Choosing to Forgive

There is a peculiar arithmetic to the High Holidays. We spend Elul and the Ten Days of Repentance mentioning our failures before G-d, certain that the hardest work of teshuvah is the reckoning we do with Heaven. The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah suggests the opposite: the shortest, surest path to divine forgiveness runs through the grievances we hold against other people. The Talmudic Sage Rava teaches “whoever forgoes the reckoning owed to him for wrongs done against him has all his own transgressions forgone by the Heavenly court in turn.” He grounds this in a verse from Micah: "He bears iniquity and passes over transgression." Rava reads the verse almost mathematically: whose iniquity does God bear? The iniquity of the one who himself passes over the transgressions done against him. Measure for measure. The forgiveness we extend becomes, quite literally, the forgiveness we receive. The Talmud doesn't leave this as abstraction. It tells us of Rav Huna the son of Rav Yehoshua, who fell gravely ill — so ill that Rav Pappa, visiting, quietly instructed the household to prepare his shrouds. Rav Huna recovered. When his friends later asked what he had seen at the threshold, he reported that the Heavenly court had indeed been prepared to judge him strictly until G-d intervened on his behalf: "Since he does not stand on what is owed to him, you too should not be exacting with him." The man's own willingness to let go of grievances became the very argument for his life. This is not a comfortable teaching, because letting go rarely is. And it lands differently when you consider how many of us are carrying these grievances. A 2025 YouGov survey found that 38% of American adults are currently estranged from a close family member — a sibling, a parent, a child, or a grandparent. That is not a fringe phenomenon. It is more than one in three of the people sitting beside us in shul this Yom Kippur, and quite possibly some of us reading this. Estrangement has become so common that it barely registers as newsworthy anymore — which is itself the problem. We have normalized the silence. Researchers who study the trend, like the psychologist Joshua Coleman, point to something else worth naming: estrangement has become culturally destigmatized in a way it wasn't a generation ago. What was once a private shame is now, on social media, sometimes framed as an act of self-protection or identity — a closed door celebrated rather than mourned. That shift makes Rava's teaching more urgent, not less. A culture that increasingly rewards walking away needs, more than ever, a countervailing voice that asks what is gained by staying in the account. The Talmud is not asking us to pretend the wrong didn't happen, or to reconcile with someone who remains unsafe. Choosing to forgive is not naivete; it is a deliberate relinquishing of the accounting — the decision to stop keeping score even when the ledger is accurate. What Rava promises is that this act, difficult as it is, is precisely what unlocks Heaven's own accounting on our behalf. So before the gates close, there is a question worth sitting with: Is there someone whose debt to me I am still holding? A sibling I haven't called. A parent whose apology I'm still waiting for. A child who cut off contact I've never truly examined my part in. Rava's teaching offers a striking trade: let go of what is owed to you, and Heaven lets go of what you owe. This Yom Kippur, that may be the most direct route to being written and sealed in the Book of Life. Have a Peaceful Shabbos and a Meaningful Yom Kippur, ​ Rabbi Yaakov Fisch

Rosh Hashanah and 9/11 Converge

Tonight, as we usher in Rosh Hashanah 5787, we cross a threshold that will not come again: the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11th falls on the very evening that zichronos — remembrance — becomes the operative theme of our prayers. We did not engineer this coincidence. The Jewish calendar simply placed it before us, and it is worth pausing on before the shofar sounds. Zichronos is one of three central sections of the Rosh Hashanah Mussaf, alongside Malchuyos (Kingship of G-d) and Shofros (Sound of Shofar), each crafted from ten verses in Tanach. The Zichronos verses describe G-d "remembering": "וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹקִים אֶת נֹחַ". Translation: "And G-d remembered Noach"; the covenant with the Patriarchs and the cry that precipitates the Exodus (Shemos 2:24). On its surface, the language is strange. Does the Master of the Universe forget? The Maimonides answers this the way he answers all anthropomorphic language about G-d: "remembering," applied to Hashem, cannot mean recall. Unlike frail humans, G-d does not forget. Rather, it means the covenant becomes operative—providence enters into a specific relationship, at a specific moment, with consequence attached. In Zichronos, memory is not a mental event. It is the hinge on which judgment turns. This is, in fact, how memory works throughout Jewish law generally. Our obligation to remember Shabbos or the Exodus is not an invitation to nostalgia. The Haggadah does not ask us to recall the Exodus; it obligates each of us, in every generation, to see ourselves as though we personally left Egypt. Memory, in this context, is not preserved. It is transmitted, and the transmission itself is the mitzvah. That is the bridge to this particular anniversary. A member of our shul born after 2001 has no personal memory of that Tuesday morning — no memory of the smoke over two cities, of a nation's synagogues filling that Shabbos, of neighbors checking on neighbors regardless of faith. In another decade, no one leading davening on a random Tuesday will have lived it firsthand. This is exactly the problem the machzor was built to solve for a covenant three thousand years old: how do you bind a generation to a memory it did not experience? Not by relying on the dwindling number of people who were there. By ritual seriousness, repeated with enough weight that the memory becomes structural rather than personal. There is a further layer particular to Zichronos that a purely civic day of remembrance does not carry: it ties memory to din or judgment, to consequence, to what we owe because of what we remember. A Jewish remembrance of September 11th is not only grief for what was lost. It asks what vigilance, what gratitude toward those who still stand guard, what unity across difference, we owe because we remember rightly. We enter 5787 tonight having been reminded, by the calendar itself, that memory and judgment arrive together. May we merit to remember well — and to be remembered for a year of life, health, and peace. כתיבה וחתימה טובה Rabbi Yaakov Fisch

One People, One Covenant

This week, an extraordinary piece of Israel's history resurfaced. After 78 years beneath the Mediterranean, the wreck of the Altalena was discovered off the coast of Israel. The ship had become one of the most painful symbols of the early years of the State of Israel, a reminder of a moment when Jews, only weeks after declaring independence, found themselves fighting one another. In June 1948, the Altalena arrived carrying weapons purchased by the Irgun, the underground organization led by Menachem Begin. The new Israeli government, led by David Ben-Gurion, insisted that all weapons come under the authority of the newly formed IDF. Disagreements over the distribution of the weapons escalated into a confrontation. The Altalena was shelled off the coast of Tel Aviv. Nineteen Jews were killed—sixteen members of the Irgun and three IDF soldiers. The tragedy could easily have led to something far worse. Yet Menachem Begin made a remarkable decision. Despite the deaths and the anger of his followers, he called upon them not to retaliate. He understood that the Jewish people could not afford a civil war. Whatever their profound disagreements, they remained brothers. The story of the Altalena is therefore not only about what happened in 1948. It is also about a question that remains with us today: Can we disagree deeply and still remember that we are one people? There could hardly be a more appropriate time to ask that question than the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah. In this week's parsha, Moshe describes a remarkable ceremony that would take place upon the Jewish people's entry into Eretz Yisrael. The twelve tribes would gather together at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal and accept the covenant with Hashem. Six tribes would stand on one mountain and six on the other. They were twelve tribes with different identities, different responsibilities, and different blessings. Yet they stood together as one nation and entered into one covenant. The Torah's message is profound: Jewish unity does not require Jewish uniformity. ​ We will always disagree with our families, our friends, our communities, and our fellow Jews. We will have different perspectives and different priorities. But there are moments when we must remember what stands beneath those differences: we are bound by a common Torah, a shared history, and a covenant that makes us one people. Perhaps that is why the discovery of the Altalena is so timely. A ship that became a symbol of Jewish division has resurfaced just as we prepare to stand before Hashem on Rosh Hashanah. May we enter the new year with the lesson of those twelve tribes firmly in our hearts: many tribes, but one people; many opinions, but one covenant; many differences, but one Klal Yisrael. Have a Peaceful Shabbos, ​ Rabbi Yaakov Fisch

Rooted in the Field: What Silicon Valley and the Labor Movement Both Miss

Google is a leader in Silicon Valley in many ways, not least for its famous employee perks. They include free gourmet cafeterias, gyms, nap pods, laundry/dry-cleaning services, and massage services. Google is the benefactor and so committed to its people that it removes every friction from their day. A very different workplace model is the one worker rights are typically associated with unions. The language of worker rights has grown louder in recent years: quiet quitting, benefits reframed not as gifts but as entitlements owed. The workplace as a site of extraction, where anything beyond a paycheck must be fought for and named as a right. These look like opposites, but they share a weakness. Corporate perks are generous yet voluntary. They are granted this year, quietly cut the next, as tech employees have learned repeatedly. Entitlement claims are durable yet unbounded, and once made, they tend to expand rather than settle. This week's parsha offers a third model, sitting in plain sight in the Torah for over three thousand years. The Torah states: כִּ֤י תָבֹא֙ בְּכֶ֣רֶם רֵעֶ֔ךָ וְאָכַלְתָּ֧ עֲנָבִ֛ים כְּנַפְשְׁךָ֖ שׇׂבְעֶ֑ךָ וְאֶֽל־כֶּלְיְךָ֖ לֹ֥א תִתֵּֽן׃ "When you enter a fellow Israelite's vineyard, you may eat as many grapes as you want, until you are full, but you must not put any in your vessel." כִּי תָבֹא בְּקָמַת רֵעֶךָ, וְקָטַפְתָּ מְלִילֹת בְּיָדֶךָ — וְחֶרְמֵשׁ לֹא תָנִיף עַל קָמַת רֵעֶךָ. "When you come into your neighbor's standing grain, you may pluck ears with your hand — but you may not swing a sickle over your neighbor's grain." (Devarim 23:25–26) Rashi, following Chazal, is precise: this is a law about a sachir — a hired laborer, working the field on his employer's behalf, mid-task. The Gemara in Bava Metzia works out the boundary: he may eat while he labors, to the point of satisfaction, but may not fill a sack, use a tool to harvest more, or take produce home. He eats k'nafsho sav'o — to his own appetite, not his household's pantry. Notice what kind of right this is. Not a perk the landowner chose to offer, and not something the worker organized to win. It is a chiyuv — an obligation built into the employment relationship itself, binding on the employer regardless of his wishes, and bounded for the worker regardless of his. It is not corporate largesse, because the employer has no discretion on this perk. Google can end free lunch; an employer that operates according to Torah Law cannot end this right, because it was never his to give. But it is also not entitlement culture, because the labor itself bounds the worker's claim. The moment he tries to convert it into ownership — filling a vessel or sending food home he has stepped outside the right into theft. Dignity here never detaches from the relationship that generated it. The same chapter continues with b'yomo titen sech'aro — wages must be paid the same day, "for he sets his life upon it" (24:14–15). The Torah legislates real economic responsibility on the employer. ​ Silicon Valley ties worker wellbeing to an employer's continued benevolence, and those perks can evaporate the moment margins tighten. A purely entitlement-based framing, whatever legitimate grievance drives it, risks severing the worker's claim from the work itself, turning every benefit into another demand. The Torah roots the right in the labor — he may eat because he is in the field, working. That rootedness gives it both permanence, since no employer can revoke a mitzvah, and proportion, since no worker can expand it past what the relationship calls for. It is an employer's responsibility, made law (halacha) precisely so it no longer depends on anyone's kindness at all. That is a sturdier foundation for a workplace, or a community, than either a free cafeteria or a picket line. Have a Peaceful Shabbos, Rabbi Yaakov Fisch

Tension of Religion and State

In 2001, Alabama's Chief Justice Roy Moore installed a 5,300-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state judicial building, arguing that American law itself is unintelligible without its divine source. Federal courts ordered its removal, insisting law must stand independent of religion. Moore refused to comply and was ultimately removed from the bench — but his underlying claim endures: a legal system severed from G-d is a legal system without a foundation. About half a century earlier, there was a different but similar controversy behind the drafting of the Declaration of Independence for the modern State of Israel. As the document was finalized in May 1948, religious Zionist leader Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon insisted that the birth of the Jewish state could not be declared without invoking G-d — "Tzur Yisrael v'Go'alo," the Rock of Israel and its Redeemer. Secular leaders resisted, but even they could not bring themselves to found the state on man's authority alone. David Ben Gurion proposed a compromise that only the words of "Tzur Yisrael" be cited in the document. It may have been a compromise in wording. Still, it was not a compromise in substance: even Israel's most secular founders recognized that a Jewish state proclaiming its own legitimacy needed some anchor beyond itself. And Rabbi Maimon, unwilling to let the moment pass without full acknowledgment, added "b'ezrat Hashem" beside his own signature, and stood trembling to recite Shehecheyanu — making certain that G-d was present at Israel's founding in fact, if not fully in the text. Two modern stories — one American, one Israeli — show societies grappling with this very truth, each in its own way insisting that a nation's laws cannot stand on a purely secular foundation. This week's parsha, Shoftim, lays out the blueprint for Jewish governance — judges, officers, and even a king. But buried in the laws of monarchy is a striking requirement: before a king may rule, he must write his own sefer Torah and keep it with him "kol yemei chayav" — all the days of his life — reading from it constantly "l'vilti rum levavo me'echav," so that his heart does not grow haughty above his brethren (Devarim 17:18-20). The message is unmistakable: government cannot be divorced from faith. A king is not permitted to rule by pure political power, military strength, or personal will. His authority is only legitimate when it flows from, and remains bound to, the word of God. Remove the Torah scroll from his side, and what remains is not a king — just a man with an army. Shoftim's requirement that the king carry his own sefer Torah teaches the same lesson these two stories illustrate from opposite ends of history and geography: leadership untethered from Torah, from G-d, inevitably drifts toward self-worship. Whether through a monument in a courthouse or a phrase etched into a declaration of statehood, both stories reflect an enduring instinct — one the Torah codified thousands of years earlier — that no government, no society, and no leader can sustain justice, humility, or true authority while divorced from faith in Hashem. ​ Have a Peaceful Shabbos, ​ Rabbi Yaakov Fisch

A Time to See

The dog days of summer are thankfully coming to an end. "Dog days of summer" refers to the hottest, most sluggish stretch of summer. The traditional dates of this season, per the Old Farmer's Almanac, run July 3 to August 11. Many states, including Florida, begin their school season in mid-August, and for many parents, it’s a moment not too soon! Another season that begins this coming week is the season of Elul. This is the month before Rosh Hashanah and is traditionally a time of reflection and introspection. ​ It can be hard to get into the headspace of Elul, especially as the rest of the world is still caught up in trips to the beach, time in the pool, and relaxing vacations. The messages of Elul can feel disconnected for us, as a call to reflect and introspect is not something that gets us excited right now. Furthermore, we might wonder what difference it makes if we get engaged in the season of Elul, considering that most people around don't have spiritual reflection at the top of their to-do list. ​ There is a powerful insight based on the first word of this week's parsha, which incidentally is the name of the parsha, ראה or Re’eh. The literal translation of ראה is “see,” but that does not capture the meaning. Hebrew grammar is more precise than English, where there is a different word for seeing depending on whether you're addressing an individual or a group. If you are addressing an individual, you would say ראה. If one is addressing a group of people, the correct word choice would be ראו. The latter part of the verse is encouraging us to look at the important choices we make. ​ The larger message is that the Torah is addressing us in our responsibility as individuals. It’s so easy for one to second-guess the impact he can have as an individual, as there are so many others who can be engaged or make a difference. The Talmud teaches us that one should view oneself as having the same amount of assets and liabilities in the spiritual realm. Additionally, we should view the entire world as having equal amounts of assets and liabilities on our spiritual spreadsheets. If one individual does just one Mitzvah, he can tilt the entire world in the right direction. Unfortunately, the opposite is true as well. ​ We begin the month of Elul this coming week, and it’s a call for reflection and introspection as we begin to blow the shofar every weekday morning. It’s much easier in the short term to ignore the call. Let's make the courageous choice to answer the call and, as our Parsha teaches us, to open our eyes and finally “see” what’s in front of us. Have a Peaceful Shabbos, Rabbi Yaakov Fisch

Moses: America's Unseen Founding Father

Long before George Washington crossed the Delaware or Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration, another figure had already shaped the American imagination: Moshe Rabbeinu, otherwise known to the world simply as Moses. When the Pilgrims fled England in 1620, they cast themselves as the Israelites escaping Pharaoh, and King James as the tyrant they left behind. That founding metaphor — a chosen people crossing water into a promised land — became the template through which generations of Americans understood their own story. The Puritans read the Mayflower Compact as their Sinai covenant. Patriots recast King George III as Pharaoh. Enslaved Americans found in the Exodus the deepest expression of their own hope for liberation. Moses was not simply a biblical figure imported into American rhetoric; he became, as historian Bruce Feiler argued in his book America’s Prophet, the nation's true spiritual founding father — its founding narrative before it had a founding document. This inheritance is not just rhetorical. It is carved into the architecture of American government itself. In the U.S. House Chamber, twenty-three marble reliefs of history's great lawgivers ring the gallery above the Speaker's podium — from Hammurabi to Blackstone. Twenty-two are sculpted in profile. Only one faces forward: Moshe , positioned at the center of the north wall, with every other lawgiver angled to look toward him. Each time the Speaker rises to address the House, Moses looks directly down on the chamber where American law is made. The Supreme Court tells the same story in a different key. On the building's east pediment, Moses sits at the center of a sculptural group titled "Justice the Guardian of Liberty.” Inside, on the courtroom's south wall frieze, Moses appears again among a procession of lawgivers, this time holding tablets inscribed with Hebrew text. The exterior tablets are left blank — a symbolic gesture — while the interior tablets bear script, positioned where the Justices themselves sit in judgment. Together, these choices reveal something Americans have rarely stated outright but have consistently built into stone: that the nation's understanding of liberty is inseparable from its understanding of law, and that both trace back to the same figure who led a people out of bondage and then handed them commandments to live by. The word Moshe does not appear in the Constitution. But he stands, quite literally, over the rooms where it is interpreted and applied. Recently, Mike Huckabee, the American Ambassador to Israel, stated, "without Israel, without the Jewish foundation, there would not be an America.” He added, “if the United States forgets its heritage and the G-d of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob," it will not remain the great nation it has become.” As America celebrates its semiquincentennial anniversary, there are voices and political winds that are attempting to detach America from its foundation that was inspired by Moshe leading the Jews as a free people to its promised land. At this inflection point of the country's history, we hope and pray that America doesn't lose its way. ​ Have a Peaceful Shabbos, ​ Rabbi Yaakov Fisch