It is said that in the Polish town of Kotzk they searched for the truth, and the road is bumpy and very bumpy. We know the saying of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, zt"l: "I stand with one foot in the seventh heaven and the other foot in the underworld."
Rabbi Mendel was profound in the theory of skepticism. The only certainty – that is, that which stands above any doubt – is the doubt itself. That doubt that arises from the clear knowledge that man will never come to realize the great kind of unknown. In this view, Rabbi Mendel mentions Socrates a bit - I know I don't know.
And every New Year, and all the terrible days, I wrestle with it.
Once a Chassid came to the terrible and holy Rabbi Mendel of Kotzk, and his heart was heavy. "I am forced to meditate and contemplate and have no rest," the Chassid exclaimed to his rabbi. "What," asked the Kotzek Rebbe, "is the thing you are forced to contemplate?" He said to him, "Is there really judgment and judgment?" "What do you care?" replied the Kotzker. "Rabbi," wondered the Chassid, "if there is no law and judgment, what is the purpose of all creation?" "What do you care?" repeated the Kotzker. "If there is no judgment and judgment, what good is the Torah?" insisted the Hasid. He said, "What do you care?" The Chassid shrieked: "What did the Rebbe? What would I care?"
"Oh, if you care so much," answered the terrible and holy man, "then you are a good Jew, and a good Jew is entitled to reflect, he will not be offended."
Because the very demand, the very digging into faith itself and its importance, is part of faith. A convert to anger who eats pork in cream on Yom Kippur in defiance is a great believer - but through the negative.
The Silent Scream
The Kotzker once said to his outstanding student, Rabbi Yitzhak Meir Alter, who later became the founder of the Gur dynasty: "If I had at least known that I would be in the afterlife, I would have gone out dancing in the middle of the city... If only I knew."
The Kotzek Rebbe spent the last 20 years of his life in seclusion within the four walls of the small room. Following an affair shrouded in secret, which took place on Shabbat in the Toldot affair, a large camp broke away from its students.
And to this day it is whispered about that Shabbat: "On that Shabbat that Rabbeinu zt"l fell ill."
And he was left alone in the small room, where mice were infested and abandoned. Thus the last years of the Kotzker passed through the agony that is the lot of those who seek the truth with absolute commitment.
The very demand, the very digging into the faith itself and its importance, is part of faith. A convert to anger who eats pork in cream on Yom Kippur in defiance is a great believer - but through the negative
And we must delve deeper into what he said: "When a person has something to shout about, and wants to shout, but cannot shout, this is the greatest cry."
And about this it must be explained.
Thanks to Ovadia Hamama's beautiful melody for the liturgy "Please Force," it seems that there is no one who does not know the words, "Who received and heard our cry, knows mysteries."
Rabbi Uri of Strelisk, the holy serap – of whom Uri Zvi Greenberg, the poet of Catrog and Faith, was one of his descendants – explained it this way: "The truth is that we don't know how to pray at all. We are crying out for help from the urgency of the hour. The soul is attuned to spiritual needs, but we do not have the power to express the soul's intention. Therefore, we pray that although God will hear our cry, he will also hear the silent cry of the soul, who knows the mysteries."
The Tefillin that Fell to Israel
Friends and friends, I don't have the energy for troublesome year summaries. I am a concerned Jew. And let's not be fooled - as you read these lines you and I know that there is a big elephant in the room.
In The Third Man, Orson Welles exemplary portrays Harry Lime, a mysterious crook. Writer Graham Greene wrote the screenplay. But the well-known lines in the film were written by Welles. "In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgia family, there were wars, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they managed to produce Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. Switzerland had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace – and what did they manage to produce? The cuckoo clock."
Life in Israel has always been excessively interesting, but we are now in the cuckoo's nest.
The traditional New Year greeting in China is "Have a boring year."
The Chinese greeting sounds puzzling, meager, grayish. An uninspiring blessing that echoes softness and lowness in the face of existence. A bourgeois yawn in front of the seductive cosmos. But as a family owner, her wisdom and quiet power are understandable to me without unnecessary explanation. On the contrary, the deeper you explore and study it, the more the blessing will lose its charm.
By the way, in Yiddish there is the negative version - the curse "Have an interesting life". And my dear ones, there is no worse curse than her.
Because here, in the good land, our longed-for homeland, and I am not a little cynical, a little boredom is now required. A year of yawning after yawn. A year of prosaic headlines about labor disputes, weather and offenses with no disgrace. A year in which death will rest, a year without wars and rockets, the year of Switzerland and cuckoo clocks in Israel.
A year in which the conflicted tribes that make up the oldest nation in history will find points of interface, connection and embrace.
And in these terrible days and finally, it is appropriate and necessary to mention Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, zt"l, whom the people called "Israel's apologist."
Once, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak would pray while praising G-d: "G-d, Israel is the tefillin in your head. A simple Jew, if his tefillin falls to the ground, he carefully raises them, cleans them and kisses them. God of Merom, your tefillin have fallen to the earth."
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