This past week, that question stopped being theoretical for our family.
At three o’clock in the morning, I received a call that my granddaughter had been grazed by multiple bullets at a party. Her boyfriend was shot in the head and murdered, and one other killed, and five others are in critical condition, and four were injured.
In the middle of that kind of pain, Rabbi Goldstein’s question suddenly becomes very real: What are your values actually worth?
When death walks that close to your family, you stop asking what you say you believe. You look at what you’ve actually been living for. You look at where your time, your money, and your heart have really gone.
Because in the end, values are proven in moments like this — not in comfortable conversations, but in the choices we made long before the phone rang at 3 a.m.
The Receipts- Not Just Words
“Ashrei adam oz lo bach, mesilot bilvavam” — Happy is the person whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to You. (Tehillim 84:6)
Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein asks: What are your values truly worth? When we claim “family, honesty, integrity,” are we willing to sacrifice time, money, comfort, or ego — or are they just nice-sounding opinions?
This brings us back to the Garden, and to the very first test Hashem gave us after leaving Egypt.
The Mean God Of The Bible
Many Christians say the God of the Old Testament is mean and angry. But look at the facts. Pharaoh was cruel. He called us lazy, stopped giving us straw, yet still demanded the exact same number of bricks from every person. The strong gathered more straw, the weak gathered less, but the quota never changed. Those who fell short were beaten.
Hashem’s very first test after the Exodus was the manna — and it was literally impossible to fail. If you gathered more than an omer, it still measured exactly one omer. You could not gather less than an Omer because it still came out to one Omer. If you tried to keep some overnight, it turned into worms.
If you went out on Shabbat, there was no manna at all — but you had received a double portion the day before, so you could rest. Every single person received exactly what they needed. No beatings, no impossible demands. Just perfect fairness and built-in rest. Hashem was proving to us: “I am not Pharaoh. I am a loving Father who provides for everyone equally.”
Parsha Emor Not By Your Hands
In this week’s parsha, right in the middle of the holidays, the Torah places the Omer offering. Rabbi David Fohrman shows us a beautiful intertextual triangle. The Omer in Emor connects to the manna in the desert and to the moment in Joshua 5 when the people first ate from the produce of the Land — the day the manna stopped forever.
The Omer is Hashem’s bridge. It reminds us that even when we plant, harvest, and bake with our own hands, Hashem is still the One who provides. The land is simply a new form of the wilderness. The moment we forget that, our values drift away from their Source.
That’s why the laws of pe’ah and leket — leaving the corners and gleanings for the poor — come right after the Omer. Just as no one could hoard the manna, we are not allowed to hoard our harvest. God still retains a stake in what we produce.
Today, many Jews say the Third Temple will simply descend from heaven when Mashiach comes. But Rabbi Fohrman’s lesson echoes the words of the prophet Haggai: we cannot sit and wait for some philosophical ideal.
Our Heavenly Partner
We must begin the work with our own hands, exactly as our ancestors did when they entered the Land. The Omer teaches us that Hashem partners with human effort. He fed us with manna, and now He feeds us through the work of our hands — but only if we remember Who is really providing.
Nathaniel Jeanson’s book Traced proves with DNA that we are literally one human family. We all descend from Noah’s three sons. If we are one family, we need one Father’s house rule—the Ten Commandments.
Rabbi Fohrman shows that Hashem at Sinai deliberately echoes Rebecca’s words to Yaakov in Genesis 27: “Listen to my voice.” The family story is redeemed. The Ten Sayings become the constitution for one united human family.
עץ (tree) equals 160 in gematria — the same as צלם (image). Only by holding onto the Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life, do we truly live up to being created in God’s image.
The Table Is Set
Pirkei Avot makes it clear:
“Let your house be a meeting place for the Sages, sit in the dust of their feet, and drink their words thirstily.”¹
One who learns even a single letter must honor his teacher.²
“Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own… and reverence for your teacher like reverence for Heaven.”³
“If there is no Torah, there is no derech eretz; if there is no derech eretz, there is no Torah.”⁴
This Shabbos in Emor, as we count the Omer, ask yourself honestly: Do I truly study the word of Hashem, or do I just say I love Him? Do my actions — my fruit — show that I remember Who feeds me every day?
The pathways to Him are always on our hearts. We cannot wait for the Temple to fall from heaven. Like our ancestors, like the generation of Haggai, we must begin the work with our own hands — remembering the manna, living the values, and repairing this one human family together.
Shabbat Shalom. Chazak ve’ematz.
Footnotes ¹ Pirkei Avot 1:4
² Pirkei Avot 6:3
³ Pirkei Avot 4:12
⁴ Pirkei Avot 3:17