He Is on the Way

My phone would not stop moving across the table.

A vibration. A name. A message from Israel.

He is safe.

Have you heard from them?

Call me.

Another video. Another name. Another family.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, the news did not arrive all at once. In America, it came piece by piece, as though the mind could absorb only so much.

At first there were rockets. Then infiltrations. Then communities. The music festival. Homes. Hostages.

Then the photographs began arriving.

By the hour, fragments hardened into facts: civilians murdered in homes and on roads, houses burned, people dragged into Gaza, bodies desecrated. Investigators would later document sexual violence as well.

For those of us with family and friends in Israel, the distance between New York and Israel disappeared.

Every phone call contained a human being.

A cousin. A friend. Someone's son. Someone's daughter. Someone who answered. Someone who did not.

There are moments when a people learns that geography is an illusion.

That morning, a Jew in Queens could feel a house burning in Be'eri. A mother in Brooklyn could wait for a soldier she had never met.

An entire people leaned toward the same small screen, waiting for another name. Then another mobilization began.

Israel called up roughly 360,000 reservists—about four percent of the country. Men and women left offices, universities, vacations, businesses, families. Israelis abroad searched for flights home.

Everyone seemed to be on the way. A soldier to his unit. A father to the airport. A shipment to Israel. A son south.

Nobody yet knew what the war would become.

What began in Gaza would become a war across seven fronts: Gaza, Lebanon, Judea and Samaria, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran.

But in those first days, no map was large enough for what we were feeling.

Only a cloud. Grief. Fear. Anger.

And the knowledge that something had happened to all of us.

Purpose would come later.

The Other Mobilization

America began moving too.

The United States moved ships, aircraft, munitions, and air-defense support toward the region.

The Jewish people moved differently. Fundraisers appeared overnight. Boxes filled hallways.

Protective equipment. Medical supplies. Clothing. Food. Toiletries. Chargers. Whatever was missing, somebody tried to find.

Strangers suddenly had one another's phone numbers. Businessmen became freight coordinators. Doctors became supply consultants. Teenagers packed cartons. Families cooked and carried boxes.

People gave money meant for something else. Billionaires gave. Schoolchildren gave. Everyone wanted to send something.

And then there were the things no box could carry.

I remember crowds praying in Williamsburg and Crown Heights.

I remember the Ohel of the Lubavitcher Rebbe filling with people.

Tehillim opened everywhere.

Names traveled from phone to phone.

Jews who had not spoken to Hashem in a long time suddenly had much to say.

We had soldiers. Weapons. Money. Allies.

But beneath all of it, the Jewish people reached for something older.

Torah. Tefillah. Chesed. Each other.

Every cry was private.

And somehow it became one cry.

The Vessel

A few weeks after October 7, a friend said something I have never forgotten.

We were sending money, supplies, prayers.

But perhaps, he said, we should create a vessel of Torah for our brothers and sisters in Israel.

Something permanent. Not a reaction. A commitment. So we began a shiur.

No cameras. No military vehicles. No boxes being loaded onto airplanes.

A few Jews simply gathered around Torah. We said we would continue. As the war widened, the learning grew to twice a week.

And we kept coming. Gaza. Lebanon. Iran. Missiles. Hostages. Funerals. Another headline. Another name. Another front.

And in the middle of it, a group of Jews would open a sefer.

Three years later, we still do.

I used to think the shiur mattered for what it might accomplish in Heaven. I still do.

But with time I understood something else: the Torah was accomplishing something in us.

War can convince human beings that history belongs to the loudest weapon. A missile crosses a border. A fighter jet rises. A commander falls. A building collapses. The world watches.

For a while, power appears to be the only language anyone understands.

And yet the quietest thing we did after October 7 may be the thing I understand best.

We sat down.

And learned Torah.

What War Cannot Build

Three years is enough time to watch the impossible become history. Men once thought untouchable were gone. Capabilities that terrified us were damaged. Fronts shifted.

And dangers remained.

War did what war always does: it changed the map without completing the human story.

Victory cannot simply mean becoming better at surviving the next war. There must be a world beyond war.

Something in me refuses to believe that Hashem created history merely so one generation could become better at defeating another.

Judaism imagines something more radical.

The Rambam ends his laws of kings not with Jewish armies ruling the earth, but with a world beyond domination.

The Sages, he says, did not yearn for Mashiach to rule other nations.

They yearned to be free for Torah and wisdom.

Then he describes the destination:

No famine. No war. No jealousy. No competition. Humanity occupied with knowing Hashem.

The earth, Isaiah says, will be filled with that knowledge as water covers the sea.

That is the Jewish conclusion to war: not a larger battlefield, but the end of the need for one.

Not humanity bowing to Jewish power. Humanity bowing to Hashem.

After October 7, that vision seems less naïve to me.

I have seen what the alternative looks like.

The Generation Between

There is a strange statement in Sanhedrin.

Rabbi Yochanan says that Ben David—Mashiach—will come in a generation either entirely worthy or entirely guilty.

At first glance, neither possibility seems possible.

Entirely righteous?

Entirely guilty?

I do not pretend to resolve the Gemara.

But I have come to hear something in its paradox.

Clarity.

Perhaps redemption begins when we stop living permanently between positions.

When we stop saying Hashem matters—but only after everything else.

Torah matters—but when I have time.

My marriage matters—but after my pride.

My children matter—but after my phone.

Kindness matters—but not toward him.

Prayer matters—but only after there is nowhere else to turn.

We are very skilled at living halfway.

Perhaps the struggle before redemption is not only between righteous people and wicked people.

Perhaps it is also inside the person who knows what he believes but has not decided whether to live by it.

October 7 stripped away many half-positions.

For a while, Jews who disagreed about almost everything remembered that we belonged to one another.

A soldier risked his life for strangers. A secular Jew asked religious Jews to pray. Religious Jews packed supplies for people they had never met. Strangers opened homes.

People who had debated what kind of Jew someone else was suddenly cared only that he was a Jew.

It should not require tragedy to reveal that truth.

That leaves a question:

Can we reach the unity without first needing the wound?

One House

I cannot prepare the world for Mashiach. That assignment is too large. But I have a smaller country: my home.

Every man does.

Every home has a culture, a language, laws no one writes down.

What do my children see me worship? Money? Status? My phone? My anger? Myself?

Or a father who bows before Hashem?

Not perfectly.

But unmistakably.

Perhaps that is where redemption becomes less abstract.

One house decides what it serves. Then another.

A husband speaks differently to his wife. A father puts away his phone. A mother lights Shabbat candles. A child watches a blessing as if Someone is listening. Someone gives tzedakah unseen. Somebody says, I was wrong.

A Jewish home becomes a small territory in which Hashem is King. Then another. And another.

We spend so much time asking when Mashiach is coming. Perhaps Heaven is also asking when we are coming.

The great shofar belongs to Hashem. The preparation belongs to us.

For three years, twice a week, I have watched men walk into a room and sit around Torah.

We began because Jews were dying. We continued because Jews were fighting.

But perhaps that was never the deepest reason.

Perhaps we were practicing for a world in which fighting would no longer be necessary.

A world not consumed with war or conquest, but with knowing Hashem.

On October 7, everyone seemed to be on the way. Reservists. Weapons. Boxes. Prayers. We kept asking whether help was coming.

Three years later, I find myself waiting for a different arrival. I do not know the day, the road, or how many turns remain. But I know what our Torah taught us to await.

A king who bows before Hashem. A scattered people gathered. A world exhausted by hatred. Humanity recognizing its Creator.

A day when the splitting of the sea will seem almost private beside a greater miracle:

the splitting open of the human heart.

Perhaps that is why our little shiur still meets. Why a Jewish home still matters. Why every mitzvah in a frightened world is an act of confidence in its future.

We are not being asked to predict redemption. We are being asked to prepare for it.

He is on the way.

The question is whether we are.