Eikev – August 10, 2006

The word for this week is NACHIM, comfort. In the world of Assiya, it means regret.

From the Aish Kodesh: G*d needs COMFORTING, too, because G*d is part of every act.

Rabbi Akiva teaches us how to let go of grudges, how to RELENT. Akiva was the son of converts; because they didn’t have Jewish values, they never educated him. He held a grudge against them because of this. He was able to let go of this grudge my teaching an illiterate son to say kaddish for a very bad parent. The father had had relations with the cantor’s wife while the cantor was singing Kol Nidre.

Akiva’s teacher was Gamzu, “And this, too, is for the good.” This statement has both pieces, the pain and the good.

Pain has two parts:

1. Acknowledging that it looks bad. In shiva, this is the first seven days.

2. This, too, is for the good. In shiva, this is the walk around the block where the mourner must push himself to re-engage.

In the story of Job, the men were silent for seven days, the same way Miriam was silent when she was doing teshuva outside the encampment.

We learn that the loudest voice is the silent voice. This is from Eliahu, who was the gilgul (reincarnation) of Pinchas, and also of Nadav and Abihu. What did all these gilguls have in common? They all thought you could find G*d in the fire that comes down. However, HaShem said, “I am not in the fire or in the sound. I am in the mute voice that’s the thin razor’s edge.”

In the story of Job, when the men begin to speak after seven days of silence, all the voices try to make meaning out of the suffering.

The Nystarim is the place where pain gets acknowledged.

“Gamzu le tova” means not that it is for the best, but pain is a framework for choice.

Predators tear their prey. Shchita is a silent cutting, not a tear.

Gamzu said that even though he lost his limbs, his teaching could still go up; he could be an example to Jews for all time to learn to deal with loss and pain.

The “Man in the Photo” refers to the photograph, now in the study guide, of the man who, wearing his tallis and tefillin, stands between the Nazis and the Jews lying on the ground.

Why did the Man in the Photo put on his tefillin to meet the Nazis? This class answers this question.

We need a force: OZE. Aleph, zayin. Zayin means weapon and male sexual organ. Aleph of godliness is riding/controlling the weapon/male force.

When the women danced on Tu B’Av, there were three kinds of women:

1. Beautiful women

2. Women from good families

3. Ugly women.

“Raise your eyes.” Who raised their eyes? Abraham at the akada. HaShem told Cain to raise his eyes, but Cain was unable or unwilling to do so.

OZE is the essence of peace.

If we fight fire with fire, if we demonize the enemy—we can’t do it; they can out-demonize us.

Tefillin are called OZE – that’s why the soldiers in the photographs from the Hezbollah War put them on going into battle.

Wars of annihilation are tied to the way men look at women, because both originate in the lizard brain of the man.

THE PEGLIASH OF GEBEAH, the end of the Book of Shoftim, Judges

The story starts with a lot of eating and drinking. Excessive eating and drinking brings people to their basest level. Stuffing down conscience, love. Esther knew that King Achashveros was vulnerable to control because of the way he tried to control Vashti. A control freak is easily controlled.

The concubine is only for sex while the real wife is for love and childbearing. The concubine ran off with a lover but it didn’t work out and she returned to her father. Her father worked very hard to get her “husband” (is this the right word to use for the consort of a concubine?). This must have been humiliating to her, to have her father try so hard to get rid of her and to have to talk her husband into taking her back. The father was acting from the lizard brain, which says it’s all about honor, it’s all about ego, it’s all about him. She must have felt not valued. Side note: India kills 100,000 girls a year. China does the same; each family is allowed one child, and they want only boys.

When the husband left with the concubine, first came the servants, then the camels, the asses, and finally the concubine.

The husband bypassed the Jebusites, who held Jerusalem, because he preferred a Jewish town in the tribe of Benjamin, Gebeah.

Benjamin: Saul was from Benjamin; part of the temple was in Benjamin. Benjamin was named by Rachel “Son of My Pain,” but Jacob changed his name to “Son of My Right Hand.” It was very unusual for the father to change the name given by the mother. Rachel’s death had a profound effect on the family.

Benjamin’s animal was the wolf. The wolf eats the stragglers, the same way Amalak does.

In Gebeah there was more eating and drinking. Then a crowd of men surrounded the house and demanded the husband be turned over to them so he could be sodomized. Instead, the husband throws the concubine out. She is attacked repeatedly during the night and crawls back, dying on the threshold with her hand on the door. The husband cuts up her body and sends a piece to each tribe to inflame them against Benjamin.

Benjamin refuses to yield up the perpetrators, so the other tribes attacked Benjamin and almost destroyed it.

Finally NACHAME appeared as RELENT. They said Benjamin was guilty, but they were also implicated. The husband, the real perpetrator, had gotten off scott free. So they took the Benjamin women and married them to their sons, starting the holiday of Tu B’Av in which the unmarried women dance before the men.

FOUR WENT INTO THE GARDEN

Elisha ben Abula lost faith in himself. He said it was because he saw a boy die after doing two mitzvote which were supposed to prolong one’s days (the boy was chasing away the mother bird before taking the eggs and fell off the ladder). But Elisha ben Abula saw Akiva tortured to death. He couldn’t believe that G*d was all powerful.

One went mad—he didn’t want to return to his body after reaching the pinnacle.

From Aish Kodesh, page 209: “How many trials must one undergo as the price of a prayer?”

And yet, unbelievably, today there are more people studying Torah than before the Holocaust.

In the Gemara, love is called the curtain . This is the veil in the bedecken at the wedding ceremony. The kallah (bride)’s face is covered so the chassan (groom) can see her essence and not the superficial. “Love is the curtain that brings renewal to creation every moment.”

The Man in the Photo with the shin on his head is OZE. The other faces, the Nazis, are projective reality. We have to oppose Hezbollah with OZE. We have to put on tefillin and go to battle.

We Jews have a special strength that comes out of compassion. We have to keep the middle line: Hezbollah says that America is drowning in sexuality and materialism. They’re right. But they’re drowning in fanaticism and gevurah. Too much chessed (loving kindness) leads to murder. So does too much gevurah.

The thin line is right between the two. The world is caught between too much love/chessed (no boundaries) and too much gevurah.

OZE is the third way.

We Jews have to be the scapegoat to teach the world about projective reality.

Benjamin longs for the Temple. But Benjamin is also the tribe that protects the gang rapists. It’s the same energy in both instances. The same energy goes in two directions. Refer here to the two names of Benjamin, Son of My Pain, Son of My Right Hand.

The prayer belt held the skirts of the men in battle when they had to run. Every time we pray we fight ourselves.

G*d is the object of our projection. This is easily seen when people play G*d in a psychodrama. HaShem, like the Schwartza Wolf, is a mirror to us. (This is a Shlomo story.)

The shin on the head of the Man in the Photo is OZE; the Schechina is on his head.

In Eikev it says that the people will see the shin on our head and will be afraid.

RATZON is desire or will. We want something so badly that we will it into being.

The Shechina is resting over the head of every person who is ill.

Desire is expansive; the right hand is over the heart.

Pain is contractive; the left hand is in a blocking position. This is tuma.

Tuma is a boundary, an unashamed acknowledgment of blockage.

Menstruating is a blockage of life to prepare for life and intimacy.

Tuma and tahara both bring holiness down.

Aish Kodesh, page 205, second paragraph: Knowing your defects makes room for G*d. Being blocked from receiving G*d could be because there is no acknowledgment of defects (Nebucharnezzar) or a lack of self-worth, where the pain of acknowledging one’s defects is too much.

Tefillin on the left arm gives strength to block the unbridled desire on the right arm.

When we’re ashamed of the pain, this also blocks HaShem. We need unashamed acknowledgment of blockage.

When one is ashamed, one alters the photographs (the photo fraud in Lebanon).

The pain gives Akiva and the Man in the Photo the opportunity to connect with G*d.

Pinchas was able to kill Cozby and Zimri because he had compassion. He wasn’t hating them, he was remembering the Jewish people who were dying in a plague. Compassion is being cruel to cruel people and being loving and kind to kind people. Otherwise we get turned around and are cruel to kind people and kind to cruel people.

This is personal integration, to treat my enemy with compassion I have to be able to treat my friends with compassion and also myself. This connects with the importance of eradicating baseless hatred between Jews.

We have to draw good boundaries so we don’t have a mushy self-indulgence.

URGE PEOPLE AROUND US TO WORK HARDER AT THIS TIME, TO YEARN FOR THE TORAH. THE THREAT FROM HEZBOLLAH AND IRAN IS VERY GREAT.

A big part of OZE is guarding hope in your heart.