Pikuach Nefesh, Sukkot, Shelter & Home

To all who have shown such kindness to me and kept me going and in reality, along with my friends, kept me alive. I know that pikuach nefesh traditionally refers to violating commandments to save a life. Still, it also means saving a life, and you have saved my life.

Thanks to Jewish Family Services here I am in the midst of moving to my own apartment (with no furniture, but they are searching). I am on welfare, but I start a job for a housecleaning agency on October 8th. I may not have internet for a while. I have a lot to say.

Meantime, I want you to know that when I am settled, and with internet, I would like to thank each one of you personally. Whether it was words or money, you have kept me alive and going. Seriously. Amazing how even a little bit helps enormously!

You have made me proud to be a Jew, and proud that I joined the tribe. You have been the light that balances an almost overwhelming darkness. You truly are where G-d is, G-d acts, and G-d speaks. I know it sounds over the top, but if only you could see it from my perspective, at ground zero.

I want to mention the serendipity and beauty of my move to my own home. Perhaps Providence? Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, is my favourite festival. It is also a marker of a beginning, when I left everything behind and went to LA and the first services I attended were on Sukkot at the shul where I met LARabbi™ z"l and where I chose to make my home.

Sukkot is also a remembrance of my conversation 4 years later with LARabbi™ z"l while the Chatsworth fires were raging; he talked about the "end of days" (I do obsess at this time of year).

I found home with Judaism. With Torah. With Jews (even when you make me crazy). Shelter is very fragile, as I can attest. And don't think that any of you are immune. But as with all sukkot, where the rules dictate you must construct them so that one can see the sky and the stars, I can attest to the fact that I have been blessed by you and my close friends who kept me sheltered with word and money, and who kept the roof open; and I have been blessed by Jewish agencies, though not by my shul community (where the rabbi hasn't called for a month since the original cry for help). I hope, finally, that soon I will have no need of tzedakah.

Thanks to you all, to your small and large gestures from kindness and compassion and justice, I am able to see the sky and stars. Still.