Sichos Chullin - Rav Adin Even Yisrael

By the waters of Babylon-Boston,

Last thing the Rav said to me before I left, "Boston, I have been there. It is an interesting town. Don't get too spoiled there in Boston."

And here I am, its a nice place to visit. Lovely trees, parks, some nice people. I feel like such a stranger. After a superb shabbos meal complete with my improvised, "peanut-butter and jelly" baked chicken (sauteed in Thai peanut oil, olive oil, olives, Rasberry perserves, or Marmalade, or something along those lines, and red wine), after going on just a little too long, we finished and I walked E&N back to their house through the plush streets, 12 midnight, muggy air and affluent brookline houses, stuffed with shabbos, and E. asked me, "how does it feel like to be a brookline baal a boos?" We are swapping our place in Jerusalem with this fantastic house, much thanks to E&N's reccomendation and our generous swappers, so I am kind of pretending to be a local. A fleishige brookline orthodox Jew, "dont get too spoiled there in Boston."

But we are a little homesick. Rav Adin SHilita is fond of telling about a new immigrant to Israel, american, who came to him with looking for advice as to how to cope with his own spiritual strife. THe Rav said to him, "Just walk around Jerusalem and speak to simple people, Israelils who don't know any English. Just speak to them in simple hebrew and listen carefully to how they respond." (I don't think he meant to ask the simple Israelis about the meaning of life and theological issues, but just to force himself to carry on simple conversations, or "small talk." Such conversations could have profound results.) The Rav said that the man did this, and found many answers to many of his spiritual questions in the words of the simple Jews of Israel. I heard the Rav tell over this story two or three times, once telling me that my teshuvah would be complete the day I quit speaking English and speak only Hebrew. ANd zug ich, some people use the hebrew language like a holy cow, but, with God's help, I don't think that will be my problem. Heaven help us all to reach into our past and in so doing, re-align our futures -
In Hebrew.