The boxes were already stacked by the door when I arrived. Caroline and her husband Quincy were packing up their Boston apartment to move to New York, where she will begin her medical residency. I carried boxes down to the moving truck. On one of the trips back up, I stopped at her bookshelf.

There is an old expression: Don’t judge a book by its cover. I have come to believe something different. A bookshelf is not decoration, but a biography. Every book on it is the result of a choice: which ones to buy, which ones to read, which ones to keep, and which ones to carry across a move. Over time, a bookshelf becomes a kind of self-portrait. It reveals what someone has been thinking about, what they hope to remember, and what new conversations they are still waiting to discover.

But a bookshelf is not only a self-portrait.

It also a record of those who have loved you.

At their wedding, I gave Caroline and Quincy five books. Not new books. Books that had lived on shelves in my family across four generations. I wanted them to begin their marriage with pages that had already been turned by people who loved them, words that had already been underlined, margins that had already been written in.

The first was my grandfather Normy’s freshman Latin book from 1920, years before he attended Harvard Law School, where Quincy would soon earn his own law degree. Caroline carries his name as her middle name.

The second was my mother’s freshman Latin book from 1942. To Caroline and Lucy, she was simply Nana.

The third was my own first-year Latin text from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1985, the same school where, years later, Caroline and Quincy would meet.

The fourth was one of my mother’s favorite books, a reminder that every generation leaves behind something different: not only possessions, but the ideas that shaped a life.

The fifth book was different. It was a Torah, given to Quincy for his studies. The other four carried conversations that had shaped generations of my family. This one carried the conversation that had shaped them all.

* * *

Three books I had given Caroline over the years caught my eye. One was Who Killed John Maynard Keynes?, which had profoundly influenced how I thought about economics for thirty years. One was Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the story of Willy Loman. Arthur Miller later married Marilyn Monroe, a fact that took me, in ways I did not expect, to another Breaking Matzo essay. And the last was The Goal, by the Israeli physicist Eliyahu Goldratt, a novel about what happens when a community learns to move at the pace of its slowest member.

John Maynard Keynes spent his life asking how societies prosper and why, left to themselves, they sometimes fail entire nations. Arthur Miller asked why one man could still feel like a failure inside a prosperous society. Eliyahu Goldratt asked how an entire community moves forward together.

It took me thirty-five years to realize that those three books had been talking to one another all along. Each one showing something the others could not.

Years later, I found myself thinking about Good Will Hunting. During my years at Harvard, I had the opportunity to meet both Robin Williams and Matt Damon. Their film gave me language for something I had slowly been discovering myself. Looking back on those decades, I realized that my own journey had been similar. I once thought the challenge was reading more books. Over time I discovered the greater challenge was allowing those books to read me.

Standing in front of Caroline’s bookshelf, I realized something else. Those conversations had not ended with me. They had simply moved to another shelf.

* * *

Caroline and Quincy’s wedding fell on Parashat Va-Yeilech. The portion takes its name from its opening words: va-yeilech Moshe “and Moses went.” At the end of his life, Moses walked toward the people one final time. He entrusted the Torah to the next generation so the conversation would not end and commanded that it be read publicly every seven years, in the presence of everyone: men and women and children and the stranger within your gates.

The Torah was never meant to sit quietly on a shelf. It was meant to be read, questioned, remembered, argued over, and lived.

At their rehearsal dinner, I gave Caroline and Quincy the five books of my own. Not because I imagined they belonged beside Moses’ five books, but because I hoped they would serve the same purpose. To begin conversations that would become part of the home they would build together, grounded in faith, curiosity, and understanding.

* * *

In Devarim, in the passage we call the Shema, Moses had already said it: teach these words to your children. Speak with them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way. The commandment is not merely to preserve the words. It is to keep the conversation alive.

Those books were no longer sitting quietly beside one another. Keynes, Miller, and Goldratt had  joined a conversation Moses began generations earlier. Every bookshelf can become a Beit Midrash, a house of study where texts never stop speaking to one another. Every generation enters the conversation before it realizes the discussion has already begun.

Suddenly Caroline’s bookshelf looked different. It was no longer a collection. It had become a conversation. Someday Caroline and Quincy will add their own voices.

Someday Caroline and Quincy will add their own voices.

* * *

A book on a shelf is a conversation waiting to resume. Every time Caroline opens one of those books, she is not reading alone. She is reading with everyone who read it before her: with Normy, with Nana, with me. The margins hold the argument. The underlines hold the surprise. The dog-eared pages hold the moment someone stopped.

We think we are passing books down. We are passing the experience of being stopped. You cannot hand someone the feeling that arrested you on page forty-seven. But you can hand them the book and the page will find them too.

Inside each of the five books I gave Caroline and Quincy rests a handwritten note. The notes are still there, traveling with the books, waiting quietly to be discovered.

One day Caroline will open one of those books. Or Quincy will. I do not know which one. I do not know when. I do not know what either of them will be carrying that day.

Some words have to wait until the reader has become the person who can finally hear them.

The note inside the book has been waiting all along.

So has the verse.

The truck was loaded. The apartment was nearly empty. I reached for a book. It no longer belonged to me. It had become hers.

She will think it was waiting for her.

It was.

I placed the book back on her shelf.

***

Boxes by the door.

On her shelf, the book I read.

The hike continues.

* * *

Torah, Midrash, and Further Study

A few of the Torah passages and Jewish sources behind this essay, for anyone who would like to read further.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 31. Parashat Va-Yeilech. “And Moses went.” At the end of his life, Moses entrusted the Torah to the next generation and commanded that it be read publicly every seven years in the presence of everyone. The wedding of Caroline and Quincy fell on the Shabbat morning of this portion.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 6:4 to 9. The Shema. The central declaration of Jewish faith and the commandment at the heart of this essay: teach these words to your children, speak them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way. The commandment is not to preserve the words. It is to keep the conversation alive.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 31:10 to 13. Hakhel. The commandment to gather the entire community every seven years for a public reading of Torah — men, women, children, and the stranger within the gates. No one inherits Torah alone.

Beit Midrash. The traditional Jewish house of study where texts are argued over in pairs, one voice answering another across generations. Every bookshelf chosen with care becomes a Beit Midrash.

Eliyahu Goldratt, The Goal (North River Press, 1984). The central insight — the pace of a system is determined by its slowest member — is paraphrased in the essay to show how communities move forward together.

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (Viking Press, 1949). The story of Willy Loman, included among the five wedding books. Miller later married Marilyn Monroe, a thread that connects to another Breaking Matzo essay.

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Macmillan, 1936). Referenced through Who Killed John Maynard Keynes?, which shaped the author’s thinking on how economies prosper and why they sometimes fail entire nations.

Good Will Hunting (Miramax, 1997). Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The film gave language for the distinction between reading books and allowing books to read you — between acquiring knowledge and integrating meaning across a life.

* * *

The Chiddush:

A bookshelf is not where books are stored. It is a Beit Midrash where ideas remain alive, conversations continue across generations, and every reader eventually discovers the words that were waiting for them all along.

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A friend is not simply someone who stands beside you when things are going well. A friend sees not only who you are, but who you may become.

That kind of friendship is rare between people. Between nations, it is almost unheard of. Two hundred and fifty years ago, one nation looked west across the Atlantic at an unfinished republic and said: I see what this will be. It did not wait for proof or victory, it simply opened the door.

That nation was Morocco. The friendship it extended in 1777 remains the longest unbroken diplomatic relationship in American history.

On December 19, 1777, George Washington led what remained of his army into winter quarters at Valley Forge. The ground was frozen and his men had no shoes. The outcome of the Revolution was not a question of strategy that night. It was a question of survival.

One day later, Sultan Mohammed III of Morocco issued a decree. Any vessel sailing under the American flag could enter Moroccan ports freely, without tribute and without threat. No other nation had done this. France would follow six weeks later. Britain’s other colonies would not. Morocco named the struggling republic as a friend.

To understand why Morocco could see what others could not, you have to understand where Morocco stands. Morocco has always lived at a threshold. Where the Atlantic enters the Mediterranean. Where Africa reaches toward Europe. Where Arab, Amazigh, Jewish, African, and European civilizations have met for centuries. Kingdoms built at such a crossroads learn that bridges are more valuable than walls.

Sultan Mohammed III understood this lesson well. He built Essaouira on Morocco’s Atlantic coast as a deliberate international city. Muslim and Jewish merchants shared its markets. European engineers raised its walls. Goods from the Sahara, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean moved through its warehouses. Multiple languages rang in a single transaction. Essaouira was not a compromise between civilizations. It was what happens when a civilization decides that connection is a form of strength.

Sultan Mohammed III also trusted Jewish advisers to represent Morocco to the world. Among the sultan’s advisers was Samuel Sumbal, who served as his diplomatic agent and confidential secretary. Sumbal managed Morocoo’s relationships with the courts of Europe. He was also the nagid, the communal leader, of Morocco’s Jewish communities. He became a translator not only of language, but of civilization.

When America did not respond to the sultan’s opening gesture, he found a way to be heard. In 1784, Moroccan ships seized an American merchant vessel, the Betsey. The crew was taken to Tangier, unharmed, to be held until a treaty was concluded. It was a raised hand, not a clenched fist. The Americans finally sent an envoy and the Treaty of Peace and Friendship was signed in 1786, ratified by Congress in July 1787 — two months before the Constitution was signed.

* * *

In Bereshit, God speaks to Abram before Abram has done anything to earn the name. Lech lecha: go forth. Not after you have proven yourself. I name what you will become. Recognition preceded reality. The name came before the nation.

This is what friendship does that diplomacy cannot. Diplomacy waits for facts. Friendship acts on what it believes the other can become.

* * *

Nearly two centuries later, another Moroccan king would again recognize what others refused to see. When Vichy France demanded that Sultan Mohammed V hand over Morocco’s Jews, he refused. Vichy France saw Jews. Mohammed V saw Moroccans. He reportedly told French officials: there are no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccan subjects. Of Morocco’s 250,000 Jews, none were deported and none wore the yellow star. The same instinct, two centuries apart: see the full humanity of the person in front of you before the world has finished deciding what that person is worth.

Those Moroccan Jews carried their world with them when they left. Moses Elias Levy, born in Mogador on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, came to Florida dreaming of a refuge for persecuted Jews. In 1845, his son David became  the first Jewish member of the United States Senate, eventually adding his Moroccan ancestral name to his own: David Levy Yulee. A county in Florida still bears his family’s name.

The nation that first recognized America had long recognized its Jews as part of itself. That recognition, too, had a long reach.

* * *

History remembers the victories. Faith remembers the first friend.

When two seas meet at Cape Spartel, Morocco’s northwestern tip, they do not erase one another. The Atlantic and the Mediterranean become something neither was alone. Morocco has watched this every day for centuries. Perhaps that is why it understood, before almost anyone else, that a new nation across the ocean was not a threat to the existing order, but an addition to it.

Before there was certainty, there was belief. Before there was victory, there was friendship. Before America found her place among the nations, one kingdom on Africa’s Atlantic shore looked west and made room for her.

Torah, Midrash, and Further Study

A few of the Torah passages and Jewish sources behind this essay, for anyone who would like to read further.

Bereshit (Genesis) 12:1 to 3. Lech lecha — go forth. God speaks to Abram before Abram has done anything to earn the covenant. The call precedes the person. Recognition does not wait for proof; it names what will become true.

Bereshit (Genesis) 17:5. God changes Abram’s name to Abraham — father of many nations — before a single nation has come into being. The rabbis note that to name something fully is to help bring it into existence.

The Moroccan-American Treaty of Peace and Friendship, 1786. Signed in Marrakesh by Thomas Barclay and Sultan Mohammed III, countersigned by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, ratified by Congress in July 1787 — two months before the United States Constitution was signed. It is the longest unbroken treaty relationship in American history. Morocco gifted the United States its first diplomatic building in Tangier in 1821; it remains the only United States National Historic Landmark located in another country.

Samuel Sumbal (d. 1782). Jewish merchant, diplomat, and confidential adviser to Sultan Mohammed III of Morocco. Educated in Marseille and fluent in European languages, he served as diplomatic agent of the Sharifian court and as nagid, communal leader, of Morocco’s Jewish communities. His role in shaping the sultan’s Atlantic diplomacy is documented by historian Daniel J. Schroeter.

Moses Elias Levy (1782 to 1854) and David Levy Yulee (1810 to 1886). Moses was born in Mogador, Morocco, and established himself in the Florida Territory, purchasing 50,000 acres with the intention of building a Jewish refuge he called Pilgrimage Plantation. His son David became in 1845 the first Jewish member of the United States Senate, representing Florida, later adding the Moroccan ancestral name Yulee to his own. Levy County, Florida, is named for this family.

Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco and the Jews of World War II. When Vichy France demanded that Mohammed V apply anti-Jewish laws across Morocco, he refused. He reportedly told French officials there were no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccan subjects. He retained Jewish officials in government, publicly invited Jewish leaders to sit beside him in a national ceremony, and resisted the imposition of the yellow star. Of Morocco’s approximately 250,000 Jews, none was deported to the Nazi death camps.

Breaking Matzo: Related Essays

History of Moroccan Jews: Fluctuation and Migration

Two thousand years of Moroccan Jewish life — from the Roman Empire through the founding of the mellahs, the Vichy years, and the great emigration — told through community voices and culinary tradition.

The Memorable Magic of Moroccan Cuisine

How the Shabbat table, the Mimouna, the henna feast, and the spice trade turned Moroccan Jewish cooking into one of the most layered and joyful cuisines in the world.

The Magic Carpet Was Never About Flying

A meditation on the Moroccan Jewish tradition of the flying carpet as a metaphor for exile and return — the carpet that carries you is the community that holds you.

Chiddush:

Recognition is an act of faith. Nations, like people, often become what someone first believes they can become. The essay is not really about diplomacy. It is about the spiritual meaning of being the first friend — the one who sees who you may yet become before you can

***

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Questions or thoughts? Write to us: contact@breakingmatzo.com

One breath on all things,

one flame bows, one sail rises.

What wind am I now?

* * *

May 27, 2026, 8:31 AM. To Quincy:

I am so so proud of your resilience and determination and passion to be graduated from Harvard Law School. Each step of your journey revealed new dimensions of your character that have impressed me in many ways. Mazel Tov! Enjoy today and tomorrow and take it all in!

Quincy:

Thank you!!!!!!! I could not be more happy and grateful!!!! Caroline and I are just beaming and I feel so lucky to have been able to join this big Harvard family!! Thank you for leading the charge for us and for the LSAT materials!! I can’t wait to celebrate 🎉

Me:

You are welcome! In every way. However, I have not been your leader. I have been your cheerleader! The Midrash teaches that every blade of grass has an angel flying over it saying “grow, grow, grow.” I would add that every sailboat has those behind it that “blow, blow, blow.” 💨💨💨❤️❤️❤️

* * *

I sent the first of those texts to Quincy at 8:31 on the morning of his Harvard Law School graduation.  I almost didn’t send the second.

Quincy is my daughter Caroline’s husband. He has been part of our family for eleven years. Five years ago, when he was applying to law school, I offered what advice I could. Four years ago, when he was preparing for the LSAT, I sent him books and resources I could find. I was not his tutor nor his teacher, I was his cheerleader.

A cheerleader has no authority. Encouragement may be the purest form of influence, because it asks for nothing except another person’s flourishing.

In the second text, almost without planning to, I quoted a line I have always loved: a teaching from the Midrash, from Bereshit Rabbah, that there is not a single blade of grass below that does not have an angel above it, whispering “Grow, grow, grow”. I added something entirely new this time: that every sailboat has, behind it, those who “blow, blow, blow.”

I pressed the heart, pressed the three small winds, hit send, and put the phone down. Only later, on a long walk, did I realize I had written more theology into a text message than I usually manage in an essay. Because those three little words, “blow, blow, blow,” turned out to answer one of the oldest questions in Judaism. What is the difference between the wind that snuffs the candle and the wind that fills the sail?

It reminded me of a song. In 1973, Elton John sang Candle in the Wind, a tribute to Marilyn Monroe, who had died eleven years earlier at thirty-six. The song imagines her as a candle burning beautifully against the dark, its flame always one breath from being put out by the cruelty of fame. I have always loved that song. Only recently did I understand why. The song is about a candle, but it is really about wind.

There is a phrase in the second verse of Genesis. In the beginning the earth was tohu va’vohu, wild and empty. Darkness lay over the face of the deep and ruach Elohim moved over the face of the waters. The breath of God. The wind of God. The spirit of God.

Ruach does extraordinary work in that verse. It means three things at once: breath, wind, spirit. English splits them into separate words; Hebrew keeps them as one. When God made the world, he did not begin with light., he began with breath. Before there was anything to see, there was something to feel.

A candle and a sailboat receive exactly the same wind: the same moving air, the same molecules. To the candle, that wind is a threat: it guts the flame, it ends the story. To the sailboat, that same wind is propulsion: it fills the canvas, it carries the journey home.

The difference is not in the air, it is in the surface that meets the air. The wind is ruach, and ruach is neither kind nor cruel. It is the same breath either way. Which means the question is never what the wind is. The question is always what stands in it.

The Torah knows both winds and puts them in the same place.

In Deuteronomy, Moses makes the people remember Amalek. As the freed Hebrew slaves walked out of Egypt into the wilderness, Amalek attacked, and the Torah is precise about how. Amalek did not meet Israel head-on, butcame at the rear of the column and struck the stragglers. Amalek is the wind that picks off the candles at the back of the line.

Then there is the other wind, standing in exactly the same spot.

I once wrote about Bamidbar, the wilderness census, and Joshua and Caleb, the only two counted in the first generation who lived to be counted in the second. Joshua and Caleb lived out the meanings the tradition has long associated with their names: Joshua, salvation; Caleb, a whole heart. One came from Joseph’s line and one from Judah’s, the two brothers who finally reconciled. They were the only spies who refused to bring dibbah, a bad report, on the Promised Land. When the people were ready to let their flame dim, Joshua and Caleb blew on it.

Amalek went to the back of the line to pick off the slowest. Joshua and Caleb went to the back of the line to carry the slowest forward.

This is the choice every parent, coach, teacher, and friend makes, often without even noticing. We can be Amalek or we can be Joshua. We can stand behind a person’s life and pick at the flickering flame or stand behind it and whisper grow.

I have a candle in my house that proves it can be done. Joan and I keep a menorah that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, the very candle of that song, and a woman Joan has loved since girlhood. Marilyn converted to Judaism before her marriage to Arthur Miller in 1956 and lit Hanukkah candles in her own home. By some improbable grace, her menorah now sits on our table. Joan and I lit it together on our first shared Hanukkah. Since then, Caroline, Lucy, Quincy, Avi, and Julie have all gathered around that same light. When you light it, it plays Hatikvah, the Hope. The wind tried to snuff Marilyn’s candle, but her menorah is still burning, every Hanukkah, in a Jewish home in Miami, still playing the song of hope.

Five years ago, I gave Quincy advice on his law school applications. Four years ago, I gave him LSAT books.  This year, I send him wind.

When I texted Quincy that morning, I did not know I was writing a midrash. I was just sending a few words to my son-in-law, on a morning that was his and not mine. But I think I was trying to do the one thing a cheerleader can do: to stand at the back of his line and be the kind of wind that carries rather than the kind that snuffs.

Joan and I pray that our children, Caroline, Lucy, Avi, Julie, and now Quincy, will always recognize the breath of God that can fill a sail. We pray that they, in their turn, will become that same breath for someone else.

Perhaps that is what the angels over every blade of grass have been whispering all along. The wind has always been there. The wind always will be. The only thing we ever decide is what kind of wind we become.

* * *

Texts from Quincy’s graduation morning. May 2026.

(I called it Talmud but it was actually Midrash)

* * *

Torah, Midrash, and Further Study

A few of the Torah passages and Jewish sources behind this essay, for anyone who would like to read further.

Bereshit (Genesis) 1:2. Ruach Elohim, the breath, wind, and spirit of God moving over the waters. One word, ruach, holds all three.

Bereshit Rabbah 10:6. The teaching that every blade of grass has an angel above it, whispering “grow, grow, grow.”

Shemot (Exodus) 17:8 to 16. Amalek attacks Israel in the wilderness, the first battle after the Exodus.

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 25:17 to 19. “Remember what Amalek did… how he struck those lagging behind.” Amalek comes at the back of the line.

Bamidbar (Numbers) 13 to 14. Joshua and Caleb alone bring back a hopeful report, refusing the dibbah, the bad report, of the other spies.

Bamidbar (Numbers) 26. The second census. Joshua and Caleb are the only two of their generation counted again.

Hatikvah, “The Hope.” The Israeli national anthem, played by Marilyn Monroe’s menorah.

Peaches answers cream.

Two daughters present and counted.

The walk can begin.

“Who wants to be Peaches?  Who wants to be Cream?” For years, that was how our family adventures began. Whether we were going for a run in the baby jogger, heading on a hike, walking to the park, or getting into the car; I always would ask the question. Caroline would quickly claim one. Lucy would take the other. Sometimes they switched. Sometimes they argued. But eventually the answer always came. “I’m Peaches. I’m Cream.”

Everyone was present. Everyone was accounted for. We were ready to go.

For years, I simply thought it was a fun family ritual. Only later did I realize that something deeper was hiding within the peaches and cream. It was our family census. Not because I needed the number, but to make sure nobody was left behind.

Every parent understands this. You count the children before a hike. You count them before getting on a bus. You count them before leaving the restaurant. The counting is not about arithmetic, it’s about responsibility.

Years ago, British Prime Minister David Cameron discovered that lesson for himself. After a family lunch, he and his wife drove home separately and realized that their eight-year-old daughter was in neither car. They had left her behind at the pub. They returned quickly and found her safe.

Every parent knows the wave of panic that must have washed over them in that moment. The problem was not transportation, it was assumption. Nobody counted.

Perhaps that has contributed to why I have always been curious about the Torah’s obsession with counting.

* * *

We recently read the Torah portion Bamidbar, which opens with a census. Moses and Aaron are instructed to count the Children of Israel tribe by tribe. At first glance the census feels administrative. Tribal totals, military readiness, ancient record keeping. But the Torah rarely spends this much ink on something that is merely administrative. If God simply wanted a number, He did not need Moses. God already knew the number. The census must be about something else.

I believe the clue to the census’s true purpose is hidden in the fact that Bamidbar is not the Torah’s first count. Long before Moses counted Israelites in the wilderness, Noah was counting animals on the ark. The Torah could have instructed Noah to bring one lion, one elephant, one giraffe, one dove. Instead, the animals enter the ark shnayim shnayim, two by two. The first admission ticket in the Torah is not a coin, it is a relationship. Noah did not preserve species through inventory. He preserved creation through partnership; no animal entered the ark alone. The future of the world depended not merely upon survival, but upon belonging.

Noah and Moses both delivered a newly formed community across a body of water to a new beginning. The first census in the Torah is not a count of animals. It is a count of relationships.

The same pattern returns centuries later, in Exodus. God commands Moses to count the Israelites through a half shekel offering. Every person contributes the same coin. Rich and poor. Leader and laborer. Yet each person gives a half shekel rather than a whole one. Why half? The lesson was embedded in the coin itself. None of us can be complete alone.

You count because you belong. You only become whole when you find your other half.

* * *

My counting has changed. Once I counted daughters before hiking. Then, one winter night a few years ago, I took my first new census.

On the first Hanukkah that Joan and I shared together, I told her that the menorah on our table had once belonged to Marilyn Monroe.  Monroe had converted to Judaism before her marriage to Arthur Miller in 1956. Joan stopped, looked at me and then back to the menorah. She was surprised and filled with wonder because of her lifelong admiration for Marilyn Monroe. She lit the candles with a double portion of joy.

Each Hanukkah since, when the candles burn, Joan glances at the menorah with the same joyous smile she had on that first night. The most photographed American woman of the twentieth century once lit Hanukkah candles in her own home. Her menorah now lives in ours. It was, in a way, our first half shekel; the small coin that turned a house into a household. Two halves becoming one whole.

* * *

This is what the Torah has been quietly teaching us, from the ark to the half shekel, and from Marilyn’s menorah to the trailhead at the start of a family hike. The Torah does not merely count individuals. It counts them into belonging. The count does not only recognize the bond. The count brings the bond into being.

We count the Omer. We count toward a minyan. We count generations. We count through the half shekel. We count tribes in the wilderness. No matter what we count, the purpose is never arithmetic. The purpose is belonging, and the counting itself is what brings the belonging into being.

* * *

Today is Father’s Day. Tomorrow, Caroline turns thirty. I approach sixty. My father, the girls’ beloved Gramps, turned ninety-one. Three generations stand together at nearly the same moment in time. Thirty. Sixty. Ninety. A small census of our own, not of population but of blessing.

I am closer now to becoming a grandfather, b’H, than to running another baby jogger race. Those days have passed. New ones are approaching.

I do not yet know how I will count my grandchildren. I do not yet know what call and response will follow peaches and cream. Maybe milk and honey, the promise of the Promised Land. Maybe light and light, one candle, then another, then another. Maybe something my grandchildren invent before I have the chance to name it. If two by two was Caroline and Lucy, then I pray that the next ark may carry more.

I pray for many. I pray for a tribe, full of faith, and of belonging. Because the Torah counts us for the same reason that parents count their children before a hike. Not because we need the number, but because we do not want to leave anyone behind.

* * *

The census was never counting Israelites.

The census was creating Israelites.

The count created belonging.

* * *

Two halves at the door.

Peaches answers cream. We count.

No one left behind.

* * *

Then and Now

The Peaches and Cream Tradition Continues

The Peaches and Cream call and response began when Caroline and Lucy were small. It continues to this day. Twenty five years on, the same two daughters still answer the same two questions.

* * *

Then. Caroline and Lucy. The baby jogger days.

Now. The same question, twenty five years later.

* * *

If you would like to read more about Marilyn Monroe’s menorah and its journey into our home, I shared that story previously here: The Magical, Meaningful, and Memorable Story of Marilyn Monroe’s Menorah.

This morning, at a minyan in Bal Harbour, two things arrived together.

The first: a rabbi visiting from Jerusalem lead us. He taught about manna, the bread that fell from heaven when the children of Israel walked into the wilderness with nothing in their hands. A blessing you could gather in the cool of the morning.

The second: as the service opened, a soldier rose to speak. He was a young man who had lost both of his legs to a land mine.

I have been turning those two things over against each other all day.

*   *   *

I have long believed that the difference between a curse and a blessing is not in the thing itself, but in the outlook.

A curse is what you call a circumstance when you stand inside it and judge it as it is, right now. A blessing is what you call the same circumstance once time has done its slow work. Once the passage of days has brought healing, feeling, and the kind of seeing that only arrives later.

In the moment, things can feel bad, but remember that you are looking outward. Your outlook sets your attitude. This too shall pass and as it passes, something opens. You begin to see inside; insight, after all, is only the sights that live inside ourselves and others.

For a long time, that was the whole of what I believed. The curse comes first; the blessing comes later; wait and the wheel will turn.

This concept is not my own creation. That a curse can ripen into a blessing is among the oldest consolations we have: gam zu l’tovah, “this too is for the good,” said the rabbis; the sages, the poets, and the modern psychologists each in their own way. I am not trying to add a small stone to a cairn that is already a mountain of wisdom.

What I am after is narrower and possibly stranger. Not the comfort that the blessing will arrive once time has done its work, but the possibility that the blessing was there all along, hidden inside the curse. The same substance only wrapped.

This morning, the rabbi from Jerusalem showed me exactly where to look.

*   *   *

The bread from heaven is man. מן. Mem. Nun. Then the rabbi turned the word over. The man who rose, generations later, to erase us, the villain of the Megillah and tyrant of Purim, is Haman. המן.

The same two letters sit at the heart of each. Mem. Nun. The blessing and the curse nearly mirror one another: manna hidden inside Haman, wrapped in an additional letter.

The name of the curse already carries the name of the blessing inside it.

This is the deep grammar of Purim itself. The Book of Esther tells of a day Haman had chosen for the destruction of the Jews; on that very day, everything was inverted. The Hebrew phrase for it is v’nahafoch hu, וְנַהֲפוֹךְ הוּא, which means “and it was overturned.” It is the heartbeat of the whole holiday: the reversal in which a thing becomes its own opposite.

You can read it unfold, line by line, as the Megillah unrolls. The gallows Haman built for Mordechai became the gallows for Haman himself. The honors Haman was sure were coming to him, he was forced to drape on the man he hated. The decree of death became a day of deliverance as sorrow turned to gladness.

The curse did not get traded for a blessing after the fact. The curse was the blessing, turned inside out.

Purim keeps a second secret, folded into the same scroll. It is also the holiday of hiddenness. In the entire Book of Esther, the name of God is never once spoken. It is only book in all of scripture where he goes unnamed and yet his hand turns every page. The name Esther itself comes from the Hebrew root for hidden, and the sages hear beneath it the verse haster astir panai, הַסְתֵּר אַסְתִּיר פָּנַי, “I will surely hide my face.”

This is the deepest wrapping of all. Not that the blessing is absent, but that it is concealed. It is the same hide and seek we play with our own lives. Esther hid her name for nine years, and Moses was raised a prince before he learned whose child he was. Each of them became themselves only by stepping beyond the prisons their palaces had become.

When Haman, the curse, carries manna, the blessing, inside it, one letter apart, it is doing exactly what the whole Megillah does. It hides the gift in plain sight.

The blessing is not always something that arrives later. Sometimes it was inside the whole time. Wrapped.

*   *   *

We wrap presents for a reason. A gift handed over bare is barely noticed. The paper, the ribbon, the box, the pause before the lid comes off: that is what teaches us to want what waits inside. A blessing that costs nothing to receive is a blessing we forget by morning. Hashem wraps the blessing in the box of a curse. The wrapping is not a cruelty. It is the very thing that makes us reach.

I learned this once, years ago, in a different sanctuary.

At The Shul in Surfside, I heard a teaching about a son sent into town to receive a blessing from the Rabbi. The Rabbi gave him these:

May you plant, but never harvest.

May your house be destroyed, and may you forever be a guest.

May your table always be dirty and messy.

The son came home furious. These are curses, he told his father. What kind of Rabbi did you send me to?

His father unwrapped each one.

Plant but never harvest: may your children outlive you and never be cut down before their time.

May your house be destroyed and you be forever a guest: may your spirit, after you are gone, live on as a welcome presence in the hearts of those who loved you.

May your table be dirty and messy: may children and grandchildren and great grandchildren crowd around it for generations, in all their loud and compassionate chaos.

Why, the son asked, did he deliver blessings dressed as curses? Why not say it plainly?

Because life is rarely what it appears on the surface. What we first see is almost never what we finally understand. The Rabbi wanted the boy to learn to dig past the wrapping to the nechama, the soul, that lives inside each circumstance and each person.

(The Rabbi gave five blessings in all; the complete teaching is at the end of this blog.)

*   *   *

President Ronald Reagan loved the story of two twin boys — one a pessimist, one an optimist. The pessimist wept in a room full of new toys, certain they would only break. The optimist laughed in a room full of manure because, with all that manure, there simply had to be a pony somewhere.

Two rooms. Two boys who decided, before they ever looked, what they would find inside.

*   *   *

This morning When the soldier rose to speak, the box stopped being a metaphor as he told us about the moment he came back to consciousness and realized that both of his legs were gone. The first clear thought that surfaced up through the pain, before the grief, before the arithmetic of everything that was now gone, was not why me. It was not what now. He understood, immediately, that he had been given a new mission. Hashem took away my legs, he said, in order to give me wings.

I have nothing to add to that. I only know I will spend a long time trying to deserve having been in the room to hear it.

*   *   *

There was more to the service and some of it was mine.

When the Torah was taken out, I was given the honor of the first aliyah, the one set aside for a Kohen. I carried something private up to the bimah with me. It had been a heavy week. An Achilles tendon that tore and tore again and is still relearning how to hold my weight. A hard appointment with the doctor yesterday, my healing slower than I had hoped. I stood for the blessing quietly wondering when I would walk normally again, when I would step back onto a tennis court.

Eight months earlier, the morning after the surgery meant to repair that tendon, I awoke to a voicemail. I had just cancelled a trip to Bahrain to see my friend Khalid, and he had called to console me. In Islam, he said, we say khayra. When something bad happens to you, it is because God wants to draw you closer to Him, and to bring good things to you. So I suppose that is what has happened. Lying there, sore and sorry for myself, I thanked him; I did not actually believe, or understand, what he meant.

Then came the second aliyah.

It went to the soldier who had spoken, and beside him, a second soldier, who had also lost both of his legs. The two of them were called to stand beside me in front of the Torah for their aliyah.  When they completed their Torah reading, our minyan stood, and together with both soldiers, we all danced. The soldier who had lost his legs about eight months earlier, the very same month my own tendon tore for the second time, danced with us. As he danced, he announced to the room, with confidence and determination, that his dancing was only going to get better.

I had walked in that morning grieving a ruptured tendon. He had no legs, and he was promising us he would dance better next time.

The ache in my heel did not disappear. The road back is still long and I still want my tennis court. But standing there, my worry was returned to its true size, small enough, at last, to carry. Beside his, my own curse looked almost like a gift.

Khayra, Khalid had called it, months before I was able to feel what he meant.

I came into the minyan believing that time turns a curse into a blessing. I left wondering whether I had it wrong. Perhaps the blessing is there from the very beginning, hidden inside the one thing we are trying hardest to escape.

Man and Haman. The manure and the pony. The legs and the wings. The wrapping is not the obstacle to the gift. The wrapping may be the gift itself. Even a torn tendon. Even the long walk back to the court. Wrapped with faith.

*   *   *

Heaven’s bread still falls.

One letter hides the blessing:

unwrap, and find wings.

*   *   *

Torah References

Noah and the Flood (Genesis 6): It looked like the end of the world. God set out to wash away a corrupted earth; yet, folded inside that destruction, was an ark, and Noah’s faith, and a family and the animals carried safely on the water. What appeared to be the curse of annihilation was the blessing of a world purified and reborn in goodness.

Joseph’s Coat and Dreams (Genesis 37, 44, 45, 50): The coat of many colors began as a father’s favor, a garment of beauty. Then his brothers’ jealousy turned it into bloodstained evidence of a death that never happened. His dreams, in which his family bowed before him, read to those same brothers as arrogance, and they sold him into slavery and let him rot in prison. Every gift arrived looking like a curse. But the slavery carried him into Egypt; the prison carried him to Pharaoh’s trust; and the dreams came true in the only way that mattered. When the famine came, the brother they had tried to bury was the one with the power, and the grain, to keep them all alive. The curse of his rise was, in truth, their rescue.

The Rabbi’s Five Blessings (Full Text)

The complete teaching from The Shul in Surfside. The Rabbi’s blessings, as the son first heard them:

May you plant, but never harvest.

May you bring others into your home, and may they never leave.

May you send your own out from your home, and may they never return.

May your house be destroyed, and may you forever be a guest.

May your table always be dirty and messy.

And as his father unwrapped them:

Plant but never harvest: may your children outlive you, and never be cut down before their time.

Bring them in and may they never leave: may your children marry, and may you welcome those families and hold them close.

Send them out and may they never return: may your children build homes of their own, happy enough that they never come back alone and unmoored.

May your house be destroyed and you be forever a guest: may your spirit, after you are gone, live on as a welcome presence in the hearts of those who loved you.

May your table be dirty and messy: may children and grandchildren and great grandchildren crowd around it for generations, in all their loud and compassionate chaos.

The Same Secret, Across Traditions

This consolation is not ours alone. It surfaces wherever people have suffered and then reflected.

Hinduism

Swami Vivekananda, “An Answered Prayer”

He asked for strength, and was given difficulties to make him strong.

He asked for wisdom, and was given problems to solve.

He asked for courage, and was given dangers to overcome.

He asked for love, and was given people to help.

He received nothing he had asked for, and everything he needed.

The monk who carried the practice of yoga to America left this prayer, which holds the whole idea in miniature.

Zen Buddhism

Mizuta Masahide (1657 to 1723)

蔵焼けて 障るものなき 月見哉

kura yakete / sawaru mono naki / tsukimi kana

Barn’s burnt down; now I can see the moon.

The poet and samurai watched his storehouse burn to the ground; the loss removed the very thing that had blocked the view.

Islam

Khayra

The good that hardship is sent to carry. The Prophet taught that the believer’s every circumstance is good, gratitude in ease and patience in pain, and that when God wills good for someone, He sends them trials. You have already met this teaching in the body of this piece, in Khalid’s voicemail from Bahrain.

For Further Reading

Esther, Moses, and Finding Your True Self in the Palace: Esther hid her Jewish identity in the palace for nine years; Moses was raised an Egyptian prince before he knew whose child he was. Each became who they truly were only when they stopped hiding and answered the call, Moses with a single Hebrew word, Hineni, “Here I am.” The companion to this piece: the blessing, and the self, both wait wrapped and hidden until we find the courage to uncover them.

Gam Zeh Ya’avor: “This Too Shall Pass”: King Solomon sends his most trusted minister to find a ring that can make a happy man sad and a sad man happy. What comes back is a plain gold band engraved with three Hebrew letters, gimel, zayin, yud, which spell gam zeh ya’avor, “this too shall pass.” A meditation on how the passage of time levels both our sorrows and our joys, and how to enter even a hard year.

What Is a Crisis?: A crisis, this piece argues, is a state of mind, not a state of being. Drawing on Jonah and the sailors caught in the storm at sea, it is a reflection on slowing down, breathing, and staying calm in the face of an uncertain future, so that the worry of what might happen does not consume the present moment.

Learning How to Ask

“You ask too many questions.”

I’ve heard that more than once in my life.

The first time was in school. My 5th grade English teacher, ironically named Mr. Ask, told me I asked too many questions.

Years later, I heard it again at our first pediatrician visit after our daughter Caroline was born. We were new parents. Everything felt important and uncertain, so we asked questions. A lot of them.

Each time, the doctor responded the same way:

“I refer you to the manual you received at the hospital.”

The manual, seven days old.

As if everything we needed to know was already written somewhere. As if the answers existed and our job was simply to find them.

Eventually, we left that practice.

When we requested our medical records, there was a note in the file:

“Parents ask too many questions.”

It felt like something out of Seinfeld, except the note was real.

For a long time, I carried that with me, quietly absorbing the idea that some people did not welcome questions.

Then, during this recent Passover, I found myself reflecting on something very different.

At the Seder, the youngest child asks the questions.

Not only is it accepted; it’s celebrated.

Then I thought more deeply about that tension, between curiosity and cynicism, and turned to the Four Sons: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who does not know how to ask.

I realized I had been looking at them the wrong way.

I always wanted to be the wise son. The one who understands. The one who knows.

And if I’m honest, there were moments I drifted toward the wicked son too. Not because I believed what he believed, but because there’s something in all of us that wants to push, to challenge, to be seen.

But I never saw myself as the simple son.

When I moved to Miami two years ago, something shifted.

I started to notice not what I knew, but everything beyond it.

After sitting with that, I stopped aspiring to be the wise son and began to explore the simple one.

Not because he knows less, but because he leaves room for more.

This year, something shifted again.

In my work with AI, studying agentic systems through a course at the Harvard Data Science Institute, I began to see the same idea through a new lens.

The ancient conversation at the Seder table and the modern one in the classroom began to overlap.

Knowledge is no longer aspirational; it’s foundational.

In AI, the difference is no longer what the system knows, but how it is asked.

I noticed it more deeply when I began working with AI in a more intentional way.

Not just asking it questions, but building something with it.

I launched a small pilot, an agentic system to generate daily reflections for the Counting of the Omer.

I called it the MatzoAgent.

In my mind, I framed it through the Afikoman.

The middle piece of matzo we break, hide, and ask the children to find.

An ordinary piece of matzo, broken in half, becomes something more.

The youngest children, who ask the four questions, then search for the Afikoman.

And only when it is found can the Seder be completed.

That was the premise: that something hidden, in the archive, in the tradition, in ourselves, might be surfaced through the right question, asked daily, gently, over forty-nine days.

At first, I thought the power would come from the answers.

But that wasn’t what mattered.

What mattered was everything around the question: how it was framed, how it was guided, and how it was reviewed.

The system worked not because it was intelligent, but because it was directed.

Eighteen days in, a reader wrote to me.

She said she had spent the afternoon wandering through the site, unbeknownst to me, revisiting pieces she had read before and discovering others she had never seen.

She wasn’t writing about the daily reflection.

She was writing about everything the reflection had led her back to.

The system had not given her an answer; it had given her a doorway.

The question, once planted, kept working in her without me.

I began to realize something subtle.

AI wasn’t an authority. It was more like an ingredient.

Something to be used judiciously.

The value wasn’t in what it produced on its own, but in how I chose to bring it into the process.

The reader later put it back to me more clearly than I had put it to myself:

Even with AI, the work is the life. The AI is just how the question gets asked.

The difference between something generic and something meaningful often came down to a single thing:

The question.

The Afikoman: broken, hidden, waiting to be found.

I always enjoyed hiking with my daughters Caroline and Lucy. When they were younger, we told stories and riddles to pass the time.

One of our favorite riddles was the two men at a fork.

One always tells the truth. One always lies. You don’t know which is which.

Somewhere down one path, there is a treasure.

You can then ask one question.

After much discussion, and hiking, Caroline and Lucy discovered it:

“Which direction would the other man say leads to the treasure?”

And then you go the opposite way.

The path to the treasure is there.

But it only reveals itself through the question.

At the Seder, there is a son who does not know how to ask.

That’s how I always heard it.

But this year, I heard something else.

What if he does not know how to ask…yet?

Not because he can’t, but because he is considering which question is worth asking.

In the age of AI, questions come easily.

The harder part is knowing which ones are worth asking.

There’s a moment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail that I keep coming back to.

To cross the Bridge of Death, travelers must answer “questions three” correctly or be cast into the abyss.

The first travelers answer quickly.

They don’t pause. They don’t question the question, and they fall.

Then the final traveler, King Arthur, arrives and the question changes:

“What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

It sounds precise. Intelligent. Impossible.

A trick question.

Instead of answering, King Arthur does something else.

He asks back:

“What do you mean, an African or European swallow?”

In that moment, everything shifts.

The Bridgekeeper is no longer the one asking.

He becomes the one being questioned.

He doesn’t know the answer, and he is cast into the abyss.

King Arthur’s instinct wasn’t to answer quickly, but to ask carefully.

And it saved his life.

Not by the answer he gave, but by the question he asked.

At the most basic level, AI rewards speed.

But at a deeper level, the level of agentic systems, the advantage belongs to something else entirely.

Not the fastest answer.

Not even the most knowledgeable one.

But the person who pauses long enough to examine the question, to refine it, to challenge it, and to understand what is really being asked, and what is not.

There is a moment with King Solomon that has always stayed with me.

Two women come before him, each claiming to be the mother of the same child.

There are no witnesses, no clear evidence, and no way to determine the truth through facts alone.

So King Solomon does something unexpected.

He calls for a sword and says that the child will be cut in half.

One of the women agrees, but the other cannot.

She steps forward and pleads, “Please, give the child to her. Just don’t harm him.”

The real mother doesn’t argue. She lets go.

The first traveler answered.

King Arthur asked.

King Solomon designed the question.

Each is a step deeper into the same practice.

King Solomon did not merely ask a question.

He designed the one that revealed the truth.

Maybe the wise son is no longer the aspiration, but the foundation.

Maybe the simple son reminds us to stay open.

Maybe the one who does not know how to ask is the one we’ve misunderstood all along.

Not because he doesn’t know…

but because he understands what it means to ask carefully.

We are surrounded by answers now.

But answers don’t change us.

Questions do.

The treasure is still there.

But it reveals itself not to the one who knows the most…

but to the one who knows how to ask.

If you could ask one question, what would it be?

Everything is known
But nothing opens without
The question we choose

Editorial note: The reader referenced in this essay reviewed the relevant passage and provided permission for publication.

Further Reading

For those who want to explore these ideas more deeply, I’ve included a few pieces that shaped this reflection:

• The story of Isidor Isaac Rabi, who credited his mother’s daily question for shaping his scientific mind. While other parents asked, “Did you learn anything today?”, his mother asked, “Izzy, did you ask a good question today?” Rabi, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944, later said this focus on questioning, rather than simply learning, helped make him a scientist. A powerful parallel to this essay’s central idea: progress begins not with answers, but with the discipline to ask well.
• A related essay I wrote on the simple son: Inspirations of Ignorance: Lessons from the Simple Son This essay also includes a photograph of the Four Sons from the Szyk Haggadah, a book my family has had since 1920. The illustration is by Arthur Szyk, whose work brings the Four Sons to life with remarkable depth and detail.

• A short clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail featuring the Bridgekeeper and the Bridge of Death.

• A blog applying an agentic AI framework to decision-making, using the New England Patriots as a case study.

• The biblical account of King Solomon and the two women can be found in First Book of Kings 3:16–28.

What is freedom? Not the dramatic kind that splits seas, but the quieter kind that reshapes a life. How does freedom actually show up in our daily choices, habits, conversations, and at our tables?

When we tell the Passover story, we focus on the extraordinary—the plagues, the sea, the miracle. Freedom arrives all at once. It is loud and undeniable.

But most of life is not lived at the edge of a sea.

Freedom is quieter. It often feels smaller than we expect—and harder than we admit. Sometimes it looks like nothing happening at all—until everything changes.

It lives in small decisions: how we respond, what we hold onto, how we speak, how we show up. It sits at our tables—in how we listen and whether we make space for others.

The Exodus happened once.
Freedom happens again and again—choice by choice, day by day.

Adults: Where does freedom show up in your life? What patterns still hold you? What would it look like to choose differently—consistently?

Kids: What is something new you can do on your own this year? When do you feel most free to be yourself?

And maybe the real question this Passover is not whether we are free—
but whether we are living like we are.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

I can still hear myself shouting those words—equal parts excitement and warning—as my daughters, then seven and four, scattered through the house looking for the perfect hiding spot. Lucy’s favorite was the doll basket—buried beneath stuffed animals, certain she had found the perfect place to disappear. The game was simple: stay hidden as long as possible. Winning meant not being found. And when I finally spotted them—behind a couch or tucked into a closet—“I found you!” marked the end of their victory and the beginning of their laughter-filled defeat.

As Passover approaches, I find myself thinking about a different kind of search.

At our Seder, the afikoman—and even the search for chametz—became highlights for the children. Unlike hide and seek, where the goal is to remain hidden, the afikoman reverses the game entirely—the goal is to be found. After years of finishing second to my older brother Laurence—never once finding it—I made a quiet decision as a parent. At our Seder, the children would search together. The reward would be shared. The experience would be about discovery, not defeat.

Our rabbi at The Shul, reflecting on this week’s Torah portion, Vayikra, brought this contrast into focus. The word Vayikra—“And He called”—ends with a small aleph, written smaller in the Torah scroll. It is a subtle detail, yet one filled with meaning. Many interpretations point to Moses’ humility—his desire to soften the intensity of God’s call.

But there is another way to understand it.

Moses is called by God three times: at the burning bush, at Mount Sinai, and here in Vayikra.

The progression is precise.

The first call awakens.
The second teaches.
The third reveals.

At first, the voice comes from outside, impossible to ignore. Then it gives structure and direction. Finally, it becomes quiet enough to be heard within.

What if the small aleph represents not less communication, but a deeper one?

Not the voice that demands attention—but the one that requires awareness.

One of our favorite children’s books was Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who!. Horton hears a tiny voice coming from a speck of dust—so small that no one else believes it exists. While others dismiss it, Horton listens. He protects it. He insists on its reality, even when it seems invisible to everyone else.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

As I read to my children, it seemed like a simple story. As I reflect as an adult, it feels much deeper.

The ability to hear what others overlook, to notice what appears insignificant, is not imagination. It is perspective. As Albert Einstein observed, genius is seeing the same thing as everyone else, but thinking about it differently.

Perhaps the small aleph is asking the same of us.

It reminds me of a Hasidic story often attributed to Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa. A poor man dreams that he will find a treasure under a bridge in a distant city. After traveling there, a guard laughs and tells him that he once dreamed of treasure buried under the bed of a poor man with the same name. The man returns home, digs beneath his own bed, and discovers the treasure had been there all along.

Sometimes we travel far only to discover that what we were searching for was already within us.

As children, we play hide and seek trying not to be found. As adults, we realize that the greater challenge is allowing ourselves to be found.

This Passover, perhaps the goal is not to remain hidden, but to step forward.

We spend our childhood trying not to be found—and our lives learning how to be found.

The afikoman follows the same pattern. Early in the Seder, we transform an ordinary piece of matzah into the afikoman with a simple break. The night continues without it. And then, at just the right moment, the search begins. The children look, they uncover, they return with it—and only then can the meal be completed.

The small aleph, the afikoman, the hidden treasure beneath our own bed—they all point to the same truth: the most important parts of ourselves are not absent, but waiting.

To listen more carefully for the quieter voice.
To search more honestly for what we have set aside.
To find the small aleph within ourselves—and bring it back to the table.

Yesterday, my older daughter Caroline successfully matched in her pursuit of medical residency. I have always admired her determination and academic excellence. But what I am most proud of is something quieter.

When Caroline and Lucy played hide and seek, Caroline often chose to be found first—allowing Lucy the joy of winning.

As Caroline now begins her journey as a physician, I see that this was never a small gesture. It was an early expression of something deeper—a hidden strength of kindness. A physician enters the most hidden places in a person’s life—the moments of fear, pain, and vulnerability few want seen. Caroline has been practicing for this her entire life, not in hospitals, but in a house in Boston, in a game of hide and seek, learning that sometimes the most generous thing you can do is let someone else be found first.

As we approach this year’s Passover Seder, we can see the afikoman not as something lost, but as something waiting for us to become the kind of people who are ready to be found.

Hidden all along
We search far for what we hold
Ready to be found