My Home in Exile

For eighteen years, every key in my pocket has belonged to someone else.

Recently, on one of my daily walks, I looked up at the sky.

I do that often.

Looking upward restores proportion. Buildings become smaller. Errands become smaller. Even worries lose some of their authority.

I was counting my blessings.

A Jewish wife. Jewish children. A Jewish home.

I was thinking of Rabbi Shalom Arush's teaching: a man can spend his life measuring success by what he has accumulated while overlooking the wealth already sitting around his table.

Then I turned a corner and saw the house.

It was magnificent.

Newly built on a broad lot, white, sharp and immaculate, like an expensive box of chocolates set beneath the sky.

I kept walking.

I have trained myself what to do when I see something beautiful that belongs to someone else.

Bless them.

I had no idea who lived there.

I blessed them anyway.

May they have health there. Shalom bayit. Children and grandchildren. Guests around their table. A sukkah in the yard. Laughter in the rooms. May those walls hear more blessing than sorrow.

And I continued toward my apartment.

A Beautiful House

I would like, one day, to have a house of my own.

There is no spiritual achievement in pretending otherwise.

I would like space. A backyard. A sukkah that does not have to negotiate with anyone. A room lined with sefarim.

A table large enough that when unexpected guests arrive, nobody has to wonder where they will sit.

I would like the feeling of coming through a front door that is truly ours.

The Gemara understands this. It says three things broaden a person's mind: a beautiful dwelling, a beautiful wife, and beautiful vessels. Beauty can enlarge a person.

Torah is not suspicious of property. There is wisdom in owning something solid beneath your feet.

A friend of mine recently gave his newly married son a magnificent house.

Imagine that wedding gift. No landlord. No lease renewal. No wondering about next year's rent.

A young couple beginning marriage beneath a roof already theirs. If parents can give such a gift, what could be more generous?

It made me think about the gift I was given.

Mine came differently.

Borrowed Keys

I have rented since I married. As our family grew, we moved. Another building. Another apartment. Another landlord. Another set of keys.

You learn things when the walls are never entirely yours. Not to become too attached. That permanence is more fragile than it looks.

You learn to ask Hashem for next month's rent. Then next year's. Then the next apartment when the family outgrows this one.

There were years when oncology entered our lives so often that keeping life moving felt like an achievement. I sometimes wondered what a thirty-year mortgage would have added to everything we were already carrying.

A mortgage can be a blessing. It is also a commitment to decades you cannot see.

Renting spared me some of that weight.

It kept reminding me where my dependence belonged: with Hashem. It kept me praying. The roof above my family was never truly guaranteed by a lease, a deed, or a bank.

After eighteen years beneath walls that belonged to someone else, I began to understand something deeper:

I had learned to live somewhere without mistaking it for permanence.

Renting had taught me exile.

Someone Else's House

A renter lives somewhere without entirely belonging to the place.

You are home. But not completely. You hang pictures. Buy furniture. Your children know which floorboard creaks. The kitchen fills with the aroma of Shabbat. You know where the afternoon light falls.

And still, somewhere in a drawer, there is a lease reminding you:

This is home. But it is not yours.

There is something painfully Jewish about that sentence.

After the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, our tradition teaches that the Shechinah did not abandon us: wherever Israel went into exile, the Divine Presence went with them. And when Israel is redeemed, Hashem returns with us.

I find that almost unbearable in its tenderness. We did not lose Hashem in exile. He came with us. But we are still not Home.

Perhaps that is what renting taught me: you can build a beautiful life inside a place that is not your final address.

You can raise children there. Learn Torah. Fight and forgive. Light Chanukah candles. Say Shema beside a child's bed. Welcome guests. Cry there. Recover there. Become there.

But never confuse comfort with arrival. My landlord may own the walls. He does not own what happened inside them.

What I Was Building

Sometimes, I wondered when a house of my own would come. Now I wonder whether Hashem was asking me to notice what I was building instead.

Torah. Marriage. Children who know what a bracha sounds like.

A table where Shabbat arrives every Friday night whether the apartment belongs to me or not.

Tzedakah. Tefillah. Middot still under renovation.

Faith requiring more repairs than any roof.

Eighteen years ago, I rented my first place.

I did not know I was beginning two construction projects.

One was visible: furniture, beds, shelves, dishes. Another apartment. Another move.

The other could not be measured in square feet. It was the slow construction of a Jewish home.

Unlike an ordinary house, that structure could travel.

Every time we moved, it came with us. The Torah came. The Shabbat table came. The mezuzot came down and went up again.

My wife and children came with me. So did our prayers, our mistakes, our efforts to repair them, and the quiet work of becoming better people together.

I had been building all along. Just not in brick.

East Toward Jerusalem

There was another gift hidden inside renting: I never became completely anchored. Some part of me remained unsettled.

My eyes kept looking east. Israel. Jerusalem. The Beit HaMikdash.

That does not mean a Jew outside Israel should refuse to build or live beautifully.

Build the house. Plant the garden. Buy the table. Invite people inside.

If Hashem gives you abundance, use it magnificently. A Jewish home can turn blessing into holiness.

But perhaps we should leave one small corner of the heart unpacked.

One box we never completely open.

Something that remembers:

We are not finished yet.

The white house I passed deserves every blessing I gave its unknown owners.

Perhaps one day Hashem will bless us with a home of our own. If He does, I hope I will remember what it is for.

Not as proof that I succeeded. As another place to serve Him. Another roof for Torah. Another yard for a sukkah. Another table that grows when someone needs a seat.

I think again about my friend's son. His father gave him a house. What an extraordinary gift.

But there is something no father can hand his son with the keys.

The years of needing Hashem. The prayers spoken when you did not know what came next. The relationship built through dependence. The knowledge that whatever roof is above you tonight, Hashem is sheltering you.

That cannot be transferred at closing. It has to be lived.

He was given his road. I was given mine.

And I am grateful for mine.

I still hope to have a house of my own one day.

But I no longer want merely to own one. I want to deserve what a house can become.

Until then, I will keep paying rent. I will keep looking at the sky. I will keep looking east.

And I will keep building the only property I know I can truly take with me:

a Jewish home.

One day, perhaps, Hashem will give me my own front door.

But there is another House I am waiting for first.

So here is my toast.

L’chaim, Hashem.

May I merit to welcome You Home—to Your House, the Beit HaMikdash in Jerusalem.

And until then,

I will keep building a Jewish home wherever You have placed me, without ever mistaking exile for Home.