Home & Hope: Words of Faith & Courage for Am Yisrael

Dear TorahAnytime Family,

As we close out the joyous days of Sukkot, I am filled with immense gratitude and inspiration. The overwhelming positive feedback we’ve received over the past weeks has been nothing short of extraordinary. Families and individuals have shared how TorahAnytime has brought them closer together, how moments of sadness have transformed into joy and elation, and how the timeless words of Torah have uplifted hearts and homes. These shared accounts reflect the unshakable spirit and strength of our people—a people who continue to shine light, even in challenging times.

In this special edition, we bring you a further collection which serves as a testament to our faith and courage as a people. I hope the words contained within, from Einav Danino, mother of hostage, Ori Danino hy”d; Rabbi Doron and Shelley Perez, father and mother of Daniel Perez hy”d; and other heroes in our time bring strength to you and your loved ones, and that you’ll share them widely to spread that light even further. May this Sukkot be a time of renewed joy, connection, and spiritual elevation for you and all of Klal Yisrael.

With heartfelt brachot,

Yosef Davis,

Executive Director, TorahAnytime

IDF Reservist

DEDICATED

In honor of all those who were tragically murdered on October 7th and thereafter; for the safe return and healing of all our hostages; for the quick and complete recovery of all those injured; the continued dedication, courage and bravery of our soldiers in the IDF; and the safety and security of our brothers and sisters in the Land of Israel.

For He Who avenges blood remembers them; He has not forgotten the cry of the humble (Psalms 9:13)

Einav Danino (Mother of hostage, Ori Danino hy”d)

My Love, My Light, Ori

The following is a verbatim transcript, translated from the original Hebrew, of Einav Danino’s speech delivered on March 14, 2024, at the “Ohel Sara” Amen Group.

When Ori was born, I wanted to give him a name of light. I found in this chapter (Tehillim, Chapter 27) the name Ori. I decided to name him Ori, after the words L’Dovid Hashem Ori V’yishi. For twenty-five years, I read this specific chapter and did not understand the meaning. But on October 7th, I understood that everything is written here.

I would like to share my personal story of Ori with you. Ori is my oldest son, twenty-five years old, a charming boy. Every picture of his is with a smile. On October 7^th, Ori and his friends went to the Nova festival, and each of them came in their own separate vehicle. Later in the evening, three more friends in another vehicle joined them.

Towards morning, they heard sirens and missiles launching in the area. They thought it was normal because it was in an area where these kinds of occurrences are common. An hour later, he received a phone call that he had to leave the premises. There are certain things I cannot specify, but he received the call that he had to leave. He and his friends started heading toward the main road, each in their own vehicle, and anyone who tried to escape and jump into their vehicle, they helped get out of there

They made it to the end of that road. But then Ori remembered that he had just met three new friends that evening. He decided to act on it and go back to pick them up. His friend saw in his rearview mirror that Ori was turning around, and called him up and said, “What are you doing?” He said, “I must go save them.” He said, “You cannot go back there.” But he said, “I can't bear the thought of leaving them there.” They were his friends whom he just met that evening, right? The friend kept going as he was scared. Ori went back.

He managed to make it to them and get them into his car, but he never managed to get them out of there. On the way out, one of the terrorists shot the engine of the car and the car stopped. Ori was taken hostage alone, and the other three were taken together.

Nobody has seen him since, and nobody has heard from him since. Two of the hostages— Maya and Itay Regev—that he attempted to save returned in one of the hostage exchanges. Omer Shem Tov, the third of the three friends, and Ori are still in Gaza.

I am not asking Hashem any questions. I tell Him every night, “Thank you for the nisayon (challenge). It's not an easy one, but I don't know if it could have ended up differently. And for that, every night, I say, “Thank you for choosing me for this challenge.” Until October 7^th, I thought life was normal—sending the kids in the morning is normal, hug them, kiss them, do their hair.

I don't have what it takes, but I thank Hashem every morning. Every morning I thank Father, G-d; I thank Him for the difficulty. I know He does not do any harm for His children; nothing bad. There is no bad that comes from Above. That's why we need to be strong. That's what we need to get stronger in and work on.

This is my little request from everybody. To thank our Father Above every morning, even during trying times and difficult times. It's very important to thank for all the goodness that He grants us. But we have to thank for the difficulties as well. If we will have the privilege of thanking Hashem for the difficulties, I am positive that Hashem will show us only the good and He will return them home all healthy and well.

Ori used to always tell me, “Ima, keep dreaming; dreams do come true.” So I keep dreaming, and I am sure it will come true

Two months after he was taken captive, I very much wanted to go see his vehicle. I was told it's not a good idea and I shouldn't do it, but I said I still very much want to see it. I get there and three police officers escorted me. I entered the lot where the cars were and I see black. I see burnt cars. And I scream to Hashem, “How can anything come out of here?” I keep going towards Ori's vehicle, and I reach the car. I see it's all punctured with bullet holes. I scream, “Mizmor L’Todah,” and the police officers are crying. They ask me, “How can you say Mizmor L’Todah?” thanking Hashem at a time like this. And then I said, “I would rather Ori come out of this car than out of the third car. And for that, I thank Hashem.” Just the thought that it could have ended up differently and it didn't happen—for that, I thank the Creator of the World.

In one of my trips, I took my ten-year-old daughter, and they wanted to make her happy and do something nice for her. So they took her to a nice restaurant. They ordered a cake with a candle. She said, “It's not my birthday.” They said, “Never mind, we just want you to be happy.” We told her, “Hodaya, blow out the candle and make a wish,” and we told her to ask for Ori to return. She looked at me and said, “I can't.” What does a ten-year-old wish for? What does she want to ask for if not her brother? She said, “Ima, I want Mashiach to come. It’s not fair that only I should be happy; I want all of Am Yisrael to be happy.”

That's the way I brought my children up. To always love others. That was Ori’s story. He didn't even hesitate. He was always the first one to aid, to assist, even if he just met them a couple of hours prior to the event. We should all work on this and be stronger with loving others. It doesn't matter what their background is.

The most crucial thing is never to forget and to bring them home. Not tomorrow, but now.

Thank you very much.

I want to say with you Mizmor L’Todah (Tehillim 100). Thank you to each and every one of you for this privilege and for you coming to hear me. It should be a merit for Ori and the rest of the hostages that are still being held. We should send them a lot of strength to endure everything they are going through.

A song of thanksgiving. Call out to G-d, all the earth.

Serve G-d with joy, come before Him with praise.

Know that the Lord is G-d; He made us and we are His; His people and the flock of His pasture.

Come into gates with thanksgiving, [into] His courtyards with praise; give thanks to Him, bless His Name.

For the Lord is good; His kindness is forever, and until generation after generation is His faith.

Rabbi Joey Haber

Two Years Later

Two years ago, one day changed the life of every Jew around the world.

We all remember where we were when it happened. I certainly do. I was in my shul. We had an early minyan that Shabbat, and during the Chazan’s repetition of Shemonah Esrei, someone came over and whispered, “Rabbi, did you hear what happened?” “What are you talking about?” I asked. “There was a terrorist attack in Israel,” he said.

Now, unfortunately, a terror attack in Israel isn’t uncommon news. But then he added, “There are at least fifty people killed.” I remember freezing. Fifty? In my lifetime, I couldn’t recall such a number. We’d heard of attacks—bus bombings, restaurant bombings—but they consisted of eighteen victims, twenty. But not fifty.

Then the whispers spread through the room. People murmured that the number might be even higher.

When we returned for Mincha that afternoon, I was supposed to give a class. Someone came over to me with more news. “Rabbi, the death toll is over three hundred. There are thousands injured. Hundreds taken hostage.” And in that moment, we all realized that the world for the Jewish people had changed forever. It was our moment of collective trauma.

And since that day—over seven hundred days ago—there hasn’t been a single day when we haven’t spoken about it. Whether it’s in conversation, in prayer, or in thought, every one of us has lived with it. “Is there a deal? Is there not a deal? What’s happening with the hostages?”

Recently, I was in Baltimore, Maryland. On the drive from the train station, I passed a home whose entire lawn was covered with photos of the remaining hostages. There was also a massive sign which displayed the number of days since they were taken. That day, it read “711.” The number changes daily, but the pain remains the same.

Each of us has been deeply affected. In those first months, we couldn’t stop talking about it. Then came the exhaustion, and people grew tired of hearing, tired of hoping. And yet, we’re still talking about it. Every single day.

Because we cannot not talk about it. It’s part of who we are now.

Stories of Courage

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to visit Israel. During that visit, I went to Tel HaShomer Hospital for the first time. It’s one of the most inspiring—and at the same time, one of the most heartbreaking—places on earth. You walk through the corridors, and you realize something almost impossible to absorb: most of the people there don’t have both legs. You look around, and everywhere you turn someone is in a wheelchair, someone is in a chair, someone is learning to stand again. You almost catch yourself looking twice, just to see if both feet touch the ground.

Two people I met there have stayed with me ever since.

The first was a soldier who had been shot straight through the throat; right through the Adam’s apple. He was alive, miraculously, breathing and speaking through a tracheostomy tube, surrounded by his family. When we visited, they were playing music at his bedside. He had been a commander, a man of immense strength, and seeing him—wounded but alive, surrounded by love and faith—was an image I will never forget.

The second man also left a deep imprint on me. He lived in one of the communities down south that was attacked on October 7^th. When the terrorists surrounded his neighborhood, he ran with his wife and six children into their safe room. But here’s something to remember: safe rooms in Israel are designed to protect against rockets. Not terrorists. They are sealed against explosions, but they don’t have locks.

And so, this father held the door shut—with his hands. From the morning until the afternoon. For hours. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven, twelve, one, two. Around three in the afternoon, the terrorists reached his home. They threw a grenade at the door and it exploded. He survived, but his face was shattered, and eight of his ten fingers were gone.

A few months later, during Chanukah, the hospital held a public lighting of the Menorah. And that same man—the one who had held a door closed for his family with everything he had left—was asked to light the menorah. He did so with his two remaining fingers.

In that moment, the entire room fell silent. Because in that single act, you could see the courage of Am Yisrael, the resilience of the Jewish spirit, the strength that refuses to die.

And yet, as inspiring as it was, I also felt something deeply sad. Of course, the tragedy itself is unspeakably sad—over 1,200 people murdered, thousands wounded, and hundreds held hostage. But beyond the grief, there’s another kind of sadness.

When the war began, we all believed that it would unify the Jewish people, and that it would remind us that, in the end, we are one family. And for a time, it did. It didn’t matter what community you came from or what your background was. We all cared and we all cried.

But now, almost two years later, the divisions have returned. The peace process divides us.

The question of drafting yeshiva students divides us. The vision of Israel’s future divides us. It’s painful to admit, but we are still a torn people.

Yes, many have grown spiritually through this crisis, and perhaps profoundly so. But many others have not changed much at all. Even among us, those who care deeply, who follow every headline, who pray every day for our brothers and sisters in Israel—how many of us can honestly say that we are different because of October 7th? We talk about it. We care about it. We ache for Israel. But the question remains—has it truly changed us?

G-d In Control

I think we need to ask ourselves this hard question.

Have we changed?

Yes, we’ve given our time and we’ve donated our resources. We’ve shown up for causes. But are we different?

There’s a message here that may have been difficult to say earlier, but perhaps now, it needs to be said.

In Parshas Ha’azinu, the Torah says: “See now that I, I am He, and there is no god with Me; I bring death and I give life; I strike down and I heal; and none can be rescued from My hand” (Devarim 32:39).

What does this verse mean? And why does Hashem repeat the word Ani, “I,” so many times?

The answer, I believe, lies at the core of Jewish faith. If you want to live as a true Jew—as a believing Jew—there is one principle you must internalize completely: Ani Hu. I, Hashem, am in control.

When a human being says “I,” it’s usually a statement of ego. “I did this. I accomplished that. I have power. I am in control.” But when Hashem says Ani, He’s reminding us that He alone is in control. That life, death, healing, pain—everything—is in His hands.

We may try to make sense of events. We may say, “It’s meant to bring us closer to Hashem,” or “It’s meant to unify Am Yisrael,” or “It will lead to Mashiach.” And perhaps all of that is true. But at the deepest level, faith means recognizing Ani Hu. Hashem runs the world, and He owes us no explanations.

Over the past days, several people have shared things with me that drove this message home. My daughter told me that the night of Yom Kippur after returning home from shul, her daughter came to her upset. “I don’t understand. It’s Yom Kippur and I want to be close to Hashem, and yet I keep having these strange, stressful thoughts. Why is Hashem sending them to me?”

A little while later, someone else told me, “Rabbi, my Yom Kippur didn’t feel as uplifting as I expected. I had all these intrusive thoughts that I couldn’t shake.”

And it struck me. Even on the holiest day of the year, when we stand before Hashem, stripped of all distractions—our minds, our hearts, our inner worlds—are not always within our control.

We can’t control every thought. We can’t control every feeling. We can’t control what Hashem sends our way.

But that’s the essence of Ani Hu. To recognize that we are not the ani. He is. He gives life, He takes life, He wounds, and He heals. And our job is not to understand; it’s to trust.

The Vastness of the Universe

But if we want to truly grasp what that means, to feel the weight of those words, I want to share an observation I made recently during a class.

We were talking about the universe. You know, we live in a galaxy, part of something called the Milky Way. Now, the Milky Way sounds simple enough, but think for a moment about what it actually means. To travel from one end of our galaxy to the other would take one hundred thousand light years. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year. And light moves fast, about 186,000 miles per second. To put that in perspective, sunlight takes about eight minutes to reach Earth from the sun. That means every minute is roughly ten million miles.

So imagine light—ten million miles a minute—traveling not for eight minutes, not for a day, not for a year, but for one hundred thousand years straight. That’s the size of the Milky Way alone.

And within this galaxy, there are between two hundred and four hundred billion stars. Each star is its own sun, potentially with planets orbiting it.

If there were just one galaxy, that alone would be impossible to comprehend. But there isn’t just one. There aren’t ten, or a hundred, or even a thousand. There are not a million, or ten million, or a hundred million. Scientists estimate there are over two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Two trillion! And each one, on average, contains hundreds of billions of stars.

It’s staggering. You can’t even begin to imagine it. And yet—think about this carefully—the same G-d who created those two trillion galaxies also guides the wing of a single fly.

He knows what happens in every cell of your body. He directs the steps of an ant. He counts the hairs on your head. Do you realize what that means?

Hashem’s greatness is infinite, and so is His intimacy. He is the Creator of the cosmos and the caretaker of a single heartbeat. The Master of galaxies and the Guardian of your thoughts.

That’s Ani Hu. That’s the meaning of, “I am He.” To believe in Hashem is to stand in awe of both His vastness and His nearness; to see the universe stretched across eternity, and still know that He is here, with you.

The Beetle and the Mite

Let me share with you where I once saw this truth—the greatness and intimacy of Hashem—come alive before my eyes.

The most powerful trip I ever took outside of Israel was about eight years ago, when my wife and I visited South Africa for a safari. It was one of the most awe-inspiring experiences of my life. There, in the heart of nature, you can see Hashem everywhere.

Now, you might say, “Rabbi, you can see Hashem on the streets of New York too.” And that’s true, you can. But trust me, what you witness in the wild plains of Africa is something entirely different.

We were assigned a guide named Jawan, who was said to be one of the most knowledgeable animal experts in all of Africa. We rode through this vast, untouched reserve, roughly the size of New Jersey, in an open Jeep. No fences, no caretakers, no doctors, no zookeepers. Just raw, Divine creation, exactly as Hashem designed it.

We came expecting to see giraffes, elephants, lions, and leopards. And we did. But the most extraordinary moment came not from one of the great animals, but from one of the smallest creatures on earth.

As we drove, I noticed little round balls rolling across the dirt path beside us. “What is that?” I asked. Jawan smiled. “That,” he said, “is dung, the waste of animals, being rolled by the dung beetle.” He explained that there are thousands of species of beetles, and these particular ones spend their lives rolling away waste. And because of them, despite the endless number of animals in the wild, the entire savannah remains clean. These tiny beetles are Hashem’s natural cleaning crew. They roll the waste away day after day, keeping the entire ecosystem pure and balanced.

Then Jawan told me something remarkable. In Australia, he explained, they once had a major problem with waste piling up across farmland, attracting huge numbers of mice. So, scientists decided to import dung beetles from Africa. They flew plane after plane loaded with thousands of beetles, released them into the Australian plains, and waited for the miracle to begin.

For two weeks, the beetles worked tirelessly, rolling the waste just as they did in Africa. But then, suddenly, they all died. Every single one. Scientists were baffled. Why could these same beetles survive in Africa but not in Australia?

After studying it closely, they discovered the answer. As the beetles roll the waste, their joints become covered in dirt. In Africa, small, tiny mites live on the beetles’ legs and clean those joints, allowing them to keep moving. But in Australia, those mites didn’t exist. Without them, the beetles’ joints froze and they died.

Can you imagine? Hashem designed a world where even the beetle has its helper, where microscopic mites clean its joints so that it can continue doing its job, sustaining the balance of an entire ecosystem.

I remember sitting there, looking out over that vast landscape, and thinking to myself: “If the same G-d who created trillions of galaxies also choreographs this, remembering the joints of a beetle and the mites that clean them, how could I ever doubt His control over my life?”

And yet, I worry. I worry about a deal I didn’t close. I worry about finding a shidduch for my son. I worry about marrying off my daughter. But what am I really saying when I worry? That the G-d who coordinates galaxies, gravity, and the gears of creation somehow can’t figure out my little corner of the world?

When you see the safari—when you watch a beetle being cared for by a mite—you realize: Hashem is running everything from the greatest light in the heavens to the smallest movement on the earth.

And suddenly, you understand what it means when He says, “Ani Hu.”

The Tailor’s Workshop

The Chafetz Chaim once shared a mashal that captures this notion.

Imagine you walk into a tailor’s shop. You hand the tailor your suit, or perhaps a dress, and ask, “Can you fix this? Can you make it whole again?”

Now, if you’ve ever stepped into a tailor’s workshop, you’ll notice that it’s not a place of order. It’s not filled with neatly arranged clothes or perfectly folded garments. It looks like chaos with pieces of fabric everywhere, alongside threads, needles and other scraps on the floor.

And then the tailor takes your suit, and what does he do? He rips it. And then he rips it again. You might shout, “What are you doing? You’re ruining it!” But the tailor looks up calmly and says, “Trust me. I’m tearing it in order to repair it. I’m cutting it in order to make it whole.”

That, says the Chafetz Chaim, is life.

When we see Hashem “rip” something in the world—when tragedy strikes, when confusion surrounds us, when things fall apart—we feel like our garment is being destroyed. But the emunah of a Jew is to believe that Hashem, the ultimate Craftsman, is sewing something greater than we can see. As the Torah says, “HaTzur Tamim Pa’alo—The Rock, His work is perfect.” Hashem’s actions are complete, even when we can’t comprehend them.

Sometimes, with time, the picture becomes clear. A month later, a year later, maybe longer, we look back and say, “Now I understand. I lost that job to find something better. That relationship ended so a new blessing could begin.”

But there are other times when we never see the full tapestry and we don’t understand. And maybe we never will.

And that’s when we must trust the Tailor. Trust that every cut, every stitch, every thread is guided by His perfect hand. Because, remember, the same G-d who creates galaxies, Who moves the wind and the waves, Who guides the steps of an ant and the spin of a beetle—that same G-d is holding the needle of your life.

And He is sewing you into His plan.

Faith in the Face of Tragedy

Let me share with you an incident that has stayed with me.

During Elul, I was invited to give a class at a business. Some companies like to host Torah classes for their staff, and this one gathered all the women in a conference room. In the front row sat a group of very religious women, and among them were two who stood out to me—one very religious, and one who looked different.

I’m not the type to judge anyone, but I was curious, so I asked gently, “Do you work here?” The first woman said, “No, I’m actually close to the boss’s wife. I heard there was a class happening, so I came.” Then I turned to the woman beside her.

“And you?” I asked. “I’m from Israel,” she said. “What brings you here?” I asked. She smiled softly and pointed to the woman next to her. “We became very close. We met at a Shabbat meal, and we’ve stayed connected ever since.”

Then the first woman, the religious one, spoke up. She said, “Do you know… her son was at the Nova Festival.”

The whole room fell silent. I turned to her. “Your son was there?” She nodded. “He was thirty-one.” She told me that when the chaos began that morning, she called him right away. Normally, he would answer the phone saying, “Ima.” But this time, he said her name—“Rita.” And she said that in that instant, she knew something was terribly wrong.

A short while later, he called again. He said he was in the car, driving home. It was supposed to be a thirty-five-minute drive. But thirty-five minutes turned into an hour. And then two.

Four days later, the army came to her door with his coffin. Her son, Ben, had been murdered at Nova.

I didn’t know what to say. The room was frozen. Finally, I asked her, carefully, gently, “How are you? How do you feel toward Hashem after all of this?”

She paused for a long time. And then she said, “The first month, I was angry. Very angry. But now,” she said, “I am one with Hashem. I am so close to Him. I am stronger with Hashem than I’ve ever been.”

I asked about her husband. She said, “Him too. We are both strong with Hashem.” I sat there, in awe.

Here was a mother whose life had been torn apart, whose world had been ripped at the seams, and yet her faith was unbroken. She would never see the garment mended in this lifetime. She would never be able to say, “Now I understand why.”

But she lives with HaTzur Tamim Pa’alo. She believes that the Rock, Hashem, is perfect in all His ways. And that, too, is Ani Hu. That is Hashem saying, “I am He. I am in control. This is My world.” And sometimes, the deepest faith is not in understanding, but in learning to live peacefully within a world we don’t understand.

The Hidden Order of History

There’s another Pasuk in Parshas Ha’azinu that captures what we can see and what Hashem does allow us to glimpse.

“Remember the days of old, consider the years of generation after generation. Ask your father and he will tell you; your elders, and they will explain to you” (Devarim 32:7).

Most people understand this verse simply. Ask your parents, ask the older generation. But Rashi states something else. He says, “Ask your fathers” means—ask the prophets. Ask those who truly saw. And ask the elders—those who understood.

What are we meant to ask them? The very next verse answers:

“When the Supreme One gave nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of man, He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel” (ibid. v.8).

Rashi explains that thousands of years ago, there was a generation that tried to unite the world, the Dor HaHaflagah, the generation of the Tower of Bavel. Humanity was one language, one culture and one goal. They wanted to make themselves a single power with a single, unified name. And Hashem shattered it. He dispersed them across the earth.

At that moment, it seemed like destruction. It looked like chaos, as if Hashem had torn the fabric of human unity apart. But, truthfully, as Rashi says, that dispersion was the beginning of creation. By dividing the nations, Hashem was laying the foundation for the Jewish people to emerge.

In other words, when we look at the world and see it being ripped apart, when we cry out, “Hashem, what are You doing?” He answers, “I am setting the world in order. Don’t question why I tear,” Hashem says, “because when I tear, I mend. When I scatter, I am building something greater than you can yet see.”

Hashem’s World—and Ours

In a recent speech, a broken woman approached me. She was older, her shoulders slumped under the weight of pain no one should ever have to bear. She said, “Rabbi, my son… here in America… my son was accused of something completely exaggerated. He’s a good man, married, with children—and now he’s sitting in jail.” Her voice trembled. “We have no idea how long he’ll be there. It’s already been many months. It could be years.”

After the event, she spoke to me again. Later, she sent me an email.

Dear Rabbi Haber,

“I mentioned that my son is unfortunately stuck in a holding facility. The story is complicated, and the accusations are exaggerated. But we know that Hashem loves us. He doesn’t punish us; He helps us grow.

“Still, it’s hard. He’s been there eight months already, while his wife and five children suffer alone at home. It’s hard to understand. It’s hard to cope.

“My son, who for twenty years has been a person of chesed, a ba’al tzedakah, a yerei shamayim, a devoted husband and father, is sitting in a cell. His pain is indescribable, and the pain of his children, who love him so much, is beyond words.

“Rabbi, would you be able to send me an email that I can forward to him? Something that might give him strength?”

I sat there thinking. What do you even write to a man you’ve never met, sitting in jail, feeling forgotten by the world, maybe even by Heaven? What do you write when you know that his email will be read by guards, by officials, by people who may never understand what it means for a Jew to sit alone and still believe?

It was early in the morning, Erev Yom Kippur. The world was quiet, as I sat by my desk and began to write.

Dear ______,

This is Rabbi Joey Haber.

I heard your story, and I am mortified for you. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be in jail this long, without knowing when or how it will end. To be away from your wife and children, it must be indescribably painful.

But I want to share a few thoughts.

Hashem placed Daniel in a lions’ den. Chananya, Mishael, and Azarya in a fiery furnace. Yosef in a pit. Avraham Avinu in a blazing fire. Yitzchak on an altar. And Yonah, in the belly of a fish.

I’m sure every one of them asked the same question: “How did I end up here? I’m a good person. I love Hashem. How could this be my story?” And yet, it was precisely there that their greatness was born. Those moments of darkness became the chapters that defined their eternity.

I have no idea why Hashem chose you for this journey. But I do know this. As clearly as I know anything about Hashem, somehow, there is something extraordinary that only you can achieve in this place.

You’ve been a ba’al tefillah for many years. Perhaps the tefillot you now whisper in solitude will rise higher than any prayer you have ever said before. Your courage now will shape your strength later. Your love for your family will become a legacy they hold for generations. And your faith—your simple, stubborn belief in Hashem right now—means more than the faith of thirty others combined.

When you sit alone, cut off from the world, I know it must feel like no one sees you. But that’s not true. Klal Yisrael sees you. We feel your pain. We feel the ache of your wife and children.

We are with you. As I write these words in the quiet of Erev Yom Kippur morning, I hope you can feel our care, our love, our tefillot. I hope you can reach deep, deeper than you ever thought possible, and find greatness that could not have been reached anywhere else.

With a heart full of love and prayer that this nightmare ends very, very soon,

Rabbi Joey Haber

Later, his mother wrote back:

Dear Rabbi Haber,

“Rabbi, I’m crying as I type this. Your words brought tears to my eyes. I can’t believe what you wrote. The chizuk, the strength, it’s beyond words.”

And I thought to myself: This is who we are. This is Am Yisrael. A people so small living in a world so vast. A world within a universe so incomprehensibly immense.

We live in a world where things happen, and some of them we can understand within a day, a week, a year, and others we may never understand at all.

Now, two years after that dark day, we still cannot fully digest it. Why were hostages taken? Why did some return and others not? Why did one community lose eighty souls and another was spared? Why are tens of thousands still displaced? Why did some soldiers return safely while others fell? Why does our tiny country remain surrounded by enemies? And how in the United States, the land of freedom, in New York City, the largest Jewish city outside of Israel, do we see antisemitism on every corner? How?

The answer is—I don’t know. None of us do.

Because we can’t even comprehend a single galaxy, let alone the trillions Hashem created. We can’t understand the anatomy of a fly’s wing, or the design of a single cell. So how could we possibly understand the architecture of Divine Providence?

And yet, we believe. That’s what it means to be a Jew.

We walk through a world we cannot always explain, but we know there is a Designer. We look at chaos and see the hand of the Tailor. We feel the tear, and still trust that Hashem is sewing the world together again.

“HaTzur Tamim Pa’alo— The Rock, His work is perfect.”

So as we stand here, two years later, commemorating a moment that tore at the very heart of our nation, we declare: Hashem, we believe. We believe that You are running the world in the largest ways and in the smallest ways. That even as You disperse, You are building. That even as You tear, You are mending. That even through pain, You are preparing redemption.

And so we walk forward—with tears in our eyes and faith in our hearts, believing that one day, the seam will close, the fabric will be whole, and the world will once again reflect Your light.

Rabbi Yoel Gold

From Mourning to Yearning

Pain and joy are opposite emotions, and yet the Perez family experienced them both at once.

On that fateful Simchat Torah morning, Rabbi Doron and Shelley Perez were at home in Yad Binyamin. Their son Yonatan had just become engaged to his kallah, Galia. Their other son, Daniel, served as a tank commander in the IDF on active duty.

Daniel was stationed on base in Nahal Oz. Yonatan and his kallah were home with their parents when news of the attacks began to spread. He saw the messages, the clips, the WhatsApps, and then received a call from his commander: “If you can come down to Sderot, come.”

Within seconds, Yonatan was gone.

Later that afternoon, around five o’clock, Shelley was resting when her phone began ringing nonstop. She finally woke up and saw multiple missed calls from different numbers. “We’d better answer,” she said.

Her husband Doron picked up and stepped into another room, as Shelley began to shake. “What? What is it?” she asked.

 “Yonatan’s okay,” Doron said. “Just tell Galia he’s okay. He was shot in the leg.”

“In that moment,” Shelley recalls, “I didn’t even think about Daniel. I figured that he’s in his tank and he’s finally fighting the terrorists. He must be fine.”

But moments later, the entire family burst into the house with devastating news: Daniel’s tank had been found. One soldier was confirmed dead inside, while Daniel and the other two crew members were missing.

“That was the first very, very painful moment knowing that Daniel is probably in grave danger,” Doron said.

In the days that followed, the Perez family had to make a terrible decision. What to do about Yonatan’s wedding.

Should they cancel the wedding entirely or hold a small ceremony in Yad Binyamin, within the restrictions of the Home Front Command? It was a heart-rending choice, especially for Yonatan himself. But together with Galia and both sets of parents, they decided to go ahead. Because life, even in the darkest times, must continue.

When the day arrived, Shelley felt overwhelmed. “I said to Doron, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this.’ I had been crying for days.” Her friends rallied around her, some organizing the wedding, others simply holding her hand.

Before leaving for the ceremony, she went into Daniel’s room. Just two weeks earlier, she had bought him a new suit and a pair of shoes, the kind of shoes that could be described as exactly so Daniel. “I couldn’t believe how strong Shelley was,” Doron said. “I actually didn’t want to go into his room. It was too hard for me. But then I turned to Shelley and said, ‘This is Yonatan’s day. We have to make it about him.’”

And so they did.

Friends and neighbors transformed a local high school into a fairyland. At the entrance, guests received color-coded bracelets, either yellow or red, showing which bomb shelter to run to if an alarm sounded.

As Yonatan limped toward the chuppah, the room was filled with both tears and song. “The dancing, the simchah,” Shelley later said, “is palpable for me even now.” Yet even as they danced, Daniel was never far from their minds.

People kept telling Shelley, “Maybe he’s in hiding.” But she knew her son. “Daniel is not hiding,” she said. “There is no way Daniel would have hidden anywhere.”

A few weeks later, army officials came to their door. Based on evidence—Daniel’s phone signals from Gaza and other data—they had strong reason to believe that he had been taken captive. Hearing this created a whole new set of worries.

“Was he with Hamas? With Islamic Jihad? Was he alive? In a cage?” Shelley said. “I was totally traumatized, and as time went on, it just got worse and worse.”

A few days later came, they received the dreaded news.

Daniel had been killed on October 7^th.

For Shelley, the shock was followed by a guilty relief. “At least he was never in their hands,” she said through tears. “He hadn’t suffered. I felt like a brick had been lifted off me.”

With the news of Daniel’s death, Shelley and Doron were now looking for ways to honor his memory and mourn him properly. Eventually, a blood-stained shirt of Daniel’s was found fifty meters from his tank. That shirt became their connection, and the symbol they buried. “In the end, that was what we could bury. Without that shirt, we would not have had a grave. It was literally five and a half months of absolute torture,” Shelley said. “My heart is so sore for those mothers and fathers who are waiting.”

One day, while scrolling online, Shelley came across a post by another mother, Batsheva Sadan. Her son had been held in Gaza for a hundred days and had recently returned. She asked him, “What’s the first thing you want to do now that you’re home?” He answered, “I want to hang a picture of the Beit HaMikdash in our house. In every home, every school, every municipal building in Gaza, they have a picture of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. They know what they’re fighting for. We must remember what we’re fighting for.”

“When we went to Nahal Oz and did a ceremony for the tank, we found a Hamas missile,” Doron related. “And it had two pictures of the Al-Aqsa Mosque on it.”

Shelley was deeply moved. She said, “We need to do this. We need the Beit HaMikdash in every home.”

Her friend Naomi heard the idea and decided to act. She found a beautiful image of the Beit Hamikdash and designed a wooden plaque featuring the passage from our Sages: “The future redemption comes kima kima — little by little — like the rising of the sun” (Talmud Yerushalmi Berachos 1:1).

Batsheva sent a few messages on WhatsApp one Thursday afternoon. By Sunday, there were seven hundred orders. Then a thousand. Then thousands more, from Sderot, Beit Shemesh, London, South Africa.

From that moment onward, a grass-roots movement was born: a nation remembering what it fights for and what it longs for.

Eventually, Shelley and Batsheva met in person for the first time. They embraced and wept together. “Our enemies will do all these terrible things for the Al-Aqsa Mosque to be theirs, and we need to know what we’re fighting for.”

“As you come into our home and so many homes,” Doron said. “there is an unplastered part of the wall, representing the Beit Hamikdash. Somehow the Beit Hamikdash is always something we are mourning for. But this is a yearning. Yearning and mourning are connected, but they are different. Mourning is mourning a loss. Yearning is something whose presence you want.”

We say every day in our prayers: “V’techezenah eineinu b’shuvcha l’Tzion berachamim—Let our eyes behold Your return to Zion in mercy.”

May we go from mourning to yearning, and from yearning to seeing, until all our brothers and sisters are reunited in the Land of Israel with the Beit HaMikdash rebuilt, speedily in our days.

Rabbi Mordechai Becher

The Path of Faith

One of the few rays of light to emerge from so much darkness is the revelation of emunah.

I’m not going to translate the word, because emunah doesn’t fit neatly into English.

Some call it loyalty. Some call it faith. Others say it means trust, conviction, or certainty.

But emunah is all of those things, and something deeper still.

Over these past two years, we have witnessed a manifestation of emunah among the Jewish people unlike anything in our generation. And not just among the religious or observant. Among Jews who were raised far from Torah and mitzvot—Jews who had little connection to tefillah or halachah—and yet, when the world fell apart, something ancient inside them awoke.

Suddenly, emunah became real again.

We saw it in the IDF. Soldiers asking for tzitzit and tefillin, soldiers lighting Shabbat candles in tanks, soldiers reciting Shema before battle. I’ve seen it personally. I have two sons who fought, one in Gaza and one in Lebanon. One of them was injured, underwent two operations, and went back to the front lines.

The mesirut nefesh, the self-sacrifice, of these young men and women is beyond comprehension. They carry not only weapons but the weight of the Jewish people on their shoulders. Many are reservists—fathers with children, professionals with jobs, students with lives—and yet they go. They go because of love, because of duty, and because deep in their souls they believe that Hashem is with them.

That is emunah.

And perhaps most inspiring of all—the emunah of the hostages.

Think about it.

Mia Shem, held captive for fifty-five days in the depths of Gehinnom, sang songs of emunah to herself in the darkness. When she was finally freed, she and her mother, Keren, spoke at Stern College for Women. They said that throughout her captivity, they could feel the tefillot of the Jewish people surrounding them. Not just know them—but feel them. That’s not imagination. That’s spiritual reality.

And then there’s Sapir Cohen, taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7^th. She said that the only thing that kept her alive was speaking to Hashem. And this was a young woman who wasn’t raised with emunah, not raised with Torah, not raised with mitzvot. And yet, in that pit of terror, she discovered what it means to be a Jew. She found G-d in the darkness.

That is what this time has revealed. The world may be broken, but the Jewish soul is whole.

The world may tremble, but our faith endures. Emunah is not naivete. It’s not blind optimism. It’s the courage to believe when belief doesn’t make sense.

Take Sasha Trufanov, a twenty-nine-year-old Russian–Israeli electrical engineer, held in captivity for 498 days. He was raised essentially an atheist. He didn’t believe in G-d, didn’t pray, didn’t see himself as part of anything spiritual.

But during his captivity, something inside him awakened. In that darkness, he came to believe in Hashem. He said that somehow, he felt a Presence with him. And when he was finally released and returned to Israel, one of the first things he asked for was a pair of tefillin.

That’s emunah.

I had a student of my own who experienced something similar. He had been at the Nova music festival, the site of that horrific massacre. He wasn’t observant, wasn’t raised religious, and of course, Nova took place on Shabbat. But he survived.

Through a series of remarkable circumstances, he eventually found his way to Yeshiva University, to a class I teach called “Essentials of Jewish Thought,” a class for beginners, for students without any background. He studied with me for one semester. Then he came to me and said, “Rabbi, I’m leaving this class.” I asked him why. He said, “Because I want to learn Gemara.”

That’s emunah.

And then there’s Agam Berger, a twenty-year-old Israeli soldier, captured from her observation post and held for 482 days.

During her captivity, she found a siddur, a prayer book, left behind by someone she never met. She said that siddur changed her life. She prayed from it every day. She tried to keep Shabbat as best she could. She fasted on Yom Kippur and on Tisha B’Av. She tried to keep kosher, even when there was almost nothing to eat. She marked Chanukah with a single candle. On Pesach, she somehow managed to get corn flour so that she wouldn’t eat chametz.

When she was released, she said something extraordinary. “I was kidnapped because I am Jewish. So no one can ever take away my Judaism.” And as she flew home to Israel, she held up a small whiteboard for the world to see. On it, she had written words from Tehillim, Chapter 119: “Derech emunah bacharti— I have chosen the path of faith.”

And then, in her own handwriting, she added: “U’be’derech emunah chazarti — And through the path of faith, I have returned.”

These are the Jews of our generation. Jews who met Gehinnom and found Gan Eden inside it. Jews who discovered that even in darkness, the soul knows the way home.

Where Does Faith Come From?

How does someone who was not raised with Torah or mitzvot, who never learned about Hashem or emunah, suddenly find it in the darkest, most brutal circumstances imaginable? Where does that come from?

Rav Daniel Feldman, one of the Roshei Yeshiva at Yeshiva University, offered a striking answer. He quoted a verse from Tehillim: “Ha’hofchi atzur agam mayim—Hashem turned the rock into a pool of water.” And then he added: Her name is Agam Berger.

Hashem turned what seemed to be a rock—a hard, barren place with no emunah—into a flowing spring of faith. That’s what we witnessed. Hashem transformed the unyielding stone into living water, the Mayim Shel Torah, through the heart of a young woman named Agam.

But this raises a question that touches all of us. If we can understand how people like her—these hostages, these kedoshim—discovered emunah in such circumstances, maybe it can teach us how to strengthen our own.

The verse Agam quoted—“Derech emunah bacharti”—is striking. David HaMelech doesn’t say, “Bacharti Emunah—I chose faith.” He says, “Derech emunah bacharti—I chose the path of faith.”

Emunah is not binary. It’s not an on/off switch. It’s not that you have it or you don’t. It’s a derech, a path, a process. It deepens, it stretches, it grows, and sometimes, it’s tested.

The Kotzker Rebbe expressed this beautifully. He said, “When I look at my emunah today, I realize that yesterday I was an apikores (a heretic). And I hope that tomorrow, when I look back at today, I’ll say the same thing.”

What did he mean?

Emunah is never static. It’s alive and it evolves. It should humble you today and surpass you tomorrow. That, too, is derech emunah.

It’s not the flick of a switch; it’s the turning of a dial. A gradual increase, a journey, a lifelong refinement. Our emunah rises and falls, like the volume of a song. But as long as we remain on the path, as long as we keep choosing derech emunah bacharti, then we are growing.

Hashem doesn’t expect perfection. He expects movement. And maybe that’s the secret these hostages revealed to us. In the depths of captivity, when every comfort was stripped away, they found that emunah is not a possession; it’s a direction. They didn’t just believe in Hashem. They walked toward Him.

Choosing, Daily

That’s the first thing to understand. When David HaMelech says “Derech emunah bacharti—I have chosen the path of faith,” the key word is bacharti, I chose.

Emunah is not inherited. No one is born with it. It’s not written into our DNA. We absorb it from our environment, from our parents, from our teachers, from our experiences, but ultimately, it’s something we must choose. And that choice isn’t made once. It’s made every day.

A friend of mine, a Rav in Passaic, once told me a story. One of his congregants was flying somewhere, though there was nothing religious about the destination. He ordered a kosher meal, and the man sitting next to him, another Jew but not observant, noticed. They struck up a conversation, as often happens when a kosher meal lands on your tray. The man looked at him and said, “So you always eat kosher?” “Yeah,” he replied, “I always do.” Then the other passenger asked an innocent question: “So when did you decide to become observant?” The man froze. “When did I decide? I... never really decided.”

After the flight, he went straight to his Rav and said, “Rabbi, I had a crisis on that plane! I realized; I never decided anything!”

His Rav smiled and said, “But you did. Every time you’re hungry and you look for a hechsher, every time you pass a restaurant and choose not to walk in, every time you wash your hands before eating bread, you decided. Maybe not once dramatically, but thousands of times quietly.”

That’s Derech emunah bacharti. Emunah isn’t a single moment of revelation. It’s a lifetime of small decisions. Every time we act according to Hashem’s will, we choose the path again.

Some people have one great turning point, or a ba’al teshuvah moment. But for others, it’s quieter. It’s cumulative. It’s the steady rhythm of choosing Hashem over and over again. And that’s what these hostages did. They weren’t born into faith. They didn’t study it. They chose it.

Under unthinkable conditions—alone, terrified, stripped of everything—they chose Hashem. They chose emunah. And that choice—the choice of Derech emunah bacharti—is what kept many of them alive.

Viktor Frankl, the famous neurologist and psychiatrist from Vienna, lived through several concentration camps during the Second World War. He found himself in a strange and tragic dual position, as both victim and observer.

He was a man of science, a professor of psychology, a mind trained to study human behavior, and yet he was also one of the millions suffering within the barbed wire. From that vantage point, he recorded his observations, later published in his monumental work, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl wrote words that would echo for generations:

“Those who have a why to live can bear almost any how.”

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by a lack of meaning and purpose.”

“In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning—such as the meaning of a sacrifice.”

It’s brilliant, insightful and true. But it’s not the whole picture.

Frankl explains why people survived, but not how they discovered faith. He understood resilience, but emunah goes beyond resilience. Meaning, perhaps, gives you strength to endure, but faith gives you the strength to transcend.

And here the Ramban steps in.

In his introduction to Sefer Iyov, the Book of Job, the Torah’s deepest exploration of human suffering, the Ramban opens with haunting honesty. He writes:

“Yesh davar mach’iv ha’ levavot u’mad’iv ha-machshavot—There is something that pains the heart and troubles the mind. From this alone, many throughout the generations have been drawn to complete denial of Hashem.”

What is this force so powerful it can shake faith to its core?

He continues:“Ha’ra’ot ba’olam, mishpat me’ukal—The presence of evil in the world, the distortion of justice. Tzadik v’ra lo, rasha v’tov lo—The righteous who suffer and the wicked who prosper.” This, says the Ramban, is the question. It is the most dangerous challenge to faith, the root of rebellion among all peoples and all generations. That is why he writes his commentary on Iyov. He aims to confront this very paradox: the seeming absence of justice in a world governed by a just G-d.

And that is what makes the emunah of our generation—of the hostages, the soldiers, the families, the bereaved—so staggering. Because they live within Iyov’s question. They see the injustice, the pain, the loss, and instead of collapsing into denial, they rise into emunah. They have not found explanations, but they have found Hashem. And that, ultimately, is what Sefer Iyov is about. It is the Torah’s sustained confrontation with the question of suffering.

The Beginning of Faith

As we know, Iyov endures every conceivable loss: his wealth, his children, his health, his dignity. His friends come to comfort him and to explain matters to him. One after another, they offer theories, arguments, and defenses of Divine justice. But Iyov rejects them all.

Until a fourth figure appears—Elihu, the youngest of them all.

The Pasuk says: “Vayichar af Elihu—And Elihu became angry” (Iyov 32:2). Why was he angry? The next verses explain:

“Elihu waited to reply to Job with words because they [the other friends of Iyov] were older than he in days. Then Elihu saw that there was no answer in the mouth of the three men, and he became angry” (ibid. v. 4-5).

Elihu had hoped that age would bring wisdom, that those older than he would find words that would heal. But when they could not, he stepped forward.

The Ramban, in his introduction, writes something fascinating. He notes that Iyov does not refute Elihu’s words, and from this, he infers that Elihu’s response may represent the Torah’s true answer to the problem of suffering.

The Ramban writes: “Ha’emet lefi peshuto shel mikra… The truth according to the simple meaning seems to suggest that this is the answer—the completion of the argument.”

But then he adds, with remarkable humility: “Yet these words, in the hands of those who explain them, are not sufficient to remove this doubt from the human heart.” In other words, even the best words about suffering are still words. They cannot quiet the ache completely.

The Ramban ultimately suggests that Elihu’s answer may allude to the mystery of gilgul haneshamot, reincarnation, the idea that the balance of justice extends beyond this life alone.

And yet, there is another way to understand Elihu’s message.

Rav Shmuel Berezovsky, the present Slonimer Rebbe and son of the Nesivos Shalom, writes in his Sefer Darchei Noam that Elihu’s response begins not with theology, but with humility.

Elihu remarks: “I am young, and you are aged; therefore I was afraid to speak” (ibid. v.6). Elihu begins not with answers, but with awe. He acknowledges that there are questions too vast for him, realities beyond the reach of intellect.

The Slonimer Rebbe writes that this is itself the beginning of emunah. Because emunah does not start when you understand. It starts when you realize you can’t. That humility—Elihu’s trembling awareness before the infinite—is the first step toward faith.

Three Classic Paths to Emunah

And perhaps that is the lesson for our generation as well. We are not meant to explain Hashem’s world. We are meant to stand before it with reverence, with tears, and with faith.

And this, the Slonimer Rebbe says, is the key.

Elihu continues and says: “There is a spirit within man, and the breath of G-d grants him understanding” (ibid. v.8). The Ramban, as we said, interprets this as an allusion to gilgul haneshamot, the reincarnation of souls. But the Slonimer Rebbe reads it differently.

He cites the Zohar, which explains that “Nishmat Shakkai tevinem” means that a person’s own neshamah, their divine soul, is what grants them understanding. In other words, emunah is not merely learned. It is remembered. It is already inside you.

Most of us think of emunah as something we acquire from the outside. The Rambam (Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 2:2) writes that one can attain emunah through contemplation of the natural world. When you study creation, when you look at the wonders of science, the precision of the universe, you can arrive at faith. Indeed, the constants of physics are so finely tuned that even a fractional deviation would make life impossible. The universe, it seems, is calibrated for existence.

Or look at DNA. The complexity, the storage, the transmission of genetic information is far more advanced than any technology we’ve ever created. Edmund Wilson once calculated that if you were to encode the genetic information of every species on earth—roughly ten million species—it would fit into a single teaspoon of DNA. One teaspoon. Enough to contain the blueprint of all life. And still, some say this came about by chance.

But for those who, as Rav Elchanan Wasserman writes, possess sechel yashar—a clear, unclouded intellect—it is self-evident that such order cannot emerge from chaos. That is one form of Emunah, the intellectual path.

Another comes from history.

Rav Yehuda HaLevi, less a philosopher than a historian of the soul, advised not to look at theories, but at the Jewish people. The mere fact of our survival defies probability. Every day is a miracle.

The fact that we are here—still learning Torah, still praying in the same ancient tongue, still carrying the same covenant—is almost impossible to explain. Other civilizations have vanished into museums. You want to see an Etruscan? Go to the archaeology wing. You want to see an Egyptian artifact? It’s in the British Museum, because the Egyptians aren’t using it anymore. But the Jewish people? We’re still using ours. The same mezuzah, the same Shabbat, the same Shema. That, too, is emunah.

Yet even these—intellectual and historical—are not enough. Because when the questions grow fierce, the intellect alone can falter.

So there is another kind of emunah—the emotional, the experiential. The Slonimer Rebbe calls it regesh. The stirring that comes from a song, a kumzitz, a tearful tefillah. It is real, and it is powerful. Emotion can open the gates of faith. But it can also fade.

We feel. We cry. We rejoice. We tremble. Emotions are one of the ways through which HaKadosh Baruch Hu communicates with us, and through which we, in turn, reach for Him. But as powerful as emotions are, they can also be fleeting. They can be swept away by stronger, darker emotions. A beautiful kumzitz may open the heart, but a terrorist attack can shatter it.

And so, the Slonimer Rebbe writes, emotion alone cannot be the foundation of faith.

He does not dismiss the other paths—the intellectual, the historical, the emotional. Each reveals something vital about emunah. But he insists that they are not sufficient.

Faith from Within

There is, he says, something higher. Something he calls, in the language of the Zohar, “Mehemenusa Shleimusa—Complete, unshakable faith.”

This kind of emunah gives a person such clarity, such strength, such inner anchoring that nothing—not tragedy, not doubt, not even terror—can cause him to waver. And where does this faith come from?

Not from the external world. It comes from within. “Nishmat Shakkai tevinem.” The breath of G-d within man grants him understanding. True emunah is born from awareness of the soul itself. When a person becomes conscious of their neshama, they uncover something that cannot be taken away. It is not learned, not argued, not inherited. It simply is. It is the inner knowing that “I am.”

It is, in a way, like the philosopher René Descartes’ famous declaration: “Cogito ergo sum—I think, therefore I am.” If I am asking the question of meaning, who is doing the asking? If I am seeking purpose, if I am searching for Hashem, then something within me already knows that He exists.

A machine does not ask, “Why am I here?” A computer does not wonder, “What is my purpose?” Artificial intelligence may calculate, but it cannot yearn.

Only a soul can yearn. Only a soul can search for its Creator. And that very yearning is emunah.

Rav Chaim David HaLevi, the late Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, wrote something strikingly similar in a teshuvah years ago:

“The primary path to emunah is not by looking outward, but inward. It is by searching the depths of one’s own soul—b’ma’amakei libo—and revealing the neshama within. Through that, one finds Hashem.”

You can look outward, as the Rambam says, at the majesty of the cosmos, and it will bring you closer to faith. You can look at Jewish history, as Rav Yehuda HaLevi says, and see our miraculous survival. You can be moved by song, by prayer, by tears.

But the truest emunah, Rav Chaim David HaLevi writes, is discovered when you look inward.

“Day lo la’adam lahatzitz kol shehu pnimah…—It is enough for a person to glance inward. In the depths of his heart, he will remember that in moments of fear, of darkness, of trembling, or even of hope and yearning, he has always felt that he is not alone.” That awareness—that you are not alone in this world, that your very capacity to seek meaning is the voice of your soul calling to its Source—that is Nishmat Shakkai tevinem.

And perhaps the Chovot HaLevavot said it best.

He tells of a pious man who turned to Hashem and said: “My G-d, You have starved me.

You have left me bare. You have placed me in the darkness of night. You have shamed me and burned me with fire—And yet, I will not cease to rejoice in You.”

It is hard for us to grasp such faith. But what that man understood—and what our generation’s kedoshim have lived—is that even in the darkness, the fact that we can feel the darkness, the fact that we can question the pain, is proof that we are not abandoned.

Because the One we are crying to is already within us. That is Mehemenusa Shleimusa. That is complete faith.

The Brisker Rav’s Insight

Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav, makes a remarkable observation on a Gemara. The Gemara (Bava Kama 26b) discusses the following case.

Let’s say a person takes an old pottery vessel—something they no longer want—and throws it out the window from the second or third floor. As it’s falling, someone standing below strikes it with a stick or a bat and shatters it midair.

The question the Gemara raises is: is that person liable? At first glance, you’d think not. After all, the owner threw it out the window. He effectively declared it hefker, ownerless. If something is truly ownerless, anyone can do with it as they please.

The Brisker Rav queries this. Why, then, does the Gemara even entertain the possibility that the one who broke it might be liable? It’s hefker!

He answers with breathtaking depth.

When you place an old computer monitor on the curb on garbage day, it’s hefker, for you’ve completely relinquished ownership. You no longer care about it; it has no purpose or meaning to you. But when a person throws something out the window, it’s different. Even in that act, there’s intent. Maybe he’s throwing it in anger. Maybe he’s testing gravity. Maybe he’s simply venting frustration. But there’s still kavana. There’s still ownership in purpose. And as long as there is purpose, says the Brisker Rav, then even if the object is being broken, it is not hefker.

So too with Klal Yisrael.

Sometimes, it feels as though we’ve been thrown out the window and cast into chaos, only to be shattered and broken. It feels as though Hashem has abandoned us. But He hasn’t. Because Hefker means there’s no purpose. Hefker means indifference. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu is never indifferent. Even when we are being broken, we are being held. Even when we are being shattered, we are still His. There is still kavana. There is still meaning. There is still ownership. Hashem’s hand is still on the vessel, even as it falls.

And that, perhaps, is the deepest truth of all.

The emunah of our generation—the emunah of the hostages, the soldiers, the families—is not naive. It’s not the faith of people who don’t see the pain. It’s the faith of people who see it clearly, and still believe that even in the breaking, there is purpose. That even in the shattering, Hashem’s hand is still there. That we are not hefker. We are remembered. We are loved.

And one day, the broken shards will be gathered again and every tear will be redeemed. And the world will see that even through the chaos, even through the darkness, even through the fire, G-d has never left us.

It’s striking that the Ramban writes, “Nimsh’chu rabbim b’chol hadoros l’kfirah gemurah—Throughout the generations, many were drawn toward heresy because of the question of the righteous who suffer and the wicked who prosper.”

Indeed, history bears this out. There were Jews who emerged from the Holocaust who lost their emunah. Rav Shlomo Carlebach used to call them holy apikorsim, holy heretics. Because how could we, who never walked through those gates, ever judge them? And yet, there were others—broken, bleeding, starved—who somehow clung to Hashem with indescribable strength. Through hunger, through darkness, through silence, they still felt that they had not been abandoned.

The Burning Palace

The Slonimer Rebbe traces this idea to the Beis Avraham, who draws from a famous Midrash at the beginning of Parshas Lech Lecha.

The Midrash says that Avraham Avinu was traveling and saw a birah doleket, a palace aflame. He said, “Is it possible that this palace has no master?” And at that moment, Hakadosh Baruch Hu appeared to him and said, “I am the Master of the palace.”

The Beis Avraham asks: the phrase birah doleket seems odd. If it means a palace filled with light, it should have said me’irah, illuminated. But it doesn’t. It says doleket, and doleket means burning.

Avraham didn’t see a shining palace. He saw a beautiful palace on fire—civilization devouring itself, morality collapsing, a world consumed by its own corruption. And in that vision of destruction, Avraham asked the eternal question: “How can this palace burn? Where is its Master?” And Hashem guided him to look within the fire.

That moment, says the Slonimer, was Nishmat Shakkai Tevinem. Even in a world ablaze, the Master is present. Even when all that is visible is chaos, the neshama still knows its Source.

And that is every Jew’s story. Each of us, at some point, encounters our own birah doleket—a world, a dream, a hope that seems to burn before our eyes.

And in that moment, we are called to remember that even as the palace burns, the Owner is watching. Even as the vessel shatters, the Hand that made it still holds it.

I remember reading a passage from Rabbi Yaakov Herzog, the son of Rabbi Yitzchak Isaac Herzog, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, a brilliant talmid chacham, and the uncle of Israel’s current president.

In his writings on Jewish philosophy, Rabbi Herzog makes a profound observation about Kaddish.

We associate Kaddish with mourning. An avel, a mourner, recites it after the passing of a loved one. And yet, there isn’t a single word in Kaddish about the deceased. Not one. Kaddish isn’t about loss; it’s about Hashem’s greatness.“Yitgadal v’yitkadash shmei rabbah—May G-d’s great Name be exalted and sanctified.”

Why is that?

Rabbi Herzog writes that Kaddish is the Jewish response to loss. It is our declaration that in the face of the destruction of the finite, we cling to the Infinite. When the transient world crumbles, the neshama turns instinctively toward eternity. That, he says, is emunah.

It’s the same message Rav Chaim David HaLevi taught, and the same truth the Slonimer Rebbe and the Beis Avraham revealed. When the external world collapses, when all that is physical and familiar disappears, a person doesn’t become faithless, they become faith itself. Because the soul is not destroyed by loss; it is awakened by it.

Hearing and Seeing: Two Modes of Faith

And yes, the questions remain. They must. The Ramban said that the sight of injustice in this world—tzaddik v’ra lo, rasha v’tov lo—has drawn countless people toward kefirah, denial. And we understand that. There were survivors of the Shoah who lost their emunah. But there were also those who emerged from the same inferno still whispering Shema Yisrael.

And that, says the Slonimer Rebbe, is mehemenusa shleimusa—the complete, unshakable faith that comes not from books, or proofs, or miracles, but from the neshama itself.

And so, when you find yourself disturbed by the world’s injustice, if you feel pain at the sight of suffering, that’s not a flaw; it’s a sign of your humanity. And if you cry out, “Why?” that’s not heresy. It’s emunah.

Because only someone who believes in a Judge expects justice. Only someone who senses moral order can feel its absence. To question is not to deny G-d. It is to search for Him.

That’s why emunah that comes from the neshama can never be shaken. The intellect may be challenged, emotions may waver, but the soul knows.

And I think, when Agam Berger, after 482 days in captivity, lifted that whiteboard and wrote, “Derech emunah bacharti—I have chosen the path of faith,” that’s what she meant. That’s what we are witnessing.

Jews who never learned Torah, who grew up far from mitzvot, who once lived only in the external world, now finding within themselves a depth of faith that even the most pious could envy. Because when the outer world burns like Avraham’s birah doleket, and everything finite collapses, the soul does what it has always done. It turns inward, it listens, and it remembers the voice of the Infinite.

The Midrash that we quoted earlier—the one describing Avraham Avinu gazing at the birah doleket, the burning palace—introduces its parable with a verse:

“Shim‘i bas, u’re’i, v’hati ozneich; v’shichi ameich u’veis avich—Listen, daughter, and see; incline your ear, and forget your people and your father’s house” (Tehillim 45:10).

The Slonimer Rebbe points out that this verse contains two verbs: shim‘i—to hear, and re’i—to see. There are, he says, two levels of emunah.

Shmi’ah, hearing, is the faith of the intellect. It is the ta shma of the Gemara—“Come and hear.” Hearing unfolds step by step, word by word, idea by idea. You piece together arguments, you weigh evidence, you construct meaning. It is the emunah we reach through contemplation of the natural world, through the history of our people, through philosophy.

But re’iyah, seeing, is different. Seeing is not sequential. It is immediate. You don’t assemble reality piece by piece; you grasp it all at once. The Zohar and the Yerushalmi, written in the land of revelation, always use a different phrase than the Bavli’s ta shma. They say ta chazi—“Come and see.” That’s the emunah of re’iyah. It’s not built on syllogisms; it’s the clarity of inner vision. It’s not anti-intellectual; it’s beyond the intellect.

The Rambam alludes to this as well. At the very beginning of Mishneh Torah (Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah 1:1), when he introduces the first commandment—the foundation of all foundations—he doesn’t say leha’amin (to believe) that there is a Creator. He says leda, to know. “Leda sheyesh matzui rishon—To know that there is a First Cause, a Creator of all being.” Knowledge, not belief.

In Arabic, the Rambam’s original term is al-i‘tiqad, to know inwardly, to grasp as truth. Rav Saadiah Gaon’s Sefer Emunot v’Deot—literally Kitab al-Amanat wal-I‘tiqadat—is “the Book of Beliefs and Knowings.” The emunah of which they speak is not blind acceptance; it is daas, knowledge that has fused with the self. Because daas in Torah always means connection. “And Adam yada (knew) Chava his wife” (Bereishit 4:1)—knowledge that binds two beings into one.

So too here. The daas the Rambam speaks of is not intellectual assent to an abstract idea, but the deep, lived awareness that Hashem is as real to me as my own existence. It’s not something I believe because I’ve been told. It’s something I am. That’s the emunah the Slonimer describes, the re’iyah, the vision that wells up from within the neshama. It is the daas that says, “I don’t merely believe there is a G-d; I know it, because I know myself.” Such emunah cannot be disproved, because it is not a theory that can be refuted. It’s a reality that can only be lived.

This, of course, is something the mefarshim discuss at length regarding the Sefer HaMitzvot. The Baal Halachos Gedolos famously does not count emunah, belief in G-d, as a mitzvah, while the Rambam does. The Ramban challenges the Rambam sharply, for how can you call emunah a commandment? A mitzvah presupposes a metzaveh, a Commander. How can you command a person to believe in the very Being who is giving the command? “If he does not yet believe in the Commander,” the Ramban says, “to whom will he listen?” It seems circular, even impossible.

And yet, later authorities, such as the author of the Megillas Esther (written by Rav Isaac Leon ibn Tzur; c.1495 – c.1545), offer a beautiful answer. They explain that the Rambam is not commanding us to begin believing in Hashem. That spark of emunah we already possess, drawn from our parents, our history, our encounters with creation itself. Rather, the mitzvah is to cultivate that spark, to deepen it, to turn emunah into daas. To transform a belief we have inherited into a knowledge we have internalized until our awareness of Hashem becomes so intrinsic, so natural, that doubting it would feel as absurd as doubting our own existence.

That, says the Megillas Esther, is the mitzvah of the Rambam. Not to believe that there is a G-d,

but to know it. To make it part of our being, the way we know we are alive.

From Faith to Knowledge

And that, perhaps, is what David HaMelech meant when he wrote, “Derech emunah bacharti—I have chosen the path of faith.” Faith is not a single step. It is a derech, a path, a lifelong ascent from emunah, faith, to daas, knowledge.

It is the same derech that Elihu offered to Iyov. It is the inward road, not the outward proof. It is the derech that begins in the neshama, not in the cosmos. It is the road that turns inward to discover the truth that was there all along: that I know Hashem because I know myself.

And when we look at the world today with so much unraveling, so much moral and social collapse, the Slonimer Rebbe reminds us: the very instability of the world is what drives the soul inward. When all that is external falls away, we discover what has always been constant: the Neshama, and the Ribono Shel Olam who placed it within us.

That is the silver lining in the storm clouds of our time. And so, in the zechus of that emunah—

the emunah of our hostages who sang tehillim in captivity, the emunah of our soldiers who fight with courage and purity, the emunah of Klal Yisrael who weep, and pray, and refuse to give up—may we be zocheh to the day the Navi promised: “Ki mal’ah ha’aretz de’ah es Hashem, kamayim layam mechasim—When the earth will be filled with the knowledge of G-d, as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9).

May that day come soon, with the coming of Mashiach Tzidkeinu, bimheira b’yameinu, Amen.

Mr. Charlie Harary

Our Heroes

To our Israeli Soldiers,

You may think that you are fighting only for the State of Israel, and that the battle you are engaged in right now is for the land you grew up in—the cities and towns of the North, the South, the East, and the West. You may believe that you are simply a soldier defending a state.

But I’m here to tell you, you’re wrong. You’re not a soldier just for the State of Israel. You’re a soldier for the Jewish people. You’re not fighting only for a country. You’re fighting for a homeland that belongs to millions of Jews who live beyond its borders, for Jews in every corner of the world who feel, deep in their hearts, that Israel is their home.

You’re fighting for every Jew who believes that the State of Israel is not just another nation among nations, but the continuation of Jewish history, the fulfillment of prophecy, the proof that G-d runs this world and never abandons His people.

You’re fighting for generations who never had the chance to lift a sword in their own defense. For the grandparents and great-grandparents who perished at the hands of those who hated us simply for being Jews. You’re fighting for every Jew who ever dreamed of going home—and could not.

For thousands of years, we had no physical response to hatred. But today, your courage, your strength, your tank, your plane, your very soul—all of it—is powered by the spirit of Hashem. Because you are part of something eternal.

You may never meet us. You may never hear our names or our languages. But every Jew in the world is standing behind you.

We love you. We’re praying for you. We’re worried for you. And we’re proud of you.

You may think that what you’re doing is simply your duty, but we see it for what it is: heroism.

Wherever you are right now, know this: the entire Jewish world is with you. We’re praying that you destroy our enemies, defend our people, and uphold the mission we’ve carried for generations: to stand with Hashem, and to bring His light into this world.

“Hinei lo yanum v’lo yishan, shomer Yisrael—Hashem does not slumber and does not sleep; He guards Israel” (Tehillim 121:4).

Do not fear. Do not falter. Ha’ikar lo le’fached klal. You are never alone. Hashem is with you. And all of Klal Yisrael is with you.

May He guard you, strengthen you, and bring you home—safe, victorious, and proud—to a land redeemed, a nation united, and a world filled once again with His peace.

We love you and may Hashem protect you always.

Am Yisrael Chai.