praying for geula

When your mind is open you notice things right in front of your eyes.  This is what happened one night Chol Hamoed Pesach when I pushed my head out of the water of the mikveh pool for the third time, rubbed open my eyes and was about to recite the blessing on its wall “yihi razon milfanecha … sheibane beit hamikdash bimheira b’yameinu…” (let it be Your will … that the Holy Temple be rebuilt, speedily, in our days).  I stopped momentarily before reciting the ancient prayer.  This is the moment when one feels so close to Hashem, like a newborn child, and you can ask for anything, you are that close, you can ask Hashem to bring geula, soon, in our days, while we are still alive!   We’ll be actually able to ascend the steps of the Temple, and this won’t be a dream, it will be for real, this will be the reality that already happened many years ago and that we gave up following foolish fantasies, chasing elusive dreams, arguing and bickering with each other.  The reality where Kohanim will again serve in the Holy Temple, including my husband who patiently waited for me for more than two weeks, and our son, working so hard on his Bar Mitzvah training.

My son is fiercely egalitarian.  He believes that women should have equal rights to serve Hashem as the men.  He does not know how close women are to Hashem at the moments like this.  The closest moment is during the birth of a child.  Regardless the advanced medical care, and the best doctors in the world, this is the moment when we are completely at God’s mercy.  When it is only by His will that the new life emerges into the world from the dark corridors of our flesh and blood, as a beautiful gift, with a curly head full of his own thoughts.  Sheasani kir’zono.