The Flavor of Life

My grandchildren were by us for Shabbos, and they were chewing gum, as children are wont to do. As I watched them, I was thinking about something my rebbi, Rav Mendel Kaplan, would tell us. He would say, “Life is like chewing gum. Ah bissel tzuker un kei kei kei — It has a little sugar, but most of the time you are simply chewing.” His pithy comment is quite deep and has much meaning.

There is actually a lot packed into that little expression. Underneath the humor is a very profound observation about what life is all about.

Rav Mendel’s point, as I understand it, is that we tend to imagine that life is supposed to be a succession of sweet moments. We wait for the good news, the simcha, the accomplishment, the nachas, the vacation, the special Shabbos, the wedding, the birth, the siyum. Those are the moments when we taste the “sugar.” But they are not the bulk of life because, face it, most of life is the chewing.

And that doesn’t mean that most of life is bad. Chewing gum isn’t bitter or unpleasant. It’s simply...ordinary. You chew. You continue. You go through the day. You take care of what needs to be taken care of. You deal with the unexpected. You go to work, learn, daven, raise children, worry about things, solve problems, pay bills, make phone calls, wait for appointments, clean up messes, and do it all over again the next day.

There is a little sugar mixed in, and those moments are precious. But the sugar isn’t the entirety of the gum. The chewing is the experience of living.

And perhaps that is one of the great misunderstandings of life. We think that we will really begin living when everything falls into place. When the children grow up, when the parnossah is settled, when the health is perfect, when the problem is resolved, when the simcha arrives, then life will be good.

But Rav Mendel’s “ah bissel tzuker un kei kei kei” teaches something else: Don’t wait for the sugar to begin appreciating the chewing.

A person is not measured only by the dramatic moments of his life. Much of avodas Hashem takes place in the seemingly uneventful actions of ordinary days. The greatness is often not in the extraordinary moment, but in getting up every day and doing what needs to be done again and again.

The kei kei kei is almost the sound of life itself.

We chew, we chew, and we keep going.

And perhaps there is an even deeper message. When you chew gum, you don’t ask, “When is the next taste of sugar coming?” You know that the sweetness will eventually fade, but you continue chewing. Why? Because chewing itself has become part of the experience.

So, too, we have to learn to appreciate not only the moments when Hashem gives us an obvious taste of sweetness, but also the long stretches in between. The sweetness may be less apparent, but that doesn’t mean that those moments are empty. They, too, are part of the life Hashem has given us.

Sometimes, in fact, the chewing is where the sweetness is hidden.

A person looks back after many years and realizes that the days he thought were merely “ordinary” were actually his life. The rushed mornings, the chitchat with people in shul after davening, the walks home from shul, the Shabbos meals, the conversations with his children, the learning sessions, the small acts of kindness, the challenges he overcame, even the difficulties that forced him to grow — those weren’t interruptions to his life. They were his life.

Rav Kaplan managed to say all of this with a smile and a couple of words of Yiddish: Ah bissel tzuker un kei kei kei.

A little sugar.

And then you chew.

Rav Mendel was very smart. He was blessed with a life comprised of chochmas haTorah, and he sought ways to impart that chochmah to us, his young American talmidim. He was teaching us not to resent the chewing while waiting for the sugar, but rather to recognize that the sugar gives us moments of sweetness, while the chewing gives us the opportunity to live.

Life is not a bowl of cherries or a piece of candy that is sweet from beginning to end. It is chewing gum: Ah bissel tzuker un kei kei kei. There is a little sweetness, and then a great deal of chewing.

The sugar moments remind us why we are here.

We work hard at something and then are able to look back and see what we have accomplished, be it raising children and enjoying the milestones of their lives or struggling to work through a Tosafos and then experiencing the joy and sweetness of finally understanding it. Someone goes through a nisayon and later realizes that it made him stronger, deeper, and closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

The chewing itself can eventually become sweet.

There is another important dimension. If we expect life to be sweet all the time, we would become disappointed very quickly. But if we understand that life is mostly chewing, with occasional bursts of sweetness, we develop a different relationship with life.

We stop asking, “Why isn’t life sweeter?” and begin asking, “Where is the sugar?”

And I think that is perhaps the most beautiful way to understand Rav Kaplan’s bissel tzuker.

The sugar is there. It may not be everywhere. It may not last forever. Sometimes we don’t even recognize it while we’re experiencing it. But it is there, and perhaps the real avodah is to learn to notice it.

Two people can live through the same day. Both have responsibilities, frustrations, bills, disappointments, and endless things to take care of. One comes home saying, “What a difficult day.” The other remembers one small moment — a child’s smile, a good sevara, a meaningful vort, a beautiful sunset, a kind word — and says, “Boruch Hashem, there was some sugar today.”

As I get older, I think more often about Rav Mendel and his teachings and the insights he gave us when we were young and growing up. And I think about different dimensions of what he meant. Maybe that is what he meant. While it is true that life is mostly about chewing, it is also true that Hakadosh Boruch Hu makes sure that there is a little sweetness. The wise person looks for those moments and learns to savor them.

Elul is one of those doses of sugar that Hashem puts into life.

Life is filled with routine. We wake up, go to work, learn, daven, raise children, and deal with responsibilities, disappointments, and challenges. Through the “chewing” of life, we are moving forward, sometimes without even noticing how quickly the days are passing.

And then comes Elul.

Suddenly, Hashem gives us a month that is different from all the others. It is as if He puts a little sweetness into the gum and says to us, “Stop for a moment. Think about where you are going. You still have time. You can fix things. You can come closer. Ani leDodi veDodi li.”

That itself is an extraordinary kindness.

The yemei hadin are approaching. A person might look at himself and think, “How can I repair everything I have done wrong?” And then Elul arrives and tells him: Come with me. You can do it.

After Tisha B’Av and the Nine Days ended, we felt as if the rest of the month of Av was one of sweetness. It represented the sugar of life we so desperately crave. It provided us with the opportunity to get off the Ferris wheel of chewing, of working, of doing the things we have to do in life. The second half of Av gave us a break, a time to go away, to travel, to unwind — a time of leisure, swimming pools, barbecues, and enjoyment.

The past three weeks represented the physical sweetness that Hashem gives life, and now we have entered the month of Elul, which presents us with some of the spiritual sweetness of life.

The sweetness of Elul is not the sweetness of comfort or pleasure. It is the sweetness of opportunity.

Elul signals that Rosh Hashanah is coming. We are being given the weeks preceding it to prepare. To think. To regret. To apologize. To improve. To strengthen a relationship. To become more careful with our words. To daven with more concentration. To learn better and more. To examine our lives and say, “I am going to fix what I did wrong over the past year.” To say, “Next year, I am going to do better.”

That is the spiritual tzuker of life.

Teshuvah is not merely a painful accounting of our failures. It is the realization that we are not trapped by what we said or did yesterday. We can change it. We can change ourselves. The person I was yesterday does not have to be the person I am tomorrow. I can be better.

Elul is not meant to frighten us. It is meant to awaken us, as the posuk says, “Uru yesheinim mishinaschem.” Awaken from your slumber, from your actions throughout the year. The door of teshuvah is open. The door to greatness is open. Step right in.

We can literally go back and erase yesterday. What happened, happened. The words were spoken, the opportunities were missed, the mistakes were made. Yet, Hakadosh Boruch Hu created a mechanism through which a person can take those very failures and transform their meaning. We can take those chato’im, those mistakes, and, through the gift of teshuvah, turn the failures into zechuyos, merits.

Someone who recognizes what he did wrong, sincerely regrets it, accepts upon himself not to repeat it, and changes his behavior, is no longer the same person who committed that act. His past is no longer part of his history, and it does not define his destiny.

That is an extraordinary kindness. That is the spiritual sweetness of teshuvah.

Failure can become the beginning of growth. A sin can become the source of humility. A painful experience can teach a person compassion. A relationship that was damaged can become the impetus to learn how to speak differently. A missed opportunity can awaken a person to recognize the next opportunity when it arrives.

Elul is the month when Hashem reaches out to us, when Heaven touches earth and the distance between us and our Creator becomes smaller. Hashem comes closer and offers us the precious gift of teshuvah, the opportunity to find our way back home.

We may have wandered. We may have taken wrong turns, missed exits, traveled down roads we never should have entered, and sometimes gotten so lost that we no longer know how to get back. But teshuvah is Heaven’s GPS. It helps us recalculate and points us home. It reminds us that no matter how far we have traveled, the road back is still open. We are never too far gone to return. And what could be sweeter than that?

Elul isn’t merely a countdown to Rosh Hashanah. It is Hashem giving us advance notice that the yemei hadin are coming and giving us the opportunity to prepare for them.

He is telling us, “Don’t wait until you stand before Me to wish you had become different. Change now.”

Before the King judges us, He comes closer to us and gives us a month to go looking for Him.

We have spent another year chewing. There were sweet moments, bitter moments, ordinary moments, and painful moments. There were things we did well and things we wish we could do over.

Elul provides us with the opportunity to examine the past year, fix what needs fixing, and set ourselves on a good path for the coming year. Elul enables us to build a better future.

There is a little sugar. Life is still mostly chewing. But when Elul arrives, Hashem puts a little extra sweetness into the gum. He gives us a month in which the ordinary person can become extraordinary by confronting his past, learning from it, and returning to the One who has been waiting for him all along.

We can look at it a little deeper.

The Vilna Gaon writes that when Hashem created the world, He combined the middos of din and rachamim. The world could not exist through din alone, because no human being could survive if we were judged solely according to what we deserved. However, a world governed exclusively by rachamim would lack the structure and accountability necessary for creation to fulfill its purpose. Hashem therefore conducts the world through a combination of din and rachamim.

But during Elul, Hashem relates to us strictly with the middah of rachamim. The King is coming, the yemei hadin are approaching, and yet, paradoxically, the days immediately preceding judgment are days of extraordinary mercy. Prior to standing in judgment before Him, Hashem comes toward us with rachamim and invites us to approach.

What an incredible gift that is. Imagine a person who is about to stand trial. His actions are going to be examined, and he will have to answer for the choices he has made. And then, before the trial begins, the judge goes out to meet him and says to him, “Come. Let us fix this before we start hearing the case.”

That is Elul. It is a month of Divine mercy, of Divine sweetness.

Elul reminds us that our mistakes do not have to be the end of the story. Hashem gives us the extraordinary ability of teshuvah. He doesn’t wait for us to come crawling back after judgment has already been rendered. He comes closer. He makes the first move. He opens the door and beckons us inside.

And suddenly, Rav Mendel Kaplan’s words take on an even deeper meaning.

Life can indeed be a lot of chewing. We struggle, we stumble, we make mistakes, and we can wonder how we will find our way back. How will we get tzuker back into our lives? But then comes Elul and Hashem gives us a month of rachamim, a month when the distance between Heaven and earth is diminished, a month when the King is in the field and the road home is easier to find.

That is the sweetness of Elul. It is the sweetness of rachamim. It is the sweetness of knowing that the door is open. The sweetness of knowing that Hashem will help us get on the right path before He judges us.

May we all be zoche to come home and have a sweet year of goodness and kindness. A kesivah vachasimah tovah to all.

Living in Their Dream

I’m back on an El Al plane, heading for Eretz Yisroel, expecting to spend a couple of weeks in Yerushalayim.

Making the trip was not an easy decision. The specter of another war with Iran was hanging in the air. President Trump had been bombing Iran for fourteen straight nights and had repeatedly threatened to go all out against them. Had that happened, Israel would most likely have been drawn into the conflict, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there for that.

Our flight was scheduled for Monday morning, and I decided that if Shabbos passed without incident, we would go.

When Shabbos was over, I turned on my phone and saw that not only had the president not ramped up his attacks on the evil regime in Iran, but he had announced that, inexplicably, he was putting everything on hold.

As I waited to see how things would develop, I was reading seforim describing the aliyah of the talmidei HaGra and the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov. I read about what motivated these great people to leave behind their homes in Eastern Europe, the lives they were accustomed to, and whatever comforts they had, and to undertake the treacherous journey to Eretz Yisroel, where they knew they would face a life of deprivation and hardship.

Reading about why they went, and what they went through to get there, became a source of encouragement for me.

War or not, I would go.

I hadn’t made any particular plans for what I would do while I was there, but would simply follow the path of the multitudes of Yidden who, throughout the generations, yearned to be in Eretz Yisroel and took advantage of every opportunity to spend time in Hashem’s land.

And if there would be a war, I decided, I would make the best of it. I would not spend my time there angling for a way to get back “home.” I wasn’t looking forward to sitting in a bomb shelter, but if that was how Hashem had planned my vacation, I would accept it.

Every day, we put our lives in the hands of Hakadosh Boruch Hu and trust that He will care for us. In Eretz Yisroel, however, we feel it more.

The Torah (Devorim 11:12) tells us that Eretz Yisroel is different from every other land: “Eretz asher Hashem Elokecha doreish osah tomid einei Hashem Elokecha bah mereishis hashonah ve’ad acharis Shonah.”

It is a land upon which Hashem’s eyes are constantly focused, “from the beginning of the year until the end of the year.”

Perhaps that is part of what makes being there so different. We are always dependent on Hashem wherever we live, but in Eretz Yisroel, that dependence is palpable. You feel it.

As it turned out, there was no immediate need to worry. Despite President Trump’s bluster and threats, there was no war. Iran continues in its evil ways, and the world watches.

But perhaps the real question is not why I was willing to go to Eretz Yisroel with the possibility of war hanging over the country. The real question is why, throughout our history, Jews have been willing to do far more.

They left behind homes, families, livelihoods, and familiar surroundings. They traveled for months under conditions that are difficult for us to imagine. Some endured hunger and disease. Others arrived in a land where they had no means of supporting themselves and little of the physical comfort they had known in Europe.

And they did it willingly.

What were they looking for?

The answer is not simply that they wanted to live in a holy place. They were seeking something that cannot be measured in comfort, convenience, or even safety.

They wanted to be in the place where a Yid feels closest to the Ribono Shel Olam. They wanted to be in Hashem’s Chosen Land.

The stories of the talmidei HaGra and the talmidim of the Baal Shem Tov are especially moving because these were not people who had nothing to lose. They had homes. They had communities. They had positions of honor and lives that were familiar to them. Yet, the pull of Eretz Yisroel was stronger. The desire to live lives of kedusha in artzeinu hakedosha and help usher in the era of Moshiach pulled them out of their homes and away from their extended families to begin new lives in Eretz Yisroel. In the years since, many have followed their example, and as time passed, the challenges of settling there eased.

Those people understood something that we sometimes lose sight of.

For thousands of years, Yidden have davened, pleaded, sung, and begged to return to Yerushalayim, to Eretz Yisroel.

Every day, Jews around the world turn toward Yerushalayim. Three times a day, we ask to be returned to our land. At the end of the Seder, we proclaim, “Leshanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim.” At its height, as Yom Kippur concludes, we cry out the same words.

And here I was, sitting on an airplane, heading to Yerushalayim, with the privilege of spending two weeks in Eretz Yisroel.

How blessed is our generation.

If only we would appreciate our blessings.

There is another thought that occurred to me as I sat on the plane.

We have become accustomed to something that is anything but ordinary.

We can wake up in New York, Los Angeles, London, or Paris, and by the next morning be in Yerushalayim.

We take it for granted.

We complain about the flight. We complain about the airport. We complain about the food. We complain about the traffic when we land.

And then we get into a car and drive through Yerushalayim.

Stop for a moment and think about that. For centuries, a Yid could spend his entire life dreaming about that moment. Our grandparents and great-grandparents longed to see Yerushalayim. They yearned to be able to walk through the streets of the Holy City.

For many of them, the dream remained a dream.

For others, the dream was so powerful that they abandoned everything they knew and undertook journeys that we would consider unimaginable.

And we?

We can book a ticket on our phone. A few clicks, a few hours in the air, and we are there. Perhaps because it is so easy, we don’t appreciate what we have.

There is a danger in miracles becoming routine.

When something extraordinary happens once, we are overwhelmed by it. When it happens every day, we begin to regard it as normal.

That may be one of the great challenges of our generation.

We were born into a world in which Jews can live in Eretz Yisroel as Jews. We can walk freely through Yerushalayim. We can learn Torah there, daven there, raise children there, and build communities there.

We can visit the Kosel whenever we want.

We can travel throughout the land that our ancestors could only dream of seeing.

And somehow, it has become ordinary.

Perhaps the seforim I was reading before the trip were reminding me not to let that happen.

They were reminding me that Eretz Yisroel is a gift.

A gift purchased with the yearning, sacrifice, and mesirus nefesh of generations.

A gift that carries responsibility, and a gift that should never be taken for granted.

Yet, Eretz Yisroel is going through a very difficult period.

Bnei Torah have been dealing with a campaign against them that would have been difficult to imagine not that long ago. Cynical propagandists have unleashed a vicious political war against the Torah community, turning the issue of military service into a weapon with which to attack an entire way of life.

The result, coming in the midst of an actual war against Israel’s mortal enemies, has been nothing short of a typhoon.

Instead of the Jewish people standing together against those who seek to destroy us, an increasingly bitter internal struggle has developed. The political and social divisions have become so deep that the country sometimes seems to be fighting a civil war while simultaneously fighting an external war.

And with elections approaching, the battle is only becoming more intense.

There is something particularly painful about this, because Eretz Yisroel is not merely a country. It is the home of the Jewish people.

For generations, the secularization of Israeli society was not merely tolerated. It was deliberately cultivated. Torah study and religious observance were pushed to the margins as the founders of the state sought to create a new Israeli Jew—more secular, more nationalistic, and less connected to the Jewish religious tradition.

The tragedy is that many of the early leaders had grown up differently.

They may not have been observant themselves, but they came from homes and communities where Torah, mitzvos, and Jewish tradition were familiar. They had parents and grandparents who were religious. They had relatives who were frum. They knew what Shabbos was. They knew what a bais medrash was. They knew that the Jewish people have a Torah.

And even when they fought against religious influence, many understood that the Torah community is an authentic and indispensable component of the Jewish people.

That understanding led to what became known as the religious status quo.

Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, despite being a secular socialist, reached an accommodation with the religious parties that included the famous arrangement granting exemptions from military service to yeshiva students.

The arrangement was far from perfect, and the Torah community certainly did not view the secular leadership as its natural ally. But there was an understanding that there was room in the Jewish state for Jews who lived according to the Torah.

There were other surprising connections as well.

Shimon Peres, who became one of Israel’s most prominent secular leaders, grew up with a Jewish religious background and had studied Torah with his grandfather. He also met the Chofetz Chaim as a youngster. Later, he played a role in preventing the draft of religious girls, for which the Torah community was eternally grateful.

Menachem Begin came from Brisk and, despite becoming a secular political leader, understood the world of Torah and the place of religious Jews within the Jewish people in a way that is difficult to find among today’s political class. He was familiar enough with Yiddishkeit that when he was hiding from the British, he hid in plain sight by living as a religious Jew in Yerushalayim.

When Begin came to power, it represented a historic change in the relationship between the government and the Torah parties.

There was still disagreement. There was still tension. There were still battles.

But there was a basic recognition that we, too, were entitled to support and rights.

That has changed.

Today, many of the politicians leading the campaign against the Torah community have little meaningful connection to Torah, halacha, or the culture and traditions of Jewish religious life.

And that lack of familiarity matters.

It is difficult to understand someone whose world you have never entered.

If you don’t understand why a person can spend his life learning Torah, you will see a yeshiva student as someone avoiding responsibility.

If you don’t understand what Torah means to a Yid, you will see Torah learning as merely another career choice.

If you don’t understand that the Jewish people survived exile because we remained connected toTorah, you will have difficulty understanding why the Torah community regards the preservation of Torah learning as an existential matter.

And if your ideal is to become “k’chol ha’amim”—like all the nations—then Torah will inevitably come to be viewed as an obstacle to that goal rather than the foundation of Jewish existence.

They don’t understand us at all.

This is not simply a political disagreement.

It is a disagreement over what a Jewish state is supposed to be.

Is Israel merely a country inhabited by people who happen to be Jewish, or is it the Jewish state whose identity is rooted in the history, heritage, and Torah of the Jewish people?

Those are two very different visions.

During my trip, I met Moshe Gafni, Knesset leader of Degel HaTorah. He asked me a question that has stayed with me: “Do people in America realize how bad the situation of the Torah community is in Israel?”

People in positions of leadership within the Torah community are deeply concerned about what the next elections will bring and what kind of government will emerge afterward. They understand that the coming political battles are not merely about personalities or parties. The decisions made now may determine the relationship between the State of Israel and the Torah community for years to come.

Every election is important. But some elections are pivotal.

President Ronald Reagan famously warned that freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. The same principle can apply to institutions and traditions. What one generation takes for granted, the next generation may no longer understand, and the generation after that may actively oppose.

The coming elections may therefore represent a turning point in Israel’s relationship with its Torah community.

And there is another development that should trouble every Jew.

As the State of Israel has become increasingly estranged from Torah, and as the Torah community has increasingly been portrayed as the problem rather than as an essential part of the Jewish people, something else has been happening in the world.

Hatred of Jews has been rising.

Antisemitism has become more brazen, more mainstream, and more politically acceptable.

On American college campuses, in European cities, and increasingly within the Democrat Party, which once considered itself a friend of the Jewish people and which many Jews supported and still support, anti-Israel rhetoric has often crossed the line into something much darker.

It is a troubling irony. We spent two thousand years praying to return to Eretz Yisroel. We finally returned. A Jewish state was established. Cities, yeshivos, hospitals, and universities were built. Jews poured in from across the globe.

And yet, at the very moment when we have more Jewish power than we have had in two thousand years, there are those working to separate the Jewish state from the very thing that made us a nation in the first place: Torah.

That should frighten us, not because frum Jews need special privileges, but because a Jewish state without a Jewish soul is ultimately a contradiction.

Eretz Yisroel was not promised to us merely so that we could become another nation, with theaters, universities, and a government. It was given to us so that we could become the nation Hashem chose us to be.

But despite all of this, Eretz Yisroel remains Eretz Yisroel.

It is the land Hashem promised to our forefathers. It is the direction toward which we turn three times a day when we daven. Its air is holy. Its soil is holy. And many of the people who live there are visibly holy.

On this visit, I discovered a new gem.

A friend suggested that I daven on Shabbos morning at the Kerem Avrohom shul. It is literally a stone’s throw from the new developments on the Schneller property in Geulah, where I was staying.

The contrast could hardly be greater.

Jerusalem Estates is a modern high-rise development, with contemporary architecture and beautifully appointed apartments equipped with all the latest amenities.

And in its very shadow stands this little shul, a throwback to another Yerushalayim.

The shul is small and has only a few regular mispallelim. To reach it, you climb an outdoor flight of steps to the second floor. There is nothing grand about it. No marble lobby. No impressive entrance. No architectural statement.

Just a little shul.

But what a shul!

As soon as I heard how close it was, I was eager to daven there. I remembered having been there as a bochur, when I was learning in Brisk. Rav Dovid Soloveitchik’s yeshiva had learned one of the sedorim there, and I had gone there several times and regularly passed it.

Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach had lived in Yerushalayim when he first came to Eretz Yisroel and he had learned in this very shul.

Now I had the opportunity to return.

The people were warm and welcoming. After davening, several of the mispallelim came over to greet me, asking my name and where I am from.

One of the men who approached me was an older Yid who was the baal korei.

I complimented him on his laining and asked him his name.

“Yadler,” he told me.

I asked if he was related to the famed Yerushalayim maggid, Rav Bentzion Yadler.

He looked at me and told me that he was his father’s father.

I took another look at him.

I studied his face and features, trying to discern in him the remnants of the Yerushalayim of old, the world of the legendary maggid whose name is woven into the story of Yerushalayim.

Apparently, he noticed me looking at him.

He looked me straight in the eye and said very seriously: “Ihr hut ah zechus vos ihr hut gedavent du! You have a zechus that you davened here!”

Indeed, I did.

I looked around the shul and noticed a plaque thanking the Jews of Vilna who had contributed toward the construction of the building.

Then I saw the date, 5654. I made a quick calculation and realized that it was the year 1894.

I stood there for a moment, contemplating those numbers.

1894.

What did the world look like then?

What did Yerushalayim look like?

What did life look like for the Yidden who built this little shul?

The world has changed almost beyond recognition since then. Empires have risen and disappeared. Nations have been created and destroyed. Technology has transformed every aspect of human life. Yerushalayim has expanded far beyond what it was back then and become a major city.

Yet, this little shul is still there.

Torah is still being learned there.

Tefillos are still being recited there.

Yidden are still walking up those same steps to stand before Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

The rov of the shul is the fourth member of his family to occupy the position, going back to the famed brothers, Rav Yonah and Rav Eliyohu Rom.

I went over to him and said shalom aleichem. He asked my name and whether I was related to Rav Yisroel Lipschutz, the author of the Tiferes Yisroel on Mishnayos. I told him that I wasn’t, and that my family came from Kovno. He smiled and told me that I had come to the right place and should feel at home.

He then told me something else.

The famed gaon, Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin, who lived in the Old City of Yerushalayim, would venture beyond the walls during the summer and daven in this very shul.

Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin had previously served as the rov of Kovno.

Suddenly, my own connection to the place felt a little more personal.

I had been doubly blessed.

I had the zechus to be in Yerushalayim, and I had the zechus to daven in a small, unassuming shul where great gedolim had stood before me—where Rav Yehoshua Leib Diskin had davened, where Rav Shach had learned, and where the yeshiva headed by the son of the Brisker Rov, populated by talmidim who would go on to become Klal Yisroel’s roshei yeshiva, rabbeim, and rabbonim, had once learned.

This is Eretz Yisroel.

For all its problems, for all its struggles, for all the political turmoil and uncertainty, there is no place like it.

Every step taken there is a mitzvah.

Every corner has a story.

Every stone seems to hold a secret.

The land preserves and transmits a heritage that stretches back thousands of years, and everywhere you turn, you encounter the people who lived there, dreamed there, struggled there, davened there, and refused to give up on it.

Perhaps that is why, especially now, we need to concentrate on the good.

It is Elul.

The month when we prepare ourselves for the Yom Hadin has arrived.

And the Torah gives us a remarkable formula for approaching that judgment.

The Kedushas Levi, in this week’s parsha, Parshas Shoftim, explains the pesukim of “Shoftim veshotrim titein lecha bechol she’arecha.”

We are commanded to establish judges and officers. But there is another message hidden within these words.

If we learn to judge others properly, with fairness, compassion, and kindness, then “veshoftu es ha’am mishpat tzedek”—we can bring about a more merciful judgment upon Klal Yisroel.

The way we judge others influences the way we ourselves are judged.

That is a powerful thought with which to enter Elul.

We are all preparing for the Yom Hadin. We are examining ourselves, thinking about where we can improve, where we have fallen short, and what we can do differently in the coming year.

And we all have much to daven for.

Klal Yisroel is in a serious situation.

Our brothers and sisters in Eretz Yisroel are living with danger from without and painful divisions within. The Torah community is facing challenges that could have consequences for generations. Antisemitism is rising around the world. The Jewish people need rachamim.

An important thing we can all do now is to help arouse the middah of chesed.

Judge others favorably.

Speak more kindly.

Assume the best.

Look for the good.

Give people the benefit of the doubt.

And perhaps, in that zechus, we will merit that Hakadosh Boruch Hu will look upon us with that same middah.

The summer is coming to an early end this year, and the heady days of Elul have arrived.

We spent the summer trying to maximize the days of bein hazemanim. Now we have entered a different season, one in which we have to maximize something far more precious: the days of Elul.

We were given a gift in Eretz Yisroel.

We were given the gift of a generation that can travel to Yerushalayim with a boarding pass.

We were given the gift of Torah, of tefillah, of Jewish life, and of the ability to walk in the footsteps of generations who dreamed of being where we are.

Let us not take any of it for granted. Let us appreciate the blessings we have each day in our lives.

Let us see the good. Let us judge one another favorably.

And let us use these precious days of Elul to arouse the middas hachesed, so that we and all of Klal Yisroel may be judged favorably and merit a kesivah vachasimah tovah, a year of good health, yeshuah, hatzlocha, brocha, and, if he has not come before the new year begins, bias Moshiach Tzidkeinu.