Rabbi’s Message: One step towards peace at a time
November 25, 2025
I gave a version of this message during the sermon at services at NTHC this past Shabbat; but even as the Jewish world enters into this new era of healing now that the war is coming to a conclusion, I noticed that there is very little good news these days. So, in this week that our thoughts turn to gratitude, I thought I would most like to spread this message of some of the efforts towards peace that give me hope and foster gratitude for all of the ometz lev, the strengthening of the heart, that this work takes. I pray that they nurture that spark in you too:
Several years ago, when we were living in Israel, our family adopted a lone soldier. The lone soldier program pairs young adults who move to Israel and serve in the IDF with families who can offer something priceless: a place to land, to rest, and to be cared for. That weekly return to a home is one of Israel’s most powerful tools for preventing the isolation, alienation, and trauma that too often haunt veterans elsewhere.
Our soldier was from Connecticut. Her name is Kayla. She came to us through my dear friend and counseling mentor, Dr. Betsy Stone. Gaining a twenty-something “child” while my other children were still in diapers should have felt funny—but Kayla simply became part of us. I signed her ketubah at her wedding. I fussed over her and her husband Elad when they visited after their honeymoon. And two weeks ago, I joyfully delivered gifts to her daughter Doriah—who is, in my completely unbiased opinion, the world’s cutest spaghetti-covered toddler.
But the moment that filled me most deeply with pride was hearing Kayla describe her new work.
This year, she joined Sindyanna of the Galilee, a women-run, Arab-Jewish cooperative committed to building shared economic opportunity and, more importantly, shared humanity. Kayla has always loved the intersection of nourishment and entrepreneurship, but this work is different. It is quiet, careful peace-building. It is women sitting together across lines of difference, making something with their hands, and allowing the possibility to grow with them.
When she first told me about it, I felt the two truths she was holding: the anxiety of stepping toward people whose intentions you can’t yet read, and the deep desire to help create peace anyway. That tension sits at the very heart of this last week’s Torah portion, Toldot.
When Isaac and Rebecca arrive in a new region of the land, they encounter Abimelech, king of the Philistines. Isaac is afraid—so afraid that he lies about Rebecca being his sister, the same painful pattern we saw with Abraham and Sarah. Later in the chapter, more tensions arise around land and water rights—accusations, expulsions, and old wounds rising quickly to the surface. (Genesis 26:9; 16–22)
Isaac begins in the same emotional posture many of us know well: tightened breath, suspicion, defensiveness, the feeling of “What will they take from me?” Psychologist Dr. Marilee Adams calls this the Judger mindset—the instinctive, protective reaction that emerges from lived experience and inherited fear. It is not irrational. It is human.
But the miracle of this portion is that Isaac does not stay there. Something in him softens. He pauses. He asks a different kind of question—not “Who will hurt me?” but:
What outcome do I actually want here?
Is peace possible?
What would it take for us both to stay and thrive?
Dr. Adams calls these Learner questions—questions that don’t deny fear but make room for curiosity and possibility. And that shift, however small, is what makes the treaty between Isaac and Abimelech possible.
The Torah doesn’t portray a perfect reconciliation. Trust is not magically restored. But they move, even if only briefly, out of fear and toward coexistence. And that movement is everything.
Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, one of the great modern Mussar teachers, offers that each of us has a bechirah (or choice) point — the inner frontier where real choice becomes possible. Not the places we operate on autopilot, and not the places too far beyond our current capacity. The bechirah (or choice) point is the narrow, holy space where instinct meets intention.
Isaac stands at his bechirah point when Abimelech approaches him again.
Kayla stands at hers each time she sits with women whose histories are intertwined with her own, yet whose stories she is only beginning to learn.
And each of us stands at ours in our families, our communities, and our world.
The heart of Rabbi Dessler’s teaching is this: holiness is not found in winning the inner battle; it is found in the moment we pause long enough to choose.
When we ask a different question, like:
“What else might be true?”
“What might they be feeling?”
“What is the outcome I want for both of us?”
We push our bechirah point forward. Over time, those small courageous choices become our new nature.
The work Kayla is doing at Sindyanna is quiet, patient peace work, the kind that never makes headlines but changes lives. The kind that feels fragile. The kind that requires holding fear in one hand and hope in the other.
And it is the same work the Torah invites us into during this season.
Peace does not begin with answers. It begins with better questions.
Questions that widen rather than narrow.
Questions that make room for the humanity of the person across from us.
Questions that honor our fears but do not let them be the only truth in the room.
Isaac and Abimelech show us that even ancient rivalries can yield, for a moment, to cooperation.
Rabbi Dessler reminds us that spiritual growth happens one choice at a time.
And Kayla shows us that those choices—quiet, small, steady—can be the seeds of something much larger.
As we head into this week of gratitude and personal gatherings, I invite us to notice our own bechirah points, the places in which we discover that we too have a choice.
Where do we feel tightened breath?
Where do inherited fears or old wounds constrict us?
Where are we tempted to ask, “Why are they like this?” instead of “What might they be needing?”
And can we — just once, and then again — ask a gentler, wiser question?
Because every time we choose curiosity over certainty, openness over assumption, connection over fear, we widen the possibility of peace.
May we walk gently toward that possibility together.
May we know peace at our Thanksgiving tables.
May we know peace in our communities.
May we know peace in our world.
Wishing you a wonderful week and a Happy Thanksgiving,
Rabbi Lauren
