I have just finished Elie Wiesel's Memoirs. It is a fascinating book, full of bits of brilliance that are scattered in its pages like emeralds. But reading it makes me feel like a worm, a gnat, a bit of mold on a leaf. I don't think I have hardly lived this life, and he has lived enough for a hundred men. Maybe that is what happens once you have seen the inside of hell. From the moment you walk out, if you are blessed enough to do so, you live a different kind of life. A life on fire. Burning bright like the tungsten filament in a light bulb. White, vibrating with energy. One cannot gaze at people like that. You might go blind.
I think I must be more like a candle flame. Flickering. Blown by the ether of life. Wholly dependent on the wax below me that was gathered by faithful bees who faced untold dangers to produce the fuel for my hesitant and vulnerable glow. And a wick that was woven by pious souls who lived before me.
My existence seems muted by comparison to the rarefied circles he was blessed to move in.The conversations I longed to have, he participated in over and over. When I think of the anguish I endured, not having one understanding person to ask my questions of when I was reading Buber, Steinsaltz, Aryeh Kaplan and HaLevi! Oh the tears I shed, I felt so utterly alone in my quest for the truth. I had no teacher for such a long, long time. Who knows how much I lost of those years of reading and study with no other to guide me?
Now I can barely stand to read a mystical book. It breaks my heart. The words sear my consciousness. When I open their pages I tap into those waters that I gathered in my wilderness exile and a thousand questions suddenly spring to my lips. I want to shout them aloud to the heavens. I have such a cistern of unarticulated musings that were the dam to be breached, it would flood the world. Or so it seems to me.
But if I was honest, were I actually be able to sit at the feet of a master, I would find myself mute, unable to form even the most simple of my questions. It's like I have become entangled by my own incomplete learning. I would not be able to find my way out of this labyrinth that I built with my own hands.
How ironic.
And in some ways things have changed in the world since those days of questioning. Those subjects that I thought were so pressing have been overshadowed by my longing for Moshiach. It is as if the questions, the seeming contradictions, and the tantalizing hints in the holy books have piled up so high that they press against the ramparts of heaven. Perhaps that is how we will breach her walls. Standing on the mountain of our questions.
For so very, very long, fiery souls more shining and pure than mine have petitioned, cried out, and argued with God that the time was now. If He didn't answer them, how can I hope He will listen to my feeble, uneducated whimperings?
And yet I continue to ask, when the longing overcomes the pain.
Most days I cannot bear to acknowledge my utter exile. To ask is only to remind myself that I live in humiliating spiritual poverty.
My isolation is all the more bitter,because I knew some small tastes of the sweetness of community for a season. Now I'm not sure where to go. Nor do I know quite what to do. Except to gather up the courage to make a pilgrimage out of my denial and once again storm the gates of heaven with feeble hands that can hardly make a convincing fist anymore.
God help me.
I wonder if I have the strength?
You, HaShem will have to give it to me.
It is my right.
If not by birth, or learning, or excellence of spirit, then by the sheer number and sincerity of my tears.
I think I must be more like a candle flame. Flickering. Blown by the ether of life. Wholly dependent on the wax below me that was gathered by faithful bees who faced untold dangers to produce the fuel for my hesitant and vulnerable glow. And a wick that was woven by pious souls who lived before me.
My existence seems muted by comparison to the rarefied circles he was blessed to move in.The conversations I longed to have, he participated in over and over. When I think of the anguish I endured, not having one understanding person to ask my questions of when I was reading Buber, Steinsaltz, Aryeh Kaplan and HaLevi! Oh the tears I shed, I felt so utterly alone in my quest for the truth. I had no teacher for such a long, long time. Who knows how much I lost of those years of reading and study with no other to guide me?
Now I can barely stand to read a mystical book. It breaks my heart. The words sear my consciousness. When I open their pages I tap into those waters that I gathered in my wilderness exile and a thousand questions suddenly spring to my lips. I want to shout them aloud to the heavens. I have such a cistern of unarticulated musings that were the dam to be breached, it would flood the world. Or so it seems to me.
But if I was honest, were I actually be able to sit at the feet of a master, I would find myself mute, unable to form even the most simple of my questions. It's like I have become entangled by my own incomplete learning. I would not be able to find my way out of this labyrinth that I built with my own hands.
How ironic.
And in some ways things have changed in the world since those days of questioning. Those subjects that I thought were so pressing have been overshadowed by my longing for Moshiach. It is as if the questions, the seeming contradictions, and the tantalizing hints in the holy books have piled up so high that they press against the ramparts of heaven. Perhaps that is how we will breach her walls. Standing on the mountain of our questions.
For so very, very long, fiery souls more shining and pure than mine have petitioned, cried out, and argued with God that the time was now. If He didn't answer them, how can I hope He will listen to my feeble, uneducated whimperings?
And yet I continue to ask, when the longing overcomes the pain.
Most days I cannot bear to acknowledge my utter exile. To ask is only to remind myself that I live in humiliating spiritual poverty.
My isolation is all the more bitter,because I knew some small tastes of the sweetness of community for a season. Now I'm not sure where to go. Nor do I know quite what to do. Except to gather up the courage to make a pilgrimage out of my denial and once again storm the gates of heaven with feeble hands that can hardly make a convincing fist anymore.
God help me.
I wonder if I have the strength?
You, HaShem will have to give it to me.
It is my right.
If not by birth, or learning, or excellence of spirit, then by the sheer number and sincerity of my tears.