Seven days with the Chernobyler Maggid

There is a list on your phone called This Week. Monday's three items are still on it. So are last Monday's. You moved them to Tuesday, and on Tuesday you moved them to Thursday, with the calm of a person moving a chair. Nothing was cancelled. It was all carried forward, and the list is now long enough that you have started a second one.

The Me'or Einayim says the year is built like a body. A person has 365 sinews, the year has 365 days, and each day, he says, is a sinew of its own.

In our words: a sinew is not a spare part. Each one holds one thing in one place, and the body cannot use Tuesday's instead. That may be reading a great deal into one line of his. He is on his way somewhere else, to one day of the year in particular. Still, if today has a place of its own, then the items you moved off Monday did not go to Thursday. They just did not happen on Monday.

You have a strong week on paper. The gym three mornings, learning four nights, the inbox at zero by Thursday. And you have a Wednesday. Every Wednesday at about four, with a meeting behind you and nothing in front of you, the day comes apart, and it takes Thursday with it. You have rebuilt the whole plan twice. Both plans had a Wednesday in them.

The Me'or Einayim says the year has a sinew like the one where Yaakov was touched. One of its 365 days is the gid hanasheh, the place at the back where the forces that oppose holiness take hold. That day is Tisha B'Av, and it was given to them, he says. It stands opposite Yom Kippur, the day that is the life of the whole year.

In our words: a bad Wednesday is not Tisha B'Av, and nobody should confuse the two. But in his picture the place where the year is hit is a known one. We would call it a weak point. Yaakov was touched in the thigh, which the Me'or Einayim goes on to call the back, and the back, we would say, is the side a person does not watch. It may be worth finding your Wednesday before you write the third plan.

In September you decided to stop checking your phone during davening (prayer). It went well for nine days. On the tenth you checked it in the middle of the silent prayer, twice, for a message that turned out to be from a pharmacy. You concluded that you are a person who cannot do this, and you have been that person since about October.

The Me'or Einayim reads the wrestling as a description of every day. The one Yaakov wrestled with, he says, is the yetzer hara, and he is always wrestling with Israel and holding on. Always is his word. He gives the fight one end, the dawn, and he reads the dawn as the days of Mashiach.

In our words: if the fight is daily, the tenth day was not a verdict. It was a Tuesday. That can be heard as bad news, and maybe it is. Nobody enjoys hearing that the match goes on. But a person who expects to win once and be finished will quit on the tenth day, and a person who expects to wrestle again tomorrow has only lost a morning. Yaakov was still holding on when the light came.

The quarter went badly. One client left, the launch slipped, and in the review your manager used the word "learnings," which is a word people use when they would like something to be over. You walked out on your own legs. You have told the story four times since, and in each telling you lose by a little more.

The Me'or Einayim reads the verse as two facts. The one who wrestles with Israel could not overcome, because, in the verse he brings, Hashem will not leave him in his hand. And he touched the thigh, and did harm there. The Torah puts both in one verse.

In our words: he is speaking about Israel, the destruction and the exile, and a bad quarter is not that. But the two facts are worth keeping apart at a desk too. Wounded is one thing and defeated is another, and the retelling tends to merge them. The Torah's own account of the morning after is short. The sun rose on Yaakov, and he was limping.

You can still do your job. That is the confusing part. You answer the emails, you sit in the meetings, you say "great question" at the correct moments. But you read the same paragraph of the contract four times on Tuesday, and at night you opened a sefer (a book of Torah), looked at one line for a while, and closed it. Nothing is wrong. You simply know a little less than you knew in the summer.

The Me'or Einayim describes an exile with no travel in it. The yetzer hara, he says, covers the light of understanding with darkness, and da'at is taken and made less. He measures the loss against Mount Sinai: Israel does not have the whole da'at it had there.

In our words: he is speaking of knowing Hashem and His Torah, measured against Mount Sinai, and a contract is not that. We borrow only the shape of it. The loss in his account is da'at, and a loss of clarity is one that nobody else can see. It may be a stretch to hear a phone in "the darkness which covers the light." It is still worth asking what, exactly, has been covering yours. You probably know. It is probably in your pocket.

On a shelf at home there is a Gemara (a volume of Talmud) with your handwriting in the margins. It is from the year you learned seriously, and the notes are small, confident and in two colors. You opened it last month to find something and could not follow your own note. You remember writing it. You remember the chair. You do not remember what it means.

The Me'or Einayim says that parts of the Torah were forgotten by Israel, and that when evil is gone they will come out from where they are held and return. He reads a line of the Gemara this way: every shitah that was taken, Hashem will give back. Every line.

In our words: he is speaking of the whole Torah and of the days of Mashiach (the Messiah), not of one person's margin notes. Maybe the note is simply gone. But in his picture what was forgotten was taken and is held, and what is held can be given back. That changes what you do with the book on a Friday. You do not put it back on the shelf. You read the line above the note.

Look around the table for a second. Somebody is telling a story to the person beside them while looking at the challah (the Shabbat bread). Somebody is listening with their whole back turned, serving soup. One chair is angled a little toward the door. Everyone is here. Not everyone is facing.

The Me'or Einayim is speaking of something much larger than a table. The exile, in his reading, belongs to the "back," as in the prophet's words about Israel, "backward and not forward." And the end of it, he says, is Israel and their Creator face to face, as it was at Mount Sinai.

In our words: he is speaking of Israel and Hashem, and a table of people is not that. We are borrowing only the picture. Still, facing someone is a thing a person can practice, and Shabbat is the day with the fewest excuses. The one serving the soup has had their back to the table since the meal began. Somebody could take the ladle.