Feeling Strong and Happy

             

By the last month of the year (which we entered today) and after a long winter, one would expect a person to be depleted and melancholy (especially after the winter America had).     Granted, the finish line is near, but it is not quite spring.   The internal perspective is different.  The name of the month, אדר, means strength and the famous refrain from the Talmud is that as soon as אדר comes we increase our joys.  The two perspectives could not be further apart- how can we understand it? 

  We have to go back to the beginning where the Torah teaches us some alchemy about how to make a human being.  So first, you take misty water and sprinkle it over a large swath of dirt. Let it soak for a period of time. Then, take the mud and form it into a human like figure and let it dry.  After that, blow into it and you get a human- just like that- if you are G-d that is.  Given that we are not G-d, and that this process won’t get us very far aside from making a statue, what is the point of telling us about the process to make man?  There must be secrets here that do matter for us.

                The key line is Genesis 2:6, ‘And a mist אד went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground’ (that was step one of human creation above).   What was this mist?  It is made up of the letters א ד, which are the first letters of man, אדם, and the first letters of our quandary, אדר.  The mist represents spirituality emanating from the physical earth.  The Kabbalists says that א, the ineffable letter of Oneness, and hence spirituality, is coming up from the ד, the 4th letter that represents our physical world (think the four direction we travel as represented by a compass, think poverty as the physical world always lacks something, it always needs a fix and the letter daled means in Hebrew dal- poor).  

                And that is the role of man in this world.  It is to bring out spirituality, ethics, and morality from what looks like a natural world.  That is also what the last month of the year is all about.  We started with Passover in Nissan where we are showered with miracles and spirituality from G-d and we end with Adar where we shower G-d with a display of our own spiritual prowess.  It is the month where we realize that we are strong and capable and when a person sees that he is capable and strong, the natural reaction is an increase of joy. 

               

               

A new inspiration

      

 After a long hiatus, there is no better day than the new year for the trees to begin anew. Tu B’Shvat (the 15^th of Shvat) is a well-known holiday with nowhere to go.   There are no real obligations on this day, except it is customary to eat some tasty Israeli fruit that one has not eaten yet that year. On this day, we recognize that most of the rain has fallen for that winter in Israel, the sap has started to move up the tree, and the first stage of the ripening fruit is about to begin.  More than that, it is a day of deep rejoicing where we don’t fast, make eulogies for the deceased, or place our heads down in submission during prayer.  Usually, we reserve joy for a tangible event, but here all that is happening is hidden and internal. What is the depth of the day and what does it mean for us? 

        A tree[2] is connected to the ground and it takes tasteless and formless dirt and produces a tasty and complex fruit.  Aside from the verse in Deuteronomy 20:19 that explicitly states it, ‘…for a man is a tree in the field’, the comparison is obvious. A human being is called ‘adam’ from the language of dirt, ‘adama’. A person is born with selfish tendencies and few things to be proud of- he is like tasteless dirt. It is his job to take his dirt, potential, and transform it to mitzvahs that have taste (reason) and purpose.  The Talmud in Sota 46a says explicitly that the main fruit of a person is his mitzvahs.

 This doesn’t happen automatically; it takes a lot of hard work.  Hopefully, the seeds were planted during the high holidays and tended up to this point. A third of the year has passed from Rosh Hashanah and this has supreme significance. Symbolically, if the body were divided into thirds, we’d now reach the midsection, we've now completed our hearts.  After much toil, we should start to feel inspired from our work, our hearts should come alive. That inspiration should lead to new directions and new actions.  

        This is the joy of Tu B’shvat. It is the process of moving from foundational work to transformational work. We should now have enough inspiration inside to actualize the plans we had for the year and create fruit that has never been tastier. 

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[1] Adapted from Shem mi Shmuel parsha B’shalach.

[2] A tree, אילן in Hebrew is gematria 91- which is the combination of the high name of G-d, יהוה and the lower name of G-d, אדוני. A tree connects both the upper and lower worlds.