It was an ordinary ride that delivered an extraordinary idea.

Earlier this week, in Washington, D.C., I stepped into an Uber driven by a retired gentleman with a calm demeanor. Soft religious music played in the background. He greeted me the way certain people do — warmly, unhurriedly, as if he carried quiet purpose into even the smallest interactions. The ride itself was unremarkable. What has stayed with me is what he said as I got in, and again as I got out:

There is still time today to make yesterday jealous.

There is still time today to make yesterday jealous.

In a world saturated with noise, anxiety, and uncertainty, that one sentence felt almost radical.

The Weight of Yesterday

We are living through a season when the past presses hard on the present. For Israelis, the last year has meant war, loss, and an uncertainty that refuses to lift, compounded for many families by real economic strain. For Jews around the world, rising antisemitism and deepening social division have created a persistent, low-grade unease that rarely gets to rest. And beneath the headlines, in ordinary lives, people are carrying private weight of their own — illness, family rupture, opportunities that closed and never reopened.

It is easy, under all of that, to feel defined by what has already happened. To feel that yesterday has the final word.

Jewish tradition has never accepted that conclusion.

Teshuvah: Not a Season, a Practice

The concept of teshuvah — return, renewal, the capacity to become someone slightly different than you were — is not confined to the High Holidays. It is woven into daily life. Maimonides teaches that a person is not defined by their past; they are defined by........

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