CHOCHMAS NASHIM: EIKEV : AV INTO ELUL
By: Suri Davis
There is a grayish mauve color when children are provided with paints which they can’t help but want to mix together to see how the colors evolve from one color to another as they continue to mix. The freedom of the mush mash. Many youngsters want that absolute freedom, they are not prepared for the discipline of dipping the paintbrush into one color, patiently cleaning the brush in water before moving on to the next color. Painting is a fine art.
Over Tisha B’av, I watched a couple of Holocaust movies. One of the most haunting thoughts is how these fine and refined families, living in refined homes, with the finest of housewares, crystal, china, beds, linen and housekeepers, overnight were forced to live like packrats in ghettos and concentration camps. It is shockingly haunting to think that one’s world could be tossed overnight into such horrific dystopia.
Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt at the request of Joseph the viceroy to enjoy a gifted life. Over time, they were enslaved, not for ten years, or a few decades, but for 210 years. They lived life under terror and hardship for generations. Broken down like animals. G-d hid from them His open presence.
The Jews developed their slave mentality over 210 years, one might have thought it would take just as long to overcome those horrifying years. G-d accelerated the process by compressing the experience with His open revelation of miracles in Egypt with the ten plagues, then with awe inspiring miracles during the Exodus, and for the entire 40 years in the desert.
G-d broke the twelve tribes, so he could rebuild them as one nation. This week’s parshah, as Moshe continues his causa mortis/pre-death soliloquy, he tells us, that G-d chastises the Jews, as a father chastises his son. We know that each child has a gift to provide the world, that each person creates with G-d as his partner. A father chastises his son not to throw all the paint in one cup, he guides him to put each color in a separate cup, that he should use separate paint brushes or wash the paint brush between colors, so that he can showcase the child’s abilities as each color is highlighted in the child’s painting from his own imagination. Refining the child’s skills, showcasing them, highlighting them.
By all accounts, when G-d created the world, He did so with the countenance of Judgment. If man sins, he will be punished. Aleph Beis, strict rules of law, clear, unequivocal. G-d realized early on with Adam and Eve, that the world could not run on judgment, it would require mercy as well, mercy based in love.
G-d’s destruction of the holy temples in the month of Av, spelled aleph beis, was brutal, the accounts of horror in the book of Lamentation are horrific, but G-d showed mercy, in that He took His anger out on the Temple, and not His entire nation. He gave us an opportunity to repent, to survive and to reach for redemption. In this month of Av, G-d showed us tough love, the love required for us to turn ourselves and our actions around, to refine ourselves.
This Shabbos, Shabbos Mevorchim Chodesh Elul, we move from fear of G-d and His ability to deny us protection from our enemies, to love of G-d, ELUL is an acronym which spells out, I am for my Beloved and my Beloved (G-d) is for me. The higher relationship is love rather than fear.
Once we saw that G-d destroyed our temples, but did not completely annihilate us, we realized the absolute love G-d has for us in permitting us yet another chance to repent and get close to Him. Every year, we are given an opportunity to repent, and continue to ask G-d for our needs. The chutzpah/audacity we have to rebel against G-d and continue to ask Him to provide for us.
This parshah discusses how a man chastises his son, and we pray to G-d that He fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah: That as a woman comforts her son, so too will G-d comfort us, and in Jerusalem we will be comforted.”
Shabbat shalom.
-Suri