From the heart of Jerusalem: Of mountains and valleys

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When you are up high on top of the mountain, it becomes much easier to see where you are going; everything seems so clear, and often the view is breathtaking. In the valley, on the other hand, the high walls of the mountains obscure where you really are, and it is much easier to get lost.
In the army, when studying navigation, you learn very quickly that you have to navigate in the valleys. It would make sense to be up on the mountaintops, as you could always keep your eye on your distant destination, and you would never get lost. But the amount of effort and sheer exhaustion that would be the inevitable result of climbing up and down all those mountains would also mean you would never get there. Your distance would be multiplied tenfold, and you would probably pass out long before ever reaching your goal. Mountaintops are beautiful, but they are also exhausting.
Sometimes we are privileged to experience life’s mountains, like the joy of the birth of a healthy baby. The wonder of meeting and seeing such a new little person has to fill one with awe. It allows you to realize that there are great things at play in this world, and that we are not alone, and indeed are part of something much greater.
Many are the mountains we see and sometimes are blessed to experience in this world. Some of them are towering giants, like the day a person gets married, or marries off a child, the achievement of a life’s dream such as seeing an organization grow into a real force for good in the world, or even changing someone’s life. And some of them are hilltops, like an A+ on a college paper, the girl who says yes when you ask her on a date, the boss who agrees to your request for a raise, or even the beginning of new friendships. And whenever we experience these peaks, they are a chance to see life a little more clearly, and take stock of our direction, making sure we are still on course.
And then there are the valleys; life’s low points, where things often seem so lost and confused, you wonder whether you will ever climb out, and whether you are so lost you are really walking away from your destination instead of towards it.
There are many valleys. Some are deep ravines surrounded by cliff walls, like the painful breakup of a marriage and the pain of the loss of a person you may have thought was your best friend, or the cold lonely emptiness of a hospital hallway or surgical waiting room. And just like the mountains, we navigate them as we best we can, and hope and pray that soon we will arrive at the mountain top, and see things clearly again.
To be absolutely clear: I am not suggesting that this is the ‘answer’ to the age old question of why so many good people suffer in this world. Moses himself could not fathom the answer to this question (tractate Berachot 5a), and it would be extreme arrogance to presume the understanding of the unfathomable.
But sometimes we are blessed to see the people of the valley who succeed not just in climbing the mountains, but also in bringing the valleys with them.
Maybe the first stage of changing who we are and the way we look at the world, which seems to be the goal of Rosh Hashanah, is whether we can call out to Hashem even from the depths. Can we succeed, somehow, in harnessing our greatest challenges and our deepest pain, allow Hashem into our lives?
Take Christopher Reeves, the movie superstar who played Superman, and who was paralyzed from the neck down in a tragic riding accident.
I remember once catching a segment of a Larry King Live interview with Mr. Reeves. King asked reeves how he manages; after all, he was Superman, and now he will, it seems, never be able to even teach his five-year-old son how to catch a ball.
I will remember forever Reeves’ answer: he said:
“I learned one thing from this entire experience: it’s not about what you do; it’s about who you are.”
I wonder, if when we are standing before the open ark reciting the words of this challenging Mizmor (Psalm), we are not really asking G-d; we are telling G-d first of all, that we are willing to call out to Him, even from the depths, and we need a little help. And
I wonder, if perhaps we might consider that these depths, for each of us, each in our own way, contain the most fertile ground of all, if we could only find the enormous strength to dig just a bit deeper.
Best wishes for a sweet, happy, healthy and above all peaceful New Year.
Be’Virchat Ketivah’ Ve’Chatimah Tovah,

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.


Rav Binny Freedman, Rosh Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City is a Company Commander in the IDF reserves, and lives in Efrat with his wife Doreet and their four children. His  weekly Internet ‘Parsha Bytes’ can be found at www.orayta.org