I went to the zoo this week. Needless to say, I had a blast. And needless to say, the excursion didn't end before I had learned a deep lesson as well. Walking through the "animals of the bible preserve," my buddy Dave R. and I wondered if they were kosher. The plaque there claimed that they were, yet they were not one of the animals brought to the Temple for sacrifice. Why not? They're very similar to goats and very common in Israel. The plaque brought a Gemara to explain that G-d didn't command us to sacrifice the Addax since it lives in the mountainous regions of Israel and is therefore hard to capture. Domesticated animals are the only ones required to sacrifice since they are much more easily acquired. "Wow!" I thought. "What a deal, G-d took into consideration the difficulty of performing his mitzvot before commanding them. What a benevolent creator we have." Well, not exactly. What about keeping kosher? I'm still waiting to hear the Gemara say "A Jew should keep kosher as long as it's convenient, but when if you really have to shlep around to try and find some kosher food, just make do with what's nearby." Nor does it mention "Davening is indeed of enormous importance, but if you want to sleep in some mornings, don't worry about it. After all, a guy needs his sleep!" Unfortunately, this "Addax principle" seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Talk about ruining a perfectly good day at the zoo.
Luckily, I was prepared with a way to cope with this realization. In a recent Daff, Yossi C. from New York shared with us the Shlomo Carlebach torah on the Shema. "Al levavecha," on our heart, that's where we're to put G-d's mitzvot. Not in our heart, but on it. Touching our heart, ready to seep in and be felt out in due time. Ready to be investigated and understood and loved. Coming to live G-d's word is a long trip, with a lot of pit stops on the way.
One of my favorite pit stops is coming up Monday night - Purim! Such an amazing Holy Day. We fast, we eat, we pray, we get rip-roaring drunk. Wait a second, I thought this was a Holy Day…becoming intoxicated doesn't seem like a noble pursuit fitting such for such a day. Or does it? What happens when you're drunk? You either pass out, or become a blabbering fool. Let's examine the latter option for a moment. That's the whole reason we drink on Purim…to let the secrets out. We're all experts at keeping secrets, especially the ones about ourselves. But how good are we at letting them out?
We all know that the only way to have peace in this world is to communicate, the newspapers are talking about it everyday, yet the reason we're not all shaking hands yet is because we don't know who we're trying to make peace with. We're all stuck in who I THINK you are, who I WISH YOU WERE. Rebbe Nachman talks at length about the importance of keeping our minds open. As soon as I think I know you, as soon as I think I have you all figured out, I've killed any chance you had of going beyond that. As soon as I make the mistake of equating what you just did with who you are, I've cheated us both out of understanding each other. Purim is a time to let our walls down a bit. Using alcohol to do so is generally not the best way to do that, but sometimes the spark of our "battery" gets so dim, that we need a jump-start. Once we let someone into our fortress, we start to see how similar we really are. The amazing aspects of our souls that are at the root of who we really ARE draw us to each other like a moth to a flame.
A wise Addax once told me that giving and receiving are two sides of the same coin (though I'm not sure how he knew what a coin was). Only when I give of myself, of my true soul, can I expect to receive anything lasting. That's the trick to understanding. People, life, G-d, whatever it is I'm searching to understand -- the more of my own secrets I tell, the more I'll hear. It is these secrets that will tell my heart how to open up and receive.