Mount Abu and Home
Yehudit understood in her soul that her journey to Mount Abu was a journey to death. She had to say farewell to the material world, for from there one does not return...
translated by Esther Cameron
Part 3 of “GIRL OF THE SINAI DESERT”
One night she had a dream in English. In this dream all kinds of spiritual studies were going on. She was sitting on the sand in an Oriental posture and beside her sat a figure who embodied all the knowledge of the world. She said to this figure:
“If you are the knowledge of the world, you must tell me who the creator is!”
The figure wrote in the sand. Three letters in English: ABU
Yehudit woke up with those three letters engraved on her memory. She did not know what was meant by the word, Abu, which just sounded to her like the Hebrew word “abba.” She felt that they were laughing at her in heaven, and that it was a vain dream, and in the course of the day she forgot about it.
That same day, she was approached by a friend who had a map. In all her travels Yehudit had not looked at a map until now. She just traveled according to stories that she heard, dreams that she dreamed, and above all intuition. She didn’t even know how to read a map. Up or down on a map were the same to her.
The friend wanted to show her, at the bottom of the map, a certain place that he wanted to travel to in order to receive advice. She gazed vacantly at the map, and suddenly her eyes saw at the upper part of the map, the letters that she had dreamed a few hours earlier, MOUNT ABU! She pointed to them and asked her friend: “what’s this?”
“No, no, look at the bottom!”
“Yes, but what’s that up there?”
“I don’t know. I want to go in the opposite direction.”
“You’ll go down and I’ll go up!”
She began to ask her Indian acquaintances about the place. They explained to her that according to Indian mythology, the world has existed for 5000 years, and after that it will be destroyed and re-created, and after each destruction the gods convene in order to decide on a new place of creation, and the place of their meeting is Mount Abu.
This answer convinced her that she was moving in the right direction. She finally decided that she would go there. India is a huge country, and the journey to Mount Abu was supposed to take about a week. On the way she came to a crossroads and debated whether to continue to Mount Abu or make a side trip before going to her destination.
She understood in her soul that the journey to Mount Abu was basically a journey towards death. She knew that she had to say farewell to the material world, for from there one does not return. In order to merit the eternal life of the soul, she would have to kill her body, for the whole Eastern concept is that you have to leave the body in order to connect to the cosmic truth. She was ready to separate from this world, yet something within her wished to experience a little bit more of it. An old desire awakened in her to travel to Goa, the place of unlimited freedom. She said in her thought to the master of the world:“Wait for me a bit, and then I will come to you…”
She got a ticket to Goa, intending to get to Mount Abu in two weeks. She sat in the women’s waiting room, and waited for the train. The hall was busy as a marketplace, full of children, and even all kinds of animals. Yehudit sat barefoot in jeans, talking with the higher worlds.
Then she noticed, at the opposite end of the hall, a group of about forty women who had just come in. They were dressed in white and had the faces of angels, quiet and peaceful amid all the hubbub. Quietly they walked in and sat down in a corner of the hall. One of them took out a banana and slowly peeled it. A second arranged her sari. They fascinated her, and she looked at them from the other side of the hall with great curiosity.
Suddenly the mama, the mother superior of the group, began to walk toward her, a distance of more than 100 yards. She sat right down beside Yehudit and said: “Hello.”
“Who are you? What is your group?”
The mama looked at Yehudit with the look of divine love: “We have just arrived from Mount Abu, and you must go there…”
Yehudit thought she would faint. The providential intervention was so obvious. It was terrifying. Against all the rules of politeness she grabbed the mama by the shoulders: “Who sent you to me?”
“We are all messengers of G-d…”
Yehudit felt at that moment that the Master of the Universe was “sitting on her” pretty hard. He didn’t even want to wait the two weeks that she had planned to spend in Goa. Yehudit looked heavenward and said right in front of the mama and the other passengers: “Can’t You wait two weeks? I promised I’d come… Please understand… I’m a little bit afraid… A few more crumbs of this world… When they’re finished, I’ll come… I promise You!”
The mama told Yehudit a little bit about what is on top of the fabled Mount Abu, and repeated that she was a messenger of G-d and that Yehudit must go there. It was now clear to Yehudit that she would arrive at the final station of her life in two weeks’ time.
When she got to Goa she was no longer interested in anything, not the sea, not the beach, not the jungle, and none of the various kinds of people. She sat staring at the high mountains, and after just three days she left Goa and made the week’s journey to Mount Abu, to the end of the world.
In the course of that week she stopped in several places to attend meditation classes, not in order to seek the truth but in order to purify herself before separating herself from her body and joining the cosmic truth. In the course of these purifications she felt a tremendous joy. After about ten days she felt that she was ready to encounter the absolute truth.
She reached the village that lay at the foot of Mount Abu. One of the monks examined her and found that she was “clean” and full of holy fire and fit to encounter G-d. He suggested that she attend a meeting on the mountain. As with previous experiences, she already felt that what she found here would not be exact or reliable, but the strong sense of Providence compelled her to continue. She said to herself that above all the confusion she would be able to see the absolute truth beside which nothing exists.
Before going up on the mountain she felt that she had to purify herself in a few more areas. She shaved her head and bought white garments appropriate to the truth that she was about to discover. She went up on the mountain towards the temple, past a number of statues, which as usual did not interest her much. On the mountaintop a monk came toward her: “Hello! It’s so good to see you again!”
“But I have never seen you before…”
The monk began to explain to Yehudit the theory of the sect, according to which the world has been destroyed every 5000 years, and we are now on the threshold of the 5000th year and therefore one should not have children at this time, but only prepare for the end of the world. The sect has several billion believers who do not reproduce, but only prepare for destruction. Something about that seemed strange to her. She had never believed in fighting nature. Who are we that we should decide to put an end to reproduction? Nevertheless she went on following the monk. Just as she had been sure that at the top she would find the answer, she knew that the truth awaited her here and now.
In the exhibition hall there was a kind of branching tree of life that represented the evolution and diversification of all the world’s religions, where they had come from and where they had spread to in the course of years. She found Christianity and Islam, but on attempting to locate Judaism she made out the following:
Abraham —–> Ishmael —–> Mohammed ——-> Islam
She turned to the monk and said with an excitement she did not understand: “But Abraham had another son named Isaac and they founded Judaism!” The monk scowled: “No! Our god said that that does not exist… it’s a complete lie!”
In India the more calm and quiet someone is the more he is considered holy. The sanctuary was full of monks and nuns sitting in absolute silence. Against the background of this silence Yehudit’s scream was suddenly heard. She did not know where the voice was coming from; it seemed to her as if something completely inward was bursting forth from her, from inside inside, from the place in which silence and the scream unite:
There is Judaism and it is the truth!!!
When these words burst forth from her, she did not see anything except her words flying through the air, she actually saw her own voice. All the monks and nuns melted away. She suddenly felt a true exaltation above anything she had experienced until now. She said to herself simply: what are you doing among all these gentiles with their idolatries?!
When she came down from the mountain, she did not yet identify her outcry with returning and doing teshuvah; she certainly didn’t think about becoming frum, a blacker-than-black Orthodox woman; but she knew that now she would have to go back to Israel and find out about Judaism. She realized that she didn’t remember anything except Tanakh classes with Cassuto’s commentary and a few random commandments such as lighting the Chanukah lights in that Tel Aviv apartment. She became indignant with herself: I came all this way to learn the beliefs of gentiles, and I don’t know my own Torah?! What choice do I have?!
On her way back to Israel she stopped in Thailand in order to return gradually to her body. She knew that if she did not return to her body she might be hospitalized for too much spirituality! She bought a ticket for two weeks later, and in the meantime she observed the flood of natural life, spoke with people and swam a great deal in order to activate her body.
Once she wept before the Master of the Universe: “I am certainly not the first person in this world who has seen such great acts of Providence and received such lights from You, You’ve certainly sent some message before this, some letter, some something to someone in this world, so grant me at least to meet him…”
While she was still speaking, a young man approached her. He had heard her prayer, unbeknownst to her — an angel of flesh and blood: “You know what you need? You need “Mesillat Yesharim”! Have you heard of this book? It’s from our Torah…”
When she read the book she realized that it was not just one man who had been exalted and had once received some message or letter, but a whole people who had received the Torah and, providentially, it was her people! The book presented to her a clear way of looking at things which put her head in order.
She arrived in Israel precisely on the eve of the Passover seder. She felt that she had come out of Egypt and that the whole Haggadah had been written especially for her, in order to tell her how she had come forth from slavery to freedom and from darkness to a great light.
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