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.

What Happens Now?

Some things change, while other things remain remarkably the same. What appears to us to be new and unprecedented has often happened before. History has a way of repeating itself, and the Jewish people have learned, sometimes painfully, that the circumstances may change, the personalities may change, and the challenges may take on new forms, but the underlying story is often familiar.

Today, there is understandably deep concern about the situation in Eretz Yisroel. Many are watching the political developments with trepidation, wondering what the future will bring if the polls predicting the political demise of Binyomin Netanyahu prove accurate. There is a fear that the next government will be even less sympathetic, and perhaps openly hostile, to the Torah community and the values that have sustained Klal Yisroel throughout the generations.

The concern is real. The uncertainty is real. But before allowing ourselves to become overwhelmed by the headlines and the predictions, it is worth taking a step back and looking at the larger picture. We have been here before, not necessarily with the same names, the same parties, or the same political circumstances, but with the same fundamental question of what happens when the forces of government turn against the Torah world.

The answer, as Jewish history has taught us repeatedly, is not found merely in political calculations. Governments rise and fall. Coalitions are formed and dissolved. Leaders who seem invincible suddenly disappear from the political stage and those who appear destined for obscurity rise to prominence. But the Torah remains, and so does the eternal commitment of Klal Yisroel to it.

That does not mean that we should ignore the danger or minimize the challenges confronting the Torah community. On the contrary, we must understand them clearly. But we should remember that the Jewish people have survived far more uncertain times and that what looks like an entirely new chapter may simply be another variation of an old story.

We are obligated to remember that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is in charge. Not the polls. Not the politicians. Not the political parties. Not the pundits who confidently predict what tomorrow will bring. The Ribbono Shel Olam runs the world, and every development, even those that appear frightening or incomprehensible to us, takes place under His Hashgocha Protis.

We have a responsibility to be vigilant, to advocate for the Torah community, and to do everything within our ability to protect the interests of Torah and Yiddishkeit. But alongside that hishtadlus is the recognition that the outcome is ultimately not in human hands.

Our obligation is to maintain our emunah and bitachon even when we cannot see how things will work out. It is easy to have bitachon when everything appears to be going our way. The test comes when the polls are ominous, when political alliances seem threatening, and when the future seems uncertain. At those moments, we are reminded that the world does not run according to polls and political predictions. It runs according to the will of Hakadosh Boruch Hu.

And perhaps that is precisely the perspective we need now. We should be concerned, but not frightened; we should be vigilant, but not despairing; we should engage in hishtadlus, but remember Who is directing the outcome.

There is a remarkable story related in the sefer Amudo Shel Olam, a biography of Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, that brings this perspective into sharp focus.

During a particularly bitter Israeli election campaign, the leftist parties had made no secret of their intentions. Among their campaign promises was the drafting of yeshiva bochurim into the army. When the election results came in and those parties emerged victorious, there was apprehension in the religious community. The people who had openly spoken about imposing difficult and potentially devastating decrees on the Torah community were now in a position to carry out their plans.

One of Rav Elyashiv’s talmidim approached him and asked what would happen. The people who hated religion had won. They were about to assume power and would seemingly have the ability to implement everything they had promised during the campaign.

Rav Elyashiv’s response was astonishing in its simplicity.

He told him that thinking about what would happen was bittul Torah.

At first glance, the response is difficult to understand. How could a person be expected not to think about something that potentially threatened the entire Torah community? Surely, it was important to understand the danger and prepare for what might come.

But Rav Elyashiv was teaching his talmid a fundamental yesod in emunah and bitachon. He was telling his questioner that there is a difference between hishtadlus and worrying. There is a difference between doing what must be done as opposed to spending hours imagining everything that might go wrong. A person is obligated to act when action is called for, but once the necessary hishtadlus has been made, there is no purpose in thinking about frightening possibilities.

We do what we can do and the rest is up to Hashem. To discuss it further, to pontificate and fret, and to play out different scenarios in our minds or in discussions with our friends is simply a waste of time. We would be better off spending that time studying Torah.

The question, “What will happen now?” contains within it an assumption that we know what is going to happen. We see a government forming, we see politicians making promises, we read the polls, and we begin constructing a picture of the future. But a Yid knows that the picture we see is not the whole picture.

Politicians can make plans, parties can form coalitions, and governments can announce their intentions, but nothing can happen that Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not allow. What appears to us to be a frightening political development may ultimately lead to an outcome we could never have imagined. And what appears to us to be a setback may contain within it the seeds of a yeshuah.

This is what Rav Elyashiv was reminding his talmid. Don’t spend your time trying to figure out what tomorrow will look like. Your job is to learn Torah, to daven, to do the hishtadlus that is required of you, and to leave the future to the Ribbono Shel Olam.

That message is as relevant today as it was then. In the matter of what is going on here and in Eretz Yisroel, we must always remember that the Aibishter runs the world. We have our tasks, we have our job, we have the reason He placed us in this world, and we should not get sidetracked from our missions.

We must daven. We must strengthen our own study of Torah. That is what we are here for. We do what we can, but we must never allow our concern over what people might do to consume the time and strength that belong to Torah and avodas Hashem.

Rav Elyashiv’s response was a lesson for generations: Do not waste today worrying about a tomorrow that belongs to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Have faith that you are in good hands and that everything will work out the way Hashem wants it to.

This message was brought home to me in a powerful way by a story Rav Shimon Galei related during his trip to Mexico on Sunday on behalf of Keren Olam HaTorah to raise funds necessary to help support Israeli yeshivos and yungeleit.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, when the Torah world had been decimated and much of the Torah that had existed in Europe had been lost, many wondered how, and if, it could ever be rebuilt. Generations of talmidei chachomim had been wiped out, yeshivos had been destroyed, and entire communities had disappeared. The devastation was so overwhelming that people feared that the Torah world would not be able to recover.

The Ponovezher Rov, Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, viewed it differently. He was not worried about whether the Torah world would continue. Hashem promised that Torah would never be forgotten, and a promise from Hashem does not depend upon circumstances.

There was only one question that concerned him: Who would have the zechus to be part of it?

That is a very different way of looking at the present and the future. We are not asked to figure out whether Torah will survive. We are not required to calculate the obstacles or predict how every challenge will unfold. Hashem has already taken care of that.

The calculation we need to make is a much more personal one: Will we be among those who help make it happen? Will we have the zechus to strengthen Torah, to support lomdei Torah, to sustain yeshivos, to give what we can give, and to do what we can do?

We do what is within our power and leave the rest to Hashem. To continue discussing it, pontificating about it, fretting over possible scenarios, and playing out endless versions of what might happen is a waste of time that could be far better spent learning Torah and doing our part to strengthen the Torah world.

The Ponovezher Rov understood that the future of Torah was never in doubt. The only question was who would merit to have a share in it. That question remains ours.

And this is true not only regarding Eretz Yisroel. It is true regarding us here in America, regarding the challenges facing our communities, and certainly regarding the personal challenges that every individual faces.

Nobody escapes having a pekel. Every person has things that don’t go as planned, disappointments that he didn’t anticipate, challenges he would rather not have to deal with, and situations that seem to have no easy solution. Some pekels are heavier than others, but nobody walks through life without one.

The question is not whether we will have a pekel. The question is how we carry it.

Will we allow it to consume us, to fill our minds with endless calculations and what-ifs, and to make us bitter and anxious? Or will we recognize that this, too, is part of the derech that Hashem has chosen for us, do what we can, and then leave the rest in His hands?

The way we relate to our pekel says something profound about who we are. It reveals how much we trust in Hashem, how we respond when life does not conform to our plans, and whether we are able to continue moving forward even when the road takes an unexpected turn.

We cannot choose the pekel we are given, but we can choose how we carry it. And sometimes, the very pekel that we wish we could put down becomes the vehicle through which we grow, become stronger, and discover a deeper emunah in the One Who placed it upon our shoulders.

This week’s parsha, Ki Savo, is fundamentally about emunah and bitachon, about recognizing the Yad Hashem in every aspect of our lives.

The parsha opens with the mitzvah of bikkurim. After a farmer has worked the land and finally sees the fruits of his labor, he brings the first fruits to Yerushalayim. Standing before the mizbei’ach, he recites the pesukim recounting the tzaros of Yaakov Avinu and the suffering of our forefathers in Mitzrayim. He describes how Hakadosh Boruch Hu heard their cries, took them out of Mitzrayim, and brought them to Eretz Yisroel.

He presents the fruits of his labor to the kohein. Then comes the culmination of the mitzvah. The posuk says, “Vesomachta bechol hatov asher nosan lecha Hashem — And you shall rejoice with all the good that Hashem has given you.”

The Torah is teaching us the secret of simcha. Happiness does not come simply from having what we want. It comes from recognizing how we got it and Who gave it to us.

When a person understands that the ultimate determinant of his success is Hakadosh Boruch Hu, he can be fulfilled even when life does not look exactly as he had imagined. And when he recognizes that the One Who created the world created him, knows what is best for him, and has a plan for everything that happens, he can begin to view even difficult circumstances through a different lens.

A person may find himself in a situation he desperately wishes were different. He may have a problem he cannot solve, a disappointment he cannot undo, a pekel he wishes he never had to carry. He has a choice. He can bemoan his fate, wonder why this happened to him, and become consumed by thoughts of how things should have been, or he can remind himself that he is not where he is by accident. Hashem placed him there.

That does not mean that he should be passive. He should do everything within his ability to improve the situation. He should daven, seek advice, make his hishtadlus, and do whatever a responsible person is supposed to do. But once he has done what he can, he should accept it and leave the outcome to Hashem.

He can say to himself, “I am here because Hashem wants me here. There is a reason for this, even if I don’t understand it. My job is to do what I can and wait patiently for Hashem to decide when it is time for me to leave this place.”

He can recognize that Hashem has placed him in this situation, expecting him to strengthen himself, confront the challenge, and do whatever he can to deal with it, rather than allowing himself to become broken and sink into yiush.

That is bitachon. And that is also the path to simcha.

The person who knows that everything is from Hashem does not need everything to be perfect or to change before he can find peace. He can find peace in knowing that his circumstances are being directed by the One Who knows where he needs to be and what he needs to become.

Three times a day, we recite the posuk, “Posei’ach es yodecha umasbia lechol chai ratzon.” At first glance, the posuk seems to be saying that Hashem fulfills the desire of every living creature. But we know that this is not how life appears to work. People have desires that are not fulfilled. They daven for things that do not happen and long for realities that never materialize.

The Tzlach (Brachos 4b) offers a profound explanation. “Posei’ach es yodecha umasbia lechol chai ratzon” does not mean that Hashem gives every person everything he wants. Rather, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives each person the ability to be satisfied with what he has and to recognize that what Hashem has given him is what is best for him.

That is a much deeper understanding of ratzon. A person can spend his life wishing for what he does not have, or he can develop the understanding that what he has is what Hashem has determined he needs.

Yaakov Avinu lived with this awareness. He was forced by his brother into exile, where he was tormented by Lovon and endured years of deception and hardship. Later, he was forced to descend to Mitzrayim. He certainly did not want these things to happen. Yet, he understood that they were not random misfortunes. They were part of the plan Hashem had prepared for him and for Klal Yisroel.

Yaakov went down to Mitzrayim with relatively little. Yet, that descent became the beginning of the transformation of his family into a great nation. What appeared at first to be another painful turn in his life was actually the beginning of the fulfillment of the promise Hashem had made.

This is the perspective that allows a person to persevere when he finds himself in a place he never expected to be. He may not understand why he is there. He may desperately wish that his circumstances were different. But he knows that he has not arrived there by accident. Hashem has placed him there for a reason, and until Hashem decides that the time has come for him to move on, his responsibility is to strengthen himself, do what he can, and trust that there is a purpose in what he cannot understand.

The mitzvah of bikkurim trains a person to develop this perspective. A farmer can look at the fruit in his hands and think only about the work it took to produce it — the planting, the waiting, the uncertainty, the labor, and the many things that could have gone wrong. Or he can stop and recognize how much he has to be thankful for.

He remembers planting the tree without knowing whether it would take root. He remembers waiting through the seasons without knowing whether the tree would produce fruit. He remembers all the possibilities for failure. And now he is standing in Yerushalayim with the fruit in his hands.

The bikkurim compel him to look at what he has and to recognize and proclaim: This came from Hashem.

That is the beginning of simcha. Not the belief that everything will always turn out exactly as we would like, but the recognition that whatever happens is being directed by Hakadosh Boruch Hu and that what He gives us is ultimately for our good.

Too often, we see the burden and forget the blessing. We complain about the struggle to make a living and forget to thank Hashem that we have a job. We focus on the difficulties of our work and not on the fact that we have an income. We see the labor required to cultivate the orchard and forget the miracle of having an orchard that produces fruit.

Bikkurim teaches us to stop and recognize the good.

And perhaps that is why the Torah describes the culmination of the mitzvah with the words, “Vesomachta bechol hatov asher nosan lecha Hashem Elokecha.” The goal is not merely to acknowledge that Hashem gave us something. The goal is to rejoice in what Hashem gave us.

A person who understands that his life is being guided by Hashem can face even a difficult pekel without being broken. He can continue to make his hishtadlus, continue to daven, continue to learn, continue to serve Hashem, and continue to believe that the situation in which he finds himself is not the end of the story.

He doesn’t have to understand everything in order to have bitachon. He has to know Who is running the world.

This is the lesson we need to take with us from Ki Savo.

We spend so much time wondering what will happen. What will happen to Eretz Yisroel? What will happen to the Torah world? What will happen to our communities? What will happen to our families? What will happen to our finances? And what will happen to us?

There is nothing wrong with making hishtadlus. We have to be responsible, we have to plan, we have to take precautions, and we have to do what we can to improve the situations in which we find ourselves. But once we have done what we can, we have to remember that the future is not in our hands.

That was the great lesson of the Ponovezher Rov. After the destruction of European Jewry, he wasn’t worried about whether Torah would survive. Hashem had promised that it would. His question was only who would have the zechus to be part of its rebuilding.

The same is true in our own lives.

We don’t know how every nisayon we experience will end. We don’t know how every communal challenge will be resolved. We don’t know what twists and turns await us. But we do know that none of it is happening outside the Yad Hashem.

Our job is not to solve the future. Our job is to live properly in the present.

To learn Torah when we can. To daven with kavanah. To do our hishtadlus. To help another Yid. To support Torah. To strengthen our families. To carry our pekelach with dignity and emunah, and never to despair.

The world currently looks very frightening. Our personal circumstances can sometimes appear overwhelming. There may be times when we cannot see a way forward. But we have been here before. Klal Yisroel has stood in places that seemed to offer no future, and from those very places Hashem brought about salvation and growth.

The farmer bringing his bikkurim to Yerushalayim understood that. He did not bring only the fruit. He brought with it the story of the uncertainty, the waiting, the hard work, and the things that could have gone wrong. And then he stood before Hashem and declared that he was thankful for what he had been given.

That is emunah. That is bitachon. And that is the source of genuine simcha.

May we all be written and sealed for a kesivah vachasimah tovah.

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.