hodayot [thanksgivings] for today

9:04
My Body, my Partner, my God
I give thanks to the balance of all the bodily fluids in us!
Including the Amniotic Fluid,
which once surrounded and cushioned me
in my mother's womb,
and Immanuel, Ronnit and Micha in my own womb,
and Itamar in Ronnit's womb!

I give thanks over and over again,
that Itamar is alive, healthy, wise and beautiful,
and that all our family is alive and healthy,
without worries about
income, housing, educational facilities,
and that the challenges and lessons,
which each family member attracts into his/her drama,
are not too difficult.

A short encounter
between my daughter,
Itamar's mother,
and my daughter-in-love!

I'm sorry,
that Mika,
sweet as she looks,
came in between
the camera and Ronnit's face...

"Aladdin" is the ideal space for a kids' party,
when the weather cooperates like it did yesterday,
where the different guests can disperse and gather
at different places under the olive trees.
There are several hammocks to swing in (Mika)
- trees to climb on (Arnon),
- peacocks - beyond a fence - to watch -
- here and there -a table with chairs
and everywhere mattresses with cushions,
on which to sit , eat and drink,
or to engage in intimate conversations
(Micha and Jonathan, Rachel and Rotem),
to lounge or to lie, to rest or to sleep
or to perform acrobatics (Yael and Neta)


Ronnit and Uri, the parents of the birthday child,
were too busy, of course, to enjoy all this.
Ronnit, my daughter, turned to me just once
pointing to the 11-12 year old "facilitators" of the games:
"These are Yael's friends - Shir and Neta -
who will be in the group,
with which you are going to work!"
She meant the Benot-Mitzva project of the Democratic School.
I DID find the time, to make contact with the two girls,
without telling them "the secret".
Only Yael and the girl Gilli , one day born after her,
know, that next Thursday we'll start an activity,
in which Yael and Gilli will tell the other 11 girls,
what their "Parasha+Haftara" is,
and what passage in those is relevant to them.

How intense and tense were those 3 hours!
How could I divide my attention between so many people
two of my children, Ronnit and Micha,
two of my children-in-love, Uri and Efrat [who felt so sick]

7 grandchildren,
Jonathan, Rotem, Yael and Itamar,
Arnon and Ayelet and Mika,
+ Neta and Shir, + Rimon and Yossi [see below]
and to also take pictures to document this day!

I give thanks for the harmony and joy which prevailed.

Finetuning to my Present

It was Rimon, who had informed Yossi Rudoy:
"Rachel Bat-Adam is here!"
I asked him if he wanted a straight answer.
I also felt that it was important for Rotem
to experience how I was applying what I believe in.
"I have been hitchhiking and conversing with so many drivers,
that I only remember those, from whom I learnt something.
Mostly it's the driver who learns. Does this hurt you?"
When he said: "I can no longer be hurt",
I wanted to close the conversation.
If not for my inner obligation towards Rotem, I would have let him go.
But I felt, that there was a reason for this encounter just now:

I had finally created the situation, which Rotem yearned for,
but could not create it herself: a meaningful talk with grandma.
"What is it that you want to achieve
through your psychology courses at the Open University?"
I gently led her to her deepest motivation behind all her reading and studying
[she is not yet 15!]:

"If I understand ,
why a human being acts as s/he acts,
doing all kinds of horrible things which I tend to judge,
I feel "yoter mefuiyeset im ha-olam"
more at peace with the world.
I was moved - almost to tears -

I was just about to go on writing here,
that this confession made her even dearer to me,
who had been striving for the same understanding for so many years,
only with much less sources to learn from,
when electricity was gone - for more than 2 hours,
and with it this last passage, which I now needed to reconstruct.

I tried to sleep, I did more ordering and cleaning in the house,
being careful not to be caught by Efrat who does not want me to "work".
She stayed home today, feeling worse and worse,
{"severe influenza", said the doctor and gave her a pill),
and commanded me to travel to Arad at 8:30, as planned.
This time I did not fall into the trap of believing that she really wanted this.
I said with utmost determination:
"I'll stay here, until Immanuel returns (at 18:00),
and if you want to be angry with me, then be angry!"

An hour of technology silence.
I informed her of the fault, and she became friendlier.
I already had checked in the neighborhood,
(and taken out Nella at the same time):
"the street below us and across us has electricity, ours hasn't,
a cleaning woman in the kids' center suggested that we call 103".
Efrat who has no telephono-phobia like me,
went through the tedious process of getting an answer.
Yes, Shoham (and other close towns) have a failure,
and there is no estimate, when it will be repaired.

I sighed - wondering, if this was "a punishment" after all
for having stayed to support Efrat, instead of going to Arad,
or more exactly: "a punishment" for having defied her.
Then, luckily, Efrat hinted , that she needed me to do something:
to go to the house of the vet and get food for Nella.

This was a matter of half an hour,
except that I didn't enjoy it, when I learnt,
that the earphones of my cellphone were functioning only partly.
Again I can't hear music.
At least, when I came back, electricity had returned,
which meant, that I didn't need to bother with the question,
if I should leave after all, or stay here until my son's return.


Efrat is back in bed, the house is relatively clean,
I even brushed Nella outside - with rigurous strokes,
since Efrat also feels nauseated by Nella's hair everywhere,
and now I'm back in the quietness of my computer sculpting.


I am always aware of the woundrous gift of electricity,
and always grate-full to the people whose job it is to provide it.
May the work of healing, learning and creating
which their work permits me to do,
help them in living their lives, as they help me to live mine.

Back to Rotem, my granddaughter, and to Yossi Rudoy.
I said to her:
"If this is your goal -
to understand human beings
and thus feel more at peace with the world,
you may find out, how limited psychology is."
"I know", she said, "very limited".
"It's more helpful than philosophy,
but one day you may need to go into what's called metaphysics."
She knew the general term, but what in this would be helpful?
It was then, that Yossi Rudoy interrupted our dialog....

Soon after everybody left,
and while on our way out - Rotem was still beside me -
he approached me again with a present in his hand:
the book he had written about his awakening:
"Stepping on the shadow" (his cancer)
"From an existential crisis to the gift of life"


What does this mean now?
"Maybe you'll learn something from it after all!" he said.

Looking back to the fabric of my life yesterday,
I can see yet another strange thread in it.

At 22:30 I heard the phone, but came too late to get it.
An unknown number, to which I usually don't call back.
But since I was waiting for a call from Deqel,
concerning my SMS on Friday,
if the Benot-Mitzvah activity could be postponed to Thursday,
I did call back.
It was Hagai~~~~~ !

Hagai hadn't called me for half a year at least,
and I knew, that his call meant that he was in deeper pain than usual.

He told me about his nightly learning of Kabbalah.
He, too, tried to make me learn something new.
I listened with utmost attent to find,
where we had a common interest.
Since he was intellectualizing so terribly,
thus covering up his pain even more,
it took some 40 minutes -
(I soon left the house to walk with Nella in the dark) -
until he could convey his yearning for "milui" , for "full-fill-ment",
and his search for the conditions which would provide this.

I needed to be cautious.
Too often had he deluded himself and me, as if I had helped him.
So I said:
"The answer that you seek from me would be of no use to you,
but do not worry about the rightness of your present path - the Kabbalah.
Since you are so clear about your motivation , your purpose, your desire,
and focus on it with all your heart, body and mind,
you will find what you seek.
Even if you should discover,
that your present path is an illusion like all the pathes you walked before:
you'll have reached a new level of understanding,
from whence you'll better see the direction towards your goal."

"Some things became sharpened after all,
so that I know what to ask Rabbi Leitmann,
but please open the website www.kab.tv:
maybe, you learn something there, too!"

I opened that radio-channel now
and the first - and last - sentence I heard,
was about the "eruption of the ego".
It was similar to what Yossi had said at "Aladdin":
and from which I guess a make-wrong of the ego...

I had turned to Rotem for a moment:
"C.G. Jung (Rotem: "I don't like him") has said,
that the ego is not something to get rid off,
but something we have to win over as a partner."

I am tired of listening to that old stuff.
For what purpose did I invite those "actors" into yesterday's drama,
into what roles did I cast them?

The day was difficult,
and the crazy chasing after their kids with food:
"do you want this? No, then this? No, I'll make you this?
"Yes" and when the agreed-upon food is rejected in turn:
"Should I bring you this or this or this?"
by both my daughters-in-love
was just one thread in a fabric of patterns,
which were sharply exacerbated by headache and influenza.
.....
Just before Immanuel drove me to the train-station he bathed Mika.
When telling her, that Savta would leave to Arad but return within a few days,
she stood up in the water and commanded:
"You are not going!"