Anatomy Of A Thought

By Yochanan Gordon

I’m writing to you from Hollywood, Florida. By the time you’re reading this I’ll already be home, but right now we’re in the final days of what is known as Yeshiva Week.

Earlier this evening my son and I were watching old Jewish music videos on YouTube. Some were live concert recordings, the kind that instantly transport you back into another era. As we clicked around, I casually mentioned to my son that many of the concerts whose footage we were watching I had actually attended.

I haven’t written much about this, but I grew up an avid Jewish music fan. I used to buy a new album—cassette tape, compact disc—lock myself in my room, and listen from beginning to end while studying the album cover like a sacred text: the lyrics, the credits, the names of the composer and arranger. It was a real avodah, as they like to say these days.

Today it feels like nobody knows the people who made a song what it is. They know the singer—and that’s it.

I mention this because during my concert-going years there were times when I had the privilege of watching a performance from backstage. It used to mean something to have a backstage pass. And while the front row is its own kind of magic, there’s something uniquely powerful about watching from behind the curtain, seeing not only the finished product, but the anatomy of how it comes to life.

In recent weeks I’ve been updating my WhatsApp status with reflections as they happen in real time. They’re brief, self-contained ideas, but they’ve done something unexpected: they’ve helped me generate longer-form writing. And that, for someone trying to produce meaningful content week after week, is no small thing.

So this week, I thought I’d give you, my dear readers, a backstage view into the evolution of a couple of these reflections. Consider yourselves privileged.

One morning last week I woke up thinking about the words we say every day in davening:

“Hamichadesh b’tuvo tamid ma’aseh Bireishit,” He who renews daily, in His goodness, the handiwork of creation.

And I wondered: if Hashem is recreating the world every day, why do our lives so often feel like they’re running on a repetitive loop?

Then it occurred to me that in learning Torah there is a concept called chiddush, a novel insight. The amazing thing about a chiddush is that it usually isn’t found in an entirely new text. It’s found in something you’ve seen a hundred times already. But suddenly you become attuned to a nuance you never noticed. The words didn’t change—you did.

And then the thought hit me:

Maybe we’re meant to approach the daily goings-on of life the way we approach a sugya in Gemara.

We often look at events and shrug, as the Gemara might say: “Mai dehava hava,” whatever happened, happened. Nothing more to see here.

But in a life ordained by Divine Providence, there is no such thing as mai d’havah havah. Every day is a new creation. And our job isn’t only to live through it—it’s to learn it. To study the unfolding of our lives until we become sensitive to what Hashem is communicating to us through it.

So if your life seems repetitive, and you wonder what “renewal” really means, perhaps the answer is simple:

You’re looking at your life through a routine headspace instead of a Talmudic headspace.

One of my status readers shared a striking idea from Rav Adin Steinsaltz, zt’l. He was once asked: how can a person maintain excitement in prayer when the prayers are the same every day?

He replied that if the prayers seem the same to you daily, it isn’t because the liturgy is boring, it’s because the one praying is not growing. If you remain on the same level, then of course the words will look the same every morning.

That line set off a lightbulb in my consciousness.

Live the way we learn.

We hear constantly about the importance of Jewish unity and no doubt it’s one of the greatest virtues we can strive for. But very few people offer practical guidance for the real obstacle: how to achieve unity with those who simply irk us.

In fact, two of my children had been involved in a minor tussle. One of them clearly had a problem with his sibling—not merely something he did, but something deeper: who he is.

He’s in fifth grade and just started learning Gemara. So I took the opportunity to reframe his perspective using the tools of Talmud study, tools still fresh in his young mind.

I asked him, “You just started learning Gemara, correct?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“So tell me—what are the steps of learning a piece of Gemara?”

Together we outlined it:

A Mishnah states a law. The Gemara questions it. Challenges it. Contradicts it. Brings proofs and rebuttals. Then resolves it.

In learning Gemara there are questions, contradictions, challenges, proofs, and resolutions. And not only are those steps not off-putting, they are the very process through which Torah is understood.

Then I told him: the word Yisrael is said to stand for yesh shishim ribo osiyos laTorah—there are 600,000 letters in the Torah. And there is a halachah that if even one letter is missing, an entire sefer Torah is invalid. And every Jew is a letter in that Torah.

Some Jews represent the Mishnah. Some represent the Gemara’s questions. Some represent its contradictions. Some represent its resolution.

But every single one is indispensable.

We recently observed the 10th of Shevat, the yahrzeit of the Frierdiker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, and the day upon which his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, would soon assume leadership.

In his inaugural farbrengen on Yud Shevat 1951, even before officially accepting the nesius through the recitation of a maamar, the Rebbe quoted the Gemara: “When someone arrives in a place, he should adopt the customs of that place.” And since in America bold statements are in vogue, the Rebbe said, I will make a statement.

Chazal say, Yisrael, oraita v’kedusha brich hu—the Jewish people, the Torah, and Hashem are one.

From this, the Rebbe said, emerge three loves:

Love of Hashem

Love of Torah

Love of Jews

Many think these are three separate loves—that one can exist without the others. But the Rebbe insisted they are one. It is impossible to genuinely love Hashem and His Torah without loving every Jew.

And it occurred to me that perhaps these three loves describe not only a spiritual truth, but a historical progression.

There were those who strove to articulate the depth of Divinity—the world of the Arizal and the Mekubalim. There were those who emphasized the primacy of Torah—the world of the Vilna Gaon. And then there was the Baal Shem Tov, who brought these truths down into the emotional, lived reality of the Jew, teaching that Hashem and Torah are not only lofty ideas: they are embedded in the soul of every Jew, expressed through ahavas Yisrael.

If that was the chiddush of the Baal Shem Tov, then perhaps that is what the Rebbe spent forty years amplifying—through Chabad Houses, mitzvah tanks, mivtza’im, the Twelve Pesukim, Tzivos Hashem, and endless initiatives that have reshaped Jewish life across the world.

And that, dear readers, is the anatomy of a thought: a backstage pass into a small reflection that becomes a larger way of seeing life. 

Yochanan Gordon can be reached at [email protected]. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.