I know a woman who today does a juggling act of hundreds of things every day but if you watched a video of her 20 years ago on certain days you’d see her lying on a couch not able to move.
Not because she wasn’t well G-d forbid but because she didn’t know how to get up.
Then one day she went to shul. She wanted to follow the “people in the bubble ” she called them.
She called them that because when she’d see them walking down the street on Shabbos in the middle of a busy city they’d seem like they weren’t really there like they were encased in this transparent bubble of peace and happiness.
She followed them right up to the shul’s two big doors off the main boulevard. She even went in and sat down on the women’s side all the way in the back row.
In her shul back home there was no
women’s or men’s side but there were similarities and as soon as she heard the first prayer she started to cry.
Why? She didn’t know. She just knew that it went somewhere all the way inside and she couldn’t stop it.
When shul ended someone noticed her from the side and invited her home for a meal. It was the first time she’d ever been at a Shabbos meal.
Before they ate they all went to wash for bread. They showed her how to wash her hands and make the blessing. There was
so much honor in each act. She said she went into a side room to cry for a second time. “And that was it ” she said. “From that moment on I was on my way back. It was something about the holiness but it was more than that. It was kind of like being given the secret code into the club hideout.”
She said she felt let into a world that was right there in front of her all the time but she was never a part of. And that was the deep loneliness she could never put her finger on.
“But it was a journey. I didn’t just wake up and say ‘Okay now I’m religious.’ There were days I couldn’t get up. I’d lie on the couch not able to move because there were so many disjointed pieces to put together and I’d just lie there thinking I’m never going to get there and just when I thought I’d never get up
I’d pull the siddur on the coffee table close to me and read one small line at a time.
“It took me half an hour to get through the morning blessings. But as I read one blessing after another each one would
give me a little more energy and faith to help me get up to start my day.”
The other day I was in this woman’s kitchen while she was making kugel. The same woman who juggles hundreds of things a day.
Her recipe was quite a complicated
process. It had about 15 parts to it. And while she was making the kugel we were talking about this girl who needs
something to pull her life together.
We said how a job would do it.
Then we said maybe she should go back to school.
And as we talked I watched as she grated the potatoes cracked the eggs sizzled the oil
added the matzah meal or flour and some salt and pepper.
And she said “It’s not those things that are going to pull her up only emunah puts all the pieces together.”
Then she held up her big metal
mixing bowl and said “It’s like this: Without the flour the whole thing falls apart.
“It’s not a kugel.” —