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.

Today, my wife said goodbye to her 2015 Honda Pilot.

It was not an attractive car (particularly as of late), but it had lived a full life. By the time we handed over the keys, the odometer read 271,587 miles.

I found myself thinking about the bracha one says when purchasing a new car. Sometimes the appropriate bracha is shehecheyanu. But when the benefit is shared with others, the bracha is Hatov VeHaMeitiv, thanking Hashem not only for what we have received but also for the good that others will receive through it.

That bracha subtly asks us to think not only about what we have acquired, but about what it may allow us to give. When we receive something new, what do we imagine it is for? Is it mainly for our own comfort, our own convenience, our own plans? Or do we see it as something that can help us show up for other people?

Chaviva’s Honda Pilot did a lot of showing up. It carried people to appointments and smachot, to airports and hospitals, to homes where a visit was needed and places where a favor could not wait. A challah dropped off before Shabbos. A ride that could not wait for someone else to offer it. I can picture my wife pulling up outside someone’s house countless times, not making much of it, just doing what had to be done. Another ride. Another errand. Another small act of care that would never be counted anywhere.

Except, of course, it would be counted. Not by her. Not on the dashboard. But in the quiet accounting of a life lived with purpose, those things matter.

I once heard my dear friend, Rabbi Avraham Willig, recount something his late mother-in-law, Rebbetzin Henny Machlis z”l, would ask her children and grandchildren. “If I have ten dollars in my pocket,” she would say, “and someone comes to the door asking for tzedakah, and I give him two dollars, how much do I have left?”

“Eight,” they would answer.

She would ask again.

“Are you sure? I had ten dollars, and I gave away two. How much do I have left?”

Again, they would say, “Eight.”

“No,” she would tell them gently. “You have two.”

She would then explain that the eight dollars still in your pocket may or may not remain yours in any lasting way. You may spend them wisely, or you may not. You may lose them. They may pass through your hands and leave no real trace. But the two dollars you gave to another person are yours forever. No one can take them away. They have already become part of you.

Perhaps that is what an odometer cannot measure. The miles we drive for ourselves fade into the past. But the miles spent carrying someone else to a doctor’s appointment, to a hospital, to a simcha, or simply to where they needed to be, those miles we keep.

The Torah does not ask us to reject the material blessings we are given. A car, a home, a livelihood. These are ordinary things. But in the hands of someone who wants to do good, ordinary things become instruments of chesed.

That is what made saying goodbye to this car feel unexpectedly meaningful. It was only metal and rubber, coffee stains and worn seats. But for many years, it helped carry something sacred.

Cars wear out. Engines fail. Paint fades. Odometers stop counting. But every act of kindness leaves behind something that does not depreciate.

Her 2015 Honda Pilot has spent 271,587 miles. Every last one of them well.

My wife? She still has 271,587 miles left.

Twenty feet sounds like a lot until it has to hold a lifetime. 

In just a few days, the movers will come to pack our belongings into a twenty-foot container that will carry them across the ocean. Furniture, clothing, sefarim, family memories, and the accumulated evidence of years lived in one place. Somehow, all of it has to be measured, sorted, chosen, and packed. We are not only deciding what to ship. We are deciding which parts of our lives we want to carry forward.

For most of Jewish history, when Jews moved, they did not have months to plan, lists to organize, or containers to ship across an ocean. They often had hours. Sometimes less. What they could carry fit into a wagon, or more likely into a small bundle over their shoulders. They carried whatever they could, and they carried what they had to. So I feel grateful beyond words for the luxury of this kind of decision. It is overwhelming, but it is also a gift.

As the boxes fill, I find myself thinking less about furniture and more about identity. Less about possessions and more about values. Less about what will fit into a container and more about what belongs in the life I am trying to build.

The Gemara in Pesachim (87b) teaches that one of the purposes of galus was to gather converts, souls drawn to the Jewish people through our presence among the nations. Later thinkers expanded this idea further, understanding galus as an opportunity to gather ניצוצות הקדושה, sparks of holiness, from the many places we passed through. That means galus was never only displacement. It was also a mission.  So, aliyah, at least for me in this moment, does not feel simply like leaving. It feels like returning with what has been gathered.  And that means I have to ask myself honestly what parts of galus I am ready to leave behind, and which sparks I hope to bring home.

The first thing I hope to leave behind is a survivor mentality.  Indeed, survival is sacred, and we should never speak lightly of it. For much of our history, survival itself was a form of avodas Hashem. To endure, to remain faithful, to raise Jewish children, to hold onto Torah under conditions of pressure and uncertainty, these were not small things. They preserved us.

But survival, for all its dignity, was never meant to be the final goal of Jewish life. We were not created only to live another day. We were created to build, to plant, to create, and to take responsibility for the future.  I am grateful to be moving toward a life that feels less like holding on and more like planting. Less like preserving a fragile presence and more like helping build something meant to last, a בנין של קיימא.  

The second thing I hope to leave behind is the feeling of being a stranger.  I say this with deep gratitude. I am proud to be an American. As this country approaches its 250th anniversary, I believe the United States has been an extraordinary blessing to the Jewish people. For generations, it offered safety, opportunity, freedom, and dignity. That gratitude is real and should never be minimized.

And yet, even with all of that, I have carried a feeling, sometimes subtle and sometimes less so, that I am still a guest. Avraham Avinu described himself as both a ger and a toshav, a stranger and a resident. That has often felt to me like the paradox of Jewish life in exile. We build homes, institutions, friendships, and communities. We contribute to the broader society with loyalty and appreciation. And still, some part of us may know that our deepest story is elsewhere.

I am looking forward to living more fully as a toshav. Not because life in Eretz Yisrael is simple, and not because it erases every tension, but because Jewish identity there is not an accommodation. It is the language of the street, the rhythm of the calendar, and the fabric of the culture. I am looking forward to a life in which our story is not peripheral, but central.

The third thing I am grateful to leave behind is the question itself.  For many years, I lived with the question of aliyah. Anyone who has considered it honestly knows that the decision touches nearly every part of life. It is not romantic. It is not simple. It is not made only in the language of ideals. It is made through conversations, anxieties, hopes, practical details, and many long pauses.

Over the past number of months, people have said to me, “It is amazing what you have done.” My response has consistently been that I have, in fact, not done anything. I am still here. (The boxes are not even gone.)  But in truth, something has happened. A decision has been made. That does not mean I have certainty. It does not mean I know what will unfold. But there is a quiet gift in having crossed from wondering into commitment.

So, those are some of the things I hope to leave behind: the instinct to survive instead of build, the feeling of being a stranger, and the long uncertainty of the decision itself.  But aliyah is not only about leaving. It is also about carrying. And there are gifts from chutz la’aretz that I very much hope to bring with me.

The first gift I hope to bring is the accumulation of what galus has taught me, what Rav Shlomo Wolbe z”l, in the sefer עלי שור, calls התלמדות, the practice of allowing oneself to be shaped by experience. It is not the same as studying a subject or mastering a skill. It is something quieter, the readiness to be changed by what life places in front of you, to treat every encounter, every success, and every setback as something that has come to teach. Not every experience announces its lesson. Some lessons come gently. Some we understand only years later. But a person who moves through life with that willingness does not leave empty-handed, even from the hardest stretches.

So when I think about what I am packing, I am not thinking only of pictures or possessions. I am thinking about a congregant who taught me more about emunah during her illness than I ever taught her. About a mentor who corrected me in a way that stung for a week and shaped me for years. About hundreds of Shabbos tables, thousands of difficult conversations, and countless interactions, that I can still feel. These are not items in a container, but they are very much coming with me.

The second is a community mindset.  There is something remarkable about American Orthodoxy. We have built strong shuls, schools, institutions, chesed networks, and communities of real responsibility. I think many of us take this for granted. We assume that Jewish life naturally organizes itself around a shul that is more than a place to daven, a school that is more than a place of instruction, and a community that is more than a collection of households. But none of that is automatic.

I have watched families sit together in a shul lobby after a loss and felt the room hold them. I have seen communities mobilize overnight because someone needed help. A tzibbur is not just ten people gathered in the same room. A kehilla, at its best, becomes a place where people carry one another in joy, in sorrow, in growth, and in responsibility.  That is something I hope to bring with me. The conviction that Jewish life flourishes when it is rooted in relationship, that Torah and tefillah need the warmth of human connection. A kehilla can become a home.

The third gift I hope to bring is the spirit of being metzapeh l’yeshuah, continuing to yearn for redemption.  One of the gifts of galus is that it keeps us aware that history is not yet complete. We know, almost instinctively, that we have not arrived. So much of Shemoneh Esrei is a plea for national restoration, for Yerushalayim, for Malchus Beis David, and for the rebuilding of what remains broken.  Aliyah is, on a personal level, a step closer. A movement toward home. But it is not the completion of the story. Even in Eretz Yisrael, we still daven for geulah. We still say, “כי לישועתך קיוינו כל היום.” We still live with longing.

I do not want to lose that. I do not want arrival to dull the ache for what remains unfinished. Being metzapeh l’yeshuah is not only about waiting. It is to live with the awareness that the world is not yet what it is meant to be, and that our own small acts of building, planting, learning, and returning are part of something much larger than ourselves.

And so, as I prepare for this move, I have learned something simple and profound. Not everything fits.  That is true of containers, and it is true of life. Every major transition forces us to decide what belongs in the future and what belongs in the past. Marriage, parenthood, career change, loss, renewal, and aliyah each ask their own version of the same question. What am I carrying that still belongs with me? What am I holding that should finally be left behind?   

As I stand just days before this next chapter, I hope to leave behind whatever narrows the soul and carry forward whatever has deepened it. I hope to leave behind the habits that no longer serve the future and bring home the holiness that galus, in its complicated way, allowed us to gather.

In Israel, storage space is significantly limited, and quite simply, not everything fits. And maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. When packing an entire life into a twenty-foot container, one is forced to ask: what must be packed, what should be released, and what sparks are we meant to carry home.

We should stop pretending that convenience has helped us become better communicators. It hasn’t.

It has allowed us to respond faster. It has made us easier to reach. But it has not nurtured honesty, attentiveness, or presence. If anything, it has given our worst habits more room to grow. We apologize through screens. We argue through fragments. We comfort people while multitasking. We answer those closest to us with one eye on whatever else is glowing in our hands.

The Torah provides a very specific standard when it describes Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophetic experience: ודבר ה׳ אל משה פנים אל פנים כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו, “Hashem would speak to Moshe face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.” That final phrase is not only describing Moshe’s prophecy. It is telling us, clearly and unambiguously, what real human conversation is supposed to look like: present, direct, attentive, and face-to-face.

The Rambam (הלכות יסודי התורה פרק ז) gives us a way to understand that model more deeply. Here, the Rambam affirms the unique level of Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy, a level that was never equaled before him and will never be equaled after him. What is striking, though, is how much attention the Rambam gives this principle. Other principles are presented with relative brevity. The Rambam affirms the oneness of Hashem, for example, without elaborating on all of its depth and implications. But when he discusses Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy, he explains it in detail. He lists four distinct ways in which Moshe’s prophetic experience differed from that of every other prophet.

The Rambam clearly intends to demonstrate not only that Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy was different, but how it was different. And when we look carefully at those four distinctions, two of which are found in this week’s parsha, they do not remain confined to the world of prophecy. They begin to form a model of communication that instructs us how to become better communicators.  

1. Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy was direct.

All other prophets received prophecy through the medium of an angel. Moshe Rabbeinu did not. Hashem communicated with him directly. The Rambam’s proof is from this week’s parsha: פה אל פה אדבר בו ומראה ולא בחידת, “Mouth to mouth I speak with him, in a clear vision and not in riddles.”  

So much of our communication today is conducted in riddles. Not because we are especially deep, but because we are often unwilling to be clear. We hint. We imply. We delay. We send messages whose real meaning sits somewhere beneath the words, waiting for the other person to figure it out. Sometimes we do this because we are trying to be sensitive. But often, if we are honest, we do it because we are afraid. We do not want to have the difficult conversation. We do not want to say what needs to be said. We do not want the discomfort of being direct.

There is a reason we hide. Direct speech can be risky. Once words are spoken clearly, we can no longer pretend we were misunderstood. We can no longer retreat into ambiguity. We expose what we think, what we feel, and what we need, and sometimes that is frightening. So we hide behind half sentences, vague texts, carefully placed silences, or the small emotional theater of punctuation and emojis.

There are times when written communication is useful, even necessary. But there are also times when a conversation deserves a human face. An apology should often be given with eyes that show regret. A painful concern should be expressed in a voice that carries care. A serious conversation should not be reduced to a rushed message sent between errands.

Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy was פה אל פה, direct, clear, without riddles. Again, we are not prophets, and we are not comparing ordinary human speech to nevuah. But the Torah’s language still teaches us something. Real communication requires courage. It requires the willingness to be understood. It requires us to stop hiding from the people we claim to care about.

2. Moshe Rabbeinu received prophecy while fully awake.

All other prophets experienced prophecy in sleep or in an altered state. Moshe Rabbeinu received prophecy while awake, alert, and in control of his senses. The Rambam cites the pasuk: ונועדתי לך שם ודברתי אתך מעל הכפרת, “I will meet with you there, and I will speak with you from above the [Ark’s] cover.”  Moshe was awake. Present. Fully there.  That, too, is a standard we need to recover.

There is something painful about speaking to someone who is only half-listening. Their body is in the room. They may even nod at the right times. But their eyes drift downward. Their fingers keep moving. And somewhere inside, the speaker understands: I do not really have this person. Most of us have felt that. Most of us have done it to someone else.

A child comes home with a story, and the parent answers while checking a message. A spouse shares something important, and the other spouse responds while scanning an email. A friend begins to open up, and the listener glances at the phone for just a second, but that second says more than we realize. People can feel when we are not fully with them.

Here too, the failure is understandable. We are tired. We are distracted. We are carrying more than people can see. Sometimes the phone is not merely entertainment; it is an escape. But that is precisely why presence matters. As much as possible, we should make it our business not to look at our phones when someone is speaking to us. Not because phones are evil. They are not. But because attention is one of the simplest ways we show another person that they matter. To listen well is to give a person the dignity of our presence. It means turning toward them. Letting our eyes rest where the relationship is. Not preparing our answer before they finish speaking. Not treating their words as background noise to whatever else is occupying our minds.

3. Moshe Rabbeinu was not overwhelmed by prophecy.

All other prophets were overwhelmed by prophecy. The experience frightened them, weakened them, and left them feeling as though they were on the verge of death. Moshe Rabbeinu was different. He was not overwhelmed by his prophetic experience. The pasuk says: ודבר ה׳ אל משה פנים אל פנים כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו, “Hashem would speak to Moshe face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.” Moshe Rabbeinu could receive the word of Hashem without collapsing. There is a human version of that strength. It is the ability to listen without immediately reacting.

Many of us struggle with this. Someone criticizes us, and we become defensive before they finish the sentence. Someone shares pain, and we rush to fix it because their sadness makes us uncomfortable. Someone says something we disagree with, and we respond with intensity before we have taken the time to understand what they actually meant. Sometimes our reaction is so loud that the other person’s message never really arrives.

And this, too, is not because we are bad people. Often, it is because listening well makes us vulnerable. If I really hear your criticism, I may have to change. If I really hear your pain, I may have to sit with my helplessness. If I really hear your perspective, I may have to surrender the satisfying simplicity of my own. So we interrupt. We explain. We defend. We advise. We take control of the conversation because receiving it honestly feels too exposed.

This can be especially damaging when people turn to us for advice. If we react too quickly, too sharply, or too emotionally, we may think we are helping. But we may actually be making it harder for them to speak honestly. They begin to protect us from their words. They soften what they need to say. They stop telling the truth because they do not want to manage our response. And then we cannot help them properly. We cannot offer sound, objective advice if we have not first absorbed what they are trying to say.

To listen well requires inner steadiness. Not coldness nor indifference, but steadiness. The capacity to hear something painful, complicated, or unexpected without taking control of the conversation too quickly. Sometimes a person does not need our immediate judgment. They need our patience. They need room to finish the sentence. They need to know that we can hold what they are saying without becoming overwhelmed by it.

Moshe Rabbeinu stood before the word of Hashem and remained fully himself. On our much smaller level, we are asked to stand before another person’s words without falling apart.

Clarity allows a conversation to begin. Presence allows it to be received. Steadiness allows it to deepen. But the final distinction adds one more demand. Real communication is not only about how we respond when someone speaks to us. Sometimes it is about whether we are willing to step forward at all.

4. Moshe Rabbeinu could initiate prophecy.

No other prophet could initiate prophecy. A prophet could receive the word of Hashem only when Hashem chose to communicate with him. Moshe Rabbeinu, however, could initiate prophecy whenever necessary. Here too, the Rambam cites a pasuk from this week’s parsha: עמדו ואשמעה מה יצוה ה׳ לכם, “Stand, and I will hear what Hashem will command you.”

Moshe was always available. He was always on call. That reflects his singular role as the leader and teacher of Klal Yisrael. But it also reminds us that responsibility requires availability. Each of us has people toward whom we carry obligations: a spouse, children, parents, friends, students, and colleagues. People who rely on us not only for affection, but for steadiness and dependability.

Availability does not mean we have no boundaries. It does not mean we must answer every call immediately or live in a state of constant interruption. But it does mean that we cannot arrange our lives entirely around convenience and then call ourselves responsible. People should know that we can be counted on. They need to know that when something matters, we will not disappear into busyness, avoidance, or delay.

And availability means something else as well. Sometimes we have to initiate the conversation. There are conversations that will not begin unless someone has the courage to begin them. An apology that has waited too long. A concern about a child. A friendship that has become strained. A family issue everyone feels, but no one wants to name.  It is easy to wait. We tell ourselves that perhaps the problem will fade. Perhaps the other person will bring it up. Perhaps silence is kinder. But sometimes silence is not kindness. Sometimes it is fear.

Moshe Rabbeinu could say, עמדו ואשמעה, “Stand, and I will hear.” He did not always wait passively. When Klal Yisrael needed guidance, he stepped forward and sought the word of Hashem. Again, we are not Moshe Rabbeinu. But there are moments when responsibility means taking the initiative. Gently, carefully, without accusation, but clearly.

The Rambam’s seventh principle is, first and foremost, a foundation of emunah. We believe that Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy was utterly unique. Through him, the Torah was given with perfect clarity and absolute authority. But Torah is never merely abstract. Even its highest principles are meant to shape the way we live in our kitchens, in our cars, at our Shabbos tables, in our marriages, in our friendships, and in the small conversations that determine the quality of our relationships.

Moshe Rabbeinu’s prophecy teaches us what communication looks like at its highest point: direct, awake, steady, and available. Our conversations are not prophetic. But they can still carry a trace of that dignity.

The Torah describes Hashem speaking to Moshe כאשר ידבר איש אל רעהו, “as a man speaks with his friend.” That is a remarkable phrase. It means that human speech, at its best, is not casual or cheap. It is one of the ways we honor the image of God in another person.

And perhaps, in a world filled with so much noise and so little true listening, that itself would be a beginning, not of prophecy, but of becoming more deeply human.

There are moments in history that change everything. And then there are moments so foundational, so transcendent, that it seems all of history was waiting for them.

Ma’amad Har Sinai was such a moment. Chazal teach us that the world itself was created for Torah, Bereishis, for the sake of reishis, for the sake of Torah, which is called reishis. Everything before Sinai seems, in some way, to have been moving toward that single point: Adam and Chava, Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivka, Yaakov and his family, the descent to Mitzrayim, the suffering, the redemption, the crossing of the sea. All of it was a long, sacred prelude to the moment when the infinite voice of Hashem entered human history and became Torah.

And then, almost immediately, everything shattered. Before the echoes of revelation had even faded, before the awe of Sinai could settle into the life of the people, came the Eigel HaZahav, the golden calf. It was a staggering, almost unimaginable collapse. Moshe came down from the mountain holding the Luchos, carved and written by Hashem Himself, and broke them.

It is difficult to absorb the shock of that moment. The world had waited thousands of years for Sinai. Creation itself, Chazal tell us, was suspended in anticipation. Yet the first expression of that Torah, the first Luchos, did not remain whole. How does something so full of promise break so quickly?

At first glance, it feels like an exception, a tragic interruption in an otherwise orderly story. But look closer, and it becomes clear that this is no exception at all. The Torah prepares us for this from the very beginning, presenting moment after moment filled with promise that does not unfold as expected. Gan Eden begins as paradise, only for humanity to be exiled. Noach emerges into a renewed world, only to find that human frailty survived the flood. Avraham is promised a future but waits decades in a landscape of uncertainty. Yaakov receives the blessing, but his life is defined by flight, deception, grief, and struggle. Yosef dreams of greatness, but his path runs through a pit, slavery, false accusation, and prison. These stories aren’t incidental; they form a sacred pattern. The Torah is not a book about life going smoothly the first time. It is a record of human beings encountering disappointment, confusion, failure, and loss, and then being asked to keep walking.

Still, the breaking of the Luchos stands apart. It isn’t just another example of Plan A giving way to Plan B; it becomes the central image through which the Torah teaches us how to live with what remains after a rupture. The Gemara teaches that both the second Luchos and the broken pieces of the first Luchos were kept in the Aron. At the very center of Jewish holiness, in the Kodesh HaKodashim, there was room not only for what remained whole, but also for what had shattered.

Think about that image for a moment. The broken pieces were not buried. They were not hidden away in shame or treated as remnants of a failed beginning that needed to be forgotten. They were placed in the Aron, right alongside the whole Luchos, in the holiest place on earth. This means holiness does not require the erasure of brokenness, but rather its sanctification. The Aron did not just hold the ideal; it held the whole story. It held the original dream and its shattered remains. It held what came directly from heaven and what had to be rebuilt through human sweat. It held the Torah of innocence and the Torah of repair.

This may be one of the most compassionate teachings Chazal offer us. We often imagine holiness as synonymous with wholeness, assuming that what is broken must first be fixed before it can belong in a sacred space. But the Aron teaches otherwise. Some broken things are not removed from kedusha; they are carried directly into its center.

There is a Torah of the first Luchos, pure, pristine, untouched by failure. But there is also a Torah of the second Luchos, received after sin, after pleading, after Moshe returns to the mountain, and after the people learn that their relationship with Hashem can survive devastation.

The second Luchos were fundamentally different. The first were carved and written by Hashem. The second were carved by Moshe at Hashem’s command. Human hands now had a role in preparing the tablets. What had once been received entirely from above now required the active participation of man.

The Ibn Ezra, in Parashas Yisro, cites a tradition from the Gaon that identifies seven ways in which the second Luchos were actually greater than the first. Whether one accepts that specific conclusion or not, the very possibility is striking. It suggests that the Torah coming after a breaking is not merely a diminished version of what came before. It carries its own depth, its own dignity, its own revelation. The Beis HaLevi deepens this idea further, teaching that the second Luchos mark the beginning of Torah Sheba’al Peh, the Oral Torah, the Torah that unfolds through human struggle, questioning, interpretation, and transmission.

Where the first Luchos represent a Torah descending from heaven in perfect form, the second Luchos introduce a Torah that must be carried, worked through, clarified, debated, and lived. They open the door to a different kind of relationship with Hashem’s word, not less Divine, but more deeply internalized through human effort.

Torah Sheba’al Peh is born not in the untouched perfection of the first moment, but in the aftermath of the break. That doesn’t make the breaking good; it makes the repair sacred.

Perhaps this is why the broken Luchos remain in the Aron. They testify that the Torah we live by is not only the Torah of revelation, but also the Torah of return. It is not just the Torah of what Hashem gives, but the Torah of what we struggle to receive, lose, seek again, and rebuild within ourselves.

This isn’t just a national teaching; it is a deeply personal one. Our lives rarely unfold the way we imagined they would. We all carry a quiet script inside us, sometimes written in childhood, sometimes shaped by community, longing, or fear. We imagine how life is supposed to look, the order in which things should happen, and the ease with which certain blessings should arrive.

And then life happens. A marriage does not come. A child struggles. Health changes. A dream collapses, a relationship breaks, or a plan we counted on no longer makes sense. Sometimes the shift is dramatic and public; sometimes it is private, almost invisible to others. But inside, the same sentence rises: “This is not the way it was supposed to be.”

That sentiment deserves compassion. It is not wrong to feel it. Pain is not a lack of faith, and disappointment is not a spiritual failure. There are times when the most honest tefillah a person can offer is simply, “Hashem, please make this stop. I cannot carry this anymore.”

But once we honor that pain, we may have to ask a deeper question: Who told us what “supposed to be” means? Who gave us the script? Perhaps what we call Plan B is not a departure from the plan at all. Perhaps, sometimes, it is the exact place where Hashem is writing the script with us in real time.

This doesn’t mean pain is easy, or that every loss can be neatly understood. It certainly doesn’t mean we should rush to explain away another person’s suffering. There are wounds that cannot be resolved by a thought, even a true one. There are chapters in life where perspective comes only later, and sometimes, not at all in this world. But the Aron teaches us that brokenness is not outside the story of kedusha. Sometimes, it is the very thing carried into its holiest place.

There is a fascinating Medrash that tells us that before Hashem created this world, He created worlds and destroyed them. It is a mysterious teaching, and I do not pretend to fully understand it. Why would Hashem create worlds only to destroy them? Why allow earlier worlds to disappear before letting this one endure?

Rav Soloveitchik zt”l addressed this Medrash in his 1957 Yahrzeit Shiur. He opened by describing the Midrash itself, then turned to its lesson for anyone who has lost a world and must build again:

“A Jew has to know how to emulate God, and, like God, to continue to create even after his former world has been eradicated. True, what I have in Boston may not be as beautiful as the European Torah world before the Holocaust. Nevertheless, it is the world we now have. We have to continue to build it and not look back. We must not be cynical, and we should direct our attention and efforts to the future. We must look ahead.“

We are not always given back what we lost. But we are still asked to build. Not because the new world is the same, and not because the pain has disappeared, but because this is the world we have right now, and there is *avodah to be done here, too.

It is much easier to remain attached to the world we thought we were going to inhabit, the life we thought we would have, the family we envisioned, the body that used to work differently, the opportunities that seemed certain and then vanished.

There is a time to grieve those losses; that grief is necessary and holy. But there is also a time, if we are able, to say: This is where I am now. This is the life in front of me. I did not choose all of it. I may not understand much of it. But I am still here, and there is still something Hashem is asking of me here.

Shavuos is the Yom Tov of revelation, of clarity, of Hashem’s voice filling the world. It is the day we return to Sinai and recommit ourselves to Torah. But the story of the Torah we actually live does not remain suspended in the thunder and lightning. It moves through the breaking. It includes Moshe climbing the mountain a second time. It includes the second Luchos. It includes Torah Sheba’al Peh, the Torah that demands human effort, patience, struggle, and rebuilding.

That is the Torah we carry. We carry what is whole, and we carry what is broken. We do not always get to choose what enters the Aron of our lives. But with Hashem’s help, we can learn to hold it all with faith.

Plan B is rarely the life we imagined. But sometimes, in ways we could never have planned, it becomes the exact place where our deepest Torah begins.