Abyss, Essence, and Meaning – Iris Haim

A few months ago, I already knew I would be speaking this year at the Tikkun Leil Shavuot event at Beit Avi Chai in Jerusalem.

I write these words so naturally, as if I’ve spent my whole life in Jerusalem, familiar with Beit Avi Chai, and understanding what Tikkun Leil Shavuot is all about.

As a secular Israeli who has never had to explain or justify my Jewish identity, I had long been curious about the combination of those three words: Tikkun Leil Shavuot. It always sounded mysterious, almost mystical to me.

People dressed in white gather at night in various places for a tikkun. I didn’t really understand what that meant.

For years, I wanted to join, but I never did.

And now, here I am, speaking in front of an audience—an audience that has come to hear a Dvar Torah, a tikkun—invited, surprised, but accepting the challenge.

I’m scheduled for 2:00 AM, which works well since I’ve just returned from the U.S., and I won’t be sleeping at that time anyway.

I’m paired with Yair Agmon, the author of One Day in October, a book with forty stories of bravery, one of which is about my Yotam—on page 94: To Die as Free Men.

He sends me texts from the Torah and the Talmud, and I respond with my own—secular texts—realizing it’s all fine. We can learn from secular words, too.

He sends me a text about the abyss, about the abyss that threatened to flood the foundations of the Temple, and as someone who pays close attention to word choice, I always see in the word תהום (abyss) the essence—מהות. The letters are rearranged, but they change the entire meaning of the word.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep (abyss).”

I explain to the people sitting in front of me at 2:00 AM at Beit Avi Chai in Jerusalem that the earth was formless and void because there was darkness on the face of the essence, not the abyss.

When we don’t see or understand the essence, because the darkness covers it, everything becomes chaotic.

This also comes through in the story Yair Agmon sent me—from Tractate Sukkah 53a.
When King David built the Temple, the abyss threatened to flood its foundations, and this frightened David greatly.

I explain: when essence tries to reveal itself, it can be very frightening. So, we cover it with activity—doing, acting—so as not to feel, not to face our truth.

“He said: The more the abyss rises, the wetter the world becomes.”

And I say: the more essence we bring into the world, the better the world becomes.

The more we are able to live in our essence, in the meaning of our existence, the better our world will be.

This idea connects deeply with my recent encounter with the Jewish psychologist Edith Eva Eger.

Edith, or “Edi,” as she prefers to be called, is a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor. She lives in San Diego, where I’ve just returned from. She wrote the book The Choice and later, The Gift.

I read her book in 2021—actually, I listened to it as an audiobook while driving, absorbing every word with intensity.

I connected deeply with her story—15 years old, arriving at Auschwitz with her sister and mother, a talented dancer with dreams of a dance career.
The Holocaust cut those dreams short.
She and her sister survived, but her parents were sent to the gas chambers that very day.

In her book, she talks about our ability to choose—whether to remain in a victim mentality or to seek meaning in our story.

Abyss, Essence, and Meaning.
Victim and Decay.

These are letter reversals that shift our consciousness and allow for choice.

To be a victim? Victimhood is decay. Decay is the destruction of something living—death.

I spoke about this at the gathering at Beit Avi Chai, also quoting from Zelda, the late poet, who I recently discovered shares the same date of death as my birthday—the 28th of Nisan, which is also Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the date of a famous speech by the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

A man named Avi, sitting in the audience, told me he is Zelda’s nephew, and that she was a relative of the Rebbe.

I quoted from Zelda’s work, Rain of the Cemetery, from her collection Gardens of Nothingness, where she discusses facts—whether facts shape our consciousness, or whether we have the free will to decide what the truth is for ourselves.

Is what the media tells us the truth?

I shared how, since October 7th, I no longer see what the media says as truth.
I choose my own truth.

Is burying the body in the grave the truth? No. I feel that the coarse fact is not the truth at all—that it is just the rough shell within which the seed of the true meaning lies.
(Zelda, from Gardens of Nothingness)

In Kibbutz Gvulot, there is a grave in the cemetery, or as I prefer to call it—the House of Life. It is the grave of Yotam Chaim.

And what does that mean? Does the burial of the body in the grave dictate my life from now until eternity?

Yotam’s body may be in the grave, but Yotam himself is with us always—his amazing, infinite spirit is with us and allows me to keep working toward a better world. That is the essence, that is the meaning.

Should I adopt a victim mentality? Yes, my son was killed by IDF soldiers—that’s true. But he was killed as a hero, in the midst of war, and I won’t ignore the path that led him there.

I have the free choice of how to manage my consciousness.

I far prefer the consciousness of the hero—it strengthens me and gives me power.

And so, the stories of King David, Edith Eva Eger from Hungary in the 1940s, and Zelda, the poet and painter from Israel, all come together.

This is how we connect our own story—what meaning do we have today in the struggle for our country? Who are we in this story? Do we take responsibility? Are we heroes or victims?

Each of us has the power to choose.