At the peak of our Pesach Seder, injury struck. We were gathered together, 180 people discussing freedom and singing the beautiful haggadah songs in unison, when I noticed my one-year-old son Zalman crying hysterically. I rushed over and discovered that his four-year-old brother had closed the door on his thumb. His nail had become mostly detached from his thumb, and it was bleeding significantly. We cleaned him off and bandaged him up, and after the holiday we took him to the doctor.
The doctor removed the finger nail entirely, cleaned it up and sewed it back on so that a new nail would be able to grow in and replace it.
The whole incident got me thinking.
*Our nails are considered the least holy part of the body—they are the furthest and most removed of all our parts. We have much less sensation in our nails than in any other part of our bodies, and our nails grow back when we cut them, unlike our hands or feet of any parts of significance. You’d think hurting a nail would be no big deal, but oh no… When the doctor was fixing Zalman’s nail, the nurse had to hold him down, I was busily trying to distract and placate him AND he was strapped into a mini straight jacket. Oh – and they had given him a local anesthetic!
A tiny nail, but so much pain. What does it mean?
According to Kabbalah, all the souls of the Jewish nation comprise a metaphoric “body.” Some souls are more connected to G-d, and they are likened to the heart or the head. Other souls are connected, but less strongly—they are considered the arms and legs. But then there are some souls which seem to be completely detached, just like the fingernail. They seem so far removed from Judaism, devoid of any spirituality, but at their essence they are still very much a part of the Jewish nation.
In fact, we had a real cross-section of Jews at our Seder. We had some “head” and “heart” Jews, some “arms” and “legs,” and yes, even some “fingernails.” We were privileged to share our Seder with one person who hadn’t been at a Seder in 35 years! Together, 180 Jewish souls asked the Four Questions. And together we recited, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Together, we make up the collective body of our nation.
The same way the body needs all its parts in order to function fully and productively, we need all members of our nation to work together to accomplish our goals – Torah, mitzvot and the ultimate redemption. It’s our job, our mission, to reach out to the “fingernail” souls among us and reassure them that they are pivotal, fully-fledged members of the global Jewish community. When we are united, and working together, we are unstoppable.
*According to the Shulchan Aruch—the Code of Jewish Law—we must dispose of cut nails carefully, because they can be harmful, particularly to pregnant women. The Shulchan Aruch explains that a person who buries the nails is considered righteous, a person who simply throws the nails away is wicked, and a person who burns the nails is the most pious of all. Why? According to the Talmud, burning one’s nails is actually harmful to the one burning them (because it is part of one's body), but if a person is so determined to prevent another from coming to harm (by stepping on his nails, or otherwise), that he is willing to put himself in harm’s way to burn them, that person is extremely pious.