WARNING: This is A LONG post! Do yourself a favour and go make a nice big cuppa tea or coffee, get yourself comfy and then start to read this!

Anyone who has been to Israel would have come across the following sign or piece of errant graffiti:


Transliterated it says; "Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me'Uman"
There is no translation.

Although Na Nach Nachma is based on the name of Rebbe Nachman, he himself did not use it, and it was unknown in his day.

The Na Nach Nachma phrase was revealed and taught by Rabbi Yisroel Ber Odesser, a controversial Breslov figure in the 20th century.

There's a really interesting explanation and history of the mantra on Wikipedia (gotta love Wikipedia!)

I guess when I first saw the mantra plastered all over the country I was curious to know what the hell it was. I copied it down in my notebook, making myself a mental note to find out what it was all about.

When I moved to Sydney a couple of years ago, I came across my notebook and realised that I had never got around to finding out the meaning of the whole na nach thing. For some unknown reason I wrote it out and taped it to the bottom of my computer monitor at work. I sensed there was something deeply mysterious and powerful about it - but I was still completely in the dark as to its meaning.

Rewind to a few months ago.

A friend of mine came over to my house for a visit. He said, “Hey! Do you want to hear my exciting news?” His eyes lit bright and I was intrigued. He told me that a friend had rung him and told him about this Rabbi that had come out from Israel and was taking private appointments. Apparently well known and highly respected in his Kabalistic sphere, Rabbi Nissan Levi is something of modern day “tzadik”. It’s hard to find a word in English that equals tzadik – I guess Holy Man would be the closest. Call him what you will though, Holy Man, Shaman, Healer, Psychic… there is something very special about this man and you know from the minute you lay eyes on him that there is something not quite of this world about him.

The next morning I was on the phone making an appointment to see him. He was staying with someone in an apartment in Bondi and you had to call this guy first in order to make an appointment. David was his personal assistant I guess you could say. He scheduled me in for an appointment that same night, straight after work. I didn’t even have time to consider it.

To say I had no idea what to expect is a massive understatement. I’ve been to a couple of so-called clairvoyants in the past and it is not that I am a skeptic, quite the opposite in fact. I absolutely believe that there are people in the world who are truly gifted, that have some finely-tuned sixth sense that allows them to see and understand things far beyond us mere five-sensed human beings. I say “so-called clairvoyants” because nine out of ten of them are fairground attractions at best and charlatans at worst. I have friends who can barely choose an outfit to wear without consulting their “guide” and I think that misses the whole point. I digress…

I arrived with a totally open mind. I didn’t know what he was going to do or say and part of me was actually quite frightened. Somehow I knew that I was not going to be able to bullshit this guy.

I arrived exactly on time and was buzzed into an apartment building. “We’re on the second floor, turn right out of the elevator” a man’s voice told me through the intercom.
I find the apartment and knock. I end up knocking about four times before someone comes to open it. It’s David, the guy I spoke to on the phone.

I walk into what can only be described as one of the worst interior designed apartments I have ever seen. Pink leather couches and matching pink chintz curtains. White enameled dining table and chairs and a worrying amount of lace doilies covering most surfaces. On the walls were religious paintings depicting Rabbis of long ago. There was also a photograph of a heavily bearded man that looked like something between a psychedelic hippy and an orthodox rabbi. If you have ever been to Safed in Israel you’ll know the type I mean.

What I didn’t realise was that this was Rabbi Nissan Levi.

David told me that the Rabbi would be with me in a minute. I could catch a glimpse of him through the terrace that wrapped itself around the lounge room and the kitchen. He was sitting at a table in the kitchen smoking a cigarette. Or at least I think it was a cigarette.

If I had conjured up any kind of image in my head in advance of seeing Rabbi Levi it was of that classic grey and white bearded old, wizened Rabbi. If you have ever seen photos of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Schneerson – that’s what I was imagining. I was so off the mark. Rabbi Levi was a lot younger than I imagined. It was hard to tell exactly how old he actually was with all that hair and beard, but I hazarded a guess of somewhere between late-thirties to early forties. (It turned out he was 44 – not too far off!)

A slight man, he wore the classic outfit of a Hassid – black pants and a white shirt, with his tzit tzit hanging loosely by his sides. On his head he wore a black ski beanie, which perched awkwardly on top of all his masses of hair.

He sat down in the pink armchair opposite me. He said nothing for a while and then using his hand on his own body, pointed very deliberately to a spot on the right side of his chest, somewhere in the upper ribs. He said to me “you used to feel pain here”. I looked at him, and then I looked at David, who was also sitting in the room – to act as a translator now as Rabbi Levi spoke mostly in Hebrew.

He was right. More than right, he was spot on actually. A few years ago I was incredibly sick and ended up having emergency surgery in Hong Kong to have my very diseased gall bladder removed. Where he had pointed was the exact spot of where my gall bladder had once been and was most definitely the source of the most physical pain I had even experienced in my life.

A few more minutes passed. He then said something in Hebrew that I didn’t understand. I looked to David who translated. “He said that you have many thoughts in your head, but that they fly away” (I in turn translated this to mean, I multi-task too much and can’t get anything done). Yeah, spot on again Rabbi, but I don’t think I wanted to come all the way to Bondi just to hear something as pedestrian as that. The Rabbi then said, “That’s it. There’s nothing else wrong with you.” For a second he looked as if that was it. He’d read my inner soul like a laser beam scans a bar code over a loaf of bread.

I sat there for a moment, not sure whether to move or say something. The Rabbi then sat back in his armchair and settled into a very deliberate pose. Relaxed, but purposeful, he rested his hand, with his fingers outstretched, over his left eye. He closed his eyes and remained utterly still. Initially I thought he was thinking, trying to connect to something. I really don’t know to be honest. All I knew was that all of a sudden my meeting with him was not over. I found myself staring at his fingers and I realised that they were the strangest fingers I had ever seen. The tips of his fingers were swollen, bulbous almost. If you have ever seen the pads on the tips of a frog’s hands (do frogs have hands?) then you will be able to picture the Rabbi’s fingers.

More than a few minutes had passed by now and I was beginning to get fidgety. At the end of the room was a mirrored wall and in it I could see David’s reflection. I looked at him to see if I could gain any insight into what exactly was going on. He seemed as perplexed as me. Something instinctively told me to stay silent and not to move too much. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes… in the end almost twenty-five minutes passed. In that whole time the Rabbi did not move a muscle or open his eyes. Had he fallen asleep I wondered? I mean, seriously, it was possible wasn’t it? He must see so many people, with so many problems. It’s feasible that the man was wrecked.

All of a sudden, the Rabbi opened his eyes and seemed oddly energized somehow. Without warning, he got up and went to the toilet. I looked to David as if to say “what’s going on?” He looked back at me equally mystified. I said to David, does the Rabbi do this often? He told me that he had never seen him do that. That the Rabbi sees thousands of people a year and he had never seen him do that. Tentatively, I asked him if he thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. He shrugged his shoulders in genuine confusion and said “I have no idea.”

Oh great. Of all the thousands of people the Rabbi sees, I am the one who freaks him out.

When the Rabbi came back to the armchair he resumed his pose, except this time he had his eyes open. He asked me if I had stomach problems. Again, he was pretty spot on. I’ve never had anything actually diagnosed and I don’t think it is anything serious, but all my life I have been particularly prone to stomach aches.

It’s the next thing he said that left me stunned.

“The blood cannot flow in your body. It is because your soul is blocked.” At that same moment I started to feel the strangest sensation in my body. My head felt like pins and needles, my face was hyper-sensitive. My stomach felt like jelly and I had that feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and you remember that you have an exam that day. Suddenly the Rabbi asked me how I felt. I tried to explain it through David who translated back into Hebrew for me. The Rabbi nodded knowingly. He explained that what he had been doing all that time was “un-blocking” my soul. What I was experiencing now was a physical reaction to that, a seismic shift that had taken place deep, deep within me. I was aware of how much shit he’d just dredged up and it was utterly overwhelming.

The Rabbi said I would feel better in a few minutes. He was right. Except now, I felt like I wanted to burst into tears, but I had no idea why. I told him this and he smiled at me. Not in any kind of patronizing way, but genuine kindness. He told me that was normal – to be expected even. But I should know that they were not tears from the body they were tears from the soul.

It was only towards the end of my meeting with him that he asked if there was anything else, anything I wanted to ask him. I had been thinking constantly of two things; that I wanted to return to Israel and was that the right thing for me to do? Was that my destiny?

I know so many people who have gone to Israel not because they felt they HAD to live in Israel – be it for ideological or religious reasons, but because it was a great place to run away to. I desperately wanted to go back for the right reasons. In many ways I feel like I have been running my whole life. I’m tired and I want to stop running. But I love Israel and I don’t want it to be yet another destination, another escape route. I want my reasons for wanting to be there to be right, genuine and honest.

My other question was marriage. I wanted to get married. Was he here (in Australia) or was he in Israel?

Unlike the rest of my meeting with Rabbi Levi, which had been rather slow and supernal, these two questions required no thought, no meditation whatsoever. He looked as if I had asked him the dumbest question in the world.

“You have nothing here” he said, with the slightest hint of contempt. “This place is bullshit! There is nothing here for you. You will go back to Israel in eight to nine months and your husband is there."

He gave me a tiny little book of Tehillim (Psalms) and told me to read the ten Psalms in it every day. Then he told me to come back in a week and he would sort out the “husband” issue for me. It was almost like going to doctor. My miniature book of prayers was my prescription. Take once a day after meals.

Before I left, the rabbi lapsed once again into his deliberate meditative pose, except this time his eyes were open. After a few minutes, he sat upright again and said something in Hebrew that I didn’t catch, except for one word: simcha, which means joy. I looked to David who was smiling. He told me that the Rabbi had just put joy back in my heart. Before he had taken out the sadness and now he was replacing it with joy and mazal – luck.

I left the apartment and walked outside the building. I had never felt so incredible in my life. Like a ten ton weight had been lifted from my body. I burst into tears. I couldn’t stop, but I didn’t care if anyone saw me. Because I knew I was crying tears from the soul, and not from my body. I felt re-born.

***

It took me over two weeks to get another appointment. The first time my meeting was canceled because the Rabbi was not feeling well. The second time David had totally forgotten to write down my appointment and had double booked. The third time I arrived and was told that the Rabbi had no time to see me then, I would have to come back at 10pm that evening. It was the only night I could see him. Tomorrow was Friday and he wouldn’t be available during Shabbat and he was leaving early on Sunday morning. It was tonight, or nothing. I finally managed to convince David to squeeze me in at 8.15pm, which left me a little short of three hours to amuse myself. Being a stone’s throw from a massive shopping mall, I knew that three hours would pass by in no time at all. I had some dinner, window shopped, had a neck and shoulder massage and bought myself an electric toothbrush (yes, I do realise that’s an odd item to purchase).

I wandered back and almost couldn’t believe it when I was buzzed into the apartment building and walked back into the apartment. Having had three aborted attempts to see Rabbi Levi reminded me of the story of people who want to convert to Judaism and get “turned away” by the rabbi three times, as if to test their sincerity and commitment to join the Tribe.

This time the Rabbi seemed somewhat more terrestrial. We seemed to communicate better, and the meeting flowed in a way that I could actually comprehend. David excused himself, saying he had to go out for a few minutes, but he was certain that between my Hebrew and the Rabbi’s English, we’d get by just fine.

Again, I don’t really “ask” the Rabbi anything as such. Instead we just chat a bit. Sure, it’s stilted, awkward, but he “gets” me somehow. He is certain of one thing: I am going back to Israel by the end of the year. He gave me his contact details without me even having to ask for them. He told me he will heal my body in Israel. He said there was no point doing any work on me in Australia. “It’s bullshit here” he said again (gee, he really didn't like Australia did he?!), his choice of words took me by surprise.

He got up and walked across the room to the shiny enameled white dining table. He sat down and started to write furiously, covering both sides of a sheet of paper. I couldn’t see, let alone decipher what he wrote. He folded it up into a small little package and sealed it crudely in masking tape. I will never know what it says. It could be a recipe for alphabet soup for all I know… but I don’t think so. He told me to keep it with me, carry it in my bag. I stow it away safely in my wallet. I’ll forget it’s even there soon.

His parting gift to me was this: he sat back down in the armchair opposite me and on a silver platter he wrote yet more indecipherable words in Hebrew using a water soluble marker. He got up and went to the kitchen and a moment later I heard water running. He returned a couple of minutes later – with a plastic cup filled with blue liquid. He had run water over the words and as they dissolved, they flowed into the cup. He told me to drink the water. I swallowed the words. Literally. I guess I was drinking "Aleph Bet" soup this time. Sorry. Crappy pun. Part of me thought, have I just crossed some invisible line? Have I crossed into Loony Land? What was I doing swallowing blue water? All I could think of at that moment was a) I hope that the pen was non-toxic and b) I hope I don’t have a bright blue tongue.

After I drank the water the Rabbi told me I would have clear thoughts. I smiled at him.

Clarity – that’s a beautiful thing.

I wished him nessia tova – bon voyage and something told me that our paths would cross again.

So Rabbi Nissan Levi was my first introduction to the world of Breslover hassidism. I won't even pretend that I understand a fraction of what I experienced. Just last week I was coaxed into going to a shiur run by a guy I have met a handful of times. Everytime I bumped into him he would encourage, nay implore, me to go along.

Again I thought: what the heck? I'm all for new experiences!

I discovered that this guy is a Breslov - one of a handful in Sydney. And the shiur was all about Rabbi Nachman's teachings. Once again I felt like I was in some parallel universe.

"Sure" I said. "I totally get what you are saying."

What the??? I like to think I am a pretty intuitive person with a healthy balance of skepticism and faith. When I am so far from comprehending the so-called "truth" is it because I "the unitiated" just have to work on connecting to my neshoma? Or is everyone else floundering as well, except they are just too afraid to admit that they too, are stumped?

I will never shut the door. I do read the 10 Psalms on a reasonably regular basis (I find it a nice relxing thing to do just before I go to sleep at night) and I will go back to another shiur... maybe... probably.

Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me'Uman

Right on dude.

Last weekend I travelled to Melbourne to attend the Limmud Oz festival, which is a two day festival of Jewish Culture and Learning held alternately in Sydney and Melbourne each year.
Limmud Oz was born out of its well-established sister festival Limmud, which is a much grander five day affair held in the UK annually.

Clive Lawton, affectionately known as the "father of Limmud", having founded Limmud 25 years ago, was instrumental in founding the atipodean version and was at this year's festival to present a number of fascinating sessions.

I attended one of his final sessions entitled, "Why Be Jewish?"

Such a topic is an interesting one for a Melbourne audience. I suspect Melbourne Jews (particularly the ones that live in the Ghetto-like bagel belt of Caulfield) feel they are somewhat immune to the serious issues facing the rest of the Jewish world in the Diaspora.

"A decline in the number of kids receiving a Jewish education?" Nahhhh!
Most of OUR kids go to Jewish day schools.

"Intermarriage and assimilation problems?" Nahhhhh!
Most of OUR kids marry Jewish and stay Jewish.

Oh you think so eh Melbourne?

Clive, who first visited Melbourne 10 years ago commented at the time that the Melbourne Jewish community reminded him of the Jewish community he grew up in the Britain of the 1950's.

Ten years on, time has not stood still. Clive now sees Melbourne Jewry as the Jewish community he remembers in his teenage years in the 1960's.

Ten years. Ten years of change. You do the math.

"I can tell you what happens in the 70's, the 80's, the 90's and the Naughties if you like" he said. "Because I have been there and I have seen what happened. And if you think it is not happening to you as well, you are living in a dream world. It's happening to you like it is happening to everyone else, except you are slower than everyone else."

Them's fighting words and the Jewish mothers in the audience were none too impressed with the Englishman's views invading their home turf.

"Staying Jewish is getting harder and harder" he proclaimed.

Why?

"Because they don't hate us anymore."

In many ways, Australia is "the lucky country". For the most part, Aussies live in relative racial harmony and thank G-d we have not yet suffered a terrorist attack. However, I think Australians are frighteningly naive to think that it could never happen in Australia.

It is not a hard thing to be a Jew in Australia. It is much harder to be, say, a Muslim. The ultra religious Jewish community is so insular it doesn't have to worry about the rest of the world and the secular community looks like everybody else.

Long gone are the days when our Eastern European grandparents fled vicious antisemitism, or even worse, suffered the Holocaust, only to come to Australia after the war to discover a land truly made of milk and honey.

Today, we are more likely to receive comments like, "oh you are Jewish? That's so interesting. My brother's girlfriend is Jewish. What's that thing about sundown on Friday all about, I forgot what it is called..."

I am not for one second suggesting Australia is some kind of nirvana free of antisemitism, of course it is not. But compared to many other countries, we have it pretty good here.

What I am getting at is this: "Because they hate us" is not a reason to be Jewish.
We cannot survive on the hate of others. We cannot teach our children what a wonderful thing it is to be a Jew if the best we can come up with is, "because we can't let the antisemites win". Fear cannot be our great motivator. When we obsess about antisemitism we paint ourselves as perpetual victims. When we over-emphasize the threat of assimilation, it makes us feel like an endangered species.

Our parents have to care too.

All too often, parents leave it up to the school to do all the "Jewish stuff". Kids go to their prohibitively expensive Orthodox Jewish day schools, learn Tanach, learn Halacha, learn minhagim, keep kosher and then they go home and...play X Box on a Friday night while the family hoes into a pepperoni pizza.

And you wonder why our kids are growing up and saying, "Be Jewish? Oh get stuffed!"

I am also not suggesting everyone becomes orthodox. That's not the point I am making. I am talking about "dugma ishit" - personal example and being a positive personal role model. As children we look to our parents for guidance and for the right answers. If we continually receive mixed messages it's no wonder that we grow up confused about who we are and what our identity is.

We need to show our kids that being Jewish is a rich and valuable lifestyle.
But that alone is still not enough.
We need to show our kids that being Jewish is a rich and valuable contribution to the world.

Perhaps then, we will grow up with a sense of pride, not fear about being a Jew.

Why be Jewish?

Because we are a light among the nations and we have a message the world needs to hear.

The other week my mother and I had a big fight.
Not just a little disagreement, a difference of opinions.
Oh no. This was a big, old fashioned mother-daughter screaming match of epic proportions.

You see, my mother and I live about 1,000 kms away from each other. I live in Sydney and she lives in Melbourne. I travel to Melbourne quite regularly for work, which on the one hand is really nice. I get to see my family and spend time with my closest friends. On the other hand, I stay with my mother when I am in Melbourne and that means I automatically become a 6 year old girl again.


No longer am I the 33 year old independent woman I know myself to be most of the time.
In my mother's house I regress. Partly it's my own fault. Of that, I am certain.

So what was the fight about?

Well, it was about lots of things, some of which I won't write about because they are too personal and I am not into airing my dirty laundry in public. But I will share some of it with you.

My mother called me an extremist.

She accused me of putting up barriers and pushing my family away from me.

To put this in context, what she was referring to was my (and I will freely admit it) somewhat consistent or perhaps persistent mention of the word "Israel".

"It's Israel this and Israel that! Your whole bloody life is Jewish and Israel and you aren't even there yet. It's like you are already living there and you are distancing yourself from us, you are pushing us away. You are turning into an extremist."

Now, if you didn't know me, and there is every chance that you are a total stranger that has happened to come across my blog by sheer randomness, then well, I suppose it would be hard to make sense of the things my mother said to me.

You could likely have read that and thought, "Gee this girl sounds pretty unfeeling and self-centred."

You could also have read that and thought, "Gee that mother sounds pretty tough on her daughter."

Well, like any story - there are always two sides and I am old enough now that I have learned that I am not always right (although I would dearly love to think I am!)

My mother has a point.

It's true that I envelop myself in "all things Israeli". I listen to Israeli music and Israeli radio on the internet. I keep abreast of all the news in Israel and try when I have time to read things in Hebrew to keep my reading up to scratch (my reading comprehension sucks by the way, my spoken Hebrew is pretty decent). When I see Israeli food brands in the supermarket I sigh a sigh of nostalgia for a place I am thousands of miles away from and I will pay the obscene mark-up in price for a packet of Osem soup just because it satisfies some tiny missing piece in me, it fills this huge hole just a teeny weeny bit.

It's easier to live a fantasy than reality isn't it? Come on, we've all done it.

I was born and grew up in Hong Kong. As you'd expect, it was not the most Jewish of environments or upbringings. I have a Jewish mother and a lapsed Anglican, now staunchly atheist father. I had zero religious education. We "did" Christmas. I say "did" in inverted commas because what constituted Christmas for us as a family were some nice presents, a Christmas tree (but my mother drew the line at putting a star on top - like that made it ok??) and we sat down, just my parents, my brother and I for a turkey and trimmings dinner.

What's the one thing I remember about Christmas? My mother having the worst day of her year. The awful fights my parents would have at the dinner table (usually my mother berating my father for having spent too much money on presents) and my brother and I, trying to remain cheerful with our brightly coloured party hats extracted from cheap Christmas crackers with groan-inducing inane jokes.

There was one religion in Hong Kong. Greed.
I grew up in a society where money was revered like a god. I had no sense of who I was or where I came from. I had no extended family in Hong Kong - no grandparents, no cousins. Just my immediate family. From a very early age I remember wanting to desperately understand what my heritage was. I thought about my mother's parents in Melbourne. My Polish grandparents with their thick Yiddish accents that I loved, and yet felt so removed from. My relatives in Australia represented a whole world that I wanted more than anything to be a part of, to feel connected to, to understand.

I remember that as a young girl, the one Jewish thing I owned was a book about the Jewish holidays. It had lovely bright illustrations in it and I devoured that book like you couldn't possibly imagine. I wanted to understand what it was to "be Jewish" to feel like you were part of a larger equation.

I am all grown up now. I own lots of "Jewish" things. I have lots of "Jewish" books in my home. I went to Israel for the first time almost 3 years ago and what happened to me there changed my life.

I found home.

I found a place where for the first time in my life I could be me. Where people didn't question my non-Jewish sounding surname, or the fact that I hadn't gone to a Jewish school and they didn't give a shit that I was learning at 30 what most Jewish kids learn at 3.

There is a quote in Philip Roth's seminal Jewish novel, Portnoy's Complaint that couldn't possibly sum up my experience in Israel for the first time better:

“What was incredible and strange to me…what gave my entire sojourn the air of the preposterous was one simple but wholly implausible fact: I am in a Jewish country. In this country, everybody is Jewish.”

So, to get back to the argument my mother and I had. Yes, she was right - I do talk about Israel too much, and I am sure it hurts her because my one-track mind only succeeds in reminding her on a daily basis that in too few months I will be returning there, this time (G-d willing) for good.

But in my defence (and it is my blog, so I am fully entitled to defend myself!) I think I have worked out why it is I persist in making Israel such a huge part of my life here in Australia, on the other side of the world from Israel.

It's my barrier, my wall, my protection. Maybe if I start to live my Israeli life here, then by the time I actually get there the adjustment won't hit me like a ton of bricks. I might be subconsciously pushing my family away now because in a few months my mother won't be an hour's flight away from me to have that huge argument.
But I am not stupid. I do possess a pretty large degree of self-awareness. I know that I can push my family away all I like now. The fact is, when I am in Israel and after the initial thrill wears away, I will miss my family and my friends and I expect that there will be times I will suffer enormous homesickness and loneliness.
But, however warped it sounds, that is a price I am prepared to pay.

Some days I feel like I am hurtling towards my fate at a rate I cannot even quantify. Sometimes I don't even feel like it is in my control anymore. I set the ball rolling initially and now it has gathered enough momentum that it is a force unto itself.

Call me crazy, call me an extremist. But at the end of the day, I am just a girl who is trying to find her way home.