The TSA Speaks: An Elul Encounter

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The Jewish month of Elul is the time when God is most accessible. It is the season when “the King is in the field”—meaning God’s presence can be felt in the everyday places we frequent, like homes, businesses, and airports.

Yes, even in airports.   

Once, during a recent Elul, I was flying from Montana to the east coast. I had a long layover at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport before my connecting flight home. With plenty of time to explore, I wandered far from my gate, seeking out premium ice cream, a good book store, and whatever else might engage or distract me. O’Hare is enormous, and I rambled through its endless corridors lined with stores, souvenir shops, and restaurants. 

Parkinson’s Law, which holds that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion, also applies to whiling away the time between flights. Lulled by the browsing, noshing, and people-watching, I lost track of time. Suddenly I realized that I had to get back to my gate immediately or I would miss my flight.

I was confident that if I hurried, I would have just enough time. But that confidence vanished when I encountered a long line waiting to get through a TSA checkpoint that stood between me and the gate. Somehow, my meandering had taken me out of the secure area. Now I would have to go through a second security check. The line was long and barely moving. 

What a mess I had made! The odds that I would catch my flight were shrinking to zero. By nature I am loath to skip to the head of any line to plead for special treatment. And it didn’t help that I was the cause of my own predicament. But I didn’t have a better option. Making my way to the front, I felt the burn of unfriendly stares. By this point, I had so little time that I didn’t know if I could make the flight even if the TSA inspectors waved me through without a search.   

Summoning previously untapped reserves of chutzpah, I asked the lady in charge if I could go right through and sprint to my gate before the aircraft, which had started to board, shut its door. Her look told me that my request was a non-starter. 

Then she spoke. “You are going to have to empty your pockets, show me everything you’re carrying. Put it all out there on the table for me to see if you want to continue your journey.”

I complied and, perhaps because of my evident distress, she helped me collect my belongings and sent me on my way with good luck wishes before returning to her duties.

I made the flight, barely. Once we were airborne and I began to relax, her words came back to me. When she had said them all I had heard was “no.” But now, replaying them, they seemed like the coda to a parable of my own making. In order to continue the journey of life I had to stop at this checkpoint, the month of Elul, and reveal the hidden things—sins remembered and forgotten, character flaws, other wrongs—I had been carrying around all year. Putting them out on the table as though confessing,I faced them full on, knowing the Governing Authority was observing. Then it became a question of what the Governing Authority would do. Baruch Hashem, for that year I was waved through, allowed to continue the journey.

There are many sources of inspiration available to make your Elul rich and uplifting. There are books, podcasts, tweets, blogs, emails, and videos, filled with inspiration and guidance. But don’t let them distract from the Voice that can speak through any mouth it chooses.

May we all be waved through and continue the journey of life in 5783.

Alex Troy worked at two Jewish schools, teaching history at one and serving as head of the other. He has written a novel inspired by his time as an educator, which will be published in 2023. Alex also worked as a lawyer and investor. He and his wife, Dale, have three grown daughters. They live in Florida and Connecticut.

Historic Moment for Jewish Life and Leadership

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(Cambridge, MA) — In a first for Jewish student life on campus, Harvard Chabad announces the establishment of the Harvard Chabad Endowment for Jewish Leadership, with a $5,000,000 gift by Jackie and Omri Dahan. The gift will endow the position of Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, Founder and President of Harvard Chabad, which will henceforth be named The Jackie and Omri Dahan Harvard Chabad Jewish Chaplain. 

The gift will also fund the Dahan Fellowship for Jewish Leadership. The new fellowship, piloting this September, will nurture a new generation of Jewish leaders, to be known as Dahan Fellows. 

The endowment will be formally announced Thursday, September 22, 2022 (26 of Elul, 5782), at the Symposium on Jewish Leadership, taking place at Harvard Business School, marking 25 years of Harvard Chabad. It will be followed by a reception and dinner in honor of the occasion. 

The symposium’s panel will feature Jewish philanthropist, George Rohr, Founder and President of NCH Capital Inc, Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus, at Harvard Law School, and Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature, Emerita, at Harvard University. All three panelists have had deep ties to Harvard Chabad since its founding. George Rohr served as founding Board Chair, and Professors Dershowitz and Wisse as its founding Faculty Advisors. The event will be moderated by entrepreneur and philanthropist, Omri Dahan, a 2001 graduate of Harvard Business School. It was during his time at HBS that he befriended Rabbi Hirschy and Elkie Zarchi, whom he describes as his “treasured spiritual mentors.” 

“It’s a historic moment,” says Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, “We are so energized by the Dahan Family’s gift and all that it will enable for generations to come. “With this gift,” Rabbi Zarchi adds, “Jackie and Omri will hopefully generate a conversation in Jewish philanthropy and inspire a model of elevated thinking of how to invest in the truly transformative work that Chabad does on university campuses around the world.”

In Transition

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When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.” Exodus 32:1

This astonishing moment in our history came days after G-d revealed himself directly to the people for the first time. Following the revelation, Moses had left the valley encampment, declaring that he would climb the mountain to speak with G-d and return after forty days. But when the fortieth day came and Moses still had not returned, the people panicked. 

At first glance, what’s most striking (and most discussed) about their decision to form an idol is the astonishing failure of faith. But if we look past that for a moment, we’ll find another curiosity: the people’s logic for making an idol. “For that fellow Moses . . . we do not know what has happened to him.” 

We can imagine their frustration, their feelings of abandonment: “What now? What will become of us? We must do something!” The discomfort of not knowing is too much for them to stand. They decide that they would rather create false truths than embrace that uncertainty—a colossal failure that would reverberate through the ages. 

This magazine goes to print in the month of Elul, the time between the waning of the past year and the dawn of a new one. Like the period between Moses’s ascent to the mountain and his return, this transitional period can feel unnerving. Like the Jews who wondered whether Moses would really return, we might wonder whether the new year will actually deliver its promised changes. Will the new year bring us a reprieve from the tribulations of the last? We hope, we pray, and we wait. We don’t know.

In a world that seems to be spinning out of control, uncertainty has, ironically, become familiar. Few, if any, of us have been shielded from the violence, disease, and economic decline that have marked the last several years. Hundreds of thousands of people have become refugees—uprooted, stranded, living in transition—their lives now the very definition of uncertainty. 

We discover that, hiding in those ambiguous places, are possibilities for new, creative activity.

In this issue we look at the many forms uncertainty has taken. We see how American college campuses have come to fear complexity, embracing a distinctly modern form of intolerance instead: cancel culture. And we see how campus Chabads are working to repair that damage. As a point of contrast, we read about teshuvah’s approach to navigating moral complexity, and we learn how it encourages us to resist our natural fear of uncertainty. 

We also hear from Chabad representatives and their communities in Ukraine and elsewhere who stand betwixt and between, not knowing when things will stabilize. And in our Talmud Teasers feature, we look at how the sages turned hazy situations into a field for creative interpretation.

Across all of these pieces, we will see that confronting challenges strengthens our resistance to failure. That every time we embrace uncertainty, we become less fearful of standing in those in-between spaces. And so, as we consider the transitional days of Elul—daunting as they are—we discover how this period’s uncertainty can also become enlivening. We discover that, hiding in those ambiguous places, are possibilities for new, creative activity.

May all our uncertainties lead us to better and happier places, and may 5783 fill our lives with goodness and sweetness.

כתיבה וחתימה טובה!

This article appeared in the Fall 2022 issue of the Lubavitch International magazine. To download the full magazine and to gain access to previous issues please click here.

Israeli Terror Victim Teens Gifted Tefillin and Shabbat Candlesticks on Canadian Trip

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A Montreal community member surprised a group of teenage terror victims from Israel on Shabbat, August 20, by offering to donate a pair of tefillin or Shabbat candlesticks for every youngster.

The teens came to Canada to participate in IVOW, Israeli Victims of War, a unique trip that brings Israeli teens—either wounded in a terror attack or closely related to someone who has been—to Montreal for a month each summer. “The teens represent a real cross-section of Israel,” says Richard Dermer, who directs the thirty-year-old program. “Some are religious; some are not, some are Ashkenazi, some are Sephardi—terror doesn’t discriminate.”

After participating in local Jewish camps for three weeks, the teens spent a week together touring Canada. On their last Shabbat before flying back to Israel, the IVOW teens visited the Montreal Torah Center, where several of the organization’s unpaid volunteer staff are members, for Shabbat services and a unique program honoring Israeli victims of terror.

After the Torah reading, Abie Moses shared his story. In 1987 his pregnant wife Ofra and five-year-old son Tal were murdered by a Palestinian terrorist. Today, Moses is the national chairman of the Organization for Victims of Terrorism in Israel.

Also on hand to share his story was Obie Ben-Chaim, a former Israeli soldier severely wounded in the head while serving in the first Lebanon War. In solidarity with the teens and the sorrow they’ve experienced, the Israeli Consul General in Montreal, Paul Hirschson, also spoke with the group. “Their remarks gave the community a strong sense for who these kids are and the grief they and their families have been through,” Dermer says. 

But after the speeches, the program went off script. Community member Jeremy Levy quietly told a rabbi he and his wife wanted to donate a pair of tefillin for every boy on the trip, and Shabbat candlesticks for every girl, provided they commit to using them regularly. When the rabbi relayed his offer to the teens, the vast majority raised their hands— fifty-five girls and twenty boys. 

But getting the promised tefillin and candlesticks to the teens before their return flight to Israel on Wednesday morning would prove no easy feat. To complicate matters, the teens were leaving for Toronto immediately after Shabbat for their trip’s finale.

Rabbi Moshe New helps a teen wrap his new pair of tefillin.

Rabbi New and his staff shifted into high gear. They tracked down the appropriate number of tefillin in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and FedEx expedited the package to Toronto. But the box ran into trouble at customs. By the time Rabbi New landed in Toronto on Tuesday afternoon to deliver them, he had to hail a taxi and track down the package at a massive FedEx warehouse outside Toronto. With the teens leaving in hours, he rushed to their hotel, tefillin in hand.

Fresh off a long day of roller-coasters at Canada’s Wonderland amusement park, the group of nearly one hundred Israeli teens arrived at the conference room of their Toronto hotel, where Rabbi Moishe New waited with their new sets of tefillin and Shabbat candlesticks. “We had just a forty-five-minute window,” Rabbi New says.

Rabbi New helped teen after teen wrap their new tefillin. “It was an incredibly emotional moment,” he says. Witnessing the scene, Obie Ben-Chaim remarked he regretted not asking for a pair of tefillin. “It turned out we had an extra pair for him!” Rabbi New says. 

“Our generation thirsts for real Jewish connection; we just have to respond,” Rabbi New reflected. “The teens were ready to take on another mitzvah. All anyone had to do was respond to them.”

Grateful or Entitled?

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I am concerned about what kind of people are we raising, and I want to reverse this shift in our family that is making our children self-absorbed and entitled. How do we not spoil them? How do you teach children who “have it all” to appreciate what they have?

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The Evening Shema: The Perfect Place to Begin

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(Photo for Lubavitch.com) At Kerem Shalom border crossing where Corporal Shalit was kidnapped, a fellow soldier takes time to say the Shema.

Parshat Ve’eschanan contains probably the most well-known verse of the Torah, the Shema. The Talmud opens with the Mishnah’s discussion of the Shema. In particular it asks, “when is the proper time to read the evening Shema?” To this, the Talmud poses a question of its own: “why first discuss the Shema of the evening and not the morning?” The answer ultimately given—that G-d created the night first—only leaves us with more questions. 

The premise of the Talmud’s question was that the darkness of night is the wrong place to start, and its answer seems to be nothing more than a resignation to the natural state of affairs. Isn’t the Torah supposed to focus on light, and standing up for what is moral even when it defies the conventions of nature? 

In a poetic turn of events, the answer is found in the very conclusion of the Talmud. “All who learn halachot each day are promised a place in the world to come, as it is written, “His are the ancient ways” — do not read “ways of old [halichot]” but “Halachot.” Habakkuk 3:6. We’d think, what’s so special about someone who learns a portion of Halacha every single day? Surely if one misses just one day, while being sure to learn yesterday and tomorrow, nothing of value is lost?

If we look at the original verse in Habakkuk, the Talmud’s reading seems puzzling: “He stands and shakes the earth, He beholds and makes the nations tremble, the everlasting mountains are dashed to bits, the hills bow, His are the ways of old.” In the simple reading, the verse describes G-d’s power, and in the Talmud’s reading, the verse describes the power of our Torah learning. 

In truth the two understandings both get at a single truth. G-d rules the world in a just manner through the morality of the Torah, and by learning the Torah we participate in the rectification of the world. When we learn Torah we become a “partner” in the creation of G-d’s world, by helping to bring it closer to the way it ought to be. 

This brings us back to the evening Shema. We could very well skip the evening, and begin our discussion with what seems to be a more appropriate theme. But in practice, we cannot wait for the light of day. If G-d created night first, we cannot simply wait out the darkness. Instead we have to bring the light of holiness and Torah into the world even while it is still night. 

In this way, by opening with a discussion of the evening Shema, the Talmud is teaching us that we cannot afford to let the evening pass us by. Every moment that G-d creates is an opportunity that we ought not overlook. Even if it seems an odd place to begin, every ordinary moment can become a sublime opportunity, if only we get started.

Based on Toras Menachem Vol. XXVII pg. 222