Tzipiyah.com

Tomorrow night is the wedding of one of my best friends. It is also the day of the amazing holiday of Yom Yerushalaim. We all the the multitude of psukim describing how the joy of Jerusalem will be similar to the Joy of a Wedding. The fact that we will have the opportunity to celebrate both at the same time will increase this Joy. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on this relation.

Harav Mordechai Elon Shli”ta once told us.

“חתן בחילופי אותיות זה נתח”

HaTaN (a groom), in a technique of interpretation where you switch the letters around to make a new word, is like NiTuaH (surgery).

Pretty scary no? That’s not the type of thing you judaism usually teaches: “Going to get married is like getting surgery”. What happened to all the nice things we heard about establishing a family?
So of course, getting married is not like going to get a surgery, but in this quote lies a very deep thought that I think we all need to meditate on: those of us who are single, engaged, recently married and married for longer then we can remember. In this sentence Rav Elon was telling us a very deep secret.

When was the first time we saw a surgery in the Torah?
In the first perek of Bereshit(pas. 27), the Torah states:

“And God created man in His image; in the image of God He created him; male and
female He created them.”

There is an obvious discrepancy in this passouk since it starts talking in the singular and ends in plural. Rashi also adds on to that problem and asks:

“Yet further (2:21) Scripture states: “And He took one of his ribs, etc.””

Rashi answers his own question, and the one I stated above, by saying:

“The Midrash Aggadah (Gen. Rabbah 8:1, Ber. 61a, Eruvin 18a) explains that
He originally created him with two faces, and afterwards, He divided him.”

This is something very powerful. Our sages teach us on this midrash an amazing lesson: They explain that men and women were first created as one, linked to each other from back to back into one being. Then, God performed the first ever surgery. He divided men and women into what they are today, two different beings.

When a Hatan enters the chuppah, of course, he is not entering a surgery. It is actually the opposite happening! When a Hatan enters the chuppah, he is making a tikkun (rectification) on the first ever surgery, bringing the world back to the way it originally was intended to be by God. This is actually quite explicit in the psoukim of the second perek of sefer bereshit:

23. And man said, “This time, it is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This
one shall be called ishah (woman) because this one was taken from ish
(man).”
24. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother, and
cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

We can now understand what Rav Elon meant when he said חתן בחילופי אותיות זה נתח. HaTaN (a groom), in a technique of interpretation where you switch the letters around to make a new word, is like NiTuaH (surgery).

However, let us not stop here, because when a Hatan goes under the chuppah, it is more then a simple tikkun that he is doing. He isn’t just bringing back the world to the way it was. He is making it even better! Before the surgery, men and women were one flesh, but they were connected from back to back. Now, they can look each other from face to face.

Our sages teach us that the family unit is the building block of all of Am Israel. On a simple level this is obvious: The many families together form Am Israel. But there is something much deeper.
The same way the family structure is functional when two jews, loving each other, and looking at each other face to face, Am Israel is functional when all of the individuals in that nation look at each other, face to face, without turning their back to each other.

Rav Kook’s most famous quote is:

“And if we were destroyed, and the world destroyed along with us, by baseless hatred, we shall return to be rebuilt, and the world rebuilt along with us, by gratuitous love. “
(Orot HaKodesh 3, 324)

Only when jews will start looking at each other face to face, only when we will connect ourselves to nishmat haklal, the jewish spark, which exists in every jew, only then will mashiach come.

The passouk most famous for describing Yerushalaim Ir Hakodesh is:

“Ir shechubra la yachdav” - “a city which is interlinked together”

The Mefarshim disagree on what is really interlinked. Some say that Yerushalaim shel Maala, the Jerusalem from Above in which God resides, is interlinked with Yerushalaim shel Matta, Jerusalem from below, where we reside.

Yet, others say that Am Israel is interlinked with Yerushalaim. We see that the celebration of Yerushalaim is the celebration of Jewish Unity. We all look at Jerusalem and are connected through it.

As we have seen, the building block of this reality where people look at each other from face to face is when a hatan and his kallah make the tikkun of the surgery and become one, looking at each other from face to face.

We can now see that this Tikkun and some farther reaching consequences. This tikkun is the building block of the greater Tikkun in which am israel connects itself to its national identity, returns to its land and builds the beit hamikdash as a house of prayer for all the nations.

It now becomes clear why we remember Yerushalaim under the chuppah by breaking a glass. This chuppah ends up becoming one of the bricks which are used to rebuild Jerusalem.

Both weddings and Jerusalem are symbols of Jewish unity and celebrating both these occasions is a celebration of this unity.

May we all be zoche to celebrate learn this message of gratuitous love so that next year, when we celebrate Yom Yerushalaim, we get to celebrate it not only in Israel, but in the rebuilt Beit Hamikdash.

“עוד ישמע בהרי יהודה ובחוצות ירושלים קול ששון וקול שמחה קול חתן וקול כלה” - “Yet again there shall be heard in this place, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride. “

“חתן בחילופי אותיות זה נתח”

A beautiful song popped into my head today. I hummed and sang it for a while, until I realized that the song and how I learnt it are very significant today. It takes me back to some time I spent in Israel in 2005.

I had spent a pleasant evening with a very good friend of mine in central Jerusalem. After a great meal at Burgers Bar, we decided to walk across to the Old City and the Kotel. We made it more interesting by trying to find a short-cut. It was a quiet, pleasant evening, and we enjoyed the walk. But then we saw something unusual…

When we neared Kikar Tzahal (Tzahal Square), the intersection of Jaffa Street closest to Jaffa Gate (?), we saw a lot of people grouped near the gate. Up close, we saw a very large circle of men, mostly bearded, wearing white shirts and smart pants, and kippot s’rugot (crocheted yarmulkes). They were dancing slowly around, in a circle, singing songs of passion, joy and trust in G-d. I don’t remember if it was my friend or me who decided to join in, but we walked up and joined hands with the men, becoming part of the circle.

It was a bit bizarre; here, at maybe ten, eleven at night, was a large group of men, singing and dancing, with virtually nobody else around, on the wide plaza area just outside Jaffa Gate. An armed soldier and policeman stood guard. My friend and I were both quite casually dressed, and I was distinctly aware that I was wearing a black T-shirt with a skull and crossbones. But no matter. Nobody cared.

After a while of dancing, we re-grouped into many rows of about seven or eight men, shoulder to shoulder, and we began dancing through Jaffa Gate. We progressed through the Shuk, and down into the Arab Quarter, along streets and alleyways that I’d never walked along before. The whole area was deserted, as the residents were under a temporary curfew, for our protection. We danced and danced, and even circled a small block within the alleyways; we joined hands again and went right round the block!

My friend and I were swept along with these men we’d never met, becoming part of their singing and joy. Their songs were songs of pride and hope, of confidence and passion. One song that I learnt, as we sang it over and over again, went like this:

I actually never caught all the words at the time — Google has referred me to -ישעיה כו:א-ב Isaiah 26:1-2 — but parts of the verse, and the powerful chorus, that I shouted out together with maybe a hundred men, has stayed with me since then. These are words of triumph; words of hope; words of redemption; words of a nation that can sing joyous songs of its glorious return to its holy city, to its holy land. The most beautiful thing is that ‘ביום ההוא’, ‘on that day’, was truly referring to that very night in Yerushalayim. We were experiencing the fulfilment of a millenia-old prophecy. I didn’t even realize this at the time.

The date, of course, way Yom Yerushalayim, the annual day in celebration of the liberation of holy Jerusalem in the Six-Day War from the Jordanians. And we danced and danced, singing all along, the men from Merkaz HaRav yeshiva*, and my friend and I, all the way through the Arab Quarter to the Kotel. And there we danced some more, and said some special festive chapters of Tehillim.

Not so long ago, as many of us know well, the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva suffered an enormous tragedy in its Beit Midrash, study hall. Eight young boys, who learnt at the yeshiva, were murdered by an Arab-Israeli terrorist. The personal, familial, communal, and national aspects of the tragedy are immense, and shock-waves still resound through the Jewish Nation.

I suddenly realized, today, that I had had a tangible, brief connection with some students of Merkaz HaRav*, about three years ago. I and my friend had sung and danced with men we didn’t know, in celebration of something holy and special. What inspiration, what a message of hope and joy and unity, even in the face of tragedy. What joyous celebration of Jerusalem! What vision and pride… Let’s remember the wonderful things that G-d has done for us, and that He continues to do for us… Let’s sing the song today, in Jerusalem!

———-
* I have always assumed, from that night, that this is where they were from; either the yeshiva itself or its kollel (does it have a kollel?). I may be wrong, and they may have been from some other yeshiva or kollel. But even if so, their powerful message of hope and joy, of Tzipiyah, anticipation of goodness to come, and the deeply inspiring experience I had with them, remains strong.