Come Back

There are times when we become so focused on doing the right thing that we fail to notice the opportunity to do something even greater.

On the Rosh Hashanah before her passing, Rebbetzin Shayna Chana Elyashiv was not well and was unable to go to shul to hear the shofar. My friend, Rav Gedalya Sheinen, told me that after davening, he would blow shofar for Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv according to all the different shitos.

That year, when he finished, he asked Rav Elyashiv if he should go to the rebbetzin and blow shofar for her so that she could fulfill the mitzvah.

To his surprise, Rav Elyashiv told him not to.

It was the second day of Rosh Hashanah, he explained, and the obligation to hear shofar on the second day is only miderabbonon. Additionally, women are not obligated to perform the mitzvah, but have accepted it upon themselves. Since blowing for the rebbetzin would involve extra tircha—a burden for Rav Sheinen—it was not necessary and he should go home.

Rav Sheinen left and began walking home.

Then he heard Rav Elyashiv calling after him.

“Kumt tzurik. Come back.”

Rav Elyashiv told him that after telling him to go home, he had thought about it and reconsidered. He said that it was true that the mitzvah of shofar on the second day is only miderabbonon and returning to blow more kolos would be a tircha.

“However, my wife will be so happy to hear the kol shofar,” Rav Elyashiv said. “By blowing for her, you will be doing a chesed and chesed is a mitzvah mide’Oraisa. I can be matriach you for a de’Oraisa.”

What an extraordinary way to look at life.

Rav Elyashiv had initially viewed the situation through the pure lens of halacha and concluded that there was no reason to impose upon Rav Sheinen. But then he thought about his wife. He thought about the happiness those sounds would bring her. Suddenly, what had appeared to be an unnecessary tircha became an opportunity to fulfill a mitzvah de’Oraisa.

The story reminds us that, sometimes, we can become so preoccupied with the mitzvah we are trying to perform that we fail to see the mitzvah standing right in front of us.

We look for lofty opportunities to serve Hashem while overlooking the person beside us who needs a little of our patience, a kind word, a smile, a favor, or simply the knowledge that someone cares about him. We get involved in performing the “big” mitzvos and let mitzvos that we consider minor fall by the wayside.

There is something especially powerful about this message as Rosh Hashanah is upon us. We spent the past weeks of Elul examining ourselves and thinking about what we need to improve. We thought about our davening, our learning, our mitzvos, and our bein adam laMakom.

But the Rambam (Hilchos Teshuvah 7:3) teaches us that doing teshuvah involves more than repenting for improper actions. It also includes doing teshuvah for bad ideas, as well as anger, hatred, jealousy, chasing after money and honor, gluttony, and the like.

When we do teshuvah, we should also be examining ourselves by considering how the people around us feel because we are in their lives.

“Do I make life easier for them or more difficult? Do I notice when someone needs something from me or do I see only the inconvenience it will cause me? Do I recognize the opportunities for chesed that Hashem provides me with every day?”

Rav Elyashiv’s greatness was not merely that he knew the halacha. It was that he understood that beyond the halacha was a person, and beyond the person was an opportunity to do the will of Hashem.

Sometimes, the greatest avodah is hidden in the smallest act of consideration.

And sometimes, before we go rushing down the stairs, we need to stop, turn around, and listen for the voice calling, “Kumt tzurik. Come back.”

Rav Sheinen was already walking down the stairs. The decision had been made. The matter was settled. But Rav Elyashiv stopped him and said, “Kumt tzurik. Come back.” He had reconsidered. He had looked at the situation differently. What a moment earlier had seemed to be an unnecessary tircha had suddenly revealed itself as an opportunity for a greater mitzvah.

There is something almost prophetic about that scene as we stand at the threshold of a new year.

At the time of the technological revolution, during the beginning of the twentieth century, when the world suddenly began exploding with innovative inventions, the Chofetz Chaim wrote in his sefer Sheim Olam that these new inventions serve to strengthen our emunah. Regarding the camera, he noted that it demonstrates that the Mishnah’s admonition that we should always be cognizant of Hashem’s “ayin ro’eh,” an eye that sees, is not merely an allegory. The development of the telephone similarly reinforces the reality of “ozen shoma’as,” an ear that hears.

The Chofetz Chaim taught us to look at the inventions of man and discover in them reminders of the wisdom and truth of the Torah.

If there is a technological invention that seems to symbolize our situation this week, perhaps it is the reset button.

The remarkable thing about a reset button is that it tells us that what happened until now does not necessarily determine what happens next. You can be working on a computer when it freezes, something goes wrong, everything stops working or a process becomes corrupted, and then, with the press of a button, the computer can be shut down and started again, and the problem is gone.

Rosh Hashanah is our Divine reset button.

We look back at the past year and see mistakes, failures, disappointments, and habits that we wish we could undo. We wonder how we can break patterns that have become deeply ingrained. We may feel that because we have been the same person for so long, we are destined to remain that way.

Rosh Hashanah comes and tells us that this is not true.

“Zeh hayom techilas ma’asecha.”

On this day, everything starts over again.

Rosh Hashanah is not merely the commemoration of the first day of creation thousands of years ago. It is an opportunity to experience creation anew, to recognize that Hashem is recreating the world today, and that He is giving each of us the opportunity to renew our own personal circumstances as well.

Rav Yisroel Salanter famously asked why Rosh Hashanah precedes Yom Kippur. Would it not make more sense, he reasoned, for us first to cleanse ourselves through teshuvah and then afterward be judged and celebrate Hashem’s dominion over the universe? Would it not bring greater glory to the King if His subjects, who gather to proclaim His sovereignty, were already purified of their sins and fully devoted to His will?

Perhaps the answer lies in understanding the essence of Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah tells us that there is no status quo.

Nothing is guaranteed to continue into the coming year simply because it existed during the previous one. There are no chazakos. We cannot assume that what was will necessarily be.

And that is both frightening and comforting.

It is frightening because we realize that we have no lease on the blessings we enjoyed during the past year. We cannot assume that good health, parnossah, nachas, simcha, peace, or any of the other gifts Hashem granted us will simply continue because they were ours yesterday.

But it is also enormously comforting.

Because if there are no chazakos for the good, there are also no chazakos for the bad.

The person who struggled this past year is not condemned to continue struggling. The person who failed does not have to remain a failure. The person who was distant can become close. The person who was weak can become strong. The person who made the same mistake again and again can choose, with Hashem’s help, to make a different choice this time.

We pour out our hearts on Rosh Hashanah precisely because we believe that nothing has to be the way it was. We daven for a good new year because the future has not yet been written.

“Hayom haras olam.”

Today is the day of creation.

Not only then, when the world was first created, but today. Now. At this very moment.

“Hayom yaamid bamishpot kol yetzurei olamim.”

Today, the forces of creation are once again present, as Hashem judges every one of His creations and determines the course of the coming year.

Rosh Hashanah marks a new beginning for every person.

And that new beginning is itself a source of comfort. It tells us that we are not locked into our present spiritual state. We are not prisoners of our past. We can press the reset button. We can choose a different path. We can become different people.

We can say that Rosh Hashanah comes before Yom Kippur because, before we can undertake the difficult work of teshuvah, we need to know that teshuvah is possible.

Before we can confront our shortcomings, we need to believe that they do not define us, and before we can begin the journey toward becoming whole again, we need to know that we can have a new start.

Remember when we were kids and we would have a race, and if we didn’t get off to a good start, we’d call for a do-over? Rosh Hashanah is that new start. It’s the do-over.

The person we were yesterday does not have to be the person we are tomorrow. What happened last year doesn’t have to happen next year.

When we hear the sounds of the shofar, we hear echoes of the sounds that were sounded at Har Sinai, when Klal Yisroel stood together and was transformed into the nation of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The shofar at Har Sinai heralded a new beginning. The world had reached the moment toward which it had been moving since creation. Klal Yisroel was about to receive the Torah and enter into its eternal covenant with Hashem.

At that moment, there was only hope and promise.

The shofar was also sounded at Yovel, the year of freedom and renewal. When we hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, we can hear within its sound an echo of Yovel, the great declaration of freedom that accompanied the return of the eved to his family and his home, and the return of each person to his ancestral property.

The sounds of the shofar sounded at Yovel proclaimed that the past does not have to imprison the future.

A person who had spent years as a slave could go home and begin again. A family that had lost its ancestral field could reclaim it. The world could be restored to its original order.

We, too, can begin again.

We can receive a fresh start, a new lease on life. We can return to the place where we belong.

This helps us understand the remarkable fusion of simcha and awe that characterizes Rosh Hashanah. It is the Yom Hadin, the awesome Day of Judgment, when every person stands before Hashem, and at the same time, we are commanded to celebrate the day as a Yom Tov.

Why the simcha? How can we be expected to be joyous when the judgment is upon us?

The answer is that the simcha is not despite the judgment. We are joyous because we think about what the judgment makes possible.

We are not simply being judged on the person we were. We are being given the opportunity to become the person we can be.

As far removed from Hashem as we may feel, as much as we may regret what has happened during the past year, and as dark as our situation may sometimes appear, the shofar comes to remind us that the story is not over. It’s just starting. There is a new beginning.

And there is teshuvah, the bridge between the person we have been and the person we can become. Rachmana litzlan, the plane crashed and we were thrown into a stormy sea. Teshuvah is the life vest provided to us, enabling us to hang on to life and return safely to shore.

The shofar calls us to reach for it.

We slip. We make mistakes. We commit aveiros. We fail to perform mitzvos as we should. When the shofar sounds, we look back and see the places where we fell short, the opportunities we missed, and the things we could have done better.

But one of the greatest chassodim that Hakadosh Boruch Hu does for us is that He gives us a way out of the rut.

He gives us Rosh Hashanah.

He gives us the ability to make a new beginning, to start from scratch, to press the reset button on our lives.

To be happy, even if we were sad.

To be upbeat, even if we were down.

To learn well, even if we didn’t last year.

To daven with kavanah, even if our tefillos have become rote.

To become better people, even if we have been disappointed in ourselves.

To scrub ourselves clean from aveiros, from the dirt and silliness in which we allowed ourselves to become entangled.

Rosh Hashanah gives us the ability to press reset on all the components that make up our lives and begin anew.

When we were children, we would sometimes search for the colon—the famous “two dots”—in a Gemara. We would be struggling through a difficult sugya, confronted by a question we could not understand, an argument that seemed beyond us, or a line of Gemara that had left us hopelessly confused. So, we looked ahead to find those two dots, which meant a new sugya and a chance for a new beginning.

Whatever had gone wrong in the previous sugya, we knew that here we could start fresh. Perhaps this sugya would be easier. Perhaps we would follow it better. Perhaps this time we would finally understand.

Rosh Hashanah is the two dots in the shvere sugya of life.

We pick ourselves up, we turn the page, and we begin again.

We are arriving at the end of another year, and some of us are staggering toward the finish line. The past year had its share of difficulties. When we express the annual hope of “tichleh shanah vekileloseha,” there is no shortage of tzaros and challenges to which we refer.

Yet, the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah (16b) teaches that a year that is “rosh,” impoverished, at its beginning will be rich at its close. Rashi explains that this means that Klal Yisroel approaches Rosh Hashanah like poor people, with our hands outstretched, recognizing that we have nothing of our own and that everything depends upon the generosity of Hashem.

Our tefillos are like the pleas of a poor person before a wealthy benefactor. We say in Selichos every morning, “Kedalim ucheroshim dofaknu delosecha.” We say to Hashem, “We stand here as poor people, as paupers, and we knock on Your door and have faith that You will open it and grant us a good year.”

Rav Yitzchok Blazer would say in the name of his rebbi, Rav Yisroel Salanter, that the yesod of Rosh Hashanah is to recognize that we have no guarantees and no chazakos, but we recognize that we are standing before the Source of all blessing.

We are like a poor man who was given an appointment with the most generous baal tzedakah in the world, and we are filled with hope that he will give us what we ask of him.

Rav Eizik Sher expands on this idea.

On Rosh Hashanah, everything in creation and every creature is judged individually. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah (1:2) teaches, “Kol bo’ei ha’olam ovrin lefonov kivnei maron.”

Think about what that means. The entire world is standing in judgment. Billions of human beings. Nations and countries. Kingdoms and governments. Each one is being judged. Who will have hunger and who will have plenty. Who will have drought and who will be flooded. Who will experience war and who will experience peace. Who will prosper and who will suffer.

And in the midst of this enormous gathering, there is only one nation that knows the secret, only a tiny percentage of the billions who stand before the Borei Olam who understand what it means to be zoche badin.

Only Am Yisroel knows the secret of standing before the King like an “oni bapesach,” like an impoverished person who knows that he has nothing to rely upon except the rachamim of the One who holds everything in His hands.

Our sense of frailty is our strength. We know that on our own, we are nothing and have nothing. We have no guarantees and no chazakos. But we know that we have Hashem, and when a person comes before the Source of all blessing with that recognition, anything is possible.

Thus, on Rosh Hashanah, the first two days of the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, we do not recite vidui or al cheit. The teshuvah of Rosh Hashanah begins somewhere deeper. It begins with how we think.

Because before we develop a new course of action, we need to develop a new perspective. Before we can change what we do, we have to change how we see ourselves, how we see our lives, and how we see our relationship with Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

The kol shofar awakens us to the realization that we are beginning again. On this day, we don’t look back. We look ahead. We look at everything that we can do right. We do teshuvah on our thought process. We hear the shofar call out to us, saying, “Kumt tzurik. You can do it. You can be great. You can do all the mitzvos properly. You can be a baal middos. You can be a kind and gentle tzaddik who performs the mitzvos perfectly. And you can have a great year.”

On Rosh Hashanah, the person who struggled with his davening can begin to approach tefillah differently. The person whose learning was inconsistent can open a Gemara with renewed determination. The person who has been carrying anger or disappointment can choose to let go, and the person who has become discouraged with himself can lift his head and remember that Hakadosh Boruch Hu has not become discouraged with him.

The call of the shofar is simple, without an elaborate melody or complicated words, because teshuvah begins with a call that comes from somewhere deep within a person and says, “I want to come back. I want to be better. I want to begin again.”

And we are not starting the journey alone. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is right there with us, holding our hand and helping us. We make the first move, but Hashem promises to help us complete the journey, to strengthen us when the road is difficult, and to enable us to accomplish what we could not accomplish on our own.

As we stand at the beginning of another year, whatever our situation is, we should not be intimidated. The shofar calls out to us, “Uru yesheinim mishinaschem.” Don’t fear the future. Awaken from your sleep, from your nightmares and fears. New opportunities, new accomplishments, new nachas, and new growth await you.

We know Who holds the year in His hands, and that knowledge allows us to approach the Yom Hadin not only with awe and trepidation, but also with the simcha that comes from knowing that we are being given another chance.

We will hear Hashem calling each one of us and saying, “Kumt tzurik. Come back. Begin again. It’s a do-over. You can do this. You can win. You can have a winning year.”

May we all be zoche to a great year, filled with yeshuos, refuos, hatzlocha, brocha, and geulah.

Kesivah vachasimah tovah.

Choose Life

What separates man from beast? Well, there are many things that separate man from beast, but one of them is the ability to make choices. We call that bechirah.

An animal is governed by its nature and instincts. When it is hungry, it seeks food. When it is tired, it seeks rest. When it senses danger, it seeks safety. A person, however, can experience an impulse and choose not to act upon it. He can be angry and decide to remain silent. He can be tired and nevertheless get up to daven. He can be tempted to sin and choose to walk away. He can be hurt by another person and decide that he will not allow the hurt to determine how he treats others. The ability to stop, consider, and choose a different course is one of the defining qualities of a human being.

Rabbeinu Yonah writes in Shaarei Teshuvah (3:17) that the loftiest spiritual values we are to strive to attain were imparted to us through mitzvos. He cites as an example the mitzvah in this week’s parsha of choosing good over bad. Every person is given the opportunity to choose what type of life he wants to lead and what he wants to do with his life. The Torah commands us, “Uvocharta bachaim — And you shall choose life.”

The Torah does not merely tell us that we possess the capacity to choose. It instructs us to use that capacity properly. The Torah tells us that when we stand at the crossroads and are confronted with alternatives, we must recognize that the choice is ours and that our choices have consequences. A good life does not simply happen. It is built through decisions, some large and consequential and many so small that we barely notice them at the time.

We tend to think of the important choices in life as the major decisions that require careful thought and planning: whom we will marry, where we will live, where we will send our children, and which path we will take in life. These decisions are certainly important, but there is another category of choices that quietly shapes us every day: how we speak to our spouse when we are tired, how we respond when someone has offended us, whether we use our time productively or allow it to slip away, whether we complain about what we lack or appreciate what we have, and whether we respond to a difficult situation with emunah or with frustration. These choices become the building blocks of our character.

A person becomes who he is through the choices he makes. Each time he chooses patience over anger, he strengthens his capacity for patience. Each time he chooses Torah over distraction, he becomes more attached to Torah. Each time he restrains himself from saying something hurtful, he develops greater control over his speech. Conversely, when a person repeatedly gives in to an impulse or temptation, he is also making a choice, and each time a person gives in to his yeitzer hora, it becomes that much more difficult to do the right thing the next time he has to make a choice.

There is tremendous power in the concept of bechirah. We are not merely choosing what to do in a particular moment. In a very real sense, we are choosing what kind of person we will become.

I met a delightful Yerushalmi Jew who told me about his Hungarian grandfather, a Jew from Toshnad who met the same fate as the overwhelming majority of Hungarian Jewry. He was taken to the concentration camps with his wife and children, and only he survived.

Years later, the grandson asked him, “Of all the awful experiences of the war, which was the worst?”

The grandfather’s answer was unexpected. He said that, for him, the worst moment came after the war had ended, when he had been freed from the camps.

He emerged alone, barely alive, with the people he had loved most in the world gone. Seeking some measure of solace, he made his way back to his hometown of Toshnad, hoping to see the home in which he had once lived with his family. But the Jews of the town were all gone, and a non-Jewish family had assumed ownership of his house.

He walked up to the door, simply wanting to take one final look at the place he had once called home. He had left that house without saying goodbye, never imagining that he would one day return to it alone.

Then he noticed that the family nameplate was still firmly fastened to the door.

Seeing his family’s name on the door gave him the courage to knock. The occupant was kind enough to allow him inside. He entered and looked around at the walls that had absorbed the laughter and songs of his murdered family. Everything seemed just as he remembered it. The dining room table, around which his family had gathered for festive meals and sung zemiros on countless Shabbosos and Yomim Tovim, was still there. Even the leichter on which his wife had lit the candles for so many years remained in its familiar place.

He stood there, overwhelmed by memories, when suddenly the man who had taken possession of the house told him that his time was up.

“Okay, Jew,” he commanded. “Your time is up. Get out.”

The grandfather walked out of the house and stood on the street. Decades later, he told his grandson that he had never felt so degraded and distraught in his entire life. All the pain and heartache he had endured seemed to converge in that one moment. He had survived the war, but now he was standing outside the home that had once belonged to him, looking at a life that no longer existed.

And then, standing there at the gutter, he realized something.

He had a choice.

He could allow the anguish to pull him down and give it all up or he could summon whatever strength remained within him and rise above what had happened to him.

He chose to rise.

He made his way to Yerushalayim, remarried, built a new home, and was blessed with a new family. In time, that family grew to include children and 150 grandchildren.

Think about the magnitude of that choice. He could not change what had happened. He could not bring back his wife and children. He could not restore the Jewish community of Toshnad or reclaim the years that had been stolen from him. None of those things were within his power. But there was one thing he could determine, and that was whether the tragedy would be the end of his story or whether he would pick himself up and start again.

He followed the posuk of “uvocharta bachaim” and chose life.

That decision gave him the strength to move forward. It enabled him to rebuild his life, to establish another Jewish home, and to create a future that would eventually include generations of descendants. The tragedy remained part of his story, but it did not become the entirety of his story.

That is the power of bechirah.

Thankfully, we are not generally confronted with choices remotely resembling the one that lonely survivor had to make. Our challenges are usually much smaller and our decisions far less dramatic. Yet, the principle is the same. We may not always be able to choose what happens to us, but we can choose what we will do with what happens to us.

A person may be disappointed, but he can choose whether to become embittered or to strengthen his emunah. He may experience failure, but he can choose whether to view it as proof that he cannot succeed or as an opportunity to learn and try again. He may encounter a difficult period in his life, but he can choose whether to spend his days asking, “Why me?” or to ask, “What does Hashem want from me now?”

This does not mean that pain is not real or that difficult experiences should be dismissed with simplistic answers. The Toshnad survivor knew pain in a way that few of us can comprehend, yet he refused to surrender his future to his suffering.

The Rambam makes this point especially clear in Hilchos Teshuvah (5), where, in the midst of his discussion of teshuvah, he stops to establish one of the fundamental principles of bechirah: Every person has the ability to choose whether to follow the good path and become a tzaddik or to follow the bad path and become a rosha. Man is unique in creation in possessing this ability to act according to his own will and to determine whether he will be good or bad. Nothing is predetermined. Each person has the ability to decide what he wants to become and how he wants to live his life. As the Rambam writes, a person can be as righteous as Moshe Rabbeinu or as wicked as Yerovom.

This is the choice that Moshe Rabbeinu placed before Klal Yisroel in Parshas Re’eh (Devorim 11:26-28): “Re’eh, see, I am placing before you today two paths, two ways in which you can live your life, es habrocha, the path of blessing, asher tishmeun, if you listen to and observe the Torah, and es haklolah, the path of curse, if you choose not to follow the Torah.”

And this is the choice Moshe presents to the Jewish people in this week’s parsha as well. He told the Jewish people (Devorim 30:15-19), “Re’eh nosati lifonecha es hachaim v’es hatov, v’es hamoves, v’es hora... Hachaim vehamoves nosati lifonecha habrocha v’haklolah uvocharta bachaim lema’an tichye atah v’zarecha, See, I have set before you life and good, and death and evil. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. And you shall choose life so that you and your children shall live.”

The choice is placed before us. Which path we take is up to us.

The nisayon of bechirah is constantly before us. It is not reserved for the rare dramatic moment when a person is forced to make a life-altering decision. It is present in the ordinary moments of every day: Do we follow the yeitzer tov or do we allow the yeitzer hora to convince us and guide us?

The lonely survivor standing outside his former home in Toshnad could not have known what his choice would eventually produce. He could not have envisioned a new home in Yerushalayim, a new family, children, grandchildren, and 150 descendants. He could only choose what to do with the next moment.

He chose life.

And that is the choice Hashem places before each of us as well.

Uvocharta bachaim. Hashem tells us that we should always choose the option that grants us life.

This past Sunday, the 17^th of Elul, the Rajchenbach family dedicated the new Kollel Zichron Eliyohu building in Chicago, marking yet another milestone in the remarkable growth of the Torah community in that Midwestern bastion of Yiddishkeit. It was a day of celebration, a day on which the fruits of decades of mesirus nefesh and dedication to Torah were made visible in bricks, mortar, and a beautiful new building.

But there was another facet to that dedication that surely would have been on the mind of the patriarch of the Rajchenbach family, the beloved Reb Yankel, had he merited to be there.

The 17^th of Elul is a date that carries a very different memory for the Jewish people. Eighty-seven years ago, in September 1939, Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany, and the inferno that would engulf European Jewry had begun. Within days, the Second World War had spread across Europe, and the destruction of Polish Jewry and, ultimately, the great communities of Eastern Europe was underway. The Jews of Poland, who had built some of the greatest Torah communities the world had ever known, were decimated. Families were torn apart, communities were erased, and an entire world was destroyed. Millions were murdered, many in the concentration camps and ghettos, while those who survived often emerged with little more than their lives. Their homes were gone, their possessions were gone, their families and friends were gone, and the world they had known had disappeared.

Some survivors were so broken that they lost their faith or their connection to Yiddishkeit. Others simply lost the will to live. But there were also those who made a different choice. They chose to live. They chose to cling to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. They chose to rebuild Jewish homes, to raise children, and to recreate, as best they could, the world that had been destroyed.

One of those people was Yitzchok Rajchenbach of Lodz, Poland.

A simple Yid, he lost his wife and children in the war, yet he made the choice to begin again. He married a woman who had lost her husband during the war, and together they settled in Lodz. There they had a son whom they named Yaakov Eliezer.

Eventually, the antisemitism and difficult conditions in postwar Poland became too much and they made another choice: to leave. They eventually settled in Omaha, Nebraska.

Their son Yankel was then eleven years old. He had been sent to public school, but when he became bar mitzvah, his father turned to his only son and told him, in his Poilishe Yiddish, “Du kenst ir nisht bleiben ah Yid. Mir darfen dich shiken in yeshiva. You won’t remain a Yid if you stay here. We have to send you to yeshiva.”

Yitzchok Rajchenbach made his choice. He took his young son to the bus station and put him on a bus for the thirty-four-hour journey to New York City, where the boy would enter yeshiva.

A refugee who had already lost almost everything was making another sacrifice because he understood that what mattered most was that his son have a life of chaim.

That boy grew up to become one of the spiritual fathers of the Chicago Torah community. The city that today boasts a magnificent new Kollel Zichron Eliyohu building owes a portion of its Torah landscape to the choice made by a Polish refugee who understood that if his son was to remain a Yid, he needed to give him a Torah education.

Hitler sought to destroy the Jewish future. Yitzchok Rajchenbach chose to rebuild it.

And so there is something deeply moving about the fact that on the 17^th of Elul, a date forever associated with the beginning of the destruction of the Jewish world of Poland, a new Torah building was being dedicated in Chicago by children and grandchildren of Lodzer Yidden who were mekayeim the posuk of uvocharta bachaim lema’an tichye atah v’zarecha.

Interestingly, my grandfather, Rav Eliezer Levin, the late rov of Detroit, made a similar choice. He told me that when he arrived in Detroit in 1939 to serve as a rov, there were already thirty-three other rabbonim in the city, and some of them were not pleased about the arrival of another rov. “Who needs another rov here?” they wondered, particularly another greener, a newcomer who had recently arrived from Lithuania.

Years later, Rav Levin told me, “Uber fun zei alleh iz gornit gebliben. But there is nothing left of all those rabbonim.”

He was not criticizing them. He was making a point about a difficult decision that he made.

“Those rabbonim did not have the strength to send their sons away to yeshiva,” he explained. “They kept their sons at home. But I sent my only son to yeshiva.”

It was an extraordinarily difficult choice. Rav Levin was a refugee, trying to establish a life and a rabbinic career in a new country. He had only one son, and sending him away was hard. We certainly cannot judge those who made a different calculation under circumstances that were extraordinarily difficult.

But Rav Levin made his choice.

He followed the posuk of “uvocharta bachaim lema’an tichye atah v’zarecha,” and chose life for his son.

And that son was Rav Avrohom Chaim Levin.

Rav Avrohom Chaim went on to found the Telzer Yeshiva in Chicago, which became a pillar of Torah in the city. The yeshiva helped establish the Torah infrastructure and leadership that built the Chicago Torah community and made possible the establishment and expansion of Kollel Zichron Eliyohu.

And so the chain continues.

We often think that our choices affect only ourselves. We make a decision and imagine that its consequences end with us. But that is rarely true. A parent’s choices affect his children. A mechanech’s choices affect his talmidim. A community’s choices affect the generations that follow. One person’s decision to sacrifice for Torah can become the foundation upon which thousands of others eventually build.

Choices lead to life, not only for the person making the choice, but for his children, his grandchildren, his community, and, ultimately, for the entire world that benefits from another generation of Torah.

Hopefully, we will never be confronted with a choice as monumental as the one that stood before that lonely survivor on the streets of Toshnad. Most parents will never face the decision that confronted Yitzchok Rajchenbach when he placed his young son on a bus and sent him thousands of miles away to yeshiva. We will, thankfully, not have to rebuild our lives from the ashes of the Holocaust, nor will we have to make decisions under circumstances in which the future of our Yiddishkeit seems to hang in the balance.

But we should not conclude that bechirah is less relevant to us. Our lives are filled with choices, but they are simpler. In every instance, in every choice, the Torah tells us, “Uvocharta bachaim.” Choose life. Choose the right path, the path of goodness.

A person wakes up in the morning and is faced with a choice about how he will begin his day. He can approach it with gratitude or with complaints, with zerizus or with sluggishness. During the day, he will encounter people who test his patience and situations that do not proceed as he would like. He will have opportunities to speak and opportunities to remain silent, opportunities to be helpful and opportunities to walk away, opportunities to use his time well and opportunities to allow it to disappear. He will encounter temptations that nobody else sees and nisyonos that perhaps nobody will ever know about. Each time, he is being asked, in one form or another, to choose.

And because these choices are so ordinary, we sometimes fail to appreciate their significance. But greatness is built when a person chooses what is right over what is convenient, what is meaningful over what is immediately pleasurable, and what will bring him closer to Hashem over what merely feels good for the moment.

The decision to spend another few minutes learning instead of reaching for the phone may not seem like a historic event. Choosing not to answer an insult may not make the newspapers. Not allowing our taavos to control us, choosing to help a poor Yid from Eretz Yisroel or from around the corner — all these things mean choosing life.

Hashem does not want us to drift through life. He wants us to recognize that we have been given the ability to direct ourselves. We are not simply products of our circumstances, our personalities, or our inclinations. We possess the ability to choose what we will do with them.

There is a path called chaim, and we possess the ability to choose that path.

The world around us constantly encourages us to make choices based on what is easiest, fastest, and most enjoyable. The Torah asks us to consider something deeper: What is true? What is right? What does Hashem want from me? What kind of person will this decision make me? Is this the path of brocha or the path of klolah? Will this action bring me closer to being like Moshe or like Yerovom?

The most encouraging aspect of bechirah is that we are never trapped by yesterday’s choices. As long as we are alive, we can choose again. That is the gift of teshuvah.

Hakadosh Boruch Hu, in His compassion, has provided us with teshuvah, giving us the opportunity to reverse course and begin again. We are not condemned to remain where our previous choices have brought us. We can undo our mistakes and return to where we belong.

On Rosh Hashanah, we are judged according to the choices we made throughout the past. Yet, out of His deep and enduring love for us, Hashem gives us the opportunity to change that judgment.

“Lo nifleis hee mimcha velo rechokah hee” (Devorim 30:11). In this week’s parsha, the Torah tells us that teshuvah is within everyone’s reach. When we recognize that we have made bad choices and wish to rectify them, Hashem reaches out to us. He invites us to come closer and helps us repair what has been damaged.

Whether we earn the good life we all seek is ultimately up to us. It requires us to recognize the truth contained in the words of the pesukim, in the teachings of Chazal, in the words of the Rambam, and in the mussar seforim we should be reviewing during these days leading up to the Yomim Noraim.

The more we align our lives with the path He has laid out for us, the more we merit the brachos and goodness for which we yearn.

Let us all use the gift of bechirah wisely and, in the instances when we haven’t, merit to do teshuvah, so that together with all of Klal Yisroel, we will be inscribed and sealed for a kesivah vachasimah tovah, a year of brocha, yeshuah, refuah, parnossah, nachas, and the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu bekarov.