Its 11AM Thursday morning and I am
driving back to Manhattan. I came to Brooklyn this morning to make three
condolence calls, but since I left my house early this morning, I have had no
cell service. I have no Waze, so I am not sure how long the drive will be and I
can’t listen to any classes, so I am hoping with the help of Siri, to get a
jump on this week’s article.
This lack of connection and how, in
these few short hours, I have been
dealing with the loss of my phone reminded me of the words of the Ohr HaChaim
HaKadosh on the opening verse of this week’s portion.
“Shemot Rabbah 52,2 relates that the
scoffers amongst the Jews ridiculed the idea that Hashem would take up
residence in a structure made by Moses. From this we see that not only did the
Gentiles not credit the idea that the G-d of the Heavens had come down to
earth, but even some of the Jews could not believe this. Accordingly, even
though it was evident that Hashem's presence was indeed in the Tabernacle on
the first day of Nissan, the day the Tabernacle had been erected, they did not
consider this as evidence that Hashem's presence would remain there on a
permanent basis.
“Once they observed the ongoing miracle
of the Western Lamp, (need to pause here to explain)
The Gemara (Shabbat 22b) says that the
Ner Tamid spoken of in the Torah, is referring to the ner ma’aravi — the
western lamp — of the Menorah. It served as a testimony for all mankind that
the Divine Presence dwells among the Jewish people.
The uniqueness of the western lamp was
that the Kohen always put into it half a lug of oil, the same amount of oil as
was put into each of the other six lamps (half a lug = 5 ½ oz.). This was
sufficient to last for the longest nights of Tevet, and yet it outburned all
the candles.
They all burned the entire night and
would extinguish in the early morning. In the summer, when the nights are
shorter, they would burn into the morning hours. After they went out in the
morning, the lamps would be cleaned out and fresh oil and new wicks would be
placed in them. This service was known as “hatavat haMenorah” — “making good” —
i.e. preparing the Menorah for kindling. The candles would not be lit again
until the late afternoon. The western candle, however, continued burning the
entire day until it was time to kindle the Menorah again in the evening.
This miraculous uninterrupted burning of
the western lamp went on all the years of the first Beit Hamikdash, and served
as a testimony for Hashem’s presence in Israel. The western light continued to
remain lit during the forty years that Shimon HaTzaddik was Kohen Gadol during
the early years of the second Beit Hamikdash.
The Ohr HaChaim continues … “this served
as testimony that Hashem's presence was there to stay.
“The Torah impressed upon Moses that the
oil for the Menorah in the Tabernacle would become the vehicle by means of
which Hahsem’s presence in the Mishkan/Mikdash would be demonstrated when the
'eternal flame' would be lit.”
I thought to myself, we have bars on the
phone to indicate connection, while they had this flame on the menorah to
indicate connection with Heaven above. So, what went through their minds when
the flame went out?
Must be a mistake! Must be something I
did wrong? Maybe we need a reset?
When I got in the car, in the wee hours
while it was still dark outside and entered the address in Waze, I noticed the phone
had no service. Sometimes this happens, so I put the phone into airplane mode
and then back to standard mode, causing it to search for a signal. It searched
but found nothing. Instead of any reception lines, there was simply an SOS in
the upper right-hand corner.
So, I decided to reboot the phone, and
when I turned it back on, fully expected to see that I had service, but I
didn’t. Still sitting in that upper right-hand corner was SOS. (The universal
signal of distress!)
I went into settings and tried to see if
anything was amiss and then I wondered if perhaps AT&T was down. I thought
that was unlikely as all the other cars were driving and I noticed Waze running
on their screens within their windshield holders.
Heaven doesn’t break the connection. It
must be me. Perhaps AT&T could be down in Atlantic Beach, but over the
bridge it would re-connect. That’s what I thought and it didn’t.
As it was very early, I decided to stop
at the Keli Mikveh as I had some things in the trunk to dip. I turned the phone
off again while my hand froze as I dipped a frying pan, some glasses, and
whatever else Chantelle packed into the bag. And I wondered if when I got back
in the car, the phone would work. Maybe the zechut of dipping the dishes would
fix things.
It didn’t and so I accepted that most
probably it was either a virus infecting the phone, a messed-up setting or an
issue with my internal antenna. I needed an AT&T store to help.
When you first find that you’re
disconnected, you panic. Is it me? Is it them? What if someone wants to reach
me? I am expected to be connected always. Now I am not! Is there a pay phone. I
actually looked for one on street corners, in the gas stations, and on the Belt
Parkway. I had a quarter! And I was hoping to at least call someone and have
them text the groups to tell them that my phone was out and I was unavailable
so that no one would worry. But there are no payphones anymore.
Later on, driving on Coney Island
Avenue, I spotted a cell phone store and pulled in front. Maybe they open at
8AM? No, they don’t open until 10 AM.
At the second house, I thought to borrow
a phone. But it was pretty much me and the family in mourning. So, I didn’t
bother. As I got back in the car, not having removed the phone from its
holster, I thought about how at first, I panicked, and I felt so lost without a
connected phone and without Waze, and without being able to look up where I was
going, or to let anyone know where I was in a day and age when people worry if
they are out of touch for even a moment. That initial panic gradually led to a
feeling of being anxious which lessened to a feeling of concern, and finally acceptance.
I said that Hashem disconnected me. It is what it is.
Sitting in the car, I said to myself,
one more stop, one more misvah, (and at each visit, I realized that without a
phone, I was more focused and felt that the person or people I came to visit
did more for me than I did for them) and I’ll be in the city by noon and I’ll
stop into the office and then I’ll go around the corner to AT&T and they
will fix it.
I wondered if this is what happened with
benai Yisrael. The candle goes out. The line is dead. Is it a mistake? Can we
reboot? Can we light it again. And between the end of the First Temple and the beginning
of the second, we did. Maybe there weren’t as many bars in the second temple,
but there was steady connection for forty years and then not so steady a
connection.
And then the Greeks came and the light
went out again. At first, we went through the steps. It must be something on
our end. Reboot! Relight. Do something. But all we got was SOS. Until the
Macabees showed up. But then the Romans came and poof!
I imagine that as we turned off our
connection whenever we felt like it, Hashem finally reacted in kind and shut
down the system. The light of the Menorah went out. The bars went out. It was
SOS,
And maybe we, as a people, went from
panic, to being anxious, to being concerned and finally acceptance. And the
tragedy I thought, is that with acceptance, we steadily forget what we lost. We
don’t even realize what it was to have the phone. We go back to the pay phone,
to the maps, to the messages, to the answering services, the beepers, the
operators, the telex machine, and the messengers. (If you are sharing this with
family, you’ll have some explaining to do). We don’t even remember what it was like to
have that always open, clear and direct connect.
And as I finished dictating this to Siri,
the strangest thing happened as I was moving from the Prospect Expressway up
the ramp onto the Gowanus leading to the tunnel, bars lit up, messages started
coming in and service was back. What happened, I wondered?
I made a call to the office, but became
disconnected after a few seconds. I tried texting, but then the phone went back
to SOS. Was it really my phone or was it AT&T? Do I need to go to the phone
store. And with the service out again, I couldn’t figure anything out. Strange
puzzle!
There was a connection, however brief,
reminding me that potentially the system worked. Was that like the little
miracles we see in life? Was that like the reminders Hashem sends us, telling
us, “I am here, I am with you!”? Do we too easily forget those reminders?
Coming out of the tunnel and heading
onto the FDR, service returned. I noticed on the family chat, a note explaining
that AT&T was down all across the country and was gradually coming back.
What happened? No one knew yet. And what
would happen if everyone disconnected? Today the Greeks and the Romans are not
the tools, would it be the Russians or the Chinese? Scary!
But for a brief moment I understood what
the light of the menorah meant. When it was on, we were connected and when it
shut off, we were in a panic of SOS.
The verse ends with the words, Ner
Tamid, everlasting light, and I as I made my way towards the office with
service going on and off, I prayed that we would be zocheh to all see that Ner
Tamid, lit speedily in our days, in the Bet HaMikdash, Bimherah BeYameynu,
Amen!
