At the Jewish Federation dinner on Monday night, Marlee Matlin told a beautiful story about a king who had a collection of precious jewels and would spend hours each day looking at it. There was one diamond in particular that was known to be the most beautiful, and one day, while inspecting it, the diamond slipped out of his hand and fell on the floor. When he picked up he was horrified to see there was a huge scratch on it from one end of the diamond to the other. A call went out to the entire kingdom to see if anyone could fix the king’s favorite possession. Many tried, but, of course, no one could. The king was distraught until a poor peddler came by and offered to make the diamond even more beautiful than it was before. The king agreed to give it to him, and after a few days the peddler returned. The king looked over the repaired diamond and noticed the crack was still on it, seemingly nothing had changed. The peddler had him look closer at the top of the diamond, where the small shape of a rose was now imprinted. Now the crack was no longer a crack, but the stem of the rose instead. In this way, the peddler had turned the imperfection into a new creation.
Matlin, famous among other things for winning an Oscar for Children of a Lesser God in 1986, has had a very successful career as an actress despite being diagnosed as deaf at the age of one and a half. For her the story was meant to show that we all need to look beyond our perceived flaws and look for the rose within. How fitting that this week’s Torah portion is Nitzavim, which remembers a time when all of us – woodchoppers to water carriers – stood in front of God and received the wisdom of Sinai. No matter our circumstance, we were all worthy of God’s wisdom.
One of the poignant tales Matlin told on Monday night was of her Bat Mitzvah experience, where the entire congregation cried tears of joy. Seeing their reactions, Matlin too began to cry, so much so she feared she had stained the Torah. Not so, the rabbi told her. Our history is filled with many times of joy and of sadness and it is all of those tears that make us who we are. Her tears had not ruined the Torah, but made it stronger.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 09/30/2016 by wpadm