So you are sitting in your car, and Maariv has already started. You got out of the house, you made it to shul, and you parked. And you are about to get out of your car, but you pause. You see people walking in. You know, in a minute, you’ll see people rushing in. Men in hats grasping at their brims as they shuffle-run to shul.

Kids on scooters, flying across the street, chucking them onto the grass at the front door. And a minute past that, it’ll be quiet. Davening will already be a good few minutes in.

But now you are here, a minute past the start of Maariv, sitting in your car. You ask yourself, “What’s the point, really? Davening doesn’t do it for me. It just doesn’t. Maybe it used to, when I had the will to force it, but not anymore.” So you sit there on the precipice, in your car. The walk to the front doors of the shul is only a few steps from the spot you found at the curb. But there is an abyss open wide between you and those doors. Wider than the expanse of the universe.

Does this sound familiar to you? No? You never had an issue with minyan? What about night seder? What about any mitzvah you used to do with vigor, or perhaps never even did before, and now is just not the time?

Do you remember when you were trying to feel something, waiting for the davening or the learning or your relationship with Hashem to move something inside you? Waiting to see if it was worth the investment, but the words just fell flat? And you forgot why you were even bothering in the first place?

Perhaps some of you out there have never experienced this. It was always good for you. Maybe you are confused as to how a Yid could feel this way about his Yiddishkeit. Well, that’s great… for you. But it is a reality for many, whether it’s davening or a mitzvah or chessed. It’s as real and as human as anything. It’s a trajectory many feel. They put in their effort when they are young, and when it starts to fizzle and wane, the avodah feels like a burden.

And then we find the happy-clappy stuff. The cute vorts, the music videos, and the meat boards that make us feel like Yiddishkeit is fun.

We associate the burnout feeling with the old way of doing it. And the new way is warm, deep, and geshmak. It’s fun. And you get used to doing what feels good.

So you went from one end of the earth to the other. You went from thinking you needed to suffer under the cold, calculating burden of avodah, and when that didn’t work, you sought the feel-good stuff. The inspiration without effort. And that begins to feel empty as well.

The pasuk says in this week’s parsha, יִפְתַּח ה׳ לְךָ אֶת אוֹצָרוֹ הַטּוֹב אֶת הַשָּׁמַיִם “Hashem will open for you His good treasure, the heavens.”

The Kedushas Levi shines a light through this pasuk that is like a lifeline for me. He says :כִּי בַּתְּחִלָּה בָּא לָאָדָם הַיִּרְאָה, וְאַחַר הַיִּרְאָה בָּא הַתַּעֲנוּג, וְהַתַּעֲנוּג הוּא גָּנוּז בְּהַיִּרְאָה... כִּי בְּתוֹךְ הַיִּרְאָה גָּנוּז תַּעֲנוּג.

“At first, yirah comes to a person, and after the yirah comes pleasure, and that pleasure is concealed within the yirah.… For within yirah, pleasure is hidden.”

He continues and says, “And Hashem will open for you the goodness concealed within the treasure of yiras Hashem after you have served the Creator with yirah.”

If you just received the pleasure on its own, that isn’t real. Real ta’anug comes only from within yirah. So pleasure is the treasure. But you can’t find the real thing for free.

I imagine this little vort may not be landing the way it should. You might ask, “But Reb Levi Yitzchak, I got into this mess by burning myself out with yirah. I tried the yirah approach. It’s why I’m here in the first place!”

And the answer is, you’re right, but there’s more to it. There is a perspective you may have missed. And not just you, but me too. I can get swept up in the feel-good vibes just as much as the next guy.

The pasuk in Yeshaya tells us, יִרְאַת ה׳ הִיא אוֹצָרוֹ “Fear of Hashem is His treasury.” The famous Gemara in Berachos teaches us, הַכֹּל בִּידֵי שָׁמַיִם חוּץ מִיִּרְאַת שָׁמַיִם “Everything is in Hashem’s hands except for yiras Hashem.”

So yirah is the foundation. It is the building block of the relationship. You can’t skip this step, because if you do, you may fall into the trap of good vibes. Ta’anug without effort. Nahama d’kisufa. It isn’t filling. But the secret is still in the yirah. Not in the old yirah that broke your back with its cold, hard burden, but, as the Gemara says, the yirah that is in your hands. That is yours alone. And, as the Navi says, “Yirah is the treasury.”

Because there is a way to look at yirah as a gift. As a spring of light and life. Counterfeit yirah says, “You’re never enough.” True yirah is the choice in your hands to do what is right even when it’s hard.

So you are sitting in your car. It’s two minutes past the start time of Maariv, or whatever threshold you may be standing against. You can go in and feel bad about yourself again. Or you can stay in your car and listen to the rest of that song that feels good. And this choice feels like the only dichotomy left. But there is a third way to look at this.

You can open the door anyway, go in anyway, and allow yourself to sit in the knowledge that you got to choose this evening to go in. You may not feel the pleasure of being in shul, but the pleasure that you are truly in tune with yourself and connecting to Hashem in the effort can fill you with a glow that shines from one end of the earth to the other.

And as you cross the great chasm between you and whatever doors of avodah you may be facing, know that it is all within you. That the next step of a relationship with Hashem is in your hands.

Now, you did the thing. That is the key. The rest will come along. The joy from the hard things, and when you are on a roll, even the happy-clappy music videos can be enjoyable. They become the dessert that leaves a sweet flavor in your mouth. But the main course? You earned that. You came a bit closer to Hashem today.

Sometimes it’s just about moving. The Mesillas Yesharim teaches that external action awakens the internal. כִּי הַתְּנוּעָה הַחִיצוֹנָה מְעוֹרֶרֶת הַפְּנִימִית

You stayed in the fight. You kept moving. And perhaps this is the first taste of the hidden treasure you ever had. You discovered that you can ask something of yourself. That you can take responsibility for something hard without driving yourself back into burnout or settling for shallow ta’anug.

You used to think that work took something from you, but now I hope you can see the gift Hashem left for you within it.

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You are a holy Yid. No? You would die for Hashem, for fellow Yidden. We all have questioned whether we could do it, and perhaps there are others who couldn’t rise to the challenge, but I trust you. I know you are the one who would die al kiddush Hashem.

But, not to make it awkward, do you live like this in your life? In all areas of your life? Every moment? Every glance the wrong way, or thought that flits across your mind? What about that time you could have been present with your young son while he tumbled through the living room, but you were too busy checking a status on your phone? You said you’d give up your life, but you wouldn’t even give up your phone for a single minute…

And no, I am not targeting just you. I do this too. I truly am the main character of my life, and I see myself as the good guy. I would die for my family and my community. But I know the little things. The little things in my life I let slip. The human things.

The Noam Elimelech teaches us from this week’s parsha that “There are people who, in the generality of their limbs, sacrifice themselves for Hashem through fasting, deprivation, and the like. But in particular, each individual limb by itself is not as proper and correct as it should be. At times they stumble through them, through some seeing or sustained looking, through speech, or through other matters that a person tramples beneath his heels.”

Yes. You thought we already went through that bit of Torah way back in Parshas Eikev, when you were reminded again of the vort that you must treat every mitzvah with reverence, even the small ones.

The Rebbe Reb Meilech brings a Chazal from Yoma: “אֵבָרִים שֶׁפָּקְעוּ מֵעַל גַּבֵּי הַמִּזְבֵּחַ, קוֹדֶם חֲצוֹת — יַחְזִיר”—“With regard to limbs from offerings that were forced off the altar by the heat of the fire, if they fell before midnight, these limbs remain sacred. He should return them to the fire.”

“Individual limbs spring away and cause failure in a person who sacrifices himself to Hashem. ‘He must return’ means that he must return and repair them, sanctifying each individual limb by itself.”

We are the korban. We were always the korban. And we throw ourselves onto the fire for Hashem. It is honorable and worthy. But it doesn’t always mean we are totally worked out. There are parts of ourselves that need care. The little areas that need work. The mitzvos kalos that we trample underfoot.

I was taught in school that we all have a tachlis in life, a purpose. But we’re not born with a manual. We don’t know what our tachlis is. We have the Torah, but we need to walk its paths to find our tachlis. So it is easy to think that we need to be gedolim. Or massive askanim or massive gevirim. Those are grand poobah purposes. You can dream of the glory, of the greatness, of that purpose. But it’s too big, too general.

A rebbi of mine once joked that the minute a bachur comes off the plane home for bein hazmanim, he has made plans to finish all of Shas. But by the time bein hazmanim is over and he is planning to return, he’s barely done a single daf. Oftentimes the grand plan doesn’t include the details that are integral to a true avodas Hashem program. That’s where you start.

The Nesivos Shalom teaches on the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos that the way to learn what our tachlis is in this world is simple. It’s Torah, avodah, and gemilus chasadim. I hated that answer when I first heard it. It’s too… cliché. And not enough direction to actually work on a purpose.

But that’s it. The idea is not to create grand schemes. Yes, you are willing to die for Torah and for Hashem, but how do you get your whole being there? The answer is the small details. When you learn Torah and daven and help those around you, you will start to see things emerge that are your things. Small things. Coming one minute early to davening. Maybe it’s just coming on time to Borchu.

I have a friend who started working on himself only later in life. He is a huge inspiration to me. He does what many forget. And that is to pick one small and easy thing and do that. And then grow from there.

The yetzer hara likes big schemes, but growth comes in the small steps. He likes to make the project so astronomically huge. Because it feels good when it’s big. Go big or go home, as they say. And I say go home. Take a deep breath and spend ten minutes with your kid, phone-free. Don’t let yourself fall into the trap of “going big.”

And this is available to anyone at any stage. No matter where you are in life, you can always take a minute and choose something small. Maybe even impossibly easy, and commit to it. And when you pile these little things up over time, it’s a big thing.

And your korban will have fewer parts spring out of the fire. Maybe your korban is smaller, but it’s more whole, entirely for Hashem. This is what a Gibor is. The goal is to be kovesh the yetzer. Not to make grand plans and never follow through, but to find the thing that actually works.

כִּי־תֵצֵא לַמִּלְחָמָה עַל־אֹיְבֶיךָ, when you go out to war with your yetzer, don’t be the hero in general. Don’t just dream of the cape flowing behind you. Choose the better battle strategy. Choose the path that slowly ties all the disparate parts of you together. The small things, the ones you can win day in and day out.

Brother, I look forward to seeing you out on the field of battle.

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We don’t naturally do this. We don’t naturally understand the needs of others. Even having sympathy, much less empathy, is downright hard. You could almost say it’s against our nature.

Parshas Re’eh goes over the list of kosher birds again, as is the way of Sefer Devarim. And we come across the Chasidah, the stork.

Rashi explains why the stork is called a “Chasidah” based on a Gemara in Chulin. It’s a sweet reason. It’s nice. Heartwarming in all the right ways. It’s called a chasidah because it does chesed for its friends. שֶׁעוֹשָׂה חֲסִידוּת עִם חַבְרוֹתֶיהָ.

I was learning with my chavrusah, and he brought out his vort for me. I was actually asking him, “How can I get better at these divrei Torah?” “I felt I was in a bit of a slump recently when it came to the writing of this weekly newsletter, and he brought this vort out for me. About the Chasidah, who does kindness for its friends.

And as you all know, the vort doesn’t stop there. The Ramban teaches us that while there aren’t specific signs to tell which bird is not kosher, there is a list. And the chasidah is on this list of unfit flying things to eat.

So you’ll ask me, but then why does it have such a nice name? Why does the gemara point out the beauty of the name, and yet it’s not kosher?

You all know what’s coming here. You know the vort; I know the vort. I didn’t know it came from the Chidushei Harim, though. It’s one of those vorts that are so ubiquitous it feels like it had always been the pshat. R’ Yitzchak Meir Alter, the first Rebbe of Ger, taught us the lesson of the Chasidah. It does kindness for its friends, yet it is still not kosher because it does kindness only for its friends.

An old vort… yes. Older than the sands of time, I think. That is why we need to jump back into it. The heilige Ruzhiner taught the same vort, and so did the Kotzker. It has sort of become a cliche vort. At least that’s the way it seems to me. The truest truism that was ever true. It notches itself perfectly into that part of the mind that had been carved and set with the rules of how to be. The part that doesn’t always travel all the way down from the mind to the heart. You need to do kindness, not only with our friends but also with everyone else.

The Kotzker goes harder into the paint, though. The way you do chesed also tells the story of what kind of person you are. Do you only do chesed for your friends? So, it’s essentially a selfish pursuit? When you give to your friends, you know that will endear them to you. It’s a matter of self-preservation. A matter of self. A bechina of Yeshus, of selfness.

Giving to others selflessly is risky. This notion grinds against what has been programmed into your psyche from the moment it was born. It is programmed into every living thing from the beginning of creation, this instinct to survive. The Torah here tells you to quiet that screaming alarm in your head and to just give to others.

And no, we are not talking about tzedkaah here. Tzedakah is not chesed. It can be a part of it, but it is its own thing. For many, tzedaka is simple. You write your check, and you feel like you did your chesed of the day, but you can’t even feel it hit your account.

That’s not called doing chesed. That all still fits into the natural instinct of self-preservation. The kavod, the honor of giving money. It feels good and is good for taxes.

Real chesed is hard.

My chavrusah told over this vort, and I said to him, “But where’s the real bite of this vort? This is a famous vort. Where’s the chidush? Where’s the oomph?” He looked at me and said, “It’s simply to know that chesed is difficult. It’s hard. It’s an avodah. It’s hard to do for others.”

Parshas Re’eh starts off with a directive. See, this day I set before you blessings and curses. Devarim is where Moshe is reiterating to the people how to live. How to be. Perhaps to tell us that the natural morality that is logical and obvious is not enough to pull us up the mountain of Hashem.

Of what purpose is the Torah if it is only aligned with the physical drive for self-preservation? Is the Torah not more than a how-to manual? Or is it a way, perhaps, to transcend the preprogrammed algorithm baked into our physical being?

It is a wonderful thing that there is so much tzedakah given and so much chesed being done. But when you look in the mirror and see yourself and really see yourself, are you really truly giving? It’s in you. You can do this. You have the ability to give chesed ad ein sof... but it’s hard. I get it.

The goal of this newsletter, more a journey I was embarking on for myself, was about how to be a Gibor. Not the way the world looks at a hero or a powerful man. But the way the Torah looks at a powerful man. The Mishna in Avos explains that the goal is to be kovesh your yitzro. To conquer your nature. To see the algorithm of the physical world writhing in your mind and freeze it in its tracks.

A Gibor is one who climbs the mountain of Hashem. Who rises above into a way of being that is beyond the gravitational pull of self-centeredness.

So when a gibor learns this parsha and reads about the chasidah and remembers the cute vort that we all already know. Perhaps the gibor will take a minute and remember that this goes beyond the cuteness. That it’s hard. True chesed is hard.

And a Gibor rises to the challenge and does the hard thing.

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What do you do when the giving gets tough?

“And it will be, on account of your understanding these judgments [and keep them, and do them, and Hashem, your God, will keep the covenant and the loving-kindness which He promised to your forefathers].” (Devarim, 7:12)

וְהָיָה “And it will be” is always a term denoting simcha (joy), as it is said in the Midrash (Bereshis Rabba 42:4). The verse says ekev, meaning both “because of” and “heel”—and thus signifies “the end.” This is in order to show that in the future God will reveal to each soul in Israel the understanding that no statute or law in the Torah, no matter how inscrutable, was without meaning. At present, all the difficulties that Israel suffers over the fulfillment of mitzvot are due to an inability to understand the depth of the good contained in the mitzvot. It appears to them that these statutes are without meaning, and therefore they suffer from them. Yet when it becomes perfectly clear that everything was done in justice for the benefit of Israel and was not without meaning, “then our mouths will be filled with laughter,” (Tehilim, 126:2) and we will rejoice.

מי השלוח, חלק א, ספר דברים, עקב

Marek stood in front of his home, gazing at the road that lay before him.

Drumar’ovo Village. His inheritance and his curse.

As roadwarden of this village, he couldn’t help but agonize over his predicament.

Every town and village and city, for that matter, had a roadwarden who also was the governor. In the small villages the unfortunate soul who happened to be the firstborn son of a roadwarden, was gifted with the pleasure.

His home stood at the northernmost edge of the town. It was the first property the road passed as it snaked its way through the village lands.

The King’s Road lay pristine on this early spring morn. It was a beautiful road as far as roads go and was kept this way by the road warden himself, as was his duty, but entirely pointless.

The road spanned the entire kingdom but wasn’t completely used. Many areas benefited from the road as it efficiently passed through areas that were impassable. Many cities were built and thrived on the convenient access the road provided.

Yet the road didn’t always provide convenience. The King’s Road could circle and twist and bend and turn in the most random fashion. It cut through the middle of some towns and cities. It bypassed some villages completely.

In Drumar’ovo, it made itself right at home in the fields.

The road came towards the village from the west, and instead of continuing on by the northern edge, it snaked its way south and around the village, down through the wheat fields. It coiled in a circle, doubling back on itself as it entered the barley fields and cut straight through the vineyard back towards the north and then passed the village and away.

The fields were hampered by the twisting road. By the lazy shapes it wrought in the needed space of the fields. Fields that could grow no larger as they backed up to the great forest directly to the south and to the beginning of the Kiert’kin mountain range, southeast of the town. The mountains had some space for the vineyard, and there was good grazing for the sheep, but the road really did take up so much planting space.

Marek absentmindedly took out his pipe and began to load it with tabac. He hoped Petar would be on time this year. He did not know what he would do if the merchant tarried and Marek’s tabac stores dried up.

Marek refused to even think about the larders currently sitting empty. Bare shelves swept and picked clean by hungry families.

He thought about Mila. about what he would do if the hidden stores were used up before the harvest was completed.

It was a rough winter; not enough of the crop came in last harvest season.

“There would have been enough if not for the blasted road…” Marek muttered.

His elderly father, Tomas, looked up from where he sat carving a piece of pine at his small workbench and gave Marek his usual disapproving look.

“I will not hear this blasphemy again about the road,” he croaked. “It is the king’s privilege to have his road and your duty to uphold it.”

“Father,” Marek began. “The village is starving. The road takes up so much space in the fields.”

Tomas began to recite, “Eighteen paces abreast, two span by one span per stone, so that a caravan can go forth and another return as one. For the honor of the King.” The code of the roadwarden as memorized and remembered by every roadwarden since the dawn of the First King.

Marek sighed. “Father, you don’t understand. A good king would never abandon his people this way. The king has not ridden this stretch of road for over four centuries. The merchants just bypass it. They travel the road until they reach our town and cut through to the road as it makes its way out of our town and continue east. The road that spreads through wheat and barley fields is never used, yet we are mandated to care for those stones just as we must tend to the ones used regularly. Eighteen paces spread through the fields adds up to one hundred hectares of unusable wheat and barley fields…” Marek’s voice trailed off.

He was getting so tired of the back and forth. His father knew what he was going to say but didn’t seem to care. Going on and on about king and country, honor and privilege, and the road, it was all hogwash.

Tomas grunted and returned to his carving.

The image of Mila’s gaunt cheeks filled his vision. His sweet daughter was starving with the rest of the village. It wasn’t fair to her. We had enough space to grow more to ensure the yield was higher than they currently were able to produce. But the old-timers, like his father, wouldn’t budge.

“Father,” Marek suddenly had enough. “The council decided we are removing the road. We will take the stones and redirect them along the dirt path used by the merchants and connect to where the road leaves the fields. We are going to plant spring barley and turnips this first year in the space for a quick crop. And next year we will integrate the empty spaces into the current fields. We will have a crop in the next sixty days. I will be tough, but we will make it through the hungry gap. Next year our yield will be greater, and Drumar’ovo will no longer be the cursed village it has been these past few years.”

“I know, son,” his father said sadly. “You will have your crop and then you will be content. These are words I’ve heard before and even said myself. You will do this thing and you will learn of your folly, and I pray it does not cost the lives of everyone in this village.”

“It will cost the lives of everyone in this village if we do nothing,” Marek said.

***

The work took only ten days. Almost the entire town came out for the removal of the stones. Tomas and a few of his elderly friends refused to participate.

Marek refused to worry about them anymore. He was saving his village. He was doing the right thing here. Some of the stones were used to connect the road at the front of the village on the northwestern side to the next junction where the road left the village on the northeastern side. The bulk of the two-by-one span stone slabs were carted away.

The planting of the spring barley began immediately. It was hard to till the still-cold earth, but the entire village worked at it. Ten days later the first shoots of the barley could be seen.

The celebration was palpable, and no one noticed that Ivo had still not yet returned from his trip into the mountains. He had left just as the last stone was removed from the road. He took a small part of the flock and went to go seek new pastures lands. Marek hoped he was still out looking for something the sheep could eat, but Ivo should have been back already.

If anyone else in the village did notice, they would have thought silly lazy Ivo was just taking his time and trying to skip out on doing the work on the new patches of land with the rest of the village.

Sixty days after the first planting, the new spring barley crop was ready to harvest. The town had completely emptied its stores at this point. Mila looked pale and sickly from her starvation. But all were joyous at the sight of the freshly harvested sacks of barley. The town would survive.

Marek cried tears of joy that day. Tomas refused to partake. None knew what he ate; only sheer spite was what Marek thought.

Marek was beginning to worry, though.

Petar the merchant hadn’t arrived yet. He should have been there by now. The town thought that perhaps it was the extended winter this year, but he should have been there at least by the spring harvest.

And Ivo was still gone. Thank heavens above he hadn’t taken a larger flock with him.

As the spring drew to a close and summer began, Marek grew worried. Much-needed supplies hadn’t yet arrived. Petar’s yearly shipment was missing, and they would need him to survive out here so far from the capital.

Later, midway through the summer, Marek started receiving very disturbing reports.

Luka had been tending the new fields close to where the road veered off in its new direction. A Royal Courier passed on the King’s Road. Luka called to him. He was but half a road’s width from the courier, but the royal messenger kept going, completely ignoring him.

Nikola took another small flock of the remaining sheep and went out into the countryside seeking fertile land, like Ivo did. But that was six days ago, and no sign of Nikola anywhere.

Finally, Petar arrived with his giant cart. He made his way down the road towards Drumar’ovo in that slow, plodding gait his horse always took.

Mila saw him first from her window and shouted with excitement to her father.

“Papa, he’s here! Petar came at last…”

Marek walked out to the road and prepared to greet the merchant. As Petar’s cart grew closer to the village, Marek walked into the road with growing anticipation.

Marek always looked forward to seeing Petar. And while he may have had to put up with Petar’s often crude humor, Marek would welcome it, as his supply of tabac had completely run dry.

Marek walked out to the road right in front of Petar, yet Petar kept moving forward. He almost plowed right into Marek if he hadn’t jumped out of the way at the last moment.

“Petar, you drunken old fool! What are you doing?” Marek half shouted as he got to his feet and brushed himself off. But Petar kept on riding.

Marek began to yell after him, perhaps using words not befitting a roadwarden, but Petar’s actions combined with all the other strange happenings was getting to him.

Suddenly Petar stopped.

“Finally,” Marek whispered to himself and hurried to catch up to the merchant.

As Marek walked up the side of the large cart, he saw Petar pull out a map and mutter to himself. With a grunt, he flung the map off the side of the cart, whipped the reins of his horse with a yell, and continued forward, connecting to the new road that took him completely past the village and away.

Marek was so thoroughly confused he forgot to call after Petar. Marek picked up the fallen map, studied it for a moment, and a look of horror formed on his face.

***

Marek sighed.

“Father, we’ve been over this. You have no idea that what’s been happening is related to the road.”

Tomas looked at his son with a furrowed brow and that look he only reserved for the rambunctious children of the village. Marek knew the look; he’d received it many a time before, but he was in his fortieth year now, by God.

“Mila is alive because of what we did with the road, Father. Have you no feelings for that? For the life of your granddaughter?”

“If Danica were alive today, she would have stopped you,” Tomas muttered.

That hurt, Marek. That hurt more than his father could really know.

“That’s not fair, Tomas.”

Marek stormed away and forced his thoughts towards the council meeting they had earlier, if for nothing else than to keep the painful memories of his Danica from consuming him again. It had been years since he thought of her. Now was not the time to revisit that old hurt.

The road warden had to focus.

Stojan had screamed at the council. They were gathered in the center of the village, standing in a circle, with the villagers all standing about behind them.

“The map… is false,” he sputtered.

“No, it’s not,” Marek said calmly. Although his calm demeanor was a lie, Marek was anything but calm.

“The map is real… we have the same map with the seal of the king’s cartographer himself,” he said coolly.

“Only Petar’s map is a bit different now, isn’t it?” Stojan shrieked.

The murmurs of the council and the crowd behind them slowly grew into a crescendo of cries and yells.

“Quiet down, everyone.” Marek said in a firm, stony voice. “I, Marek, have been Roadwarden here for years, and my father was Roadwarden before me and his father before him. We will fix this. I promise you.”

Marek now stood overlooking the road. He traced the old imprint of the road that could still be seen, where barley shoots were sprouting and the turnips would be ready soon.”

Marek was lost in thought…

“You don’t really have a plan, do you, Marek?” a voice said suddenly from right behind him.

Marek jumped.

Standing behind him was a very old man. In flowing but simple robes, holding a gnarled walking staff.

Marek had never seen the man before.

“Who are you? Where did you come from? I did not see you coming down the road...”

“Relax, Marek,” the old man said. “It is of no matter how I arrived here, only that I am here. And lucky I am, for in another month or even less, I wouldn’t have been able to find this place.”

“What do you mean? Wait… How come you are here, Petar, and the courier they…” Marek trailed off.

The old man smiled and took a seat on… Marek blinked. The old man just sat. In the open field. On nothing.

Marek blinked.

The old man said, “You could sit too, if you believed.”

Marek, confused, asked, “Who are you?”

“I drew your map. I drew all of them, you could say. The one you have and the one Petar had. They used to look the same. At least they were when I drew them. But now they don’t look the same,” the old man sighed. “Have you not been wondering why your village has disappeared from the maps of the kingdom? Your map remains the same because it never left the village, but I imagine other things have left the village and never returned…”

Marek stiffened.

“I see that I am not far off.”

“We’ve lost two shepherds and a sizable part of the village’s flock,” Marek said meekly.

“Roadwarden, do you know why the King’s Road was made?”

Marek remained quiet.

“A long time ago… I know, I know, every story starts off that way,” the old man chuckled to himself.

“A long time ago this land was barren. It was a wasteland. A curse had been put on it during a great war. It was before even my time. The First King found a way to revive the land, to make it live again. He taught me how to build the road, and build the road we did.”

Marek stared at the figure sitting on nothing over the grass by the side of the road. “You worked with the first king? But… but… that’s impossible.”

“Let me finish, Marek,” the man said. “The first king taught me the way of the road and how to enter it on the maps of the kingdom. What is a road for Marek?”

Marek was quite thoroughly lost by this story, not quite comprehending what any of this had to do with his town disappearing.

“A road is to allow the ease of travel across the land,” he responded.

“Yes to travel. To get somewhere or to return from somewhere. But this road is more.”

“But this road, the road made by the first king, has never been traveled by any of the kings. At least this part of it.” Marek interrupted. “Others use it, but from our current king all the way back four centuries to the first king, none of them have come out here. And my family, Roadwardens all of them, diligently kept the road. A road never used,” Marek said in a quiet voice.

“Ahhh…. But still, you used to believe that the road had purpose. Even if not apparent. The last few seasons you have forgotten that purpose. There is more to this road than you understand. The King’s Road was shaped in the ancient way that bound the kingdom and returned it to the fertile lands it once was. Every curve and twist and shape bound this land and gave it life. Gave it life, Marek! Now do you understand?

“But we have been planting. The land is fertile… I…” Marek trailed off. The revelation of the King’s Road was beginning to sink in.

“For now… for now…” the king’s cartographer whispered.

“Oh no…” Marek whispered… “What have we done?”

***

The first frost was upon them now. Tomas stood next to Marek surveying the rebuilt road. All the twists and all the turns through the fields. All the original stones returned to their place.

The old fields were now plowed and planted again. Ivo and Nikola had just finished the new sheep pens, and everyone was ready for the coming winter.

Tomas put his hand on his son’s shoulder and smiled. A rare smile.

“Father, will we be ok this season?” Marek asked. “Father, please tell me we will be ok this season…”

Tomas answered in a warm voice, “We’ll be ok. Just trust in the road, trust in the King, and we’ll be ok.”

Marek looked at the road. And breathed long and deep. And then he laughed. And laughed a deep laugh. A full laugh. Like he used to.

Like he really believed…

בְּכָל־דְּרָכֶיךָ דָעֵהוּ; וְהוּא יְיַשֵּׁר אֹרְחֹתֶיךָ
“In all your ways know Him, and He will make straight your paths.”
— Mishlei 3:6

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“It is like a king who had a vineyard. Enemies entered it and cut it down. Who needs consolation—the vineyard or the owner of the vineyard? So the Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘Israel is My vineyard, for the vineyard of Hashem of Hosts is the House of Israel.’

It is like a king who had a flock. Wolves entered it and tore it apart. Who needs consolation—the flock or the owner of the flock? Thus, ‘Comfort, comfort My people’—‘Comfort Me, comfort Me, My people.’”

—Pesikta Chadasha, §97

I return to my farm, or what is left of it, after having been away. I had to be away, but I was never truly away. I am always watching and managing things behind the scenes, but I return to see the devastation.

I walk slowly down the path from the road. The sun was slowly setting behind the trees, casting orange and pink hues across the meadow where my farm lay. As I grow closer to the entrance of the farm, I see the first glimpse of the place I called home. From this distance it looks like it always did. The farmhouse is sitting serenely up against the copse of large oak trees. The wide expanse of land behind where the wheat and barley grew. The rolling hills behind there are where my sheep would graze. From this distance it looked as it always did. But I was not fooled. I knew what had happened here. I was here for every heart-wrenching moment. Tears begin to flow freely down my face; the images of carnage sweep across my vision.

As I walkcloser, the signs of destruction come into full view.

I reach the low gate at the border of the farm. The one that was built by my friend Nik. It hangs lop-sided off its hinge, scarred and burned edges, truly nothing left but a few shards of wood and the sign slashed and charred sitting off to the side.

The front facade of the house is still erect, but as I walk alongside its southern side, the gaping holes of burnt masonry and charred timber appear. Looking at the house from the side, it seems as though a huge fiery hand had descended and gouged out a portion of the house in one scoop, leaving the eastern front facade intact but standing as a lie and a cover for the destruction that lay behind. At the very back, the western side where the bedroom was, only a charred and empty mess remains.

I walk to the pens on the northern side. I suddenly remember the one ram who constantly broke through the low walls there. I tried to reinforce the walls and then had to sometimes leave him locked away in the barn. He would get so rowdy and rile the others up. But he is gone now. I look around and see where one of the ewes used to sit and sing to her young. The sad memories of her neglecting her duty one season when her young wouldn’t latch right, but I still loved her and the ram and all the sheep, the good ones and the bad ones; now they are gone. The remnant spread across the valley at different farms, waiting to return when everything gets fixed and repaired.

Beyond the pens, where the field once thrived, I remember waving in the breeze the golden carpet of wheat, whispering, constantly whispering, words of wisdom and love to me and to all who lived here. The barley fields that called to man and animal alike. Who sustained my children and their flock through the good times and the bad. Now the field lay barren and empty. Nothing grows there any longer, and the sight of it pulls whatever tears I have left from my reddened eyes.

I keep walking. Towards the vineyard in the south. The roots and rows of black, twisted vines. I remember the years of the sweetest wines and even the years when the vines grew stubborn and refused their yield. But they were my vines, and I loved them dearly. A remnant was saved, also waiting to return.

The sobs came from my throat unbidden now. Looking at the desolation always brings me to this sad state.

As I walked the rolling hills behind the now barren wheat fields, I thought about what I could have done better. The attack came so swiftly. The blight entered first and destroyed the crops, and then the wolves from the west descended on my flocks and killed so many.

What could I have done? I tried to help; I tried to stop it. But it was to no avail. I brought experts in. They showed how to bolster the fences and to plant in the correct areas with the right soil, but the advice was not heeded.

“But I could have been better,” I said to myself. My voice cracked in the hoarse wails that left my throat.

“Oh, my children who once lived here, where have you gone? I sent you away, and you have paid double for your sins.”

“My children who lived on this farm with the flock and the vineyard and the wheat and the barley and the love and the hardships and the pain and the joy and the sorrow are all torn from this place.”

“One day. One day they will all return here. One day the fields will whisper their words of wisdom and love to me again. One day soon, my children, soon.” I shout to the sky and to the sun and to the moon and to all who would listen.

But for now I walk this land. And this sorrow and this pain my children feel every moment they are away are mine to bear as well. I walk this land every day. I have been here since that hateful day when the attack came and banished my children and my flock and my vineyard from this land. And every day I cry again.

Who will comfort me? Who will comfort me?

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I have sat across frum men in suits, men with families, who give tzedakah, who know how to speak in Torah and heard them use four-letter words like they were nothing.

They weren’t trying to be edgy, or rather, too edgy.

Just normal edgy.

A bomb dropped into a sentence because that is how people talk now.

A sharp little blast to make a point.

It’s really just a lazy hammer.

A way to sound serious without having to know how to communicate well.

These days the one who does not use those words can feel like the odd one out.

Like he is too sheltered.

Like he is refusing to join the chevra.

A man thinks he knows which words are the dangerous ones.

Lashon hara. Lies. Vulgarity. Rage.

The words of poison when they leave the mouth.

Everyone knows poison kills.

But the Noam Elimelech reveals something deeper.

Regular speech, or the speech that feels normal, can be the trap.

Even beyond the cussing, there is also the endless small talk of banalities.

Small talk is not that bad if it’s used to grease the stilted gears of conversation, but it needs to grow to carry the conversation to more holy heights.

The endless sports analysis.

The endless politics, which is just sports for angry adults.

Two teams in red and blue jerseys, each side chanting its own righteousness like drunk fans in the cheap seats.

The idea is it’s easy to lose yourself into speech that feels fine, but, like an oozing pit of quicksand, will suck you right in.

In Parshas Matos, the pasuk states “ככל היוצא מפיו יעשה.”, Whatever comes out of his mouth, he must fulfill.

Based on this, the Rebbe Reb Meilech explains the tefillah we say before Shemoneh Esrei: ה׳ שפתי תפתח ופי יגיד תהלתך.

Hashem opens the lips, and the mouth draws speech upward into the world called Tehillah.

Holy words do not simply leave the mouth and disappear. They rise and attach to the highest heights of the olamos.

Not so with דברי הגשמיות.

Mundane words are נפסקים, cut off.

They leave the mouth and fall away.

That is the problem.

Not that every plain word is assur.

You don’t need to walk around sounding like a sefer at all times.

Very few people can live like that and still come off as legit.

The problem is that mundane speech needs to be lifted.

Shlomo HaMelech says in Misheli,” מות וחיים ביד לשון”, “Death and life are in the hand of the tongue.”

The Rambam teaches us in Hilchos Deos that a person should train himself in silence.

He is not talking only about lashon hara.

He is saying that even permitted speech one to guard it.

Our modern world has such a hard time with this.

We live in a generation where everyone is always saying something.

Posting. Commenting. Texting. Reacting. Explaining. Defending. Performing. Announcing. Branding. Processing out loud.

Telling the world their truth.

We make so much noise and call it authenticity.

And you may say, “What? I didn’t say anything wrong.” or “Those words aren’t that bad, relax.”

Maybe not.

Maybe it’s not wrong.

Maybe it’s just dead.

That is what bothers me about the easy curse word.

It’s not only the question of issur, though a Yid should ask that too.

But even before the technical aspect, you have outsourced your emphasis to crude and crass words.

You want the impact without craftsmanship.

Instead of searching for the right word, you grab the loud one.

Instead of building your sentences, you throw a brick through the window.

The Tanya in Perek Mem says that when you speak using your nefesh habahamis, if you speak in holiness to connect with Torah or even regular schmoozing that is mekadesh shem shamayim, you are revealing your true divine soul.

But when you speak idle words, the divine holiness within them becomes concealed.

The words may not be forbidden.

But they thicken the barriers over the neshamah and make the inner you harder to reach.

That is the danger of idle, crass speech.

In the Iggeres HaGra, the Vilna Gaon writes that a person is judged for everything he says, “even the slightest expression,” and he urges training oneself in silence.

He brings the Chazal that man’s pursuit in this world should be silence and then says one must seal his lips like two millstones.

He explains that idle words are powerful weapons that reach from one end of the world to the other.

So, for us, should we never speak?

No. A Gibor does not become mute.

A Gibor is not afraid of speech.

He knows speech is one of the great powers of man.

Hashem created the world with speech.

The Torah is given over in words.

Tefillah is words.

A father blesses his children with words.

A husband repairs and strengthens Shalom Bayis with words.

A leader supports his community with words.

Not every conversation needs to be deep.

A man can talk about food with kedusha.

He can talk about work with kedusha.

He can talk about sports or politics with kedusha if it is done sparingly and does not become his second religion.

He can make a joke with kedusha.

He can tell his kid to put on his shoes with kedusha.

He can discuss money, logistics, repairs, dinner, schedules, the car, the bank, the dentist, the broken sink, and the whole annoying machinery of life without letting his mouth become hefker.

It’s easy to get tripped up.

It’s easy to rely on four-letter words or the politics of the day.

Because then you don’t have to think too hard.

You don’t need to learn the language or efficient communication.

Just listen to Ben Shapiro and drop a few word bombs, and you get noticed.

But that’s cheap.

You are bigger than that, brother.

Watch your mouth.

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There is a dangerous pleasure in being sharp.

You discover one day that you can hurt people with truth.

You learn how to take a clean, cold fact and drive it between the ribs like a jagged dagger or a scalpel.

Truth shaped like military ordnance.

Pinchas takes a spear.

He rises from among the people and kills Zimri and Kozbi.

The plague stops.

Hashem then gives him, “הִנְנִי נֹתֵן לוֹ אֶת בְּרִיתִי שָׁלוֹם” , a covenant of peace.

A spear.

A death.

A covenant of peace.

That combination has lit the fires of zealotry through the annals of history, hotter than the sun.

Because every angry man wants to be Pinchas.

Every man with a hot head and a good Ma’areh Makom wants to imagine that his anger is righteous.

That his cruelty is clarity.

That his need to strike is kana’us, a blazing fire for Hashem.

But Chazal does not let us get away with that Moreh Heter..

The Gemara in Sanhedrin says “הבא לימלך אין מורין לו” “if someone comes to ask whether he should do this [Be a Kana’i], we do not tell him to do it.”

Pinchas is not a template for angry men.

Chazal there continues and says that if Zimri had separated from Kozbi and Pinchas still killed him, Pinchas would be liable.

If Zimri had turned and killed Pinchas, Zimri would not be liable, because Pinchas would have been a rodef.

One breath later, the spear becomes murder.

One movement too late, and the Bris Shalom becomes bloodshed.

That is the knife-edge of Parshas Pinchas.

Not every sharp thing is holy.

The Toldos Yaakov Yosef, later in the parsha, on the korbanos of Rosh Chodesh, gives another brutal angle to this delicate way to view the world.

The Torah says that on Rosh Chodesh we bring “שְׂעִיר עִזִּים אֶחָד לְחַטָּאת”, “one goat as a sin offering.”

He explains that when the moon is renewed, when the Shechinah rises from darkness.

Darkness still gets its due…

Then he says, “הצדיק מברר הניצוצין... על ידי יסורין שנתיסר על ידי הרשע, והצדיק עולה ורשע יורד תחתיו.”

“The tzaddik clarifies sparks through the suffering endured from the rasha. The tzaddik rises, and the rasha goes down beneath him.”

A wicked man can hurt you and still unintentionally become part of your elevation.

His betrayal may burn off childish naivete, or his pressure may teach you to daven for real.

The tzaddik rises from the pain caused by the rasha.

But do not make the mistake.

The knife does not get credit for this surgery.

The rasha does not become holy because the tzaddik used the pain well.

The man who caused the wound still has to answer for becoming the kind of man through whom wounds enter the world.

Yeshayahu says this about Ashur in perek yud.

Hashem calls him “שֵׁבֶט אַפִּי,” the rod of My anger.

Ashur is being used by Heaven, and still he is judged, because “וְהוּא לֹא כֵן יְדַמֶּה”, “he does not see himself that way.”

He enjoys the destruction.

So the Navi asks, “הֲיִתְפָּאֵר הַגַּרְזֶן עַל הַחֹצֵב בּוֹ”, “does the axe glorify itself over the One who chops with it?”

The axe may be in the King’s hand.

But it is still only an axe.

The Rambam says the same about the Mitzriyim in Hilchos Teshuvah.

Even though exile was decreed, Egypt was punished, because “שלא גזר על איש ידוע”, “Hashem did not decree that this specific man become the oppressor.

“אילו לא רצה להרע להם הרשות בידו”, “if he did not want to harm them, the choice was in his hand. History has a decree. You still choose what kind of man you become inside it.”

History has a decree. The yidden needed the Kur Habarzel.

But you still get to choose what kind of man you become.

I can’t run from this.

With all the words I write that seem to lash out, I cannot run from this…

I can be useful to Hashem’s plan and still be ugly inside.

Pharaoh was useful. Ashur was useful.

A fever, a bad boss, a cruel rebbi, a betrayal, the voice in your head that tells you you’re nothing.

All of it can be used.

But usefulness is not holiness.

Hashem can use anything.

And you.

You can use anything too.

He gave you every moment of pleasure and pain in your life for you to use.

To become a tzadik.

But beware, brother.

If you find yourself wielding the blade, know how you stand.

Look at your heart.

Do you bring with yourself the Bris Shalom?

Or is there a taivah for fervent, righteous fury that drives all your moves?

There are times to speak. Times to confront. Times to protect. Times to rebuke. Times to stand up while the plague spreads.

Pinchas did not write a thoughtful post.

He stood up.

Lakol zman Va’eis

But before you let yourself become sharp like a spear or an axe, you must ask yourself the dark question.

Do not ask, “Am I right to go to war for this, to be loichem likvod shamayim?”

That question is too cheap.

Ask this, “Do I want this to hurt?”

If the truth gives you the private pleasure of watching another man shrink, stop.

That is not Pinchas.

That is Ashur with a hechsher.

The spear must be held by a man who has erased his ego before Hashem.

The knife can only be held by a man who doesn’t enjoy being necessary but is daveik Bashem, with a Bris Shalom.

And that is the whole avodah of the Gibor.

To become strong without becoming cruel.

To become clearheaded without becoming cold.

To learn how to be brave without getting drunk on the sound of your own self-righteous spear.

Pinchas gets a bris shalom.

The axe?

It gets thrown away.

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Worst Bochur brings, brought out the worst in me…

He is dead, though, killed by his creator, like Frankenstein, who couldn’t face the results of his own making.

Worst Bochur was a mirror that reflected some (not all) of the ugliness of our community. He poked holes in the narratives.

Much needed.

RIP Worst Bochur, RIP…

You don’t deserve a Kaddish, but you do at least get a good ole’ RIP.

You did let it rip, and for that, I salute you…

you created a beautiful golem, but he was a little too distracted by the fairer sex. His wisdom was marred by the gender wars, but there were slivers of light peeking through, dripping through, pouring through…

The nature of where we stand.

The fourth turning is upon us.

One of the last things he wrote was this (I copied the text word for word, as there is no longer a way to link back to it. I still have his emails though… it’s exactly the same except there are a few commas put in their correct place. My AI grammar check added them in and i was way to lazy to go back and pull them out… sorry, not sorry.)

“The deepest desire of most people is to be accepted, seen, held, and loved unconditionally.

The deepest desire of the frum system is to tell you that you can have none of those things unless you squish your essence into a palatable mold, and then maybe you will earn enough compliance points to be recognized.

Even if you attain this, it is fragile. Step out of line; suddenly you will be discarded, and then you realize you never really existed in their minds as humans, only as cogs in their machine.

Then you either try to get back into their good graces or you get so hurt and join Kefirastack.

Truth is, both conclusions are wrong. You exist under God, not under man, and the love you were chasing was not real love; it was acceptance, conditional on your submission.

Laugh at the system and game it because it is and has always been fake. You were taught that “jealousy, lust, and honor take someone out of the world” refers to the test that gedolim face when people worship them.

It isn’t.

It’s giving up your essence, your world, for status.

It’s the test we all face every day.

Walk out of the shade into the sun.

The only acceptance you need is your own.”

The following was a comment to the post that just grew and grew, and then the Worst Bochur was laid to rest.

It sat in my Google Drive folder, waiting for me to do something with it…

And the truth is there won’t ever be a good time for posting this.

Might as well just do it now.

So here goes…

….

And the cycles of history turn, and turn and turn…

This season, the Eastern European one heavily influenced by Christianity, will eventually end and a new age will begin…

Maybe the age of my dreams…

I dream of a world where all people can follow their own path… but take their path seriously… with a brutal honesty and desire to seek truth and serve Hashem.

This seems like the general attitude of Chazal…

Each one was unique and confident in their own way. They weren’t afraid to seek the truth. They asked questions that would get you thrown out of any modern-day frum school.

They set the tone for how to learn the Torah. And fought for it tooth and nail.

They did not fear being at odds with the majority opinion.

We as a Klal may be forced to practically follow the Rov, but they didn’t, those Dei’os Yechidim. They just did their thing.

I love this sentiment, but today, when someone walks off into the sunset and claims to forge their own path, so often, it’s just a self-serving protestation.

It is a way to let the ego shine bright instead of revealing the light that is already there.

For some it becomes a way to justify lust or eating treif (not always, but most times from my experience, and I admit I need to get out more).

This ephemeral desire to be free—to emphasize ‘desire’ more than the being ‘’free’—becomes a compulsion all on its own, and a slave I become once more.

I feel like we need to return to the days of Chazal while retaining a serious commitment to truth. Those were days filled with uncertainty but also a drive to know Hashem without all this fancy wrapping paper.

We don’t know how to do this, so alas, we remain cloistered in our hive mind nests, squirming and squishing ourselves, atrophying the part of our minds that makes us great, that makes us each unique warriors for truth.

You must know that you have the blood of warriors flowing through your veins, and yet you act in fear of your own shadow when it warps its shape in the waning light of this galus.

We have all the titles for perfection in our hive mind world: avreich, Ben Torah, gvir, askan, etc.

All of these are perfect beings, true in their meaning, and obviously not everyone with a title fully lives up to it.

But the great masses, the swarming, squished masses of yidden who were broken by the system or who taught themselves to believe that they were not broken when they were, or even those who have eked out a path along the edges but do not want to leave yet do not find they have room to breathe in the squirming mass of hive-mind thought—what of them?

Or what of the mass itself that holds so much light unto itself, yet refuses to let any of it out because it’s not “our Mesorah”?

What is mesorah? What mesorah did Abaye and Rava have when they went after each other, or the schools of Shammai and Hillel, who could not stop fighting but let their daughters and sons marry each other?

Was there a shidduch crisis then? In that age of intensely committed warriors for Emes?

It doesn’t matter what kippah you wear or if you hold three hours instead of six. In our corners we congregated and gathered and squished and squashed ourselves into a heaving, writhing mass of uniformly accepted behaviors, never allowing an errant free thinker the wiggle room to feel at home.

And so what of those broken souls who want something more? We have no word for those broken souls trying to find their way, no word for the one who claws his way forward one brutally painful inch at a time, falling behind more than moving forward but still moving.

Where are the men the world needs?

To answer the call from the silly song at the end of Shrek 2:

I need a hero

I’m holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light

He’s gotta be sure, and it’s gotta be soon

And he’s gotta be larger than life, larger than life

Or more seriously, as Hillel taught in Pirkei Avos Perek Beis, “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”

Eizehu Gibor? In a world where the yetzer hid himself so perfectly in the throng of black hats and jackets…? (or white knit kippas… it really doesnt matter…) Where any act of kvisha results in phone calls to your parents or rebbe or shadchan saying, “Well… he (or she) is not really fitting in… not getting with the program…”?

Imagine living in a world where you can be truly free? Free even of the desire to be free… Just free to be one with Hashem, like all this was supposed to be all along?

Maybe I am overly romanticizing all this… the past had their issues too. Many of those issues are thankfully addressed in our time… but the souls of those Yechidim…

There are also so many great people today, and it is not fair to whitewash the entire generation with one whiny, petulant stroke of my brush…

Maybe everything is fine and we just keep our head down at the twilight of this long galus, like tired fathers hanging desperately onto the overhead railing on the train as we come home from a long day at work with no energy or vigor left in our bones for living, hoping some guy comes to save us from ourselves because we are too tired anymore to deal with all the weight piled onto our backs over the centuries…

Wouldn’t it be nice to greet Moshiach as men, standing tall and proud for keeping the faith and holding our post through this long night, instead of having our backs broken and bent and submissive to a worldy master who did not know what they lorded over, whose own backs were bent and broken by the ravages of their own time…

Should Moshiach find us in this state of befuddlement, what would we say of ourselves?

Would we be proud?

There is a lot to be proud of.

An infrastructure that is truly rock solid. Yet, what fills those hallowed halls are but broken, limping souls, limping toward a future that can no longer carry its own weight.

Would we focus on our pride as warriors for Hashem, or would we cringe from the cracks in the facade?

And as I lay blame, I lay it upon my own shoulders, upon my own failures and fears, for I know what I am capable of, but I choose to slink in the shadows, fearful, afraid, hopped up on the dopamine of meat boards and music videos.

I thank Hashem for what He has given me, but I do not know who this is that I call Hashem… a transactional god of kumzitzes and vortlach… like was taught… or something more.

And so the true Ein Sof, Kudsha Brich Hu, waits patiently for me to just turn my head and see Him for what He truly always was, always there waiting for me to let myself see. To know that while He was hidden it was me who was doing the hiding…

All he ever wanted from me was to keep to the mission he gave me. To steer this lost ship of my life home. It’s all that he wishes for all of us.

Each one of us is steering this long story home.

Keeping this small spark of light inside alive, even as the stormy seas rage and froth about.

And he gave me my ship with all its holes, and he gave you your ship.

Maybe it is bigger than mine, maybe smaller, maybe more holes on the outside but more whole on the inside…

Whatever it is, we each got our own, and each ship must be steered on its own in its own way…

But do we notice… do we know… do we?

I pray, with the only prayer I have left in my tired and sore heart, that we find the bone in our backs that should have stopped any hand from passing through and build it back up, like Moshe, who stood up the pillars of the Mishkan on his own.

Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh,

So that Hashem can dwell in me,

And so that I can finally know Him…

So I can finally say, “Ani Yodaati Es Hashem”

Ani Yodaati Dai’ka…

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Good morning.

You woke up.

You did the thing.

You got up.

You think you got up because it is the right thing for you to do. It is the effective thing to do.

So that the rest of your day will go smoothly.

You will prepare yourself with ample time.

You will be able to leave your house without the inner crisis of a man on the run.

You will make it to shul and daven properly.

It’s the practical thing to do, no?

No.

It can’t just be that.

There is a depth to working on the self, to acting in the ways of Hashem and His Torah, that is easy to miss.

So many Shmoozen sell the practicality of Torah. The efficiency of Torah.

“Wow, see how the Torah has affected the world and formed all these cultures into being slightly less than savages!”

So is that all the Torah is?

Just a series of efficiency protocols?

זֹאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה

Why doesn’t the Torah call Parah Adumah “the Chok of the Parah”?

Instead, the Torah calls it the “Chok of the Torah.”

Reb Levi Yitzchak of Barditchev says that the honest truth is that all of the Torah’s commandments are Chukim.

All of Torah are mitzvos whose true reason we do not understand.

Hashem revealed just enough for us to do something real. But the true depth? That is hidden.

The neshama understands it.

The neshamah knows the true depth, but Hashem created this world where the body is at odds with the truth.

This is an Alma D’piruda.

A world where nothing is connected. A world of separation. From truth.

The body naturally resists.

The body may think it’s doing things because of efficiency.

But that’s a selfish game.

So selfish to think that all Torah is good for is self-preservation.

To take the highest Ohr of the Ein Sof and plug it into this physical world as a way to get along?

So Hashem gives us the chukim.

To remind us that we do things even if we don’t know the full reason.

And it’s the Chok of the Torah. Because really every mitzva is this way.

How small would the torah be if it could fit into neat explanations?

The higher knowing of your soul is hidden deep within morning routines and practical dietary laws.

Kosher is good for you, really.

Really? Is that all it boils down to?

How quaint.

But know that it’s normal.

You are human. We are human.

We see patterns everywhere we want to make it all make sense.

It’s the practical thing to do to make it all make sense.

We love to serve the gods of comfort and ease and practicality.

Shaking the lulav is a practical way to show how grounded we are.

If you read the Torah a certain way, you can see the secret codes shining out that PROVE the Torah is true.

But is that all there is?

No, there is so much more.

So how does one tap into that ‘so much more’?

How can we taste our neshamah’s true understanding?

At Har Sinai, Klal Yisrael said,

נעשה ונשמע

“We will do, and we will hear.”

The Jewish way is not “I understand, therefore I do.”

It is deeper.

I do, and through the doing I become able to hear.

Hearing, even hearing deeply, isn’t enough.

You need to do things without hearing.

You need to do Hashem’s ratzon, and that will carry you through the world of practical advice for living into the world of Dveikus Bashem.

Your neshama can’t be heard in this physical, detached world.

But you can draw it out when you take action.

The Sefer Hachinuch teaches in Mitzvah sixteen “כִּי אַחֲרֵי הַפְּעֻלּוֹת נִמְשָׁכִים הַלְּבָבוֹת”.

“It is action itself that draws out the heart.”

Even a Rasha can turn himself around by doing the things.

Doing the things, often without knowing the why, draws out the neshamah.

It draws out your heart to feel and to know the truer things of your soul.

Like a sixth sense. But more than that, a feeling of returning to the place you always were.

This is the point of the Chok.

To remind you that there was always more beneath the surface.

This is why it is the Chok of the Torah, not just the Chok of the Parah.

Why is this lesson revealed with the Parah Adumah?

The Kedushas Levi continues and shows us that when the Neshama leaves the body, the body that is left becomes tamei.

Because the soul is what carries the truth, the engine of life.

When it leaves, it reverts the body back to the physical plane.

How tragic that when alive we never fully tap into the soul that’s here.

Like the Kotzker said, “I see dead people walking around who are still alive.”

The Parah Adumah is the perfect mitzvah to teach this lesson.

Where the one who is Mitaher becomes Tamei.

I don’t know why. But my soul knows why.

And I do it because I will be able to draw my soul closer to the surface.

This is what a tzadik does.

He refines the body so that the body itself becomes imbued with the kedusha of the soul.

So what is there for you and me to do?

To be a Gibor is not to be perfect.

It is to live a mission-driven life.

That does not mean you do this Jewish thing because it makes sense, or because it works, or because it is practical.

You do it because it is the truest truth.

The goal is to remember Him and to bring Him into your world.

To create a Dira Bitachtonim.

To be daveik to Him.

In whatever way you are able.

Even when the body does not know why.

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He worked his whole life to achieve what he had.

Every day. Day in, day out, was a grind.

He worked on himself. Perfected his middos. Perfected his learning. He taught others and led large groups.

What more could they ask of him?

Yet he was still overlooked.

That hurt. That was painful.

“I have more to offer. I am more charismatic. I am more, I tell you. I am MORE than he will ever be,” he thought to himself.

“No one cares.”

“No one appreciates what I have done,” he muttered to himself.

Can you honestly say you’ve never felt this way in your life?

Have you never been passed over for a promotion or done something that got no accolades?

Is it wrong to think this way?

I mean, it’s not as bad as eating treif, right?

It’s bad, but we all do it.

You do it. I saw you do it that time in shul when you were telling me about that guy.

I do it too. Yeah, that time I vented about work.

You were mistreated. He was wrong. You’re not supposed to be a doormat, right?

He is the problem.

You need to stand up for yourself.

You learn. You daven. You went to the best yeshivos. You’re a good guy, and he was a bad guy.

Forget that guy.

He is the problem.

Does that sound familiar? That exchange? Righteous indignation. And you might even be right. You might even be kadosh. And those who agree with you might even be kadosh.

“כי כל העדה כולם קדושים.”

And Korach took himself. Rashi explains, “לקח את עצמו לצד אחד.”

So he could position himself opposite Moshe. He set himself aside.

He fabricated an opposition where there was none previously.

Out of thin air, a tzaddik of the generation manufactured machlokes.

Rashi continues and adds that he spent time speaking sweet nothings into the ears of the Sanhedrin to convince them to join his side.

A man we thought to be a tzaddik hador at the time, who was slighted and passed over for promotion, did this.

The fall into machlokes is complete. No matter how big the person is.

Korach was the tallest. And his fall was absolute.

Pirkei Avos teaches in the fifth perek: “וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם? זוֹ מַחֲלֹקֶת קֹרַח וְכָל עֲדָתוֹ.”

When Pirkei Avos describes a righteous machlokes, it highlights Hillel and Shammai. But when it calls out the machlokes that is not for the sake of Heaven, it doesn’t mention Korach and his opponents. It just mentions Korach and his own crew.

Why?

Because the wrong kind of machlokes isn’t real. It’s fabricated. It’s not against a legitimate opponent. It exists just to foment disconnection between brothers.

It is a pernicious evil that lurks and twists and chokes the hearts of even the best of us.

It cordons off a piece of the whole and lets it fester in its own resentment.

True evil, it has been said, is the result of resentment. Not rage or anger, or even the initial feeling of being slighted. It is the slow drip of manufactured machlokes.

And it is as natural as anything.

The Sfas Emes brings a very cryptic Zohar. The Zohar says that Korach made his rift between Shalom and Shabbos.

Shabbos is the name of Hashem, and Shalom is the name of Hashem.

Hashem does not sit on His throne unless the world is pulled back into oneness, and this is on Shabbos. This is why we bring Shabbos into the week. It is our avodah that helps create that oneness in existence.

Shalom is the essence of Hashem, who is One and whole, and the avodah of Klal Yisroel is the bitul of self to become one. To return to the oneness of Hashem.

But Korach rent Shabbos and Shalom in half. He shook the foundations of existence, the very names of Hashem Himself, in his puny effort of assuaging his own ego.

The Sfas Emes explains that holiness is an inherent state and only exists when we are mivatel ourselves.

Korach believed that holiness was something we build on our own.

A meritocracy.

A project of self-development.

Nu, chevreh?

Do you see yourself?

Do you see yourself trying to work on yourself so much, and then someone else tries a different way and you scoff?

The yeshiva man looks at the chasid. The chasid looks at the Modern Orthodox guy. The Modern Orthodox guy looks at the Sefardi guy. The Sefardi guy looks at the Dati Leumi. The Dati Leumi looks at the yeshiva man, and around and around we go.

Everyone looking at everyone else. Looking down their noses.

Everyone thinking that the goal is to build yourself.

You and me, we’re tearing at Shabbos. We’re tearing at Shalom.

We’re breaking Hashem’s ratzon for us.

Of course there is space for healthy, holy machlokes.

But we know when it’s real.

We know, when we pay attention to the inner thermometer of our hearts, if it is beating to the drum of righteous rage.

You know.

If there is true bitul, it doesn’t mean you agree with everyone, but your ears won’t ring and you won’t go making up Torah to prove a point.

No one is above this.

Not even the tzaddik of the generation.

Korach broke us in the midbar.

Yes, we sinned before, but he broke us.

And we do this to ourselves every day.

We are all Korach.

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I guess it’s a question I’ve always had.

Something tugging at the recesses of my thoughts.

You know those questions that live right on the periphery of your mind, never demanding too much of an answer because, well, you just don’t know enough about it for it to matter.

Tzitzis is a little like this for me.

The mitzvah itself is clear.

The halachos, the Torah reason why we do it, are based on the pesukim at the end of Parshas Shelach.

וּרְאִיתֶ֣ם אֹת֗וֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם֙ אֶת־כׇּל־מִצְוֺ֣ת יְהֹוָ֔ה וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם וְלֹֽא־תָת֜וּרוּ אַחֲרֵ֤י לְבַבְכֶם֙ וְאַחֲרֵ֣י עֵֽינֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־אַתֶּ֥ם זֹנִ֖ים אַחֲרֵיהֶֽם

I wear mine out.

Because that seems like the right thing to do.

To see it, as the pasuk says.

I’m not knocking those who wear it in; I’m just saying that it makes sense it should be something you see.

Before I get to my mysterious question about tzitzis, I wanted to also let the chevra know that this parsha, Parshas Shelach, is my Bar Mitzvah parsha, and I was thinking of going a different direction than I usually do.

Maybe more personal, less of a gut punch.

Shelach is a hard parsha to do that in. It’s a hard parsha in general for Klal Yisroel.

And I sometimes think it’s quite appropriate for it to be my Bar Mitzvah parsha.

It’s kind of like a biography of my life, all the steps going the wrong way.

But we end with tzitzis.

Even when things go wrong, we still have tzitzis at the end.

I think tzitzis means more to me because of that.

Perhaps that is why I even have this peripheral question about it at all.

So here goes.

The strings, the fringes, they signify tying yourself to Hashem, right? The name, each corner of strings, and knots all together add up to six thirteen.

And if I had techeiles, I would also be reminded of the sea, then the sky, and then, of course, of Hashem, who sits on His Kisei HaKavod over it all.

Even today with no actual techeiles, I know the vort, and I remember it without the blue string to remind me.

But still, the image isn’t right.

Something is missing there.

When you put on tefillin, that is also tying yourself to Hashem.

You’re tying your actions, your thoughts, and your heart.

And the straps have a place to be, tucked away or resting against you.

The tzitzis just kind of hang there, one edge tied to you and the other swaying in the wind, getting stuck in my pocket when I try to pull out my keys.

It gets bunched up and caught on things and stuck in the seatbelt buckle.

So the idea is that you tie yourself to Hashem with your tzitzis, but it doesn’t look tied.

I know it’s silly.

It’s not a real question, probably.

Well, I learned a fire Torah from the Rebbe Reb Meilech, and for the first time, I think maybe there is something to my question.

A thread to pull on, if you will.

The Noam Elimelech says that the word ציצית is a lashon of looking, like מציץ מן החרכים, peering through the cracks.

The first avodah of tzitzis is not that I feel tied, but that I learn how to look.

The detached man does not begin with deveikus.

He needs to begin with his eyes.

He begins by noticing the thing hanging at the edge of his body.

The Noam Elimelech says we are supposed to look at the כנפי בגדיהם, the corners of our garments.

שהמצוות נקראים “כנפי”... וגם שהיא פורחת לעילא

“The mitzvos are called wings… and also because they fly upward above.”

That is beautiful, but also strange.

Because my tzitzis do not look like wings.

They look like loose strings.

And maybe that is the point.

A wing lifts you.

A string asks you to look.

You are not there yet, but you can begin from here.

And maybe that is why the techeiles does not take you straight to Hashem.

The Gemara says in Menachos:

תכלת דומה לים וים דומה לרקיע ורקיע דומה לכסא הכבוד

“Techeiles resembles the sea, and the sea resembles the sky, and the sky resembles the Throne of Glory.”

Why not go straight there?

Why not say techeiles reminds you of the Kisei HaKavod?

Maybe because most of us cannot go straight there.

Maybe because if you tell a detached man, “Look at Hashem,” he does not know where to look.

So Hashem gives him baby steps.

Look at the string.

Now look at the color.

Now think of the sea.

Now lift your eyes to the sky.

Now remember there is something above the sky.

Now remember there is a King.

Hashem does not demand that the unfinished man fake it. He gives him a string and teaches him how to begin.

Shelach is the parsha where we did not know how to look.

The meraglim looked at Eretz Yisroel and saw giants, fear, and death.

They talked themselves into seeing themselves as small.

“We were in our own eyes as grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.”

Their eyes betrayed them.

Then the parsha ends with tzitzis.

וּרְאִיתֶם אֹתוֹ

“And you shall see it.”

It is almost as if the Torah says, “You fell because you did not know how to look, so here is a mitzvah that will train your eyes.”

Here is something at the edge of your garment, small enough to hold.

Now my young grasshopper, listen close.

That is what a Gibor is.

Not the man who always feels attached.

A Gibor is the man who knows he is not fully attached yet, but he still looks.

He looks at the string.

He looks at the corner.

He looks at the loose edges of his own avodah.

He learns to notice where he is distracted, where he is small, and where he is lazy.

But he does not stop there.

He follows the thread upward.

The Noam Elimelech says that when a man sees what is missing in his mitzvah, his heart trembles, and he cries out to Hashem, and then Hashem, in His great mercy and kindness, considers it as if he had done the mitzvah without anything missing.

Hashem gives you a way to begin from the place where you actually are.

A way for the loose, unfinished, distracted, half-attached Yid to begin climbing from string to sea to sky to the Kisei HaKavod.

And there’s my answer to a silly question I had at the back of my mind.

The strings are this way because that is the avodah.

To take the part of me that still hangs in the wind and teach it how to see and reach upward.

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“What did you just do…?”

“What?”

“You just killed that man!!! He’s lying there on the floor, blood pooling in the sand still… the stones, so many stones… WHAT DID YOU DO??!!!”

“I didn’t do anything. It was the eirev rav guys that did that. But I understand why they did it.”

“Chur didn’t deserve to go out like this.”

“He didn’t deserve it, but he also didn’t not deserve it, if you catch my meaning. We were voting on making the golden calf, and he wasn’t getting on board.”

“Vote? What are you even talking about? Moshe Rabbeinu is coming back soon. What is there to vote on?”

“You don’t understand. It’s our hishtadlus. With Moshe gone, there isn’t a clear way to serve Hashem. We need something to be ‘here.’ Moshe is not here, so what else are we supposed to do?”

“You are supposed to wait and have emunah and not be oved avodah zarah. The eirav rav are really making our lives difficult out here…”

“Hey, you don’t know me… you think you know me? How dare you talk to me this way. We voted; you didn’t want to vote. You are a poretz geder. Anything YOU say is just apikorsus, and we don’t need you around to be a bad influence on the rest of us.

In Beha’alosecha, the Leviim were chosen to take the place of the firstborn to serve Hashem directly and to bring kapparah to Klal Yisroel.

It was supposed to be the firstborn, but the episode of the Eigel derailed that plan. I’m a firstborn, so it hurts a little more than most.

The Kedushas Levi notes a change in the order of the korbanos brought by the Leviim. Normally, avodah zarah requires the Olah first and then the Chatus because avodah zarah begins in thought before action. And plays atone for sins of the mind. This was the directive for the offerings.

Yet the order changes when it comes time for the actual offering. The Chatus is actually brought first. Like it is done with regular aveiros.

Why?

The Kuzari explains that Klal Yisroel did not reject Hashem. Moshe had disappeared, and they panicked. They needed something visible. Their emunah was still there, but they could not tolerate the absence.

The Kedushas Levi goes even further.

The Eirev Rav committed avodah zarah.

Klal Yisroel did not.

Their hearts were still with Hashem.

They wanted a leader there.

But Moshe was gone.

They needed something they could point to.

Something they could see.

Something they could hold.

There are two kinds of men in the world.

The first kind rejects Hashem and everything the Torah stands for.

Then there is the second kind.

The second kind believes.

They wear the uniform.

They keep the mitzvos.

They never question the derech.

But the second life gets muddy, they panic.

The second Hashem feels hidden, they panic.

To prevent this uncertainty, they start looking for an Eigel.

Because they need something they can see.

You know the line.

“What about hishtadlus?”

You gotta do hishtadlus.

You gotta squeeze harder.

Push harder.

Work harder.

Worry harder.

And slowly the hishtadlus stops being the vehicle for bitachon and becomes the avodah itself.

You still believe in Hashem.

You still learn Torah.

You still daven.

But you need to see it.

You need to touch it.

You need the physical thing.

The measurable thing.

The thing you can point to and say,

“This is what is saving me.”

It’s just Eigels.

Eigels all the way down.

The terrifying thing about the Eigel is that most of the people dancing around it probably did not wake up that morning wanting to rebel against Hashem.

They just wanted relief.

They wanted something to calm the panic.

And panic dressed up in religious language is still panic.

So why was Shevet Levi chosen to bring kapparah?

Levi saw the same delay.

Levi heard the same rumors.

Levi lived through the same uncertainty.

But they stayed far away.

And they did not build the Eigel.

Why not?

Because Levi understood something the others forgot.

The test was never whether you believe in Hashem when Moshe is standing right in front of you.

The test is what you do when Moshe is late.

When Moshe came down and saw what happened, he didn’t call out to Levi.

He didn’t say:

“Hey Shevet Levi, come here.”

He said:

“Mi LaHashem Eilai.”

Whoever is for Hashem, come to me.

Who is for Hashem?

The person who does not need the replacement ‘thing’.

The person who can sit with uncertainty.

The person who can wait.

Only Levi came.

That is why Levi can bring the kapparah.

Because they were the only ones who could teach the rest of us how to live without an Eigel.

They taught us that there is no need to panic when Hashem seems hidden.

They taught us that the point is not the thing.

The point is Hashem.

This is what traps us in every generation.

The glorification of things.

The making of everything into chitzoniyus.

The forgetting of what those things were supposed to point toward.

You are a Gibor.

You are the child of Hashem.

There is no reason to panic.

He is here with us even if we can’t see Him.

Wake up from your slumber, brother.

Wake up.

Some men wait for Hashem, other men build substitutes.

The parking lot was still full when he walked out.

A few men still swayed under the streetlights, singing quietly with arms wrapped around each other.

Somebody shoved a warm bottle of “soda” into his hand.

WhatsApp statuses were already filling with slow-motion clips of the fire, the singing, the closed eyes.

He sat in his car scrolling.

Another kumzitz.

Another “deep” clip.

Another man whispering about Atik Yomin, olamos, ratzon, Ohr.

For a few moments he felt enormous.

Ancient and Holy.

He felt awake.

Then two days later he lost his temper over something silly.

I know this man because for years this was me.

Not the holiness.

The chasing.

One shiur after another.

One niggun after another.

I know how to speak the language.

I can mumble words like דוכרא and אור אין סוף with my eyes half closed, fluttering, looking up to the sky and feel like I was touching heaven.

Meanwhile my anger remained.

My ego remained.

My need to be seen...

The feeling was changing me less than I thought.

The Bnei Yissaschar says that when Klal Yisrael left Mitzrayim, Kedusha came as a gift.

Revelation flooded them before they had earned it.

They reached higher awareness so they could rise from the Mem Tes Shaarei Tumah.

Spiritual levels in an arousal from above.

In haste, not through their own avodah.

And because it was unearned, it could not last.

So the light left.

It was needed for them to be able to leave Mitzrayim.

It was real enough to show them who they could become.

And then came ספירת העומר.

Forty-nine days of building and refining.

The Bnei Yissaschar says only afterward, through yearning and effort, did Klal Yisrael become vessels capable of receiving Torah through their own work.

That is the part many of us skip.

We keep trying to live off the first night of Pesach.

Another kumzitz.

Another tisch.

Another “powerful vort.”

Another glowing clip at one in the morning while our wives and children sleep upstairs.

The world calls this the hedonic treadmill.

The first hit excites you.

Then the nervous system adapts.

Soon you need something stronger just to feel alive again.

I think this can happen spiritually too.

Simple inspiration no longer cuts it, so the Yid escalates.

More intensity. More mystical language. Bigger highs.

More meat boards and music videos.

But the ego remains untouched.

You can cry during a niggun and still be worshipping yourself.

The tragedy is that it can look like avodas Hashem from the outside.

Especially these days, when Torah content never stops flowing.

Shiurim. Clips. Podcasts. Concerts. Niggunim.

Tiny bursts of spiritual stimulation all day long.

And slowly a terrible confusion settles in.

We begin mistaking spiritual consumption for spiritual growth.

What frightens me is how easy it is to hide inside this forever.

A man can spend twenty years learning the vocabulary of depth instead of becoming deep.

Become fluent in yearning while carefully avoiding change.

Sometimes I think we have confused being emotionally moved with being spiritually transformed.

But movement is not transformation.

Tears are not תיקון.

A person can leave a kumzitz feeling shattered open and still remain enslaved.

I think this is part of why the yahrtzeit of the Baal Shem Tov falls specifically on Shavuos.

The Besht did not descend into the world to create a religion of spiritual thrill-seekers floating from one emotional fire to another.

He came to wake sleeping Jews up.

To break open the shell around the heart so a person could begin real avodah.

Not just feel holy for a few hours.

Real avodah usually looks far less dramatic.

It is repetitive and quiet and almost invisible.

It’s because of that, the ego hates it.

The Nesivos Shalom says that on Shavuos we need to bring a מנחה חדשה, a new offering.

This means you are required to bring a new self.

Something you worked on for you and Hashem alone.

Not a prepackaged experience with a famous singer that made you really feel “a part of it”.

That is the entire journey from Pesach to Shavuos.

Pesach is the gift.

Sefirah is the work when the Ohr left.

Shavuos is accepting Torah after becoming someone capable of holding it.

It’s not chasing another feeling.

Even this newsletter scares me sometimes.

I wonder how much of my own writing is real avodah and how much is another form of spiritual performance.

Even small things.

Signing my name as only “Adam.”

I feel I need simplicity to become its own aesthetic.

Wanting my humility to be noticed.

The yetzer, the ego, is a genius.

It knows how to dress itself in white shirts and holy language.

I hope naming the disease honestly is the beginning of healing.

Maybe the real avodah of Shavuos is smaller and quieter than we imagined.

Davening even when nothing burns inside.

Learning slowly instead of consuming endlessly.

Fixing one middah without announcing it.

Doing mitzvos without demanding an emotional payoff afterward.

Being one with the desert.

Making yourself ownerless. Hefker.

Bitul Hayeshus.

The making of space within yourself to accept the Torah for real.

The high was never the avodah.

The high was only the map.

The highest madreigah is not one who burns brightest beside the fire for one night.

It is the yid who still walks toward Hashem after the music stops.

Many of us learned how to feel holy before we ever learned how to become holy.

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A man can spend his entire life becoming someone for other people and never once be himself.

That sentence frightens me because I know how easily it can happen.

A boy grows up and learns the rules of survival.

Be this kind of frum.

Dress this way.

Speak this way.

Learn this way.

Hide your weaknesses, flaws, or what someone else told you are flaws.

Fake your confidence even when your insides feel like cracked plaster.

Then adulthood comes and the masks multiply.

Provider. Father. Ben Torah. Professional. Calm one. Strong one. Productive one. Put-together one.

Meanwhile, his real self sits somewhere deep beneath the noise like a man buried alive under his own house.

It’s not that these titles, these ways of living, are wrong in and of themselves, but they can easily become masks.

The modern world is obsessed with identity.

Everything demands one from you.

Politics. Advertisements. Communities. Algorithms.

Even toothpaste commercials whisper the same message.

Choose your tribe.

Choose your style.

Choose your outrage.

Choose your label.

And the final coffin nail, that even our penimiyus became chitzoniyus.

Our inner world now is a vibe and some meat boards and music videos.

The Pri Tzadik opens Sefer Bamidbar and asks why the Torah was given in a wilderness.

The Midbar has no owner. It does not care who you pretend to be.

It is egoless.

That is why Torah was given there.

Reb Tzadok explains that a person cannot truly acquire Torah unless he makes himself hefker like the desert itself.

Not worthless, but ownerless.

A man no longer gripping his self-made identity with white knuckles.

That may be the hardest avodah of our generation.

Because we are drowning in performance.

People now perform wealth. Perform suffering. Perform authenticity. Perform spirituality.

Even vulnerability became a costume people tailored carefully for public consumption.

A person can spend years building a polished religious identity while his actual soul starves quietly in the corner.

The frum man today feels this in his bones.

He was told if he worked hard enough, learned enough, controlled himself enough, and succeeded enough, eventually he would become the person he was supposed to be.

Instead, many men reach adulthood battered and exhausted, secretly terrified that they missed the doorway somewhere.

They look at themselves and feel counterfeit.

Too distracted.

Too weak.

Too late.

I know that feeling more than I care to admit.

There are moments I look at my own life and feel the distance between who I am and who I imagined I would become.

And for years it was easier to blame the world for that distance.

The system.

The distractions.

The pressures of modern life.

The endless superficiality swallowing everything whole.

Some of that criticism is true.

We live in a generation addicted to chitzoniyus.

But the desert strips away that excuse.

Ownerlessness.

The Pri Tzadik continues and teaches that the deeper Torah emerges after the sin of the Eigel.

Not before.

After.

The first luchos descend into a world of perfection.

Fire splitting the heavens.

Absolute clarity.

A nation standing untouched beneath Har Sinai.

Then comes collapse.

And specifically there, Torah Shebe’al Peh begins unfolding into the world.

The Torah of arguments, wrestling, and sleepless nights trying again after failure.

The Torah that enters real life instead of hovering above it.

The first luchos belonged to angels.

The second luchos belongs to the exhausted men.

Rav Hutner writes in Pachad Yitzchak, Iggeres 128, that people imagine gedolim emerged through uninterrupted greatness, while the real story of a tzaddik is the hidden war itself.

It’s the falls and the rebuilding.

Most of us never hear that.

I feel like the the modern biographers of our time stole this heritage from us.

Each book written about a gadol is only half as large as it was supposed to be.

The other half, the ugly half, the struggle half, the actual derech half, hidden out of a twisted desire to pretend that these were not people but angels.

And for the rest of us?

We hear the looping tape in our minds, “If I were truly worthy, I would not struggle like this.”

But Reb Tzadok Hakohen teaches the opposite.

The wilderness is not where Torah disappears.

The wilderness is where the deeper Torah begins.

Every Yid has a root in Torah. A letter. Or even part of a letter.

Not every soul is a giant shining aleph standing proudly at the center of the scroll.

Some are hidden strokes. Bent fragments. Small pieces tucked inside larger forms.

Still indispensable.

A Sefer Torah missing one tiny letter is pasul.

One.

That means the broken man sitting silently in the back of shul, convinced he failed at becoming himself, may still carry a letter no one else in creation can reveal.

But he will never hear it while performing endlessly for the crowd.

The wilderness has no audience.

That is why Torah was given there.

Not because the desert is empty.

But because it is stripped of illusion.

And maybe that is the terrifying mercy of the Midbar.

Our false identities finally die of thirst there.

For the first time in years, in the Midbar, a man can feel the sand beneath his feet and realize he does not need to become someone else before approaching Hashem.

He only needs the courage to stop running from the letter already carved into his soul.

Wake up, brother.

Walk into the wilderness.

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“Torah begins where the performance dies.”

He sits there long after the room has emptied.

The lights hum.

A faint buzz overhead.

The kind you don’t notice unless everything else is quiet.

He’s lost in thought.

Things went off the rails, but he can’t figure out why.

He did everything right.

Stayed in the system.

Learned what he was supposed to learn.

Married who he was supposed to marry.

Built the life he was supposed to build.

From the outside, it looks like it all holds together.

Inside, it’s falling apart.

It’s not a dramatic collapse.

No crisis that forces a reckoning.

It’s worse.

It’s a slow, spreading realization he says out loud.

“I never built anything.”

After all the davening, learning, and all the ביטחון work.

It all feels empty.

Because he realizes, maybe for the first time, that he inherited a rhythm.

A set of expectations.

But he never fought for it.

And now he can feel there’s nothing underneath.

We all know the rich kid trope.

Money never scarce.

Effort never required.

The machinery of life hummed along before he even understood how it worked.

He spends differently.

Thinks differently.

Carries himself like the world owes him something.

Never challenged with anything meaningful

Then one day, the system stutters.

Something happens.

It dawns on him that he has no idea how to make anything happen.

It’s not every rich kid.

But it’s a story common enough that we all get it.

We shake our heads at that kid.

First-world problems.

But you need to know we live it ourselves.

In our comfortable cocoon of religious life.

See, many of us were born into this.

A home that knew תורה.

A community that structured life around it.

A system that handed us meaning before we ever asked for it.

We didn’t need to fight to keep שבת.

We didn’t discover תפילה as a last-resort ditch effort.

Just k’nased for coming ten minutes late.

We didn’t forge אמונה in the foxhole of this no-man’s-land we call life.

We were just taught how to say the words with the right accent.

We assumed everything was fine.

You said, “I’m good.”

It’s a stable life.

But there’s a rot that grows in that comfort.

You stop checking yourself.

And then strange things start showing up in a community that feels so perfect.

No amount of derashos is saving us from this.

There’s more anxiety and shame and hidden addictions.

More men who look put together but are hollow underneath.

Do you think it was because תורה failed?

Chas v’chas.

The תורה was never the problem.

The problem is the life that eliminates effort.

The Noam Elimelech walks us through this concept.

On the opening of Parshas Emor, Hashem says, “אמור אל הכהנים בני אהרן… ואמרת אליהם”

Why the double language?

He says there are two kinds of צדיקים.

There are those who built themselves, who separated, struggled, and carved out their own דרך.

They have nothing to lean on, so they watch themselves carefully.

They don’t fall easily.

And then there are the sons of אהרן.

Holy. Elevated. Surrounded by קדושה from the beginning.

And precisely because of that, they are in danger.

They think they have something to rely on.

Their pedigree.

And that reliance breeds a subtle גסות הרוח.

An ego boost rooted in frumkeit.

They may tell themselves, “I’m already something.”

The Noam Elimelech says the warning must be doubled. “אמור… ואמרת…”

Say it again. And again.

Because they won’t hear it the first time.

Because it sounds like it doesn’t apply to them.

Because they look fine.

He anchors it in the famous line from Mishlei, “תועבת ה׳ כל גבה לב”

Not just someone who boasts.

Someone who stands in a place they did not build and calls it their own.

That is תועבה.

Life collapses and זכות אבות becomes comfort.

Comfort then becomes blindness.

Blindness becomes drift.

And drift doesn’t feel like failure.

It feels normal.

Until one day you sit in a quiet room and realize there’s nothing inside that actually belongs to you.

The Noam Elimelech adds the pasuk of “וינזרו מקדשי בני ישראל”

This is a warning to the kohanim to be careful with the kodshim the Bnei Yisroel bring.

But the Rebbe Reb Meilech takes it deeper.

Even the holy and special kohanim must become like נזירים.

Separate themselves from their יחוס.

Act as if they have nothing.

Watch themselves, they who are born kadosh among the Bnei Yisroel, with constant awareness.

Without that, they will fall faster than anyone else.

They are more susceptible because they have a title they can lean on.

A rich dad and his credit card ready to always bail out his son.

It’s an avodah for all of us.

Not just kohanim.

I don’t stand outside this.

I have this entitlement in spades.

I know what it is to sit in a room, say the right words, nod at the right times and feel nothing moving inside.

To lean on ביטחון like it’s a cushion.

As if Hashem were a glorified ATM.

Put in the card, get stability, get clarity, get outcome.

No עבודה. No effort.

That’s not ביטחון.

It’s entitlement wearing the costume of בטחון.

No, this doesn’t mean there is something wrong with frum living.

It means that you need the right perspective about it.

You thought you were standing strong and secure.

You aren’t.

You are leaning on your father, your yeshiva, your past.

And now your legs don’t work.

Good.

Because this is the moment the Torah was talking about.

“וינזרו מקדשי בני ישראל.”

Separate yourself.

Start again.

Hashem doesn’t ask you to preserve what כבוד you think you inherited.

Use it to get yourself going.

But be wary.

Remember He’s commanding you to become something on your own.

With your own two hands and the תורה He gave to you.

Strip away the entitlement.

Stand like a man with nothing.

And build.

Stop living off their fire. Build your own.

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The fire was burning.

Exactly where it was supposed to be.

Around it, everything held its place.

Kohanim moved with precision.

Each step measured.

Everything already decided and planned before it began.

No improvisation. No guessing.

The nation stood back. Watching.

Nadav felt it first.

That inner pull.

The feeling that doesn’t ask permission.

This wasn’t enough.

The fire was there.

The עבודה was happening.

Everything was there, exactly as commanded.

But something was missing.

Aharon stood where he belonged.

Moshe had already spoken.

The chain of was intact.

And still…

There was this empty space that Nadav felt.

Avihu felt it too.

A half-step too slow.

Waiting for something to break open.

No signal came.

Just that quiet certainty in their heart that they had to do something.

To move.

Nadav stepped forward holding his own fire that he gathered.

No one stopped him.

Why would they?

They were meant to be there.

It just looked like they were doubting what they were supposed to.

But, they were trying to bring more.

More fire and closeness.

More of what everyone says they want.

Avihu followed, helped with the strange fire.

Closer now.

Closer than they were told to be.

Closer than anyone goes without being called.

Nadav and Avihu didn’t hesitate.

They moved like men who felt something real, and trusted it.

They were in.

Higher than high

Suddenly the air tightened.

Subtle. Final.

Like a boundary you only recognize after you cross it.

For a moment, it looked right.

Like it belonged.

Then it turned.

A sudden roar of flames.

And they were gone.

“בקרבתם לפני ה’ וימותו.”

I used to think they were punished becaue they did something wrong.

Rebellious even.

That they crossed a line they shouldn’t have crossed.

It’s not that.

The Kedushas Levi says they didn’t reject Hashem.

They bypassed the path.

Hashem built the world with boundaries.

Levels. צמצום.

Even malachim don’t cross their assigned space.

It’s just a fact of life.

Part of the fabric of their reality.

They can’t survive it.

It isn’t that they are forbidden, but step beyond your boundary, and you dissolve

Klal Yisrael is built the same way.

So it is with the entire world.

The hishtalshelis goes as follows.

Moshe → Aharon → his sons → the elders → the people.

This is the hierarchy.

It’s how this game was set up.

But Nadav and Avihu didn’t want distance.

They wanted closeness without the structure that makes closeness possible.

So they stepped forward.

And reality responded.

This isn’t a story about them.

This is us.

We all want ahava.

And so many of us want to just skip yirah.

We want the warmth, the music, the feeling that something is happening.

But the slow build?

The structure?

The discipline that doesn’t feel like you’re doing anyhting?

We move around it.

We’ve built an entire version of Judaism that lets us do that.

Kumzitses.

Energy.

A deep vort that hits.

“The seforim hakedoshim say…”

You walk out feeling like you touched something real.

Maybe you did.

But it doesn’t hold.

I’m not pointing fingers.

I’ve lived this.

I’ve chased it.

Still do.

A good niggun that opens something inside.

A vort that hits just right and suddenly everything feels aligned.

There’s nothing wrong with these on their own.

And I‘ve told myself, “this is how I grow.”

“This is my avodah.”

It isn’t.

Not by itself.

The Kedushas Levi goes further.

Even when the feeling is real, when avodas Hashem brings joy, expansion, a sense that you’re doing something right, that can still be a trap.

Because now you’re serving the feeling.

You’re not serving Hashem.

You’re serving the experience of serving Hashem.

This is the lie we don’t like to say out loud.

That a man may try to build his own path.

Take what works, skip what doesn’t, and follow what feels alive.

If it feels good, it must be right.

That’s exactly what Nadav and Avihu did.

They wanted more.

They just didn’t want to wait for it.

There is a system.

There are מדרגות.

There is a pace for growth that doesn’t care how inspired you feel.

You build it.

Day by day.

Sometimes with nothing.

Sometimes with just showing up.

Just staying inside the lines.

No one writes songs about that.

No one builds movements around that.

But it’s the only thing that holds you firmly to your roots.

It’s the glue.

And then, sometimes, the fire comes.

Not because you chased it.

Because you’re ready for it.

Because you built something that can hold it without collapsing.

Of course there is nothing wrong with the ahava itself.

With a Kumzits, with a deep vort.

Do a hundred Kumzites a day.

But every time I think a kumzits is enough…

Every time I convince myself that feeling something means I’ve grown…

I’m standing there again.

One step too close.

Telling myself this is what it’s supposed to feel like.

It isn’t.

Not yet.

There’s a place for warmth.

There’s a place for a song.

There’s a place to feel the geshmak of a cool vort that quoted a Zohar.

But if that’s the whole thing…

Then nothing is ever being built.

A man who lives like that will always need the next moment.

Another song, Another vort.

But there’s nothing underneath.

Nothing that anchors you.

Some of you will get mad at me for saying this.

Maybe even feel betrayed.

I love you guys. I want what’s best for all of us.

And this where the real avodah is.

In the quiet.

In the structure.

In the lines.

Sing a good song.

Learn Torah that lights you on fire, yes even the chassidishe vertlach.

But remember it can’t be the only thing.

If you build yourself properly, you won’t need to chase it.

It will be given.

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There was a time when Substack felt like a writer’s paradise.

You just wrote and read.

You thought out loud, without the noise of algorithms or feeds.

Back then I was here mostly as a reader before Notes was a dream in Chris Best’s eye.

I was here before the subtle shift from publication platform to social media platform.

It was a different world.

I just wanted a place to write. That’s it.

But alas, i fear it is no more…

It’s sucking me in, and I need to get out.

Don’t get me wrong.

There is a lot here that I appreciate.

There is a real chevra of FrumStack writers and readers.

Honest growth with ideas sharpened on the whetstone of the perennial burnt-out OTDers and the perennial upbeat Frum apologists.

I’m grateful to every one of you who contributed to that.

Gibor did not grow in a vacuum.

It grew here.

I’m not leaving because I’m burnt out or because I hate the discourse.

I simply started my own website away from the riffraff and the soul-crushingness of all social media platforms.

And I just don’t feel good directing people to a social media platform to read Torah.

That’s the truth.

Many of my readers are not regular Substack users.

They come for Torah, or my essays.

I cannot in good conscience send them into a system designed to keep them scrolling or reacting.

like a spider’s web that keeps here just to slowly drain you fo your life force…

Endlessly forever whipping back and forth across the interwebs like you are living in the kaf hakelah.

I personally struggle with the addictive nature of social platforms.

I feel the pull.

The commoditization of attention.

Gibor cannot be about conquering your nature while I knowingly build it inside a machine engineered to hijack it.

So I’m moving the tent.

The publication is relocating to thegibor.org (dont put in gibor.org; thats a "guard your eyes" type of thing in israel… I mean, go there too, but thats not my thing.)

My site is not a hundo yet, but it’ll get there soon… with Hashem’s help

It’s on the Ghost platform.

It isn’t social media in nature, and it's a place I feel far more comfortable directing people toward.

All my subscribers here are being imported over.

If you choose to unsubscribe, I understand. No hard feelings.

The same essays will live there in the same voice, although I hope to keep getting better at this craft of writing, so maybe not the same as here.

Minus the comment section rants.

(Though let’s be honest, I’ll probably still lurk here. I may post links. I may drop a heated rant when I’m bored at work. You know I won’t be able to help myself.)

But the center of gravity is shifting.

Going forward, I plan to publish more varied content around the Gibor way of life.

More on growth, discipline, the Torah, fatherhood, etc.

A place built for men who want to become something sharper than the culture around them.

Yes, women are allowed to, but it's going to get a lot more intense, so no pressure on you guys to come over...

Thank you for being here with me.

Thank you for reading my stuff and the feedback.

Thank you for arguing and for caring.

A Gibor does not drift.

He chooses his environment.

I’ll catch you on the flipside.

It lowers its head.

It charges.

Bone cracks.

Blood spills into dirt that was meant for crops.

It’s too late.

The horn is inside him.

The scream cut short.

Dirt and blood mix under hooves that don’t understand what they’ve done.

An ox gores.

An ox does not politely injure.

“ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים לפניהם.”

“And these are the laws that you shall place before them.”

The Torah does not begin Mishpatim with poetry.

It starts with civil law, slavery, torts, and gore.

We all just stood at Har Sinai.

Thunder and fire.

The voice of הַשֶּׁם split reality in two.

And the next thing we know, He places a dead body before us.

Because you need to know that if your ox kills, your revelation did not descend far enough.

“ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים לפניהם.”

Place them before them.

Not in heaven.

Not in theory.

Before them in the dust.

Covered in blood.

I used to think Mishpatim was just administrative.

Necessary but secondary.

The real stuff was the fire, the ecstasy.

“Lord, get me high!!!!!”

Now I’m not so sure.

Of course there is a place for all that, but its not all that.

The Ishbitzer notices something strange.

Here it doesn’t say the usual, “And Hashem spoke to Moshe.”

It says to place these laws before them, all of them. The exact same way.

Justice flattens out the status games we like to play.

When a king inspects his soldiers, even the general must stand in line.

The respected Rav.

The generous donor.

The polished professional.

The kollel yungerman with perfect dedication.

The poor man.

The socially off man.

The man who was taught to be afraid of his own shadow and to fall in line and to be “normal.”

The cool man.

The with-it man.

The well-connected man.

All must stand in line and receive the same.

There is no exemption clause for being admired or being shamed for that matter.

Sadly in our communities today we have built a status game with a frum flavor.

We compete over learning, influence, chumros, access, and philanthropy.

We measure who is “holding” and who is slipping.

It’s subtle. Sometimes, it’s… not.

We know how to hide judgment in concern.

And all the while we are calculating, someone is bleeding.

Not from an ox.

From our tone.

From our indifference.

From the way we dismiss a struggle because it does not fit our narrative of how a Yid behaves.

I recognize this because I have done it.

I still do it.

I have judged a man for being lax without knowing what it cost him to wake up that morning.

I have looked at a wealthy Jew and assumed vanity instead of seeing the weight he carries.

I have watched a Posek issue a lenient psak and felt suspicious, as if strictness were the only currency of integrity.

My ox has gored.

The Mei HaShiloach says something terrifying yet uplifting and eye-opening.

“When a man’s possessions cause damage, it reflects a lack of inner refinement. If the soul were refined, even his animals would not cause harm.”

R’ Chanina ben Dosa’s goats returned with bears on their horns.

His kedusha extended outward.

His refinement shaped reality.

So what extends outward from me, from you, when you are not careful?

Resentment does.

Resentment that others do not see how hard you are trying.

Resentment that holiness feels unevenly distributed.

Resentment that some seem to rise while others are forced to grind.

And sometimes, if I am honest, resentment toward Heaven.

“If You want me to serve You, why make it this complicated?”

The Ishbitzer calls that a grievance against God’s hidden ways.

But “keep justice”, he says.

Restrain yourself from nursing that complaint.

Because resentment leaks.

It hardens a man.

It makes him sharp with his wife, impatient with his children, and skeptical of his brothers.

It makes him judge.

“Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof.”

Pursue justice properly.

This is the source for “dan l’kaf zechus.”

Pursue a justice that does not humiliate.

The greatest poskim understand this.

I’ve always found that the bigger the Rav, the more he absorbs before he makes his ruling.

He feels the rent that is due.

He senses the shame behind the question.

He knows that halacha is not a trophy but a derech.

Small men use halacha to win.

Great men use it to carry others.

And there are many great ones.

Rabbanim who quietly bear the community’s fractures.

Wealthy Yidden who give more than we know.

Ordinary Jews with no title who instinctively assume the best about another Yid.

They teach us something we forget in our comfort.

Every Yid is a chelek Elokai mima’al.

We have in each of us the Ohr of a million suns.

If we only would just take notice.

What about for ourselves? Do we judge ourselves righteously?

Do you know what you are made of?

You are forged from light older than the stars.

Comfort is not evil, but it is dangerous.

It convinces us we have arrived.

Soldiers who believe they have arrived stop scanning the horizon.

Mishpatim drags us back into formation.

Your ox is your influence.

Your ox is your money.

Your ox is your words at the Shabbos table.

Your ox is the silent look you give another yid when you think he’s not looking.

If your ox gores, you pay.

Not only in coin.

But in the hard work of scraping resentment out of the heart.

Har Sinai was fire. Mishpatim is blood and dust.

It is IRL, brother, and it hurts and smells bad sometimes.

Holiness that does not reach the dust is just a show you put on to appease the masses.

It’s funny, because for the most part no one really cares about your little show with all your prancing about.

Everyone else has their own blood and guts to contend with.

So stand in line together.

No one is above another, and no one is disposable.

A Gibor is not the man who climbs highest in the game of status.

He is the man who refines himself so thoroughly that nothing he touches leaves another Yid bleeding.

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There is no such thing as staying the same.

That sounds obvious until you really sit with it.

Until you apply it to a man who is “doing fine.”

You get married. Start working. Learn a little. Daven.

Doing the things. Not embarrassing yourself.

Never rocking the boat.

You think you’ve got it handled.

But life does not allow neutrality.

Muscles that are not used weaken.

Water that does not move turns foul.

A fire that is not fed goes out.

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It is simple physics.

It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor.

I’m sorry, but you can’t change the laws of physics.

“Kedoshim tihyu.” You shall be holy.

Tihyu, to be constantly moving and not something you set and forget.

It’s a state of becoming.

The Noam Elimelech writes that kedusha is not something static.

A Yid cannot remain on one level.

Every day there is either movement upward or a quiet slide downward.

There is no standing still.

A Jew cannot rest on his haunches.

Standing still is already decay.

Most men do not fall because they choose evil.

They fall because they stop moving.

And sadly, our current culture trains them to.

Any large system has to.

You cannot organize communities, schools, yeshivos, or families without teaching people to stay in line.

To keep your head down.

Do not stand out.

Do not make waves.

This instinct is human.

It is how groups survive.

It keeps things orderly and predictable.

But what keeps a system stable can keep a man small.

Men age into routine.

Marriage settles them.

Responsibility presses in.

In yeshiva it happens early.

The unwritten rule is learned fast.

Don’t step out of line.

Don’t ask for more than what’s given.

Don’t be the guy who disrupts the rhythm.

And over time, this survival instinct gets hailed as virtue.

You tell yourself, “As long as I’m not rocking the boat, I’m fine ”.

“This is just who I am.”

“At my stage, change is unrealistic.”

You may think these are statements of humility.

No.

They are statements of surrender.

Parshas Yisro is not about a man who heard miracles and got impressed.

Everyone heard about the miracles.

The sea splitting was not a secret.

What woke Yisro was something else.

He saw men move.

He saw Yidden step forward into the sea.

He saw mesiras nefesh before the resolution.

And then he saw Amalek.

Amalek was not just a military threat.

Amalek was a spiritual battle to cool you down and to keep you in line.

To take a people who had just leaped into the impossible and whisper, “Settle down, calm down, come back to earth; you aren’t better or different than anyone else.”

So how was Amalek fought?

By clever tactics alone?

No.

Moshe stood on the hill with his hands raised, reaching, always reaching.

When his hands fell, the people fell.

When his hands rose, they rose.

That posture matters.

Upward orientation.

A refusal to let the eye settle at ground level.

The war was won because Moshe and Klal Yisroel would not stop reaching for something higher.

Yisro saw both moments together.

A people who move first.

A people who fight cooling by lifting their gaze.

A people who understand that battle is inevitable, but stagnation is deadly.

That is when he says, “Now I know.”

Every few years a new organization appears.

A movement.

A project.

It promises to fix what has grown stagnant.

It names real problems.

It makes noise.

It calls out the rot.

It speaks disruption fluently.

And then time passes.

The laws of the universe reassert themselves.

The second law of thermodynamics is not impressed by good intentions.

All systems tend toward equilibrium.

Without constant energy, motion decays into sameness.

Entropy is not a moral failure. It is a law of nature.

Eventually, the movement becomes indistinguishable from every other movement.

Safe and manageable, it becomes another tale.

“It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Unless something rises above nature, it is bound by nature.

Stagnant water breeds disease.

Families and communities absorb stillness.

We learn quickly what is permitted and what is dangerous.

They learn when not to move.

And that is precisely the tragedy.

You can destroy a world by doing nothing at all.

I know this because I lived it.

For years.

I had this newsletter inside me that needed to move. The Gibor concept sat and fermented in me.

It was an idea that waited.

A voice that I made stay quiet.

A sense of calling, but I told myself I wasn’t ready.

I waited to be good enough.

Waited to be allowed.

Waited for clarity.

And while I waited, my soul atrophied.

Starting again was brutal. It still is brutal.

I am still writing in these chains I placed on myself, trying to break free.

Trying new things.

Stopping and starting again.

Movement after long stillness hurts.

It draws attention.

It invites resistance.

People will try to stop you, not because they hate you, but because your motion threatens their equilibrium.

Your movement exposes their rest.

But there is a point where you see the truth and cannot unsee it.

Once you see that life only exists in motion, you cannot pretend that keeping your head down is righteousness.

Planning has its place.

Thinking has its place.

But waiting forever is death.

Move.

Just move.

A little.

In any direction you can.

Start with the embarrassingly small thing you’ve been avoiding because it doesn’t feel like enough, but it is something you know you can do.

Keep that moving.

Let it grow.

Don’t wait to feel ready.

Don’t wait to be understood.

And whatever you do,

don’t stop.

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Amalek attacks after the sea splits.

When it’s calm and when we are fed.

When it’s all good and I just finished my mahn steak dinner.

The Torah places the ambush deliberately, almost offensively so, here.

Not in the midst of a crisis.

The water has just closed.

The impossible already happened.

We who were slaves yesterday watched the world crack open and obey.

We walked through the seabed like kings.

We sang.

And then, Amalek attacks.

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The timing is the key here.

It is easy to assume that danger belongs only in the middle of struggle.

We brace ourselves when things are hard.

We tighten when we feel trapped.

The Torah is warning us about relief.

“אשר קרך בדרך.”

Cooling doesn’t mean outright sin.

It’s just the release of the nervous system exhaling after holding the line.

This is exactly when men drop their guard.

Look at the sequence.

After the sea comes the song.

Gratitude pours out.

But the song was a release valve, not a fortress.

The music always ends, and life resumes.

And then comes the real test.

The mahn.

Daily food, daily living, and no slavery or Pharaoh to get our haunches up.

There is no immediate danger.

But also, no control over the situation.

We are now completely at the whim of Hashem, with no way to know what will come next.

Eat today. Trust again tomorrow.

This can be harder than Egypt.

Slavery may break the body.

Bitachon confronts the ego.

Dependence without urgency can be unbearable.

There’s no enemy to fight, no adrenaline to ride.

There is no crisis to fight off or to organize around.

In that environment the complaints begin.

“What will we drink?”

“What will we eat?”

“Why did you bring us here?”

No one is drowning or starving, yet our spirit frays.

That’s the cooling.

It is not just an ancient or spiritual story.

It’s drilled into every modern army.

Soldiers are taught that the most dangerous moments of an operation are not in the breach or the firefight.

They’re the minutes and hours after the objective is secured.

After the body comes down from adrenaline and the threat seems neutralized.

That’s when men forget to clear the room again.

That’s when weapons are mishandled.

When perimeter checks get sloppy.

When friendly fire happens.

When ambushes succeed.

Your judgment softens, and reaction time slows.

Once the immediate objective is “clear,” soldiers are trained to immediately follow a strict sequence of actions rather than pausing.

This is called “The Consolidation Protocol.”

Every serious unit trains for this window.

Checklists. Protocols. Repeated drills. Perimeter security sweeps.

The Torah knew this before any military manual was written.

Imagine the following.

A man wrestles an intruder out of his home.

His hands are shaking, but his kids are safe.

He collapses onto the couch and says, “Thank God, it’s over.”

But he forgets to lock the back door.

That’s when the second man walks in.

Amalek is the second man.

So what do you do, in your moments of calm, when things subside after a crisis?

Sit back and relax?

Forget the discipline and the overall mission?

Miracles won’t protect you here.

It’s just trust.

It is the hardest thing, especially when you’ve been through the ringer and just want to veg out and be done with it all for the moment.

That’s why the Torah gives us mahn with rules.

Shabbos with limits.

Daily fixed rhythms with no improvisation.

The fall after a win is a normal human tendency.

You can train for it. And mitigate it if you are prepared.

Being surprised by it is negligence.

You already know how you behave in a crisis.

The question is, who are you when the song ends?

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