The Wagon Master

I always loved the wagon drivers and inn keepers in the Baal Shem Tov stories of old. They were the simple folk, the ones who were sometimes total illiterates when it came to the literal part of their Judaism. They were the ones who couldn’t read even the most rudimentary of Hebrew, the ones ignorant of the order of the prayers—the ones who didn’t even have the skills to learn from a book. But  when it came to matters of the heart, the connection with their Creator and the unadulterated and endless love they felt for the King of the world – they were the masters. They were the ones the Baal Shem Tov was told to seek out at times, in obscure forests and out of the way villages.
 
The Baal Shem Tov, the great-grandfather of Rebbe Nachman, was a miracle worker, a Chassidic Rebbe who lived over 200 years ago. He was a master himself, in his service of Hashem—and yet, he was sometimes driven to seek out these seemingly simple people to learn from, and to spread the message: sometimes, the seemingly simple people, are not so simple.
 
It is 2016, and it is a message I try to keep at the forefront as I try to do Hashem’s will without tripping over my ignorance. It is so hard when you look the part, after being a BT (baal teshuva) for almost two decades, yet knowing that you still lack some of the ‘book smarts’ of Judaism. It is a game of constant catch up and fall back, and I am starting to realize that maybe I should just revel in my role as the ‘simple wagon driver’ instead of trying to fight it.
 
I realize I have a lot of holes when it comes to  my Torah ‘ book knowledge’. I didn’t have the benefit of a religious education. I was educated in Montessori schools (complete with free roaming llamas), with a stint in a British school in Colombia until we moved to Miami. Then  it was public school all the way, with one year in a fine college institution in Indiana. Instead of studying the prophets and the Rashi’s like my high school aged daughter, it was the British poets and American History. The existentialists, and Ionesco, my all time favorites. And as I hear my daughter studying with her friends, I sometimes feel the import of my ignorance creeping up on me, nullifying everything I have accomplished to this day in my growth as a Jew, and I hang my head like one of those poor, illiterate peasants on one of the Baal Shem Tov’s journeys.
 
I feel it as I muddle my way through a simple note from school, until frustration finally makes me give it to our nine year old to translate. I feel it as friends rattle off pesukim (scriptural verses) in the midst of a conversation, and I don’t have a clue as to what they just referenced. I don’t know the order of the parshot (weekly Torah portion) in the Torah, and I don’t even know (yikes) the order of the months in the Hebrew calendar! All the things my daughter has learned in Kindergarten—I never did. My self education has been a bit spotty, a little bit here, a little bit there, with no trajectory, no structure, and definitely no order!
 
Some things I just have to keep pleading ignorance on…
 
And yet—I cry when I pray at times. I talk to Hashem and I am THERE. I am the wagon driver walking on water in some Ukrainian forest because my love of Hashem is enough. I may not be able to rattle the meforshim with the Rashi like my daughter can—but I can pray. I can pray the simple prayer of the wagon driver  because I come from a place that even the biggest tzaddik has not come from. I come from the frozen tundra of Russia, and I have emerged under the blue sun soaked skies of Eretz Yisrael. And I cry for the past and I cry for the future, and Hashem knows from where I came and  where I am now. I utter the prayer of the simple child, the child who doesn’t comprehend all the Kabbalistic meanings of the Alef Beit—I have barely gotten past Alef. But only Hashem knows how hard I had to master that Alef before I could move on to Beis…
 
So, yes. I am like the wagon drivers of an era gone by. And even though I may not be ‘book smart’, I can be ‘heart smart’. I can use my soul to connect because Hashem understands me—no matter what language I speak. And just like the wagon drivers of old, I can make peace with my ignorance and use it to get closer to my Creator. Yes, my knowledge may still be pretty elementary – but at the end of the day – I am still His child. And a Father always wants to hear from His children. Yes—even his most ‘simple’ children. What really consoles me is that Rebbe Nachman says that the most important aspect of Judaism is innocence and simplicity. So, even if we are Baalei Teshuva and we didn’t drink Talmud with our mother’s milk, we can still serve Hashem beautifully with the simplicity of the wagon drivers.