How to bring God's palpable presence back into our world.

I often think about waking up in a world without my parents; being no one's daughter anymore. And being no one's partner since my marriage ended 10 years ago. Yes, I do have my beloved children. But, it would be a very lonely existence without Hashem.

There is so much division in the world today. I hope that world leader's, particularly Obama - think very hard about whether their actions are TRULY fostering "estrangement or oneness."

My kudos to Ms. Rigler for a terrific article.


Waking Up to a World without God's Presence
by Sara Yoheved Rigler

How different is the world we live in! When the Temple was destroyed, the dogged illusion of Divine absence settled over our world like a perpetual fog. In this world where Divine hiddenness has replaced Divine revelation, we grope for proofs of God's existence, like fish debating about the existence of water. We are relegated to "believing" when once we simply knew. We struggle, through prayer and meditation, to experience a momentary inkling of the Divine Presence when once we simply basked in it. We are like amnesiacs who experience vague and fleeting memories of a different life, a truer identity, but the actual grasping of it eludes us.

Tisha B'Av made orphans of us all.

ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE
In one essential way Tisha B'Av differs from death: the catastrophe is reversible. As Rabbi Avraham Isaac Kook declared: "The Temple was destroyed because of causeless hatred [among Jews]; it can be rebuilt only by causeless love."

"Causeless love" means loving every single Jew, no matter how much s/he differs in political or religious persuasion. It means loving Jews at the other end of the ideological spectrum. It means abortion-rights activists loving Hasidic Jews and vice versa. It means Zionists loving anti-Zionists and post-Zionists and vice versa. It means Gush Katif settlers loving the security forces who are going to evict them from their homes and vice versa.

Given that the Talmud characterizes the Jews as "the most fractious of peoples" and the daily news corroborates that description, causeless love seems like an impossible achievement.

But if someone had told me on March 9, 1990, or any day thereafter, that I could bring my father back to life by doing X, is there anything, anything, I would not have done?

If we yearn enough to bring the Divine Presence back into our world, is there anything beyond our capacity to achieve it?

A few years ago I learned how to harness the seemingly impossible to the power of yearning, and fly. It was during the peak of the Arab war of terror against Israel. I had undertaken to visit terror victims in hospital and to distribute teddy bears on behalf of Kids for Kids. A couple days after a lethal bus bombing in Haifa, my 14-year-old daughter and I visited the Mt. Carmel hospital where most of the injured -- teenagers on their way home from school -- were hospitalized.

I had never been to that hospital before. Clutching my list of terror victims in one hand and my bulging bag of teddy bears in the other, I accidentally stumbled into the intensive care unit. I asked a nurse, "Where is Daniel K.?" She pointed to the bed beside me. Lying prone on the bed was a thin, unmoving figure. I grabbed my daughter's hand and quickly exited, but the specter of that boy, the only patient I had ever seen lying face-down, haunted me.

In the waiting room, I sat with Daniel's desperate parents. They had made aliyah from Uzbekistan a few years before. They explained that 17-year-old Daniel's lungs had been punctured in the terror attack. The doctors were not hopeful.

I promised them I would pray for "Daniel Chai" (when a person's life is in danger, a name expressing life or recovery is often added), but it was clear to all of us that nothing less than a miracle would save the boy.

There is a spiritual law in Judaism called, "mida k'neged mida," measure for measure. This means that whatever humans do, God responds to them in kind. When we want God to go beyond the laws of nature, we must go beyond our own nature. Therefore, tapping into this spiritual law, I suggested to Daniel's mother that she take on a mitzvah she had not previously done to help save her son's life, and I left the hospital planning to do similarly.

When my children started to bicker in the car on the long ride home, I told them that they could contribute to saving Daniel's life by overcoming their urge to fight. To my amazement, they acted like angels all the way home.

The next day, I had an argument with my husband. I walked away from him feeling hurt and rejected. I fled to my room, wanting only to distance myself from him. As I sat on the edge of my bed, I rehearsed to myself everything I had learned about life's essential choice: choosing between estrangement and oneness. I knew that the higher road would be to reconcile with my husband, or at least be open to whatever conciliatory steps he took, but my whole nature wanted to withdraw. I sat there for some ten minutes warring with myself. I knew exactly what I should do, but was as incapable of doing it as a paraplegic trying to pole-vault.

Suddenly I was startled to hear myself say out loud: "I can't do it."

I answered my own voice, "Can you do it for Daniel Chai? Can you do it for that boy's life?"

"Yes!" came my resounding reply. "To save Daniel's life, I can overcome my own nature."

When my husband came in a few minutes later, I battled my instinct to push him away, and lovingly accepted his apology. I felt like a heroine. I knew that I couldn't do it, but for Daniel's life, I did it.

[Postscript: Daniel's mother took on lighting Shabbat candles. Despite a dangerous infection that beset him that week, Daniel had a miraculous recovery.]

When I consider the prospect of all Jews truly loving each other, I hear the voice of realism saying, "We can't do it." Then I ask: Can we do it to bring the Divine Presence back into the world? Can we do it to dispel the choking fog of Divine absence? Can we do it to end all the national and personal catastrophes that ensue in a world where God is not evident.

Author Biography:
Sara Yoheved Rigler is a graduate of Brandeis University. Her spiritual journey took her to India and through fifteen years of teaching Vedanta philosophy and meditation. Since 1985, she has been practicing Torah Judaism. A writer, she resides in the Old City of Jerusalem with her husband and children.


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