A few months ago my husband and I take a little visit to the desert. At about midnight we start home from the small settlement next to the Dead Sea. At the entrance stand two soldiers guarding. As we are driving out they flag down our car and walk up to the window with their M16s slung behind their backs.

“Hi Rabbi” the one without the yarmulke says to my husband “we’re having a debate; maybe you can help us.”

“With pleasure” my husband responds.

“Why” asks the one with the yarmulke “is the Torah written on an animal skin?”

Both soldiers bend their heads into the window while my husband thinks and I kvell about the fact that here we are in the middle of the desert not a soul or sound in sight and two young strong heavily geared soldiers sit at an outpost and what do they discuss? Not war not movies not who knows what but why the Torah is written on the skin of an animal.

“One of the reasons the Torah is written on animal skin” my husband says “is because each of us has an animal soul and this soul or drive is very powerful powerfully good or powerfully bad depending on how we harness its power. The words of the Torah are written on animal skin to teach us to direct or to harness our animal drives just as a yoke does for an ox.”

“The Yoke of Torah” says the one with the yarmulke. They both thank us and wave as we drive off. A little vort in the desert I think as we head back to Jerusalem. I also think about my friend’s son who recently went into the army and whose grandfather was the gadol hador of the past generation in America.

One day the army calls me to ask about this boy as he gave my number as a reference.

“You know Shmuel?” the army asks.

“Of course” I answer.

“Is he really a Jew?” they ask.

“Is he really a Jew? His mother’s father was the gadol hador in America.”

A few months later I hear that Shmuel’s job in the army is to train dogs. Train dogs? The gadol hador’s grandson? But of course. It makes sense. Who knows better how to train the soul of an animal than a talmid chacham? It makes perfect sense for the grandson of the gadol hador to train dogs in the Israeli army to save the lives of Jews.

Once this woman told me a story about having a dog when she was young and her parents wanted her to go to obedience school with the dog because it was so wild. About ten people came with their dogs to the training course and the trainer gave each person a special choke collar and chain to put on the dog to direct it.

“I couldn’t pull the chain” this woman told me “and I still can’t pull the chain for myself or my children.”

Last week a woman came for Shabbos. I was told “Someone’s mother is coming from abroad and needs a place for the Friday night meal.” What’s the question? Well Friday night comes and I’m in the back finishing off last-minute details. I hear that our guest has arrived and I walk out to greet her and I see — well something I’m completely unprepared for. The way this woman was dressed didn’t fall into any definition of mother I had envisioned.

I didn’t know what to do as I had a whole tribe of men who would be coming home any minute for the seudah. In shock I made a 360-degree turn and headed to the back of the house to gain composure. How could anyone send a woman dressed like this to a house full of boys? What should I do? Throw a blanket over her? And all the while I know she’s getting the gist and that made me feel even worse because however inappropriately she’s dressed she’s a Jew and a guest in my home and I hadn’t exactly greeted her like an angel.

I finally pull myself together and go out to say hello. She wants to go to shul with the men but I convince her to stay and help me set the table. As we set down the plates she starts to tell me about herself. How frum she used to be how fanatic and nervous and stringent she always was about kashrus and Shabbos. But that now she’s come to the realization that we are already in Geulah have already been redeemed and that therefore the laws of galus the exile don’t apply anymore. She asks me for acetone to remove her nail polish to prove the point going on about how wonderful it is to throw off the yoke of galus and be free in Geulah.

After she leaves I can’t stop feeling sorry for her because the message that keeps ringing in my head is that she couldn’t bear her self-imposed pressures that she choked herself trying so hard to be an angel that she had to find some loophole just to survive. That’s why she invented a theory to loosen the collar she’d put on herself and when she loosened that collar her animal soul took over.

But HaKadosh Baruch Hu only wants her to be one of His most special creations. A Jew. Not animal not angel.