When looking at this week's Torah portion and thinking about the relevance of the Yovel – the jubilee year where all land returns to its original owner and slaves are set free – to my life and reality, my mind weaves a web with a Chassidic story, a Chassidic teaching and a personal experience fifteen years old as the answer.
A woman came sobbing into the study of the Chassidic master Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev (1740 - 1809). Her husband left home the night before and she did not know what had happened. Reb Levi summoned the husband in an attempt to reunify the couple. Reb Levi questioned him about their relationship, about his work and livelihood, trying to glean insight to the husband's actions. Finally the husband came out with the truth: "Reb Levi, I may not be proud of this, but she is ugly... and I can't live this way." Reb Levi Yitzchak looks at the woman, questioning how she wants to respond to her husband. She looks at the two of them and says: "It is true. I am ugly. But, Reb Levi Yitzchak, the one thing I don't understand is – how does he not remember how beautiful I was when we stood under the chuppah???" It is told that Reb Levi Yitzchak dashed over to the Aron Ha'Kodesh (the ark) pulled the doors open, and yelled out to the Master of the World: "Father in Heaven, maybe today we are ugly, maybe that is why it feels that you have left us, but why is it that you can't remember how beautiful we were when we stood at the bottom of Har Sinai (Mt. Sinai) and received the Torah?"
Now I ask of you to fast forward from Poland of the 1790's to Yerushalayim of the 1990's. Having struggled with her weight most of my life I was grateful when a friend of the family offered to send me to a health spa in Israel for a month to lose weight. There was only one stipulation to the gift - that no matter what happened, their love and relationship to me would never change; that if I didn't succeed in maintaining the weight loss I wouldn't be embarrassed to be in their presence in the future. When sharing the potential of this venture with a friend they looked at me with a fair amount of skepticism and said: "What is the point of going away for a month, loosing some weight and then coming back to Yerushalayim? You are whom you are and that isn't going to change by going away .. You'll just go back to eating and living the way you did before you left." I smiled at him because I had an answer - a teaching from the Mei HaShiloach, the Ishbitzer rebbe (1800-1854), who in a different situation and context asked a similar question.
The Ishbitzer rebbe in his commentary on the Torah and Talmud, the Mei HaShiloach, asks this question in regard to the Yovel: if we know that the land that we acquire and toil over will return to its original owners, why purchase it in the first place? If we know that this acquisition is temporary, what purpose does it serve? He responds with two answers rooted in text, mirroring our human experience.
The first is based on the pasuk (verse) from Kohelet (Ecclesiasties 10, 1) "Better than wisdom and honor is a bit of foolishness." We play games with ourselves! Yes, is it true that I know that at the end of 49 years I will have to return the land to its original owner, but right now I don't want to think about it... I don't want to negotiate long-term strategic planning. I want to enjoy the moment, I want to "have fun" now. And yes, it is true that there is importance – 'wisdom' and 'honor' – in being responsible and calculated, but at the same time, where does 'play' come into our lives? Therefore, at times, Kohelet tells us to allow ourselves to play and laugh and take risks and not think about 'tomorrow'. So you purchase the land, you plant trees and fruits and vegetables; you enjoy it for as long as you have it. And when the time comes to return it your 'wake up' call has rung and you return the land to its lawful owner.
The other response of the Ishbitzer rebbe speaks to the effort we invest in living our lives. Along with the effort comes, God willing, feelings of joy, success, wealth (in its broadest meaning) and appreciation, to name but a few. This, says the rebbe, can never be taken from us. The imprint of the experience cannot be taken from us.
The Ishbitzer is teaching us 'the memory of Other'. It is true that the corporeal reality of this expansiveness or change may not be forever but what will linger with us forever is the memory of the experience.
I turned to my friend on that winter day of 1994 and said: "I hope that a month away will give me enough time to create new habits and acquire new ways of being in the world. But even if I don't, even if those healthy behaviors slip away from me in the future, as the land does on the Yovel year, I will always have the 'memory of other'. I will always know that there was a month in my life that I lived a healthy life. I will always know what that feels like. At most, I may be changing my life forever, or, at least I will be creating a 'memory of 'Other'', and that is a great gift!"
May we allow ourselves this Shabbat to look at our lives, to re-coin that which we define now as 'ugly' within the context of a 'memory of Other'. May we allow this notion to enable us to be braver than we at times allow ourselves to be.
Shabbat shalom.