To those who curse us

Camp makes me tired, just forty more days and it will be over… forty days. Our sages tell us that forty days have a powerful resonance to it. In Deuteronomy Moses appeals to god for forty days after the sin of the golden calf. I only just realized that that’s how much longer I have until camp comes to an end. Thus far it has been an extremely rewarding and tiring experience. I’ve been faced with new challenges, given new responsibilities, and to this point I’d like to believe I’ve risen to them.

It hasn’t been easy.

There are some mornings like this one that I wake up at 5:00am with my head so full of thoughts that I can’t go back to sleep. If I’m being honest then I’d say even when camp isn’t going on I’m somewhat prone to these mornings. One hand it’s my natural cycle, I’ve always enjoyed the peacefulness of the morning hours, I definitely do most of my writing at this time of day. I like to solitude of having my thoughts to myself, I know that one day in the not so distant future these times will be ancient memories. Lost in the rush of mornings filled with noise, filled with the demands of true adulthood, I’m feeling nostalgic already.

Can you feel nostalgic about time when you’re in it? I believe so.

Camp is giving me a wonderful clarity on my life, no TV, lots of work, kids running around, it has a realness to it that can’t be denied.

I’m dealing with a situation here that worries me, I’m a natural worrier, some parts of your nature can’t be escaped, I need people in my life to calm those fears, and I’m so fortunate that I have them and that I’ve found them. I’ve found in life that occasionally there are people of feel threatened by your very existence and those people will stop at nothing to remove you from their sphere.

I’m dealing with such a situation at the moment. I will overcome it. I trust that it is in my best interest, I pray that I will have the strength to rise above it. I’ve found that at the end of the Amidah when I say “to those who curse me, let my soul be silent” that I can’t help but repeat that line over and over again. I found this beautiful explanation of the passage:

Tosfos [Brochos 17a] comments on the prayer recited at the end of the Shmoneh Esrei: "My G-d, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from speaking deceitfully. To those who curse me, let my soul be silent; and let my soul be like dust to everyone." What is the meaning of the term "let my soul be like dust to everyone?" Tosfos suggests the very idea introduced by the Medrash above: Just like dust (afar) is never destroyed and always remains, we pray that our descendants should always remain and not be destroyed.

This prayer is speaking about people who are not our friends, people who curse us and abuse us. We pray that to those who curse us, we remain silent and we pray that our soul will remain like dust vis-à-vis our enemies. What is the intention when we pray that we should be like dust? It expresses a desire to be among those "who are insulted by others but do not respond in kind, who hear themselves being shamed, but do not respond" [Shabbos 88b]. Such people are the ones who eventually come out on top. We express this aspiration with the words "may my soul be like dust to everyone." That which Hashem promised Yaakov collectively for his descendants, we request on an individual basis as well. Concerning such people it is written: "And let those who love Him be like the powerfully rising sun" [Shoftim 5:31]

In the end it is my belief that those who seek to undo us, undo themselves, I pray for the strength to remember this when I want to respond to the petty criticisms and annoyances that I face not just in this situation but in all situations. If gods justice and mercy is ‘measure for measure”, if all our actions resonate then to quote the Beach Boys, I’m giving out good vibrations. Or to quote another source “Keeping the Faith” (it always makes me nostalgic of my time spent in NY because it was practically shot on my block)

May those who love us, love us, and those who don't love us - May God turn their hearts. And if He cannot turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles, so that we may know them by their limping.