Despite herself, she is experiencing the kavanos that the rebbetzin had taught a few days earlier. She’s never felt better.
As told to Rivka Streicher
T hey said it was life-changing.
Gila is slightly wary of their effusive tones gushing with the headiness of it all and maybe a touch smug too. She wants her life changed — who doesn’t? She wants to live each moment in soul-state to touch divinity every day amid the rush of dishes PTAs shidduch suggestions and suppers endless suppers — for her family newlywed daughter and the grandchildren that romp in her kitchen. But somehow the women she speaks to the brimming testimonials on the website it all builds her resistance to the teleconference course — like this is gonna change my life?
But she has to try.
She signs up reads off her card details and carves herself a cocoon of solitude — in the laundry room of all places. It’s the only niche in the house she can get some quiet. Nestled among the linen and towels and the heady Spring Meadow fragrance she listens intently and awaits the transformation.
Too much pep about the course has made a skeptic of her. Weeks go by and she swings her young-old legs against the laundry counter as the rebbetzin talks about bringing Hashem into your life. Her yellow notebook is abandoned and she reaches for the overflowing basket and begins to fold.
She’s upset at herself for losing the utmost concentration she’d promised to give this course but somehow between one sock and the other the rebbetzin’s ideas start to stretch and roll in her brain. The rebbetzin is talking about the deeper meaning of the tefillah of asher yatzar now. The concepts are crumpled and creased in her mind. But it’s nothing that cannot be ironed she assures herself.
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