Over the next three weeks, together we will walk through Vaetchanan, Eikev, and Re’eh; not as isolated texts, but as a rhythm of covenantal consciousness. These are not lessons to memorize, but rhythms to inhabit. Each parsha offers a lens into moral vision, spiritual resilience, and the architecture of responsibility. Together, they form a layered meditation on what it means to live with intention, to lead with integrity, and to remember who we are.
We begin with Vaetchanan, where Moshe pleads to enter the land and is denied. It is a moment of restraint, heartbreak, and legacy. We hear echoes of his voice in the Shema, in the repetition of the Aseret HaDibrot (Ten Commandments), and in the charge to love Hashem “with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.”
But what does it mean to love with totality? To remember with fidelity? To lead without arrival?
Moshe does not walk alongside his people into the future, rather he prepares them for it. He offers them rhythm over possession, instruction shaped by absence, and legacy rooted in resilience. In his transmission there are glimmers of the quiet brilliance of preparation: teaching not for proximity, but for continuity.
Consolation as Covenant: The Path to Return
Last week, we sat low, with our heads bowed, hearts heavy, in moments of introspection. Tisha B’Av holds our collective grief, yes, but it also cracks open personal memory. And then, with almost an imperceptible breath, comes Shabbos Nachamu. It’s not a jarring pivot, but a gentle lift. “Nachamu, Nachamu Ami,” calls Yeshayahu. Comfort, comfort My people. It is not an escape from pain. It is orbit around it. A return to rhythm.
That call doesn’t land upon an abstract people. It falls on individuals carrying very real loss, memory, and love. For me, grief always finds its way back to two celestial bodies: my parents. In the deep forest of mourning and consolation, they are the coordinates I return to. One steady. One fierce. Both luminous in their own way. Not quite like the sun and moon. Instead, more like heat and gravity; rhythm and root.
They were raised in worlds far apart; my father on a cattle ranch shaped by silence and steel, my mother on a small farm filled with gospel hymns and quiet grace. One taught me to stand straight; the other taught me to stay close. And somewhere between those postures, I learned what it meant to carry memory as mission.
Both became soldiers. Neither for glory, but for transformation. That choice, that courage, became the rhythm I inherited. And now, Shabbos Nachamu feels like their shared blessing. A quiet benediction they never named but lived. Not offered with grandeur, but instead with quiet devotion.
Yeshayahu doesn’t erase the wreckage; he smooths the terrain: “Kol gei yinasse, v’chol har v’givah yishpalu.” Every valley shall be lifted, every mountain and hill made low. The prophet’s comfort isn’t triumph. It’s preparation. Like my parents, he doesn’t walk the path beside us. He leaves a map, a rhythm, a memory to guide the way.
Moshe as Father: Transmission as Love
Vaetchanan is the parsha of restraint: Moshe pleads, instructs, and blesses without ever stepping into the land he longs for. What he offers isn’t geography; rather, it’s rhythm. He gives us the Shema not as dogma, but as devotion: “V’ahavta et Hashem Elokecha b’chol levavcha u’v’chol nafshecha u’v’chol me’odecha.” You shall love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.
This is not theology or doctrine. Nor is it to be rote recitation, rather it is posture, strength to walk, when we feel all alone.
Moshe teaches as a father does, not by demanding, but by being. It’s a love that flows from one soul to another dictating the model for parenthood. Teaching through rhythm, not control. Through presence, not proximity. His love is the kind that isn’t grounded in logic. It’s grounded in legacy. The Shema isn’t just a prayer; it is a lullaby left behind by a father preparing his children to walk without him.
Transmission isn’t possession. Its rhythm passed from breath to breath.
The Mishna (Berachot 9:5) teaches that one must bless for the bad as well as for the good because love of Hashem must be with “both inclinations.” It’s an instruction not just in gratitude, but in grief. In devotion that absorbs heartbreak and still affirms meaning. The kind of love Moshe offers in his final teachings. It’s a love braided with memory, not arrival, to be woven into our families.
Memory as Mission: Shabbos and the Architecture of Devotion
I wasn’t raised with Torah on the table. I was raised with the military ideals of for G-d, country, family etched into the fiber of discipline, devotion, and duty. In that rhythm, G-d was not theory: He was command. Country wasn’t ideology: it was belonging. And family wasn’t sentiment: it was method. That’s how I learned covenant before I ever called it that.
And when I joined this covenant, it wasn’t an interruption, rather it was recognition. Zachor and Shamor or remember and guard felt like the dual wings of everything I’d already been taught. Memory and vigilance. Longing and leadership. Divine rhythm as lived choreography.
Rashi tells us Zachor and Shamor were uttered in a single breath. I feel that breath across generations. My father taught silence as sanctity. My mother taught grace as inheritance. Neither quoted scripture. Both taught me scripture by their presence.
Now in our home, this is a lived covenant just as with my parents. Shabbos doesn’t begin with candles; it begins in preparation. In the way my parents packed for deployment. In the way they bent toward duty. In the way they taught that covenant means doing what’s needed before it’s asked.
Now, in my own home, Torah lives in the choreography. Two candles lit with intention. Two loaves sliced with care. And two souls, mine mingled with theirs still singing in the quiet spaces. And in that choreography, memory is still a method and devotion becomes the interaction.
Comfort as Presence: Bearing and Becoming
The comfort of Shabbos Nachamu isn’t sentimental. It’s infrastructural. It prepares the soul to walk toward Elul, toward reconciliation, return, and rhythm. Yeshayahu’s call, “Nacḥamu, nacḥamu ami,” yomar Hashem (“Comfort, comfort My people, says Hashem”) initiates that ascent. But for me, it’s another verse we say daily that scaffolds my soul even more intimately.
When the tzibur reaches the final Kaddish, the moment feels like everything starts to scatter, rushing to get our time with the Divine over with and return to the mundane. Coats being grabbed. Conversations beginning. But I stay. I pause. Whispering the words slowly, deliberately, like the covenant I’ve chosen to embody. They come from a mosaic of verses Mishlei, Yeshayahu, and Tehillim stitched together as scaffolding in a prayer often murmured when silence feels holy. Not because I must. Because something sacred happens in the stillness that follows.
I return to these words when silence carries more truth than speech:
Al tira mipachad pit’om, u’misho’at resha’im ki tavo. Do not fear a sudden terror, nor the destruction of the wicked when it comes.
Utzu eitzah v’tufar, dabru davar v’lo yakum, ki imanu Kel. Contrive a scheme and it will be foiled; speak a word and it will not stand, for G-d is with us.
V’ad ziknah ani Hu, v’ad seivah ani esbol. Ani asiti, va’ani esa, va’ani esbol, va’amalet. To your old age, I am He. To your gray years, I will bear. I have made, and I will carry. I will sustain, and I will deliver.
Ach tzaddikim yodu l’shimcha, yeshvu yesharim et panecha. The righteous shall thank Your name; the upright shall dwell in Your presence.
These words ask for no spectacle. They ask for presence. They are not promise of a rescue or escape from grief, but instead a promise of accompaniment through it. These words don’t take it away but build around it.
Comfort here is not passive. It’s a divine commitment to bear, to rescue, to sustain, and to endure. It invites us to imitate that commitment: to dignify the moment, to hold silence when others rush past it, to embody restraint as a form of leadership.
This prayer is my scaffolding. It holds the weight when I can’t. It’s where consolation becomes covenant. Not as emotion, but as architecture. Not as theory, but as a way of being.
Like my parents, whose love steadied more than it spoke. Like Shabbos Nachamu, which doesn’t lift, it listens. Like Moshe, who doesn’t walk beside, but leaves rhythm behind. Each phrase becomes a hand at my back. Not to push, just to remind me: I am not alone.
Rhythm as Compass: Legacy as Method
In our family our walk begins with presence, with rhythm, with comfort braided into memory just as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, zt”l, once wrote, “The Torah is not simply a set of instructions. It is a way of walking through the world.”
We walk toward Elul not alone, but accompanied by transmission, by covenant, and by the quiet courage to begin again.
Moshe gave the Shema knowing he would not cross the Jordan. He prepared his people not with possessions, but with patterns. That is the quiet brilliance of leadership: offering rhythm in place of proximity.
It’s the same inheritance I received. My parents raised me for a life they could not fully share, orienting my compass so I could walk it with integrity. Between them, I learned how to walk: deliberate, resilient, listening for the beat beneath the noise.
And now, I understand what they understood. It’s that we prepare our children not for our presence or our absence, but for their own path. That is the transmission: not certainty, but courage.
Shema lives everywhere in our home. Torah is not merely recited: it’s practiced. It’s on the fridge, where nourishment and decision meet. It lives in coffee poured with intention, in leadership grounded in memory, in co-parenting that steadies what’s fragile, in second chances, and in chapters thick with grief and grace. This is rhythm as compass, covenant as choreography. Each act of attention becomes its own form of consolation. It’s sacred not because it softens grief, but because it dignifies it.
This isn’t transmission by volume. It’s choreography. Each gesture a quiet offering.
Each repetition a remembered promise. I didn’t inherit certainty. I inherited rhythm.
And now I live it. Through leadership shaped by compassion, through co-parenting that reaches for repair instead of perfection, through attention that dignifies the moment instead of rushing through it.
As we walk toward Elul not empty-handed but bearing what was handed down, we carry rhythm, we reframe covenant, and we begin again with quiet courage and deliberate love.
Va’ad ziknah ani Hu… va’ani esa, va’ani esbol, va’amalet. To your old age I am He … I will bear, I will carry, I will sustain, I will rescue.
This is how we walk.
Not alone.
Not loudly.
But rhythmically.
With deliberate love.
With sacred attention.
With memory that doesn’t fade it deepens.
