With the early loss of a potential pregnancy coming as it did so closely to Tisha B'Av, I found myself once again feeling real grief on our historical day of mourning this year.  On doctor's and Rabbi's orders I was not fasting- well, at least I was not supposed to be.  I didn't eat or drink because the thought of doing anything normal was to painful to contemplate.  So I fasted.  And I thought.

It has been a long while since I lost my precious little girl, and in that time, somewhere between losing my mind, and starting to find it again, I had a lot of time to think.  To think, and to wonder about all of the "truths" I had been taught in my life.

When I was a child truth was telling my mother I broke her mirror.  When I was older sometimes truth was telling my mother I broke the mirror even when I didn't.  When I was a child truth was that sooner or later everything worked out to be "fair".  As an adult, I learned that is rarely the case.  As a child I learned that God sees and knows and keeps accounts of everything.  As an adult, I find myself wondering just how true that is.


Where is God?

I remember when I came to Israel for the first time (that I remember.  Being here when I was 10 months old does not count for this case) the first thing I wanted to do after we dropped our overstuffed bags was go to the kotel.  I had spent so many years learning about God, studying God, trying to decipher what he wanted from me.  We got on a bus, bought a cartisia, and headed in totally the wrong direction.  Eventually we made it to the old city and I was enamored by the history all around me.  The walls echoed with generations of my ancestors calling to me.  The streets were worn smooth with a millennium's worth of footprints from every corner of the Earth.  Surely this was the place where I would find the answers for which I had been searching for so long.

I walked the long narrow alleys of the shuk, and turned right into the remains of the Roman Cardo.  Incredible!  I was actually standing where people who had been coming to the Beit HaMikdash itself would have stood with their fruits or their animals.  I could feel excitement rising within me like a crescendo in a grand score.  The Jewish quarter with it's restaurants and shops narrowing in as we approached the massive main steps to the kotel.  I went down the steps, through security, and all of a sudden it was there in front of me.  I looked at it.  I looked it up, and I looked it down.  It was a wall.  A very old wall, but all the same, just a wall.

Where was my God?

We spent that shabbat with one of my husband's rabeim from his yeshiva years.  He asked me what I thought of my first trip to the kotel.  He smiled when I didn't answer, and he said to me "God was not there when you looked for him was he?"  He continued "he hides a lot, but don't worry, if you look for him he is easier to find then Waldo".

I held that comment with me for a very long time.  God hides.  Why would he create a world full of such intense good, and hide so that such evil can take control?  Where is the the God of mercy, of rachamim?  The God who remembers the good for thousands of generations?  How many of his creations have cried out over thousands of years "God, where are you?  Why have you deserted me now?  Why have you left us to die?  To grieve?  Why have you taken from me the one thing I want most in the world?"

It is only recently that I have started to consider the second part of the Rabbi's comment.  That "if you look for him he is easier to find than Waldo."  Believe me, I have seen lots of places where god isn't.  In an operating room with a dead baby.  At a funeral of a father taken far to fast and too soon.  In an old forest burned black, or in pieces of a bus mixed with the remains of those who were riding it.

But I am starting to wonder if I am looking in the wrong places.  Or rather, looking in the right places but not seeing.  In the operating room there was my husband looking at me with such sorrow in his eyes, yet such love for the little girl he held even though she never knew it.  There was so much love for someone who never opened her eyes.  That had to come from somewhere.  The kindness that came out of the woodwork when I thought my life would end had to come from somewhere.  The gaurdian angel who showed up when I really really needed someone had to be sent by someone.

When I looked around at the funeral and shiva for my father and saw just about everyone I knew who came out to pay their respects to a man who had a kind word for strangers, food for beggars, and truly greeted every one with a friendly face.  A man gone to soon but who forever changed the lives of even casual acquaintances with a love of life that was contagious.  A man who knew how to use a temper very effectively to make sure his children grew up to be people I like to hope he would be proud of.  And you knew God was there, in the heart of every man and woman in that room, remembering a man who believed in his traditions and his faith.

The old forest that burned made way for new trees.  There are angels in yellow vests who care so much about every person on that bus they crawl on their hands and knees to make sure they are returned to their families.  In every evil, someone good is doing their thing.  Quietly.  Discretely.  Making room for God.

On that same trip to Israel we spent a different shabbat with a different rebbe- a musician.  We were sitting at the shabbat table late at night, there was literally no sound.  "Do you hear that?"  he asked?  My husband and I looked at each other like he was insane.  "Do you hear that" he said again, this time more emphatically, "It is the sound of Hashem.  You hear him in the stillness of the night.  You need to listen very carefully, but if you listen you can hear him singing".

I have never been particularly good at the "Where's Waldo?" books.  But music is in my blood.  I could have sworn that night, at that table, that I heard the music.  Maybe it is not that God is hiding.  Maybe it is that we are so caught up in our trials and tribulations that we have not left room for God to show himself.  Maybe he is right in front of us and we just need to take a step back and make room for him to fill the space.

Maybe this is all just the random passing garbage from a woman trying to deal with grief as best as she can.  A woman who needs to believe that God has not abandoned this world and left it to fend for itself against all evils.

But maybe if I am up really late one night, and the apartment is really quiet, maybe I will try listening for a few minutes just to see if I hear anything.