Dew Power

   

For months my sister and I planned to have a kiddush together (a small, desert laden party after services to receive blessings for the baby) in honor of our impending daughters who were scheduled to be born a month apart. G-d had other plans because I could no longer postpone my Kiddush for Tehilla and wait for my sister to give birth.  Instead, my sister went into labor on the Kiddush morning and didn’t even show up to my Kiddush- no hard feelings of course.  More importantly, is what my sister decided to name her daughter, Talia, which in Hebrew means ‘Dew of G-d’ in honor of the dew wrapped manna that we got in last week’s parsha.  This is the source for why we make a blessing on the challah with the challah cover on them. It is a symbol for the dew that fell with the manna.   Why does dew get special mention in the Torah, and why is it a perfect name for my little niece?

                טל has an interesting numerical value-39.  This inconspicuous number actually comes up in  different places within Jewish life.  Most notably, 39 is the number of prohibited creative actions on Shabbat.  We also find 39 in the number of wrappings on a Tzitzis (7,8,11,13=39).  Where does this number come from and why do these three ideas: Shabbat, Tzitzis, and dew contain it? What is the common thread?

                Let’s start with Shabbat.  Shabbat is the idea that not one person owns the world.  In fact, we are renters here.  If a renter wants to renovate an apartment, even if it is for the benefit of the owner, he needs permission.  For six days, we have that permission to make changes to our ‘apartment’, the world, and improve it.  However, for one day, the Owner of the apartment comes to see the apartment and He doesn’t want any messy renovations that day.  He says, you are making so many changes here you may get confused and think you own the place. So remember who the owner is and whose house this is; G-d tells us remember that this is My world, and therefore, it is holy. 

                Tzitzis are strings that men wear that protrude from the four corners of a garment.  There is rampant symbolism here, but the main idea is that these strings announce to the world that there is an inner potential that needs expression to the world.  What you see- a bipedal ape-like creature- is not that.  We contain a soul that can take us beyond our animal constraints.

                Finally, we have dew.  We look at the ground and it looks dry.  Then, we wake up and see water on a sunny day and it appears that it came from the ground (I am aware that dew doesn’t actually come from the ground, but it sure looks that way).  What seemed dry actually had something inside.

                The grand idea is that 39 is also the numerical value of ה' אחד, ‘Hashem is one’. The unifier between these concepts is that even in the physical we can find holiness.  This world is not just physics, the human is not just animal, and this land is not just dry.  Behind all of them is a hidden ‘water’, spirituality, that wants expression.  G-d’s real oneness is that he is here too and not just ‘up there’.  We have very little problem with the idea that there is a first cause or some spiritual energy ‘up there’.  But to think that he is ‘down here,’ we need to look at dew to appreciate that.  We hope Talia always inspires this idea. That we can look at her and know that, yes, G-d is here too.

                

Worse than slavery

                Imagine a person throws a bucket of mud on you.  Before you are able to lash out at him, he says, ‘don’t worry, I have a one hundred dollar gift certificate to the dry cleaners, and that should take care of it.’ What do we say about such a person? Do we lavish him with his praises? No, at best, we refrain from revenge, and at worst, we still take revenge for the inconvenience.  However, it we look at Genesis 15:13, ‘And He said to Abram, ‘Know with certainty that your offspring shall be sojourners in a land not their own, they will enslave them and they will oppress them four hundred years’, we see just that. G-d decrees future enslavement, and then reassures that we’ll be saved and come out with riches. And not only are we supposed to be ok with this, but on Passover, we extol G-d for getting us out.  Therefore, it must be there is something great about the enslavement itself that we are grateful for.

                Slavery is the key to life.  To get a handle on this idea we just have to look at the secular New Year that just passed.  Aside from champagne and year in review shows, New Year’s is famous for resolutions. We decide that this is the year that we diet, study, change, exercise etc.  To be successful we need to place our self under the servitude of that ideal.  We have to treat it as an unshakable yoke that we are stuck with.  People who never place them self under the servitude of goals never accomplish, and like a cow grazing in a field, are left with a grassless field. On the contrary, a cow under the servitude of the yoke produces fields of food- its power is harnessed.

                Obviously, there is negative slavery. There are two reason why that is so.  First, the master is abusive and second a person loses all autonomy- he is a slave to somebody else’s dreams and not his own.  However, there are other situations when this happens as well. Any group- a company or a team- only functions properly when they bind together to one ideal even if it means giving up some of their own, and that is positive.  Real life starts with servitude- either to a personal commitment or to a greater cause.  There is no such thing as real freedom, and those who think there is, end up with nothing. That is why we are grateful to G-d for taking us out of Egypt, and even putting us in.  As a nation, we needed to internalize that life begins with slavery.