You Have Breathed It into Me

Sometimes, I wish I could be a child again, for a little while, to walk into my kitchen here in Beersheba and find my father seated at the breakfast table, his hair all awry, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the newspaper. Occasionally, when I am ready for bed, I long to lay my head on my mother’s lap, feel her cool hand rub the back of my neck, kiss her goodnight, and taste the unique flavor of Pond’s face cream. When I awake in the middle of the night, I frequently think I hear the sound of our house fan at our home on Killarney Street and the wind blowing the long, thin branches of the Weeping Willow just outside my bedroom window.

But it’s not possible, at least not physically possible. Those times have passed, been gone for many years, and left behind their memories only. 

I am now a parent with children, even grandchildren. They live far away from me. I see them once a year for seven days in their home. I hope my children’s memories are filled with the sounds and smells of their childhood, of the home where they grew up in Philadelphia, the creak of the pine floors, the smell of lilac, the lift of the steps leading from the lower backyard to the upper one ending in a high stone wall. 

My country is at war. Terrible things prompted it, and very difficult things lie ahead of us. I hear at night now the roar of airplanes overhead, not an attic fan. My coveted long afternoon walks with our dog have been truncated. We still take three walks a day, but we never go farther than our ability to return home and enter our bomb shelter within sixty seconds. It’s a different kind of walk. Dogs are amazing creatures. Ours has learned to go to the shelter entrance when he hears the warning siren. The three of us enter together, my wife, Kulfi, and I; we double-lock the steel door, sit, and listen. We are listening for a boom, the sound of our anti-missile system destroying the rocket in the air. We wait the time the Home Front Command has suggested before leaving the shelter – ten minutes. I think it is to allow time for all the rocket debris to fall to the ground. What a strange world we all live in, one in which humans devise ingenious new ways to kill other humans and ways to prevent new ways of being killed. It’s an old story, almost the bulk of human history.

In the morning, I listen to a classical music station as I set the kitchen straight, feed our animals (we also have a female kitten – Nisan the Ninja), and prepare my breakfast. The station often plays Bach and Mozart, two of my favorite composers. For a while, a short while, I live and move in a world of beauty, sound, and perfection for me, especially in the case of Mozart. Like being a child again and seeing my parents, hearing the music is comforting, ordered, and beautiful. 

A similar world arises during my recitation of the daily prayers. Just listen to this. It will give you some idea of that immaterial world, that spiritual universe where prayer takes us. This excerpt is from the Morning Blessings, as translated in my Chabad siddur (prayer book):

My God, the soul which You have given within me is pure. You have created it, You have formed it, You have breathed it into me, and You preserve it within me. You will eventually take it from me, and restore it within me in the Time to Come. So long as the soul is within me, I offer thanks to You, Lord my God and God of my fathers, Master of all works, Lord of all souls. Blessed are You, Lord, who restores souls to dead bodies.

There are several things I love about this blessing. There is the recognition that God gave me a pure soul, that it is part of God dwelling with me within my physical body. There is also the acknowledgment that it is God, and God alone, who, when the time comes, will take it from me. I don’t think much about the world to come, so little is said about it in the Hebrew Scriptures. But I eagerly embrace the idea of offering thanks. When a Mozart aria is being sung on the radio, I can’t help it. I say, “Thank you, Father, for this blessing, for this singer, for Mozart, for the musicians playing the piece, for the wood in the violin, the tree from which it was taken, the brass, and curves of the horns, for the many, uncountable hours of dedicated practice by everyone involved in allowing me to hear a work of beauty, even, maybe even especially, the inventor of the radio.

I said above that dogs are amazing creatures. They have so many emotions. This morning, when Kulfi and I were returning from our walk, a neighbor’s dog looked at us, sidled over, and followed us to our gate. I can’t remember him ever having done so before. I paused at our gate. Kulfi was on my left side, and the neighbor’s small brown dog was standing on my right. I’ve never petted him before. I put my hand down, close to him, so he could let me know if it was permitted to touch him. It was. I rubbed the top of his head. I opened our gate and started to go in, but he acted as if he was to come in as well. 

I decided we needed to talk. It wasn’t long, however, before I realized the little guy didn’t understand English. So, I switched to Hebrew and asked him if he was okay. He looked longingly at the gate of the house where he lives. I walked him over and saw that the gate had been shut. He couldn’t go into his yard, his safe place, his home. I knocked gently on the gate. No answer. I tried the gate; it was unlocked. I opened it enough for him to go in. I looked at him. He seemed content. All along, he had wanted to be with his people, to be in a safe, familiar place. And I understood that. I fully understood it.

All the best,
Gershon