Two texts about the meaning of life and self-realization have been with me all week. The first is by one of the greats of the generation, the second by a 26-year-old man. The first is by a 101-year-old Jew, the second by a martyr of the kingdom of Israel.
I read the first text at the home of the Sharky family in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem. Just as I arrived for the shiva on the repose of Sharky the Fourth, the grieving family members gathered from all corners of the house, where each received condolences separately, and went to have dinner together.
Those ten minutes of break allowed for something that doesn't usually happen during the Shiv: getting to know each other. A kind of mingling in the shadow of mourning. In those minutes, I met some lovely French families of friends and students, looked at the huge library, and was also given a tour of the courtyard, in Shalom's "Birkat Ilanot" corner.
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Outside the house, in the heart of the urban neighborhood, there is a lush plot of land with pomegranate, cherry, plum, peach and lemon trees. About one of them, someone wrote this week: "Shalom's trees. Shalom Sharaki planted, cared for, healed and felled these trees on Shmita. Every year he hung the 'Blessing of the Trees' here for the acquittal of the many.".
Among the mourners, photos showing his radiant face were passed from hand to hand, usually against the backdrop of the landscape of the Land of Israel, and along with the photos, a folded black-and-white page.
""Peshita," it says above, in the title. This is the weekly newsletter of the Bnei Zvi high school yeshiva in Beit El, a newsletter that Shalom founded when he studied there, and later, when he taught at the yeshiva, helped the young students publish it every week. There is a special closing of a circle here, and it was also mentioned at the funeral.
Shalom returned to teaching in his adulthood in two places: both in the Talmud Torah where he studied as a child ('permitted') and in the high school yeshiva. How many of us are so reconciled with the places where we studied that they want to return and teach there? And how many of us will our former principals hire as teachers or instructors? I think that says a lot.
""A bit like returning to the scene of the crime, but to make amends," someone said with a smile at the shiva, and someone else added: "To come to the very place where you yourself grew up, and to grow others.".
This issue of 'Peshita' was written last week, on the night between Thursday and Friday. Straight from the funeral, the editorial staff continued with the work of writing, this time without Shalom to help and revise, and on Friday, after a sleepless night, they showed up on the doorstep of the Sharki family with the printed leaflet, which was also sent to all the students.
This is not a newsletter, though. It has a lot of humor and bits of internal humor. Phrases and sentences that only they understand, with joy of life and pictures and poems and quotes from sections written about the beloved instructor in the newsletter in the past (example sentence: "Shalom Sharky - the first seventh-grade instructor who is still a student" and "His main hobby: doing tests"). And among all of this, there is also a text that Shalom himself wrote for his students' Shabbat newsletter, a few months ago. I am quoting his article here in its entirety. The title was "The Seventh-grade Crisis":
""My sister sells ice cream in Jerusalem (really!) and she once told me: 'My boss said that everyone who enters the store we immediately offer to taste our ice cream, even if they're not sure they want to buy.' 'Like this, for free?' I asked, 'What's the point?''
""The explanation is this: Everything in life opens in a period of grace. In fact, our entire life opens in one great grace. During the first years of our lives we receive everything for free. Someone feeds us, someone makes sure we are not too hot or too cold, someone makes us laugh when we cry. Contentment, happiness, love, and it's all free.
""Until sometime it's over, and suddenly you have to ask nicely and say thank you, sorry, please. To flatter your aunt to get candy or just a snack. As we grow older, the situation only gets worse. We have to work harder and harder to get the same things we once got for free. Doesn't it suck?
""Even when you arrive at yeshiva, it's like that. At the beginning of the fifth or first lesson, everything opens up, everything lights up. Everything has a new smell of beginnings. The learning lights up and excitement fills the air. And here I am, in the middle of the seventh or fifth lesson, a little tired, a little corny... Something in my heart is already more extinguished. And I ask myself, where did that rascality of the beginning of the fifth go? Where did the excitement of the first lesson go? What happened to that excitement of the first page?
The answer is that at every new stage in life, God opens a new gate of grace for us, which comes to give us a small sample of the future. God lets us taste some ice cream with a small disposable spoon, so that we know that it is possible. That one day it will all be ours. And now, now the real work begins. Did you taste it? Was it good? Come on, let's work. There are no free lunches.
If you received something for free – know that it is only a taste of the real thing. The best of the world awaits us, and only if we do it ourselves will we receive the full cup, which this time will truly be ours. May you have a Shabbat of responsibility, independence and joy. We trust you with our eyes closed, the guides.".
You really don't have to be a sabbathist to feel like it was written for you. This idea about the scoop of ice cream we get as a taste, in rare moments of sparkle, "at home expense," and then having to go back to toil and invest - is true for so many levels and fronts in our lives.
The second text that has been with me throughout the week is much shorter. It was spoken last Wednesday, in the halls of the 'Armonot Chen' in Bnei Brak, at the annual conference of the 'Lev L'Achim' organization.
I don't work or volunteer for this organization, but I went there and took my oldest child with me, simply so he could see elders who had acquired wisdom. Recently, with the passing of several of Israel's great men, I suddenly realized that my children might be able to say that they lived in the generation of Rabbi Elyashiv or Rabbi Ovadia Yosef – but in fact they never got to see them, simply because their father didn't have the strength because it's terribly humid in Bnei Brak.
So we got up and went to the annual conference where many, many Torah scholars gather to salute this organization, which organizes Torah lessons, mainly in the periphery, mainly among the audience known as "Metkazchim" (this is an expression that was repeated there again and again, by the way. Not repentant, not secular, not ultra-Orthodox, Metkazchim).
This huge conference is hardly covered in the media because it has no political aspect. On the way back, on the radio, we had already heard the Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies that had begun, and it really connected to the event we had left – from a beacon to a resurrection, from an attempt to destroy the Jewish people to an attempt to strengthen their Jewish identity.
There were several thousand volunteers (two thousand male and two thousand female volunteers), who participated in a seminar that was essentially all about issues of rapprochement. Lectures and panels and halachic and educational discussions on the right way to influence the Jewish people. But the whole time there was anticipation in the air for the climax – the entrance of Rabbi Aharon Leib Steinman, and the speech he would give. The moderator called it "the central task.".
And after many preparatory speeches, it happened. Rabbi Steinman entered the hall and was about to speak, and it would not be a cliché to use the phrase "Hess was thrown into the hall." Hess was really thrown into it. Silence.
I lifted the child up, so that he could see how everyone was silent and waiting as the rabbi slowly approached the microphone and began to speak measuredly and quietly. What was he going to say? What was his motto for the world of Teshuva? What was his main message to the thousands of activists? What would the spiritual leader say now that so many of the problems of the generation and its education were reaching his desk?
Here are the things, I quote word for word: "A person needs to know what he is, what he can be, and what he should be. People do not always utilize their powers. Everyone needs to know what he is, and what he can be. And if one utilizes all his powers for what he can be – he will be happy, and it will be good for the world and for himself. May God, the Almighty, help everyone to truly know what he is, and utilize all his powers for the sake of Heaven.".
That's it. The "speech" lasted less than a minute.
A person needs to know what he is, and what he can be. We need to utilize our strengths to the fullest. We just need to toil and work. Did he mean the ones who are getting stronger or the ones who are getting stronger? It seems to me that everyone together.
The message echoed in the hall for many minutes after Rabbi Steinman had already left, after giving us a small taste of a spoonful of ice cream, and left.
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
