Dear Friends, There is a curious phrase in this week’s Torah portion, Ki Savo. “If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your G-d… the Lord your G-d will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings will come upon you and reach you” (Deuteronomy 28:1–2). “Reach you” — v’hisigucha — literally means to catch up with you. It almost sounds as though the blessings are chasing us! But why would anyone run away from a blessing? Perhaps because sometimes we don’t recognize the blessing for what it is. The key may lie in the preceding verse: “G-d will set you high above all the nations.” The blessing begins with elevation — with a Jew recognizing who he is, what he stands for, and the unique mission G-d has entrusted to him. When we embrace that identity, blessings that we may previously have failed to recognize can finally “catch up” with us. A few verses later, the Torah describes another remarkable blessing: “Your enemies who rise against you will be struck down before you… they will flee before you in seven directions” (28:7). Notice: the ultimate emphasis is not on the enemy’s destruction, but on his retreat. There is a victory greater than vanquishing an enemy: possessing such absolute clarity about who you are and what you stand for that the enemy loses his will to fight. There is a powerful lesson here for Israel today. Our greatest weapon against antisemitism and those who seek Israel’s destruction is moral and spiritual clarity: the Land of Israel is the G-d-given homeland of the Jewish people. We are its custodians. It is not ours to bargain away in the hope of purchasing acceptance or peace. History has repeatedly demonstrated that concessions intended to appease those committed to Israel’s destruction have too often emboldened rather than pacified them. But such clarity cannot remain theoretical. It must be experienced. That brings us to another blessing in Ki Savo: “All the peoples of the earth will see that the name of G-d is called upon you, and they will fear you” (28:10). The Talmud teaches that this refers to tefillin. In the weeks preceding the Six-Day War, the Rebbe launched his worldwide tefillin campaign, specifically invoking this verse. At a moment of enormous fear, the Rebbe called upon Jewish men to put on tefillin — strengthening not only Israel’s soldiers physically defending the land, but the spiritual identity of Jews everywhere. Accounts from that miraculous war describe the extraordinary fear and retreat of enemy forces in the face of Israeli soldiers. The Torah’s message remains strikingly contemporary. When the Jewish people stand tall — proudly, unapologetically and visibly connected to G-d — our enemies retreat, and the blessings that were pursuing us all along can finally catch up. And perhaps that is especially the message of Elul. Elul is not a month for running away from who we are, but for returning to who we have always been. The King is in the field, close and accessible, inviting us to rediscover our deepest identity and reconnect with the G-dly soul within. And this week we celebrate Chai Elul, the birthday of both the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe — the founders of Chassidism and Chabad Chassidus. Their teachings breathed new life into Jewish consciousness, empowering a Jew not merely to believe in G-d, but to experience the G-dliness within himself and recognize what it truly means to be a Jew. Perhaps, then, the first blessing of Elul is the clarity to stop running — running from who we are, from what we stand for, and from the responsibility and privilege that come with being G-d’s people. Because once we stop running from our identity, we may discover that the blessings have been chasing us all along. Shabbat Shalom and Good Shabbos, Rabbi Ruvi New 
ב"ה