“Missouri. Hmmm.. cows... farmland....” My thoughts to a tee right before attending the Hillel Institute in St. Louis Missouri. Little did I know, I was far from home yet close to an amazing week full of a true meaningful experience.

From the Hillel Institute I realized that always having an open mind when walking into any situation that comes forth is truly a gift. I made some great friends on this journey. Ones that I still speak with and enjoy the company of. The easy-going atmosphere during nighttime was very much needed and appreciated. It allowed us all to branch out and meet each other without being held under restraints. Some of the friends I made were more religious than I, some more laid back, and some more outrageous, but all in all a wonderful group of people. The people I met at the Institute were welcoming and some of them really wore their hearts on their sleeves. Personally, from this I learned more than I had thought I would coming out of the conference: To be the best that you can be and give the best you can offer while always staying true to yourself. This showed me to never have expectations in certain situations like these. It was a great experience for networking and socializing with other Hillel’s to understand their groove of handling things on their campuses. I will take back what I learned and apply it to being a PNEI at Baruch College for the following school year. I am looking forward to a positive and wonderful year!

First off, spelling Kyiv is the Ukranian way of spelling the city and Kiev is the Russian way.  I'll probably end up referring to both throughout my time here.  Either way, there are only so many times you can make the joke about asking if the chicken at the meal is chicken Kiev.  :)  

Our guide for the tour portion of the trip was Jeremy Leigh who has written extensively on the topic of wandering Jewishly and what it means to visit a place as a Jew and seeking the Jewishness inherent in a place.  You can read a great article of his in PresentTense.  We started our tour just outside the hotel across from the circus.

What is interesting is that this picture of Yelena Azriyel and Biana Lupa from two nights ago in front of the circus...

became transformed into something new as we found out that the circus used to be known as the Jewish market of Kyiv. Jeremy then asked us to consider who actually owned the memory of a place.  Was it more likely to be the current residents?  Historians or tourists?  Or is it something that is navigated through all this varied ownership....

We moved from there to the central train station as pictured here.

As a daily commuter through Grand Central, I am quite familiar with the experience of train stations, particularly major hubs.  This experience however was different for me, but I did not realize it at the time.  I was taking pictures as a tourist, as someone far removed from the actual experience of being in this place.

When Jeremy asked us if we had any connection to this train station, it dawned on me.  That old cassette recording of my grandfather speaking with his father contained a story of this exact train station.  The story goes that my great grandfather met my great grandmother on the train leaving Kiev to come to the United States.  She was traveling in first class and he had snuck up from his position in coach.  They met, connected, but did not see each other again until later years when they were both in New York.  

Seeing this train, suddenly connected me deeply to the personal experience of this train station.  To know that years ago, a part of my family had started here gave me chills.

It brings me back to Jeremy's question of who owns the memory of a place.  I felt connected to this place through a personal story, much more so than the connection I had as a commuter.  I feel it is critical in my work with Hillel that one must be fully present.  We must bring ourselves to our work to enable others to connect with their self in a personal and hopefully deeply meaningful way. 

I'll finish this post a with two videos of Jeremy from our YouTube page...

MV

Some random pictures based on a wonderful Talking Heads song...

Pickles at every meal!!!!!

Beef Stroganoff

Mikado cake, after I was cautioned away from the Bales cake....long story for another post.

Biana's Neopolitan

As I started on the walk to Babi Yar today, I didn't know what I should be feeling.  I know that my family history from my mother's side comes from Ukraine, specifically Kiev, but I didn't quite know how to approach this site of so much suffering and murder.  I understood what I should feel at Sachsenhausen during last year's trip to Germany.  There was a museum and pictures and artifacts and tangible memory, but this was different.

This small memorial was all that stood to represent the memory of over 100,000 people who were slaughtered by the Nazis in a pit behind the stone menorah.  

After placing a small stone on the steps of the memorial, I slowly made my way over to the pit, to look into the abyss of where a part of my family was killed.

I stood, silently reflecting for some time.  Torn between seeing nature and life in the context of so much death.  I was really struggling to recall the faces of my family and I was troubled that I did not have a face to connect with for this place.  I had seen pictures of my great-grandfather, the one who had escaped Ukraine before this and after so many of the pogroms.  I recalled his voice on the cassette tape that my grandfather had recorded as a conversation about his life, the sole remaining memory of his voice.  And yet, I still could not see the faces of my family.  I thought of my mother, my grandfather and his father and tried to compile their faces into something approximating a memory but I could not.

I backed away from the site, unsure of what to think without a tangible connection.

It was then that I saw the lilac bush, standing after it had bloomed.

I didn't need to smell the fragrance, I didn't need to see the blossoms, but I had a distinct memory and a relation to all the beautiful lilacs I have seen in my life.  Somehow, that was enough. Somehow it connected to my work in this conference to understand more about Jewish Peoplehood and Jewish Peoplehood in relation to the world around us.  

In that moment of recalling the lilacs, I became at peace with the memory of a family I had not known.  I didn't need to see their faces, but I could recall their life, their memory, their connection to me through the chain of history through my memory of the lilac.

Like the one that had bloomed so beautifully in my backyard this year.

In memory of Abraham Rudman, all of his family, and all whose lives were unjustly taken from them in senseless violence.

MV

Wow, that was a couple of intense days!  I'll add more pictures and stories tomorrow.

Plus, an update from Biana!

After a minor flight delay, Biana and I took off from JFK for our 10 hour flight to Kiev.  Hard to recall most of the flight but I got the whole plot of Leap Year without listening to a word and fell asleep trying to watch Crazy Heart.

We landed this morning.  Funny thing, when we were on the plane we were wondering about how we would find our driver.  I said, "Oh, there's probably a sign that says 'Jewish Peoplehood'."  What do you know, a Ukranian man with a sign that says "Jewish Peoplehood" was waiting for us.  "Sochnut?"  That's it. Good thing we've had an Israel Fellow at Baruch for the past few years so I knew what Sochnut meant, despite my limited Hebrew.  Sochnut means Jewish Agency for Israel, FYI.

Borispol International Airport

Welcome to Kyiv!

We got settled in the hotel pictured below (what a view!)...

Then I took Biana's lead for lunch choices.  It didn't take much effort to pass up StarDogs (at least that's what it supposedly is translated to mean).

This looked like a nice place to sit and enjoy the flowers and the shedding cottonwood trees.

Borscht was recommended but my eyes were certainly bigger than my stomach as I ended up with herring, potatoes, and pickled veggies.

It's funny, no matter where I am, no matter what cuisine, I can't pass up the pickled vegetable plate.

I recognized Yonatan Ariel and a few others who came into the same restaurant after our lunch so we sat with them and chatted.  Thank fully Biana helped us with the menu ordering!  :)

We are now off to have dinner with Baruch alumni and current JDC Jewish Service Corps Volunteer, Yelena Azriyel!!!

Here are my plans for later tonight, catching up with the rest of the world.  :)

MV

'

Coming soon...a blog from our trip to the Third International Task Force Meeting on Jewish Peoplehood Education and Programming in Kiev, Ukraine!  

Stay tuned!

Around the gaps, silences and seeming repetitions of the biblical text, Midrash weaves its interpretations, enriching the written word with oral elaboration, giving the text new resonances of meaning. Often, to the untutored ear, midrash sounds fanciful, far removed from the plain sense of the verse. But once we have learned the language and sensibility of midrash, we begin to realise how deep are its spiritual and moral insights.

One example was prompted by the opening verse of today's sedra:

"And these are the generations of Isaac, son of Abraham: Abraham begat Isaac."

The problem is obvious. The first half of the sentence tells us that Isaac was the son of Abraham. Why does the text repeat, "Abraham begat Isaac"? Listening to apparent redundancy of the text in the context of the whole Abraham-Isaac narrative, the sages offered the following interpretation:
The cynics of the time were saying, "Sarah became pregnant through Abimelech. See how many years she lived with Abraham without being able to have a child by him." What did the Holy One blessed be He do? He made Isaac's facial features exactly resemble those of Abraham, so that everyone had to admit that Abraham beget Isaac. This is what is meant by the words, "Abraham begat Isaac", namely that there was clear evidence that Abraham was Isaac's father. (Rashi to Gen. 25: 1, on the basis of Baba Metzia 87a)

This is an ingenious reading. The opening of Genesis 21 speaks of the birth of Isaac to Sarah. Immediately prior to this - in Genesis 20 - we read of how Sarah was taken into the harem of Abimelech, king of Gerar. Hence the speculation of the sages, that gossips were suggesting that Abraham was infertile, and Abimelech was Isaac's father. Thus the double emphasis: not only in fact was Abraham Isaac's father, but also everyone could see this because father and son looked exactly alike.

But there is a deeper point at stake. To understand it we need to turn to another midrash, this time on the opening verse of Genesis 24:
And Abraham was old, well advanced in years: and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things.
Again there is a problem of an apparent superfluous phrase. If Abraham was old, why does the verse need to add that he was well advanced in years? The rabbis noticed something else, that Abraham (and Sarah) are the first people in the Torah described as being old - despite the fact that many previously mentioned biblical characters lived to a much greater age. Putting these two facts together with the tradition that Abraham and Isaac looked identical, they arrived at the following interpretation:

Until Abraham, people did not grow old. However [because Abraham and Isaac looked alike] people who saw Abraham said, "That is Isaac", and people who saw Isaac said, "That is Abraham." Abraham then prayed to grow old, and this is the meaning [of the phrase] "And Abraham was old." (Sanhedrin 103b).

The close physical resemblance between Abraham and Isaac created unexpected difficulties. Both father and son suffered a loss of individuality. Nor is this pure speculation. Examine Genesis carefully, and we see that Isaac is the least individuated of the patriarchs. His life reads like a replay of his father's. He too is forced by famine to go to the land of the Philistines. He too encounters Abimelech. He too feels impelled to say that his wife is his sister (Gen. 26). He re-digs the wells his father dug. Isaac seems to do little that is distinctively his own.

Sensitive to this, the rabbis told a profound psychological story. Parents are not their children. Children are not replicas of their parents. We are each unique and have a unique purpose. That is why Abraham prayed to G-d that there be some clear and recognizable difference between father and son.

Does this have any contemporary relevance? I think it does: in relation to a new medical technology, eugenic or reproductive cloning. Cloning - the method of nuclear cell transfer pioneered by Dr Ian Wilmut in the experiment that created Dolly the sheep in 1997 - raises profound issues of medical ethics, especially in relation to humans.

It is far from certain that it ever will be. Animal experiments have shown that it involves a high degree of risk, and may always do so. Cloning apparently disturbs the normal process of "genomic imprinting" by which the genes on the chromosomes from one of the parents are switched on or off. Many scientists are convinced that mammalian cloning is an intrinsically flawed process, too unsafe ever to be used in human reproduction.

However, cloning is not just another technology. It raises issues not posed by other forms of assisted reproduction such as artificial insemination or in vitro fertilisation. Nuclear cell transfer is a form of asexual reproduction. We do not know why it is that large, long-living creatures reproduce sexually. From an evolutionary point of view, asexual reproduction would have been much simpler. Yet none of the higher mammals reproduce asexually. Is this because only by the unpredictable combination of genetic endowments of parents and grandparents can a species generate the variety it needs to survive? The history of the human presence on earth is marked by a destruction of bio-diversity on a massive scale. To take risks with our own genetic future would be irresponsible in the extreme.

There is another objection to cloning, namely the threat to the integrity of children so conceived. To be sure, genetically identical persons already exist in the case of identical twins. It is one thing, though, for this to happen, quite another deliberately to bring it about. Identical twins do not come into being so that one may serve as a substitute or replacement for the other. Cloning represents an ethical danger in a way that naturally occurring phenomena do not. It treats persons as means rather than as ends in themselves. It risks the commoditisation of human life. It cannot but transform some of the most basic features of our humanity.

Every child born of the genetic mix between two parents is unpredictable, like yet unlike those who have brought it into the world. That mix of kinship and difference is an essential feature of human relationships. It is the basis of a key belief of Judaism, that each individual is unique, non-substitutable, and irreplaceable. In a famous Mishnah the sages taught: "When a human being makes many coins in a single mint, they all come out the same. G-d makes every human being in the same image, His image, yet they all emerge different."

The glory of creation is that unity in heaven creates diversity on earth. G-d wants every human life to be unique. As Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam put it: "Every child has the right to be a complete surprise to its parents" - which means the right to be no-one else's clone. What would become of love if we knew that if we lost our beloved we could create a replica? What would happen to our sense of self if we discovered that we were manufactured to order?

The midrash about Abraham and Isaac does not bear directly on cloning. Even if it did, it would be problematic to infer halakhah from aggadah, legal conclusions from a non-legal source. Yet the story is not without its ethical undertones. At first Isaac looked like a clone of his father. Eventually Abraham had to pray for the deed to be undone.

If there is a mystery at the heart of the human condition it is otherness: the otherness of man and woman, parent and child. It is the space we make for otherness that makes love something other than narcissism and parenthood something greater than self-replication. It is this that gives every human child the right to be themselves, to know they are not reproductions of someone else, constructed according to a pre-planned genetic template. Without this, would childhood be bearable? Would love survive? Would a world of clones still be a human world? We are each in G-d's image but no one

-- Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

In this week's Torah portion, Lech Lecha, God enters into a unique covenant with Abraham, promising him that his numerous progeny will inherit the fertile land of Canaan. There's just one snag. Abraham doesn't have any children. Sarah and Abraham cannot procreate and the covenant with God is suddenly in jeopardy. Sarah gives her servant Hagar to Abraham, thinking, "perhaps I will be built through her" (Genesis 16:2). The great Spanish commentator Ramban (1194-1270) specifically identifies Sarah's righteousness through this whole process. Subsequently, Hagar conceives and everything changes. According to Rashi, Hagar now looks at Sarah differently. Hagar sees Sarah and thinks, "this Sarai is not as she appears to be. She behaves as if she were a righteous woman when she is not righteous, since she did not merit conception all these years." Only a few verses later, we see Sarah treating Hagar so badly that Hagar flees with her unborn child.

So what happened to Sarah, our righteous matriarch? We live in a culture of achievement. And when we are successful, it's so easy to look at other people differently like Hagar did. Hagar sees Sarah's struggles with infertility and assumes that this reflects Sarah's core character. This type of assumption is certainly dangerous and potentially very damaging. Ultimately, it changes the way Sarah views herself. Hagar's harsh judgment becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Sure enough, Sarah becomes far less righteous and even abuses Hagar, forcing her to flee. In those moments that we do struggle, it's so easy to take it personally. Hagar assumes a flaw in Sarah's character and Sarah starts to believe her. Just because we bomb a test or don't get the internship we so badly want doesn't mean that we have any less worth as people. Sarah and Hagar teach us that achievement, positive of negative, is not a reflection of character.

Is there such a thing as an objective basis of morality? For some time, in secular circles, the idea has seemed absurd. Morality is what we choose it to be. We are free to do what we like so long as we don't harm others. Moral judgments are not truths but choices. There is no way of getting from "is" to "ought", from description to prescription, from facts to values, from science to ethics. This was the received wisdom in philosophy for a century after Nietzsche had argued for the abandonment of morality - which he saw as the product of Judaism - in favour of the "will to power".

Recently, however, an entirely new scientific basis has been given to morality from two surprising directions: neo-Darwinism and the branch of mathematics known as Games Theory. As we will see, the discovery is intimately related to the story of Noah and the covenant made between G-d and humanity after the Flood.

Games theory was invented by one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, John von Neumann (1903-1957). He realised that the mathematical models used in economics were unrealistic and did not mirror the way decisions are made in the real world. Rational choice is not simply a matter of weighing alternatives and deciding between them. The reason is that the outcome of our decision often depends on how other people react to it, and usually we cannot know this in advance. Games theory, von Neumann's invention in 1944, was an attempt to produce a mathematical representation of choice under conditions of uncertainty. Six years later, it yielded its most famous paradox, known as the Prisoner's Dilemma.

Imagine two people, arrested by the police under suspicion of committing a crime. There is insufficient evidence to convict them on a serious charge; there is only enough to convict them of a lesser offence. The police decide to encourage each to inform against the other. They separate them and make each the following proposal: if you testify against the other suspect, you will go free, and he will be imprisoned for ten years. If he testifies against you, and you stay silent, you will be sentenced to ten years in prison, and he will go free. If you both testify against one another, you will each receive a five-year sentence. If both of you stay silent, you will each be convicted of the lesser charge and face a one-year sentence.

It doesn't take long to work out that the optimal strategy for each is to inform against the other. The result is that each will be imprisoned for five years. The paradox is that the best outcome would be for both to remain silent. They would then only face one year in prison. The reason that neither will opt for this strategy is that it depends on collaboration. However, since each is unable to know what the other is doing - there is no communication between them - they cannot take the risk of staying silent. The Prisoner's Dilemma is remarkable because it shows that two people, both acting rationally, will produce a result that is bad for both of them.

Eventually, a solution was discovered. The reason for the paradox is that the two prisoners find themselves in this situation only once. If it happened repeatedly, they would eventually discover that the best thing to do is to trust one another and co-operate.

In the meantime, biologists were wrestling with a phenomenon that puzzled Darwin. The theory of natural selection - popularly known as the survival of the fittest - suggests that the most ruthless individuals in any population will survive and hand their genes on to the next generation. Yet almost every society ever observed values individuals who are altruistic: who sacrifice their own advantage to help others. There seems to be a direct contradiction between these two facts.

The Prisoner's Dilemma suggested an answer. Individual self-interest often produces bad results. Any group which learns to cooperate, instead of compete, will be at an advantage relative to others. But, as the Prisoner' Dilemma showed, this needs repeated encounters - the so-called "Iterated (= repeated) Prisoner's dilemma". In the late 1970s, a competition was announced to find the computer program that did best at playing the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma against itself and other opponents.

The winning programme was devised by a Canadian, Anatole Rapoport, and was called Tit-for-Tat. It was dazzlingly simple: it began by co-operating, and then repeated the last move of its opponent. It worked on the rule of "What you did to me, I will do to you", or "measure for measure". This was the first time scientific proof had been given for any moral principle.

What is fascinating about this chain of discoveries is that it precisely mirrors the central principle of the covenant G-d made with Noah:

Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed;
for in the image of G-d
has G-d made man.

This is measure for measure [in Hebrew, middah keneged middah], or retributive justice: As you do, so shall you be done to. In fact, at this point the Torah does something very subtle. The six words in which the principle is stated are a mirror image of one another: [1] Who sheds [2] the blood [3] of man, [3a] by man [2a] shall his blood [1a] be shed. This is a perfect example of style reflecting substance: what is done to us is a mirror image of what we do. The extraordinary fact is that the first moral principle set out in the Torah is also the first moral principle ever to be scientifically demonstrated. Tit-for-Tat is the computer equivalent of (retributive) justice: Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.

The story has a sequel. In 1989, the Polish mathematician Martin Nowak produced a programme that beats Tit-for-Tat. He called it Generous. It overcame one weakness of Tit-for-Tat, namely that when you meet a particularly nasty opponent, you get drawn into a potentially endless and destructive cycle of retaliation, which is bad for both sides. Generous avoided this by randomly but periodically forgetting the last move of its opponent, thus allowing the relationship to begin again. What Nowak had produced, in fact, was a computer simulation of forgiveness.

Once again, the connection with the story of Noah and the Flood is direct. After the Flood, G-d vowed: "I will never again curse the ground for man's sake, although the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done." This is the principle of Divine forgiveness.

Thus the two great principles of the Noahide covenant are also the first two principles to have been established by computer simulation. There is an objective basis for morality after all. It rests on two key ideas: justice and forgiveness, or what the sages called middat ha-din and middat rachamim. Without these, no group can survive in the long run.

In one of the first great works of Jewish philosophy - Sefer Emunot ve-Deot (The Book of Beliefs and Opinions) - R. Saadia Gaon (882-942) explained that the truths of the Torah could be established by reason. Why then was revelation necessary? Because it takes humanity time to arrive at truth, and there are many slips and pitfalls along the way. It took more than a thousand years after R. Saadia Gaon for humanity to demonstrate the fundamental moral truths that lie at the basis of G-d's covenant with humankind: that co-operation is as necessary as competition, that co-operation depends on trust, that trust requires justice, and that justice itself is incomplete without forgiveness. Morality is not simply what we choose it to be. It is part of the basic fabric of the universe, revealed to us by the universe's Creator, long ago.

Autumn 1909, one century ago, was a rather uneventful time. Compared to traumatic events that took place during the previous High Holiday seasons, and the horrible atrocities that would soon be unleashed, Tishrei 5670 (September-October 1909) was relatively quiet.

As it turns out, that fall was a deceptive lull in the early years of the 20th Century. Beneath the surface and behind the scenes, violent forces were simmering which would soon erupt and throw the benign century into bloodiest century in all of history.

Despite the apparent calm that holiday season, the illustrious Rebbe Rashab (Rabbi Sholom Dovber), a grandmaster sage and mystic, was not oblivious to the impending storm. In his classic style, the Rebbe delivered another of his timeless and timely masterpieces, which presented a cosmic snapshot of events to come, coupled with a profound perspective on how to approach and take on the challenges ahead.

That Rosh Hashana, one hundred years ago, the Rebbe Rashab began delivering the series of discourses, titled "Hemshech Eter" (eter is an acronym for the year 5670, tov resh ayin). The series would span for nearly six months, until the winter of 1910, and would consist of twenty-seven discourses, delivered both live (in Yiddish) and in writing (in Hebrew), and later published in a complete volume.

Couched in Talmudic language and mystical terms, the Rebbe laid out in the first part of this series of discourses two critical elements that allow us to understand and prepare for every situation, even the most difficult of circumstances.

We will focus on the discourse delivered exactly one century this week, on Shemini Atzeret 1909 (the sixth discourse in this series). In this dissertation the Rebbe Rashab explains the difference between the two holidays that flow one into the other, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. The Torah instructs us that following the celebration of the seven days of Sukkot, "the eighth day shall be a time of retreat (Shemini Atzeret) for you when you shall do no mundane work."

What is the significance of this eighth day? And why does it follow the seven days of Sukkot?

Explains the Rebbe Rashab that the secret power of the eighth day lays in the expression "(the eighth day shall be a time of retreat) for you."

We each have two aspects to our lives: Our outer lives and our inner lives. The things we do to affect the environment and the world around us. And the things we do within our own intimate selves.

The two consecutive holidays of Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret, explains the Rebbe, represent two primary prototypes of human initiative that each one of us has to be involved in - the first external and the second internal.

The purpose for which we were placed on Earth, why our souls were sent down to this material plane, is in order that we illuminate the moral and spiritual darkness of our physical world. This is the primary focus of Sukkot, when we take on not just our own personal lives, but also the welfare of our communities and societies. We dwell in Sukkot, made of vegetation of the world, we pray and commit to improve and refine the nations of the world, we dance and celebrate in public, we engage, connect and unite with others.

Following this seven-day immersion in the affairs of e the world, we then arrive to the eighth day, Shemini Atzeret, when we enter into our intimate space, "a time of retreat for you," when we are alone with G-d, "let them be for you alone, and no strangers with you" (Proverbs 5:17), and we are not involved in any "mundane work" of refining the world.

After refining the entire world during Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret is the single day when everything else is put aside and we are alone and intimate with the King, without any strangers present, for one last time before entering the dark, cold days of winter.

In mystical terms: Sukkot is related to the role of the "reshimu" - the cosmic residue that was created by the great "tzimtzum," which concealed the infinite Divine energy to allow the emergence of finite "containers" that would be able to receive this energy. Think of it as letters and words that convey profound wisdom, whose intensity completely overrides and submerges the actual letters in a powerful light, which don't allow the letters visibility. The tzimtzum conceals the brilliant wisdom, leaving a "residue" - a jumbled up assortment of letters (which are alternately compared to a summary, a blueprint, signs and hints to something deeper), which now can emerge and be revealed, but only due to the concealment of the intense brilliance. Like letters that remain visible after the light recedes, the "reshimu" is considered to be the first "container" - the root of all the "containers" in existence, which now have to begin the long and arduous process of reclaiming the hidden wisdom hidden within these residual "letters" and "containers."

On Sukkot the main focus is to enter the world of the "containers," in all their dimensions, from the subtlest to the most callous, to refine and illuminate them with Divine energy. After seven days we then retreat into - and retain ("atzeret") - the inner sanctums and chambers of the infinite energy and essential light that is above and beyond the "reshimu" and the tzimtzum - a day that is dedicated "for you" alone.

Though it would not mitigate the tzimtzum-induced horrible events to come in the first half of the 20th century, it is a bit empowering to know that we have the ability to not only not be destroyed by the darkness, but to actually illuminate it.

The Rebbe's elucidation of the tzimtzum could help people, at least cognitively and emotionally, face the gloom to come, knowing that no darkness can vanquish the spirit. In the Rebbe Rashab's own words (in the previous Sukkot discourse): "We cannot say that the objective of the tzimtzum is to eradicate the light, G-d forbid, because what purpose is served by the removal of light, and we are told that the world was ‘not created to be empty and chaotic but to be inhabited' (Isaiah 45:18)... the purpose of the concealment is that the light should then be drawn into the finite parameters of our universe, and this happens when the light is filtered through the reshimu, which carries the infinite into the finite..."

As the clouds of doom were gathering over the European horizons, one can only imagine the strength and courage imparted to all those who heard the Rebbe Rashab explaining the potency of Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret back in that autumn of 2009. No words can describe or minimize the harshness of the 20th century. But as challenging as those harsh times were, the Rebbe Rashab's words must have gathered much confidence and power knowing that these holidays infuse us with both the ability to transcend all the world's troubles, to enter an "inner" sanctum reserved "for you" alone, as well as to illuminate the dark universe.

In our time as well, though we are blessed to face far smaller challenges, we too have much to learn from Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Whether we are concerned with our uncertain economy and our future security, whether we are frightened by others fears and unknowns, whether we are anxious about our relationships and other personal ghosts, come Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret and we are told that these days bring us an unprecedented gift from above. They enable us to realize that we are not victims of circumstances; we can and must illuminate the shadows around us. And they allow us to access an inner place (which is dedicated "for you" alone) that can never be affected by the storms raging around us.

To take control of your life requires discerning a clear distinction between both parts of our beings. First, the message of Sukkot: we must know that we were sent to this world, each of us charged with the mission to illuminate our surroundings. Darkness exists for a reason - so that you can dispel it with your unique light and energy. Second, the message of Shemini Atzeret: There is a place reserved for "you alone." In the depths of your soul resides a private, intimate essence, where no intruder - physical, psychological or spiritual - can enter. This is your inner sanctum where you and only you and G-d reside. Nothing can wound or even touch that connection.

A practical way to actualize these resources is to dedicate time, as the holidays wind down and we enter the new year, to focus on these two dimensions of your life. Identify elements that reflect each one of the two, don't allow their boundaries to be blurred and spill into each other - know clearly when you are focusing on improving the people and the world around you and when you are entering into your intimate space. And above all, designate time to nourish both these responsibilities.

Some food for thought as we reflect on a century old discourse, that comes with warmest regards from the Rebbe Rashab. As we conclude Sukkot (this Friday) and celebrate Shemini Atzeret (this Saturday), we can glean much from these Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret thoughts.

And then - with this intimate and invincible power of Shemini Atzeret - "for you" alone - we have much reason to dance all night and day on Simchat Torah.

Are you starting your first year at Baruch? Get the free coffee hookup with one of our student leaders.  E-mail us at hillelatbaruch@gmail.com for more information.

Don't miss the first event on Thursday, September 3rd in the Newman Vertical Campus, Room 10-150 @ 12:45pm.  You can win one of three $18 Visa gift cards just for attending!