1.
First of all, I want to wish us a good and sweet New Year of the Torah. The eve of Shavuot is actually the eve of Rosh Hashanah for the Torah. In two aspects: First of all, chronologically. On the fifth day of Sivan, 2000 A.D., we received the Torah at Mount Sinai, and in any case, every year when this date arrives, we close another round year. And this year it is actually round, because on Shavuot 5750 we enter the 3333rd year of receiving the Torah.
The second aspect is the knowledge that, like every holiday in the Jewish year, Shavuot is not just a date, a day of remembrance for something that happened a long time ago, but much more than that: on this day, a special divine illumination shines again, something of the great light that shone at Mount Sinai.
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I don't really understand what this exactly means, but the Ramchal understood well, and this is what he wrote about the holidays in his book Derech Ha-Ha: "The root of all is an order arranged by the Supreme Wisdom, that every correction that was made and a great light that shone in a time of times, when that period of time returns, a light from the source of the first light will shine, and the fruit of that correction will be renewed in those who received it.".
That is, on Shavuot 5750 something is going to happen, something will be renewed, that didn't exist in the world before. And even without understanding, as mentioned, I understand that it is something very big.
2.
Rosh Hashanah for the Torah is also an opportunity to summarize another year of Torah study. Wow. It was quite a year. By all estimates, many thousands of new Torah students were added this year. Perhaps as never before in any other Torah year. Why? Because of the end of the Shas in the daily Daf Yomi order and the beginning of the new cycle. No one has exact figures, but according to the police estimate, hundreds of thousands participate in this demonstration, the daily demonstration of Torah study. Many of them are those who have not done so before.
True, there were many years in which Shas study cycles ended and began, but it seems that this time, in the 14th cycle, Daf Yomi is at its peak.
And if we summarize the year, we must note that this year was also a major blow to the Torah study of yeshiva students and kollel elders, the spearhead of Torah learners, talented young people who dedicate their lives to Torah. The coronavirus completely disrupted the study schedule during the period when the yeshiva were closed - and I still want to believe that in the overall calculation, thanks to the increase in the number of Daf Yomi students, Torah increased this year.
And besides, the Daf Yomi was literally a prelude to a cure for Corona. Not in the medical sense, although in this sense too, Torah study protects the world, as the midrash in Motti Steinmetz's charming poem describes: "Thanks to the Torah and the lore, the world will be saved, thanks to this rose, the orchard will be saved.".
I'm talking about the mental sense: The members of the Daf Yomi club, wherever they are, experienced the turbulent days of the Corona pandemic in a more lighthearted way. In the days when the entire world was turned upside down and nothing was as it had been before, the constant anchor of learning, of connecting to the sacred, to the essential, to the permanent, to the ancient, was to save sanity. True, there is Corona in the world and nothing is stable and certain, and there are anxieties, and when will it end and whether it will end at all, and the children are at home, and the livelihood is not at home, but there is one thing that has been with us for thousands of years, and will continue for thousands of years, and it simply calms the soul in these uneasy days. Thanks to this rose, sanity will be saved.
3.
And hence to another matter, which is also related to saving lives, and this time literally. These days, Health Minister Litzman has finished his role in the Health Ministry. I really am not familiar with the internal politics of huge bodies like the Health Ministry or Hasidism Gur, but it seems to me that all of us, literally all citizens of Israel, owe a debt of gratitude to Litzman for preserving our health. And I'm not talking about the excellent handling of the Corona crisis.
I'm talking about another sector of activity of the Ministry of Health under Litzman's leadership, which will save the lives of masses of Israelis. Many more people than during the Corona period: the food labeling reform.
I don't know how it works for you, I don't know how it will work for me later on, I hope I don't get used to the red warning stickers, but as of this moment, it seems to me that in the aggregate we are all saving our bodies enormous amounts of sugar, sodium and saturated fat. I don't think there is anyone who is completely indifferent to these red circles, which some people call with a smile "Litzmans.".
4.
Personally, I find myself surprised all the time. Every visit to the supermarket is a discovery of more and more products that I thought were relatively healthy, at least not harmful, and suddenly I discover that they have been given a red sticker. Even two.
This week it was pickles. I know nutritionists are laughing at me now, but what could be unhealthy about pickles? It's not borax. It's not chips. So, judging by the high sodium warning label, pickles may be a lot less innocent than they seem.
But the real astonishment was when faced with several types of certain cereal bars, I won't go into the names right now, that have been marketed and branded for years as a symbol of health and proper nutrition, and suddenly they were hit with two glaring flaws: both high in saturated fat and high in sugar.
It seems to me that, apart from the health issue, there's a lesson for life here. Don't look in the mirror. Don't be sure that your fixed attitude - to certain foods, to certain people - is the right one. You might be very surprised. So thank you, Litzman, for this lesson, and good luck at the Housing Ministry. Wow, stickers like that on slick real estate agents and sales agents - that could be a great thing.
5.
And finally: Aviv Gefen. I was very moved by his tears this week, when he spoke in an interview with Dana Weiss about the residents of Bnei Brak and the Haredim in general: "For years we learned how to hate the other. He is religious, he is secular. Even I was already a soldier in this game too. Suddenly I saw them. Suddenly everything connected. So how did I change during Corona? That's how I changed. I learned to respect. It lit a flame of love that was simply amazing. I can't even describe it in words, only in tears.".
Why was I so moved? What is your heart made of: Or his excitement and sincerity. He discovered, in a moment of truth, the innermost point of love for Israel. "Therefore all Israel were called brothers, truly, from the root of their souls in one God, only the bodies are divided," reads the well-known passage in the Book of Tanya, and Aviv Gefen, without ever reading it (probably), simply felt it.
To the point that he cried? Yes, great artists have a great soul, and special strengths of emotion, otherwise they wouldn't be artists but ministers of health or housing. And besides, in Gefen's case, he also has great ancestral rights (no, not Yonatan Gefen. Above in the holy. Type "Rabbi Shem Tov Gefen" into Google. It's worth a column in itself). So I tend to believe him.
But even if it's all spin, as I heard people claim this week, even if this is actually Geffen's way of always remaining in the public consciousness - every so often issuing some headline or statement that's hard to ignore - even if it's true, I'm moved by his words.
In fact, this scenario makes me even more excited: because if the times have come when Aviv Gefen thinks that in order to be on the map and be trendy and correct, one must talk about the Dossims with tears of love - then now I'm the one crying with excitement. All that remains is to wait for the day when Dana Weiss decides to join the hot trend.
Two weeks ago, a picture was published here from one of the closed synagogues in Ramat Beit Shemesh, on which was a banner with the request and hope, "Return us, O Lord, to You, and we will return.".
This week, with the return to the synagogues, the posters were replaced with the text "And the sons returned to their borders." If I were a synagogue tax collector (and I am not, not even a coronavirus tax collector), I would hang a poster on it that would be appropriate for the two joyful events mentioned here in one week - the day of the liberation of Jerusalem and the day of the reopening of the synagogues and the ba'i midrash - "We returned to the water cisterns.".
• The column is published in the newspaper 'Bisheva''
