odds. It’s about carrying on our mission regardless of the dangers.  It’s about overcoming fear and accomplishing the goals before you.  Faith is the source of strength that lies within each of us.

Fear never goes away.  We learn to control some fears, only to discover new ones.  Yet what we learn from our third Patriarch, Jacob, is not to be discouraged or disheartened.  Our faith is our strength as we take our first steps forward, toward an unknown future, toward a promised day and a promised land. 

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman

Where To Find God: Toldot 2017

Where To Find God

D’var Torah for Shabbat Toldot

Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

November 16, 2017

A student of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, once asked the great rabbi:  “In our prayer, the Tefilah, why do we refer to God as ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob?’ Is there—God forbid!—more than one God?  Did our forefathers, the great patriarchs of the Jewish People, not each serve the one and same Creator of Heaven and Earth?”  Answered the rabbi:  “We say: ‘God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,’ for Isaac and Jacob did not base their work on the searching and service of Abraham; they themselves searched for the unity of the Maker and His service.”

In this famous story we see the genius of the Baal Shem Tov.  For his words not only answer his pupil’s question.  He more than merely explained the threefold repetition of the word “God.”  Rather, by his response the great rabbi and teacher placed a similar burden on each one of us.  We do not merely rely on the teachings of our ancestors; we do not merely mimic their behavior.  Just as each of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs had to seek God in his and her way, so does each of us, in our turn, struggle with the same difficult questions.  We too seek God in places we did not know, in strange lands and new times.  We too seek to understand: Where are you, God? How do we recognize your presence?  And more importantly, how do we reach you?  What paths to you lie before us that we have not yet explored?

The stories we read about in the Torah offer us our first clues.

Abraham looked up for the answers to his questions. Gazing at the stars, he realized that God was beyond everything and anything that we might be able to see or know.  Looking to the tops of mountains, he knew where he might find God’s message, and at the top of one particular mountain, Mt. Moriah, he understood what God asked of him:  Not sacrifice, but dedication; not the killing of his child, but rather the compassionate teaching and upbringing that would guide Isaac on his own path, to his own understanding of God’s purpose.

However, at the top of the mountain, at the moment that he was holding the knife over his son, at the very instant when God restrained his hand, Abraham understood that, as far as Isaac was concerned, this was as far as he could go. Earlier, as they climbed up the mountain together, the boy had asked his father some pertinent questions about the nature of this journey:  “Here is the knife, father; here is the wood and the fire; but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham answered as well as he could, but his response left much unexplained.  “God will see to the sacrifice,” he said.  TBD.  He himself didn’t know.  From now on, Abraham realized, Isaac would be seeking his own answers, looking for God on his own, along his own lonely and difficult journey. 

Isaac’s perspective also changes up on that mountaintop.  Isaac would never again be as innocent and trusting as he once was.  His vision of God would be forever tainted by his understanding that he, Isaac, was the intended sacrifice; his view of God would be forever eclipsed by the sun’s reflection that he saw on the knife poised above his heart.  Isaac understood the irony of a God who sometimes seems to play games with us, a God who has a cruel side to Him, but who ultimately could not—would not, ever again—ask for the terrible price of human sacrifice.

Life and circumstances would never be the same for Isaac.  His home life was not peaceful.  He found love late in life—he was forty when Rebecca came into his life, sixty when he became a father.  Then, their twin boys, Jacob and Esau, were always struggling, always fighting.  Isaac had his preference among the two; he loved Esau, the hunter, the man of the open fields and untamed wilderness.  Rebecca loved Jacob, in whom she saw more of herself and the family that she had left behind to marry Isaac. Theirs was a house divided, with whispering and intrigue going on behind the tent flaps.

Moreover, in his life’s work as a farmer, Isaac endured many hardships.  Drought forced him and his family to move frequently.  For a while he lived among the Philistines, whose rules and morals were so different from his own.  He dug water wells, which, one by one, the Philistine shepherds, for spite and jealousy, filled in and stopped.

For most of his life, afraid to look up, Isaac instead looked down.  Rather than seek God on mountaintops, Isaac dug wells into the earth—an act that the Rabbis understood as searching for God deep within himself. 

As for Jacob, though the Torah describes him as a quiet, simple man, he was far from it.  A conniver and schemer, he trusted only himself.  Plotting to gain the blessing of the first-born, he waited for the right moment—when Esau came back from the hunt—offering his hungry and tired brother a bowl of soup in return for their father’s blessing and a future inheritance.  Joining with the schemes woven by his mother, Rebecca, Jacob cheats and lies to his father, trusting his instincts rather than the laws of righteousness and morality that his father and grandfather followed.

Jacob’s true understanding of God would only come later, once he leaves home.  Waking up from a fitful night spent on rocky terrain, after a mysterious dream about a ladder with its top in the heavens, Jacob realizes that God resides not only in the heavens above, nor only in the depths below.  Jacob understands that God’s presence is everywhere—particularly where we least expect it.  From that moment on and for the rest of his life, from his life’s experiences and from his interactions with neighbors, in-laws, wives and children, Jacob will learn about love, trust and faith; he will learn about laws of justice and about sh’lom bayit—making peace at home. Along his many journeys, Jacob will learn that God works through us, through our deeds and our words, and that God’s presence is, indeed, everywhere, transcending heights, depths and even time.

Today, some 3200 years after our Patriarchs and Matriarchs walked this earth, our understanding of God is still founded on their perceptions, but it has also changed and evolved.  Shaped by our culture and traditions, influenced by our past as much as by our the present, by our faith as well as by our skepticism, we still look for our vision of God, each of us gazing at the heavens, or deep within our souls, for a sign, for a message all our own.  Like Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, who, during a difficult pregnancy, sought an answer to her question, אנכי זה למה –“Why am I so,” what is the purpose of all this struggle and pain—so does each of us seek meaning and direction along a journey that each of us, uniquely and alone, must undertake.

Here is where the teaching of the Baal Shem Tov comes to help us. Hasidism teaches that holiness is found wherever and whenever we look for it.  Sometimes it appears in disguise.  Sometimes it is completely hidden—yet we must seek it out.  Learning from our ancient ancestors, we understand that holiness does not exist in a vacuum, somewhere outside us.  Like Abraham, we gaze up in awe to experience the grandeur of Creation; like Isaac, we search deep within our hearts for the answer to our doubts and questions.  Like Jacob, we realize that holiness exists in how we relate to one another and to the world around us. In view of the harsh realities of life, holiness is found in the tenderness and compassion that we bring to it. In the loneliness of existence, holiness exists in our friendships and in our love.  In a world where injustice and violence are all too common, holiness can be found in the give and take, in our everyday interactions—at home, on the street and at our workplace. 

May we, like our Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and like our Matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah, find God’s Presence wherever we are and in everything we do.  And may our deeds be a guiding light for our children, and for their children after them, as they seek God and search for their own way of serving God. 

Ken y’hi ratzon—may this be God’s will.

© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman