I am a product of the yeshiva world. I love it deeply, and I’m also not afraid to criticize it. There are things we could do better, things we communicate poorly, people we fail to reach, and parts of the beauty and breadth of Torah that can become obscured beneath layers of habit, culture and institutional inertia.

But I have never experienced those failures as a reason to look for something to replace the world that formed me.

Recently, I remembered a remarkable passage from Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch that perhaps explains why.

In 1828, Hirsch was twenty years old and traveling from Darmstadt to Mannheim, where he would study under Rav Yaakov Ettlinger. In a letter written on August 10 of that year, he described a kind of waking vision he experienced along the way.

The following is my modern English rendering (with the help of ChatGPT), based on historian Mordechai Breuer’s Hebrew translation of a transcript of Hirsch’s original German letter.

Rav Hirsch’s Vision

I was traveling from Darmstadt along the magnificent Bergstrasse, through the beautiful landscape of the Rhine valley. Forests stretched out on one side, hills on the other, covered with vineyards and crops.

My heart was light, and I took joy in the beauty around me.

But suddenly I sighed, and an inner voice began speaking to me:

“Look at nature! Nothing in it is idle. Every plant and every living thing moves toward the purpose for which its Creator made it. Only man has been given the terrible privilege of neglecting his duty. Only man can betray the Divine imprint placed within him.

“And what will become of you, Samson? How will you make yourself worthy of the lofty goal toward which you aspire as you begin this new stage of your life?

“You have left the soil of your birthplace, where you already neglected more than one of your obligations. Now you have been uprooted from that soil and stand on your own, exposed to every passing wind.

“How will you remain faithful to your mission? How will you keep from straying from the narrow path of truth? Where will you find a sturdy support - something strong enough to hold up your fragile stem when the storm comes?”

I became increasingly depressed. Lost in these thoughts, I sank into a kind of waking dream.

Suddenly, someone seemed to tap me on the shoulder.

I turned around.

Before me stood an old man. There was dignity and seriousness in his face, but his blue eyes looked at me with warmth and kindness.

“Why are you so troubled?” he asked gently.

I told him what was weighing on me.

“For God’s sake!” he exclaimed. “I would never have expected someone from your family - and certainly not you, my dear Samson - to give in to despair like this.

“Many of your ancestors cast a light that can illuminate your road as well. The support that carried them can support you too. Look around at the people of your generation and choose as your model the person who has remained most faithful to his mission.”

I sighed.

“Is their situation really any better than mine? And how am I supposed to recognize them and know whom to choose?”

“Come,” said the old man. “Let us see.”

Together we rose to the top of a hill.

“Look at how they live,” he said.

I looked.

There was a group of old men resting together. They seemed almost asleep. In front of each of them lay a walking stick.

The sticks were thick and sturdy. A person could place his weight upon them. They could support him and guide him along the road.

But the sticks lay unused.

They were covered with the dust of many generations, so thickly that one could barely recognize what they were.

“Now look over there,” the old man continued.

I saw a group of lightheaded young people dancing giddily in a circle.

Each of them also carried a stick.

But their sticks were different.

They were thin, light rods - little more than playthings.

When these young people had first left their homes, the old men had given each of them one of their own sturdy staffs.

But the young people had rejected them.

The staffs were covered with the dust of generations. They seemed heavy and cumbersome, obstacles to the young people’s desire to run quickly and freely.

“Come,” they had said to one another. “Let’s get rid of all this useless dust and weight!”

And so they threw away the sturdy staffs.

Now look at them. See how lightly they dance with their new sticks!

Their sticks may be beautiful, but what good are they?

When these young people came to the first obstacle in the road and tried to lean on their sticks, the flimsy things broke in their hands and they stumbled and fell.

“Do you see?” the old man continued. “They are the majority.”

“But look more carefully, there is a third group.”

I looked again.

I saw young people walking forward with firm steps, their sticks in their hands. Their faces were radiant, there was joy in their hearts. They moved toward their lofty purpose calmly and confidently, without fear.

They too had been given the old staffs.

But when they received them covered in dust, they did not throw them away. Instead, they carefully removed the dust. Layer by layer, they cleaned the staffs until the old luster emerged again.

Now they took pride in them, and they possessed something that could truly support them through life.

The old man turned to me.

“Now do you understand what this staff is, my Samson? Have you made your choice?”

“My choice is firm,” I replied. “But I still don’t really understand what the staff itself is.”

I blushed as I said it.

“Then examine it for yourself,” he said.

He handed me one of the staffs. I took hold of it, my heart pounding.

And suddenly, there in my hands, the staff opened, It had become a Sefer Torah.

“Take it,” the old man said. “It will guide you throughout your life.

“In the midst of life itself, Torah will reveal its power to you, and if you ever meet someone who wishes to take the same step you are taking, offer him this support as well.”

And there the dream ended.

I awoke and once again took in the magnificent landscape around me. My companions began singing cheerful songs. I joined them, looking toward the future once again with joy in my heart.

I am still filled with hope.

If you ask why I have written all this to you, it is because I felt the need to pour out what was in my heart.

Here, at least, there is someone who understands me.

Elsewhere, they think very differently, so please accept these words as a page from the diary of my inner life.

I find his story incredibly moving, and over time I find that it increasingly describes how I see my mission.

I identify with the third group.

I don’t believe the dust is sacred, and there’s plenty of dust.

There are things within the yeshiva world that have become stale. There are things we do because we have always done them. There are parts of Torah that we communicate poorly and parts we sometimes barely communicate at all. There are people who pass through our institutions without ever being shown the full beauty and breadth of what they have inherited.

I love the world I grew up in, and because of that I insist: if there is dust on the stick, clean it off.

But there is an enormous difference between removing the dust from a thick stick and replacing it with a thin one.

And equally true:

You can remove the dust from a thick stick but you cannot polish a thin stick until it becomes thick.

I love ideas. I love encountering people who see the world differently than I do. I have learned from psychology, philosophy, literature, technology, and from people whose assumptions about life are radically different from mine. I find enormous richness in human individuality, inner life, intellectual openness and the complexity of lived experience.

Occasionally, people who have traveled further away from the yeshiva world than I have seem surprised by this.

They discover some of those things elsewhere and understandably treasure them. And when they encounter someone who remains firmly rooted in the yeshiva world while appreciating many of the same things, the temptation is to see him as an exception.

People sometimes see me as an anomaly. I’m an unusually open-minded product of a relatively closed world.

I sometimes want to ask them: Where do you think I got these things?

I don’t mean that every idea I have ever encountered was taught to me in yeshiva. Obviously not. I mean something deeper.

I don’t experience my curiosity, my appreciation for complexity, or my desire to encounter the fullness of the human experience as things I acquired by escaping the world that formed me. They are products of it.

And I don’t mean that abstractly.

I can tell you where I got them.

I got the insistence on distinctions from the chakiros of Rav Chaim, and the humility of discovering, again and again, that my brilliant answer to R’ Akiva Eiger simply didn’t work. I got the rigor - and the thrill - of having to understand my chavrusa well enough to best him.

And I got the experience of watching people far greater than me submit their own formidable intellects to something larger than themselves.

From the passion of Rav Elya Svei and his clarion cry, the starting point of everything: “Vos vil der Ribbono Shel Olam fun unz?”

To the humanity and self-effacement of Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky: Take what you do seriously. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

From the communal responsibility of Ner Yisroel.

To the refreshing clarity and sechel hayashar of Rav Tzvi Berkowitz, and even a the touch of the maverick of Rav Yaakov Weinberg.

And to the Gadlus HaAdam of Slabodka that permeated it all.

From the humor, respect for language, and genuine reverence for all people embodied by Rav Emanuel Feldman.

To the self-sacrificing fealty to truth of his brother, Rav Aharon Feldman.

And yes, even Lakewood.

It taught me the immersion and singular focus of R’ Aharon, and R’ Shneur Kotler’s insight that sometimes the most powerful things in the world are the things we do for no other reason at all.

Torah lishmah.

And what about music and art? How did I find those in the black and white of the yeshiva?

I learned those things too. Not primarily through their most garish external expressions, but closer to their essence.

I learned the pure power of musical expression in the smooth nusach of Rav Chanina Nadoff- and that moving the soul doesn’t require moving the body.

I learned its opposite expression too: the inexhaustible, almost drunken exuberance for Torah expressed in the dancing of Rabbi Chaim Gibber- an intoxication that required no artificial stimulant.

Art I learned from the vivid abstract architecture Rav Shimon Shkop used to give structure and form to something as intangible as a kinyan.

And on the sunny walks through Lower Merion Park where we bochurim would go to talk in learning, I learned that the simplest things in nature contain more beauty than anything man-made - and that all of that extraordinary physical beauty was itself only the wrapping of the brilliance of God Himself.

Philosophy? Social science? We had that in abundance.

From the brilliant insight into human nature of Michtav MeEliyahu.

To the world-expansive Torah of the Gra and Ramchal.

And of course Torah is meant to be lived and applied. That lesson was readily apparent in the dikduk hamitzvos - especially bein adam l’chaveiro - of the Chafetz Chaim.

And - a personal favorite - in the endless effort of R’ Aharon Lopiansky to bring all of it honestly into the most modern of circumstances.

That is the Beis Medrash that formed me.

Yeshiva was never supposed to teach me everything I would learn in life. It was supposed to form the person who would go out and learn it.

It did not give me every idea I would ever encounter. But it gave me an enormously thick and rich stick with which to encounter them.

There are those who suggest that the way to discover a richer, broader, more fully human Judaism is to discard the old staff.

This saddens me, because so much of what they are looking for is already there.

The staff they hold contains all of those things and much more, if only we did a better job of polishing it, and if only more people had the patience to discover what lies beneath the dust.

Torah contains sechel and emotion, body and soul, law and spirituality, individuality and community, rigor and beauty, this world and the next.

Many parts of the yeshiva world don’t perfectly embody all of that, and no human institution could. But taken as a whole, the world that raised me comes closer to integrating all of it than anything else I have encountered.

It’s true, we aren’t built to remain in Yeshiva and Rav Hirsch doesn’t envision the third group polishing their staffs and then returning them to a museum, they’re for walking with.

As the old man tells Rav Hirsch:

“In the midst of life itself, Torah will reveal its power to you.”

Take the Torah into life.

Take it into work, marriage, parenting and friendship. Take it into intellectual exploration. Take it into disappointment and ambition, into encounters with people unlike yourself, into new technologies and old human problems.

Take it into beauty, suffering and doubt.

See what happens when you actually lean on it.

So when I encounter someone bright, driven and gifted who wants to walk this road we call life, who won’t settle for canned answers or dogma, I can relate.

And I hope I can do what the old man told twenty-year-old Samson Raphael Hirsch to do:

Offer him something sturdy enough to lean on- and perhaps polish it enough that he’ll want to dance with it too.

Source note: Rav Hirsch wrote the letter on August 10, 1828. The modern English rendering above is created with the aid of ChatGPT based on historian Mordechai Breuer’s Hebrew translation from a transcript of Hirsch’s original German letter, portions of which Breuer published in “Rabbi S. R. Hirsch B’Yeshivas Rabbi Yaakov Ettlinger,” Harav Yaakov Ettlinger (Jerusalem: HaMaayan Publications, 1972), pp. 39–41. The passage is also presented in Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Klugman, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch: Architect of Torah Judaism for the Modern World (Mesorah Publications, 1996), pp. 36–39. Breuer’s later publication can be viewed here through Daat/HaMaayan.

AI Torah is approaching what infinite Torah Shebichsav would be, and therefore the antithesis of Torah Shebe’al Peh.

Infinitely many finite containers cannot contain the infinite.

, responded. That led to a fascinating conversation that helped me clarify what I meant.

I thought about turning it into an article, but I decided the conversation itself was more interesting.

I’ve lightly edited it for readability.

Me:

AI Torah is approaching what infinite Torah Shebichsav would be, and therefore the antithesis of Torah Shebe’al Peh.

Infinitely many finite containers cannot contain the infinite.

Adam:

It’s getting better at quoting Torah sources correctly. I always check my sources, but it is making it very easy.

Rabbanim are increasingly more difficult to maintain a relationship with.

It is inevitable.

How would you fix this?

Me:

AI is helping me realize the real distinction between Torah Shebichsav and Torah Shebe’al Peh. Until now, one could assume that the need for Torah Shebe’al Peh was simply because there was too much to write down. That’s not remotely true.

Written words are simply containers to capture a finite bit of infinite reality. What happens in the relationship between a Rebbe and a student (or parent and child) is infinitely bigger than the words shared. It’s as big as the deep connection of two souls.

We need to connect more to living Rebbeim. I don’t know why it’s inevitable that it becomes more difficult.

Adam:

AI is getting better at providing accurate sources and accurate application of sources to your particular use cases.

Rabbanim are becoming increasingly busy with the growing mental health, physical health, and financial issues Klal Yisroel is facing, making it more difficult to maintain a relationship with a Rebbe, to glean the true depth of Mesorah and Torah relationship.

They are more and more becoming pro-bono therapists and counselors, and aside from a few shiurim and drashos they give, it’s hard to pin them down and maintain a relationship.

Perhaps it’s easier in yeshiva, but bochurim are also dealing with mental and physical health issues, and when they leave yeshiva it is quite difficult to maintain a relationship, as the Rebbe has a new cohort of students to tend to.

So it is inevitable that more and more people will gravitate towards AI as it is easier to access. Perhaps not for their emotional needs—that is happening as well—but for learning and Torah and trying to work through a Torah concept, it is just easier. Not saying it’s better, just easier.

How does one combat this? I’ve asked this before, and the answer is always you need to just go and push your way into a Rebbe. You need to reach out and make it happen on your own.

That point is not as easy for many as you say. Many don’t want to push in, so they take the path of least resistance. Also, the Rebbeim themselves are not advertising their services on how to build a relationship with them because they are so busy.

How do we fix this?

Me:

I wrote in a previous article that as AI takes over the jobs that require human intellectual capital, the economy will shift to jobs that are more essentially human.

Hopefully this means there will be more Rebbeim, therapists, etc.

Adam:

I hope so too.

But how do you respond to someone who says it’s easier to just ask AI? Also, if it’s a simple question, can AI look it up? Why is that different than looking it up in the Mishna Berura or Kitzur, or whatever?

Me:

Can a robot who cooks, changes diapers, and reads children’s books create an emotionally healthy child?

Why should we assume that a robot who quotes Halacha can create a morally mature adult?

Adam:

Agreed. I am not arguing that it is good that AI is easier and more available. I think it’s a problem as well, but when the bad thing is easy and the good thing, having a Rebbe, is hard, what do you think is going to happen?

Of course using AI as your main way to learn Torah is a huge issue, but every Rav who ever talked about it just came off sounding like they were trying to keep a grip on the people and was worried that the people would get their Torah elsewhere.

It sounds disingenuous to say “get a Rebbe” when getting a Rebbe is hard.

Me:

In my community, besides for the Rabbanim, there are many role models who people can turn to, like Kollel yungeleit.

I agree we need more people who exemplify Torah, but I also think that if it became normalized to speak to people that aren’t the ones with the titles, we’d realize there are actually more Rebbeim to learn from than we think.

I then added another response:

Me:

Another response might be: Who’s going to write this generation’s Mishna Berura?

At this point, the conversation split into two different threads.

Thread One: Who Will Write This Generation’s Torah?

Adam:

Someone who knows how to use AI.

People today don’t want to write this generation’s Mishna Berura. This is a different conversation, but the community has very successfully made everyone feel so self-conscious about their ability to have a unique thought that writing a sefer on Halacha is beyond the pale for many.

For the few that have written new takes on Halacha, those seforim are mostly regarded as either not mainstream, or not relevant to daily life because we already have a Mishna Berura; why do we need another?

Of course, this is all overgeneralizations, but many do think this way.

Me:

I want to be more specific. It’s not really the synthesis of existing Halacha that I’m talking about.

It’s the synthesis of a sense of our divine mission as expressed through history with the mores and views of today’s world.

I’m more referring to seforim like R’ Lopiansky’s Ben Torah for Life that can be practically instructive in today’s world while being consistent with the past.

The people that write those seforim are decidedly not using AI to create their ideas, but their lived experience combined with years of assimilating Torah into their being.

Adam:

Agreed. And it’s harder to do.

When there are easier tools available, it will become less and less likely someone will write the next Ben Torah for Life.

Thread Two: Where Are the Rebbeim?

Meanwhile, the other part of the conversation continued from my suggestion that Kollel yungeleit can fill some of the need for accessible Rebbeim and role models.

Adam:

Perhaps this is the answer: encourage people to come out of their shells and build relationships with Kollel yungerleit, and let the Kollel yungerleit come out of their shells and deign to talk with the plebs, the Harrys, and the low yutzlach baal habatim who nebach went to work.

Also, the number of Kollel younger-level availabilities for older guys 30s and up are much smaller.

I think there is a growing need for 35+ men who still feel like they are young but have no place. I’m trying to work out this idea of older guys still. It’s a demographic that is growing but under-supported.

Me:

To your first point—Amen!!! I’m trying my best!

The age thing is real. I do think it might be a good idea to have more long-term people in Kollel that can take on more mentoring, teaching, counseling roles.

It’s a great topic to discuss at this year’s Rosh Kollel Conference. I’ll bring it up.

Adam:

It’s an idea I had, but it’s not fully formed.

I remember when my father was in his 40s and he was a full-grown man; his Rav was the 70-year-old Rav of the shul.

He didn’t drink except for one shot of scotch on Shabbos between the fish and the chicken soup; didn’t chill; didn’t waste time; didn’t need to go to kumzitzes; didn’t hock about what was served at kiddush; didn’t talk about what vacations he went on; and didn’t talk about the quality of the suits he got.

He always did tell me that it’s important to dress well and “look like a million dollars,” but he always said there are millionaires in fancy suits who look like clowns and poor people who dress in clean clothing and look sharp.

Many of my friends’ fathers were like this. The rich ones and the poor ones. I grew up very middle class, back when middle class didn’t also mean poor.

I am sure my father and fathers of the day were not perfect and I didn’t see everything about them, but that was the image they put out.

Today—and I speak for myself—we want to chill and have nice things and go on vacations and complain about meat prices.

It’s not clear in my head yet, but 40-year-olds today are not as old as 40-year-olds when I grew up.

Me:

True, but in much of the Kollel world they are pretty mature. How do we bridge that gap?

Adam:

The relationship idea is a good one. How do we encourage relationships with Kollel yungerleit and vice versa?

Kind of like kiruv, where a good mekarev is just trying to make good friendships with people who are not like him.

It’s hard because there are implicit biases against the other from both sides.

Me:

This is precisely what a community Kollel tries to solve. It needs to be a partnership, but I think there is a viable model that exists in many smaller cities.

Adam:

Small cities do this much better than the big ones. But that’s also part of a small city dynamic.

I did kiruv in a small city for five years; I made friends with many people, religious and not religious, and became an integral part of the community.

I needed to move to a big city for chinuch and parnassah reasons and all that disappeared overnight. It was rough.

I have a good Rebbe here and chevra in shul, but it can be very hard for a lot of people.

Then I suggested we post this thread as an article. I asked him if he wanted to do it.

Adam:

I think you might do it better than I.

Perhaps we both give it a shot and see how it comes out from different angles.

Me:

Sounds good. I think just posting the exchange will be interesting.

Adam:

I am totally fine if you did that and quoted me. To be honest, I don’t think I have time to write anything on this idea. But I really do think this is an extremely important topic that I think many Rabbanim today are right about, but not communicating well.

So here’s the exchange.

What I think I learned

Here are some thoughts reflecting in the conversation.

The concern about AI and Torah isn’t just that AI will give the wrong answers. It will get better. It also can’t simply be that we need a Rav to give us the same answer AI can. Adam is right: if what Rabbanim are offering is another way to get information, the easier and faster way is going to win.

I don’t think that’s what a Rebbe is for.

Using AI to find a source, is fundamentally no different than looking something up in a Mishna Berura, but is that all we’re doing when we’re learning- looking things up?

If Torah is ultimately information, an enormous collection of texts, sources, arguments, rulings and ideas, then AI may eventually become extraordinarily good at Torah.

But that’s the point of my original post.

An infinite number of finite containers still cannot contain the infinite.

A human being can learn Torah for decades until it becomes part of him. He can live with it, raise children with it, develop relationships through it, and watch it change his community and the world. He can learn from his Rebbeim, teach his talmidim, make mistakes, gain wisdom, and slowly develop a sense not merely of what the Torah says, but of what the Torah is asking of a human being living in his particular time and place.

Eventually, sometimes, that person writes a Ben Torah for Life.

AI can synthesize an enormous amount of Torah, but it can’t assimilate Torah into a life.

This is really Torah Shebe’al Peh is about.

If Torah is transmitted through people, then we need people for Torah to live in, and we need relationships through which it can be transmitted.

We need Rebbeim, talmidim, mature people steeped in Torah who are accessible to ordinary Jews. We need baalei batim and Kollel yungeleit who don’t see one another as members of separate species and we need institutions that create the conditions for those relationships to happen naturally.

All the more reason for more community Kollelim.

The irony may be that AI, by making written Torah more accessible than it has ever been, will force us to rediscover why Torah was never meant to be only written.

Moshe kibel Torah miSinai, u’mesarah l’Yehoshua.

Moshe received the Torah at Sinai and then he gave it to a person.

I was a young, eager Kollel Rabbi, and I was going to change the world.

As luck, or fate, karma, God, take your pick, would have it, Alex was placed at my home for Shabbos lunch. It was his first Shabbos experience and my first actual conversation with an atheist.

It started when we were standing in my cramped kitchen, waiting in line to wash our hands for challah.

“Why do you believe in God?” Alex got straight to the point.

The following is our actual conversation (slightly paraphrased). I still remember it.

“Let me ask you a question,” I replied, in typical Jewish fashion. “Is the universe endless in space or time?”

“No,” he responded. “The universe has an end.”

“Okay,” I responded, relieved that we were getting somewhere. “What does the universe exist within, something or nothing? It’s not a trick question,” I quickly added.

He looked slightly confused.

I explained. “Nothing is nothing. Definitionally, if something exists, the thing that it exists within must also be a something.”

“Okay,” he said tentatively.

“That something,” I quickly continued, gaining steam, “is it endless in space or time?”

The dialogue was now a monologue.

“Mima nafsach” (my yeshiva education was beginning to peek through) “if you say no, I’ll ask you the same question: What does that something exist within? So you must agree that there exists a something which is endless, within which everything exists!”

“Okay,” he muttered, with an unreadable expression.

“That’s what I call God!” I ended with a flourish.

We washed and sat down to a delicious meal where we discussed carbon dating and played with my adorable kids.

P.S. Alex has a wonderful young frum family today and lives in our community. It’s hard to be certain, but I’m sure that first Shabbos spent in our home had a lot to do with it. I’m equally certain it had much more to do with my wife’s cooking than my well-articulated arguments.

This morning someone asked me how much he should work.

He cited the oft-told story of the Chafetz Chaim, who would sit in his store until he earned enough to cover his expenses for that day. Once he had earned what he needed, he would close up shop and go learn.

It’s a good story, but does that mean that the ideal is to figure out the minimum amount of money you need, work until you’ve earned it, and then stop?

We launched into a broad discussion, and I’ll share some of the points here.

1. Work is more valuable than the money it pays.

2. Life’s a pie chart, not a bar graph.

3. You’re not the Chafetz Chaim.

4. Be the best you you can be.

Here’s the main point: “How much should I work?” isn’t the best way to approach this issue. Before deciding how many hours to allocate to work or learning, you have to look at the entire person whose hours you’re allocating. Let’s examine the four points one at a time.

1. Work Is More Valuable Than the Money It Pays

Work provides a person with many things, the least of which may be the paycheck. Let’s go through a few of them.

1. It keeps you out of trouble.

The Mishnah in Pirkei Avos says, Yafeh Talmud Torah im derech eretz, sheyegias shneihem meshakachas avon, Torah together with a productive occupation is good because being engaging in both causes a person to forget sin.

Having something productive to occupy your time is extremely valuable; work is great for that.

2. It tethers you to this world.

At the end of the day, we live in a tangible world, and our job is to engage with it. Work of almost any kind puts a person in regular contact with concrete responsibilities, constraints, and consequences. Things that need to get done, people are counting on you, and problems need to be solved. That can provide a very valuable anchor in the real world. People without this tether can easily become wrapped up in imagination, fantasy, and all sorts of pursuits that are far from reality.

3. It gives you a tangible sense of value.

I was once speaking to a young man who was heir to a small fortune. He didn’t have to work, so he didn’t. He kept dreaming up new creative projects, but deep down he was struggling with his self-worth.

On a very basic level, there’s something very affirming about doing something that someone else is willing to pay you for. It gives you a sense of competence and self-worth that can be difficult to replace. This is one reason unemployment can be so psychologically difficult, losing a job often means losing much more than a paycheck.

4. It gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

People can have all sorts of dreams, aspirations, and ideals, but the body also needs something to get it going. Having tangible work that is enjoyable and fulfilling, together with some accountability, is a great way to ensure that you actually get out of bed and do something.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list, nor am I arguing that these things can only come through work. Learning, family, communal responsibility, and other pursuits can provide many of them as well.

But when deciding how much to work, it’s a mistake to think that the only thing on the other side of the equation is money. Work itself may be providing some very important things in your life.

2. Life’s a Pie Chart, Not a Bar Graph

I once received a call from a yungerman who wanted to come to our Kollel. When I asked him why, he explained that he had calculated that he would be able to learn an hour more a day in our Kollel than where he currently was.

In the course of the conversation, I perceived a flaw in his thinking. He seemed to be viewing life like a bar graph: the more learning you can fit into it, the higher the bar goes, and therefore the better your life is. I don’t think that’s how we should measure a life, life is more like a pie chart.

“How much learning can I squeeze into my day?” is the wrong question. Instead we should be asking how the various parts of my life fit together into a wholesome whole and how they align toward the goal of the person I am trying to become.

(This can be understood through the conversation between Eisav and Yaakov: “Yesh li Rav”, vs. “Yesh li Kol.”)

Time spent on relationships, health, practical needs, family, work, and other responsibilities isn’t necessarily wasted time, or even time unfortunately stolen away from the things that really matter, they’re all parts of the big picture.

3. You’re Not the Chafetz Chaim

Which brings us back to the Chafetz Chaim.

When the Chafetz Chaim wasn’t running his store, he was filling every minute with the most valuable and fulfilling things he could possibly be doing: writing, teaching, learning, advising, helping Klal Yisroel.

For him, work may really have been little more than a means of providing money for food. Once he had enough money, there was very little reason to remain in the store.

But the rest of us need to ask another question: What would I actually be doing if I weren’t working?

If working two fewer hours means two additional hours of serious Torah learning, perhaps that tells us something. But if it means an extra two hours drifting around the house, checking WhatsApp, pursuing half-baked projects, or generally not doing very much, then the Chafetz Chaim’s store may not be so instructive. Conversely, when someone neglets things he should be doing while he’s learning, he’s also ignoring his responsibilities.

We can’t simply ask how much we should be learning in a vacuum. We need to ask what the realistic alternatives are and what kind of life each choice is actually producing.

The Chafetz Chaim’s pie chart may have been extraordinarily simple. Yours probably isn’t.

4. Be the Best You You Can Be

I once heard Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky retell a story of a successful businessman who, after having earned enough money to support himself for the rest of his life, wanted to leave business and go learn in Kollel.

Rabbi Lopiansky replied that there are many roles in Klal Yisroel, and they’re all needed.

You’re a phenomenal Zevulun. You know how to run a business, you create things, employ people, and support many good causes. If you will be as good a Yissachar as you are a Zevulun, no one should be telling you which role you have to play.

But if you won’t be as good a Yissachar as you are a Zevulun, perhaps you should think very carefully before abandoning something you are exceptionally good at.

There’s a tendency to assume that the more overtly spiritual role is necessarily the better role. But Klal Yisroel needs many different people doing many different things. If Hashem has given someone a particular set of talents through which he can accomplish tremendous things, those talents deserve to be part of the calculation.

That doesn’t mean that whatever comes naturally to you is automatically what you should spend your life doing. We all have obligations, and all of us need to develop ourselves beyond the things that come easily. But neither should we casually discard our strengths simply because someone else’s role looks more spiritually prestigious.

In Conclusion

In the abstract, Talmud Torah k’neged kulam. Nothing I’ve written here is meant to minimize the centrality or value of Torah learning, but that statement alone doesn’t tell an individual how to structure his day or his life.

A person should ask: What should my life look like?

How do Torah, work, family, health, responsibility, talent, and contribution fit together into one coherent life? What are my strengths? What are my responsibilities? What do I actually do with my time? Where can I contribute? And what arrangement will allow all the different parts of me to be directed toward the person I am supposed to become?

Work out the entire picture, talk to someone you trust and cultivate a life that works for all of you.

You’re not a bar graph, you’re one big, beautiful, delicious pie, and every slice matters.

One important caveat: I’m discussing mature adults who are running their own lives independently. During one’s formative years, including Yeshiva and, for many people, a period of Kollel, the calculus may be quite different.

The good student flies.
The poor student lies.
The parent sighs.

And the teacher…cries.

It’s not so much the grades that are the problem. It’s the comments. The narrative.

Grades are concrete. Little markers of performance, but the real story of the child is in the comments section. It’s quite possible for one child to have higher grades than another, but be a worse student in the eyes of the teacher:

“Timmy is blessed with high intelligence, but fails to apply himself and can be disruptive in a classroom setting.”

Conversely, another child may have lesser grades, but shines in the comments section:

“Archie has really been applying himself this year. His attitude and perseverance will get him far.”

On Rosh Hashana, we’re graded as well. Sure there are the letter grades and check boxes, but it’s the comments section that matters most.

This is the meaning of Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance. On the surface it makes little sense. How can G-d “remember” when he doesn’t forget?

I once heard a remarkable concept. When we use our faculty of memory two things happen:

We bring back snippets of the past in the present
We create a narrative about the past.

G-d is above time and the first aspect of memory doesn’t apply to Him, but the second aspect absolutely does.

Each one of us is made up of trillions of little data points. Markers. Indicators.

The things we did right. The things we did wrong. Our accomplishments. Our struggles.

So we’re graded.

Davening B-
Learning A-
Interacting with others B
And so on.

But those grades don’t tell the full story.

That’s in the comments section.

In the comments, past performance matters less, as well as ability. What matters in the comments are things like effort, attitude, and above all, our will.

When Hashem “remembers” us, he’s writing our narrative. What’s the synopsis of who we are?

That’s why our attitude and approach on Rosh Hashana matters so much.

So despite what our letter grades may be, I wish this year that we all be inscribed in the Book of Life with the very best comments!

There’s something thrilling about sitting next to someone you’ll never see again and having a conversation that you have absolutely no idea where it’ll go. Most people today aren’t particularly interested in striking up a conversation with a rabbi or a random stranger on an airplane - let alone both. But the ones who are? Delicious!

Several years ago, one such fellow was sitting next to me. He was a young entrepreneur from San Diego: bright, grounded and optimistic… We spent most of the flight talking about a bunch of things I can’t remember.

At some point, he asked if I wanted to watch a movie with him. He only had one set of headphones and I didn’t want to intrude, so I suggested he listen and turn on the subtitles for me. He chose the then-new Ruth Bader Ginsburg biopic, On the Basis of Sex.

I don’t remember how much of it I actually watched, but I do remember, at some point, dryly observing: “This whole thing is because we don’t value femininity.”

I’m not sure that was the movie review he was expecting. 😊

As I write this, I am - ironically - once again on an airplane, this time somewhere over Pennsylvania, on my way to Chicago, and I’ve been thinking about that conversation. What exactly did I mean?

Come, be my imaginary seatmate and we’ll fly together.

The women’s rights story is well-known. Women were denied access to all sorts of things available to men like education, professions, political power. Since women are every bit as intelligent and capable as men, why shouldn’t they be admitted to law school, become judges, run businesses, hold political office and achieve professionally?

It’s a good question, but I wonder whether it conceals an even better one. What if the issue is deeper than society undervaluing women. What if society is undervaluing femininity itself?

Since I’ve got the rest of this flight, allow me to try to explain what I mean without falling into the classic theocratic misogynist stereotype.

Circle, Arrow, Spiral (and other shapes)

In Hebrew (and many other languages) every noun has a gender, even inanimate objects like rocks and chairs. No, my couch doesn’t have a gender identity, but this grammar rule does suggest a different way of thinking about gender categories.

When we talk about gender, we typically start with biological men and women and derive the words masculine and feminine from them.

So masculine means “manlike,” and feminine means “womanlike.” It’s circular at best, and highly subject to societal trends. It also allows for the tendency to trend towards gender-neutrality.

I want to invite you, at least for the duration of this flight, to suspend what you know and think in a different direction. Let’s theorize that masculinity and femininity are elemental concepts that extend far beyond human biology.

(To be sure, men and women are enormously important expressions of those concepts, but they don’t define them.)

Here, I’m borrowing largely from Miriam Kosman’s wonderful book Circle, Arrow, Spiral.

Kosman’s book begins with a basic duality between potential and actualization.

Follow along, it’s worth it.

Imagine a blank check: How much is it worth before you write in a number?

Potentially? Anything. Actually? Nothing.

Write $1,000 on the line and something fascinating happens. You now have an actual amount of money, but you’ve lost the unlimited potential. The check can no longer be for $10,000 or $1 million.

The relationship between potential and actualization can be seen everywhere. What’s more important: what you can accomplish or what you’ve done? Youth or experience? Wealth or relationships? Doing or being?

I think the only correct answer is both. Doing without ever arriving is pointless and being without any upward movement is stagnant. Kosman gives us two wonderful images for these forces: the arrow and the circle. The ideal is the synthesis of both: the spiral. Cue book title.

Forget gender for a moment and imagine a business with two excellent people on its leadership team. The first is restless. They see possibilities everywhere. What’s next? Where can we grow? What opportunity are we missing? What can we build? What isn’t good enough yet? This person pushes and builds, competes and expands, disrupts and moves.

The second leader is almost the opposite. They notice what the first doesn’t stop to see. How are the people doing? Is the culture healthy? Are our systems working? Are we taking care of what we’ve already built? Is someone being left behind? Can the organization actually absorb the next great idea?

One pulls the organization toward what it can be while the other holds together what already is. Potential vs. actualization.

Now, let pause here for a moment. I’m fully aware that everyone will describe these roles differently based on their own experience, and obviously real people are more complicated than neat little descriptions. I’m also not really interested in quibbling over the exact job description of a circle or an arrow or whether there’s a better formulation for that matter. Giving vs. receiving. Hero vs. princess. The exact paradigm doesn’t matter.

The point is is that there are opposing and complementary roles at play in the world that can approximately be described and defined.

Back to our companies.

Arrow Inc. may grow exponentially while hollowing itself out, while Circle Corp. may be a lovely place that never gets anywhere.

Now let’s shift from business to the most important human organization; the one that actually produces and develops the most valuable resource on the planet: the family.

A family also needs movement and direction. It needs someone thinking about where it is going, what it stands for, what it is building, what resources it needs and how its members will encounter the world outside.

A family also needs someone attending to the life developing within it. Who needs what? Who is hurting? Who feels secure? What does this particular child need? How do a collection of individuals become a home?

Again, don’t get hung up on the details of my descriptions, and don’t assign genders yet. Just notice that we recognize both roles and that we need both.

Now suppose both people are excellent at their jobs, but society values arrows more than the circles.

Sound familiar?

The arrow has a big cultural advantage: it’s measurable and visible. Growth, revenue, degrees, promotions, titles, income, things built, barriers broken, goals achieved.

The circle’s success is harder to show: a healthy family, secure children, enduring relationships, people who belong, human beings slowly becoming themselves over time. Much of the evidence appears decades later, and even then nobody quite knows who to give credit to.

Now further suppose that I feel terrible for all those undervalued circles and I announce a solution:

“Attention all circles: We see you laboring in silence, but don’t worry. We’ll make sure that you can be an arrow too.”

At one level, that can represent real progress. If someone has arrow capacities and artificial barriers prevent them from getting there, removing barriers is good. But I haven’t raised the value of the circle at all. In fact, I may have inadvertently reinforced the original insult.

“You’re right, what you’re doing isn’t properly valued. But don’t worry, we’re going to give you access to the things that are.”

Ok. Now it’s time to bring out The Handmaids Tale because here’s where I finally use those charged words. The archetype we’ve been calling the arrow is what I mean when I use the word masculine. The circle is what I mean by feminine.

That’s it.

If that’s a bit too much for you, you can keep on using the terms arrow and circle.

Don’t think I’m trying to put people into boxes.

Men possess femininity, and women can be masculine. Everything in creation can function relationally as circle or arrow depending on context. If the words masculine and feminine immediately cause you to picture a particular man and a particular woman and you start arguing with me about whether your wife is more ambitious than you are, we’ve stumbled into the confusion I’m trying to describe.

I’m also not that interested here in defining exactly how those forces express themselves differently in men and women. That’s an interesting conversation, but it’s not this one. We have become so accustomed to treating gender as primarily a conversation about men and women that we have largely forgotten how to have a conversation about masculinity and femininity themselves.

Business School and Other Values

Several years ago, I gave a talk about this at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, mostly young women attended. The gender pay gap was a hot issue at the time, so I asked them a question.

Imagine a society that valued a person’s ability to form and sustain relationships more than it valued a person’s ability to earn money. Suppose that society had exactly the same gender pay gap as ours. Would the gap carry the same significance?

They got my point. In fact one girl approached me afterwards and thanked me profusely for helping her understand why she never felt comfortable in business school.

In modern Western culture, wealth has become synonymous with success. Wealth is the ultimate potential - the blank check, options and possibility.

We adore potential and celebrate youth. We love breaking barriers, pushing the envelope, keeping our options open, being the best, moving upward. We don’t like closing doors. We can’t stand making decisions, and committing. and we certainly don’t like settling or settling down.

Here’s an interesting thought. We warn people not to “settle” yet settling is what you do when you finally stop chasing long enough to build a home.

Conversely, ambition, wealth and progress aren’t bad - we need arrows. But when arrows stop being one part of a healthy civilization and become our neutral definition of success, we’ve got a problem.

Nowhere is that more obvious than motherhood.

Motherhood is utterly unscalable. A woman nurtures a baby inside her body for nine months. Then come nursing, sleepless nights, diapers, appointments, meals, school, adolescence, emotional crises and years upon years of forming one particular human being at a time (for the most part).

Of course motherhood requires plenty of arrow as well: discipline, direction, ambition, decision-making, pushing children toward growth. Again, nothing really is purely circle or arrow, but motherhood makes the value of the circle particularly difficult to ignore.

But motherhood is also terribly disruptive!

It gets in the way of careers, interrupts progress, it can prevent a woman from reaching her full potential. It puts her life on hold.

Does that sound familiar?

Listen carefully to what’s buried inside our language. A woman “gave up” her career. She “fell behind.” She has a “gap” in her résumé. Eventually, perhaps, she can “get back” into the workforce, as if being a mother is a side hustle.

We instinctively respond to the real costs of motherhood by asing how we can minimize its arrow-cost. That’s a legitimate question, but we should spend at least as much time asking how we can maximize its circle-value.

It really begins with the proper attitude. Does our society actually consider motherhood an accomplishment on par with becoming a CEO?

Sure, we sentimentalize mothers quite well, I’m talking about prestige.

Would we hear a young woman say, “I want to become an extraordinary mother and build a remarkable family,” and think: Now there’s an ambitious young woman? Would we describe the years she spends raising children primarily in terms of what she sacrificed professionally, or would we recognize those years as an enormous human accomplishment in themselves?

Could a mother spend a day nursing a baby, navigating a teenager, feeding people, sustaining relationships and constructing the emotional architecture of a home without ending the day wondering why she wasn’t “productive”?

After all, all she did was hold a world together and worlds held together don’t show up on quarterly reports. And it’s more than just maintenance she gave the world a purpose and home.

Now do you under my reaction to the RBG movie?

I have no objection to Ruth Bader Ginsburg joining the Bench. Women can be extraordinary lawyers, entrepreneurs, professors, executives, politicians and judges. Opening those worlds to women represented genuine progress; women can shoot arrows too.

But it’s very limited progress, have we learned to value femininity or just women?

Why I Admire Shulman

This brings me to the recent firestorm around Shulman’s writing about gender. He attempted to describe the feminine role using words and images like “girly,” “princess” and beauty, among others, and the response was fierce. You’re mansplaining femininity. Women are so much more than that.

Some of those critiques are legitimate. His vocabulary may have been inadequate. Some women understandably bristle when a man attempts to tell them what femininity is. I’m not particularly interested in adjudicating all of that here.

I do want to applaud something I think he was attempting to do.

He was trying to value femininity and we’re remarkably unaccustomed to doing that.

In fact, some of the responses themselves may illustrate the problem. When someone praises a woman using feminine language, we can feel a reflexive need to establish that she is so much more than that: She has a career, she leads, she achieves, she’s independent, ambitious, and accomplished.

Of course she may be all of that. But notice what just happened. We established the woman’s value by pointing to her arrowness.

Shulman’s vocabulary for femininity may have been underdeveloped and I’m not claiming to have a better one. But it seems worthwhile to notice how difficult it is to associate a woman primarily with circle-value without feeling that we have somehow diminished her.

In 2014, President Barack Obama offered a standard by which to measure a civilization: “You can judge a nation, and how successful it will be, based on how it treats its women and its girls.”

More than a century earlier, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, commenting on the Torah’s discussion of childbirth, described motherhood as “the highest and noblest occupation, on which the whole future of the human race is built.”

To paraphrase: “You can judge a nation, and how moral it will be, based on how much it values motherhood.”

Obama is addressing women. Are they respected? Protected? Educated? Given opportunity? Can they participate fully in society? Are artificial barriers preventing them from developing and expressing their abilities?

Rav Hirsch is addressing femininity: What does the society value?

A civilization could do really well in advancing women’s rights while completely undervaluing femininity. Women could become CEOs, senators, surgeons, professors and Supreme Court justices while motherhood continues to be understood primarily as a career interruption. Women could achieve unprecedented access to masculine forms of prestige while femininity itself remains strangely ordinary.

Again, I’m not attempting to define femininity. I’m not sure I could, and I’m not sure I want to. Circle and arrow are useful concepts, but they’re just a loose metaphor. Women may describe femininity differently than men do. Individual women themselves will certainly describe it differently from one another. And I suspect femininity will always retain a certain wonderful mysteriousness to me and many other men.

We don’t need to define something exhaustively before noticing that we’ve stopped valuing it.

So, what is femininity?

It’s wonderful, mysterious and absolutely vital. More than that, I’m not quite sure. I am pretty sure of this:

Valuing women without valuing femininity is a fool’s errand.

Thud. We just landed in Chicago.

Our world is full of materials: nature, people, emotions, concepts... Whether it will be a valuable ecosystem which benefits all, or a worthless mess depends on a sense of order and purpose.

"Anyone who judges truthfully becomes a partner with Hashem in Creation." This statement, quoted in Shabbos 10a is cryptic yet profound.

We have no part in creating the raw materials of the world. That's solely for the Creator. How those pieces are arranged and to what value is largely up to us.

Will we respect the natural boundaries in our world?

Will we respect others' money, spouses, and honor?

Will we respect natural boundaries between night and day, good and evil, male and female and various other dichotomies that exist.

We may not sit on a Beis Din but we judge all the time. Will our world be a warm home for all of its inhabitants or a chaotic mess? That is up to us and our respect for the order and purpose for which everything was created.

What do you think our world is shaping up to be, a home or a junkyard?

“Do you believe that Jesus was the son of God?” he asked.

“No more than every one of us,” my father replied.

“I respect what you believe,” said the man.

“And I respect you!” responded my father.

It was a subtle but important distinction.

My father did not say that he respected the man’s belief. He didn’t. He believed the man was wrong about something fundamental.

But he respected the man.

We have somehow come to believe that respecting people requires validating their viewpoints—and that strongly rejecting someone’s beliefs gives us license to reject the person along with them.

But beliefs and people are not the same.

Beliefs should be judged on their merits. Some are true and some are false. Some are noble and some are dangerous. They are not entitled to our respect merely because someone holds them sincerely.

People are different.

We can disagree vehemently with what someone believes while continuing to recognize his dignity as a human being created b’tzelem Elokim.

Perhaps that was contained in my father’s first answer as well.

“No more than every one of us.”

Every human being has a connection to the Divine.

Including the stranger standing in front of him.

The answer can be found in a fascinating insight from the 15th-century Spanish scholar and statesman, Don Yitzchak Abarbanel.

In his commentary on the Shiras HaYam (Song of the Sea), he defines what makes something a song: it’s when you alter the words you wish to say to fit a tune. This idea is beautifully captured in an anonymous quote I once heard:

”Words make us think thoughts. Music makes us feel feelings. And Songs make us feel thoughts.”

Words are powerful tools for communication. They bring clarity, specificity, and precision. But they belong to the realm of reason—the external, structured part of us. Emotions, on the other hand, flow from the deepest part of the soul. They penetrate, inspire, and move us—but they are inarticulate.

A song bridges this gap. It starts with words that paint a clear picture—concrete and objective. Then, those words are stretched and shaped to fit the emotional swell of the melody. The result? People feel thoughts.

Greeting cards, however, do the exact opposite. They start with a feeling and attempt to cram it into polished, pre-written words. The result is often hollow, lacking the emotional depth of genuine expression.

Next time you want to express something meaningful, try this instead: Go to your local market, browse the cards for words that resonate with you, and use them as inspiration to write a personal letter. And if you’re really feeling it—maybe even a song!

I get this question every once in a while, and it’s a fair one.

If a Kollel runs shiurim, you can count attendance. If it mentors people, you can point to relationships. If it organizes programs, you can measure participation. Those things are tangible.

But none of them are the primary mission of a Community Kollel.

At its core, a Community Kollel exists for something much harder to explain.

It exists because we believe that a group of yungeleit learning Torah with purity and intensity changes a community.

Not just the people sitting in front of them. The community itself.

You can see the results. Children grow up with different aspirations. Families change. Torah becomes something alive rather than simply respected. The spiritual atmosphere of a city feels different.

But how?

How does a room full of people learning Gemara affect marriages, schools, businesses, families, and the spiritual atmosphere of an entire city?

That question isn’t unique to Community Kollelim. It’s one of the oldest questions in Judaism.

• How does learning Bava Kama turn an impulsive Bar Mitzvah boy into a mentsch?

• How can the People of the Book become a light unto the nations?

• How does our holy Neshama reside in and animate our very physical body?

Let’s take a lesson from the building of the Mishkan, and more specifically, the creation of the Menorah.

The Midrash tells us that of all the vessels in the Mishkan, Moshe Rabbeinu struggled specifically with the Menorah, he couldn’t understand how to build it.

Let’s think about that. The Menorah hardly seems like the most complicated vessel. Moshe had no trouble with the Aron, the Shulchan, the Mizbechos... but the Menorah specifically left him questioning?

In response, Hashem showed him a Menorah of fire. Still he couldn’t grasp it. According to one Medrash Moshe ascended, grasped the concept of the fiery Menorah, then descended to Earth and forgot it - repeatedly.

Finally, Hashem told him to throw the pure gold into the fire, and the Menorah emerged on its own.

Here’s what I think is going on.

The Shulchan was understandable. It represents our material existence - something easy to grasp.

The Aron, hidden away in the Kodesh HaKodashim, represents pure spirituality. We may not fully comprehend it the way we do the tangible, but at least we can use our imagination to create a mental picture.

The Menorah presents an entirely different challenge.

As someone wise once said:

“I know what a human being is. I can even imagine what a malach must be.

What I can’t quite grasp is a human being shaking hands with a malach.”

The Menorah represents that handshake - the connection point between the spiritual and physical.

It takes the hidden light emanating from the Aron and somehow projects it into the world in a tangible way. It illuminates through wisdom, It transforms through clarity and it’s light shines far beyond the walls of the Mishkan.

But how?

That’s exactly the question Moshe couldn’t answer, and it’s the same question we’ve been asking ever since.

Now, human beings are uncomfortable with mysteries. Naturally we want to understand how things work.

So often people who set out to build a Menora, a vehicle of tangible transformation through Torah try to understand what they’re building and how it works:

• If you tell me that a certain program strengthens a community, I understand that.

• If you tell me that a charismatic speaker inspires people, that makes sense.

• If you tell me that better marketing reaches more families, I can follow the logic.

But if you tell me that a group of people learning Torah lishmah changes an entire community, I’m going to want to know how.

I think that’s why people have always struggled with the idea of Torah lishmah.

In a fascinating 1977 interview with William Helmreich, Rav Shneur Kotler described one of the greatest challenges his father, Rav Aharon Kotler, faced when establishing Lakewood.

People kept asking him the same question.

“What’s the tachlis?”

They were asking Rav Aharon to explain the Menorah.

What practical benefit comes from learning Torah for its own sake?

Then Rav Shneur quoted his father’s response - a sentence that’s etched into my mind:

“It is hard to explain that sometimes the most lasting things seem to come out from things which seem to have no purpose.”

I don’t think Rav Aharon was only talking about the founding of Lakewood, he was talking about how to build a Menorah.

Does this mean we shouldn’t plan at all? Why bother with anything programs, marketing, strategy, personnel etc?!

Of course not.

Believe me, I spend a tremendous amount of time thinking about all of those things. They matter a great deal. A Menorah still needed branches, cups, knobs, flowers, oil, and wicks to carry the flame.

The vessel matters, but the moment the vessel becomes our explanation for the light, we’ve stopped building a Menorah.

Let me explain. At this point you’re likely thinking why? Why does a Menora have to be a mystery? Wouldn’t it be easier if I could grasp it like everything else we build in this world?

Here’s the reason, and it’s profound.

If I can fully explain why a Community Kollel transforms a city through programming, or charisma, or organizational excellence, then it is no longer the Torah that’s transforming the city, it’s sociology.

There are some things in this world that cannot be reverse engineered because they are Divine.

We don’t expect to fully understand Hashem. In fact, if we could completely understand Him, He wouldn’t be much of a G-d.

So why do we expect to fully understand His Torah and how it works?

If Torah is Divine, shouldn’t we expect there to be something mysterious about the way it transforms people and communities?

So, when Moshe wanted to understand the mechanism. Hashem didn’t give him one.

He simply said: Throw the gold into the fire, the Menorah will emerge.

It’s very tempting to build a Menorah one can understand:

• A Community Kollel that succeeds because of its programming.

• A yeshiva that succeeds because of its personalities.

• A movement that succeeds because of its strategy.

Those things all matter, they are the branches, the cups, the flowers, and the oil, but they are not the light.

Our responsibility is to build the vessel with wisdom, excellence, and an uncompromising commitment to pure Torah.

The light has always been Divine and is always going to be mysterious.

At the end of the Tochachah in Parshas Bechukosai, after describing exile and destruction, the Torah offers consolation.

First Hashem says:

“V’zacharti es Brisi Yaakov, v’af es Brisi Yitzchak, v’af es Brisi Avraham ezkor...”

Hashem will remember the covenant He made with the Avos.

A few pesukim later, however, after promising never to destroy Klal Yisrael completely, the Torah says something that seems repetitive:

“V’zacharti lahem Bris Rishonim...”

“I will remember for them the covenant of the first ones.”

What’s this Bris Rishonim, if the Bris Avos was just mentioned a few pesukim earlier?

Rashi, quoting the Toras Kohanim, says two words: Bris Shevatim.

Rav Moshe Shapiro explains that Klal Yisrael actually entered into two covenants.

• The first was the Bris Avos.

• The second was the Bris Shevatim.

At the Cheit HaEigel we broke the Bris Avos, but we renewed it back with the Luchos Shniyos. (different discussion)

The Bris Shevatim was broken by the Meraglim, and it has never been renewed.

More specifically, says R’ Moshe, it’s the lack of renewal of the Bris Shevatim which prevents us from meriting Eretz Yisroel the way we should.

That naturally raises the question: What exactly is the Bris Shevatim?

Twelve Tribes, One Nation

Hashem did not create Klal Yisrael as one indistinguishable nation.

He created twelve Shevatim.

Each had its own territory, strengths and purpose.

The goal was for every Shevet to contribute something unique to Klal Yisrael while remaining devoted to the success of the whole.

That’s why Eretz Yisrael itself was divided according to the Shevatim. The structure of the land reflected the structure of the nation.

According to Rav Moshe, the Bris Shevatim meant that as long as each Shevet understood both its own role and its responsibility to Klal Yisrael, they merited the land.

The Meraglim shattered that vision.

The Torah calls the Meraglim an Eidah Ra’ah.

Rav Moshe has a beautiful description of an Eidah Ra’ah: An eidah l’shem pirud - a group united for the sake of separation.

I grew up in the South, so the analogy that comes to mind is the Confederacy.

The Confederate States formed a union, but the purpose of that union was for each state to separate from the United States. It was unity in the service of division.

Rav Moshe says that’s exactly what happened with the Meraglim.

Each nasi represented his own Shevet. But instead of asking, “What is my Shevet’s role within Klal Yisrael?” they asked, “What is best for my Shevet?”

I was thinking that Eretz Yisrael itself reflects this idea.

No single Shevet received everything it needed. One portion had mountains, another valleys. One had commerce, another agriculture. One had ports, another fertile fields.

Seen through the eyes of a single Shevet, Eretz Yisrael is almost a poor land.

It only becomes “a land flowing with milk and honey” when all twelve Shevatim function as one nation, each contributing what only it can.

The moment every tribe became primarily concerned with itself, Eretz Yisroel was no longer desirable and the Bris Shevatim was broken.

The Cost of Losing the Bris

The dissolution of the Bris Shevatim wasn’t simply another casualty of the Meraglim. It became a pattern that repeated itself throughout Jewish history.

The first major example appears after the death of Shlomo HaMelech.

Under King Shlomo, Klal Yisrael reached its peak. The Beis HaMikdash stood in all its glory, and the nation was united under a single king.

Then everything unraveled.

After Shlomo’s passing, the kingdom split. Rechavam ruled over Yehudah in the south, while Yeravam led the northern tribes. What had once been one nation became two kingdoms.

Here’s the part that always amazes me.

Within a single generation, the northern kingdom went from living during the era of the Beis HaMikdash to widespread avodah zarah.

How does that happen?

How do you go from Shlomo HaMelech to Yeravam ben Nevat in one generation?

I once learned an explanation that has stayed with me ever since.

The Navi tells us that when Yeravam established his kingdom, the Leviim left their cities in the north and moved south to Yehudah. They had good reason to leave. Yeravam rejected the Leviim and appointed his own kohanim. Remaining in the north meant living under persecution.

Daas Sofrim in Divrei Hayamim points out something striking.

They didn’t have to leave. Had they remained, the story might have been very different.

Remember, the Leviim weren’t concentrated in one area. They lived in forty-eight cities spread throughout Eretz Yisrael. Their role was to teach Torah and serve as the spiritual backbone of the nation. Their presence throughout the northern kingdom would have made it far more difficult for Yeravam to pull an entire population toward avodah zarah.

Instead, they left.

The persecution was real, but the consequence was that the northern tribes lost the very people whose mission was to strengthen them spiritually. Without the Leviim living among them, Yeravam’s influence spread with astonishing speed.

The Bris Shevatim means that my role isn’t simply to preserve my own Shevet. My role is to ask how my Shevet serves Klal Yisrael.

The Leviim existed for everyone else, and everyone else supported them.

Zevulun wanted to invest in Yissachar and in turn provided Spiritual benefits. 1

Yehudah and Dan had completely different responsibilities, but each was indispensable.

Yehudah led from the front. It built institutions, provided leadership, and gave Klal Yisrael direction. Dan led from the rear and made sure no one was left behind.

These are all different roles and all are essential.

Today, we hardly have a sense of the Shvatim of Klal Yisroel. Ten entire Shevatim are lost, and the two that remain, we’re not quite sure who belongs to which.

The Shelah HaKadosh writes that today, our different communities preserve something of the original idea of the Shevatim through our different nushcaos and minhagim, but rather than seeeing these groups as complimentary, we tend to look at differences within Klal Yisrael and immediately ask who’s right.

Who’s more authentic? Whose approach is correct?

To renew the Bris Shevatim we need to start asking: What unique role does this group play within Klal Yisrael?

Our differences are by design. The problem begins when our differences stop serving Klal Yisrael and begin serving only ourselves.

Peh Before Ayin

There’s one more piece of this puzzle that I think speaks directly to our generation.

In the second, third, and fourth perakim of Eichah, the order of the Aleph-Beis is unusual. The letters Peh and Ayin are reversed.

The Gemara asks why.

Chazal answer that the Meraglim were makdim peh l’ayin - they put their mouths before their eyes.

At first glance, that’s difficult to understand. The Meraglim didn’t invent what they saw. The cities really were fortified. The people really were giants. Their report wasn’t fabricated.

So what does it mean that they put their mouths before their eyes?

I think Chazal are teaching us something very subtle.

The problem wasn’t what they saw. The problem was that they already knew what they wanted to say before they ever looked.

Once you’ve decided on the conclusion, your eyes become very good at finding evidence to support it. That’s true not only of the Meraglim. It’s true of all of us.

Every one of us has stories about other groups within Klal Yisrael.

We all have evidence.

We all know examples that reinforce the conclusions we’ve already reached.

The question isn’t whether those examples are real.

The question is whether we’re being makdim peh l’ayin.

Have we already decided what we think about another Shevet, another community, another segment of Klal Yisrael, and now we’re simply gathering evidence to support our opinion?

Or are we looking first?

If the Bris Shevatim teaches us anything, it’s that every Shevet exists because Hashem wanted it to exist.

Our responsibility is not merely to tolerate the existence of another Shevet.

It’s to understand what role Hashem intended it to play.

That’s a much harder question.

I’ll end with a story.2

A few years ago I was in Eretz Yisrael and got into a taxi. I love Israeli cab drivers because they’re completely unfiltered. Within thirty seconds they’ll tell you exactly what’s wrong with you.

The driver realized I was American and immediately launched into a speech.

“You Americans are lazy.”

“You should all be living in Eretz Yisrael. The only reason you’re still in America is because you’re comfortable.”

For the next twenty minutes he didn’t let up.

I tried arguing with him, but he wasn't interested. By the end of the ride, I was almost convinced.

The next day I got into another taxi.

This driver also realized I was American.

He looked at me and said, “Do yourself a favor. Stay in America.”

I asked him why.

He said, “Because over here everybody hates everybody else. Ashkenazim. Sefardim. Chareidim. Chiloniim. Everybody is fighting.”

Then he told me something I’ll never forget.

He was Sefardi, and on a recent trip to Brooklyn he walked into an Ashkenazi shul.

“They gave me an aliyah!” he said.

He couldn’t believe it.

“They actually gave me an aliyah!”

For him, that simple act represented something beautiful.

His conclusion? “Stay in America.”

I remember walking away smiling.

One cab driver told me we all need to come to Eretz Yisrael. The other told me to stay where I was.

I think, in a way, they were both right.

Ultimately, Klal Yisrael belongs in Eretz Yisrael.

But perhaps the Bris Shevatim reminds us that before all twelve Shevatim can live together in one land, we first have to learn how to appreciate all twelve Shevatim.

While we are still in galus, perhaps our task is to begin rebuilding the Bris Shevatim, to appreciate not only the legitimacy of different communities within Klal Yisrael, but the unique role each one plays in serving the whole. If we can once again learn to see ourselves as one nation with many Shevatim, perhaps we will merit the complete return to Eretz Yisrael that the Bris Shevatim was always meant to secure.

Of course, we know that speaking about other people can be harmful. Yet on some level, speaking about other people is intensely pleasurable. But why? Is it simply because it makes us feel smarter? More powerful? Better than someone else?

If we want to become better at guarding our speech, we first have to understand why speaking about other people is so enjoyable.

Next question. (Bear with me. I promise these questions are connected.)

What does the word davar mean?

Eleh HaDevarim - “These are the _______.”

If you have a basic understanding of Hebrew, you probably answered, “words.” Or perhaps, “things.”

Now that’s strange.

If davar primarily means "word," why do we also use it to refer to a thing?

One more question.

Each of the five Chumashim is named after one of its opening words: Bereishis, Shemos, Vayikra, Bamidbar, and Devarim.

At first glance, they seem like nothing more than convenient labels borrowed from the opening pasuk. But what if they aren’t? What if those five names are actually telling a story? And what if that story reveals something profound about the nature of words and, ultimately, what makes us human?

If you use Gmail, you've probably seen its AI-generated image captions. They usually look something like this

:

They’re almost always technically correct... and almost always completely useless.

Now imagine we could redesign that caption generator with a dial that controls how specific it becomes.

Suppose this image appears. As we turn the dial, notice what changes, and what doesn't.

On the lowest setting, nicknamed ROBOT it writes: [A metal box on wheels.]

Turn the dial up a notch to CHILD: [A car.]

Up to TEENAGER: [A 2026 BMW X7 with alloy trim.]

Up to ADULT: [My neighbor Fred’s 2026 BMW X7 with alloy trim.]

Finally, let’s crank the dial all the way to MASTER:

[The bane of my existence!]

That’s the power of captions.

The object never changed. Only its meaning did.

Rav Moshe Shapiro offers a remarkable insight into the word davar.

Davar means "word." So why do we also use it to refer to a thing?

Because when human beings refer to things, we rarely mean only the physical object itself. We instinctively grasp things in their context.

A davar is a thing together with its caption.

If that still sounds abstract, imagine that you are a dog lying on your front lawn.

A car pulls up. A man steps out carrying a bouquet of flowers. He walks to the front door. A woman answers. He hands her the flowers, returns to his car, and drives away.

What did you (the dog) see?

A car. A man. Flowers. A door. A woman. A car driving away.

That is it.

But you as a human doesn’t simply see a series of linear actions. Your mind immediately began writing captions.

Was he a florist delivering flowers to a recent widow? A young man surprising his fiancée? A husband apologizing after an argument? An old friend stopping by after years apart?

The physical facts are identical. The meaning is completely different.

That is what human beings do. We instinctively place everything we see into a larger story. We do not merely perceive objects. We perceive devarim.

Let’s reexamine the names of the Chumashim.

Bereishis - In the beginning.

This one is fairly straightforward. We exist. We came from somewhere. Before we can ask who we are or what we’re here to do, we first have to recognize that we are here.

Next comes Shemos - Names.

The story of this sefer is one of identity. We are extracted from within Mitzrayim and become a nation with our own name.

The third sefer is Vayikra - And He Called.

Once we know who we are, the obvious question becomes: What are we here to do? Vayikra answers that question. Hashem has called us to a specific purpose.

Then we arrive at Bamidbar.

Here I’ll borrow another beautiful insight from Rav Moshe. Hebrew sometimes allows a word to contain the seed of its opposite. One example is midbar. A midbar, a wilderness, is a place devoid of context, order, and direction. In a sense, it is devoid of dibbur.

And here’s where things get fascinating.

After gaining a sense of our existence, our identity, and our mission, we are placed into a world that feels uncultivated and directionless. We wander for forty years, seemingly without purpose, struggling to align our mission with our identity.

That is Sefer Bamidbar.

Finally, we arrive at Devarim.

Moshe opens the sefer with what appears to be a lengthy review of the previous forty years. But that’s not really what he’s doing.

Moshe's opening message is, "Don't think about the last forty years the way you thought about them until now."

They weren’t as aimless as you perceived them, every stop mattered.

Here you learned patience.

Here you learned faith.

Here you learned to live together as a nation.

Here you failed.

Here you grew.

Here you became the people capable of entering Eretz Yisrael.

Sefer Devarim is Moshe Rabbeinu adding captions to the wilderness.

He is taking what appeared to be forty years of disconnected events and revealing the meaning that was always there.

Only now can Klal Yisrael understand where they are, how they have grown, and what still lies ahead before entering the Promised Land.

So what does all of this have to do with why we enjoy talking about other people?

It comes down to perhaps the defining characteristic of what it means to be human.

Human beings possess something no other creature does: the power of words. It allows us to describe, define, organize, and bring context to the world around us. To turn a Midbar into Devarim.

Ultimately, we were given the power of speech to discover the meaning woven into the world and, by aligning ourselves with it, reflect on ourselves, refine ourselves, and discover the meaning and direction of our own lives.

Yet self-reflection—and the change it demands—is difficult. Many people simply aren’t interested in doing that hard work. The need to reveal meaning, however, is too deeply woven into human nature to simply disappear.

So instead of using our words to understand and refine ourselves, we begin using them to caption everyone and everything around us.

That’s what makes talking about other people so enjoyable.

Every conversation becomes another opportunity to write the captions. We get to reorganize the universe without ever leaving the couch.

Once you see this, you begin noticing it everywhere.

Think of all the ways people attempt to organize reality through words:

• Culturally, activists seek to redefine terms.

• Historically, authors seek to rewrite the past.

• Politically, politicians propagandize.

• Conspiracy theorists weave elaborate narratives from scattered facts.

• Morally, groups search for villains to blame for their failures.

• Those who feel powerless often transform victimhood into virtue.

• Tribally, entire groups of people become reduced to labels.

• And personally, friends, relatives, and spouses are constantly characterizing those closest to them.

What do they all have in common?

Each is an attempt to bring order and meaning to the world without first bringing order and meaning to themselves.

It’s easier to rewrite reality than to rewrite ourselves.

Before we congratulate ourselves for recognizing this tendency in society, we should ask a much more uncomfortable question.

If the human mind is constantly writing captions, what captions have I been writing?

• What captions have I written about my spouse?

• My children?

• My parents?

• My coworkers?

• My friends?

• Myself?

Were those captions discovered... or invented?

The Torah, of course, doesn’t merely describe the journey of a nation. It also describes the journey of every life:

We all begin our childhood with a Bereishis. We awaken to the reality that we exist.

Then comes Shemos. Through adolescence, we begin discovering who we are.

Then Vayikra. As we mature, we begin hearing the unique calling Hashem has for us.

And then, sooner or later, comes Bamidbar.

Life becomes a wilderness.

The path that once seemed so clear disappears. Plans change. Relationships become complicated. Careers take unexpected turns. We find ourselves wandering through experiences that feel disconnected and devoid of meaning.

It’s precisely there that we’re tempted to invent captions instead of discovering them. We label. We blame. We justify. We explain away.

But the Torah doesn’t end with Bamidbar, it ends with Devarim.

Moshe Rabbeinu doesn’t rewrite the past. He reveals the meaning that was there all along.

• Here I learned patience.

• Here I learned faith.

• Here I discovered strengths I never knew I possessed.

• Here Hashem was preparing me for something I couldn’t yet see.

The events themselves haven’t changed, only my understanding of them has.

If we have the patience to resist inventing false captions, and the humility to continue searching for the ones Hashem has already written, something remarkable begins to happen.

Like Moshe Rabbeinu, we slowly discover that our wandering had direction all along. Our wilderness was never meaningless, it was waiting to become Devarim.

That was the advice one of my well-meaning friends gave me shortly after I got married. I’m not sure I know what he meant, but boy did I misunderstand it.

There are two areas of life that have the ability to frustrate us like no other: Shalom Bayis and Chinuch. Why are they so challenging?

I recently heard Rav Aharon Lopiansky point out something obvious, yet often overlooked. Most things in life involve learning a skill. It may be difficult at first, but with time and practice we improve. Shalom Bayis and Chinuch are fundamentally different because they involve another person with a will, perspective, and inner world of their own. It’s not enough to be a good husband or a good parent. You can do everything “right” and still completely miss the other person.

In English, parenting is a verb. It’s something we do. In Lashon HaKodesh, however, an Av and an Eim are nouns. While there is a mitzvah of chinuch, introducing our children to a life of Torah and mitzvos, the focus of a father or husband cannot simply be on his own actions. It has to be on the person standing in front of him. The goal is to understand their experience. We’ll never fully get there, but the attempt at understanding is itself the heart of the relationship.

This is also what makes these relationships so frustrating. If I try to build something and fail, I have no choice but to blame myself, and we’re usually quite generous with ourselves. But when it comes to our spouses or children, we often feel that we’ve done everything right and they’re simply being unreasonable.

The problem is that people aren’t projects. Whether or not I was objectively correct, the relationship is shaped by how the other person experienced what happened. If my message isn’t landing, then it isn’t landing, regardless of how carefully I crafted it. Before I can convince someone, guide them, or help them grow, I first have to understand where they are.

As a young chosson, I thought making my wife my “sugya” meant mastering the skills of being a husband or learning how “women work.” I understand now that those were the wrong goals. My real avodah wasn’t to study marriage. It was to get to know her as an individual.

We are now entering the Nine Days, a time when we mourn the destruction brought about by sinas chinam. We often think the opposite of sinah is love. Perhaps it begins even earlier. Before I can truly love another person, I first have to make room for them. I have to recognize that they have an inner world every bit as real as my own.

A sugya is never something you conquer. It’s something you return to again and again, each time discovering another layer. Perhaps that’s what my friend meant all those years ago. My wife really was my sugya.

As my Rebbe Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky would often say, “Tracht vegen a tzveiten.” Think about the other.

How irreverent!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been enjoying my latest series, Ethics of the Sons. You’ve likely picked up the theme by now, but I think it’s important to explain my thinking behind it and why I think it’s worthwhile.

We’ve always been an ethical people, and Pirkei Avos is a gold mine of timeless wisdom and ethos. I wouldn’t dare change a thing.

Ethics of the Sons is something else entirely.

No one would consciously write these sayings.

None of us would ever stand up and say that status matters more than character, that recognition is more important than honor, or that appearances matter more than substance. These aren’t the values we believe in, and they certainly aren’t the values we teach.

They are the values we sometimes drift toward.

Pirkei Avos takes words everyone thinks they understand - wisdom, strength, wealth, honor - and redefines them in terms of eternal values. We believe, teach, and aspire to live by those definitions.

But because we’re human, we don’t always succeed.

When someone, whether from inside our community or outside it, points out one of our shortcomings, it’s easy to become defensive. We instinctively respond, “That’s not what we believe.”

And the truth is, it isn’t.

However, there is often a gap between our ideals and our instincts, between what we believe and how we sometimes behave.

Having high standards and sometimes falling short of them isn’t hypocrisy. It’s humanity.

Ethics of the Sons imagines the unwritten commentary we sometimes compose with our lives. Not because we’ve rejected the wisdom of Pirkei Avos, but because we’re still struggling to live up to it. These are not the ethics we preach. They’re the ethics we occasionally find ourselves practicing.

My hope is that these pieces make us smile because we recognize a little of ourselves in them. If they sting at all, I hope it’s the gentle sting that comes from looking in a mirror.

Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky once said, “Take what you’re doing seriously. Don’t take yourself so seriously.”

If we can recognize and laugh at our foibles without beating ourselves up, we can correct them.

Let’s hold ourselves to impossibly high ideals without demanding impossible perfection and maybe, after smiling at the commentary we sometimes write with our lives, we’ll hear the original a little more clearly.

Lighthearted without being lightheaded. That’s the spirit of Ethics of the Sons and I feel this spirit is sorely needed.

So enjoy

! And while we’re here, tell me, which one made you laugh the most?

Shabbos afternoons in camp are long, and as much as we tried to offer programming, there was always some downtime. The head staff rotated patrols through the bunk areas to make sure things stayed under control.

One Shabbos, as I was patrolling, I saw a fifth-grade camper chasing another child while holding a belt in his hand.

Camp had a strict policy against staff members putting their hands on campers, so I was at a loss for what to do. The attacker was extremely upset. He was also going through a difficult family situation that made him especially volatile, and there was nothing I could say that would calm him down.

I saw an opportunity when the child being chased ran into a bunkhouse. I positioned myself in the doorway, blocking the belt-wielder and denying him access. Soon, however, he became even more enraged. He started pounding on me and trying to shove me out of the way to get to his prey.

The situation was becoming desperate, and I needed backup.

Then I saw my savior, a senior Division head, we’ll call him Rabbi Stein.

"Rabbi Stein!" I shouted across the quad. "I could use your help over here!"

He immediately ran over, sized up the situation, whispered something to the furious fifth-grader, and the kid immediately walked away.

I was stunned.

What sort of magical incantation had he recited?

There was no talking to this kid. He was furious.

Rabbi Stein explained simply:

“Think about it. What do you need and what does he need? You need him not to hit the other kid. He needs to be angry. You don't need him not to be angry, and he doesn't need to hit the kid. I simply told him, 'I know you're upset, and that's okay. Are you in control of yourself enough not to hit him?' He said yes and walked away."

I thought about that interaction for years because it taught me something profound about human nature. We often try to eliminate people’s feelings when what we really need to do is help them control their actions.

Perhaps that sheds light on an interesting set of halachos in the Torah. I’ll quote here from the Rambam in Perek 5 of the Laws of Murder & the Preservation of Life in Mishneh Torah.

כָּל הַהוֹרֵג בִּשְׁגָגָה גּוֹלֶה מִמְּדִינָה שֶׁהָרַג בָּהּ לְעָרֵי מִקְלָט וּמִצְוַת עֲשֵׂה לְהַגְלוֹתוֹ שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (במדבר לה כה) “וְיָשַׁב בָּהּ עַד מוֹת הַכֹּהֵן הַגָּדל”.

Whenever a person kills unintentionally, he should be exiled from the city in which he killed, to a city of refuge. It is a positive mitzvah to exile him, as implied by Numbers 35:25: “He shall dwell there until the death of the High Priest.”

And later

כְּשֶׁמְּשִׁיבִין אוֹתוֹ מוֹסְרִין לוֹ שְׁנֵי תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים שֶׁמָּא יַהַרְגֵנוּ גּוֹאֵל הַדָּם בַּדֶּרֶךְ. וְאוֹמֵר לָהֶם אַל תִּנְהֲגוּ בּוֹ מִנְהַג שׁוֹפְכֵי דָּמִים, בְּשׁוֹגֵג בָּא מַעֲשֶׂה לְיָדוֹ:

When he is returned to his city of refuge, he is given two Torah sages to accompany him, lest the blood redeemer attempt to kill him on the way. They should tell him: “Do not deal with him in the manner of those who shed blood. It was unintentional that this happened.”

רוֹצֵחַ בִּשְׁגָגָה שֶׁהֲרָגוֹ גּוֹאֵל הַדָּם חוּץ לִתְחוּם עִיר מִקְלָטוֹ פָּטוּר שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (דברים יט ו) “וְלוֹ אֵין מִשְׁפַּט מָוֶת”:

When a blood redeemer slays a person who killed unintentionally outside the Sabbath limits of his city of refuge, he is not held liable, as Deuteronomy 19:6 states: “He is not judged as liable to be executed.”

When someone kills unintentionally, the blood relative is not held liable for killing the killer, yet we still attempt to prevent him from doing so by sending Torah sages to accompany the killer on his way to the city of refuge.

If the Torah doesn't want the blood relative to kill the killer, why sanction it? Why not simply say that it is murder?

Perhaps the Torah is teaching us something about human nature. Sometimes a person is filled with justified rage. Telling him not to be angry won't have the desired effect. He needs to be angry.

Instead, the Torah acknowledges the feeling while simultaneously trying to prevent the action. It acknowledges the depth of the blood relative's desire for revenge - even to the point that, should he kill the killer, he would not be punished - yet it still sends Torah sages to persuade him not to act.

Once the feeling is acknowledged, perhaps the blood relative is better able to regain control of himself and keep his rage theoretical rather than feeling compelled to carry it out.

This is a powerful lesson about human nature. Torah doesn't always demand that we stop feeling. Sometimes it recognizes that feelings are real and powerful, and instead asks us to master what we do with them. When people feel seen rather than suppressed, they often discover that they don't need to act on every emotion they experience.

Both had devoted years of their lives to hateful ideologies and now look back on that period with embarrassment.

What struck me wasn’t that someone finally defeated them in a debate.

That wasn’t the story.

As they matured, took on responsibility, found meaningful work, built relationships, and began contributing to the world around them, something changed. The hatred slowly stopped making sense. Looking back, they couldn’t understand why those ideas had once seemed so compelling.

It made me think about netilas yadayim.

Chazal teach that after a night’s sleep, a ruach ra’ah rests on a person’s hands. More specifically, the ruach ra’ah takes over the entire body through the hands, and the entire body can be cleansed by washing the hands.

Why the hands? If evil has attached itself to a person, why not the heart? Why not the mind?

And perhaps an even stranger question: If the corruption can affect the whole person, why is washing the hands enough?

It seems to me that there’s a profound idea here, that corruption more often than not begins and ends in the hands, not the heart.

We usually assume the sequence is simple. People adopt bad ideas, and those ideas produce bad behavior. That might be true with healthy beliefs.

Healthy beliefs naturally produce healthy behavior. A person who believes in family builds a family. A person who believes work has dignity tends to work. Good ideas naturally flow into good actions.

But destructive beliefs often work differently.

A person becomes resentful. He stops building. He blames everyone else for his failures. Eventually he finds an ideology that explains why none of it is his fault.

The beliefs don’t create the life, the life creates the need for the beliefs.

That’s what struck me about those two former extremists.

No one changed their minds, they changed their behavior and the support base for the hate crumbled. As they built healthier lives, the worldview that had once sustained them gradually became unnecessary. The life that had required those ideas was gone.

I wonder if this has something to teach us about antisemitism.

We invest enormous resources trying to change people’s minds. We educate. We market. We produce documentaries, museum exhibits, school curricula, and social media campaigns. That work matters. But perhaps we’re fighting only half the battle.

If many people adopt hateful ideologies because those ideologies justify resentment, failure, or aimlessness, then arguments alone will never be enough.

Perhaps one of the most effective ways to combat antisemitism is to help build a society with fewer resentful people. A society of responsibility, productive work, and strong families.

A society where people are building instead of blaming.

The mitzvah of netilas yadayim reminds us that the battle against evil begins with the hands.

We don’t need to change the hearts and minds of those who hate, we simply need to help them wash their hands.

Even more importantly, when people discuss why Kollelim exist, the ambiguity of the word often creates confusion. Two people can be passionately arguing about “Kollel” while talking about entirely different concepts.

I’d like to unpack some of these different concepts using the framework of the Shevatim of Klal Yisroel. It is Parshas Korach this week, which seems like an appropriate time to discuss the need for different roles within Klal Yisroel and the danger of not respecting one’s own role and the role of others. As with the Shevatim, all are necessary and each fulfills a unique purpose. Unlike the Shevatim, however, the roles we’re discussing today are largely determined by personal choice. A person has agency in deciding which path to pursue.

Shevet Levi: Torah in Service of Klal Yisroel

Of all the Shevatim in Klal Yisroel, one stood apart. While every other Shevet received a portion in Eretz Yisroel, Shevet Levi did not. In the Midbar they camped around the Mishkan at the heart of the nation, and in Eretz Yisroel they were dispersed among forty-eight cities throughout the land.

Whether the Kohanim are considered agents of Hashem serving the people or agents of the people serving Hashem is debated in the Gemara, but their role is clear. They are not living primarily for themselves. Their task is to provide for the spiritual needs of Klal Yisroel. Since they are devoted to spiritual service and do not possess a portion of land from which to sustain themselves, the rest of the nation is commanded to support them through terumah, maaser, and other gifts.

Being part of Shevet Levi is a lifelong identity. They are role models, teachers, and spiritual guides. While they maintain their own distinct spiritual environment, they are strategically spread throughout the nation so that every Jew has access to their influence.

Applying this concept to Kollelim, we find individuals who dedicate their lives to becoming and serving as Klei Kodesh. Always anchored in serious Torah study, they see themselves as Torah resources for Klal Yisroel. They teach, guide, inspire, and lead communities while maintaining a distinct identity centered around Torah. Just as Shevet Levi was supported materially in exchange for providing spiritual leadership, these individuals expect the community to help provide for their physical needs while they devote themselves to the spiritual needs of others.

This model is often reflected in community Kollelim and in those who eventually become Rabbanim, Rebbeim, mechanchim, and communal spiritual leaders.

Shevet Yissachar: Torah as a Personal Calling

While the concept of Yissachar-Zevulun partnerships is well known, I think it is often misunderstood.

I frequently ask Kollel yungeleit learning in Lakewood what the difference is between Shevet Levi and Shevet Yissachar, and many struggle to articulate a clear distinction.

Here’s how I understand it.

Unlike Levi, Yissachar does receive a portion in the land. Rav Hirsch explains that Yissachar chose a life of agriculture. Farming is difficult, uncertain, and not especially lucrative, but it offers something valuable: independence and the flexibility to devote significant time to Torah study.

For Yissachar, Torah learning is primarily a personal pursuit. He values Torah deeply and the community certainly benefits from his wisdom, but he does not view himself as a representative of the broader community. His focus is his own growth and avodas Hashem. Therefore, he remains responsible for providing for himself.

Enter Zevulun. Zevulun recognizes the tremendous value of Torah and willingly provides support so that Yissachar can continue his spiritual pursuits. In return, he shares in those accomplishments. It is a wonderful partnership.

There is, however, one important caveat. No Yissachar can demand a Zevulun. Since this path is fundamentally a personal one, Yissachar must ultimately be prepared to sustain himself if necessary.

Applying this concept to the Kollel world, we often see this model in large batei medrash and learning communities. Baruch Hashem, there are many individuals willing to live simply in order to devote themselves to Torah study. There are also many Zevuluns eager to support such efforts.

At the same time, if a yungerman discovers that his family’s financial needs are not being met, it is his responsibility to find a solution. This helps explain why many serious learners eventually take on part-time work while continuing to maintain a significant presence in the Beis Medrash through one or even two sedarim a day for the rest of their lives.

Shevet Levi Tekufah: Torah as a Foundation for Life

There is a third concept that has become increasingly prominent in the American yeshiva world over the past several decades.

The term was coined by Rav Aaron Lopiansky, who describes what he calls a “Shevet Levi Tekufah.”

His idea is that just as the physical structure of Klal Yisroel was organized around the Mishkan and Shevet Levi at its center, so too the ideal development of a person benefits from beginning with Torah at the center. Even someone who is ultimately destined to become part of a different “Shevet” can gain immeasurably from spending a formative period living like Shevet Levi.

Applying this concept to Kollelim, this model describes the many young couples who learn for several years after marriage before moving on to careers and other pursuits. Their primary goal during those years is not to become lifelong Klei Kodesh, nor necessarily to establish a permanent Yissachar lifestyle. Rather, they are strengthening themselves. They are building a Torah foundation, developing priorities, and shaping their worldview before entering the broader world of work and responsibility.

In many ways, this is an extension of yeshiva life into the first years of marriage. The objective is not simply the Torah learned during those years, but the person those years help create.

Shevet Dan: Bringing the Camp Together

There is one final category that doesn’t fit neatly into the framework we’ve developed so far. Levi, Yissachar, and Levi Tekufah all describe different relationships to Torah study itself. Dan describes something else entirely: a relationship to the Jews who are not yet in the Beis Medrash.

When Klal Yisroel traveled through the Midbar, Shevet Dan served as the me’asef l’chol hamachanos, gathering those who had fallen behind and bringing them back into the camp. Their role was not merely to preserve what already existed at the center of Klal Yisroel. Their role was to ensure that those on the periphery remained connected.

This, I believe, is the model for kiruv rechokim.

A Kiruv Kollel is not primarily a Shevet Levi institution. Nor is it primarily a Shevet Yissachar institution. Its primary mission is not producing Klei Kodesh or facilitating personal Torah growth. Its mission is to reach Jews who are distant from Torah and help bring them closer. It is focused outward rather than inward.

Of course, those engaged in kiruv must themselves be serious Torah learners. They may possess many qualities associated with Levi. They may spend years learning in Kollel in a manner that resembles Yissachar. But the institution itself is pursuing a different goal. Its success is measured not only by what happens inside the Beis Medrash, but by how many people are brought closer to Torah because of its efforts.

This model is reflected in many outreach-oriented institutions, whether they call themselves Kollelim or not. Their primary mission is not to sustain Torah scholarship but to expand Torah’s reach.

Levi says: “I learn in order to serve Klal Yisroel.”

Yissachar says: “I learn because Torah learning is my personal avodah.”

Levi Tekufah says: “I learn now in order to shape who I will become later.”

Dan says: “I take Torah and bring it to people who are currently outside the camp.”

When Categories Overlap

None of these models is inherently superior to the others. Klal Yisroel needs Levi, Yissachar, Dan, and Zevulun. Each contributes something indispensable. The confusion begins when we assume that every Kollel exists for the same reason or that every avreich is pursuing the same goal.

Of course, reality is often more complicated than these neat categories. A single Kollel may serve several of these functions simultaneously. A community Kollel may be training future Rabbanim, providing a Shevet Levi Tekufah for young couples, and serving as a center of Torah learning for the broader community all at the same time. A large Yeshiva Kollel may contain individuals pursuing a lifelong Yissachar path alongside others who are there for a limited formative period. A kiruv organization may also be producing future communal leaders.

That said, clarity matters. While an organization may fulfill multiple roles, it is important to identify which role is primary and which roles are secondary. What is the institution fundamentally trying to accomplish? Is its primary purpose to produce Klei Kodesh? To provide communal leadership? To enable personal Torah growth? To strengthen a community? To bring distant Jews closer to Torah? The answer to that question affects how the institution should be structured, how it should be evaluated, and even how it should be funded.

Why People Support Different Kollelim

Perhaps this also explains why discussions about funding Kollelim can sometimes become confusing. Not everyone is supporting the same thing.

One donor may support a Kiruv Kollel because he wants to bring Jews closer to Torah. Another may support a Community Kollel because he values having local rabbanim, teachers, and role models available to guide a community and set spiritual goals. Someone else may support a Yeshiva Kollel or large Beis Medrash because he wants to enable serious Torah scholarship and help great talmidei chachamim flourish, and another may support a Shevet Levi Tekufa Kollel as a vehicle to attract young people to their communities.

These are all worthy goals, but they are not identical goals. Just as the various Shevatim contributed to Klal Yisroel in different ways, so too different Kollelim fill different needs. Understanding which model we are discussing often clarifies what might otherwise seem like a disagreement about Kollelim themselves.

Back to Korach

And perhaps that brings us back to Korach.

Korach’s mistake was not merely that he desired greatness. It was that he failed to appreciate that greatness can take many forms. He saw holiness and assumed that if one role was holy, then every holy role must be interchangeable. The Torah’s answer is that Klal Yisroel is built precisely on the opposite idea. Levi is not Yissachar. Dan is not Levi. Zevulun is not Dan. Each serves Hashem in a different way.

The strength of Klal Yisroel comes not from everyone playing the same role, but from each person embracing the role that is theirs.

Recently, I was speaking with a young man who is preparing to leave yeshiva and enter the workforce. Like many people before him, he was struggling with the transition.

For years, his primary responsibility was learning Torah. Now he was looking at a future where most of his day would be occupied with earning a living. He would have less time to learn, less time for the things he considered most important, and more time devoted to what seemed like mundane necessities.

It’s a question many people have asked in one form or another.

If Torah, mitzvos, and spiritual growth are the purpose of life, why did Hashem create us in a way that requires so much time and energy to be spent simply taking care of ourselves?

Why do we need to work so much?

In last week’s article, I framed the question a little differently. If the purpose of humanity is to be a moral and spiritual being, why did Hashem build us as machines and calculators? Why give us physical needs that consume so much of our time? And why give us the abilities necessary to satisfy those needs?

In fact, the Ramcha”l deals with this question in Derech Hashem in the section about Tefila. Here’s the original Hebrew:

ואמנם עומק יותר יש בענין והוא כי הנה האדון ב״ה נתן לאדם דעה להיות מנהג עצמו בעולמו בשכל ובתבונה והעמיס המשא עליו להיות מפקח על צרכיו כלם. והענין הזה מיוסד על ב׳‎ שרשים הא׳‎ ליקרו של האדם וחשיבותו שניתן לו השכל והדעת הזאת להיות מנהל את עצמו כראוי והב׳‎ להיות לו עסק בעולם וליקשר בעניניו וזה ממה שמקיימו במצבו האנושי שזכרנו למעלה שהוא דרך חול ולא קדש והוא מה שמצטרך לו בזמנו זה כפי סדרי ההנהגה. והנה זה באמת מצד א׳‎ ירידה לו ולענינו. אבל היא ירידה מצטרכת לו וגורמת לו עילוי אחרי כן כמבואר בח״א. ואולם כמו שירידה זו מצטרכת לו לפי ענינו בעולם הזה הנה מצד אחר צריך שלא תרבה יותר ממה שראוי כי הנה כפי מה שירבה להסתבך בעניני העולם כך מתרחק מן האור העליון ומתחשך יותר. והנה הכין הבי״ת תיקון לזה והוא מה שיקדים האדם ויתקרב ויעמוד לפניו ית׳‎ וממנו ישאל כל צרכיו ועליו ישליך יהבו ויהיה זה ראשית כללי ועיקרי לכל השתדלותו עד שכאשר ימשך אח״כ בשאר דרכי ההשתדלות שהם דרכי ההשתדלות האנושי לא יקרא שיסתבך וישתקע בגופניות וחומריות כיון שכבר הקדים ותלה הכל בו ית׳‎ ולא תהיה ירידתו ירידה רבה אלא תסמך ע״י התיקון הזה שקדם לה:

The Ramchal’s First Point

Let’s talk about the Ramchal’s answer through an analogy. Admittedly, I’m expressing it in a way that he doesn’t but I think this is the core of what he’s saying.

Imagine a wealthy father who owns a large company. He dreams of one day seeing his son sitting in the boardroom, helping lead the organization. He has enough money to place his son there immediately. He can introduce him to the right people, solve every problem, and remove every obstacle, and - free from mundane responsibility - the son can spend his day pursuing noble things. He could learn, create, help others, and devote himself to meaningful pursuits at the highest level.

But most fathers instinctively understand that something would be missing.

A father doesn’t merely want his son in the boardroom. He wants him to belong there.

He wants him to build something. To struggle. To take responsibility. To develop a sense of ownership over his accomplishments. He wants him to start on the warehouse floor and work his way up, not because the warehouse floor is the goal, but because without the journey, the destination loses much of its meaning.

According to the Ramchal, that’s why Hashem gave us physical needs and the abilities to satisfy them.

Hashem wants us to own our lives, not simply be employees.

He wants us to feel that our lives are our responsibility. He wants us to build, create, solve problems, make decisions, and take ownership of our corner of the world. That’s why He didn’t simply place us directly into the spiritual equivalent of the boardroom.

In a sense, we already have an example of that world.

The generation that left Egypt lived in a miraculous environment. They were fed by manna, protected by the Clouds of Glory and supplied with water from a miraculous well. Many of the burdens that define ordinary life simply didn’t exist.

But that was a temporary reality, their real destination was Eretz Yisrael: planting fields, building homes, creating communities, and taking responsibility for a world that would now be theirs to shape.

I think this idea has important implications for how we think about Kollel life as well.

Kollel is a tremendous gift. For a period of time, a person can devote himself almost entirely to Torah growth while many of life’s practical concerns are carried by others. In some respects, it resembles the experience of the desert. It creates a unique opportunity for spiritual development.

But the desert was never meant to be the final destination. The goal was always to bring Torah into a world of responsibility, ownership, family, community, and action. There is a certain type of growth that can only occur when a person looks at his life and says, “This is mine. I am responsible for it.”

The Ramchal’s Second Point

The Ramchal adds a second idea that I think is equally important.

In order to accomplish something, there must be something that needs accomplishing, something that needs you.

Imagine being handed a pair of shoes that are already perfectly polished and being told to shine them. You can go through all the motions, but at the end of the day you haven’t actually done anything.

Accomplishment requires an unfinished world, growth requires resistance, and elevation requires something capable of being elevated.

If Hashem had placed us directly into a perfect spiritual existence, there would be nothing to build, fix, improve, or transform. The physical world is the arena in which our mission begins precisely because it’s unfinished and unholy.

So, Is Kollel the Goal?

So, let’s address the question: Is Kollel the goal or isn’t it?

I think the answer is yes and no.

On the one hand, a life largely freed from mundane concerns and devoted to spiritual pursuits is, in many ways, the ideal image of the human being. That’s where we’re ultimately headed. Olam Haba is not a place of payrolls, grocery shopping, and changing furnace filters. It is a world in which spiritual pursuits take center stage.

But the Ramchal’s point is that we can’t simply be placed there.

To truly possess something, we have to earn it. To truly appreciate something, we have to build it. To truly own a spiritual existence, we first have to pass through a world that requires responsibility, effort, and accomplishment.

Perhaps that is one of the roles Kollel plays in a person’s life. It gives us a glimpse of where we’re trying to go. It allows us to taste a life centered around Torah and spiritual growth. But then many people leave that environment and enter a world of work, family, community, and responsibility. Not because those things are the ultimate goal, but because that is where ownership is forged.

The goal is not to remain forever on the warehouse floor, nor is the goal to be carried directly into the boardroom.

The goal is to work your way from one to the other.

Ultimately, spiritual pursuits may once again take center stage. But this time they do so not because everything was handed to us, but because we built a life that made them possible.

Important Caveat: When I say a person wasn’t meant to be in Kollel for life, I’m simply talking about the sense of responsibility for one’s self and ownership of one’s life. There are many people that take on roles of responsibility within the halls of the Beis Medrash and spiritual life, one need not completely leave a Torah environment to find that sense, though many do. Eretz Yisroel needs Rabbanim, Rebbeim, teachers, and role models as well, even if its not the desert.

AI: A final question to ponder

This leads to a final, speculative question:

In a recent article, I argued that history can be viewed as a progression from muscle to mind. Machines relieved us of much of the burden of physical labor. AI is beginning to relieve us of some of the burden of intellectual labor.

But if my understanding of the Ramchal is correct, it creates a fascinating challenge.

If ownership and accomplishment are essential ingredients in human flourishing, what happens when technology removes more and more of the things that once demanded responsibility from us?

What happens when the warehouse floor begins to disappear?

What happens when machines chop the wood and AI does the calculations?

How do we avoid becoming spoiled heirs - people who inherit a world they never had to build and therefore never truly own?

A Possible Answer

We laid out a pattern in the life of an individual: Start off in “kollel,” with little responsibility and get a sense of what you’re aiming for, then you’re put back onto the warehouse floor to earn and own your journey back to the top.

If this is true on an individual level, maybe it is true on a historical level too.

Perhaps humanity’s journey follows a similar arc. We started out journey in the midbar with all our needs taken care of. We then were thrust into a world where survival demands enormous physical effort. Over time, technology reduces those burdens. Then it begins reducing our intellectual burdens as well.

Perhaps this is by design.

Maybe humanity, collectively, is also moving from the warehouse floor toward the boardroom.

I don’t know if that’s true. At this point it’s only a theory worth pondering.

This week he chose the song “I Hung My Head” by Johnny Cash.

HEAVY!

I’d heard Cash’s song “Hurt” before and that is heavy and real, but the message there is spelled out and explicit. This song, “I Hung My Head” doesn’t have a clear message. It’s a story about a guy who kills a man by mistake, and runs, is caught, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hung, and each stage the refrain is used…I hung my head.

Besides for the clever play on words, there’s no resolution, almost no point to the story. What’s the message?

But more importantly I wondered, why would someone enjoy listening to this song? It certainly isn’t the musical quality of the lyrics or melody (hear it for yourself). There’s something about this story that is oddly satisfying.

My take is this: This is a song about guilt. Specifically the increasingly growing sense of gilt that becomes more and more unbearable as one comes face to face with the outcome of their actions (albeit unintentional). That emotional pain can be so unbearable that any sense of relief is most welcome - even if that relief is felt from justice of the hangman’s noose. The resolution in the song is that he paid for his crime.

People burdened by guilt will yearn for any sense of relief that comes with knowing that they’ve paid for it and now the burden can be lifted a bit.

In “Hurt,” Cash laments, “I hurt myself today to see if I could feel, I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real.”

The physical pain of torn flesh serves as a warning of the physical wound that must be addressed. Though unpleasant, it’s extremely useful.

Guilt is pain of the soul. The emotional pain of guilt serves as a warning of a soul wound that must be addressed.

With physical pain, if it gets to be unbearable, we seek artificial painkillers. The same is true with emotional pain. This is the reason people turn to drugs, alcohol, and other addictions.

The reason people self-harm isn’t merely to “feel” as Cash croons, it’s for the relief of that momentary absolution that comes from punishment.

For millennia, guilt has been a prime motivator in human behavior and has fueled religions, cults, societal movements, and addictive behaviors of all kinds.

We’re all filled with thoughts, actions, and feelings that make us feel guilty. The pain can be unbearable. There are all sorts of responses:

• Those that say: “You deserve it. Punishment is the only way to resolve your guilt.”

• Those that say: “Take this to numb the pain.”

• Those that say: “Those voices in your head are wrong, embrace the behavior that makes you feel that way and convince yourself that you’re doing the right thing.”

• Those that say: “It’s not your fault, your only human.”

• Those that say: “absolution can be found through the sacrifice of others, or some token ritual to an all-powerful being.”

And finally, there are those who say: “Guilt is a warning sign. Yes, it hurts, but you can heal yourself by improving, and as long as you can still feel, you’re still alive and can improve.”

What’s your take on this song?

That’s the question I can’t stop thinking about.

What’s fascinating is that I only stumbled upon it while thinking about AI.

I’ve written elsewhere about why I’m surprisingly optimistic about the AI revolution.

Read the full article- but the short version is that for most of history, human beings were the muscle of the world. Then machines largely took over that role, and we became the calculators of the world. Our value shifted from physical labor to intellectual labor.

Now AI is beginning to do for intelligence what machines did for muscle.

Which raises an interesting question: what’s left?

My answer has been that what remains is the most uniquely human part of all: our ability to make moral choices.

A computer can calculate, analyze, and even write; but it can’t decide whether to be kind. It can’t choose between selfishness and generosity. It can’t struggle with temptation. It can’t decide whether its time is being spent on something noble or something trivial.

Those are moral decisions. (See the full article for the rest)

But then I realized something:

When you look at a person, we’re really part machine, part calculator, and part moral being. If we’re essentially moral being, why did Hashem make us the other two things?

And the question is actually twofold:

Why did Hashem give us physical and intellectual needs that require muscle and mind to satisfy?

And why did He give us the muscles and minds to satisfy those needs?

Hashem gave us the need for warmth, and He gave us the ability to chop wood.

He gave us the need for shelter, and He gave us the ability to build.

He gave us the need to navigate a complex world, and He gave us the ability to think, calculate, invent, and solve problems.

Why both?

If our purpose is ultimately moral and spiritual growth, why not simply create us as moral beings and leave it at that?

What’s fascinating is that history seems to be slowly removing those layers. First machines reduced our need to be the muscle of the world. Now AI is reducing our need to be the calculators of the world.

It’s almost as if those layers are being peeled away, forcing us to confront what is most essentially human.

Which only makes the question stronger.

As modern as this question sounds, it isn’t mine.

It’s a question asked by the Ramchal in Derech Hashem.

His answer is profound, and I think it has enormous implications for how we understand work, technology, and what it means to be human.

But we’ll save that for next time.

In the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Why do you think Hashem gave us both the needs and the abilities that seem, at least at first glance, secondary to our true purpose?

Leave your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned for the Ramchal’s answer.