One of the most important things to remember about Shabbat is that it is an undeserved gift of unfathomable worth.

The angels actually protested to Hashem against giving us Shabbat.

They said we wouldn't appreciate it properly.

And for the majority of our people today, the angels have unfortunately been proven right.

But there is still the priceless minority who DO appreciate Shabbat — and want to appreciate it even more!

There is a lot of work entailed for Shabbat. Some of it is grunge work. If you can afford it, you can pay someone else to do it for you.

But if you can't?

In Parshat Vayakhel - Building the Shabbos Home, Rav Avigdor Miller emphasizes that it's similar to a diamond merchant who is seen carefully sweeping the dust off the floor under his work table.

Why is he doing such menial work and doing so with such care?

"This is diamond dust!" says the sweeping diamond merchant. “And therefore it’s worth my while to sit on my knees and collect dust that comes from diamonds.” 

​Here's one of the amazing (yet imperceptible to most people) events that occurs on Shabbat:

We hear about the concept of Beresheit—In the beginning—so much, that we don't think more deeply about the real meaning of it.

"The Universe was created ex nihilo!" 

"There was absolutely nothing before Hashem created the Universe!"

How many times have you heard all that?

Yet was does that really mean?

Rav Avigdor Miller explains:

The human mind can't really imagine "nothing."

When completely blind people are asked, "What do you see? Do you see darkness? Black?"

"No," they answer. "I see nothing. Not even black."

That's interesting because seeing people often describe blind people as living in darkness, but the truth is, they don't because they don't perceive even darkness.

To a sighted person, blind people live in visual darkness. But that's not how a blind-from-birth person perceives it. They simply do not see.

So could a blind person imagine "nothing"?

Visually, perhaps.

But "nothing" includes an absences of sound, scent, and everything else.

​We just cannot imagine.

This week's dvar Torah is bursting with all sorts of necessary and luscious insights:

• how to REALLY keep Shabbat
• Hashem's "Imagination" & how it works
• how the science of matter has changed
• how dvar Hashem can be both energy & material
• how anger, anxiety, and excitement can harm one's physical eyes
• the effect of the weekday on one's mental & spiritual eyesight and how Shabbat heals this effect
• why saying Vayichulu last Shabbat can make the coming erev Shabbat more peaceful
• how Vayichulu is like a mini-Yom Kippur every week
• ​why being a frum cow is better than being a wicked cow, but how to avoid being a frum cow anyway

​Parshat Vayakhel - Building the Shabbos Home

​Enjoy!

(All quotes used with permission from Toras Avigdor.)

Because Rav Papo could have used the term ishah chachamah – a wise wife (as is common in Chazal), it seemed that an ishah maskelet is educated in addition to being wise.
 
And because Rav Papo spoke with such certainty of the pricelessness of an ishah maskelet and the profound love she engenders within her husband, it seemed like Rav Papo also spoke from personal experience.
 
Then Hashem led me to a great shiur by Rabbi Noach Isaac Oelbaum (Pele Yoetz: Part 5 - Fundamental Guidelines for Chinuch) in which he confirms that Rabbanit Papo was indeed an ishah maskelet who was treasured by both her husband and children – ​as described within the introduction to the book Chessed L'Elefim.
 
Chessed L’Elefim was also written by Rav Papo (I didn’t know that!) and its introduction was written by Rav Papo’s son, wherein he states the following:

So there’s the ishah maskelet for ya, and now we know why Rav Papo was so excited on behalf of a man who managed to find an ishah maskelet. (And this also helps me understand even more why Rav Papo was so strongly in favor of female literacy - look at what his wife did with her ability to read!)

Note: If anyone is intimidated by the generous amount of yeshivish English at the beginning of Rabbi Oelbaum's shiur, please know that the rabbi switches to more standard English after the first 15 minutes. It’s a great shiur given over with great energy and Rabbi Oelbaum has already covered quite a few chapters of the Pele Yoetz, for anyone who’s interested in learning the Pele Yoetz via these classes.

I subscribe to an e-newsletter that sends out transcribed Q&As from Rav Avigdor Miller's ztz"l lectures.

This week featured a particularly interesting question that I believe many people wonder about.

Rav Miller's answer is equally interesting (even shocking at times) and inspiring.

GREAT Torah hashkafah and guidance.

​Here it is:

QUESTION:
 
On the way into orthodoxy, if somebody is eating non-kosher salami, should he make a bracha?

I'll paraphrase the question, we'll forget about the salami. We have many people today who are still not observant, but they are definitely on the way in.

Should we consider their behavior as non-consequent, which means that they are contradicting themselves, that they are committing a paradox?

​Or shall we say that despite the fact of their non-observance, these people still are on the way to success, and they should be encouraged?

Amazing.

With thanks to A Moment with Rav Avigdor Miller Z"L for generously permitting me to use their material.

You can also sign up for these enlightening once-a-week newsletters here:
http://rmillerqa.com/

I always wanted to be one of those women who make challahs every week for Shabbat, but it always seemed like a huge investment of time and fiddling.

Furthermore, like a lot of other people, I wanted wholewheat challahs with an airy texture. So getting that wholewheat pastry flour (70-80% wholewheat flour), then doing all the tips and tricks of more than one rising time and rolling out then rolling up each strand before braiding it (for an airier dough) and so on. 

And whether for wholewheat or white, other challah-makers gave recommendations like kneading in big upward swoops for an airier dough, kneading on your knees on the floor, kneading by hand for 20 minutes, and so on.

These are all good ideas, by the way.

But because of all that, I often felt too overwhelmed to make challah on a regular basis.

Then a healthy-food friend of mine (who kneads on her knees and who makes a delicious moist wholewheat peach cake for Shabbat) revealed that she prepared white-flour challahs.

In response to the shocked look on my face, she smiled and said simply, "That's the tradition. Jews always tried to eat white-flour challahs for Shabbat."

And it's true. While nowadays wholewheat flour is more expensive, that's a recent reversal.

So that broke through my "I must make wholewheat challahs - and somehow get them as airy and yummy as white-flour challahs!" mindblock.

Then one of my family members bought self-rising white flour (kemach shemarim) when there was no other flour (that didn't need sifting) available.

I'd never used self-rising flour, but there was a recipe for challahs on its shiny plastic sack, so I decided to give it a shot - with the amount of sugar exchanged for honey and decreased for Sefardi halachic requirements. (If bread is too sweet, it automatically becomes mezonot rather than hamotzi for Sefardim.)

My family loves this challah.

It makes delicious, nice-colored challahs. It smells really good. I'm still not so great at braiding it, but oh well. Even making an array of balls in a circle or loaf pan (so you get that "bumpy" challah with automatic buns, if you know what I mean) is a challenge because it's hard to get the balls all the same size. 

But for me, taste, texture, and smell are the main priorities.

Also, using this flour and recipe makes the whole process so much easier, faster, and worry-free. (Meaning, no more consternation that something's up with the yeast & the dough doesn't rise properly, using too little or too much yeast, "oops just ran out of yeast!", etc.)

So now I've got my little shiny orange sack of Osem's kemach shemarim every week (and I keep another sack of the same to add another cup to it so I'll have the minimal amount for making the challah-tithing blessing).

And by using this kind of short-cut, I can make challahs most weeks, say the bracha, daven for people, and so on.

And I'm happy doing this.

Also, one of my sons stops in to pick up a couple of rolls set aside just for him before going back to yeshivah  (which forces me to get an early start on the challahs which is a good thing for a discipline-resistant person like myself), and doing this for him makes me feel like a deliciously old-fashioned & dedicated Yiddishe mama throwback to the shtetlach of yore.

​I mean, it makes me feel like that for a few minutes, anyway.

But if life shifts (and it always does), I'll give making challahs the old-fashioned way or wholewheat challahs a try again. 

But right now, I just can't do the whole yeasting-kneading-rolling thing at this point in my life.

And that's fine!

And if life shifts another way (as it always does) so that I can't make challahs at all and we need to go back to store-bought, then that's also fine!

It's like what we were talking about in a previous post (How to Do Chessed Right? Play Your Strengths!):
You do whatever mitzvot you can in whatever way you can.

And if you can't, so you can't.

​(Hashem is the reason you can or can't, so no need for self-flagellation or other forms of self-recrimination - and no need for nose-in-the-air pridefulness either...just pleasure & joy!)

This is along the lines of Leah's comment in the above-mentioned previous post: You want to aim for fulfilling mitzvot according to halacha & the enjoyment of all concerned (including yourself).

And you don't worry if you're doing something in the "socially mandated" or "right" way, you just aim for doing it in the halachic way.

And there you go.

​I wanted to share what I learned from my relationship with “Malka” in the post The True Story of an Undercover Angel.
 
As mentioned in the post, I never saw Malka multi-tasking or flitting around. She did one thing at a time and wasn’t quick about it either. Yet she got everything done.
 
In fact, I think her slow quiet way was part of her success.
 
Yes, we need the speedy multitaskers. But we need ALL types of baalei chessed.
 
There is more than one way to be a baal chessed!

Another lesson learned was that Malka only ever did what she could.

I never saw her tending to young children. She never mentioned caring for other people’s babies or toddlers even as a young mother. Maybe she did so here and there in her younger years, but it wasn’t her "thing." She was more into teenagers and adults.
 
And that’s perfectly fine.
 
While sometimes we find ourselves as the only volunteer available for a chessed that hits our weak points, it’s otherwise perfectly fine to play our strengths in the chessed arena.
 
In fact, an attraction to one type of chessed or another is likely Hashem’s way of telling you where he wants you to go and what He wants you to do.
 
Unfortunately in our times, egalitarianism is huge and affects everything.

In some communities, poor families expect the same weddings as wealthy families, something unheard of in former generations. In some families, every male is expected to sit and learn full-time regardless of his other talents, his level of skill, and even if he needs medication to get through a day in kollel.

Likewise, many women feel they must excel at bikur cholim, hachnasat orchim, babysitting, crisis counseling, listening, cooking meals for the sick and post-partum, and so on.

A chassidic friend of mine who grew up in America's Fifties explained that there were women who were good with cooking, those good with baking, those good with small children, and those good with teenagers, and so on.

And each one contributed according to her strengthens, which provided the community according to its needs.
 
Unfortunately, a friend who excels at babysitting (including middle-of-the-night babysitting for couples who need to rush to the hospital to bring even more children into the world) expressed a lot of self-loathing for saying no when called upon to make part of a meal for a yoledet.
 
Yet she has absolutely nothing to feel bad about.
 
Her availability for babysitting is actually more in demand & harder to come by than a cholent or a kugel or even a salad (which can always be bought if necessary or can be found by someone else).
 
Furthermore, I think most of us – either as guests or ill people – have faced hosts or well-meaning visitors who really shouldn’t have been hosting guests or visiting the sick. Their heart wasn’t in it and they cultivated  an unpleasant experience.
 
Having said that, there are times when someone needs a place to stay or an ill person needs tending and there is no one else to do it but you, whether you are up to it or not.

So in those cases, you give it your best shot and also merit siyata d’Shmaya.
 
But in general, you should do the chessed you can do and not try to do something you despise or don’t understand. (In other words, if you’re feeling resentful or martyr-like, it’s probably a good idea to say no unless there is no other choice.)
 
Like with most things in life, you should play your strengths when and if at all possible.
 
Just like Malka found herself tending to the unseen vagrants in society and my friend found herself enabling parents to go to the hospital together in the middle of the night, secure in the knowledge that their children were in good hands, you might find yourself fulfilling a need that almost no one else can.

So play your strengths and don't get down on yourself about your weaknesses.

​This week's dvar Torah by Rav Avigdor Miller, Parshas Ki Tisa 2: Thinking by Torah, is so current and applicable to our times, it's hard to believe it was written in 1980!

Rav Miller talks a lot about socialism and how it's affecting America - very interesting stuff.

Plus, he makes a point I'd never considered: The other religions of the world have been so willing to swallow all sorts of bizarre ideas and customs - what's the big deal about accepting Torah?

He doesn't flesh out the answer much, but the main idea is that the Jewish people stood out as a group of independent thinkers and that is exactly whom Judaism is for.

Na'aseh v'nishma is a challenge to independent thinkers, but at the same time, the Torah way is also exactly what an independent thinker needs.

Likewise, history shows that people attracted to authentic Torah are often those who think outside the box. (Or, as Rabbi Wallerstein puts it, those "who color outside the lines.") 

And then Rav Miller delves into the mystery of how the same people who crossed the Yam Suf and experienced Ma'amad Har Sinai and the leadership of Moshe Rabbeinu could suddenly start frolicking around an idol of shiny gold veal.

​Very compelling stuff.

So what's the main nugget here?

This:

Throughout, Rav Miller discusses socialism, erev rav, child discipline, vegetarianism, and Torah hashkafah, and how Am Yisrael went from the heights of spiritual purification to the depths of spiritual pollution.

​Definitely worth a read.

The rav reassured us that people will just think we're singing along with the band.

He also suggested that we daven for the couple as part of our hitbodedut.

Recently, I was at a wedding where I scrounged up the guts to try this.

I NEVER would have thought of this on my own and I certainly wouldn't have the guts to try it without Rav Miller's reassurance that this kind of hitbodedut looks like singing and not holier-than-thou eccentricity.

My personal addition was to sway back and forth while I spoke to Hashem because it doesn't really look like singing if I just sit there while my mouth is moving.

It helped a lot that the woman next to me kept breaking out in rhythmic clapping and chair-dancing in time to the music. (Thanks, Hashem!)

So here's my take on it:

• It's not as satisfying as talking to Hashem without heavy bass and loud warbling in the background, but it's definitely possible.

 

• Honest to gosh, no one thinks you're doing anything weird (or anything spiritual or meaningful, chas v'shalom! ;-). It really does look like you're just singing along.

 

• It gets the job done.

 

• It makes you feel good.

​

So I just wanted you to know.

And...

...try it! You might like it.

While I don't know the whole spiritual message behind the bus-overturn tragedy that happened on the Modiin-Jerusalem 443 route, I do want to point out something else.

While we need to pray for and assist the survivors and mourn those who died, it's also important to realize something revealed by my son:

Many people meant to be on that bus ended up missing it.

​And it wasn't their fault.

Two boys who learn in my son's yeshivah intended to take that bus. Familiar with that bus's timetable, they stopped in at a nearby grocery store to pick up some nosh when the bus suddenly sped by. 

In fact, several other potential passengers were in that same store and also shocked that the bus came early and didn't stop.

(In routes between cities, buses don't come as often and a missed bus is a huge inconvenience to the potential passengers -- something the drivers are aware of, making them more likely to wait for a person running after them and yelling, "Wait!")

This missed bus was their salvation, as they found out later.

It reminds me of similar incident that happened around the time of suicide-bombings on the buses in Tel Aviv & Yerushalayim.

An American girl was attending Tel Aviv University's one-year program for English-speakers.

When the crowded bus pulled up at the stop where she waited, she tried to get on, but the driver started yelling at her, "There's no room! Get off! Wait for the next bus!"

Startled, she protested that there was room as she was already inside the bus.

But the driver kept yelling at her and with a final shout of "There's no place for you here!", he shoved her off the bus.

Living in Eretz Yisrael for 25 years, I've never seen a bus driver do that.

Then the bus continued along its route and...

...exploded.

That's why, indeed, there was no place for her on the bus.

It wasn't her time yet and it wasn't her way to go either.

(BTW, she didn't leave her dorm for a month after that.)

So while we need to remember & be sensitive to the pain of the victims of this tragedy and the pain of their families, and to help them and daven for them any way we can, we should also remember that nothing is truly an accident.

And we should ask Hashem what message He wants us to understand from this.

Hopefully, we won't need to suffer anymore tragedies and the Geula will come already, b'ezrat Hashem.

Please see Neshama's blog for a list of names for davening:
Route 443 Accident Victims Need Your Prayers

Also, Hamodia included these names:
Chemdatia Ditza bat Rivka
Tamar bat Rivka
Moshe ben Chana Hendel

May everyone have a refuah shlaima of the nefesh & guf b'toch sha'ar cholei Yisrael.

​Like other only-in-Israel stories, I met a spectacular yet undercover baalat chessed on the city bus over 20 years ago.

(A ba'alat or ba'al chessed is a person who excels at acts of loving-kindness, compassion, and generosity.)
 
Let’s call this baalat chessed Malka.

The couples, many of whom were young Russian immigrants alone in Eretz Yisrael, could not afford a wedding. So Malka hosted the chuppah in her own yard.
 
Malka also provided the food.
 
She hosted a wedding anywhere from once a week to every couple of months, depending. Noting her age and her slow rhythm, I asked her how she managed to cater the weddings (from her rundown narrow kitchen).
 
“They aren’t big weddings,” she explained languidly. “Just the friends and whatever family is here.”
 
Yes, except that Malka wasn’t doing simple foods – meat-stuffed zucchinis, for example, take time and skill. 
 
“When neighbors stop by,” she said, “they see what I’m doing and offer to help. Sometimes, I ask them if they wouldn’t mind helping me in the kitchen while we chat.”
 
“It doesn’t bother them?” I asked.
 
“No,” she said, her eyes widening slightly over her smile, “they’re happy to help.”
 
She also specialized in re-marrying divorced couples and took extra satisfaction in that. She described how she introduced them to mitzvah observance and gave them in her own brand of pre-marital counseling (though she didn’t call it that), explaining that there usually weren’t very serious problems, but that these couples divorced because they didn’t know what else to do.

They were decent people who simply didn’t know how to get along.

She also felt that a lack of Torah values was a serious problem in the marriage and that by getting couples to observe halacha and proper Jewish hashkafah, they could end up with a successful marriage.
 
“See this?” she said tapping long her rose-manicured fingernail on one kallah’s very low neckline. (The kallah’s face was covered in a veil so I couldn’t see her.) “I was concerned about this under the chuppah – especially with Rav Mordechai Eliyahu officiating.”
 
I frowned. Though still new to the frum scene in Eretz Yisrael, I’d already heard of Rav Mordechai Eliyahu and couldn’t imagine that such a big and important tzaddik was being mesader kiddushin for some impoverished barely-frum couple in someone’s untended backyard.
 
I still wonder if my memory is playing tricks on me. But I have clear memories of her referencing the rav several times in conversation and also seeing photos with him in front of the couple with his eyes glued to the page in front of him as he went through the Kiddushin.
 
Anyway…she continued, “But the rav said that I shouldn’t say one word!”

She made a stern face and slashed her finger through the air in recollection of his firmness about the issue.

​“He reassured me that he would just keep his eyes down so not to see anything he shouldn’t and that I should continue to be mekarev them. Eventually, he said, the kallah would realize on her own.” Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched as she looked at me. “And you know what? That’s exactly what happened! This kallah” – she tapped the low neckline again – “this kallah now wears her neckline up to here” – Malka indicated just under her chin – “and she covers her hair too. Just like the rav said would happen. So I never tell them anything. Patience. That’s what people need. Just be patient and keep working with them and they’ll get there on their own.”
 
In addition to making shiddichum, and hosting and catering weddings, Malka also provided these couples with furniture and a couple months of rent.
 
And not just for these couples either.

Malka opened one of the mammoth folders to show them bursting with thank-you notes. Page after page from grateful recipients and social workers:

Thank you so much, Malka, for the 200 shekels! It really helped us out in a pinch.

Thank you, Malka, for providing the family with much-needed beds. (from a social worker)

​Malka, thank you SO MUCH for the cart full of groceries! You literally saved us!
 
Money, groceries, beds – page after page showed that those were the items Malka provided most.
 
I scanned the shelves full of thick folders exactly like the one on my lap.
 
“Where do you get all that money to give all this to people?” I asked.
 
She gave a ladylike laugh and an elegant shrug. “Oh…just here and there…”
 
I never did find out how she was able to finance all this.

​I found myself fascinated with her.

​This dainty, elegant petite Moroccan lady with her Queen Anne heels and her unhurried pace and serene smile – tending to the emotional, spiritual, and financial needs of people who were desperate, lost, broken, living in miserable circumstances, or just needed a hand.
 
I shadowed her when I could, spending a couple of Shabbats with her and accompanying her on her rounds.
 
One time, she took me around to different hovels.
 
I had no idea there was this whole underground in Jerusalem. Old Arab hovels made of stones – and no plaster or paint on the inside either. Just an old stone edifice. They’re easy to miss because to access them, you need to turn off the sidewalk into a grassy, pebbly area until you reach a flight of stairs leading down to the door of the hovel.
 
From ground level, you just see the roof, which looks like a pile of stones or an abandoned hovel (which it is).
 
But one flight down into the ground stands the door.
 
Equipped with a basket of tea, food, and a thermos of hot water, we stood at one door as Malka knocked.
 
No answer.
 
But she kept knocking until Malka decided to open the door a crack and peeked in, telling the person who she was and that she’d brought a friend. I was scandalized by this breach of etiquette. What was Malka doing? She gestured for me to come in with her and whispered reassurance that this was definitely okay.
 
So I hesitantly followed her in.
 
I just remember slate gray stone all around when we entered into what seemed like a very narrow kitchen. The kitchen opened up into a narrow room with a bed upon which lay a person with an arm over the face.
 
Malka spoke in a quiet neighborly way as the person tried to sit up, then fell back again, then sat up again. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. The person had extremely cropped salt ‘n’ pepper hair and wore a T-shirt and sweat pants over a pudgy non-descript body. The voice could also belong to a high-pitched man or a low-pitched woman.
 
I tried to catch the person’s name when Malka made introductions, but it was also something ambiguous like “Yonah.”
 
Inwardly, I grimaced with discomfort.

​Because Hebrew pronouns and verbs are either masculine or feminine with no gender-neutral form, I couldn’t say a word to this person for fear of getting the gender wrong and causing offense.
 
Malka seemed perfectly at home and offered tea, to which the person replied there was no electricity. With a smile, Malka held up the thermos and proceeded to make tea for all of us.
 
The person seemed very grateful for Malka’s visit and the tea, and as I strained to hear how Malka addressed the person, I realized it was a woman. A very butch-looking woman.
 
Having roused herself to sit up in the bed chair, she invited Malka to sit down and graciously invited me to take a seat in the only chair. Malka perched herself on end of the mattress.
 
Then Malka started chatting and the woman brightened up. She mentioned that she wasn’t well and Malka responded with sympathy. But our “hostess” included me in the conversation too and I wondered at the transformation from impoverished homeless neglected nebbuch to a hostess with guests and dignity.
 
Here we were, three ladies taking tea and making polite conversation – in an abandoned underground hovel with no electricity or indoor plumbing.

​As a side note, when my husband found out I was accompanying Malka to these places during our first year of marriage, his eyes widened in horror and he started shaking. Growing up in one of Israel’s poor delinquent immigrant neighborhoods, he was bit more familiar with these types.
 
“These people are drug addicts!” he said. “How can you go to their homes? That’s so dangerous!”
 
That had never occurred to me. “I didn’t see any sign of drugs,” I protested.
 
“Well, their children then,” said my husband. “Even if those people are okay, their children could just show up.” He got shaky again.
 
Then he explained that in Israel, it was very odd to have an older person abandoned to living in a primitive hovel. There are family, friends, social services, and the like. Why can’t the person avail herself of these resources?
 
“Because they don’t have them,” said my husband. “Either their children want nothing to do with them after all they put them through or their children are addicts and criminals who don’t care about their parents – and if so, why did those children turn out so badly? Who let’s their mother or father live in such conditions?”
 
And regarding social services and health funds, etc., my husband pointed out that there must be a reason why these people to don't use these services. Maybe they want to stay under the radar? Maybe they have unsavory reasons?
 
Ohhhh….
 
(And now Malka’s confidence at entering uninvited made sense. The person indeed wanted her company and her goodies, but wasn’t able to rouse herself to respond.)
 
Yet everyone was so lovely and sympathetic as seen through Malka’s eyes!
 
Yet I had to admit that my husband’s points made a lot of sense.

​Also, growing up in secular America, it’s perfectly natural to find older people neglected and ignored by their offspring, so I didn’t think anything of it.
 
While there are many dedicated adult offspring in the US, I’d noticed the vehemence with which many adult children wanted to rush their aging parents into a home. Yeah, of course it’s often necessary, but these adult children do so without much sympathy or compassion for what their aging parent is facing. And once shut away, some people rarely talk to or visit their parents.
 
Too many adult children seem all too ready to pull the plug on aging parents in hospitals under the faux compassion of not “wanting them to suffer.” And after the funeral, your sympathy is met with a blithe, “Well, it was just her time to go!” or a cheery “Well, she’d been deteriorating anyway, so it was better this way!” – with cheerful music blasting in the background.
 
So I didn’t realize that abandoned parents might be the sign of serious dysfunction in the parent or criminal activity on the part of the children.   

​It fascinated me how a classy lady like Malka put on no airs when she was with these people. They felt totally comfortable with her. Also, there was something about the way she related to them that gave them back their self-respect and human dignity.
 
But she didn’t view herself as better than these people, just luckier. And I think that’s the secret to being a truly humble baal chessed. It has to come from inside, that you don’t approach such people as a queen lowering herself to extend largess to the needy.
 
I’ve noticed that other baalei chessed are the same; they feel lucky not superior. They just feel like they could be in the same place as these people, except they were given better lives.
 
Yet how had Malka found these people?
 
She just noticed, she said. She’d see these hovels and go to investigate. Or people noticed and told her.

​As I got to know Malka, it became obvious the she was the address people turned to when they discovered deprivation of some sort. And not just regular people, but social workers and cops also turned to Malka.
 
In fact, several decades earlier when she was raising teenagers herself, she got calls from the police in the middle of the night:
 
“We found this Jewish girl wandering around the Muslim Quarter and she refuses to give her name or say where she lives. She doesn’t want to go home. Can we bring her to you?”
 
Malka always said yes.
 
(If a teenage Jewish girl in Israel prefers being among Arabs in the middle of the night, then her home is BAD.)
 
Malka and her family lived in a larger home back then and she set up chairs and sofas in an alcove off the main living area. When the cops dropped the girl off, Malka led her to the alcove, where the girl would huddle up with her head down and not speak or eat.
 
Fortunately (yet unfortunately), she wouldn’t be the only girl there.
 
Malka explained how she just let them sit there until they realized there were other girls around them in the same position. Slowly, they started talking to each other:
 
“Do you live here?”
 
“No. I was brought here by the police.”
 
“What? You were? So was I!”
 
“Really? What were you doing?”
 
“I was wandering around the streets in the middle of the night because I didn’t want to go home and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
 
“Really? Me too.”
 
“Really? You too? I thought I was the only one who felt that way. Why didn’t you want to go home?”
 
And hesitantly, they started talking about what was going on at home.
 
“Really? That happened to you too? I thought it was just me!”
 
These girls teetered between their silent huddled positions and raising their heads to lean forward and whisper with their fellow traumatized girls.
 
After 3 or 4 days of this, they were able uncurl themselves and come out of their lethargy, at which point Malka could approach them.
 
Malka nurtured them into becoming frum. She taught them how to run a home by allowing them to become full participants in running her home. They stayed for 2-4 years, depending. Eventually, she found them shidduchim and married them off.
 
“How did you find husbands for them?” I wanted to know.
 
“They needed sensitive boys, of course,” Malka answered. “Understanding boys. But boys from a background like theirs, boys who also hadn’t grown up frum, but became religious later. So that’s who I found for them.”
 
“And these boys didn’t mind marrying girls from such a dysfunctional background?” I said, still perplexed because this flew in the face of what American society said and stereotypes about frum people.
 
Now Malka looked as stern as she was able. “It’s not the girls’ fault,” she stated. “These are very nice girls! It’s not their fault how their fathers were.”
 
“Of course it’s not their fault!” I rushed to defend myself against the misunderstanding. “And I’m really glad for them that they landed in your home and that you did so much for them.”
 
But then I needed to know if they became functional mothers and wives.
 
“Yes,” said Malka, cocking her head to one side and looking totally mystified by the question. “Why not?”

And she emphasized again how these were very good girls who just needed a leg up, girls who wanted to cultivate warm homes and loving families of their own. And were just fine once they were given the skills to do so.
 
“How many girls did you do this for?” I asked.
 
“Oh, I don’t remember exactly…” she said. “Ten? Twelve?”
 
“You had ten or twelve traumatized teenage girls living in your home?” I said.
 
“Well, not all at one time,” she said. “It was spread out over the years.”
 
“Okay, but still!” I said. “How did you do that?”
 
Her eyes widened at the question, then her face her lovely smile expanded over her face. “We had a large home,” she said.
 
“Okay…” I said.
 
But as we all know, a large home is not enough to explain chessed on this level.

​You need so much patience, empathy, insight, and wisdom to nurture profoundly traumatized teenagers back into good emotional health.
 
So I kept probing to discover where she had the emotional and mental resources to do all this for so many girls for so many years, but she honestly did not understand my mystification.
 
So she just kept repeating the following:
 
“Well,” she said, “our sons didn’t live at home, so that wasn’t a problem. We sent them to learn in yeshivah abroad to avoid the draft…”
 
“They were basically good girls who just needed a good home and some nurturing.”
 
“It’s easy to understand them after all they suffered. I never judged them.”
 
“Hayah lanu bayit gadol – We had a large home.”
 
And her husband was okay with everything. Heck, he financed the whole thing! 

Anyway, I finally came to the conclusion that she saw dysfunctional people not as dysfunctional, but as basically decent people who are down on their luck. They encountered difficult circumstances and some made mistakes (if you can call lifelong drug addiction a “mistake”), but that can all be remedied with a lot of time, patience, and gentle guidance.

​And even if it can’t be remedied – like maybe the androgynous woman living in a hovel will never get her act together – it’s still important to be kind and compassionate.
 
Also, Malka wasn’t just empathetic, she was an empath.
 
She intuited what people needed, even people who were very different than herself. And while I think empathy can be cultivated, I also think that her special depth of perception is a gift. And she used it well!
 
Throughout all this, I imagined that Malka grew up with a very special mother. But when I asked her about her parents, she immediately denied that her mother was the source of influence and described their family life back in Morocco:
 
“My mother sat all day on silk cushions eating bon-bons,” she said. “Merchants came to the home to display different fabrics from which she could choose to have yet another dress made.”

​Then her face lit up as she said, “But my father…! My father was a wealthy man who kept two boxes by the back door. One was full of clothes and the other was full of money. We weren’t ever allowed to answer that door. When someone knocked, my father hurried to answer it. He opened it a crack and asked what the person needed. If they said clothes, he sank his arms into the box of clothes and heaved out a pile of clothes while closing his eyes tight and he thrust his armful of clothes through the slightly open door to give the person the clothes. If they needed money, he sank his arms into the box of money and passed handfuls of money through the opening. If they still needed more, then he gave them more.”

​She paused. “He never saw to whom he was giving. He never knew who received the money and clothes.”
 
In this way, her father kept the dignity and privacy of the recipient, as per the laws of tzedakah.
 
Malka’s face glowed as she spoke of her father’s chessed.
 
When they came to Israel, Malka was fifteen and ended up being the oldest of 10 children. In severely reduced circumstances, her father did what he could to keep his wife as close as possible to the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. He toiled at more than one job, including that of a streetsweeper.
 
Malka balked at her respectable formerly successful father sweeping the streets. She even voiced her objection to him working so hard and at such menial jobs – only to keep her mother in the role of pampered princess.
 
“I prefer sweeping the streets of Yerushalayim to being a businessman in chutz l’Aretz,” he declared. Then he explained to Malka that he felt it was his duty to care for his wife in this way, explaining that the reduction in circumstances was a lot to ask of her.
 
“But you’ve made the adjustment!” Malka protested.
 
Yes, her father said. But he felt he was man enough to take it.
 
I think that also, without the servants they’d had in Morocco, a lot of the housework and childcare fell on Malka. Plus, if I remember correctly, the indulging of the mother came at some expense to the other family members.

​At seventeen, they married off Malka to a local Moroccan boy who’d fought in the Irgun and learned chevruta with another teenage boy who later became one of the Sefardi gedolei hador.

There weren’t many committed religious boys to choose from at that time and he seemed a good prospect. And indeed, Malka’s husband remained committed to Torah and mitzvot and raised their sons to become yeshivah bachurs, which was an impressive feat in those times. (Apparently, sending them to yeshivah abroad was indeed the saving of them.)
 
But he was never Malka’s equal in middot or wisdom and he never achieved much in Torah. When I knew him as an older man with a white beard, he clearly wasn’t a knowledgeable Jew either.
​
(If you’re wondering how that can be when he originally learned chevruta with a budding gadol hador, I can tell you that a more skilled partner can carry the chevruta. Meaning, one partner is doing most of the learning and explaining while the other listens – but doesn’t necessarily retain.)
 
And that was another remarkable thing about Malka: She went through life with a partner who was not close to her level and didn’t have much to give her spiritually, as ideally there should be within a Jewish marriage. But certainly, he deserves credit for financing Malka’s chessed activities and for hosting a dozen runaways in his home over the years.

​In our times, yirat Shamayim — fear of Heaven — has become underrated and underappreciated.

In some cases, it's even despised.
 
True, great tzaddikim have been saying for generations that our generations cannot handle the pious fear expected of our ancestors.
 
But that doesn’t mean that yirah — yirat Shamayim and yirat Hashem and yirat ha'onesh (fear of Heavenly punishment) — should be ignored completely.

There is way too much emphasis throughout Tanach & Chazal to dismiss the necessity of yirah.

Particularly if you read or hear about those who’ve suffered in the Afterlife, whether in Rav Yehudah Petiyah’s stories in Minchat Yehudah or Rabbi Alon Anava’s near-death experience or anything else — and how even a moment of sincere regret could have saved them so much suffering — we need to realize that there is indeed a Judge and Judgement.
 
Personally, there have been times when I refrained from doing or saying something only because the works of tzaddikim repeatedly emphasized the fact that I’ll eventually need to face the consequences of my negative actions.
 
Furthermore, so much of Judaism, whether Tehillim or anything else, emphasizes how deeply Hashem probes your true motivations. You can fool others (or think you're fooling others) and you can fool yourself, but Hashem knows the real reason why you decided to do what you did.
 
For example, there are times I really wanted to indulge in lashon hara, but the idea of facing that particularly odious sin later kept my words muzzled. Sure, I could lie to myself and invent some kind of toelet, a beneficial reason, but Hashem knows the truth and deep down, so do I.
 
Having said that, many people are inspired by the idea that for every moment you refrain from indulging in particularly gratifying lashon hara, you create a light that even high angels cannot perceive. I’m inspired by that too.

​But sometimes, the fear aspect makes a better muzzle.
 
It depends.

It also depends on your individual personality and what you personally need to bring out the best of your soul-potential.

Excessive fear and harsh atonements have been discouraged by some of our greatest, like the Arizal.
 
In the chapter on Teshuvah, the Pele Yoetz explains in the name of the Arizal that the little done in our generation is considered like the great performed in previous generations.
 
Why?
 
The klippah (the external spiritually negative "shell") is stronger and our sins are stronger, making us weaker.
 
In Chulin 84a, Chazal writes: “Father was from a healthy family, but we need to borrow money and eat well.”
 
This explains it all in a nutshell.
 
Spiritually speaking, we are the weaker, sicker descendants. If we eat minimally like our father from a healthy family, we can become even weaker, sicker, and die, chas v’shalom. So we need to “borrow money and eat well” just to survive.
 
The Pele Yoetz goes on to explain that we are like a man who owes a great debt, goes bankrupt, and lacks the means to pay in full.
 
How can we shoulder such a burden?

The Pele Yoetz advises us to:

• Speak like a poor man (i.e., admit the bankruptcy & impoverishment)
• Show your “accounts” (i.e., “See? This is what I owe, and this and this, and here are my empty coffers.”)
• Continue until your “creditor” agrees that in light of the facts, you should be allowed to pay back over time whenever and as much as you are able — but no more than that because you simply don’t have it.

(Yet you will certainly give what you can when you can.)
 
This is how we should speak with Hashem.
 
Yes, it’s the opposite of our generation’s voices promoting self-assurance, self-praise, self-aggrandizement and self-cheerleading, constantly pumping up ourselves and tweeting/posting our most minor accomplishments.

Yay me! Rah, rah, rah!

(Note: It's possible to serve Hashem with joy & without self-aggrandizement. It's also possible feel joy about a spiritually healthy fear of Hashem. It all goes together.)

​But really, we should be saying to Hashem: “I know I should be doing more and I wish I could do more, but this is my best for now. Please forgive me and please help me. Please give me what I need to make it through.”

And feel happy about that.
 
As the Pele Yoetz concludes:

So we should be patient and understanding with ourselves and others.
 
But not completely ignore the benefit of a spiritually healthy fear of God.