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We are taught that a person's name reflects much about who they really are. Recently I thought about my name, Shoshana. In Hebrew, it means rose. When one acquires a rose plant, it is really not much to look at: Just a ball of roots with a few bare twigs emerging at the top. No flowers. No hint as to the plant's potential. In order to grow and bloom the ball of roots must be planted into fertile ground, watered and receive light. So it was with me it seems, as a convert. Converts comes into this world, our neshamos hidden deep in our roots. Dormant. Unrevealed. We are not roses, only potential roses. Yet within us is an undeniable, overwhelming drive to flower - to grow into the being which Hashem has seemingly ordained for us. But rabbis, like gardeners, are not all equal. The first called himself a gardener and looked like one. He told me he would make me into a real rose plant, blooming before my Creator. He set me in a beautiful planter, taught me my name, and pinned silk blossoms and paper leaves on my stems. He scented my silk buds with perfume, and set me upon a mirrored tile which reflected like the stillest of waters. I thought I had become beautiful. I thought I had bloomed. But inside I was dying; my roots thirsting for real water. It was not until another gardener came by and I called out to him. "If I am beautiful and blooming, why am I dying inside?" He looked, perhaps with a bit of sadness: "You are not blooming at all." "Take me to your garden," I begged. "Help me to bloom, for if I cannot, I will die." The new gardener took me home. The silk blossoms and paper leaves were discarded. It hurt to see myself again as dirt and sticks. But the gardenter then planted my roots, grounding them deeply in Halacha. He watered me with the living waters of Torah. I was bathed in a new and holy light -- and transformed. Leaf by leaf, petal by petal. I bloomed. And with the transformation, I understood: The beauty with which I had been blessed is not for anything less than to bring praise to my Creator. With every mitzvah we do, every blessing and prayer we voice, we are graced with a beauty with which to praise G-d. Not everyone shares the name Shoshana, but every Jew is a flower in Hashem's garden. |
Shoshana's
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