Rabbi Martin Buber, the great early 20th century theologian, told this story of Reb Simcha Bunem, an 18th century Hasidic rebbe. According to legend, the rebbe always carried with him two slips of paper, one in each pocket. One was inscribed with a saying from the Talmud: “for my sake the world was created.” On the other, he wrote a phrase from the Torah itself: “I am but dust and ashes.” He would take out and read each slip of paper as necessary for the given moment.
Rabbi Hanna Yerushalmi is a therapist and a poet, and her words have been among my guides and my balms during these months since October 7. After yesterday’s news of another miraculous IDF rescue of a hostage—this time Bedouin father of eleven Qaid Farhan Alkadi—she posted the below poem. Based on Reb Simcha Bunem and his knowledge that each of us should hold, in our pockets and our hearts, two simultaneous truths—I thought it was also appropriate for this our first day back for 1st-6th grade at Wise School.
In His Pocket
The rabbis
advised:
keep two truths
in your pocket,
one should read:
I am but dust and ashes
and the other should read:
the entire world was created for me.
An 8-year-old
has something else
in his pocket.
Confetti.
Why?
It’s his emergency confetti,
he says,
during these raw days
he carries it with him
everywhere
just in case there is good news.
To our students—and to all of us—the world will give us many, many moments in which we are reminded that we are but dust and ashes. There will be times when we feel small, insignificant, cowed by the problems of the world—or simply our homework. And, we hope, there are times when we shine—when we know that the world was created for us, that we were created for the moment.
But as this school year begins, and as 5785 draws closer for all of us, may we find ourselves—time and again—needing that emergency confetti!
— Rabbi Sari Laufer