Thoughts on Meron by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn

Dr. Deb

Lessons from Meron

By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.

I’m heartbroken. I cried. But I’m also terrified. What’s next?

I thought HaKadosh Baruch Hu was giving us a message in 2020. Some message that I’m not sure exactly what, but something about paying attention to Him. Not forgetting that He runs the world. It seemed that maybe “the world” needed that.

But what did we do?

Aren’t we His chosen people? Aren’t we His beloved? He saved us so many times in past wars with our surrounding enemies. What is His message now that He took the lives of people celebrating the end of the plague that Rabbi Akiva’s students suffered from? People who went to Meron with holy thoughts? To be near the holy Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai?

How is it possible?

And when it’s unfathomable, it becomes terrifying.

I cried as so many of us did Thursday night. We went into Shabbos crying, though we’re not supposed to.

Frightened, confused, and terribly sad.

Again, we’re hit. When will it end?

But you know what? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from dealing with my own past griefs, it’s that asking questions about G-d’s intentions are not a good use of my time and energy. We don’t know and will never know why G-d chooses to do something to us.

Sometimes we look back at a bad thing and see good come out of it. Rabbi Akiva laughed at the fox roaming the site of the burnt Beis Hamikdash because he saw that from such a scene of total destruction, only rebuilding and beauty could come. There would be no other option.

But it takes a Rabbi Akiva to see it that way. Much harder for me.

So even thinking optimistically doesn’t help me. I don’t see the good in the lost lives (although Israelis

It seems to me that there is no other choice.

There is nothing else I can do but recognize the preciousness of my life so that I live it well. That’s it.

I have to put the terror of what’s

There is nothing else I can do but recognize the preciousness of my life so that I live it well.

claim that the dangerous area of the Meron hills created a catastrophe waiting to happen, so perhaps the authorities will wake up and do something to save even greater numbers of future lives).

Well, I’m stumped. If asking why and searching for the good in the bad – having that ayin tov – are not the answer, then what is?

For me, it has to mean going on and giving my own life the meaning that I can give it. next aside because that won’t help me function; that will hinder the very objective I’m aiming for.

But how do I do that, exactly? Feelings are feelings, right? The reality for me is that as I’ve lost a husband and grow older myself, I deeply feel my own mortality. I suffered with it the year after he died, and then, slowly, I started to feel normal.

Until Covid hit and I realized that “normal” was gone forever.

But the sunshine seemed to be peeking out a bit for 2021. Until Lag B’Omer.

I’d been waiting for Lag B’Omer too because I missed my music. And even though I’d shut the app down in my phone, for some reason, when I turned on the car’s audio, the music would start up. I was very annoyed at it for doing that. “Don’t you know it’s sefirah?” I would ask no one in particular.

But at last, I would be able to listen to my much-missed music. And then I didn’t feel like it after the news came.

So I decided there was no reason to be terrified any more. I will die. We all do.

We just conveniently forget. Because, after all, who wants to remember that?

I’m (reluctantly) embracing that truth so that I can really live.

I don’t know if that was the message G-d meant; it’s not for me to figure that out. But I can certainly interpret what it means to me: Make every day – no, every second – count. That’s my personal lesson. Be who you were supposed to be.

And, after the period of grieving lifts, be happy. Make sure of that. Whatever that takes. What will make you truly, deeply happy, at a soul level? Then do that thing.

I’m left with grief, but I’ve removed the terror. Eventually, I know (from experience), the grief will pass, too. And while I’m living through that, I want to fill myself with purpose. Because life is clearly too short.

Dr. Deb Hirschhorn is a Marriage and Family Therapist. If you want help with your marriage, begin by signing up to watch her Masterclass at https://drdeb. com/myw-masterclass.