08/14/2026
Shabbat Shalom!
In this week’s Mussar Torah Commentary on Parashat Shoftim, Annabelle Tuck reflects on a striking teaching from Deuteronomy 20:5-8. Before going to battle, certain people are told to return home: one who has built a house but not dedicated it, planted a vineyard but not harvested it, become engaged but not yet married, or become fearful and disheartened.
Why? Because there are moments when our hearts and responsibilities belong somewhere else.
Tuck connects this teaching with the wisdom of Ecclesiastes:
“A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under the sun.”
There is a time to build and a time to tear down, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time for war and a time for peace.
Through the Mussar trait of zerizut, zeal or energetic responsiveness, we are called to engage fully with what life asks of us. Yet zerizut does not mean giving everything to everything, all at once. Even a beautiful quality can become unbalanced when one pursuit consumes all others.
Drawing on her own life, Annabelle shares how a deep commitment to justice once occupied much of her energy, sometimes at the expense of personal growth and relationships. Loss, health challenges, retirement, remarriage, and Mussar practice gradually opened a different season, one with greater attention to family, inner growth, good works, and balance.
Her reflection also offers an important reminder about rachamim, compassion. We can look back on earlier seasons of our lives without condemning the person we once were. Youthful zeal may have carried costs, but it may also have created growth, innovation, and meaningful change.
The work is not to reject our zeal, but to bring wisdom to it.
Mussar invites us to ask, again and again: What is this moment asking of me? Which middah needs strengthening? Which needs softening? Where is my attention truly needed now?
As Alan Morinis asks, how can we “know the place that is yours in this moment and occupy it fully”?
This Shabbat, may we have the wisdom to recognize the season we are in, the courage to give ourselves fully to what matters now, and the compassion to honor the seasons that brought us here.
Question for reflection:
How does Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 help you recognize the place that is yours in this moment and occupy it fully?
