Daniel Nakonechny

בס"ד

Our standing at Har Sinai and bringing Torah into the world is usually envisioned as Am Yisrael standing together as a group and God being……wherever.  But there’s more to it.  While it’s true that together we did bring Torah into the world, there’s other Torah that we brought into the world individually.  Each one of us - each Jew - received precious moments when The Holy One, Blessed be He, gathered us into His arms and while holding us close to His heart in deep embrace whispered, “This is for you.  I’m giving you Torah that belongs to you.  It’s my personal gift to you.”

We’re not really taught it this way but it’s true, and in the deepest depths of our hearts and souls we know it is.  Sadly, however, we almost don’t know it any longer, because after two thousand years of Exile from our land and home the greatest devastation that we’ve suffered is that we’ve absorbed so much of the Exile inside us that we no longer know who and what we are.

Yet surprisingly, it is from this very brink of annihilation that we are beginning to return to who and what we are.

From the deep darkness of Exile, our hearts are seeing and perceiving new light that is entering the world.  At times it seems to be something that is only so hauntingly illusionary, yet at others it is the first faint rays of a long awaited sun.  Our blessing is that we have merited to be the generation who is greeting this light – greeting it in behalf of all the so many Holy Jews who have prayed and cried and believed beyond believing for it’s coming.

Our returning to and rebuilding of the Land of Israel marks the beginning of our return, but more than just our physical returning home we are also returning to what we are as Jews.  Where the destruction from our Exile has brought us so low that we scarcely remain Jews, except for maybe in our minds, now we are returning to living and being the Jews whom we are in our hearts and souls.

What we are and what we’re doing is to make this world a place where the Divine can dwell in and reside for the rest of Eternity.  Thank God, there are so many, many people pursuing this same dream.  As my contribution, I write - writing that comes from the heart and soul and writing that is to the heart and soul, but it’s an imperfect heart, one too often broken into too, too many pieces.  Yet, each time that I sit down to write, again and again as the words form on the page, I find myself connecting in that intangible way to something deeper and higher and sweeter.

It is always my hope and prayer that in my writings words that will be found that will encourage and inspire, sustain and uplift, and above it all that’ll somehow pierce through and lift us above the darkness that hovers around and over us.  If I’ve succeeded in helping us feel and taste and hear and see some of the sweet, beautiful light that is just so very, very close to our touch, then we’ve received a wonderful blessing.

For me love of God and Torah started with Rabbi Shlomo Riskin at Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan in the 1970’s.  In those heady days, LSS was an incredibly vibrant, open, and involved community committed to reaching out to all kinds of Jews, and in many ways LSS innovated ideas and programs that broke new ground for many Jewish communities in North America and the world.

While there, I was fortunate to study a few years in Yeshiva University, and on Succot 1979 I was blessed to come to live in Eretz Yisrael.  Here I studied a number of years with Rabbi Chaim Brovender at Yeshiva HaMivtar, and through his wife I met my wife, Chaya Sara.  She and I together have been blessed to raise a family of seven wonderful children and we’ve even become grandparents.  Our home is north of Yerushalayim in Beit El, the modern-day settlement that is located in or in close proximity to the Biblical location of Beit El.

To describe us best, I think that we can say this.

We - my wife and family and I - live in the very heart of the struggle for Eretz Yisrael amidst people who are in the forefront of the struggle. We’re human and as such we can be broken and defeated, but we cannot be conquered because we have a dream, a dream that is God’s dream.  Every now and then He gives us a glimpse of it, but most especially He let’s us know and believe that He, himself, wants His dream to be fulfilled before the end of days.  Whether that will come true or not is not solely dependent upon us, but we’re putting our heart with God’s heart ,and to the end that we can help make it happen we will use every ounce of our being to do so.

These are days of great sacrifice and great pain, days of tremendous desire and tremendous frustration, and days of incredible dreams and incremental fulfillment.  Everything we do is so beyond us - so beyond us because everything that we are doing is for the sake of God's dream – His dream that He and His Holy people can finally be together again - this time forever.

Daniel Nakonechny

Beit El

23 Sh’vat 5766