The Roadmap Through Fire

In 2019, I entered a world I never imagined I would have to know.

Chemotherapy.

Immunotherapy.

Survival.

I thought the assignment was obvious.

Stay alive.

Then COVID came, and I spent three months in the hospital. In 2024, I underwent a bone marrow transplant at Memorial Sloan Kettering—a journey of high-dose treatment, isolation, uncertainty, and recovery that tested the limits of what my body could endure.

By then, I understood hospitals. I understood blood tests, medications, doctors, waiting rooms, good news, bad news, and the strange vocabulary illness force a person to learn.

But there was one thing no treatment plan had prepared me for.

Life kept going.

I was still a husband. Still a father. Still a son. There were people to love, responsibilities to carry, bills to pay, decisions to make, and Torah to learn. Cancer could interrupt my body. It could interrupt my work. It could interrupt almost every plan I had made.

But it could not be permitted to become my entire identity.

For years, I thought my great challenge was getting through illness.

Slowly, I discovered something harder.

The challenge was learning how to keep living while walking through it.

Walking Through Fire

That distinction changed everything.

Survival asks, how do I make it through today?

Life asks for something greater:

Who will I be while I do?

A Daily Anchor

In a few days, I will complete my second cycle of the Rambam together with many thousands of fellow Jews throughout the world. There are three global Rambam learning cycles: one completes the Mishneh Torah in a single year by studying three chapters each day; another completes it over three years by learning one chapter daily; and a third annual cycle focuses on the daily study of the 613 mitzvot.

I am completing the three-year cycle, but my own journey began even more simply—with the daily study of a few mitzvot. I keep the complete list of all 613 mitzvot beside my desk. I return to it often. It grounds me. It reminds me of who I am trying to become.

Looking back over these difficult years, I can say without hesitation that nothing has anchored me more firmly to responsibility, purpose, and life itself than the daily learning of the Rambam.

A Roadmap

The Rambam offers something that becomes priceless during uncertainty.

Not merely inspiration.

Direction.

The Mishneh Torah is a complete spiritual roadmap: fourteen books, eighty-three sections, embracing the entire landscape of Jewish life through the 613 mitzvot.

When everything else begins to shift—when the body weakens, when tomorrow becomes uncertain, when days blur together—clarity becomes a form of oxygen. Every day I knew exactly where I was. Exactly where I was going. Exactly what I was building.

This was never abstract learning.

It was survival with direction.

Knowing God

The Rambam does not simply teach Jewish law; he teaches a way of living. His Mishneh Torah is far more than a code of halacha. It is a complete roadmap of the Jewish soul, carefully ordered so that each step builds upon the one before it.

It is no coincidence that the very first book is called Mada—Knowledge. Before the Rambam teaches us how to observe Judaism, he teaches us how to know the One Who gave it.

That first book is divided into five sections: the foundations of faith, the refinement of character, the obligation of Torah study, the rejection of idolatry, and the path of repentance and personal transformation. Looking back, I find it remarkable that as my body entered the uncertainty of illness, my mind entered a world devoted entirely to certainty.

Learning how to know God while fighting simply to remain alive was not an abstract philosophical exercise. It became the foundation upon which every difficult day quietly rested.

One Chapter at a Time

There were days when I could barely eat. Days when breathing required effort. Days when exhaustion settled over every thought before the day had even begun.

On those days, the Rambam never asked me to conquer the world.

He asked me to learn today's chapter.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

That was one of the greatest gifts hidden within the daily cycle. It did not overwhelm me with the magnitude of the entire Mishneh Torah. It simply invited me to take one faithful step. Tomorrow will bring another chapter. Next week there is another section. Three years later, without ever rushing, I found myself standing at the end of the journey.

That is how Torah often transforms a life—not through extraordinary moments of inspiration, but through ordinary moments of consistency.

The Number Eighty-Three

The Lubavitcher Rebbe pointed to a remarkable insight. The Mishneh Torah is divided into eighty-three sections, and the numerical value of the Hebrew word machalah—illness—is also eighty-three. The Rebbe encouraged Jews everywhere to participate in the daily study of Rambam, teaching that this learning possesses the spiritual power to nullify illness and draw blessing into the world.

For me, this was never merely a beautiful idea.

Three years ago, our family was privileged to participate in the International Siyum HaRambam at 770, sharing how the daily learning of Rambam had carried us through illness. Since then, life presented an even greater challenge—a bone marrow transplant, months of recovery, and the long road back to strength.

Yet one thing remained unchanged.

Every day, the Rambam was waiting.

The hospitals changed.

The treatments changed.

The diagnoses changed.

Learning never changed.

Its consistency became one of the quiet miracles that carried me through the uncertainty.

The Invitation

In just a few days, I will once again complete the entire Mishneh Torah.

Looking back, I realize that this accomplishment is not measured by the number of chapters completed, but by the number of days that refused to defeat me.

I survived.

I continued living.

I continued learning.

And if there is one lesson these past years have taught me, it is this: daily Rambam learning does not remove hardship. It gives hardship direction. It provides a steady compass when everything else feels uncertain. It reminds us, every single day, that regardless of what life places before us, there is always one chapter waiting to be learned and one step waiting to be taken.

The Rambam concludes one day at a time.

So does recovery.

So does character.

So does every meaningful life.

If you have never joined a daily Rambam cycle, I warmly invite you to begin. Whether you choose three chapters a day, one chapter a day, or the daily study of the mitzvot, you are not simply learning a book. You are joining a journey that has strengthened Jews throughout the world for generations.

I would like to close with the halacha that accompanied me through some of the most difficult days of my life that I did not merely study, but struggled to live:

"Every Jewish man is obligated in Torah study, whether he is poor or wealthy, healthy or suffering, young or very old… even one who is ill, or burdened with suffering, is obligated to set aside time for Torah study by day and by night."
Hilchot Talmud Torah 1:8

Those words became more than a law.

They became companions.

A reminder that while illness may limit the body, it need not diminish the soul.

And perhaps that is the greatest gift the Rambam ever gave me—not simply knowledge, but a roadmap that remained steady even when everything else seemed to change.

I wish you much health.

I wish you strength.

And above all, I wish you the quiet courage of daily Torah learning—the kind that transforms a lifetime, one faithful chapter at a time.