Tazria - Metzora: When You Stopped Asking

I say these words every day.

A full Shachris, with shuckling and all, but dead silence inside.

המחדש בטובו בכל יום תמיד מעשה בראשית.

And it hit me. 

I knew—mid-sentence—that I didn't believe what I was saying.

I’m past the age of questioning whether there is a Hashem. 

I did that work already. 

That's not what I mean. 

Although that may be yours, and that's something for a different essay, perhaps. 

My problem is that I'm not looking anymore.

I already looked, so I should be done, right?

I don’t expect the world to be made anew.

I expect it to just work.

I wake up. 

Daven. Coffee. Work. Come home. Kids. dinner. Learn (hopefully). Sleep. Repeat.

Like the instructions on the back of a bottle of shampoo. 

That's what my religious life boils down to these days. 

The system runs and is smooth and predictable and efficient.

Somewhere inside that efficiency, I buried the only thing that ever made emunah real. 

The need to drive home daily that Hashem is actually here, and I feel He is here. 

Because if my world behaves exactly as expected…

Then what exactly is being renewed?

I know I'm not the only one. 

You do this too. 

I know, because you’ve told me, and I can see it in your dull eyes every morning while we make coffee together at the coffee station in shul. 

The Mei HaShiloach on Parshas Tazria asks this question you are desperate to avoid.

If Hashem renews creation constantly, then it should feel new.

So why doesn’t it?

Because the chiddush is not visible in the world.

Unless you demand to see it.

Hashem takes the most repetitive reality imaginable, day after day, breath after breath, and fills it with wonders.

But only the one who longs for Him can see it.

Everyone else just calls it routine.

Avraham Avinu walked through the same world you do.

The same rhythm of life. 

He grew up in the world where the great sun rose every day. 

He grew up around the monuments and sculptures that worshipped this unending repetitiveness.

Thousands of men lived before him and prayed to the rain to come in its time, for the gods to hear them and keep this machine running the same way again tomorrow. 

They weren’t stupid men. 

They were men who built, worked, raised families, and buried their dead.

But not one of them demanded an answer.

Not one stood there and said: הבירה בלי מנהיג?

“A palace… without an Owner?”

But Avraham did.

He refused to live in a world that didn’t answer him.

The Midrash says he came “מרחוק.”

This, of course, is the inner distance. 

Distance from complacency.

The Mei HaShiloach reveals that the question that lit him on fire was not even his.

It was sent to him by Hashem. As it is sent to all who choose to listen.

For everything is constantly sent every day anew. 

And this is what he noticed. 

If it were natural, everyone would have asked.

They didn’t.

So the question itself, the refusal to accept silence, that was his revelation.

Which leads us to something you may not want to hear.

If you feel nothing when you say the words, then you are not like Avraham.

You are like the thousands who lived and died in a perfectly functioning world…

And never once asked Who was running it.

The Mei HaShiloach reads the words of this parsha, אשה כי תזריע, like a map. 

This is not just the literal description of childbirth. 

In Kabbalistic terms, woman and man represent different levels. 

It is not a judgment of value, just a structure.

Earth then heaven. אשה: An Earth state. A life on the surface.

Then תזריע: a stirring. A desire planted deep.

And then וילדה זכר: Clarity. Something new is born.

(Again, this is a Kabbalistic concept. If you are bothered by this, then subscribe to my newsletter, and I'll answer you there. )

That’s what we lost.

A complete rebirth every day. 

Not just of the world and existence but of your perception that it is new. 

That is our avodah. 

The hidden one in your mind and heart, to know that everything is made again every day by Hashem.

When that renewal becomes expected, assumed, it is no longer meaningful. 

It has never been easier to be frum.

You don’t have to search.

You don’t have to struggle.

You can live an entire religious life today without ever once needing Hashem to show up.

And that should terrify you. It terrifies me. 

It was not always like this.

A Yid in the shtetl didn’t have this luxury.

Poverty. Hunger. Fear. Uncertainty at every turn. Children buried. Homes destroyed. Pogroms and genocide. 

Not just in the shtetl, but throughout our history. 

But from that pit, rose giants.

Men who didn’t say המחדש בטובו as just another line.

They said it because if they didn't believe Hashem was renewing the world right now, they wouldn’t survive the next hour.

Their emunah was demanded.

Torn out of reality.

And we…

We inherit their words.

Their siddur.

Their Torah.

And we turned it into background noise.

 The Pasuk in Yeshaya says, “שְׂאוּ־מָר֨וֹם עֵינֵיכֶ֤ם וּרְאוּ֙ מִֽי־בָרָ֣א אֵ֔לֶּה הַמּוֹצִ֥יא בְמִסְפָּ֖ר צְבָאָ֑ם לְכֻלָּם֙ בְּשֵׁ֣ם יִקְרָ֔א מֵרֹ֤ב אוֹנִים֙ וְאַמִּ֣יץ כֹּ֔חַ אִ֖ישׁ לֹ֥א נֶעְדָּֽר׃”

Lift your eyes.

Look until you can see it.

Every פרט is placed exactly where it belongs.

Not one detail missing.

Not one.

The world is screaming order and perfection

And you walk through it like it’s just same old, same old.

The Mei HaShiloach exposed a failure in our modern, easy frum lives. 

If the question isn’t alive in you, it's not because the world lacks clarity.

It’s because you lack רצון.

You know the moment.

When you say the words, your mind is already somewhere else.

When you finished davening, nothing inside you even moved.

You don’t even fight it anymore.

That’s where this lives.

The renewal didn’t stop.

You stopped demanding to see it.

If you are uncomfortable right now,

Good.

If you are feeling the stirrings of realization. 

Even just a movement of recognition of His hand in this beautiful world.

Good. 

That’s not you. 

That’s Him, remaking the world anew again. 

And now you are beginning to notice. 

Maybe for the first time in your boring, dull, repetitive life. 

Maybe you are beginning to realize how interesting and amazing this world and your life truly are. 

Don’t kill it this time.

Don’t smooth it over. Don’t distract it away.

Let the question burn until it embarrasses you.

Look at the world like it shouldn’t be allowed to exist without an answer.

And say it like a man who refuses to live a lie, מי ברא אלה.

Don’t stop until you mean it.