A friend calls and starts going on about a particular problem. “What do you think?” she asks.

Usually we come up with some satisfying philosophy. But this time I can’t. I feel like my brain is too scattered between the revolving-door summer-vacation requests and all the heartbreaking mind-boggling events of late.

“I don’t know what to tell you” I answer absorbed in the thought for a moment of how her situation is another example to throw in the barrel of “You will go insane from what you will have to witness.” (Devarim 28:34)

“Just say something” my friend says not wanting to interrupt a twenty-year volley. The only thing that comes to mind is my laundry situation since the dryer repairman keeps showing up with the wrong parts.

“The most I can share with you at this moment is that I think my laundry situation sums it all up.”

“Okay” she says ready.

“I have to figure out how I’m going to have piles of laundry cleaned and dried with no dryer no laundry line or hanging contraption and no clothespins to hang anything up with while strong winds continuously blow. Which make the clothes fly away when they’re dry.”

“You’re right that about sums it up.” she says. She thinks I’m joking. “Sums up life lately in general” we both admit.

“Talking about hanging in midair” my friend says and begins to describe a news clip she was just shown about a parachutist who jumped out of his plane some 10000 feet in the air and his parachute didn’t open. She describes how he twisted and turned over and over in midair until he almost hit the ground and how all of a sudden his parachute slightly opened to soften the fall and caught on a tree and the man walked away whole and healthy.

“No way” I say.

“Ten thousand feet and not a scratch” my friend emphasizes.

I hear and see and live a lot of hanging situations lately. Jobs marriages shidduchim yeshivah and seminary acceptances. About half of life is spent hanging in midair not knowing where or how we’re going to land.

It’s written that in the desert we carried the Mishkan on our backs. But it’s explained that in reality the Mishkan actually carried us. In the same vein there is a special stone that lies under the Holy of Holies and most think that the world or the earth supports or holds this stone in its place. But it’s written that the entire world actually hangs on this stone.

Last night a woman calls. This is not the first or even tenth call we’ve gotten from her. She has seven children and lives in an apartment in the Old City of Jerusalem that was built between two buildings and therefore has no windows. Her husband was in an accident years ago and can’t support the family. Her son has had three open-heart surgeries and her daughter just got married.

“My cupboards are empty. Do you have any way of getting me food?”

From the outside from the world’s view it may appear that this woman is totally hanging onto others. But I know in my heart of hearts that my life hangs on the merit of helping her.

Times are hard and the world winds blow us this way and that tossing twisting us seemingly in midair. I heard that the way to survive to land unharmed is by hanging onto the tzitzis of a tzaddik.

Thoughts on “hanging.”