The Torah speaks to us not only through its words, but through the way those words are read. The ta’amim do more than divide pesukim and guide pronunciation. At times, the melody itself seems to ask us to listen more carefully.

Nowhere is that more striking than with the שלשלת. One of the rarest and most distinctive of the ta’amim, it appears only four times in the entire Torah. Its long, wavering, chain-like melody forces the reader to linger. Why does the Torah slow us down at precisely these four moments?

The שלשלת is often understood as expressing hesitation or inner struggle. Rav Yisroel Reisman cited another perspective from Rav Dovid Singer zt”l, one that complements that reading. It focuses less on the moment’s struggle and more on what flows from it. Most of the time, we act in the moment. On a good day, we consider the immediate results of what we do. Rarely do we stop to think about consequences that will ripple out years and generations later.

The שלשלת may be drawing our attention to exactly those moments whose significance cannot be measured by what is happening at the time. A single action becomes the first link in a chain that stretches across shalsheles hadoros. Sometimes the person acting understands that. Sometimes he does not. Either way, the chain is being forged.

Chazal call the ability to see this wisdom: איזהו חכם? הרואה את הנולד (Tamid 32a). The wise person sees what is being born from his actions.

Lot in Sodom. As the city is about to be destroyed, the Torah describes Lot’s response: ויתמהמה, ויחזיקו האנשים בידו וביד אשתו וביד שתי בנתיו, בחמלת ה’ עליו (Bereishis 19:16). Lot hesitates, and the malachim drag him and his family out of the city. From Lot’s daughter would come Moav, from Moav would come Rus, and from Rus, Dovid HaMelech and the line of malchus beis Dovid. Chazal make the connection explicit: מצאתי דוד עבדי – היכן מצאתיו? בסדום (Bereishis Rabbah 50:10). Lot saw only a man reluctant to leave his home. He had no idea what hung in the balance. The malachim saw a chain stretching to Mashiach.

Eliezer at the well. Standing at the well, Eliezer turns to Hashem: ויאמר, ה’ אלקי אדני אברהם, הקרה נא לפני היום (Bereishis 24:12). Eliezer was not simply finding a wife for Yitzchak. He was looking for the woman who would become one of the Imahos. He understood that, and so he davened with the weight of every future generation behind his words.

Yosef and the wife of Potiphar. When she tries to seduce him, the Torah says simply: וימאן (Bereishis 39:8). Yosef refuses. The Gemara reveals what gave him the strength: באתה דיוקנו של אביו ונראתה לו בחלון… עתידין אחיך שיכתבו על אבני אפוד ואתה ביניהם, רצונך שימחה שמך מביניהם? (Sotah 36b). In the moment of greatest temptation, Yosef was shown the chain. One act would remove him from the shivtei Kah. That vision allowed him to say no.

Moshe and the Ail HaMiluim. At the inauguration of the kohanim, Moshe performs the avodah himself: וישחט, ויקח משה מדמו (Vayikra 8:23). Rashi explains the offering’s name: שממלאין ומשלימין את הכהנים בכהונתן (Rashi, Vayikra 8:22). The Gemara teaches that the kehunah was originally meant for Moshe himself: הוא היה עתיד להיות לוי ואתה כהן, עכשיו לא כך אלא הוא יהיה כהן ואתה לוי (Zevachim 102a). With this shechitah, Moshe completes a chain that will run through his brother’s children, not his own. Thousands of years later, when a kohen stands before us to recite Birkas Kohanim, we are watching that chain continue.

Today, the 27th of October, citizens of Israel go to the polls to elect the 26th Knesset. This Shabbos we read Parshas Vayera, where the first שלשלת in the Torah is heard over Lot’s hesitation in Sedom. The timing seems fitting, because walking into the voting booth is one of those moments that deserves a שלשלת.

It rarely feels that way. Elections arrive wrapped in noise: slogans, polls, campaign ads, arguments at the Shabbos table and on the family WhatsApp group. Much of what moves voters is how they feel in the moment. Anger at what happened last week. Fear of what might happen next month. Fatigue after years of upheaval, war and grief. These feelings are real, but they don’t tell the whole story.

It is told that Rav Shlomo Heiman zt”l gave shiur with tremendous energy. One snowy day only three talmidim came, and he taught with the same intensity as always. When a bochur suggested he didn’t need to exert himself for three, Rav Heiman answered that he wasn’t speaking only to them. He was speaking to their children, their talmidim, and all the generations that would come from them.

Standing behind the curtain today, it is easy to feel like one of three boys in an empty room. One vote among millions. But the consequences of our vote do not end with the election of this Knesset. Perhaps each of the four appearances of the שלשלת offers something to consider as we cast our ballots.

From Lot, we learn that hesitation can become a decision in itself. ויתמהמה is the voice that says, “My vote won’t matter,” or “They’re all the same, so why bother?” For generations, Jews dreamed of a sovereign state in which they could shape their own future. Choosing not to participate is also a choice, with its own consequences.

From Eliezer, we learn to daven. Before we vote, it is worth asking Hashem for clarity, and asking ourselves honestly what we are voting for, not only what we are voting against.

From Yosef, we learn to resist the pull of the moment: the temptation to vote out of resentment, to punish rather than to build, to let a single headline decide for us. Yosef saw his father’s image and the generations behind it. We might ask what kind of Israel we hope our grandchildren will inherit from the choices we make today.

From Moshe, we learn that institutions are founded in moments like these, and that we often build for a future that will belong to others. The decisions this Knesset makes about security, education, the economy, religion and state, and how Jews of different backgrounds live together will outlast this election by decades.

None of this argues for any party or camp. Sincere people will look at the same chain of generations and reach different conclusions about who will best protect it. The שלשלת does not tell us whom to vote for. It tells us how to vote: seriously, with tefillah, with our eyes on the long horizon. We cannot see what our choices will set in motion. That does not excuse us from thinking about it.

The consequences of an election are not limited to who wins. They also include what the election does to the people who take part in it. When our children look back on this election, they may remember little about the campaign promises or the arguments that filled the headlines. But they may remember how we spoke about our neighbors. They may remember whether disagreement became contempt, and whether political differences were allowed to fracture friendships, families and shuls. They may remember whether we recognized that people who voted differently could care just as deeply about the Jewish future.

When the votes have been counted, we will still be one People, sharing one land and one destiny. How we treat one another after the election may shape generations as much as the votes themselves. That, too, is part of the שלשלת. Perhaps that is why it makes us linger. It reminds us that what happens in a moment may echo for generations.

The chain did not begin with us, and it will not end with us. Today, for a moment, it passes through our hands.

This was my first Yom Tov living in Eretz Yisrael, and therefore the first time in my life that I observed only one day of Yom Tov.

Much has been said and written about Yom Tov Sheni. There are halachic discussions about who keeps one day or two, especially for visitors and those who divide their time between places. Practical discussions abound, and there are no shortage of opinions about which people prefer. I’m not interested in weighing in on any of that, and I don’t think I have anything new to add. But having lived it for the first time, I found myself thinking about two things.

The first was about rhythm.  For more than fifty years, Yom Tov had a particular shape for me. Two days back to back, and everything stretched out across them: the meals, the tefillos, the long afternoons. It felt something like a doubled Shabbos. I never thought of it as an extended version of Yom Tov. It was simply what Yom Tov felt like.

This year, the first day came, and then Yom Tov was over. It wasn’t that I missed the second day. It was the absence itself that struck me. For my whole life there had been another day of Yom Tov in that space, and now there was nothing there. That void felt very strange and very unfamiliar, in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

None of this was new to me intellectually. I knew how Yom Tov is observed here, and I knew the halachic background. I also knew that the single day is the Torah’s own picture of Yom Tov. The second day, for all the meaning it has taken on over the centuries, arose from circumstance. For those who live in chutz la’aretz it is exactly what halacha requires, but it is not the original design.  

And yet when I stepped into the original design, it felt like the departure. I found myself thinking: wait, this is the ideal. I know this. That is what stayed with me. Something can be completely familiar to us conceptually and still feel foreign when we actually live it. What we are accustomed to can take the place of the ideal in our minds, so that when we finally meet the ideal, it feels like the exception.

It made me wonder how often that happens in other areas of avodas Hashem. We all develop patterns, assumptions, and expectations, and over time they begin to feel self-evident. Often they are exactly right. They reflect mesorah, family, community, and years of meaningful practice. But sometimes what feels natural is simply what has become familiar.

What are the things we think of as the ideal that are really just what we’re used to? I’m not going to offer my own answers here. The question is the point, and each of us can think about it for ourselves.

The second reflection had to do with safek and vadai.  The whole institution of Yom Tov Sheni is rooted in safek. I have known that my entire life, but this year I felt it, and it happened in davening. In chutz la’aretz, the Musaf of Chol HaMoed carries the safek. We say the korbanos of two days. We know perfectly well what day it is, but we daven as though we did not. In a sense, we step into the uncertainty of an earlier time and hold both possibilities. That is part of what we do, and it is what we are supposed to do.

On the first day of Chol HaMoed this year, none of that existed. The siddur had no instructions to account for another day. I said the korbanos of that day, and the day was simply what it was.  I found that clarity comforting. It was not something I had ever felt was lacking. For many years, two days of Yom Tov never felt uncertain to me; they felt like Yom Tov. Only by meeting that clarity did I notice it at all.

We live with a great deal of safek, in religious life and in life generally. We don’t always know the right decision, or where things are going, or even how to read the situation in front of us. Often, uncertainty is simply part of life, and we learn to serve Hashem within it. But when there is vadai, it grounds us.

The phrase that came to mind was one we have said many times over the past two weeks, on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: Vadai shemo, kein tehilaso. His name is certain, and so is His praise.

Those days bring uncertainty, of course. We stand before Hashem not knowing what the coming year holds or what has been decided for us and for those we love. And yet the comfort of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur does not come from resolving that uncertainty. It comes from what we know to be absolute. Hashem is King. He is present. That vadai steadies us, even when so much else remains unknown.

And perhaps that steadiness is the very source of joy. Sukkos, zman simchaseinu, follows directly, and the Torah’s charge is u’semachtem lifnei Hashem Elokeichem, to rejoice before Hashem. The joy is not in any particular outcome. It is in the certainty of standing before Him.

That, I think, is why the words came back to me. Only days after saying them, I felt a small measure of that vadai in the day itself, and I noticed how naturally that clarity turned into joy.

Only now, as I put these reflections into writing, do I realize that they are connected. The first was about how habit can replace the ideal, so the ideal itself feels foreign. The second was about the comfort of vadai. At first they seemed to have little to do with each other. But on reflection, they meet. Habit can feel like vadai. What we are used to carries the calm of certainty, even when it is only familiarity. This year I found myself on the other side of that. What felt unfamiliar turned out to be the ideal, and the ideal carried a clarity of its own.

I kept two days of Yom Tov for fifty-three years. It took one day to teach me something new about both.

Somewhere in your house tonight, an app is quietly working. Cameras watching the door. A thermostat learning your habits. A password manager guarding everything you own. You will fall asleep more secure, in a purely technical sense, than any generation in history has ever slept. And then Sukkot arrives, and for seven days you’ll trade all of it for a roof with holes in it on purpose. And yet, sitting there, many of us feel something the locks and cameras never quite gave us: a genuine sense of safety.

According to Chazal, that feeling may actually be the point.

The Torah doesn’t just command us to sit in a sukkah; unusually, it also tells us why. “Lema’an yede’u doroteichem ki vasukkot hoshavti et bnei Yisrael behotzi’i otam me’eretz Mitzrayim” — “So that your generations will know that I sat the children of Israel in sukkot when I took them out of Egypt.” Straightforward enough, it seems; we sit in a sukkah so we’ll remember sitting in a sukkah. But what exactly are we supposed to remember? The Gemara in Sukkah 11a records a machloket, not over what happened in the desert, but over what the sukkah is meant to remind us of. Rebbi Akiva says it recalls literal huts, built for shelter in the desert. Rebbi Eliezer disagrees. He says it recalls the ananei hakavod, the clouds of glory that surrounded and protected the nation as it wandered.

Rebbi Akiva’s opinion is intuitive. Sit in a hut, remember huts. Rebbi Eliezer’s is not. What does a structure made of wood, canvas, and schach have to do with a cloud? There is no resemblance between the two at all.

Rav Nissim Alpert zt”l answers this head-on: nothing we build could ever resemble a cloud, and that’s the whole point. Clouds are formless, fleeting, impossible to grasp. The memory we’re meant to access isn’t of shelter. It’s of hashgacha pratit, total, unearned dependence on Hashem. Brick and mortar can create a facade of protection. A cloud can’t. It only ever leaves you exposed, and that exposure is the whole point.

So why does this require leaving the house? Because the house is not neutral. Its walls do exactly what brick and mortar always does: manufacture a feeling of self-sufficiency that a cloud never could. Inside, it’s easy to forget how much of our safety was never truly ours. The Torah’s solution is to physically strip that illusion away: walk out from under the roof and sit beneath the sky, with only schach between you and the stars. The instinctive feeling of exposure, sitting there unprotected, doesn’t last. It gives way, almost without our noticing, to something closer to real security. The flimsier structure sharpens what the sturdier one had dulled.

Now think about your own house tonight. We’ve built our own permanent structures, not out of wood but out of code. Firewalls. Two-factor authentication. Cloud storage (real clouds, ironically, offer none of this reliability). A phone in your pocket gives you more reach, more knowledge, and more control than any previous generation could have imagined, let alone possessed. By every reasonable measure, we should be the calmest generation on record.

We’re not. Anxiety and disconnection are rising right alongside our technological command of the world. Something in that math doesn’t add up, unless the premise was wrong from the start. Permanent structures, digital or physical, were never built to satisfy the human need for meaning. Constant connectivity produces loneliness more reliably than it produces community. The Gemara in Sukkah 2b states the prescription plainly: for seven days, leave your permanent dwelling and live in a temporary one.

That’s what the sukkah is asking us to do. Step outside the systems that make you feel in control, and rediscover the far less comfortable, far more honest feeling of being carried by something else. The clouds of glory were never an app, a setting, or a script. They’re found where they’ve always been found: in a shul, at a table with people who actually know you, in prayer, in the quiet recognition that none of this was ever fully in your hands. For those fortunate enough to live in Eretz Yisrael, that recognition doesn’t end after seven days. It’s the air the country breathes.

That is the sukkah’s real offer. Not a smaller house. A truer one. May we step out from behind our walls this year, digital and physical alike, and find shelter, once again, in the clouds.

As we emerge from Yom Kippur, I want first to express my profound gratitude to the members of our community for an extraordinary Aseres Yemei Teshuvah. The davening in our shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur was truly transcendent. No words can fully capture what the experience meant to me, and I know many others felt the same. As our new kehillah begins to take shape, we feel deeply grateful for the remarkable siyata diShmaya that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has showered upon us. The question now is how we carry that experience forward.

The day after Yom Kippur offers both a challenge and an opportunity. Yom Kippur lifts us out of ordinary life. For twenty five hours we are freed from eating, drinking, work, and distraction. We spend the day in shul, wrapped in prayer, standing before Hashem with unusual clarity. But then Neilah ends. We recite Shema, sound the shofar, and return home. Almost immediately, ordinary life begins again.

It is easy to imagine that the great spiritual work happens on Yom Kippur itself. Yet in some respects, the harder work begins afterward: translating inspiration into life, bringing the holiness of Yom Kippur into the routines, responsibilities, and relationships that await us outside the walls of the shul.

Rav Shlomo Yosef Zevin zt”l develops this idea through a striking feature of the Kohen Gadol’s avodah on Yom Kippur. The Mishnah teaches that throughout the day the Kohen Gadol immersed five times and sanctified his hands and feet ten times. Each time he changed from the golden garments used for regular avodah to the white garments used for the unique inner service of Yom Kippur, he immersed in a mikveh.

We can readily understand why the Kohen Gadol immersed before entering the Kodesh HaKodashim. He was preparing to leave the familiar world behind and enter the holiest place on earth. But why was another immersion required when he changed back into the golden garments and returned to the avodah outside? If he was moving away from the greatest concentration of holiness, why did that transition also demand purification and preparation?

Rav Zevin zt”l explains that this question rests on a mistaken assumption. We tend to think that holiness belongs only to the inner chamber, to the extraordinary moments of prayer, purity and spiritual elevation, while the outside world is spiritually ordinary. But the avodah performed outside was also avodas hakodesh. The Kohen Gadol needed to prepare not only to enter the Kodesh HaKodashim, but also to leave it. Moving from the sublime encounter within to the sacred responsibilities without required its own immersion.

That may be the day’s defining lesson after Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur, holiness comes to us in an unmistakable form. The challenge afterward is to discover that serving Hashem outside the inner sanctum is no less an avodah. Returning to our homes, our work, our errands, and our conversations is not a departure from holiness. It is the place where holiness must now be expressed.

This is perhaps why the days following Yom Kippur move so quickly toward Sukkos. We do not leave the intensity of the Yamim Noraim and simply resume life as it was. We immediately begin building a sukkah, searching for arba minim, and preparing for Yom Tov. Our hands become busy with mitzvos. The inspiration of Yom Kippur must not remain an elevated feeling; it must take physical form.

The pasuk asks, “Mi ya’aleh behar Hashem, umi yakum bimkom kodsho. Who may ascend the mountain of Hashem, and who can stand in His holy place?” Ascending the mountain is a great achievement. But remaining there, preserving something of what we discovered once the dramatic moment has passed, is the greater test. The day after Yom Kippur asks not only whether we reached spiritual heights, but whether those heights will change the way we live below.

That requires something concrete. A resolution should become an appointment on the calendar, a new chavrusa, a change in routine, or a commitment shared with someone who can help us remain accountable. Inspiration is precious, but without a vessel it quickly evaporates. One practical step taken today may preserve more of Yom Kippur than many beautiful intentions left for tomorrow.

We have been blessed to begin this year as a community with extraordinary moments of tefillah, connection, and shared purpose. Now comes the sacred work of carrying those moments with us. May the holiness we experienced together not remain only inside the shul or only within Yom Kippur. May it accompany us into our homes and into every part of our lives, and may the remarkable siyata diShmaya with which our kehillah has begun continue to guide us as we grow together.

Falsehood told Avraham to go home. Truth told him to get back to work.

That distinction lies at the heart of the Akedah. It may also help us understand a central paradox of Rosh Hashanah.  On Rosh Hashanah, we go to extraordinary lengths to surround ourselves with sweetness. We dip apples in honey, place symbolic foods on the table, and wish one another a שנה טובה ומתוקה, a good and sweet year. We avoid foods associated with bitterness or negativity. Everything points toward blessing.

Yet the actual content of Rosh Hashanah is anything but light.  The Torah readings bring us into painful and complicated stories: Sarah and Hagar, a fractured family and a child cast into the wilderness; Chana, mocked by her rival and crying in bitterness; and the Akedah, where a father binds his beloved son upon an altar. In the haftarah, Rachel weeps inconsolably for her children. The tefillos speak of judgment and trembling, of nations standing before God, and of the fragility of life itself.  Why does a day so devoted to sweetness insist that we confront so much pain?

The Gemara teaches that Ezra established that the klalot, the Torah’s curses, be read before Rosh Hashanah: כדי שתכלה שנה וקללותיה, “So that the year and its curses may come to an end” (Megillah 31b).  It is a beautiful wish. But does life really work that way? Do illness, grief, disappointment, and fear disappear when the calendar turns? What, then, are Chazal asking us to believe?

Perhaps the answer lies in the Akedah.  The Medrash describes how the Satan repeatedly attempted to prevent Avraham from reaching Har HaMoriah. First, he appeared as an old man and challenged the very sanity of the mission: “A son was given to you at the age of one hundred, and now you are going to slaughter him?” Avraham answered simply: על דעת המקום אנו הולכים.  “We are going in accordance with the will of God.”

When that failed, the Satan approached Yitzchak and tried to turn him against his father. Your father has lost his mind, he warned. Yitzchak remained steadfast:  על דעת המקום ועל דעת אבא אני הולך. “I go in accordance with the will of God and the will of my father.”

Finally, the Satan abandoned persuasion and placed a raging river in their path. The water rose higher and higher until Avraham cried out: הושיעני אלקים כי באו מים עד נפש. “Save me, God, for the waters have reached my soul.”

The river disappeared, and Avraham continued.  Three times Avraham heard a voice telling him to stop. Three times he refused. Neither argument, emotional pressure, nor physical danger could move him from his mission.  

And then, at the most intense moment of the Akedah, another voice called out: אל תשלח ידך אל הנער ואל תעש לו מאומה. “Do not stretch out your hand against the boy, and do not do anything to him.”  This time, Avraham stopped immediately.  The angel appeared to be saying exactly what the Satan had been saying all along: Do not sacrifice Yitzchak. Why did Avraham reject that message repeatedly, only to obey it now?

Rav Meir Shapiro zt”l explains that the two voices may have used similar words, but they were asking for entirely different things. Satan’s message was: This is too difficult. Turn around. Abandon the mission and go home. The angel’s message was: The mission is not over. It is changing.

Avraham lowered the knife, but he did not simply leave the mountain. He lifted his eyes and looked again. Only then did he notice the ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Yitzchak would not be sacrificed, but there was still an offering to bring. There was still a ram to find, a thicket to enter, and a new act of service to perform. The Satan offered escape. The angel offered redirection. That was how Avraham recognized the voice of truth. Falsehood told him to go home; truth told him to get back to work. One promised freedom from the challenge. The other revealed what the challenge was asking of him now.

Rav Yitzchak Hutner zt”l develops a related idea in a celebrated letter to a discouraged student. We tend to tell the stories of great people as though they were born complete, untouched by weakness, failure, or inner conflict. But this, Rav Hutner argues, badly distorts the nature of greatness.  He rereads the verse שבע יפול צדיק וקם, “A righteous person falls seven times and rises” (Mishlei 24:16). We ordinarily understand it to mean that although the righteous person falls, he eventually rises. Rav Hutner suggests something more radical: it is through those falls that he rises. The battles are not interruptions in the story of his growth. They are the story (Pachad Yitzchak: Igrot U’Ketavim, no. 128).

These two teachings converge upon a powerful truth. Faithfulness does not always mean continuing along the same path. At times, it requires us to stop, reassess, and change direction. But changing direction is not the same as walking away. The voice of truth may ask us to release one vision of what our service was supposed to be, lift our eyes, and search the thicket for what is being asked of us now.  Hardship is not necessarily evidence that we are failing. Sometimes it means that we are still fighting. A setback may not be the end of the mission. It may be the moment when the mission assumes a new form.

Rabbi Yisroel Reisman suggests that this may explain why bee honey is such an appropriate symbol for Rosh Hashanah. Honey offers sweetness, but it comes from a creature capable of stinging. Its message is not that the coming year will contain no pain. It is that sweetness can emerge from places in which we might never have expected to find it.

The shofar conveys the same message. It recalls the ram’s horn that Avraham found caught in the thicket. The ram was not waiting in an open field. It was entangled. Avraham had to look beyond the ordeal he expected and discover the service he was actually being asked to do.

Perhaps we can also hear an additional layer in the words תכלה שנה וקללותיה. This is not a literal reading, but the word תכלה, “may it end,” echoes the word תכלית, purpose.  We certainly pray that the year and its curses will end. We ask Hashem for healing, peace, security, and relief from pain. We should never romanticize suffering or pretend that hardship is itself sweet.  But we ask for something more. We ask that what we have already endured should be granted a תכלית. May our wounds not remain meaningless. May they deepen our compassion, strengthen our faith, and uncover capacities within us that might otherwise have remained hidden. 

That is why Rosh Hashanah surrounds its sweetness with seriousness. It does not ask us to deny life’s heaviness. It asks us to believe that even within the thicket, a new form of service may be waiting. The ram was caught there not by accident, but by design. May Hashem lead us out of our own thickets, transforming all that we endured into meaning, growth, and genuine sweetness.

I have a confession to make. On a long Shabbos walk through Ramat Beit Shemesh yesterday, my wife and I passed through several neighborhoods, each with its own character and population, and with nearly every person we passed, I caught myself quietly profiling them. Not to determine their politics, profession, or precise religious affiliation. I was trying to answer a much more immediate question: Are these “Good Shabbos” people or “Shabbat Shalom” people?

Ramat Beit Shemesh makes this a live question in a way few places do. It is, among other things, a fascinating study in Jewish diversity. Within a relatively small geographic area live Jews representing a wide range of backgrounds, cultures, communities, religious orientations, and styles of dress. Even for someone who tries not to judge people by appearances, it is hard not to notice the differences.

Chazal teach, “לעולם יקדים אדם שלום לחבירו,” that a person should always take the initiative in greeting another. The value of offering a greeting is clear. But on Shabbos in Ramat Beit Shemesh, a practical question remains: Which greeting?

For generations, “Good Shabbos” has been the traditional greeting of Ashkenazic Jews. “Shabbat Shalom” is the prevailing Hebrew and Israeli formulation and is used across a broad spectrum of Israeli society. Some people have a definite preference. Others, myself included, do not feel terribly strongly about it. (There may, in fact, be halachic implications to preferring one greeting over the other, but that is a discussion for another time.)

Still, if I am going to initiate the greeting, I would like to do so in a way that feels natural and comfortable to the person receiving it. And so, as each new person approached, I found myself making a rapid and admittedly unscientific calculation.

Good Shabbos? Shabbat Shalom?

Sometimes I was reasonably confident I had gotten it right. Other times, the response gently informed me that I had not. I would offer a cheerful “Shabbat Shalom” and receive an equally cheerful “Good Shabbos” in return, or vice versa. Thankfully, no one seemed offended by my miscalculation. Perhaps that is because, beneath the difference in language and cultural association, everyone understood the same message. I see you. We are sharing this day. And I wish you well.

To be sure, this experience is hardly unique to Ramat Beit Shemesh. One could walk through Teaneck, or many other Jewish communities, and face the same linguistic dilemma. Yet somehow, here, it felt different. The contrasts seemed more visible, the question more immediate, and the encounter more representative of the community itself.

Much has been said about the divisions among the different populations of Beit Shemesh. Some of those observations are undoubtedly fair. I am new here, and I do not pretend to understand the history, tensions, or complexities beneath the surface. Nor do I imagine that a friendly exchange on a Shabbos afternoon erases genuine differences or resolves serious communal disagreements.

But perhaps it reveals something else that is also true. Unity should not be confused with uniformity. Achdus does not require us to erase our differences, adopt identical customs, or speak in precisely the same religious dialect. It means that despite those differences, we recognize that we remain bound to one another. In fact, our Shabbos walk suggested an even more modest definition of unity: the willingness to greet another person in the language we believe will make that person feel seen.

Of course, sometimes we will guess incorrectly. We will assume we understand another person because of how he is dressed, where she lives, or which community they appear to represent. Sometimes the response reminds us that people do not fit as neatly into categories as we imagine. That, too, may be part of the lesson. Profiling can help us choose a greeting, but it can never tell us everything about the person standing before us. The label is not the relationship. The category is not the human being.

During the Yamim Noraim, we stand before Hashem simultaneously as individuals and as members of a people. The Mishnah teaches that on Rosh Hashanah, “כל באי עולם עוברין לפניו כבני מרון,” all inhabitants of the world pass before Him like בני מרון (Rosh Hashanah 16a). The Gemara explains that although we pass before Him individually, we are all perceived in a single glance: “וכולם נסקרין בסקירה אחת.”

Our tefillos are similarly written overwhelmingly in the plural: forgive us, heal us, remember us, and grant us life. Even our most personal spiritual work takes place within the embrace, and the responsibility, of the collective. That collective is not composed of interchangeable people. It contains different histories, accents, customs, communities, and ways of expressing the same sacred hopes. Achdus is not meant to make those distinctions disappear. It is to prevent distinction from becoming distance.

Perhaps that work can begin with something very small. As another Jew approaches, we can spend less time determining precisely where that person belongs and more time communicating that he or she does belong. Sometimes we will say “Good Shabbos.” Sometimes we will say “Shabbat Shalom.” Occasionally, we will get it wrong.

But if the greeting is sincere, perhaps we will also be getting something far more important right.

Tomorrow night, I will board a plane and make aliyah.

The timing of this departure places it during the week between Parshas Ki Seitzei and Parshas Ki Savo, between going out and coming in. It feels too soon to reflect upon the destination. Right now, I want to pause at the point of departure, not to write about where I am going, but to reflect upon the community from which I depart.

I have lived in Bergen County for over forty years, including the last twenty-four serving as a rabbi in this community. I have already said a more personal goodbye to my own shul. This is something different. It is an attempt to step back and consider Bergen County as a whole, to recognize what has been built here, what has held it together, and what we may sometimes fail to appreciate precisely because it has become so familiar.

Leaving forces us to see what familiarity lets us overlook. When we live in a place for a long time, its most remarkable features begin to feel ordinary. We notice what isn’t working and talk about what could be better. We forget that much of what surrounds us did not have to exist and certainly did not come into existence on its own.

Bergen County has grown into one of the largest and most vibrant centers of Orthodox Jewish life in North America. Its shuls, schools, kollelim, mikvaos, chesed organizations, and communal institutions provide an extraordinary infrastructure for Jewish life. But its significance cannot be measured simply by counting what has been constructed. The most impressive thing about Bergen County is not only what it has built. It is what, despite its remarkable growth, it has managed not to lose.

Four qualities stand out to me.

1. Large, but Still a Community

Bergen County has become far too large for everyone to know everyone else. Yet it has not become merely a collection of strangers, shuls, and neighborhoods that happen to occupy the same geographic area. Over the years, people I barely knew, and occasionally people whose names I was embarrassed not to remember, would approach me in a store, at a communal event, or while walking down the street. They would comment on something I had said, share a concern, ask a question, or explain some connection between us. Those encounters reminded me that a community does not require everyone to know everyone else personally. It does require people to believe that they are living within a network of relationships. People need to feel seen, that they can approach one another, and that beneath the size and complexity remains a meaningful “we.”

Bergen County is certainly not an “out-of-town” community. It possesses little of the intimacy or simplicity that phrase sometimes suggests. Nevertheless, it has retained a genuine sense of connection. People attend and support programs outside their own shuls. They become aware when a family elsewhere in the community is struggling. They respond to appeals that do not directly involve their immediate circle. They recognize that events taking place in another institution still matter. No one person can know everyone, and no one should be able to address every need. But people continue to experience themselves as members of something larger than their own families, neighborhoods, and institutions.

That connection is more fragile than it appears. It can gradually be lost through indifference, institutional competition, or the assumption that someone else will accept responsibility. Preserving it will require ongoing effort, especially as Bergen County continues to grow.

2. Achdus Without Uniformity

Bergen County is religiously, socially, economically, and culturally diverse. Its shuls have distinct identities. Its rabbanim hold different views. Its residents do not all share the same priorities, lifestyles, or visions of communal life. Yet beneath those differences, a genuine sense remains that we belong to one another.

Unity should not be mistaken for uniformity. We have never agreed on everything, nor should we. Achdus does not require us to erase our differences. It is realized when, despite those differences, we remain bound by a shared responsibility for one another.

Nowhere have I witnessed this more clearly than in the relationships among the rabbanim of the community. Bergen County’s rabbanim represent a real range of positions, personalities, and approaches. Yet the respect, love and admiration among them is something extraordinary.  I have witnessed it for decades, and it has been a privilege and an honor to be part of it. It is real. It is not merely the public appearance of friendship or a cordiality maintained for communal purposes. Genuine closeness, affection, and camaraderie exist among the rabbanim of this community.  We have debated, disagreed, and occasionally frustrated one another. But those differences have not prevented us from respecting one another, learning from one another and caring deeply about one another. When the community faced a crisis, or when an individual or institution needed assistance, those relationships enabled us to sit together, speak honestly and work toward a shared response.

I cannot stress enough how unusual and precious this is. For a community of Bergen County’s size, with so many shuls and such a genuine range of religious perspectives, the closeness among its rabbanim is a tremendous blessing. The entire community should take great pride in it and never take it for granted.

The same spirit can be seen among the shuls themselves. Institutions naturally have their own needs, interests and concerns. Cooperation is not always simple. Practical questions, financial pressures, and legitimate differences of opinion remain.  Even so, I have repeatedly watched shuls share space, resources, infrastructure, information and expertise. Beneath the inevitable complications has remained an important instinct: another shul’s difficulty is not merely another shul’s problem.

That sense of achdus also exists from the bottom up. People from different segments of the community come together in moments of crisis, celebration, and shared concern. The relationships may not always be intimate, and the differences may be real, but the lines of communication and responsibility have largely remained open.

3. A Culture of Responsibility

Perhaps the deepest expression of Bergen County’s character is found not in its buildings or formal structures, but in the countless acts of chesed that most people will never know about.  Over the years, both personally and professionally, I have been given a window into moments of profound human vulnerability. I have seen families confront illness, financial crisis, emotional pain, bereavement, abuse, and circumstances they never imagined they would face. 

Again and again, I have watched people in this community step forward. Sometimes they came with money. Sometimes they brought meals, provided transportation, shared professional expertise or offered a place to stay. Sometimes they made a phone call, opened a door or quietly connected someone with the help that person needed. At other times, the most important thing they offered was simply their presence, the assurance that another person would not have to endure a painful chapter entirely alone.  Much of this chesed has happened without public recognition. No dinner was held, no plaque was presented, and no announcement was made. People saw a need and responded because they believed that is what a neighbor and a member of a community should do.

The many extraordinary organizations that have emerged and flourished here extend that same instinct. I hesitate to name individual organizations because any list would inevitably be incomplete. But together, they tell an important story.  These organizations did not arise because someone decided that Bergen County needed a more impressive institutional résumé. They arose because people encountered suffering and decided that it was unacceptable to look away.

Someone could not afford basic necessities, and an organization was created. Someone was trapped in an abusive marriage, and people built a system of support. Food was being wasted while families were hungry, and members of this community found a way to connect one reality with the other. When a family encountered a crisis for which no adequate response yet existed, people worked to ensure that the next family would not have to face it alone. Pain became responsibility, and responsibility became action.

Communities are not ultimately built by facilities, membership numbers or organizational charts. They are built when enough people decide that another person’s problem belongs, in some measure, to them.

4. Continuity Across Generations

The Bergen County community we know today did not simply appear. People who came here before an established solution existed for every Jewish need built it.  The original builders founded shuls and schools because, if they didn’t create them, they wouldn’t exist. They organized minyanim, recruited leaders, raised money, and established institutions without knowing whether their efforts would succeed. They did not inherit a finished community. They accepted responsibility for creating one. They were pioneers, even if we do not ordinarily use that word to describe them.

Many of those original builders still live among us. They remember when institutions that now appear permanent were little more than ideas, fragile beginnings, or acts of faith. The community owes them a debt that cannot be measured only by the buildings they constructed or the organizations they founded. They created the possibility of the Jewish life that later generations inherited. Over time, their children and grandchildren were joined by successive waves of newcomers. Each group brought different experiences, expectations, and ideas. New institutions emerged, existing ones evolved, and new leaders gradually assumed responsibility.

Transitions between generations are rarely effortless. Those who build something naturally feel protective of it. Those who inherit it often see possibilities for change that were not visible before. Yet Bergen County has largely succeeded in honoring its founders while making room for new voices, new energy, and new leadership.  The strength of that balance is that it asks neither the founders to surrender their legacy nor newer generations merely to preserve it unchanged. Each generation must receive what was built with gratitude and accept responsibility for what it must next become.

Celebrating what Bergen County has built and preserved is not romanticizing the community or overlooking the work that remains.  Bergen County has its divisions and blind spots. It has people who feel unseen, families who struggle quietly, and institutions that do not always meet every need. Its greatness is not found in the absence of problems, but in people’s repeated willingness to ask what is missing, who is being overlooked, and what must be built next.

In that sense, a healthy community is always somewhere between Ki Seitzei and Ki Savo. It must remain grateful for where it has come from without imagining that it has fully arrived. Continuity, achdus, connection and chesed will endure only if each generation chooses them anew.

For more than forty years, Bergen County has been my home. Its deepest imprint on me will not be the institutions it built, impressive as they are, but the kind of community its people created. They refused to let growth erode connection, difference become division, or another person’s pain remain someone else’s problem. Generation after generation, they inherited something precious and accepted responsibility for making it stronger.

May Bergen County continue to grow without losing what has made it extraordinary. May it remain united without demanding uniformity, deeply rooted without resisting change, and always prepared to transform the needs of others into a shared responsibility, ad bias hagoel.

Here’s to you, Bergen County.

A little out of character for me in this space, but I wanted to share a brief professional update.

I have recently launched StepAhead Counseling, a private practice offering individual, couples, and family therapy, as well as parental support. My work is grounded in evidence-based approaches, including EFT and DBT, with a particular focus on relationships, family challenges, emotional well-being, and life transitions.

I am currently able to work with clients in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Israel.

For anyone who may be interested, or who may know someone looking for support, additional information is available here:

https://stepaheadcounseling.com/

I am grateful to the many people who have encouraged this next chapter and who have trusted me with referrals over the years

The Gemara in Berachos (31b) teaches:

לא יפטר אדם מחברו לא מתוך שיחה, ולא מתוך שחוק, ולא מתוך קלות ראש, ולא מתוך דברים בטלים, אלא מתוך דבר הלכה…וכן תנא מרי בר בריה דרב הונא בריה דרבי ירמיה בר אבא: אל יפטר אדם מחבירו אלא מתוך דבר הלכה, שמתוך כך זוכרהו.

A person should not take leave of another through ordinary conversation, laughter, frivolity, or idle talk, but through a matter of halacha. A person should take leave of another only through a matter of halacha, because through that, he will remember him.

On the surface, the message seems straightforward. Before two people part, one should share a final Torah thought. Years later, an association will remain. Perhaps encountering that teaching will bring back the person who shared it. Or perhaps thinking of that person will bring the Torah thought back to mind. Either way, Torah creates a connection between the person and the moment of departure.

I am particularly intrigued by this teaching because I know how effective it can be. Thirty-five years ago, as I was preparing to leave Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, I went to say goodbye to my rebbe, Rabbi Shlomo Friedman. I stood in his doorway, and as we parted, he taught me this Gemara.  As I prepared to leave this community after twenty-four years, I found myself thinking back to that moment. And I realized that thirty-five years later, the Torah I most closely associate with saying goodbye is still his. Somehow, the Gemara worked. But I do not think it worked in quite the way we usually assume.

We tend to read the Gemara as advice about memory, almost as a mnemonic device. Teach someone a piece of Torah on the way out the door, and you will have secured a place in that person’s memory. But Chazal knew perfectly well that people forget Torah. We forget shiurim. We forget ideas that once moved us deeply. Sometimes, we even forget the people who taught them to us. If this were only a strategy for being remembered, it would not be especially reliable.

Read the words again: אל יפטר אדם מחברו. A person should not take leave of another. Notice where the emphasis falls. This is not primarily advice about being remembered. It is an instruction about how to leave. It is not simply telling us what to say on the way out. It is teaching us what kind of act a departure ought to be. A goodbye can bring a relationship to an end. Or it can place something into the relationship that continues to unfold long after the goodbye is over. The way we do that, the way we bridge past, present, and future, is through Torah. Torah is not confined by time or place.

I will admit that I have never liked saying goodbye. I am not entirely sure why. There may be some psychological explanation, but I have never felt much urgency to discover it. I only know that goodbyes have always made me uncomfortable. They seem too final. They ask us to compress an entire relationship into a few closing words and then somehow accept that the moment is over.

But Torah gives us another way to experience a departure. When a relationship has been infused with Torah, when it has been shaped by Torah, sustained by Torah, and governed by Torah, it is not subject to the same finality as an ordinary departure. Something changes, certainly. Physical presence matters, and its absence is real. But the relationship does not simply close. Torah allows it to continue in another form.

The Rav zt”l spoke of what he called the “symposium of the generations.” He described the experience of opening a Gemara and feeling that the great figures of earlier generations were not merely names on a page. Rashi entered the room. The Rambam entered the room. They became part of a living conversation. Their questions were present, their voices could be heard, and the student found himself sitting together with people separated from him by centuries. Torah brings those who are physically absent into the room. If Torah can bridge centuries, it can certainly bridge an ocean (especially in the age of WhatsApp).

We read this morning: כי לא על הלחם לבדו יחיה האדם, כי על כל מוצא פי ה׳ יחיה האדם. A person does not live by bread alone, but by everything that comes from the mouth of Hashem. We tend to assume that what sustains us is physical. Food. Presence. Proximity. The things we can see and touch. The Torah does not deny that bread matters. It does. But bread, by itself, was never what sustained us. What sustained us was something deeper: that which came from the “mouth of Hashem.” The physical carried within it a spiritual reality.

I think the same is true of a relationship like this one. We tend to assume that what sustains a relationship is presence: being in the same room, in the same building, week after week. And presence does matter. I do not minimize it. But presence was never the only thing sustaining this relationship. If it were, then leaving this building would bring the relationship to an end. What has sustained it was never merely physical to begin with. It was Torah. And Torah does not require the room.

Looking back, I do not believe Rabbi Friedman was trying to make sure that I remembered him. That would be an unusual thing for a rebbe to seek. I think he was teaching me how to leave people. Only now, thirty-five years later, do I understand that he was not merely teaching me a Gemara that day. He was modeling it. He took an idea about how one should say goodbye and embedded it within an actual goodbye. He could have offered a warm sentiment or a blessing. Instead, he taught me a Gemara in his doorway, at the moment we were parting, so that the idea would attach itself to something durable enough to outlast the conversation.

I would like to pose one additional question. Why does the Gemara say specifically דבר הלכה, a matter of halacha? Why not simply say that people should part through words of Torah? It could have been a pasuk, an insight, a word of machshava, or a meaningful blessing. Why halacha? I think there is a reason Chazal chose that word. Halacha is concrete. It is defined. It has edges. A halacha is not merely a feeling or an aspiration. It makes a claim upon us. It governs what we do. It either enters our lives or it does not.

And perhaps that is the point. We often measure relationships by how they made us feel. Was the relationship warm? Was it comfortable? Did we enjoy one another’s company? Did we feel understood? Those things are real, and I do not dismiss them. But a relationship measured only by feeling is, in a sense, the aggada of a relationship. It’s real, but it’s not load-bearing. It doesn’t have to hold anything up. It may be meaningful, but it does not necessarily leave behind anything that continues to function. A relationship becomes, in a sense, halacha when it leaves something concrete behind. Something that changed not only how we felt, but how we lived. Something that shaped a choice, altered a perspective, or taught us how to respond differently.

I cannot speak for anyone else. I can only try to account honestly for what these twenty-four years have left with me. I know that I am leaving with more than a feeling. I am leaving with a cheshbon of my own, an honest accounting of what I gained here and of the ways this community changed me.

I think first of relationships that came to matter to me in ways I could not have anticipated when I arrived. There are friendships that became part of the fabric of our lives, not only for me, but for my wife, our children, and even our parents. What began as a professional relationship between a rabbi and a community became something far more personal and enduring.

I think of the people who allowed us into their lives during difficult and painful moments. People who trusted us with fear, illness, loss, disappointment, and uncertainty. They gave us the privilege of standing beside them and of trying, in whatever limited way we could, to help carry what they were carrying. That trust was never something I took lightly.

I also think of those who shared their accomplishments and moments of joy. Their children’s milestones, personal successes, recoveries, new beginnings, and quiet victories. Through all of those conversations, I was given an insider’s view not merely of what people were experiencing, but of who they really were.

I think of the opportunity to teach Torah. To be entrusted, week after week and year after year, with the responsibility of learning, preparing, speaking, and sharing Torah is a zechus I will never be able to measure properly.

This community also gave me a platform and a voice. Some of what began in this room reached beyond it, in writing, through recordings, and in other settings I could never have anticipated. That opportunity has been more personally meaningful and gratifying than I probably ever allowed myself to say.

I received feedback here as well, including critical feedback. At the very least, even when it was difficult to hear in the moment, I know that it helped me. It forced me to reconsider assumptions, to become more careful, and to see things I might not have seen on my own. I am deeply grateful for that.

You also caused me to think about questions I might never have considered. A community brings its concerns, its tensions, its hopes, and its changing circumstances to its rabbi. Those questions forced me to learn. They expanded the range of what I thought about and deepened the way I understood Torah, leadership, and people.

And then there were the lessons that were harder to receive. Some of the most important things we learn in life do not arrive gently. There were moments of disappointment, tension, misunderstanding, and pain. I do not romanticize those experiences. But I would not be honest if I failed to acknowledge that they taught me as well. Some of the lessons I will carry most seriously were learned through the moments I would not have chosen.

These are not simply feelings. They are part of a cheshbon. This is what was built over twenty-four years for me personally. This is, if you will, the halacha of our relationship: the concrete things it left behind, the ways it shaped me, and the ways it will continue to govern how I think and how I live.

I cannot speak for what these years have meant to each of you. I can only hope that you, too, are left with something more than a feeling. Perhaps a Torah idea, a conversation, a decision, a moment of support, or even a disagreement that eventually led somewhere useful. Whatever it may be, I hope there is something concrete you can identify and say: This changed something in me. This helped shape the way I think or the way I live. That is what I hope you carry forward, not merely a memory of me, but something from our years together that continues to function.  Torah was not incidental to this relationship. It was what brought us together, what shaped our conversations, and what gave this relationship its meaning. And because it was built through Torah, it is not dependent upon our continuing to occupy the same room.

Thirty-five years ago, Rabbi Friedman taught me this Gemara as I stood in his doorway preparing to leave. Only now do I fully understand what he gave me. He was not simply giving me something to remember him by. He was teaching me that a relationship formed through Torah can endure beyond the moment of departure.  So I will end where he began: אל יפטר אדם מחברו אלא מתוך דבר הלכה, שמתוך כך זוכרהו. A person should take leave of another only through a matter of halacha, because through that, he will remember him.

If Chazal are right, then it does not end here. We will meet again every time this Torah is learned.

(This drasha was delivered at Congregation Beth Aaron on Shabbos Parshas Eikev, August 1, 2026, marking the conclusion of twenty-four years with the community.)

What does Yom Kippur have in common with Tu B’Av? Apparently, a lot. The Mishnah (Taanis 25b) lists them together as the two happiest days on the Jewish calendar. But you’d never know it from how we treat them. We spend weeks getting ready for Yom Kippur. We talk about it, think about it, build toward it. A few days after Tishah B’Av, Tu B’Av comes and goes almost without anyone noticing, and most of us couldn’t tell you a single thing about it.

It’s a strange thing for our rabbis to say. Not close behind Yom Kippur. Not a distant second. Named in the same breath. Yom Kippur we understand. What happened on Tu B’Av that made it worthy of such distinction?

The Gemara answers by citing six events that occurred on that day throughout Jewish history. Among them: the generation that was supposed to die out in the desert finally saw that decree lifted. Restrictions on who could marry whom across tribes eased, and the ban on marrying into Binyamin, imposed after the terrible episode of Pilegesh b’Givah, was lifted as well, allowing the tribe to rejoin the nation. The roads to Yerushalayim, blocked for years by Yeravam‘s guards, reopened so the ten tribes could make aliyah l’regel again. And after the terrible losses at Beitar, the Romans finally permitted the bodies to be buried, prompting Chazal to institute the brachah of הטוב והמטיב.

Upon reflection, it would seem that each one is a moment where something that had been true suddenly wasn’t true anymore. We naturally get used to a reality. Eventually we stop questioning it. We adapt by telling ourselves, “that’s just the way things are” or, a personal favorite, “it is what it is.” But then something shifts, and at first the newer reality hasn’t yet earned the same familiarity. A closed road opened. A decree lifted. A wound, finally, allowed to heal without erasing the years it took to get there. Some of these changes were obviously good news. Others must have felt uncertain even as they were happening, since nobody yet knew how the story would end. But in every case, the old reality and the new one had to sit together for a while before the new one felt real.

It’s worth reflecting on the real difference between a change and a transition, because the two aren’t the same thing. A change is an event. A transition is everything that happens inside a person after the event: loosening a grip on what was, tolerating an uncertain in-between, letting a new identity take root without demanding the old one disappear first. The generation in the desert had spent thirty-eight years building an identity around watching their contemporaries die. Hearing that the decree had ended didn’t undo that overnight. The families of Beitar, finally permitted to bury their dead, weren’t simply relieved. They were being asked to let a suspended grief finally take its normal course, years after the fact. None of these were switches that flipped. They were transitions people had to actually live through, one day at a time.

That’s the work Chazal built a Yom Tov around. It’s easy to look forward to a happy ending. It’s much harder to actually live through the disorientation of getting there. Tu B’Av isn’t a celebration of six good things that happened. It’s a celebration of the capacity, shown six times over, to move through that discomfort and come out able to build again.

Think about how differently each of these six groups must have experienced their own good news. The generation in the desert had watched people their own age get buried year after year. When the deaths stopped, there must have been relief, but there must also have been something harder to name, maybe guilt at having survived, maybe disbelief that it was really over. The people of the ten tribes who could suddenly walk the roads to Yerushalayim again had grown up being told those roads weren’t for them. Being allowed back in isn’t the same as feeling like you belong. None of this happened instantly, and none of it happened the way we tell it in one line of Gemara. It’s that same capacity, not any single outcome, that made the day a natural place to begin the biggest transition most people will ever take on.

There’s a tradition recorded in the Mishnah that eligible men and women would come together on that very date, the unmarried women going out to the vineyards in borrowed white dresses, and shidduchim were made there. Marriage requires a very similar process. It isn’t only about finding the right person. It’s about becoming someone who can tolerate the loss of a more self-contained identity, who can sit with someone else’s needs mattering as much as your own, who can let an old sense of self give way to a shared one without feeling erased by it. Anyone who has actually built a marriage knows that part doesn’t happen on the wedding day. It happens slowly, over years, the same way every transition on this list happened slowly, one adjustment at a time, most of them small enough that nobody would think to write them down. A day built around the capacity to move through change is a fitting day to begin that leap.

Maybe that’s also the real bridge from Tishah B’Av to Tu B’Av. We just finished mourning. We sat with real loss, the kind that doesn’t resolve because six days passed. A few days later we’re told, “Now go build something.” That’s a strange instruction to give someone still in grief, unless grief and rebuilding were never meant to happen one after the other. Unless they were always meant to run together.

The word we use for that shift is nechamah, and it doesn’t simply mean comfort. Its first appearance in the Torah, “וינחם ה’ כי עשה את האדם,” describes Hashem responding to a world gone wrong with what Rashi calls מחשבה אחרת, a different thought. Not one that erases what came before it, but one that grows alongside it. Perhaps that’s why the seven weeks after Tishah B’Av are called the Shivah D’Nechemta. We tend to imagine comfort as pain gradually disappearing. Chazal seem to have imagined something quieter: not the disappearance of the old thought, but the slow emergence of a second one beside it. Tishah B’Av teaches us how to mourn. Tu B’Av teaches us how to move forward, not by leaving the past behind, but by letting a new reality slowly take root beside it.

Maybe Tu B’Av deserves the same anticipation we give Yom Kippur after all. Not because we expect a particular miracle on the fifteenth of Av, but because we need the yearly reminder that no condition is permanent. Roads reopen. Families reunite. Even the most settled realities can give way to something new. Hashem created each of us with the capacity to begin again. Perhaps that’s what we’re really celebrating every Tu B’Av: not a miracle, but the courage He planted within us to begin again.