Omer Day 16, Strength—gevurah within beauty—tiferet. Like many parents, mine would deny themselves a great deal in order to "do" for their children. I recall collecting the mail at age 17 and finding a letter appointing me as the Jewish and Nature programs director for a summer camp. I had secretly applied for the position, shown to me by an encouraging mentor. Running to tell my parents, I found them both in the kitchen. They looked like they had both swallowed the proverbial canary. Could they already know my special news and be in favor of me taking the job? But how? Or was something else afoot? Dad got up and in a blink switched from merrily swinging on his crutches to extending a thick envelope toward me with one hand. Another envelope?!
"Honey! We have a wonderful surprise for you…we saved enough for a plane ticket and $250 for you to be able to spend the summer in Israel!" He handed me the envelope with ticket and a wad of money within.
Oh no! My mind ran amuck…How could I disappoint them with new of my dream job offer? Israel! I'd always wanted to visit Israel…but this summer just wouldn't work. My father and his unit had helped to liberate Bergen Belsen-- visiting Israel was also his dream. He was giving me his dream as a gift?! I didn't want it, at least not that summer.
Strong teenage words came to mind as I prepared to reject their gift. Then I truly saw my parents' beaming faces. A cascading sense of their inner beauty [tiferet] filled me, a beauty that was flowing through them from beyond them.
Looking back it was The Tree teaching me to discover my own gevurah—capacity for restraint and also to receive divine knowledge of tiferet—through the beauty of my parents' souls. What, on balance [tiferet] mattered most in this moment? Clarity came instantly.
"Dad, Mom—this is the most awesome gift!" I ran to hug them both and my dad's tears of happiness on my check are unforgettable. Then it occurred to me to ask:
"Is there also a plan for what I will do when I get there?"
They just looked at each other blankly. Ours weren't helicopter parents, quite the opposite. My father had reared me to have skills of critical thinking. He also taught me how to take found objects and create the tools one needs out of them. He often told me of how he went about finding bits of work during the depression, etc.
"Why surely you'll find some sort of job when you get there. You can always call if you want help with decisions."
Well...the summer camp let me defer the position to the following year. Through what had to be divine intervention in Israel that summer, I was able to research and years later publish, with the help of faculty at Hebrew University's Department of History of Medicine: “‘Sara’at,’ Leprosy” (Leviticus 13) - A Review of the Literature,” Koroth, Vol. 9 No. 11-12, 1991. The essence of the article, very relevant to this week's parsha, can be found in a tikkun olam OpEd [3] I wrote years back that was published in the New York Times and a different write-up with similar underpinnings titled [4]: "Parsha Politics: Why Tza'ra'at Is Not Leprosy."
What a shift in maturation that was-- being drawn "into alignment" through receiving gevurah sheh b'tiferet through the Tree of Life.
Today was Omer Day 16.