B"H
A few days ago, I crossed paths with an old Malibu friend. He looked at me with a heaviness in his eyes and asked, “Rabbi… how can you possibly stand to see the pictures of the genocide?”
I took a breath. I looked back at him and said, “Really? You too? Let me ask you, how can you be so certain of what you believe, when your information is coming from a machine engineered for one purpose: to bypass your critical thinking, to hijack your empathy, to make good people like you rage at a false story? A story that is nothing more than a modern blood libel against our people.”
The Rebbe often warned: keep politics out of conversation. The Rebbe cautioned how political discussions can easily be a corridor that leads directly into “the depths of evil.”
But this, what we are seeing now, is not politics. This is the primal war between truth and illusion. Between light and shadow.
And yet, here we are, watching countless of our own brothers and sisters drink the poison without question. Look closely: the very ones committing the most brutal desecrations of the Divine Image, the kind that strip away all traces of human dignity, are the same ones who starve their own children, parade their pain before the cameras, knowing the world will take the bait.
Billions in aid meant to build schools, hospitals, and a future have been diverted to engineer death instead of life. And the few among them who dare to imagine differently live in a constant state of fear, silenced before they can speak their truth.
How do we hold this?
This week, the Torah tells us: “You are the least of all the peoples.” We have always been a minority. And among us, even fewer live fully aligned with Torah’s calling. Measured by the world’s metrics, we are small.
But small does not mean powerless. The atom is small and yet it holds within it the ability to release a force that reshapes reality.
Spiritually, our “nuclear energy” is humility, the breaking of ego’s hardened shell so that the G-dly spark inside can radiate freely. Each act of kindness is a fracture in that shell. Every time you rise above your lower nature, you make yourself a vessel for the Infinite. At that moment, you are no longer “small.” You become a force that can illuminate the world.
Yes, it is tempting to get lost in the hypocrisy, to let the darkness itself become the object of our focus. But that is not why we are here. Darkness is not meant to be stared into, it is meant to be used. It is the contrast that makes the light irresistible.
And this Shabbat, the message could not be clearer. It is the 15th of Av, the brightest, fullest moon of the year. Only days ago was Tisha B’Av, the darkest point in our calendar. The Talmud says the 15th of Av is the greatest of all holidays because it is the embodiment of transformation: the moment the deepest night turns into the most radiant dawn.
That is the story of the Jewish people. And it is the story still unfolding right now.
We are here to do our part, to hold the frequency of light until it cracks the illusion. Soon, the lies will collapse, the hatred will dissolve, and truth will shine in a way that cannot be denied.
This Shabbat is also Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort. Its comfort is not a blanket that hides us from pain, it is the deep knowing that every wound is a doorway, that every shadow has the potential to become a lamp.
May this knowing settle into our bones. May the transformation be so complete, we witness it now, with our own eyes.
Shabbat Shalom.
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