AGONISING

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

Mazal Tov to Mommy on her upcoming birthday. See below

Mazal Tov to Shmuly on his birthday this Shabbos. You should have a good and abundant year Shmuly, with joy and good health.

Mazal Tov Hirshy on your acceptance into Nursing School. You worked really hard for many years to achieve this, and with excellent results BH. Well done! Michayil el chayil.

Mommy and I saw a brilliant shiur from Rabbi Jacobson on this week's Parsha Vayera, which I would like to share.

I will try and summarise as best I can, but if anyone has an hour to spare, I recommend you look at the full version, attached below, especially if you are interested in psychology.

https://www.theyeshiva.net/jewish/142.

When the Torah is read in shul, it has a very characteristic tune.

Each word has an attached sign, called trop, indicating the tune of each word.

In Judaism, everything is very precise, and the tune of every word is integrally related to that word.

In fact it is said that the Vilna Gaon could hear the word from the music!

In this week's sedra there is a very unusual note called the SHALSHELES.

It is only found 4 times in the whole of Torah, one of which is in this weeks sedra.

It has a very unusual sound and shape.

It looks like a vertical double z, and is on top of the word VAYISMAHMAH, 19:16, (he, Lot, HESITATED).

The sound is a triple one, and goes backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards 3 times.

Listen out for it this Shabbos!

IT BASICALLY REPRESENTS UNCERTAINTY, AND A STATE OF AGONISING, and has this meaning in different ways, in each of the 4 places where it occurs

In the context of our Sedra, the story is as follows:

Avraham and Lot had been travelling together, but at one point they took a different view on life, and they separated from each other.

Lot was attracted by Sdom, (the Jordan plain) which was worldly, looked beautiful, immorality was rife, and as Rashi mentions 'he separated himself from the One Who precedes the world.'

Avraham goes to Canaan,(Eretz Yisrael) where he relates to Hashem, makes a Covenant, fights wars, reaches out to people to do kindnesses etc

Lot had tried to assimilate with the people of Sdom, and had even been elected to be a judge!

Yet, after he tried to protect the angels (in form of men) who had come to destroy Sdom and save Lot and his family, the people of Sdom turned against him, rejected him, and called him a stranger. Even his own 2 sons-in-law are mocking him!

However despite all this, and knowing that destruction was on its way, HE HESITATES to leave - tune of shalsheles - and the angels have to grab him and force him to leave to save his life.

The psychology is as follows;

Each of us have both of the forces of Avraham and Lot battling within each of our beings, and this sets up a powerful tension within, which causes us AGONY.

Leon Festinger in US in the 1950's calls this tension COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, and speaks about it in a very similar way as Torah teaches us.

The person experiencing this tension knows what is true and what is not, but to avoid the pain of the tension, they choose to opt out, by lying to themselves, and making all kind of justifications and excuses for 'separating from the One Who preceded the world', and 'moving to Sdom'

This way there is now apparently no more tension in their being.

Then 10, 20 years down the line, even when the very society one opted out to, is rejecting one, and destruction is imminent, the hesitation is still there and probably even stronger.

In contrast, Avraham, who was just as involved in the world as lot, if not more so, when he went to purchase maarat hamachpela in Chevron, he said to Cheis, 'I am a foreigner in your land' (ie he was not interested in assimilation)....etc,

How did Cheis reply?

He said 'Hear us my master. You are a prince of G-d in our midst.' - Respect.

Which brings me back to Mommy's birthday.

I know that Mommy grew up with a very difficult surrounding environment of Arabs in Tunisia, having to go through different non-Jewish Schools where she had to find ways to keep Shabbos against all kinds of resistence.

And then there was the 6 Day War with all the additional Arab tensions.

And the social pulls to assimilate and opt must have been powerful as it would be in any society.

And there were the mockers trying to humiliate etc.

But you held strong to your core truth.

And this week's message from Torah is therefore so appropriate for you.

Wishing you much love, happiness, success, and good health, and I am sure this is a shared feeling from the whole Family.

Gut Shabbos to all