Efrat Barzel: Everyday Experiences, and the Big Thing Beyond Life

Motzei Shabbat, Parashat Vayetze. "Mom, but I want you to be there from start to finish." I promise her yes, and I gladly do it. An evening for mothers at the "Tiferet Tamar" school. Michali, Ruti's mom, came to pick me up, and we go together.

I meet lots of friends and familiar faces. Already at the entrance, they all ask me the same question: "So, what will you write about us?".

I find it sweet.

1. That I am known as someone who writes about simple life experiences.
2. That you all read so much.
3. My prayer for anyone who reads my words is that she'll do some self-reflection, and take these things into her own life, to benefit. If I write about a certain situation in my life, and you as readers stay only with me, I gained nothing. Our personal receptors bring information inside, others' situations create the instinctive question asked quietly, "What about me?"

How am I with joy, sadness, excitement, closeness? If you stay only with my flat story, you have lost yourself. I am not the one who matters here.

Just as mitzvot require intention to be felt as loved in Heaven, in the nation where we are all responsible for one another, others' emotions meet your feelings.

4. My great joy is to share what is on my heart. I learned this from Chana, the mother of Samuel the prophet. I share with Hashem in prayers, leaving small fragments on this page.

Please use them. Don't gossip about me after reading, gossip about yourselves a bit. Quietly.

I already planned many things I wanted to write. About a meaningful evening, motherly delight, education, a dairy snack given in a bag, which I must buy for home, really tasty. I planned to write about my friend Sharle, the wonderful "spoken word" artist who performed that evening, and about the experiences we had in a joint performance in Natanya, which to this day I don't know if I forgive or laugh at how the organizer acted.

My daughter waited at home and couldn't sleep, even though it was really late when I got back. Ruti also waited for her mom.

"So, Mom, how was it?". How much they want us to enjoy. To be impressed. To understand. To experience. To be part of their lives. I sat down and detailed the entire lineup for her.

But the first thing I told her was about Rivki. A girl from the eighth grade who, a few days before, had entered my prayers deeply because my daughter told me she is from her grade, and she is sick.

When the principal, there's no other like her, check in all the houses of Yaakov, said via the microphone there was some improvement in Rivki's health, a tear fell from my eye.

When two mothers spontaneously went on stage to explain how important it is to pronounce the hard and soft letters correctly when reading Tehillim, I immediately thought to myself from the audience, well done. I won't remain the sole nag saying "in the wheat aleph." The error is intentional.

On Wednesday, Rivki passed away.

In the first hours, no one knew what to do with themselves. The phones, the questions, years of emotional training. My daughter, who before she was two, when I swing her in the playground said "Mom, I'm having fun," this child I taught to feel and talk about everything, cried, "Mom, I'm so sad," she said, "it's so sad and scary."

And I, the expert, didn't know what to say to her. Because even moms aren't supposed to know everything, it's part of our humanity. "How can it be?" she asked me in a series of difficult questions, "that we prayed so much? And how can it be that Hashem takes righteous girls?" and then came the question that made me drop the pot from my hands. "Why be more and more righteous if Hashem wants the good ones?"

She asked and answered herself what the teachers – women who show the way to the students – answered her so well.

This difficulty in the reversal of the world's order is incomprehensible. When children encounter higher realms before their parents, there is something I can't grasp. They, the little ones, know before about the big thing beyond life. They know before the adults, the truth.

Today, I attach an original song, in the handwriting of the righteous, modest, joyful, and creative Rivki. When I came to the shiva and we sat in her pink room with her sister, I glimpsed at the "Hello Kitty" dolls I love so much sitting quietly on the shelf, not understanding who all these people who came were. But what moved me the most was the moment when Rivki's sister told how after her passing at the hospital, her mom and dad went to each nurse, each doctor, and said with shining eyes, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." These are the people who raised Rivki for 13 years and returned her to her Creator. What did her mother say? "We returned her pure, just as we received her."

My Dream / By the Girl Rivka Werbrand, of Blessed Memory

Like a dove soaring in the sky

So my heart soars doubly

It awaits the day to come

You'll sit and watch it

Like a rolling ball

So each generation falls and descends

Yet all, all will seek

To merit to see and behold

Like a bouquet of intertwined roses

So we all pray

Gathering prayer and tear

To soon merit the complete redemption!

A small dream,

My dream!

The dream of everyone

The dream of every Jew.