Absence, Loss and moving forward
Dear friends,
As you may have noticed, I have not published my newsletter for just over 4 months. Sadly, this was not intentional. Instead, on January 16th my dear mother suffered a sudden massive brain hemorrhage, and though she remained alive in hospital for 3 weeks while we hoped and prayed that she would improve, she sadly died on February 6th.
Unfortunately, my family were then forced to wait a few days for my mother’s levaya (funeral) to take place. I then sat shiva with my family in London while we mourned my dear mother. And I then returned back to Israel in late February.
Since then, I’ve been processing my loss while juggling my work as Chief-Learning-Officer and #theVirtualRabbi at WebYeshiva.org, the responsibilities of being a community Rabbi in Jerusalem (which is a position that I only began in December 2024), and of course my loyalties as a husband, father, son and sibling. As a result, my life has been frenetic and, sadly, despite writing many shiurim, sermons and daf yomi insights which I have penned during this period, I’ve not found the time to revert to writing my weekly Substack Dvar Torah. Still, I have very much wanted to do so, and so, writing this message is the first step. With this in mind, below is a short Torah thought which I hope you enjoy.
In terms of the future, I hope to return to posting more regularly on Substack, and if there is a particular type of content or topic that you’re interested in me writing about, please feel free to send me a private message.
And of course, if you are interested in booking a spiritual coaching or halachic consultation session with me, you can do so here (and yes, I’d love to meet with some new clients).
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Behar-Bechukotai & Yom Yerushalayim
There are many ways to understand the commandment of: “and your brother shall live with you” (Vayikra 25:36). And according to the Maharal (Drush Na’eh L’Shabbat HaGadol), we learn from the word ‘with you’ (imach) that, ‘the Jewish people are considered as one person’ (klal Yisrael nechshavim k’mo adam echad).
Of course, this insight echoes Rashi’s commentary to Shemot 19:2 where we are told that the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai “like one person, with one heart” (k’ish echad b’lev echad). In fact, perhaps this is why Rashi, quoting the Torat Kohanim, opens his commentary to Parshat Behar by stating how all the mitzvot, including the mitzvah of Shmitta, were given at Sinai, in order to remind us that just we stood together at Sinai, so too, there are certain mitzvot (including “and your brother shall live with you”) which require that we be consciousness of the fact that ‘the Jewish people are considered as one person’.
Reflecting on this mitzvah, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains (in his commentary to Vayikra 25:36), that this requires that we be aware that, ‘the life of your brother is bound up with you; that is, the whole development of his life, and the fulfilment of his mission in life, are bound up with you and with the development of your life. You do not live only for yourself.’ Accordingly, we learn from here that there are mitzvot that each individual Jew must keep which includes consideration for the wider Jewish people and an awareness of the fact that ‘the Jewish people are considered as one person’.
Until the Jewish people entered the land of Israel, Mount Sinai was the single location where we, as the Jewish nation, stood as ‘one person’ (k’ish echad). But since entering the land of Israel, there is just one place in the world which has the potential of bringing about the unity of the Jewish people: Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is the city “joined together, where the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord, as a testimony to Israel, to give thanks to the Lords Name” (Tehillim 122:3-4), and it symbolizes our yearning to unite as a people. As the Malbim explains (in his commentary to Tehillim 122:6): ‘The core concept of Jerusalem is the unity of the people’.
And so, in the days approaching Yom Yerushalayim and Shavuot we should do whatever we can to come together as a people because, as Rabbi Yisrael Hopstein, the Maggid of Kozhnitz, explains in his ‘She’erit Yisrael’: ‘Just as the Jewish people come together in love and with an awe of God, so too will Jerusalem be built.’
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Johnny Solomon