Not Good PR, Good Jews: Kiddush Hashem Today

Is it good for the Jews or bad for the Jews? Does it make Jews look good or make Jews look bad?

We often judge actions, behaviors, and, especially, headlines through this prism.

I remember in elementary school, our teacher would tell us to behave on our trip to the museum since people will judge all Jews based on how we behaved. That’s a lot of pressure on a 7-year-old!

Being the “Chosen People” means having a unique responsibility. God gave us the Torah which includes the mission of being a light unto the nations. In particular, the Torah commands us to create Kiddush Hashem, sanctify God’s name in the world, while avoiding Chillul Hashem, desecrating God’s name.

We’ve gotten used to speaking about Kiddush Hashem and Chillul Hashem in the language of optics.

When Jews act nobly, it’s a Kiddush Hashem. We’ve made Judaism look good. When Jews act badly, it’s a Chillul Hashem. We’ve given Judaism a black eye. There’s truth in that. But if that’s all it is, then Kiddush Hashem becomes a kind of religious public relations strategy. And that is simply not how Judaism treats it.

The Talmud (Yoma 86a) gives a definition that is both simple and unsettling. It does not speak about headlines or global perception. It speaks about how a Jew lives. If a person learns Torah, speaks pleasantly, conducts business honestly, people say, “Fortunate is his teacher…this is Torah.” That is Kiddush Hashem. If not, that is Chillul Hashem. Rambam goes even further. For someone identified as a Torah Jew, even behavior that is technically permissible but ethically off can constitute Chillul Hashem. The bar is not legality; it is moral refinement.

In other words, the metric is not: What story is being told about us? The metric is: What kind of people are we?

We are living in a moment the Talmud or Rambam never had to imagine. Today, Jews and the State of Israel live under a magnifying glass. A single act, even by a fringe individual or group, can become a global headline within hours. There is intense scrutiny, not always fair, often selective, sometimes deeply biased.

So, we find ourselves pulled in two directions. On one hand, we feel the need to defend, to say: this is not who we are, this is not representative, this is a distortion. And that instinct is correct. But on the other hand, there is a temptation to minimize, deflect, or even avoid criticism altogether because “airing our dirty laundry” only makes things worse. And here is where we must be careful. If our primary concern is how Jews are perceived, we have already shifted the conversation away from Torah and toward optics.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks often returned to a simple but demanding idea: Judaism is a religion of responsibility, not victimhood. Yes, we are sometimes judged unfairly. Yes, there are double standards. But none of that lowers the bar. If anything, it raises it. Kiddush Hashem is not achieved when we successfully manage perception. It is achieved when we embody integrity - especially when it is difficult, especially when no one applauds, and especially when the world is watching with a critical eye.

Rabbi Yehuda Amital spoke with particular urgency about this in the context of a sovereign Jewish state. For most of Jewish history, we did not have power. Now we do. And power introduces new religious challenges. When Jews are powerless, the primary test is survival with faith. When Jews have power, the test becomes what do we do with it. Rav Amital insisted that moral failures by Jews - especially in positions of power - must be confronted honestly. Not because of what the nations will say, but because of what those actions do to us.

The danger is not only Chillul Hashem in the headlines. The deeper danger is Chillul Hashem in the soul of the people.

Should we criticize our own? There is a real concern that repeated public criticism can feed distorted narratives. It can make it seem as though Jewish wrongdoing is more widespread than it is. It can unintentionally strengthen those who already seek to delegitimize. But the alternative - silence, denial, or reflexive defensiveness - is not the Torah way either. The prophets of Israel were the fiercest critics of the Jewish people. Not because they wanted better press, but because they wanted better people.

The key distinction is not whether we criticize, but how and why. Criticism must be truthful, not exaggerated, not generalized. It must be rooted in Torah values, not in the desire for approval. It must be directed inward toward growth, accountability, and change. There is a difference between moral clarity and performative condemnation.

There’s a story told about a rabbi who was once approached by a congregant upset about how Jews were being portrayed negatively in the media. “What should we do?” the person asked. “How do we respond to this Chillul Hashem?” The rabbi paused and said, “The best response is to ensure that in your business, in your home, in how you treat people, you are the opposite of what they are describing.”

Not a press release. Not a campaign. A life. Because at the end of the day, the most powerful Kiddush Hashem is not a statement; it is a human being.

We must learn to live with a certain tension. We need to firmly reject false generalizations and unfair narratives and, at the same time, to take full responsibility for real wrongdoing. We need to defend our people and, at the same time, to demand more from our people. We recognize that not every act represents Judaism and, at the same time, to insist that every act by a Jew still matters.

It is also true and important that countless acts of goodness go unnoticed. Quiet acts of kindness. Ethical restraint. Compassion in moments of conflict. Everyday decency. Part of Kiddush Hashem today is to live those values consistently and to make sure they are not invisible. Not as propaganda, but as truth. As a fuller, more honest picture of who we are.

Kiddush Hashem is not about controlling what the world thinks of Jews; it is about ensuring that when people encounter Jews, they encounter something that reflects God.

Sometimes that will be recognized. Sometimes it won’t. But the question we have to ask ourselves is not: “Did this make us look good?” The question is: “Was this good?”

If we only care about Chillul Hashem when others notice, we have already misunderstood it. And if we live lives of integrity - quietly, consistently, courageously, then even in an age of headlines, we will be doing what Jews have always been called to do: To sanctify God’s name not by managing perception, but by embodying it.

The Sound of Sirens

There is a sound that stops a country.

The siren is a raw sound, piercing, unadorned, impossible to ignore. In Israel, it does something remarkable: It creates silence. Twice within the span of a week, the siren wails across the land - on Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron. Highways halt. Conversations cease. An entire nation stands suspended between past and present, between memory and motion. And then, almost without transition, that same nation rises into the celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut.

The emotional whiplash is real, but perhaps the siren is the thread that holds it all together.

The practice of a siren to focus attention traces its roots back to World War I, when a businessman in Cape Town proposed a moment of silence to honor fallen soldiers. The idea spread across the British Empire and eventually made its way to pre-state Israel, where British-installed air-raid sirens became, after independence, instruments not only of warning but of memory. At first, they were used sparingly: when the remains of Herzl were brought to Israel, after a significant tragedy struck a kibbutz. But over time, something profound took shape. The same sirens once meant to signal danger were transformed into a national language of remembrance.

On Yom HaZikaron, the siren sounds for one minute at night, and two minutes the next morning. During those moments, Israel becomes still. Cars stop in the middle of highways. People stand at attention. Tears flow openly. It is not orchestrated; it is instinctive, communal, sacred.

But the story of sirens in Israel is more complicated today.

They are no longer only ceremonial. They are also urgent and sound far too often. Red alert sirens send families running to shelters. Ambulance sirens signal crisis. In recent times, the sound of the siren has become frighteningly routine. So much so that the tones of ambulance sirens had to be changed to avoid confusion.

For adults, the distinctions are painful but manageable. For children, they blur. A young boy hears a siren in his kindergarten on Yom HaShoah and is terrified, convinced it means danger, that he must run and hide. Only later does he learn that this siren is not about present fear, but past horror. Not about what might happen, but about what did.

Perhaps that confusion is not something to dismiss too quickly. Because in truth, the sirens of Israel are meant to hold both meanings at once. They are about danger and memory. About fear and dignity. About what has been lost and what still must be protected.

A siren is loud, but what it creates is silence. And in that silence, something begins to emerge.

This week, we read about tzara’at, the spiritual skin condition often translated as leprosy. It is a halakhic paradox that feels, at first glance, almost incomprehensible. A small patch of afflicted skin renders a person impure. But if the affliction spreads to cover the entire body - if it becomes total, the person is declared pure. How can this be?

The Maharal explains with a principle that feels almost counterintuitive: Sometimes, total collapse is not the deepening of brokenness; it is the end of it. When something is partially broken, it still clings to its previous form. It can be patched, perhaps, but it is still defined by its dysfunction. When something collapses entirely, however, when the old structure dissolves, it creates a kind of emptiness. And that emptiness is not void; it is possibility.

The Maharal reminds us that creation itself begins this way. Darkness precedes light. Tohu va’vohu, chaos, comes before creation. A seed must decay before it can grow. Redemption emerges not from stability, but from rupture.

This is what the siren captures. It is not a gentle sound. It does not comfort. It does not solve. It breaks. It pierces the routine of daily life and leaves, in its wake, a kind of emotional and spiritual exposure. For those two minutes, there is no distraction, no buffer. Just memory. Just loss. Just the unbearable weight of what has been.

Those moments do not end in silence alone. They lead somewhere. From the siren of Yom HaShoah, we carry the memory of absolute devastation - the kind that seemed total, consuming, and final. From the siren of Yom HaZikaron, we feel the ongoing cost of existence, the lives lost in defense of a state. Then, almost impossibly, we arrive at Yom Ha’atzmaut. Celebration does not erase the sirens; it emerges from them.

Like the metzora whose affliction has covered his entire body - who stands not as a deeper expression of impurity, but at the threshold of renewal, the Jewish people have known moments when brokenness felt complete. Those very moments, however, became the clearing from which something new could grow.

The siren is not only a memorial. It is a transition point. It forces a pause, a confrontation with the fullness of pain. And in doing so, it creates the conditions for something else to follow. Not immediately. Not easily. But inevitably. A people who can stand still together in grief can also rise together in hope.

The siren creates silence. But silence is not emptiness. It is an invitation for us to choose what to place inside those two minutes. Perhaps this year, when the siren sounds, we can be a little more intentional about what fills that stillness. To teach our children not only not to fear the sound, but to understand it, to know that this is what it means to belong to a people that remembers. To take a moment to say a name or to recall a story, a face, or a life that might otherwise blur into history. To reach out to someone for whom these days are not symbolic but personal, someone who carries loss not as memory but as daily reality. Perhaps most of all, we must allow the siren not only to stop us, but to shape us, to ask what it means to build a life, a community, a State worthy of the sacrifices we remember.

The siren will sound whether we are ready or not. When it fades, will we simply return to life as it was or will we carry something of that silence forward, and let it shape the way we live?

Let’s listen closely and choose wisely.

The Challah Holds the Key

Who’s ready for challah again?

This week, however, it comes with a key.

There’s something curious about the first Shabbat after Pesach. After a week without chametz, the challah returns, but in some homes, it looks different. It’s shaped like a key. Sometimes there’s even a key baked inside.

It’s the Shlissel Challah.

At first glance, it feels like a quaint custom. Maybe even a little strange. But like many minhagim, it carries a powerful message - especially for this moment: the day after the Festival of Freedom, when we transition from inspiration to responsibility,

The idea traces back to Sefer Yehoshua.

When the Jewish people entered the Land of Israel, something dramatic happened. The manna, the miraculous food that sustained them in the desert, stopped immediately after that first Pesach. As the verse says, “On the day after the Pesach…they ate from the produce of the land.”

From that moment on, everything changed. No more food from Heaven. Now there would be plowing, planting, building. We leave a world of open miracles and enter a world of effort, where we work, but Hashem opens the door.

Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel, the Apter Rebbe, explains that on Pesach, the “gates” are open. Spiritual growth comes easily. Connection flows. But after Pesach, those gates begin to close - not as a rejection, but as an invitation. Now it’s our move. We make a key to remind ourselves we don’t need to open everything. We just need to open a little - through mitzvot, through Shabbat, through small, consistent steps, and Hashem opens the rest.

Pesach was a gift. Now comes the hard part. That “key” isn’t only about opportunity; it’s about how we live.

Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Teitelbaum noted that the Shabbat immediately after Pesach usually coincides with Parshat Shemini, which discusses kosher food. His message is what we eat - and how we conduct our physical lives - is itself the key to serving Hashem in every area. Others connect the key to parnasah, making a living. After Pesach, when the manna stopped, sustenance would come through effort - but only with Hashem’s blessing. The key becomes a quiet prayer: Open for us the gates of livelihood.

Different explanations. One idea. Life is back in our hands but not fully in our control.

It’s easy to misunderstand this custom. Bake a key, get blessing. But that misses the point. This isn’t magic. It’s mindset. We return to work after Pesach - back to schedules, pressures, responsibilities. It’s easy to slip into thinking: it’s all on me. The key interrupts that thought. We must put in our effort but don’t forget Who opens the gates.

On Pesach, we are meticulous. Every crumb matters. Every detail counts. And then Pesach ends, and the intensity fades. The Shlissel Challah quietly insists don’t let that disappear. Take some of that Pesach passion with you. Bring a little more intention into your week. A little more awareness into your routine. Open just a little.

Maybe it’s one small thing this week: a more focused blessing or prayer, an extra minute of learning, a bit more responsiveness in how we interact with people or simply pausing to remember Who really runs the outcome.

Pesach showed us what it feels like when everything is open. Shlissel Challah asks a simple question: What will we do now that it isn’t? The challah sits on the table like a key. Not magic. Not a shortcut. A reminder. We’re back in the world of effort, but the doors are still there.

Even beyond the Jewish world, this custom has drawn attention, becoming something of a modern trend. But long before anyone noticed it, the message was always the same: We don’t control everything, but we’re still holding a key.

This week don’t just eat the challah; use the key.

If You Want Something Done Right...

If you had a time machine and could go back to any moment in history, where would you go?

Some would choose Creation. Was it a Divine act or cosmic explosion? Others would stand at Sinai, hoping to witness revelation firsthand.

In the spirit of the holiday, I would choose one moment above all: Keriat Yam Suf, the splitting of the sea. Drama. Terror. Faith. Redemption. And, as the Midrash tells us, a level of Divine revelation so intense that even the greatest prophets could not match it. It must have been breathtaking.

Here’s the problem: What actually happened?

The Torah gives us a clear, almost orderly narrative. The people panic. Moshe prays. God responds, “Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the Children of Israel and let them travel.” Moshe raises his staff. The sea splits. The people walk through. The Egyptians drown.

Clean. Structured. Predictable.
And then comes the Midrash and everything becomes far less orderly.

The sea does not split immediately. The people hesitate. They argue. They debate. Some say, “I’ll go first.” Others say, “No, I will.” Still others say, “Not me.” It’s a moment of confusion, of paralysis, of talk. Until one person acts.

That person, as we all know, is Nachshon ben Aminadav, the prince of the tribe of Judah. He doesn’t deliver a speech. He doesn’t organize a committee. He doesn’t wait for consensus. He just walks into the water. But nothing happens. He goes deeper - waist-deep, chest-deep, the water reaches his neck…his lips…his nostrils…and only then does the sea split.

If you want something done right, sometimes you have to do it yourself.

It is striking that the Torah never mentions Nachshon in this moment. Not a word. Officially, the miracle happens through Moshe, through Divine command. But the Rabbis insist on telling another truth: Behind the miracle of the splitting of the sea stands the courage of an individual who acted when no one else would.

The Torah tells the story of God’s power. The Midrash tells the story of human responsibility. And the second story is harder to live.

Perhaps that is why Nachshon’s role is hidden in the text but preserved in our tradition. If the Torah had told us explicitly that one man stepped forward and split the sea, we might think it’s easy. We might imagine ourselves in his place, confidently striding into the waves. But it’s not easy. It’s incredibly difficult to be the one.

There’s a famous scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where a leader declares, “You are all individuals!” The crowd responds in unison, “We are all individuals!” Except for one voice: “I’m not!”

It’s funny because it’s true.
It’s easy to say we value individuality. It’s much harder to actually live it.

At the sea, there was no shortage of voices. There were opinions, intentions, even declarations of willingness, but only one person translated words into action. Nachshon didn’t wait for perfect clarity. He didn’t wait for guarantees. He didn’t wait for someone else to lead. He moved.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that Nachshon understood something essential: God wanted the Jewish people to move forward toward Sinai. There was a sea in the way. So, he entered the sea.

That is the enduring message of the seventh day of Pesach.

We often wait for consensus, for permission, for the perfect moment. We talk, we plan, and we agree in principle. But seas do not split because of good intentions. They split because of action.

The challenge of individuality is not philosophical; it is practical. It is found in the moments when we are called upon to step forward while others hesitate. In our religious lives, our communities, our families, and our personal growth, we are constantly standing at the edge of some sea.

We ask: Who will go first? Nachshon answers: You.

Our tradition gives us countless opportunities to take that step, to stop being part of the chorus and become the voice, to stop discussing and start doing. In big moments and small, we are invited to act, to define ourselves, to move forward. Not just to believe. Not just to support. Not just to offer thoughts and prayers. But to step in.

To do; not just donate. To engage; not just endorse. To act; not just agree.

Pesach begins with the journey to freedom. It ends with a challenge: move. Because sometimes, if you want something done right…you have to jump in yourself. And if we do take that first step into uncertain waters, we just might split the sea.

Still Leaving Egypt

The Exodus happened in an instant, but the journey to freedom takes much longer than one night. 

Yes, it all starts in a big rush - matzah on our backs, doors flung open, a people rushing toward freedom. (We’ve all seen the movie!) But the initial journey stretches for forty years. Freedom, it turns out, is not a moment. It is a process. 

It's a long process.

We left Egypt quickly. But Egypt did not leave us so quickly.

The Torah’s name for Egypt, Mitzrayim, shares a root with meitzarim, narrow straits, constraints, confinements. Egypt was not only a place; it was a mindset. A set of internal limitations that told a people who they were - and who they could never become. To truly be free required more than crossing a border. It requires transcending those inner boundaries. 

We all need Yetziat Mitzrayim, to exit those boundaries. And that is a much longer journey. 

This year, that journey feels heavier. We are not just telling the story of difficult departures. We are living them. In recent weeks, Israelis have found themselves on bewildering, circuitous journeys just to get home for Pesach - flying east to go west, crossing into Jordan or even Egypt, retracing ancient paths in reverse just to find a way forward. Back to Egypt…in order to make it to the Seder to experience leaving Egypt!

Layered on top of this are the meitzarim we feel everywhere: the strain of the war with Iran, the disruption of normal life, and the rising tide of antisemitism across the globe. A quiet, persistent unease has settled in. We feel it. And into that feeling, we sit down at the Seder and declare: “Ha lachma anya…This is the bread of affliction…Now we are slaves; next year we will be free.”

It’s a striking declaration. We are not slaves, and yet we say we are. Perhaps the Haggadah is teaching us something essential: We cannot understand freedom without confronting its opposite. We cannot appreciate expansiveness unless we have felt constriction. We cannot become free if we do not recognize the ways in which we are still confined. 

“Now we are slaves” is not a statement of fact. It is a statement of awareness that there are still parts of us that are not yet free. And that awareness will help set us free. 

Few embody this truth more powerfully than Natan Sharansky. As a Prisoner of Zion in the Soviet Union, he spent nine years in brutal imprisonment, repeatedly threatened with death. Yet, he insisted that he was the free one. During interrogations, Sharansky recounts telling anti-Soviet jokes to his captors. 

One of his favorites was how Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader known for his arrogance, crudeness, and senility, demanded that Soviet cosmonauts outdo the American astronauts who landed first on the moon by rocketing to the sun. Wouldn’t that be impossible as they would be incinerated? Brezhnev reassured them it would be ok as they would make the attempt at night…

They wanted to laugh but were too afraid. Sharansky said to them, “You cannot even laugh when you want to laugh, and you want to tell me that I’m in prison and you’re free?”

Sharansky modeled that freedom is not defined by our external conditions. It is defined by our inner world - our identity, our convictions, our sense of self. He reflected that it was precisely his Jewish identity that gave him that inner freedom. That connection to a people, a history, and a destiny allowed him to transcend even a prison cell. As he put it, identity gave him the strength to become free even in a Soviet prison.

The deeper message of Pesach is we did not just leave Egypt and then become a people. We left Egypt by becoming a people. Freedom and identity were born together. A Jew who knows who they are - who is rooted in the past and committed to the future - is not easily confined. Not by circumstance. Not by fear. Not by the shifting currents of history. When our identity weakens, so does our sense of freedom.

The wilderness was not a detour. It was the training ground. Because slavery, for all its cruelty, has a certain predictability. Freedom is far more demanding. It requires us to step into the unknown, to take responsibility, to choose who we will be. Again and again, the Israelites faltered. They complained. They longed to return. Because it is easier to live in Mitzrayim than to transcend it.

Our challenge this Pesach is not only to remember that we left Egypt but to ask ourselves: What Egypt still lives within us? What fears still narrow our sense of possibility? What pressures make us hesitate to live fully, proudly, courageously as Jews? What parts of our identity have we muted in the name of comfort or acceptance?

This year, we have seen Jews crossing borders, navigating uncertainty, determined to get to a Seder. In Israel, the Seder will likely be celebrated alternating between the dining room and the bomb shelter. There is something deeply powerful in that image. It is messy. It is uncomfortable. It is uncertain. And yet beneath it all is a quiet, stubborn insistence: We will get there.

That is the Jewish story. Not that the road is easy, but that we keep moving. Not that we are untouched by fear, but that we are not defined by it.

“Now we are slaves; next year we will be free.”

This year, perhaps, we understand those words more deeply. Freedom is not a given; it is something we must choose. Something we must cultivate. Something we must fight for externally and also internally. We must break through the meitzarim to reclaim our identity. We must live not as a people constrained by the moment but as a people shaped by redemption.

We are still leaving Egypt. Our existence is a journey, and, with God’s help, we are still on our way.

The Shalshelet: Hesitation, History, and Strength

It happens every time.

The baal koreh begins the word…and then he pauses. Not a mistake. Not a slip. A hesitation. 

The sound stretches. It wavers. It rises and falls, as if unsure where it wants to land.

The room shifts slightly. People look up. Even those only half-listening suddenly hear something different. They may not know its name, but they feel it. The note lingers longer than expected - almost uncomfortably so - before finally resolving.

That note is called the shalshelet. And it is one of the most emotionally honest sounds in the entire Torah. Rare - appearing only four times in the Torah, it is impossible to miss. Its sound stretches, trembling, rising and falling in a drawn-out musical struggle.

The shalshelet is not just a note. It is a commentary. The Torah is not only telling us what happened; it is letting us hear what it felt like.

Our Sages hear something deeply human in the presence of the shalshelet: hesitation. Lot lingers before leaving Sodom. Eliezer pauses as he searches for a wife for Yitzchak. Yosef resists temptation - but not without inner turmoil. And in this week’s parsha, Moshe initiates Aharon into a role he himself will never hold. In each case, the Torah is not merely describing an action. It is revealing a struggle.

The shalshelet is the sound of a person who knows what is right but cannot move forward easily. It is the space between conviction and action, between fear and faith. And yet, every single time, the person moves forward. The hesitation is real, but it does not win.

The word shalshelet means chain. A chain is not a straight line. It is made of links - ups and downs, twists and turns, rises and falls. But each link holds the next. Its strength lies not in its complexity, but in its continuity. So, too, the shalshelet rises and falls again and again. The music mirrors life: fear followed by courage, descent followed by ascent. Judaism does not hide the struggle. It gives it a melody. Struggle is not a break in the chain. It is a link in it.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that the deepest moments of identity are often born in crisis - when we are torn, uncertain, even conflicted. It is precisely in those moments that we discover who we are. That is the shalshelet.

We are living through a shalshelet moment.

There is the piercing tension of missile alerts. Sirens that send families running, hearts pounding. And then, moments later, the fragile relief of an “all clear.” There is the pain of loss. Lives cut short, homes destroyed, families forever changed. And alongside it, the quiet but growing hope that the sacrifices are not in vain. There is uncertainty on the global stage as Israel joins the US in fighting the murderous Iranian regime. When will it end? What does victory look like? When will be able to fly to and from Israel as usual again? Strategy and morality, power and restraint, deterrence and escalation all pulling in different directions. Decisions that are anything but simple.

Up and down. Fear and faith. Hesitation and resolve. Like the shalshelet, our existence wavers. But the message of the shalshelet is not that great people never struggle. It is that great people struggle and act anyway. Lot leaves. Eliezer proceeds. Yosef resists. Moshe fulfills his mission. The note lingers, but it does not paralyze. More than that, the hesitation gives the action its meaning. A decision made without inner conflict is easy; a decision made despite conflict is transformative.

The shalshelet teaches that moral greatness is forged specifically because of the wavering and existential angst. And there is something more.

The shalshelet is not only trembling; it is majestic. It is the longest, most dramatic note in the Torah because within the struggle is the beginning of triumph. The wavering is not a collapse. It is an ascent. Each rise and fall is part of a larger movement toward resolution. The note does not end in uncertainty. It resolves.

So, too, this moment. We are not at the end of the story; we are in the middle of the note. It may feel prolonged. It may feel unstable. But it is not random - and it is not directionless. It is moving.

Hearing the shalshelet reminds us that Jewish history has always sounded like this. A chain across generations - moments that bent but never broke us. From Egypt to exile, from destruction to rebirth, the melody has wavered before it resolved. And the chain has held. Today, once again, we hear that trembling note. But if we listen carefully, we hear more than hesitation. We hear determination. We hear faith. We hear the quiet strength to continue.

The chain is unbroken, and the song - still unfinished - is rising toward its resolution

Opera, Chazzanut, and the Jewish Need to Feel

Some people say they’re bored in shul.

The davening is too long. The chazzan is too slow. The melodies are outdated. (No complaints about the rabbi, though!) But here’s the uncomfortable truth: It’s not the music that changed; it’s us.

Actor Timothée Chalamet recently suggested that opera and ballet can feel boring to modern audiences. His comments caused quite a stir – especially with opera singers and ballet dancers. Yet he wasn’t so much dismissing high culture as he was diagnosing a deeper condition.

Perhaps the issue isn’t the art form; it’s our capacity to enter into it.

We are not bored. We are disconnected. And Judaism was never meant to be experienced from a distance. It demands participation, emotional engagement, and, ultimately, intimacy.

There was a time when chazzanut was not something you listened to. It was something you entered. The drawn-out notes and the rising and falling melodies weren’t merely aesthetic flourishes. They were pathways into the heart. A chazzan elongated a note or sand a falsetto, and people would close their eyes. Today, they check their watches.

We have become spectators of experiences we were meant to live. What once stirred the soul can now feel distant - not because it lost its power, but because we lost our fluency in the language it speaks.

In a world starving for feeling, how can we recapture a sense of closeness?

The Torah’s term for sacrifice - korban - comes from the root karov, to be close. A korban was not about giving something up; it was about drawing near. As Ramban explains, the purpose of korbanot was to awaken the heart of the person bringing them. Watching the offering, one was meant to feel this is very personal. It was a visceral, emotional encounter that stirred introspection, humility, and ultimately, connection to God. The sights, the sounds, the gravity of the moment were designed to awaken something within.

Judaism has never been satisfied with dry observance. It calls for the heart.

Few articulated this need more powerfully than Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Piaseczno Rebbe of the Warsaw Ghetto. Writing in the shadow of unimaginable darkness, he taught that the human soul is wired for emotion:

“The human soul loves to feel. Not only in relation to joy, but it loves the emotional experience, even of sadness and crying. People love to see horrific sights and hear terrible stories to the point of tears just to feel emotional.”

The Rebbe went on to note that if we don’t find elevated ways to feel, we will seek diminished ones. The craving for emotional intensity doesn’t disappear; it gets redirected.

This insight feels uncannily contemporary. In a world of constant stimulation, people binge stories, chase outrage, and scroll endlessly - not always for information, but for feeling. We want to laugh, cry, and be stirred. The Piaseczno Rebbe is telling us that this emotional hunger is holy, but it must be guided.

Why does being in shul or davening sometimes fail to move us? Because too often, we approach it as spectators rather than participants. We evaluate the chazzan, critique the tune, or calculate time remaining. We stand outside the experience. But emotional connection cannot be outsourced. The Rebbe emphasizes that it is not any specific melody that unlocks the soul; it is the willingness to enter into the emotional state itself:

“Not only with a tune of broken heartedness, but also with a joyous song…sometimes a person cries during a happy tune…sometimes dances to the somber tune of Kol Nidrei…”

A genuine experience is not performance. It is found in immersion.

Perhaps Chalamet’s critique is less about opera and more about us. We have lost the patience - and perhaps the courage - to let ourselves be carried by something slow, unfamiliar, and emotionally demanding. But Judaism insists that is precisely where connection lies. To daven is not to endure a service; it is to offer oneself. To sing is not to produce sound; it is to reveal the soul.

The Piaseczno Rebbe even suggests a simple, radical practice. Sing quietly to yourself at home. Not for anyone else. Not even for beauty. Just to awaken the inner world that longs to be expressed.

We live in a time of profound distraction - and profound longing. People may say they are bored, but beneath that boredom is often a deeper ache: to feel something real. The right response is not to abandon depth for brevity, or tradition for trend. It is to rediscover how to engage.

If the problem is disconnection, the answer is not shorter davening or better performance. It is deeper participation. We need to stop observing and start participating. Don’t evaluate the davening. Enter it. Even for a moment.  Try singing a little more. Not so people can hear you, but because the soul needs expression. Slow down even for one moment of the prayers. Choose one beracha, let it land, and make it mean something personal. Create emotional space at home. Sing quietly. Sit with a pasuk. Just feel - without distraction, without pressure.

Whether you like opera or cantorial music or not, we must lean into our emotional and spiritual selves. To step into the davening instead of standing beside it. To sing not as a critic, but as a seeker. To allow the ancient rhythms of Jewish life to do what they were always meant to do. To bring us close. Karov.

At our core, we are not just looking to be entertained. We are looking to be moved. The question is not whether the music still works. The question is whether we are ready to listen - not just with our ears, but with our souls.