Parshas Devarim: Going Forward? Go Back 3 Spaces
We just finished a beautiful Shabbos in New York with family. Everyone had gone to sleep, and I opened my laptop to spend a little time on a project I’d started a few months ago. After writing The Strength to Stop, I had decided what I wanted to do next. Not write another article. Go back.
I wanted to gather the lessons I’d learned over the past year and a half into a book. Not because every blog should become a book—honestly, most shouldn’t. They’re written for a moment, and once that moment passes, so does the writing.
I even started the project two months ago. Then… I kept writing weekly and stopped editing. Apparently there were still a few more conversations waiting for me.
Last week, after Let’s Go Camping, it finally felt like the right time to stop writing again. Not to end the conversation—to return to it. So last night I opened another old article. Fixed a typo. Changed a sentence. Started rereading instead of editing.
And then I smiled. Of course. This past week was Devarim.
I had just spent the morning in shul listening to the story of Moshe Rabbeinu doing the exact same thing. He doesn’t begin winding down his story by telling the Jewish people something they don’t know. He doesn’t introduce a new conversation. He sits them down on the edge of the Jordan and reviews the story of the last forty years—gathering the victories, the failures, the moments they understood, and the moments they didn’t. He forces them to look back at the journey they have already lived before they are allowed to take a single step into the next chapter.
Sitting at my laptop, looking at my own old pages, it hit me that this isn't an escape. Meeting that truth in Torah somehow made it feel even more real.
I wanted to gather the lessons I’d learned over the past year and a half into a book. Not because every blog should become a book—honestly, most shouldn’t. They’re written for a moment, and once that moment passes, so does the writing.
But this feels different. I want these conversations on my shelf, not just on the internet somewhere. I want them next to the sefarim and books I find myself returning to over and over again, because I know I’m not done with them.
There are lessons in these pages that I understand today differently than I did six months ago. Others, I know I’m barely living at all.
If I’m going to keep coming back to them, I want to be able to highlight a sentence that suddenly hits differently. Fold over a page. Scribble something in the margin. Or pull it off the shelf on a random Tuesday because I need to remember something I once learned but haven’t yet become.
If I’m going to keep coming back to them, I want to be able to highlight a sentence that suddenly hits differently. Fold over a page. Scribble something in the margin. Or pull it off the shelf on a random Tuesday because I need to remember something I once learned but haven’t yet become.
I even started the project two months ago. Then… I kept writing weekly and stopped editing. Apparently there were still a few more conversations waiting for me.
Last week, after Let’s Go Camping, it finally felt like the right time to stop writing again. Not to end the conversation—to return to it. So last night I opened another old article. Fixed a typo. Changed a sentence. Started rereading instead of editing.
And then I smiled. Of course. This past week was Devarim.
I had just spent the morning in shul listening to the story of Moshe Rabbeinu doing the exact same thing. He doesn’t begin winding down his story by telling the Jewish people something they don’t know. He doesn’t introduce a new conversation. He sits them down on the edge of the Jordan and reviews the story of the last forty years—gathering the victories, the failures, the moments they understood, and the moments they didn’t. He forces them to look back at the journey they have already lived before they are allowed to take a single step into the next chapter.
Not learning something new isn’t avoiding the work.
This is the work.
Gathering these past conversations, doing this specific avodah for my future, is the only way to step into the next chapter without leaving myself behind.
Devarim reminds me that we don’t always hear the meaning of a season while we’re living it. Sometimes we have to revisit the journey before we can finally understand what Hashem was saying all along.
Not because we’re finished with those lessons.
Because we’re not.
So… I think it’s time to get back to those 70,000 words.
L’Chaim!
L’Chaim!