I could never find an audience in my mind, and so I have invented the unborn child’s face to address.
Hello, child of Judah and Benjamin and Levi, sons of Israel, son of the one who was laughed at, son of the Nations.
I don’t know what your parents taught you. I don’t know what the world is telling you, nor what you think of all these things. If you are anything like I was at your age, then you are confident about some things and sceptical or opposed to others. You know that there are pain and joy, that there are burdens and gifts, friends and those we fear, secret desires and pressured obligations. There are the things you can do, and the things that leave you tangled and helpless. There are goals and dreams, and there are all the things that you are doing wrong, and I want to tell you that I think there is also a wonderful truth.
Lots of people have tried to tell you what you must think. And tried to tell you what is bad to think.
I’m not going to tell you what to think. I’m going to tell you what I think, and why I think it, and how I imagine I would think about it if I was a child, and a stranger told it to me.
Before I knew how to read, I was asked, “How old are you?”
How old are you?
Maybe I said, I’m 4 and a half. When I was a child I knew that I was new to life and the world. It felt like the world belonged to the adults, and children were like visitors from another country.
As I grew older, and people told me I wasn’t a child anymore, then it started to feel like I had always been alive.
Do you remember feeling like the world belongs to adults? Do you still feel it?
It’s not true. ← this is just my opinion, so is everything here.
I think that we’re like monkeys and birds and dogs.
Are monkeys from the world? Do young birds, before they can fly, think that they are wrong? Are dogs like children until they can learn to go to work and have money and be allowed to do more things?
I think that we’re all wild animals and that once upon a time a mother and father told their child to “Stop being like an animal,” and then when that child grew up, it told it’s children twice as often, “Don’t be an animal.”
Monkeys love to find fruit trees, birds love to fly, dogs love to play. What do people like to do? They like to have parties, and eat sweet foods, and fly on planes, and climb trees.
Why do you think birds fly all day, but people have to work and do what their boss says?
I think we all forgot what we love.
Adults always told me that I had to do things I didn’t like. They said it was the only way to live.
But they also told me to dream, and that I could do anything I wanted if I tried hard and kept trying.
I was confused by this.
I was confused until I started learning from my grandfather.
I think that the world is silly for telling children to listen to their parents, but the parents don’t listen to their parents. You might think I’m being hypocritical, and you might be right. But aren’t all the parents being hypocritical too?
My grandfather taught me something that sounds like a fairy tale. There are so many stories and they don’t seem to matter. But this story was different. Imagine watching a movie and realizing that its exactly about your life, but with actors and different words that mean e things that you mean.
Finding a movie about my life, or a video game filled with the same puzzles I needed to solve in my real life to find treasures. I don’t want to tell you that this is a “true story”, but for me, it was true, just like a movie or game is true for someone because it helps them.
What is your story?
In the beginning, you were born, but you don’t remember how it happened, and it is complicated because there are so many things that were given to you. You were given thoughts, and a body, you were given a world with things that you wanted and other things that you could have, you were given opportunities and hobbies and interests to grow, you were given inspiration and creativity and stories and games, you were given your personality and all the ways that it will change throughout your life.
In my grandfather’s book, it explains all these things, and if we keep writing, then I hope I can tell you more about them in another letter.
Later in life, you became less like a baby and more like your own person. This is the hardest part I think. It’s hard to love ourselves when we become people, because we’re the wrong shape, and I can’t find a best friend, and I’m not good at what I see that I want, and I don’t have what I could have.
Life around 13 and after was once of the hardest. It’s not hard for everyone in the same way. But it’s hard for everyone and when I was a child I didn’t know everyone was hiding their weaknesses.
In my grandfather’s book, it said that there is no point in worshipping anything, because there is no one thing which will fix all your problems. When I turned 13, but also before, and also after, I wanted to be a fast runner, but my ribbons didn’t make me happy. I wanted not to be at the bottom of the class, but getting 100% didn’t make everything perfect. I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted and not have to do what anyone said, but (let me tell you as an adult who does whatever they want and doesn’t do what anyone says) even that didn’t make me happy.
The point was that there’s no SECRET to being cool or happy or righteous. It made sense to me that there’s no magic potion, but I still dreamed of making one.
I stopped reading my grandfather’s book after that. I agreed that nothing that my teachers or parents or politicians said was true 100%, and that there was no point thinking that any one thing would give me what I wanted.
I didn’t even know what I wanted. No one does. Everyone just says what they want in that second, or what they are told that they have to want, or what they’ve been saying for years that they want.
So I looked in lots of places – and this is why I have an advantage over children, because I’ve tried and experienced a lot of things you’ll never be able to, but I believe that you have an advantage over me, because you can take my discoveries and not have to learn them the hard way. I looked in the games I liked, and the friends, my favourite interests, and hobbies, and in the things I hadn’t tried but then one day thought I should try.
Do you think this is right; do you think that what I will say next is how you feel, do you feel like I’m giving you words for what you already knew?
I want everything! I want all the things that I want, and all the things that I don’t know that I want, and I want to want the best things even if I don’t know how to choose them yet.
I wasn’t a greedy child (but I became a greedy adult). I don’t think children are really greedy, lots of you are just impatient 🙂
I didn’t ask for a spaceship. I wanted what I thought was fair, Why shouldn’t I have another chocolate, why shouldn’t I have friends, why shouldn’t I be allowed to relax and play today?
You won’t understand me, but say these words out loud:
“As I grew older [me the author] I forgot that I wanted things, and thought I wasn’t allowed to want things.” – this is why people go to work but birds fly. Adults are like birds that were put into a cage, and when they were released they told everyone that they wanted to work (and pretended that they weren’t desperate to fly because they thought everyone would laugh at them).
Can you imagine forgetting that you are allowed to want things?
It happens when you get laughed at too many times. Sometimes it’s not what people say, it’s how they act, and when everyone acts like you’re not good enough, it can feel like you are.
If you’re anywhere around 13 then “What’s the point?” is a question that might start to make you sad. I want to tell you that I have an answer that I think is really good, and I think I found it because I was an adult who never forgot they were a child.
Lots of people have told you things, please do me a curtesy, please don’t treat me like your parents who tell you dream and then send you to school where the teachers tell you not to run in the corridors.
In my grandfather’s book, the grandchild refuses to accept anything anyone tells him. The grandchild only thinks for herself. He is polite and kind, but if he’s forced to do something then he does it unwillingly, and if he can find a way out he will.
I’m telling you, “Do what you want,” but the whole world is against you. But that’s true for me as well, I promise you. This is like a secret rebellion. This is like a revolution where no one is allowed to know that you are working to save the kingdom. This is like an adventure that you do by yourself, or maybe with a best friend, and which no one can ever really understand.
Because no one will ever know YOU 100%. Maybe they’ll know you mostly.
The part that is YOU my grandfather said was called Israel. Israel is a country now, and the people of Israel are called Jews, but in my grandfather’s book, it says that Israel is the secret agent who will never bow (only pretend to bow). Israel is like the bird in the cage that says, “Of course I won’t fly away,” but as soon as the cage is open, or when no one is looking and the key is within reach, it flies and flies and flies.
It’s not enough to be angry at the world. It’s not enough to know that most ideas sound wrong, and that lots of places are evil.
But anger is natural. Lots of people told me not to be angry, but frustration means that you remember in your heart that you love to climb trees and play.
I thought trees and games were for children, because they sort of are. ← this part is confusing, don’t worry if you don’t understand. I remember needing my toy rabbit when I was little, and I remember a few years later thinking that my rabbit had feelings, and later I would tell stories about it, and later I loved it but was embarressed, and later I forgot, and later I remembered. As I grew older the trees started to look different, every year more different. Now my trees are things you can’t imagine.
I remember feeling angry, but not knowing exactly what I wanted. Knowing that everyone is wrong doesn’t make you right.
This is the part of my grandfather’s story I didn’t like.
Life is like a maze in a haunted house, filled with treasures and traps, and distractions, and too many things to ever describe. In my life I was lonely, I was sick, I wanted a girlfriend, I wanted people to like me, I wanted to be able to create amazing things, I wanted to learn how to talk to a horse, I wanted people to not be so annoying, I wanted to know I was doing the right thing.
Life is like a series of books. In one chapter you are waking up, in another walking down the street, in another trying to untangle a fishing line, in another complaining that you are bored.
In my grandfather’s book, it says this line. It’s a very famous line.
Israel hear this:
Your unlimited potential looks like limited potential.
Your unlimited potential is somehow the same as every other person’s unlimited potential.
Shema Yisrael Y-H-V-H Eloheinu, Y-H-V-H Echad.
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.
My grandfather was in a war. In the war, they hurt the children, and took everything that they liked, and told them all that there was no hope.
My grandfather saw that no one was crying, and he wanted to cry. But he remembered something that his grandfather taught him. He said that Avraham (that was my grandfather’s name) was a hero, and that hero’s never admit defeat, and when they are defeated know that they are heroes.
You are a hero, but you will be defeated by life over and over again. When you think that there is no hope, you can repeat my grandfather’s words.
I didn’t know what the words meant. All I knew was it was the words which heroes spoke when all hope seemed lost and when they were proud that they would never give up. These are secret words, because no one else can see the depths of your struggle. These are words of a secret heroism, and that’s why I said them. But I didn’t know what they meant.
I forgot those words for many years. And when I was hopeless I knew that life sucked. Because it does, and I won’t tell you that it doesn’t. What I’m telling you here – what I’m trying to tell you – is how to be a hero and what it means. Let me try to explain those words.
Shema Yisrael – Hear Israel
Are you perfect? No. Are you amazing in some ways? Yes. Are you average in other ways? Yes.
You are great, and weak, and in between.
Is your life finished? No. Did your life just start now? No. Does time keep moving? Yes.
You are all the days of your life. You are standing here in this minute in the history of the world, and you are standing in between all that is past, and between all that is the future unknown.
Shema – Hear
When I learned what my grandfather meant, I listened properly. I knew that I was a complicated human being, with talents and interests and family and obligations and emotions and memories, and I listened with all these parts. I listened with my memories, so that if my grandfather taught me something I didn’t agree, I remembered that I disagreed. I listened with my desires, so that I always wondered what I could gain as I listened.
Yisrael – Israel
Here’s my grandfather’s secret in one line:
You are the hero of the world and no one will ever be able to understand, and even you won’t understand it because your quest is to discover at what moments your heroism can shine.
My favourite teacher told me that I was at the center of the whole universe. I still can’t see how that is possible. Do you feel like the most important person in your world? Do you think that the greatest guitar player is closer to the center? Do you think that there can be anything great when you’re stuck in your room, or stuck in your life?
Shema Yisrael – Hear Israel
The Rabbi’s who were the teachers of my grandfather’s book said that these two words were a reminder for the rest. These words say, “I will listen to the rest of the sentence and not be thinking about other things even a little bit.”
When I say shema Yisrael I remember that I am a complicated person, and I think about some of what I think makes me me, and then I remember that I am a hero.
I don’t believe that I’m a hero. But for this one sentence, as I say it, I pretend that I’m the greatest hero, sent by mankind to represent Earth at the galactic federation of planets. Whatever I believe, is what all humanity believes, and whatever I do, is what all humanity does.
For one sentence pretend that you’re important. When you’re hopeless this seems pointless. It is pointless, but that the whole point of wanting everything: if you’ll ever get everything you ever wanted you’re going to have to do what doesn’t exist yet. You’ll have to pretend to be a hero, because otherwise, you’ll never be one.
The next few words are hard to understand. I’m 29 and a half years old, and I only just started to understand them.
They’re a bit like magic. They are magic. These words are like a magic that is hidden.
[ [
I’m putting this in brackets so that you can skip it.
My teachers told me that there is a god, and that Adonai Eloheinu means that I have to worship God. I didn’t agree, but now I sort of do, but I don’t think it matters.
This is very mature stuff: My grandfather’s book is the Torah, but I’m not teaching you the Torah. I just want to tell you what I learned from the Torah.
So if your teachers tell you this is a lie, I want you to know that I’m not lying, but I might be completely wrong.
]]
Adonai Eloheinu
The author of the story is my author.
If you’re the hero, then the story of your life and your world must be about you. And if the story is a story, then it must be a story that is not just random.
If the author of your life is someone who is working with you to let you become the hero, then anything that you don’t like is a challenge, and everything that you do like is an opportunity.
When I’m sad I might say, Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu – I can find a way to make my life awesome, and I refuse to believe that it is impossible.
Everyone says that life is controlled by the world, but my grandfather taught me that the world can become my stage. My grandfather taught me that if I saw myself as a hero in training then the world would train me to become a hero.
Adonai Echad
The hard part about becoming a hero is that no one will ever know until everyone knows. The hard part of life is all the bits that hurt and are confusing and are wrong and not fair.
There’s not much point to thinking about how many things you don’t like. But it’s not wrong.
But there is a point to thinking about how every one on the planet could become a hero. It doesn’t sound likely, but it’s possible.
My grandfather helped children. I think my grandfather knew how heroic he had been in the war when entire countries had tried to kill him. Could you imagine defeating an army? Can you imagine outliving the most powerful king after he orders the destruction of all your friends and family and you?
Helping others (even your parents) might remind you that your (friends or) mother and father are also just a hero in training.
But sometimes it’s good just to say, Adonai Echad, I can imagine that other people could be heroes, that they could be better, that they could be perfect in my eyes.
Where’s the magic spell? Here it is. And if you think it doesn’t sound like magic, then as an adult let me tell you that true magic is invisible to the eye, look with your heart:
I am I. Shema
I refuse to become what the world tells me. Yisrael
There is no limit to what is possible. Adonai
I will aim for all that I can have. Eloheinu
There is no limit to how great the world can be. Adonai
The world could be perfect. Echad
So that’s why I love my grandfather. He didn’t lie to me like the teachers or parents. He didn’t try and convince me that things were ok when they weren’t, or that he knew all the answers. Instead, he showed me that I could imagine a world where I was a hero and everyone was amazing, and he showed me that it didn’t matter if I couldn’t explain how I would get there so long as I kept imagining (pretending) that it was possible.
* for adults and those who like complicated words. There are multiple redemptions, of which the penultimate was from Egypt. There was the flood, babel, others I don’t remember. The story of redeeming babel is amazing until we’re faced with the Real problems of Egypt. The goal is to become a son of David, but the stories appear each in turn, and each story folds into the next with subtlety and in unbounded creativity. Maybe we adults are secret cynics because we know there is no Quest, but that’s because it’s a quest Of quests. Sometimes we can only heal our childhood by healing our marriage, and in these ways and more the path is convoluted beyond measure.
If you are anything like me, and I was once zero years old, and once 10 years old, and later 20, and later (soon) 30 – so if you’re anything like I was at some point in my life – then being told to be brave will be an insult.
If you don’t think that it’s an insult then maybe you’re having a good day – hard days always come again.
If you’re having a hard day and you still love the words of shema then I wish you will teach me your secret.
[[
I didn’t want to talk with words like “god” because too many people already have.
But sometimes people say “god” and mean something like what I think. So I’m going to talk to you about the Fire. This will make some adults confused, but if you’re a child you might be smart enough not to get distracted by names.
]]
My grandfather saw people broken into tiny pieces. He didn’t see them burned, but they were burned after they were broken.
He said Shema, and then he hoped that he would not be broken beyond repair. I think my grandfather was broken beyond repair, which is why his story is so sad. But he was a hero, so even after he was broken, and then later when he defeated his enemies, he knew that he was a soldier in a secret army, and that it was an army for those who refuse to allow any one else to be broken and burned.
My grandfather’s heart was broken, because he discovered that all the pain and evil came from Adonai.
There is so much beauty and so much potential for greatness, and so much ugliness and small mindedness too. Why can life be great and is filled with sorrow? It’s not fair that to be capable of goodness means to be capable of hurting.
Can you imagine discovering that the words of hope – the Shema – were the words leaned from Fire!
The Fire said (to my ancestor’s ancestor, said my grandfather): If you want everything you ever wanted, then you need to suffer first. There’s no point to want a chocolate if you don’t want it first.
The Fire said that there’s no point wanting meaning and heroism without first wanting the world to not be pointless and filled with cowards and fear.
The Fire said, I am burning and you will all burn with me.
The ancestors saw that it was a terrible idea but that that it was the only way to get everything they wanted, so they set themselves on fire. When you hurt, that’s when you are closest to the fire, and when you’re happy, you’re sitting around a campfire distracted by the beautiful dance of the flames.
You’re a child maybe. I don’t want to scare you, but you must have realized that lots of little things aren’t nice. The adults never admitted this to me, and that’s why I’m making sure to tell you: The greatest chapters of life arrive without explanation, and the greatest pains of life cannot be understood.
I said that greatness arrives without explanation. Let me explain.
All the little heroisms of your life, they’re a riddle. You will become something when you collect enough or the right heroic moments, and only then will you be able to say, “Suffering can be good,” but when you suffer it’s too hard and unbelievable too.
What about the Torah and all the things my grandfather wanted to teach me but couldn’t? My grandfather was broken, he couldn’t say to his children what he wanted, and his children included my parents, and so they couldn’t tell me either.
My parents gave me the Torah, but they didn’t know what to say to make it make sense. I used to be angry at them, but then I realized they were in heroes in training too even if they were older and stronger than me. Parents were children too ← this will help you feel sorry for them when they mislead you or let you feel pain.
I would never tell you to study the Torah unless I thought you wanted to. I don’t think it’s very helpful to tell someone what to do unless you’re will to help them do it.
Instead, I’ll try and help you do it, and you’ll have to work out the rest yourself.
Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad
I believe that I can find the path to my dreams, and that my dreams are part of everyone else’s dream. This is like the Torah.
I want a multicoloured coat and maybe you want a cloud on a string like a kite. You will never know what it’s like to want what I want, and I will never know just how much it’s hurting you not to have what you want.
The Torah is a story of stories. When I read a story I think about my life, and when you think about your life.
But the Torah was hidden by adults in words and learning.
Don’t let that dishearten you. Remember the adults are not as smart as they act, otherwise they’d have flown free when they became adults, instead of chosing to do what everyone else was already doing.
[[
Some parts of the story are interesting, like when the hero fights the dragon, and some are only interesting if you can see the details, like the crazy plants in the jungle when the hero walks for days and days and days. The Torah is like this, even though my teachers tried to make me learn all of it from the start, in their order.
]]
The Torah is a dream of a dream of a dream. The third dream is yours. The first dream is the story of the Torah (Pharoahs and magic food that falls from the sky, and lots of laws about things that don’t exist and haven’t for a long time). The second dream is where your dream connects to everyone elses. ← You won’t understand this if you’re like me, but whatever you think honestly (honest to yourself and your thoughts and feelings and instincts) is right. That sounds like I’m not telling you the TRUE MEANING. It’s magic, and magic is a paradox. Paradoxes are like the world, you should seek them out.
The Torah is a dream of hope, that’s why it has the secret words of Shema.
The Torah is like a calendar that is the calendar of the world. On your calendar at home is your birthday, and your special memories. The Torah is a calendar which makes all the stories of the world become part of each other without their knowing.
I’ve tried to avoid fairy tales, because I think they’re too often abused by becoming just another way to lie. But here I ask that you forgive me for lying, and remember what I said about paradoxes, because lies can lead to truths.
Long ago all hope was lost.
Then a man had a dream of fire: in the dream, everything was burning, but somehow it was exactly what he wanted.
The man spoke to the people without hope and gave them hope.
The people were lucky, and then they were amazing, and then they sought everything they wanted and whatever they wanted they got, and that’s how they believed that hope can exist despite hopelessness.
Then all the people – now a people filled with hope – saw the fire.
If I told you all the things that the people saw in the fire, I would need to fill the stars with my clones and every clone would need to tell you something completely different from what any other clone was saying.
The fire showed them EVERYTHING. It showed them great magics, and scientific discoveries (most of which are still unknown). It showed them what it was like to be a sheep, and what it was like to be an ocean which can lift itself to travel through the stars.
The fire said, The world is your trap which you must escape by remembering that you were without hope and then filled with hope.
And the wisest women and men said, We will turn our life into a memory of hope.
The fire hid itself in words which the wise sages wrote: the Torah.
The sages hid the Torah into their lives. They lived and had children and died. And their children hid the Torah in their lives too. And they did this for thousands of years, until the sun itself knew the story, and the earth could not help hiding the Torah since it had seen its calendar of stories in the lives of the people who walked upon its surface. It was the greatest magic of all time.
The Torah became a secret song. It doesn’t matter if you know the secret. That’s what makes it magic. It’s a secret that you always knew but could never know. The Torah is all the secrets which all the heroes hid when they shouted Shema Yisrael and it is the song which your life is dancing even when it feels out of control.
The Torah doesn’t give you any powers. It doesn’t tell you what to do (not in a real way, it just tells you how to get to fulfil what you already want in your heart). It doesn’t cure fear like a drug. It doesn’t tell you what is going to be on the test or what is the the most important or how to make sad truths disappear.
That was a story, but I believe it.
Every week is a parasha. It is the dance of time. The parasha is not something you need to understand. The dance is hard, it’s hard not to step on your own feet, it’s hard not to feel shame when everyone tells you to stop stepping out of time, tells you that you’re doing it wrong.
If you can read this Shai the child. Don’t read the Torah for anyone else. Read it in what you wish it could mean. Imagine that it’s a code that is hiding the hero you were destined to become, if only you never forget that hope is possible even when it looks hopeless.
Read it when you like to read it, and imagine that you are part of magic spell drawn upon the time.
Shai, don’t worry if it sounds stupid. In fact, tell yourself when you think that it does.
Shai, what hero do you imagine you could me. Sic
Shai, if you were the author of god and the Torah, how would you hide your destiny amongst its words? There’s no answer to this question ← those are the best questions.
Let me say it plainly: there is a right way to master the Torah, but making it part of your life can become something awesome without you knowing how. Or not?
Mematai korim shema ba’aravit?
To the child who read the Torah and found no peace.
First, let me ask if you were forced against your will. If so then I. Wish I could have helped you and all children to find peace upon discovering that the world is like an alien (fire) who ignores your hunger because the alien doesn’t eat.
In my life, the Torah acted like a bonfire. It let me see in the dark, but I still had to check each tree for fruit. I’m not saying the Torah isn’t like a tree. But I am saying that so long as I suspect that I’m lying to myself about what I think is a good idea or choice, then it doesn’t matter how much magic wisdom I have. So let me ask you, what do you dream you were allowed to want?
To those in pain:
I hate pain.
Peace be upon you, until next time I can write to you, or maybe never, or maybe in a secret way,
Shema yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai Echad.
