B"H

THOUGHTS FOR THE EIGHTEENTH OF TEVES

Dear Friends:

What is the significance of the Eighteenth of Teves?

Good question.

If you have read my book, FROM CENTRAL PARK TO SINAI, you will perhaps recall the passages (see below) describing some of the most significant moments of my life, which took place beginning at 2 am on Monday, January 10, 1966 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  In later years, after we became observant, I discovered that the Hebrew date of this event was the eighteenth day of the month of Teves, which falls this year on Sunday night and Monday, January 7 and 8 in the year 2007 of the Western calendar.

About one month ago, Leah and I had the privilege of returning to Ann Arbor, Michigan, after an absence of forty years!  We were invited to speak to students at the University of Michigan who are enrolled in the famous Maimonides Program under the auspices of Rabbi Avrohom Jacobovitz.  This was a trip laden with spiritual significance for us, as we visited our old home, 606 East Ann Street, where the following event took place in 1966.  Here is how I describe it in FROM CENTRAL PARK TO SINAI

At 2 a.m. on January 10, 1966 I awoke with a start.

Things had not been going too well lately.  Our marriage seemed to be falling apart and I began to think I myself was coming unraveled.

Through all the years I had always done well academically, but lately, in graduate school at Michigan , I couldn't concentrate.  There was one course, Old English, that I just couldn't deal with.   I kept getting bad marks, and I began to think I was cracking from the strain.  In graduate school, if you get bad marks, you are in trouble.  You're supposed to be good to be there in the first place.  I was afraid I was going to be thrown out.  I was afraid I was going to be thrown out of my marriage.  I was afraid everything was spinning out of control.

Old English finals were scheduled for Friday at 9:30 a.m.   I had stayed up very late Thursday night studying.  Friday morning from some distant place I heard the sound of an alarm clock.  I must have gone back to sleep. Sometime later, I groggily opened my eyes. 

"NO!"

"It couldn't be."

9:20 !

I grabbed clothes and ran out of the house.  I jumped on my bike.  As I weaved through the Ann Arbor traffic racing for the final, tears streamed down my face.  I'm cracking, I thought.  My life is coming to an end.

Saturday night I was lying on that old green couch with the stuffing coming out.  I can see it now, thirty-four years later.  I couldn't breathe.  I was so afraid.  I didn't know where to turn.  I couldn't discuss the problems because I felt so selfish, just talking about myself.  But the problems wouldn't go away, and I didn't know how to make them go away.

When I awoke at 2 a.m. I was desperate. I saw a chasm opening in front of me, a pit from which there was no escape. I looked back on my life.  I was twenty-three years old and we had been married just over two and a half years.  We loved each other, but there was something between us; the tensions were terrible.

I felt as if my life were a long corridor, with many doors along each side.  I had opened each door, hundreds of doors.  There was a door for "hiking in the wilderness."  A door for "singing folk music." A door for "toughness" and "coolness."  There was a door for "political activism."  A door to the psychiatrist's office.  A door for "writing poetry."  A door for studying "comparative religion" and a door for "The Ethical Culture Society."  Each door had led NOWHERE, into a blank wall.   Was there no door that led to truth, to freedom, no door to sunshine and happiness? 

I began to cry.  I was through.  There was no future.  I was dying.   There was no place I hadn't tried, no door I hadn't opened.  I was drowning.   My life was ending.  Can you imagine this feeling?  There was nothing to live for.  No hope. 

I was sliding: down, down, down.... falling through space.  And then, as I fell, a thought brushed by me.  A little thought, a little voice, like a feather floating by in the midst of the void, a crazy little idea..

No, it couldn't be true.

But then ...

WHAT ELSE WAS THERE BESIDES DEATH?

All my life I had been raised as a good American boy.  I went to the finest schools and met the most sophisticated people.   NOBODY NORMAL BELIEVED IN G-D .  I mean, where is G-d?  Maybe thirteenth century monks believed in G-d, but that was the Dark Ages.  What else did they have in life?  But we lived in reality.  This was the Twentieth Century, the enlightened blossoming of world culture, the age of science and technology. We are liberated.  I mean, just where is G-d?  I don't see Him.  I can't touch Him.  I'm supposed to believe in something I can't see?

But there was one big problem. 

If all that stuff were true, how come I - the sophisticated product of the culmination of all civilization - was a total failure who couldn't succeed at even the simplest things in life?  I couldn't breathe.  I couldn't prevent myself from getting angry and alienating those I cared about.  I was a slave.

I "knew" that G-d didn't exist. 

The problem was that I felt I also didn't exist. 

Something was terribly wrong.

Suddenly, I began to turn the whole question around.  Like Hagar in the desert, my eyes opened and I saw something I had never seen before. There was one unopened door in that long corridor.  Why had I never noticed that door before?  It was the door to G-d.

I had been sure G-d did not exist. But now that my own life seemed to be falling apart, I began to wonder.

Maybe I had to turn the whole thing upside down.   When I examined it, it was very logical.  When I was honest about my life, I saw that I did not exist - my life was empty - and at that time I was sure that G-d did not exist. 

But what if G-d did exist?  Maybe then I could also exist.  Maybe my existence depends on G-d.

Maybe there was a life I hadn't even dreamed about.  Maybe if G-d were really alive I could be alive.   Maybe I had been looking at things "upside down" or "backwards" or "inside out." 

Why did my intelligence have to be the measuring rod of reality?  Maybe I did not understand and G-d did understand.  Did I have to comprehend something for it to be real?  Was I the center of the universe?  Maybe there was a reality beyond my understanding.

I began to have this crazy thought.  Could G-d exist?  No, it's crazy.  CRAZY!  All my life I had been raised on "reality."  No normal person believed in G-d . 

And then I began to wonder if I had ever met any normal people.

They say there are no atheists in the foxhole.  I was in a spiritual foxhole.  I was fighting for my life in a "war to end all wars."  My entire civilization was falling apart.  I felt the coldness of death and black nothingness where chaos reigns. I was terribly afraid.    

When you are drowning you grab the life preserver.  You don't ask questions.  I was drowning, and all of a sudden out of the sky came this life preserver.   I grabbed it.                        

What choice did I have?  I wanted to live!  

G-d, do You exist?  Could You exist?

Dawn was beginning to break in Ann Arbor as a new light began to glow inside me.  All of a sudden, I started to have this incredible feeling of hope, a new idea that would enable me to live.  

Do you think we survive on "bread"?  No, we survive on ideas.  Our life emanates from our soul and our soul emanates from G-d.   "Some [trust] in chariots, some in horses ... but we [trust] in the name of G-d." [1] This "crutch" that I had always rejected, the "opiate of the masses," maybe this was the missing link.

As the sun rose, I picked up a pen and began to write.  A volcano of thought and emotion exploded onto my paper.  I began to reassess my entire life.  All of a sudden I let G-d enter my soul and the sun came up.

Can I describe to you the feeling of hope I had?  For the first time in my life I felt what it is like to live without fear.  I thought to myself that something good and all-powerful governs the universe and that tremendous Force would take care of me, through everything, internal and external, that life would throw in my way.  There was something more powerful than Mr. Hyde.  There was Someone to protect me, Someone to take care of me, Someone to show me the way.

I happened to look in the mirror.  I saw my face, but it was not the face I had always looked at.  It was a shining face, a radiant face, mine but not the old face.  It was what I could be, or what I really was.  Maybe I wasn't a monster, after all.  Maybe I wasn't crazy.

I think I sat for a few days writing, with words ceaselessly pouring out.  For the first time, I could permit myself to see the truth of my old life, the agony, the stifled cries, the constant fear.  I could let myself see it because now I knew that there was another way, a path to freedom. 

Every year since then I have had a personal holiday on the night of January 9/10, the anniversary of my liberation from hell.

Thus ends the account in FROM CENTRAL PARK TO SINAI.  Thirty five years to the day after this event, we celebrated the birth of a grandson, Yaakov Moshe ha Kohain Hess, in the Holy City of Yerushalayim! 

Now it is forty one years to the day after that event.

What exactly happened on that fateful day?  It is my opinion that an angel appeared to me in Ann Arbor , Michigan , an angel dispatched by G-d to rescue me, my wife and our future family from the hell in which I had lived for twenty three years.  Perhaps I had uttered a prayer in my agony, a prayer which escaped from my heart and my lips unbeknownst to me even though I "did not believe" either in prayer or in G-d! 

Of course, in our deepest levels of consciousness, we all know that G-d rules the universe that He created.  We are sometimes, however, too full of pride to admit that there could be Anyone above us Who rules the entire creation!  I was full of pride, but also full of pain, and so perhaps, the pain prevailed for one millisecond and a prayer went up to G-d, a prayer which was heard with its accompanying tears!  And G-d, in His mercy, sent to me, that poor pathetic creature in the prison of his pride, an angel who unlocked the door and freed me so that I could make my way to G-d and His Torah.

And so today, on the forty first anniversary of the unlocking of the prison in which I had incarcerated myself, I thank G-d for my existence and all His countless blessings, among which are the fact that He introduced me to my eternal soul-mate, Leah, and blessed us with a beautiful family of holy children and their children.   May we all live in health and strength along with Klal Yisroel and welcome as one Moshiach ben Dovid soon in our days.  The blessings go on and on: I also thank our wonderful parents, who bequeathed to us souls that searched for purity in this polluted world; Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, who first opened our eyes to the Torah some thirty three years ago, and all the countless holy teachers and friends who have helped us so much along the way.  G-d 's bounty is truly endless!

If you ever feel that you are living in darkness, please read this and know that G-d will always provide light for us to emerge from the darkness, no matter how black it may seem.  I want to give you just one contemporary example of that, from an insight provided by our daughter Rebbetzin Yaffa Jungreis.

Last Sunday we Jews commemorated the Fast of the Tenth Day of Teves, the anniversary of the day 2448 years ago on which Nebuchadnezzer surrounded the City of Jerusalem before the destruction of the First Temple .  Since then, it has never been the same for the Children of Israel.  Even during the days of the Second Temple , in many ways we suffered exile, sometimes figuratively and often literally.  But our Prophets and Rabbis tell us that in the End of Days we will be completely redeemed and our Temple will be rebuilt, never to be destroyed again.

Do you think the world is completely hopeless now?  It often looks that way.  But Rebbetzin Yaffa pointed out an amazing thing to me.  On Shabbos, one week ago, when we read the Portion of Vayigash, which describes the reunion of Joseph and his brothers, Saddam Hussein of Iraq was executed.  Saddam Hussein had described and viewed himself as a reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzer.  He set out to destroy Jerusalem just as his predecessor had done and just as his neighbor, the president of Iran , would like to do. 

But on the day before the Fast of Teves, the day on which Nebuchadnezzer began the siege of Jerusalem so long ago, Saddam Hussein's violent life ended violently.  So will it be for all those who desire to hurt the Holy Nation of Israel. 

The Guardian of Israel does not slumber and does not sleep. [2]  

Redemption is near! 

Whether in Ann Arbor or Yerushalayim, we must now open our hearts to Torah and to reconciliation and unity among our people. 

May we soon hear the sound of the Shofar Gadol.  May the 18^th Day of Teves be a day of blessing for the Nation of Israel and the entire world.

With gratitude,

Roy S. Neuberger

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