Dear Friends:
This is the week of the 18th of Teves.
What is so special about that?
Forty four years ago, on the 18th of Teves, an angel visited me in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Here is the story, as narrated in FROM CENTRAL PARK TO SINAI: How I Found My Jewish Soul, my first book (published by Jonathan David in 2000 and just released by Feldheim in Hebrew.) When it happened, I didn't know that there was such a thing as a month called "Teves," or what day in Teves it was. Many years later I found out.
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.
I was lying on that old green couch with the stuffing coming out. 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 knew we were "basherte" (although I didn't know the word), 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," 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. 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, 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. 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 it 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 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!
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. Every year since then I have had a personal holiday on the 18th of Teves, the anniversary of my liberation from hell.
Do you think that angels don't exist any more? Well, you just read the story. I'm sure an angel visited us in Ann Arbor on that day long ago.
In this week's Parsha, Moshe Rabbeinu appears from "nowhere" to rescue the Children of Israel. It's going to be like that when Moshiach ben Dovid appears: just when everything looks totally dark and hopeless, the Redeemer will come "k'heref ayin," in the blink of an eye.
This is the middle of winter. It's dark and cold and we are all alone in a world filled with enemies. Moshiach is about to come, just when we least expect him!
