Dreams

The Ukraine Update will soon be posted.

When I was young and my father would lay me into the large feather tick, I would stare at our thatch roof of our house and ponder every thought my young mind could conjure forth.

“Tatty,” I would say,
“Yes my child?”
“Tatty, what is a soul? What is it made of? How does it work? What makes it fly?”
I could never ask anyone besides Tatty these fantastic questions.

Tatty knew everything and anything in the world. Tatty would talk with R' Zundel the Rav and visit with R' Mendel Porush. He would hold me in his lap and read from his many old s'farim. When I was good, Tatty would even take out his fiddle and play lilting niggun. Tatty knew everything with his big gray beard and his yellow-gold eyes.

Tatty would sigh and run his hands through my long curls of black hair.
“Well, my child let me tell you a story.”
Tatty always told the best stories, there was the one about the Baal Shem Tov and why he laughed, or the story of nistar who wandered from town to town to help simple Yidden. My Tatty knew everything and anything under the sun.
“My child, can you tell me what why we are here?”
“No Tatty, why?”
“My child, Hashem created a world rich with wonder. The seas team with fish, the air with birds and the forest with animals. In the sky there are stars, hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands, all shinning down on us. By day the Sun comes out and gives us light . . . Why did Hashem make all of this glory?”

Tatty paused for a moment but I knew not to answer his question, not yet at least, he was only giving time for the words to surround me, to sink into me, and become one with me, until my mind covered them as snuggly as the comforter my body.

“Hashem created all of this, and more, for you my child. Hashem wanted that even in the physical world He would be felt and revealed. Not only would the fish sing his praises and the trees clap their hands to Oneness, but that even a little boy who has a yetzer hara that says to be naughty . . .”

“Like not giving my extra apple to my baby brother?” I blurted out.

My Tatty laughed,

“Yes even such big problems as not sharing your apple, even those things he would fight, and through that sanctify Hashem’s holy name”

This was always the point in which either his story would end, or I’d discover if it had just begun. If the former were true Tatty would bend down and kiss my forehead, as his big bushy beard scratched my face. If the later were true, he would then fumble through his bag and take out a long wood pipe with the silver mouthpart. Anxiously, I sat there waiting.
Tatty, lighting his pipe began to puff slowly.
“Now, where were we?”

“The fishes and the apples Tatty! But Tatty what does that have to do with my neshama?”

Tatty laughed again, his eyes lighting up with joy.

“Ah yes,” he said, “What is a Yid? A Yid is fire; a Yid is a chailek eloka m’maal, a venerable part of G-d above. That is your soul my child, a spark sent down to light up the darkness.”
“But Tatty, how does the spark stay bright? If it does stays down here to long, or gets wet, won’t it go out?”
“That is very wise of you my child. This spark is always connected, no matter how great a wind may come it shines bright. But there is something else that I must tell you, if you blow on the spark and fan it with all of your might then not only will to glow, but also it will grow and catch flame! When you do a mitzvah my child you are fanning the spark. The flame in you will grow and spread, spread to others whose sparks have not yet been fanned.
“Soon not only one neshama is glowing, but hundreds upon hundreds, thousands upon thousands, all flickering above to their source, to Hashem.”
“But Tatty, why doesn’t it fly away if it is always flickering towards its source?”

“It knows something very special that keeps it down here, my child, it knows that through being down here it can reach new heights, it can connect itself to Hashem in ways not possible above.”

“I don’t understand Tatty.”
“Oh, my child, you have many years to understand. Now the time has come for your Neshama to go above for the night, so that, tired as it may be, Hashem will return it to you refreshed in the mourning. So lay your head on the pillow and sleep.”