In my head, I am an extremely productive person. I have learned everything I set out to learn, gotten fit, and become a calmer, more disciplined human being. Unfortunately, my actual life did not get the memo.

That is one of the dangers of keeping everything private. The dream remains beautiful because reality never gets a vote.

There is a concept called hischayvus. The closest English word is probably accountability, though even that does not capture it fully. It means putting something outside yourself. A commitment that once lived only in your head becomes real enough that someone else can ask about it later.

“How is it going?”

“Did you finish it?”

“What happened with that project?”

Suddenly, the personal idea that was once carried internally has a life of its own. Now you or I will feel responsible to do something with it.

There is something very powerful about this. Anyone who has ever tried to create something, or even to work on himself, knows how easy it is to stay in your own head, even for years on end. A dream can feel alive because it has not yet been tested. A project can remain beautiful because it has not yet met the slow, ordinary effort required to build it.

When someone reacts and says that something mattered to him, it moves you. The work starts to move beyond the idea in your head.

At least, that is how it is supposed to work. In my own life, I have noticed something strange. Sometimes, when I say out loud that I am going to do something, whether it is to learn more seriously, eat better, wake up earlier, or be more present with my children, the declaration itself seems to work against me.

I do not know exactly why that happens. Maybe it creates pressure too early or drains the private energy of the goal. Maybe saying the thing gives me the small satisfaction of movement before I have actually moved. But there are times when sharing the commitment does not strengthen it. It weakens it.

My brother, Rabbi Sender Haber, pointed out that the Piaseczna Rebbe says something similar. Sometimes an idea begins as something spiritual, private, and untouched. The moment you say it out loud, it enters the physical world. That can be necessary, because nothing gets built if it never leaves the mind. While at the same time, it can also lower the idea before it has had space to develop.

Then I tell myself that I should have kept it private. I should have just done the thing and let the work become real on its own. But that has its own problem, because when everything stays private, it often stays vague. The goal remains protected, but it also remains unfinished.

That is the strange catch-22 of accountability. Saying it out loud can distort the work, but keeping it hidden can allow it to disappear.

My writing became the place where I felt both sides of this most clearly. For a long time, accountability helped me write. I tried to put something out each week. It was a serious challenge for me, but it was good. It forced me to pay attention to the world around me and to take the ideas floating around in my head and bring them into the parashah. It gave me a rhythm, and sometimes the rhythm itself did a lot of the work. There were weeks when inspiration came early, and there were weeks when, try as I might, I could not connect with anything.

A mentor once told me not to force it. If nothing was resonating, I let there be some space between the words. Still, I knew people were reading. I felt it when someone told me he was reading the pieces at the Shabbos table, or when people showed me in concrete ways that the writing meant something to them. That meant a tremendous amount to me, and it still does. I do not take it lightly when someone gives attention to something I wrote, especially because I tend to write long pieces in a world that is afraid to ask anyone to sit with anything for too long.

That kind of appreciation creates its own hischayvus. When you realize that your words matter to someone, you want to keep showing up. An idea is no longer just yours. Once it reaches someone else, it becomes shared property.

Once people are reading, something can shift. It may no longer be only, “What am I trying to understand?” or “What needs to be said?” It can become, “What do people expect from me?” or “What do I need to put out next?”

The work may still look the same from the outside. It may still be consistent, useful, and appreciated. Yet inside, something starts to feel different. The original impulse gets weaker.

I saw an idea recently that stayed with me. There are two reasons a person can climb a mountain. He can climb because the mountain matters. The challenge itself means something. He wants to know what the climb will demand from him and what it will do to him. Or he can climb so that when he reaches the top, he can turn around and wave to everyone below.

There is a world of difference between climbing because the mountain matters and climbing because we want people to look up and clap. Applause is beautiful and meaningful when people notice and care, but we cannot climb solely for the clap.

Working in publishing, I have seen another version of this. One thing we often tell young, idealistic authors is to be careful about writing a book too early, before they have lived with the ideas long enough. Young people often have a clarity and energy that older people have learned to bury under layers of sophistication. However, a book is not a fleeting thought. It has a longer shelf life than a mood. Sometimes a person can write something at twenty-five that he will regret at forty-five because it belonged to a mountain he no longer believes was his to climb.

Robin Sharma writes about the danger of spending a life climbing mountain after mountain, only to realize at the end that they were the wrong ones. The deeper question is not only where we are climbing, but why. A person can do everything right and still realize that he gave his best energy to something that was never truly his.

Often, seeking the clap changes the climb itself. It changes the way you climb and even what you are able to learn from it.

Writing, or creating anything lasting, is sometimes a way of sharing what we know. Often, it is also the way something becomes understood in the first place. It is where a vague feeling becomes a sentence, or where we realize that a thought should remain a thought and not be put to paper. It is where you may realize that the idea that you thought you had understood, is asking more of you than you first imagined.

Rick Rubin makes this point in The Creative Act. We tend to think the artist’s work is the finished product, while the deeper work is a way of being in the world. Yes, what we produce matters, as it is the tangible result of our learning. However, that is not the whole story. Writing itself is also a way of learning something more deeply. Sometimes the private struggle to understand something changes you more than sharing it ever could.

Recently, I began working on a different kind of project. It is harder, slower, and less immediate. It does not fit neatly into a weekly rhythm or a quick finished piece. It requires more thought, more patience, and probably more time than my usual writing. So I find myself facing the same question again.

Should a project like that remain private until it is done? Should it be worked on slowly and brought out only when it is complete? Or should it be shared piece by piece, letting people come along for the unfinished parts too?

Part of the answer is that the work often reveals itself only after it begins. Most things cannot be understood before the work begins. Sometimes the project reveals itself only after enough time has been spent with it. It begins with one intention, and then the material pushes back. It may ask for more time than expected. It may demand a different direction than the one imagined at the beginning.

The upside of sharing is that it gets you moving. It forces you to stop thinking only about the work and actually create something. It keeps the project from becoming one more beautiful thing buried in the cemetery of good intentions. Anyone who has a folder full of unfinished ideas knows exactly how easily that happens. There are books that never became books, essays that never became essays, and projects that remained eternally “in development,” which is often just a professional-sounding way of saying that nobody forced them to exist.

The downside is that sharing creates pressure. It can turn an inner process into a performance. It can make the question shift from “What am I trying to understand?” to “What comes next?” Once that happens, the work may still be consistent and useful, but something inside it can start to thin out.

There is a difference between accountability and dependence. Rick Rubin writes that rules are not good or bad in themselves. There are only rules that serve the work and rules that do not. That feels right to me. A deadline, a chavrusa, a public commitment, or a self-imposed obligation is a tool. It can make us show up when we would rather drift. It can also push the work toward something it was never meant to become.

In yeshivah, this is part of the genius and the frustration of a chavrusa. In theory, it is easier to learn alone. Alone, a person can move at his own pace, follow his own mind, and organize the sugya according to the way his brain works. A chavrusa disrupts that. Another person is sitting across from you, asking questions you did not ask, getting stuck on things you thought were obvious, and pushing you into places you may not have gone on your own. It can feel limiting and inefficient. It can also force the learning to become more honest, because once an idea has to survive another person’s question, it becomes clear very quickly whether the idea actually holds.

I thought about this recently because of a friend who asked me how my writing was going. I admire him because he has built a serious, balanced life between work and Torah. He carries real responsibilities. He shows up for his work, his learning, and the community. He keeps demanding things from himself without turning his life into a public production. Along with everything else on his plate, he learns eight daf a day.

He told me that the first time he set out to finish Shas in a year, he told people. He created the hischayvus. People knew about it. They encouraged him. They asked him how it was going. Knowing that people would check in helped him keep going.

But once he finished, something shifted. He no longer felt the same need to tell the world. The first time, the public commitment helped him prove to himself that it was possible. After that, the proof lived inside him. He had climbed the mountain once, and now he knew the mountain could be climbed.

That, to me, is a healthy form of hischayvus. It begins outside, but if it is working properly, it slowly becomes internal. The goal is not to need an audience forever. The goal is to use the commitment long enough to discover that you no longer need to rely on it.

Because sometimes the obligation becomes a crutch. We begin to rely on being watched, asked, needed, or expected. The public commitment that once helped us move can slowly replace the inner reason we started moving in the first place. We confuse output with honesty, consistency with authenticity.

There is an opposite danger too. A person can say, “I only want to create when it comes from within,” and that can be deeply true. It can also be an elegant way to hide. We are very good at disguising avoidance as authenticity. “I am waiting until it feels real” can mean exactly that. It can also mean that I am afraid to be tested by the work.

There is also a point where trying too hard to be sincere becomes its own performance. You start watching yourself for purity instead of doing the work. You ask whether the feeling is pure enough, deep enough, honest enough, and before long the search for sincerity becomes another way not to begin. Sometimes sincerity does not come from staring at yourself. It comes from entering the process and letting it strip away what is false.

This does not happen only in writing. It happens in marriage, work, religious life, and growth. Whenever another person, system, obligation, or deadline is involved, it becomes very easy to locate the pressure outside ourselves. A spouse becomes the reason for feeling limited. The job becomes the reason there is no room to breathe. The audience becomes the reason the work feels trapped by expectations. Responsibilities become the explanation for why everything still feels stuck.

Sometimes there is truth in that. Life is not lived in a vacuum, and other people do affect us. Marriage and parenting, perhaps more than almost anything else, bring a person face-to-face with himself. The people closest to us do not meet only the version of us that exists in our minds. They meet the version that shows up under pressure, when we are tired, disappointed, needed, or exposed. That is part of the strength of marriage and family life. They do not allow us as individuals to remain theoretical for long.

There is a reason the side mirror says, “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.” Some things look as if they are behind us because they belong to the past, but they are still much closer than we realize. Old fears and old ways of protecting ourselves do not always disappear just because life has moved on. Sometimes they are right there in the mirror, affecting how we see what is happening now.

At the same time, there is a point where blaming the conditions becomes its own prison. The obstacles may be real and heavy. A difficult relationship, a demanding job, or a responsibility that keeps taking more than expected can leave a serious mark on a life. However, if those conditions become the whole explanation for why we are stuck, then we have handed them too much power.

There is a certain moment of adulthood when a person realizes that even if the conditions are not fair, the work is still his. To think that everything is his fault is childish in the other direction. The reason is simpler: blame does not build anything. Blame may explain the wound, but it does not climb the mountain. At some point, the question becomes: What can I still take responsibility for, even here, now, and with the capacity I actually have?

There are also moments when all the outside pressure falls away, and a person is left alone with himself. Then the question gets much harder. Without the person to blame, without the audience to impress, without the deadline to resent, without the pressure to fight against, what remains? What do you actually want? What are you actually willing to build? What work are you willing to do when nobody is clapping along?

That is where the real climb begins.

There is another piece here too. Not every desire to be seen is the same as climbing for the clap. A person does not need an audience for every good thing he does, but he does need, at least sometimes, to know that the good he is trying to do is not invisible. We need to be human, too.

The goal is not to choose between obligation and authenticity. The goal is to hold them in the right proportion. Enough hischayvus to keep moving, but not so much that the obligation becomes the whole engine. Enough accountability to keep the work honest, but enough space to keep it alive. Enough public commitment to prevent the project from disappearing, but enough privacy to make sure it still belongs to the one doing it. Some things need to be spoken aloud so they can become real, and some things need to be protected long enough to become real from the inside.

There is no clean formula for this. Each person has to keep asking whether accountability is making the work more honest or turning it into another performance. Sometimes hischayvus saves a person from himself. It gives direction to vague desire and forces a dream into the world. But sometimes the same accountability becomes a way of avoiding the deeper question: Am I climbing because the mountain is mine to climb, or because I want to be seen at the summit? The answer will not always be flattering. That is probably why the question matters.

The hope is to climb because the mountain matters. If others are there along the way, if they encourage, read, respond, notice, or clap, that is a gift. A real gift. Still, it cannot be the reason for the climb.

The climb has to do something to you.

Otherwise, you reached the top and missed the mountain.

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Clap for me

You watch Curious George as a kid and see a monkey making trouble.

You watch it as a father and suddenly respect the Man with the Yellow Hat. He is one of us, a tired guy who works hard, raises a chaotic little kid, and somehow does it without yelling or losing it.

Hats off to him.

Then you wonder if Hashem looks at us the same way, with all our chaos and all our messes, and somehow still has that much patience.

Maybe that is why everything always works out for George in the end. Not because he deserves it, but because someone is watching over him the whole time.

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25 Kislev, 1st day of Chanukah 5786

Sometimes a bunch of unrelated moments line up, and only afterward do you realize they were all pieces of one idea Hashem was trying to show you.

I didn’t set out to write about this. It kind of strung together on its own. Between a text message, a conversation with a friend, opening a book, and attending a shiur that doesn’t usually fit into my schedule. Looking back, it’s hard not to see how the pieces were placed exactly where they needed to be. Hashem gives us the pieces. Our job is to notice how they fit.

As you may know, I write a weekly post on the parsha, usually trying to uncover a deeper layer beneath the surface of the text. Lately, my focus has been on Shabbos, on learning how to tap into its light and carry it with us as we move through the darkness of the weekdays.

I’ve been writing about the spirituality of light and darkness. Sometimes we have to find the hidden light inside the darkness just to get through. Even when we reach the light,…

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These pieces are reflections from within the sukkah itself—a space that reminds us how temporary life feels, and how permanent our connection to Hashem really is. On Sukkos, we once gathered in the Beis HaMikdash to be seen by Hashem, a reminder that He holds space for each of us at this time of year—and, perhaps, always. May we learn from Him to hold space for one another in these days of joy and holiness.

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Sukkos Reflections

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Finding Harmony In The Sukkah

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Lately I have been thinking about the number of things we do in Judaism. So many actions seem small or even unimportant, yet we cherish them anyway. People call them symbolic or say they have deeper meaning, but on the surface they do not seem to change much.

What they definitely do is - fill the calendar. We hide ten pieces of bread before Pesach. We bang for Haman. We eat latkes on Chanukah and cheesecake on Shavuos. We dip apples in honey on Rosh HaShana and wear a kittel on Yom Kippur. Even what we wear and how we act, from tzitzis to the kippah to how we cut our nails and wash our hands, carries meaning we rarely stop to think about.

With Sukkos approaching this year, I have been trying to understand why we do so many different strange things—from the mitzva of sukkah itself to the arba minim, from the hoshanos to the ushpizin, and everything in between. As I learned, I began to understand some ideas. Others were simply above my pay grade, and more just did not resonate or speak to…

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The Seven Paradoxes Of Yom Kippur

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According to Pharrell Williams, the height of happiness is to feel like a “room without a roof.” Strange as it may sound, Yom Kippur is meant to be the happiest day of the year. The Mishnah teaches, “There were no better days for Israel than the 15th of Av and Yom Kippur.”1

So according to Pharrell, Yom Kippur is the day to feel like we are in a room without a roof. Why is this?

There is only one day a year that begins with a matter of simcha. Not Pesach, the time of our freedom, and not even Sukkos, our official זמן שמחתנו (time of our joy). Only Yom Kippur opens with a pasuk that stirs all hearts:

“אור זרוע לצדיק ולישרי לב שמחה”

“Light is sown for the righteous, and for the upright in heart, there is joy.”

The Mishnah continues:

וכן הוא אומר, (שיר השירים ג) ‘צאינה וראינה בנות ציון במלך שלמה בעטרה שעטרה לו אמו ביום חתנתו וביום שמחת לבו’.”ביום חתנתו” – זו מתן תורה.

And so it says, “Go forth and see, O daughters of Zion, King Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him on the day o…

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There’s a long-standing minhag to sing Lecha Dodi to the melody of Eli Tzion on the Shabbos before Tisha B’Av. It’s a slow, mournful tune—meant to remind us that even on Shabbos, even in Eretz Yisrael, we are still in galus.

This past Shabbos in shul, the man next to me—someone relatively new to the community, a recent oleh—looked visibly uncomfortable as we began to sing. A few lines in, he shook his head, mumbled that it wasn’t appropriate to sing such a tune, and quietly walked out of the room.

He came back later for Maariv, but the moment stayed with me.

It was jarring. Not because I was offended, but because I think it touched something deeper. Something about the tension so many of us carry here—between joy and pain, presence and absence, arrival and longing.

Living in Israel is a gift. But stepping off a flight at Ben Gurion doesn’t mean the geulah has arrived. Being home physically doesn’t mean we’re whole spiritually. Singing that tune on Shabbos is one of the ways we remind ours…

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we’re not just remembering the past.

We’re carrying all of Jewish history—

the destruction of both Temples,

the Crusades, the Inquisition,

the endless exiles, the pogroms,

the Holocaust,

our fallen soldiers, our murdered fellow Jews.

We bring it all before HaShem and say:

Enough.

We’ve had enough of the darkness.

We’re begging for the Ohr HaGanuz—the hidden light.

Rav Moshe Dovid Vali teaches that Kinnos are not just words of mourning.

They are tikkun—they are repair.

In fact, the words קינות (Kinnos) and תיקון (Tikkun) share the same Hebrew letters.

These aren’t just words of sorrow.

They are words of healing.

They carry spiritual light,

they protect us from harm,

and they help repair the brokenness of the world.

Kinnos aren’t just about what was.

They’re part of how we bring about what will be.

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One Simchas Torah, a young yeshivah bachur asked Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach for a brachah.

With his usual warmth, Rav Shlomo Zalman blessed him: “You should find a good shidduch, have parnassah, and merit time to learn Torah.”

But the bachur hesitated. “Thank you,” he said, “but that’s not the brachah I was looking for.”

“So what do you want a brachah for?” Rav Shlomo Zalman asked.

“I want to be the Gadol HaDor,” the bachur replied.

Rav Shlomo Zalman’s face fell. He grew visibly upset.

“How can I give you a brachah like that?” he said. “To ask to be the Gadol HaDor means you're asking for everyone else to be smaller than you. That’s not a brachah—it’s a put-down to others. I can’t give you such a brachah.”

And it made me think.

Should we really be aspiring to be Gedolim? Should we teach our kids to?

Or should we simply aspire to grow—to learn, to be kind, to be present—and if gadlus comes, it comes. Not because we see others as smaller, but because we …

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We are living in surreal times, in historic times, in miraculous times. These are days we will one day speak about to our children and grandchildren. We are witnessing events that we will recount at Pesach Seders and Chanukah and Purim celebrations. These are moments that feel touched by something beyond us, as if the world itself is leaning toward redemption. It feels messianic, as though something hidden is beginning to reveal itself.

At the same time, it feels raw and unpolished, rooted in the nitty gritty of real life, full of earthiness, moodiness, roughness, and sharp edges. We are still human. We are still living on this earth. There is so much to be grateful for, so many open miracles and quiet kindnesses. There is also so much we are still trying to process, so much we have not yet had the space or strength to heal from. Some of us have lost loved ones in this war, people whose names and faces we carry with us constantly, who do not leave our thoughts. Others have watched thei…

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Woke up this morning with this on my mind, thought I’d share it.

There’s this kind of hunger that doesn’t want much, just a little more. A few more seconds. One last taste.

Like when you’re deep in a dream and you know you have to wake up, but you try to stay just ten more seconds because you feel like something important is about to happen. And then you wake up, and the whole thing slips away like it never mattered.

Or when you’re eating from a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, and it’s just one more spoon, one more bite, because maybe this one will hit different. But it never does. You just regret it later and forget how it even tasted.

Last licks don’t really mean anything. They just feel like they do.

It’s such a physical thing. In spiritual stuff, ten more seconds can actually change something. You can learn something real, feel something deeper. Maybe that’s how someone becomes a Reb Shimon Bar Yochai.

Maybe the last licks don’t matter. Or maybe that’s exactly when everything starts.

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There are three sirens that we expect this time of year.

They are the scheduled sirens for Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron, which are sounds that lead the national pauses. Each one ushers in a moment of silence where the entire country comes to a halt, united in reflection, remembrance, and often, tefillah. For three moments each year, regardless of our backgrounds or beliefs, we stand together as one people. In a country which is often marked by its differences, these sirens remind us that beneath the surface, we are still deeply connected.

When it comes to Yom Ha’atzmaut, we have a full day without a siren. There isn’t a distinct moment that forces us to pause nor is there any ritual that defines what we are meant to do. It arrives quietly, and for many of us, it remains in a quiet place.

This year, that silence feels especially noticeable. Over the last few months, we’ve experienced way more than three sirens. Albeit, with a slightly different sound, these sirens interrupted regular lif…

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Between Simchas Torah And Shavuos

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We celebrate the Torah twice a year: on Simchas Torah and Shavuos. The Sfas Emes taught that on Shavuos, the Torah of that year is given anew. Each year, a new portion of the Torah, which was given at Sinai, reaches its time to be revealed. This includes all the Torah insights for the coming year for all the people of Israel. Our ability to renew and be renewed in Torah throughout the year depends on receiving this portion of the renewed Torah that descends to the world. 

As preparation for the new Torah, one must engage with the old, internalize it, and study it deeply. The Torah that we learn on Shavuos is an in-depth engagement with the Torah that we have studied until now, enabling new insights.

On Simchas Torah, however, we celebrate the new Torah that we have worked hard to attain since the previous Shavuos. The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that we do not celebrate the Torah with great joy on Shavuos, as the joy is not complete since the Torah we received on Shavuos was given as a gif…

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“When we have trust in God, we understand that we do not have to be God. We do not have to manage everything, know all of the answers and know each and every end result. We can exhale deeply and release some of our control to God.” - Ruchi Koval

As I sit here writing this, I find myself unwinding, breathing out deeply, appreciating the moment, and leaving it all up to God. We can't grasp everything, right? There's obviously some grand design, we just need to realize that God's got our back.

You can sense it just by taking a moment to look around and noticing the patterns around us. Seeing how one thing follows another, and how, when we take our time and don't rush past each moment, it's clear that God's calling the shots. So let's trust Him, let out that stress we've been holding onto, and give Him the reins. After all, things will play out just as they're meant to be.

I only pray that it should always be this simple and straightforward. There are times whe…

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Let's unpack this.

We need to accept ourselves in our current state, even when grappling with pain and confusion. It’s crucial to acknowledge the present moment, which will allow us to understand that we exist within it for a purpose.

At times we may find ourselves wishing, as we all invariably do, that things were different. Longing for an altered reality is actually a very common tendency and to move beyond it, we must recognize that this feeling isn't unique to us; it's a shared human experience.

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Over the past 18 months, I've taken up the challenge of sharing weekly reflections on Substack, drawing inspiration from the Parashah. The journey has been fulfilling, enriched by the positive responses and continuous encouragement from my mentors and our community.

While exploring and communicating divrei Torah through this platform, each post, whether a homerun or not, has been a product of substantial time and research. The aim is to produce content that is both fulfilling for me and impactful for you, the readers. I hope you find value and inspiration in these thoughts.

Now, it's time to take this challenge to the next level, and for that, I need your help.

Over the past four years, I've been sharing image quotes on social media under the name 'Insta Torah' @instatorah613. This account had garnered over 3500 followers and hundreds of posts before it was abruptly deactivated. Despite its unexpected end, I consider the journey to have been a successful…

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Asara B’Teves is Tuesday, January 3rd. It is a day of prayer and fasting mourning the siege and destruction of Jerusalem, the translation of the Septuagint and other national travesties.

Let’s use this opportunity for introspection and to merit to greet Mashiach and see the rebuilding of the Beis Hamikdash.

Source: Chasam Sofer - Commentary to the Selichos for Asarah B’Teves

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Rabbi Moshe Shapiro was giving a lecture and one of the students set up a tape recorder that paused when there was silence. When Rabbi Moshe noticed this, he said that the pauses are there for a purpose — the pauses allow for the teachings to be internalized. They are Torah too.

Dr. Jonathan Feiner writes in his book Mindfulness: “Insight occurs in the space between the words”

Sometimes you are not inspired by anything, and that’s ok. Sometimes the pause in between the inspiration provides greater insight in the long run.

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