08/03/2026
As I sit on the airplane back to California, leaving my true home in Israel for the place I currently call home, I find myself reflecting on the question I have been asked more than any other during this trip:
“You came all the way here for HaRav Rabbi Yaakov Peretz’s Azkarah?”
Anyone who knows me knows how deeply I was attached to Mori HaRav. That alone would have been reason enough.
Yet the truth is that Mori HaRav himself would never have approved of such a journey if its purpose were merely to honor his memory. He taught us that our responsibility is not to dwell on the past, but to continue building the future through Torah.
That is why this week was filled from morning until night with the work that he believed in.
Some of what was accomplished will remain private for now. But I can say that old relationships were renewed, new ones were formed, and doors were opened that, b’ezrat Hashem, will allow us to continue bringing many more of Mori HaRav’s writings into print in the years ahead. We also began forming the core of a Shiviti Bet Midrash in Israel. Time spent with his family and his students strengthened a mission that Rabbanit Dr. Devorah Halevy and I have dedicated our lives to with his blessing and encouragement. Hours of learning and prayer in the holiest places of our people renewed my own spirit, so that I can return to the beloved members of Kehillat Shaar HaShamayim in San Diego, and to the entire Shiviti family around the world, with renewed strength and purpose.
My heartfelt thanks to my dear in-laws, Rabbi Meir and Faigeh Goldberger, whose warm hospitality, as always, gave me a home in Jerusalem from which I was able to work, learn, and make this demanding week possible.
As I leave, my heart aches to return—not for another visit, but for the day when we can join the rest of Am Yisrael living together in the Land of our forefathers.
But alongside that longing is profound gratitude.
Standing at Mori HaRav’s grave, I was reminded of Rabbenu HaRambam’s teaching that a person’s greatness is measured not by monuments, but by what lives on after them.
His Torah, his values, his uncompromising integrity, and, most of all, his influence live on in the lives of those who continue his work. It is one of the greatest privileges of my life to see those ideals flourishing among the extraordinary people who make the Shiviti family what it is today.
HaKadosh Baruch Hu granted our generation the privilege of knowing a man who crossed oceans and continents to teach Torah, who gave endlessly of himself, who never sought honor, and whose every effort was directed toward bringing human beings closer to their Creator.
If, in my own small way, I have crossed oceans and continents in the service of Torah, it is because I learned from his example what such a life demands. To carry forward even a small part of the work to which he devoted his life is one of the greatest honors of my life.
May we prove worthy of carrying that light forward.
