Three doses of inspiration to lift  the spirit and soul

Make Your Bed: The Seventh Day

Rabbi Menachem Nissel

Every Friday night we sing Shalom Aleichem — and some have the minhag to follow it with Ribon Kol Ha’olamim, containing the words popularized by Mordechai Ben David’s classic song: Ana Melech Malchei Hamelachim… Please, O King Who reigns over kings… Ki hidlakti nerosai, v’hitzati mitasi, v’hichlafti simlosai lichvod yom haShabbos — for I have kindled my lights, made my bed, and changed my clothes in honor of Shabbos. The Mishnah Berurah, listing the mitzvos of kavod Shabbos on Erev Shabbos, also writes that in addition to setting your Shabbos table, “It’s also good to make one’s bed” (OC, 262:1).

What’s so illustrious about making a bed?

We spend a significant part of our lives asleep in our bed. When we wake up, we thank Hashem in our morning brachos for the opportunity to recharge our batteries. We say the brachah “hanosen l’yaeif koach” — thank You for giving strength and energy to the tired.

Because it’s the place we sleep, and sleep is a holy undertaking, the bedroom has kedushah. For example, they note that in Sefer Melachim II (11:2) the Kodesh Hakodoshim is called chadar hamitos, the bedroom (see Ben Yehoyada, Shabbos 119b). The Vilna Gaon teaches that Hashem created sleep to allow man to attain Torah secrets, something he can’t do when his neshamah is attached to his guf (see Rav Chaim Volozhin’s introduction to the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on Safra D’Tzniyusa).

When a talmid asked the Arizal why he was smiling when asleep on a Shabbos afternoon, he answered that it would take him 80 years to teach the revelations he’d learned during those minutes! Rav Yosef Karo and the Ramchal wrote freely about the nocturnal visits of maggidim.

The take-home message for us is simple. The two malachei elyon who honor our house on Friday night see your bed in the same way they see your Shabbos candles. Making your bed will add an extra minute to your Shabbos preparations. It gives you a wonderful opportunity to remember and reflect that Hashem’s holy presence is everywhere in your home, your mikdash me’at.

Rabbi Menachem Nissel is the Senior Educator of NCSY and teaches at Yeshivas Yishrei Lev and various seminaries in Yerushalayim. He is the author of Rigshei Lev: Women and Tefillah and Looking into the Sun: A Taste of the Torah, Life and Legacy of Rav Moshe Shapira.

Hashem’s Messengers: Personal Development

Rebbetzin Dina Schoonmaker

Facilitated by Mindel Kassorla

Sometimes we ask Hashem for a certain kind of help, but we’re very specific about where we expect that help to come from. We want our best friend to organize meals after our baby is born. We want our mother to help us solve a problem. We want our husband to emotionally support us through a hard week.

But life doesn’t always look like that. Some people aren’t always available in the ways we need or hope they’ll be, and it can feel like Hashem didn’t send the help we asked for. At times like these, we can remember: “Harbeh shluchim yesh lo la’Makom…” (Rashi, Shemos 16:32), Hashem has many messengers, many pathways to send what we need.

If it’s meant to be fulfilled, it will be — just maybe not in the package we pictured. Your best friend is having a hard time herself and can’t organize meals… and suddenly a neighbor you barely know shows up with dinner. Your mother doesn’t have the solution… but a mentor does. Your husband is overwhelmed or unavailable and then a kind friend sits and listens instead.

Chovos HaLevavos, in Shaar Habitachon, teaches that a person may focus their hishtadlus toward one job, one connection, or one individual, yet the yeshuah will arrive through an entirely different — sometimes unexpected — avenue. Because no person is the source; they’re only the conduit. Whether someone is able to help us or not is entirely in Hashem’s Hands. If they can help, it’s His Will. If they can’t, that, too, is His Will.

We can either stew in resentment toward the “missing” messenger for their lack of availability, or we can recognize that everyone is only ever that — a messenger sent when Hashem wants, in the way He chooses. When we expand our mind to realize that “harbeh shluchim yesh lo la’Makom…” we may see that Hashem did send the help we were davening for, but through a different shaliach. This fosters spiritual flexibility and helps us realize that the world is full of surprising kindness.

A Sacrifice in My Heart: Around the Campfire

Mindel Kassorla

Bilvavi mishkan evneh, lehader kevado, u’vmishkan mizbei’ach akim lekarnei hodo. U’lner tamid ekach li es eish ha’Akeidah, ul‘korban akriv lo es nafshi hayechidah

(Piyut from 16th-century kabbalist Rabbi Elazar Azikri)

Ihad to wait a few years before I was blessed with my first child. As a woman without kids, I’d become the person on my block you could depend on to organize neighborhood events and meal trains, host last-minute guests, and do all sorts of random favors. In a sense, being the person you called on when you needed help became part of my identity.

Now, as a postpartum mom with a colicky baby, this had to change. But I felt like I was having an identity crisis. The first time it hit was when my cousin had a baby a few weeks after me, and I couldn’t make a meal or send a single thing to her kiddush. Calling up my mentor, Mrs. Dina Schoonmaker, I said, “It’s not just that I miss who I was. I also don’t want people to be upset that I’ve suddenly turned inward and am not available anymore.”

“When you say no or don’t show up, most people will get it,” she said. “But you’re right, sometimes people won’t. And they might be upset. And that’s okay. You know, and Hashem knows, that you’re doing the right thing. And that’s what matters.”

I hung up the phone realizing how true her advice was, but also how hard it would be to live it. It would require a personal sacrifice from me, to give up part of my identity and to tune out what people thought.

Maybe that’s the idea of building a mishkan in our heart. It means making our internal world a place of love for Hashem, but also for sacrifice for what is right. The korban referenced in the song is “nafshi hayechidah” is my personal sacrifice in my own way, one that perhaps no one else would understand — except for me and Hashem.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 984)