Darkness Before Light

From Ki Tavo to Today

The Tochacha and Its Aftermath

In this week’s parsha, Ki Tavo, we read the terrifying litany curses — the tochacha. The section closes with the words:

“And Hashem will bring you back to Egypt in ships, by the way of which I said to you: You shall not see it again. And there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies for slaves and maidservants — but there will be no buyer.” (Devarim 28:68)

Immediately afterwards, the Torah shifts tone. At the beginning of chapter 29, Moshe Rabbeinu gathers the entire nation and says:

“You have seen all that Hashem did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land — the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders...” (Devarim 29:1–3)

This raises a piercing question: Why here? Why, immediately after the relentless cascade of curses, does Moshe Rabbeinu remind them of the miracles of the Exodus — episodes already recounted many times in the Torah? What is the connection between the frightening vision of exile and destruction, and the review of miracles, signs, and wonders that they had already witnessed when leaving Egypt?

Let us park the question for now, and examine a Gemara in Shabbat 77b.

Gemara (Shabbat 77b)

רַבִּי זֵירָא אַשְׁכַּח לְרַב יְהוּדָה דַּהֲוָה קָאֵי אַפִּיתְחָא דְּבֵי חֲמוּהּ, וְחַזְיֵיהּ דַּהֲוָה בְּדִיחָא דַּעְתֵּיהּ, וְאִי בָּעֵי מִינֵּיהּ כׇּל חֲלָלֵי עָלְמָא הֲוָה אָמַר לֵיהּ.אֲמַר לֵיהּ: מַאי טַעְמָא עִיזֵּי מְסַגָּן בְּרֵישָׁא וַהֲדַר אִימְּרֵי?אֲמַר לֵיהּ: כִּבְרִיָּיתוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם — דִּבְרֵישָׁא חֲשׁוֹכָא, וַהֲדַר נְהוֹרָא.

Rabbi Zeira encountered Rav Yehuda, who was standing at the entrance to his father-in-law’s house. He saw that Rav Yehuda was in a cheerful mood, and thought: If I ask him anything at this moment, he will tell me. So he asked him: “Why is it that goats walk ahead first, and only afterwards do sheep follow?”

Rav Yehuda answered him: “This is the order of creation — first came darkness, and afterwards came light.”

Rashi – Comment

עיזי מסגן ברישא – שֶׁהֵן שְׁחוֹרוֹת, וְאַחַר כָּךְ אִמְרֵי לְבָנוֹת.

The goats go ahead first, for they are black; afterwards the sheep, which are white.

Black Goats, White Sheep

At first glance, this Gemara raises questions. Of all things Rabbi Zeira could have asked his teacher — why this? Why a zoological curiosity about goats and sheep? Why not a halachic problem, a deep sugya, a question of law or theology?

And what’s more, why record it in the Gemara at all? Surely Chazal are not interested in shepherding practices.

The answer, of course, is that Rabbi Zeira’s question wasn’t about animals at all. By asking about goats and sheep, he uncovered one of the core axioms Hashem built into the world. Just as Hashem created the law of gravity to govern the physical universe, He also created spiritual laws that govern history and destiny. And one of those laws is this: darkness comes before light.

That is what Rav Yehuda meant when he replied:

“כִּבְרִיָּיתוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם — דִּבְרֵישָׁא חֲשׁוֹכָא, וַהֲדַר נְהוֹרָא.”

The black goats always walk before the white sheep. Choshech always precedes or. Evening always precedes morning. That is how Hashem designed the world.

(And perhaps the real chiddush of this Gemara is that someone could be in a good mood while standing at his father-in-law’s doorstep. But that interpretation is my own…)

Maharal — Darkness as Preparation

In Netzach Yisrael (ch. 11), the Maharal pushes us to see darkness not as an accidental barrier but as the very precondition for light. Without darkness, there is no light.

Think of a seed: if you place it on the surface, in the sunlight, it remains a seed forever. Only when it is buried in the dark soil, swallowed by the earth, hidden and seemingly rotting away, does it break open and begin to grow. The very concealment is what allows new life to emerge.

So too in creation and in history. The choshech is not a detour or a punishment; it is the soil in which the or is planted. It is the womb in which redemption gestates.

If light were to come first, says the Maharal, it would not even be recognized as light. Without a backdrop of darkness, brightness has no meaning. The darkness carves the vessel — the sensitivity, the hollowness, the ache — through which the light can finally be received.

Suffering and humility, then, are not wasted. They are the plowing of the soul. They make the ground fertile. They soften the heart. And in that broken soil, in that humbled earth, growth can occur.

This transforms how we understand exile, suffering, or moments of personal struggle. They are not just “bad times” we must grit our teeth through until the good comes. They are the preparation, the necessary soil, for the good itself.

Rav Tzadok HaKohen — The Structure of Redemption

Rav Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin (Resisei Layla, ch. 24) develops this idea further: before something truly great can occur, it must be preceded by a period of darkness, confusion, or difficulty. This is not incidental — it is the very structure of redemption.

• The greatest day in our history was Matan Torah on the 6th of Sivan, 2448 years after creation. But that blazing moment of light — when the heavens opened and G-d’s voice thundered across the world — was not free. It was preceded by 210 years of backbreaking labor in Egypt, the long night of exile, the “black goats.” Without passing through the choshech of galut Mitzrayim, there could have been no or of Sinai.

• The same pattern repeats with the Mishkan. What greater light is there than the Shechina dwelling among Israel? And yet the impetus to build the Mishkan arose only after the darkest national failure: the sin of the Golden Calf. Again, the black goats had to walk first, before the white sheep could follow.

  
  

This is the divine rhythm: darkness before light, exile before redemption, failure before growth. The Gemara’s image of goats and sheep is not a quaint pastoral observation — it is a spiritual law written into the fabric of creation itself. It's a manifestation of an axiom of creation.

Darkness and Light in Our Times

We don’t need to look far back in Tanach to see this principle at work — we’ve seen it in our own times. The last century bore witness to tremendous darkness in Jewish history: the destruction of European Jewry. Six million of our people, a full third of the Jewish nation, were wiped out.

Menachem Begin once told President Jimmy Carter: “The Germans tertiated my people.” Carter said: “I don’t recognize the word tertiate.” (In truth, Begin had invented it.) Begin replied: “Decimate means to kill one in ten. The Germans tertiated my people. They killed one in three. One third of the Jewish people were destroyed.”

And yet, in the shadow of that abyss came one of the greatest lights of modern times. From the ashes of the Holocaust emerged the State of Israel — the first sovereign Jewish homeland in nearly two thousand years. From shattered Torah centers arose a revitalization of yeshivot across the world. Darkness came first, but it was precisely that choshech which set the stage for a new dawn.

The rule of creation still holds: the black goats must walk before the white sheep.

Blood Before Life

This principle is not only hinted at in the black goats and white sheep, or in the great historical arcs of Sinai, the Mishkan, or the Holocaust and the State of Israel. It is also embedded in the very language of our covenant with God.

“וָאֹמַר לָךְ בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי”

“In your blood you shall live.” (Yechezkel 16:6)

Chazal read this as referring to the blood of korban pesach and brit milah. But the words also encode this axiom: before there can be chayi (life), there must first be damaich (blood, sacrifice, pain). There is no vitality without cost. No birth without blood. No redemption without sacrifice.

כִּבְרִיָּיתוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם — דִּבְרֵישָׁא חֲשׁוֹכָא, וַהֲדַר נְהוֹרָא. 

That is the law. That is the axiom. Just as Hashem etched gravity into the cosmos, or the laws of thermodynamics into the fabric of creation, so too He encoded this rhythm into the very heartbeat of existence: first darkness, then light. It is not a suggestion, not a parable, but a law as real as physics.

אָמַר רַבִּי סִימוֹן: אֵין לְךָ כָּל עֵשֶׂב וְעֵשֶׂב, שֶׁאֵין לוֹ מַזָּל בָּרָקִיעַ שֶׁמַּכֶּה אוֹתוֹ, וְאוֹמֵר לוֹ גְּדַל

Every blade of grass has an angel appointed over it, who strikes it and commands, “Grow!” (Bereishit Rabbah 10:6).

Why must the angel strike it? Why not simply whisper encouragement? Because that is the structure of creation itself: growth comes only after a blow. The makkah (strike) precedes the aliyah (elevation). Every step upward, every spurt of growth, is birthed through a moment of pain or resistance.

Hashem is not pushing us down when He allows darkness; He is setting us up for something greater. Our task is to endure the choshech, to recognize it as the prelude, not the end.

We see this pattern of darkness before light on the individual level, on the historical level, and even on the cosmic level of creation itself. But the Jewish story has another layer to it — one that speaks not only to the sequence of light after darkness, but to the extremes of what it means to be Am Yisrael.

In my last blog, I touched on the prayer Aleinu Leshabe’ach. It is meant to be recited בְּאֵימָה וּבְיִרְאָה — with awe, with trembling, with the weight of eternity in our mouths. The first paragraph is said to go back more than 3,500 years, to Yehoshua bin Nun, as he led Am Yisrael into the Land. That makes it one of the oldest tefillot we possess.

And yet — perhaps because it sits at the very end of davening — so many of us skim it, mumble it, or skip it altogether. We treat it like a polite closing, a benediction before the door. But in truth, Aleinu is no afterthought. It is a thunderous declaration of identity: who we are, Whom we serve, and what it means to live as a people whose goral — whose lot and destiny — is bound directly with Hashem Himself.

And this point is crucial: Aleinu is not simply a second version of the blessing “שלא עשני גוי” from birkat hashachar. We’ve already thanked Hashem for not making us non-Jews. Here, something far deeper is being said. It is not just about who we are not — it is about who we are. A people whose fate is unlike any other, whose portion is unique, whose goral is set apart, tethered to Hashem alone.

In my next blog, be’ezrat Hashem, I hope to explore the line “שֶׁלֹּא שָׂם חֶלְקֵנוּ כָּהֶם וְגוֹרָלֵנוּ כְּכָל הֲמוֹנָם” — and how goreleinu, our lot, is intertwined with the awesome judgments of Rosh Hashanah. But for now, in this piece, let us remain with the line before it: “שֶׁלֹּא עָשָׂנוּ כְּגוֹיֵי הָאֲרָצוֹת.”

Before we can explain why we are different from the nations of the world, we need to pause and look at a Gemara (Ketuvot 67b).

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: מַעֲשֶׂה בְּרַבָּן יוֹחָנָן בֶּן זַכַּאי שֶׁהָיָה רוֹכֵב עַל הַחֲמוֹר וְהָיָה יוֹצֵא מִירוּשָׁלַיִם, וְהָיוּ תַּלְמִידָיו מְהַלְּכִין אַחֲרָיו.

The Sages taught: There was an incident involving Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai. When he was riding on a donkey and leaving Jerusalem, and his students were walking after him to learn from him…

The Gemara situates us in the ruins of Jerusalem, the leader of the generation leaving behind the holy city in disgrace.

…רָאָה רִיבָה אַחַת שֶׁהָיְתָה מְלַקֶּטֶת שְׂעוֹרִים מִבֵּין גֶּלְלֵי בְהֶמְתָּן שֶׁל עַרְבִיִּים. כֵּיוָן שֶׁרָאֲתָה אוֹתוֹ, נִתְעַטְּפָה בִּשְׂעָרָהּ וְעָמְדָה לְפָנָיו.

…he saw a certain young woman who was gathering barley from among the dung of the animals of Arabs. She was so poor that she survived on undigested barley kernels. When she saw him, she wrapped herself in her hair, having nothing else to cover herself, and stood before him.

This is one of the most heart-wrenching images in all of Shas. A Jewish daughter reduced to rummaging through animal waste, scraping undigested barley kernels out of animal dung, with only her hair for clothing.

אָמְרָה לוֹ: רַבִּי, פַּרְנְסֵנִי. אָמַר לָהּ: בִּתִּי, מִי אַתְּ? אָמְרָה לוֹ: בַּת נַקְדִּימוֹן בֶּן גּוּרְיוֹן אֲנִי.

She said to him: My teacher, sustain me. He asked her: My daughter, who are you? She replied: I am the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion.

The revelation is staggering. This isn’t just any beggar. This is the daughter of Nakdimon ben Gurion — one of the three wealthiest men of Jerusalem, a man whose fortune was so vast the Gemara says he could sustain the entire city for years. His daughter’s ketuba alone was worth a thousand thousand gold dinars.

אָמַר לַהּ: בִּתִּי, מָמוֹן שֶׁל בֵּית אָבִיךָ הֵיכָן הָלַךְ?… אָמְרָה לוֹ: רַבִּי, לָא כְּדֵין מָתְלִין מַתְלָא בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם: מֶלַח מָמוֹן — חֶסֶר? וְאָמְרִי לַהּ: חֶסֶד.

He said to her: My daughter, where did the money of your father’s house go? She answered: Rabbi, isn’t there a proverb in Jerusalem: “The salt of money is its loss”? And some say: “The salt of money is kindness.”

In other words, he did not give enough Tzedakka, in proportion to his wealth. Wealth without generosity rots. Money unspent on kindness cannot last. Even the greatest fortune can vanish when it is hoarded, not shared.

אָמְרָה לוֹ: רַבִּי, זָכוּר אַתָּה כְּשֶׁחָתַמְתָּ עַל כְּתוּבָּתִי? אָמַר לַתַּלְמִידָיו: זָכוּר אֲנִי… וְהָיִיתִי קוֹרֵא בָּהּ: אֶלֶף אֲלָפִים דִּינְרֵי זָהָב מִבֵּית אָבִיהָ, חוּץ מִשֶּׁל חָמִיהָ.

She said to him: Rabbi, do you remember when you signed my marriage contract? He turned to his students and said: I remember. I read in her ketuba: a thousand thousand gold dinars from her father’s house, not including that which came from her father-in-law.

Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai himself had seen the dizzying wealth of Nakdimon’s household — wealth so immense it was almost unimaginable. And now, that same daughter stood before him in filth and shame.

בָּכָה רַבָּן יוֹחָנָן בֶּן זַכַּאי וְאָמַר: אַשְׁרֵיכֶם יִשְׂרָאֵל, בִּזְמַן שֶׁעוֹשִׂין רְצוֹנוֹ שֶׁל מָקוֹם אֵין כׇּל אוּמָּה וְלָשׁוֹן שׁוֹלֶטֶת בָּהֶם, וּבִזְמַן שֶׁאֵין עוֹשִׂין רְצוֹנוֹ שֶׁל מָקוֹם, מוֹסְרָן בְּיַד אוּמָּה שְׁפָלָה. וְלֹא בְּיַד אוּמָּה שְׁפָלָה, אֶלָּא בְּיַד בְּהֶמְתָּן שֶׁל אוּמָּה שְׁפָלָה.

Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai wept and said: Fortunate are you, Israel! When you fulfill the will of the Omnipresent, no nation can rule over you. But when you do not, you are delivered into the hand of a lowly nation. And not only into the hand of a lowly nation, but even into the hand of the animals of a lowly nation.

Here the Gemara cuts to the essence of Jewish destiny. Other nations rise and fall by degrees. But Israel is different. We do not live in the middle. When we fulfill the will of Hashem, we rise to dazzling heights — ketubot of millions, streets paved with jewels, wealth and honor beyond imagination. But when we fail, we fall to depths that defy imagination — rummaging in animal dung for scraps. Stars or dust, glory or degradation, never mediocrity.

This is precisely the meaning of Aleinu: שֶׁלֹּא עָשָׂנוּ כְּגוֹיֵי הָאֲרָצוֹת. We are not like the nations of the earth. Our fate is direct with Hashem, unmediated by angels (I will explain this point in the next blog), and therefore it is always extreme, always unprecedented, always miraculous — for good or for bad.

And this is exactly why the Torah describes Am Yisrael in two opposite images: “כְּכוֹכְבֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם” — like the stars of the heavens — and “כַּחֹול אֲשֶׁר עַל שְׂפַת הַיָּם” — like the sand on the seashore, the dust beneath feet.

When we rise, we do not just prosper; we soar to the stars, to heights no other nation has ever reached, to an existence lit by unprecedented brilliance.

And when we fall, we do not simply decline; we plummet to the dust, to be trampled and trodden underfoot, degraded to the lowest imaginable place. Stars or dust. Nothing in between.

Throughout Jewish history, our story has swung between extremes unlike any other

nation. When Am Yisrael rises, our heights surpass anything the world has ever witnessed; when we fall, our descent is to depths no other people has ever endured.

מוֹסְרָן בְּיַד אוּמָּה שְׁפָלָה

 — “delivered into the hands of the most degraded of nations.”

We saw this tragically on October 7th, when bands of terrorists on motorcycles carried out unspeakable massacres וּלְאַבֵּד אֶת־כָּל־הַיְּהוּדִים מִנַּעַר וְעַד־זָקֵן טַף וְנָשִׁים בְּיוֹם אֶחָד of men, women, and children in a single day.

If Rav Yochanan Ben Zakkai had been there on October 7th, or if Rav Yochanan had seen the gas chambers of Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz, do you know what he would have done? He would have wept bitter tears. Yet, at the same time, he would have said: “אַשְׁרֵיכֶם יִשְׂרָאֵל – Fortunate are you, Israel!”

For people ask: Where was G-d? In the Holocaust. On October 7th. The lows we reach is the very proof that it is the hand of G-d. The very fact that our destiny is written in such radical peaks and valleys is itself the strongest testimony that this is not the work of human chance. No ordinary nation experiences history in such absolute extremes. Our unparalleled suffering and our miraculous survival both point in the same direction: this is the hand of God guiding His people. בִּזְמַן שֶׁעוֹשִׂין רְצוֹנוֹ שֶׁל מָקוֹם אֵין כׇּל אוּמָּה וְלָשׁוֹן שׁוֹלֶטֶת בָּהֶם - when the Jews are doing the will of Hashem, no nation can touch them.

And this, perhaps, is the deeper meaning of what we declare every day in Aleinu: שֶׁלֹּא עָשָׂנוּ כְּגוֹיֵי הָאֲרָצוֹת וְלֹא שָׂמָנוּ כְּמִשְׁפְּחוֹת הָאֲדָמָה — that Hashem has not placed our lot with the nations of the world. Most nations of history “flat-line”; their fate is managed by a guardian angel, their destiny rises and falls within natural limits. But Am Yisrael is different. We are dealt with directly by Hashem Himself. And so our story knows no middle ground: either we soar to the heavens like the stars of the sky, or we sink to the dust of the earth, trampled underfoot. There is no permanence in between. This is the awe and the privilege of being Hashem’s people — to live at the very extremes of history, carrying in our destiny the unmistakable imprint of His hand.

Unprecedented Heights

But just as we have witnessed unprecedented lows, so too we have seen unprecedented heights. On 13 April 2024, Iran launched an unprecedented aerial attack on Israel. It was codenamed "Operation True Promise". Below are quotes from Wikipedia:

Iran's attack sent around 170 drones, over 30 cruise missiles, and more than 120 ballistic missiles toward Israel

The attack was the largest attempted aerial assault in history, intended to overwhelm anti-aircraft defenses.

It was unprecedented. Nevere in history, was there an aerial assault - missiles, drones -of this scale against one nation, at one time. And yet, by open miracles hidden in the guise of technology and courage, ninety-nine percent of those missiles were intercepted or failed to hit their mark. We have also seen the unparalleled precision and strength of Israel’s operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Iranian infrastructure itself. Such victories are far beyond the realm of ordinary military strategy. They bear the unmistakable imprint of Divine providence — reminders that when Am Yisrael rises, it is only through the hand of Hashem, lifting us to heights no nation has ever reached. Ofcourse we know, that there was tremendous Tefillot and davenning happening at the time of the attack - and it is obvious that in the merit of that Hashem did an 'unprecedented' miracle for the Jewish people.

Returning to Ki Tavo

And now we can return to Parshat Ki Tavo, the Torah lays out the terrifying vision of the curses. It tells us that when we fall, it will not be ordinary misfortune but collapse without precedent. “You will try to sell yourselves as slaves, but no one will even buy you.” A descent so deep that it defies imagination.

And then, immediately after, the Torah turns the page and reminds us of the flip side: just as our lows are without precedent, so too are our highs. Remember the miracles of Egypt, where Hashem shattered an empire with open wonders. Remember the splitting of the sea, when nature itself was overturned for us. Remember the forty years in the desert, when Hashem sustained us with manna from heaven, water from the well of Miriam, and clothes that never wore out.

The Torah is teaching us that Israel’s destiny is never in the middle — it swings between the extremes of history, so that the world can never mistake our story for anything other than the hand of God.

Making It Personal

Everything I have written up to this point – I have taken from two shiurim by Rabbi Eli Mansour - basically transcribed word for word. But from here, I would like to make it personal.

For me, all of this does not remain in the abstract. It speaks directly into my own life. There are two take-home lessons I carry with me personally. As I wrote previously, my wife’s cancer is so atypical, so far outside the expected course of nature, that we cannot help but see it as the Hand of Hashem. It is a direct message, tailor-made for us — a reminder that just as the destiny of Am Yisrael is guided in ways that defy human logic, so too are the events of our personal lives held in Hashem’s hands.

And so we pray that by striving to do the will of Hashem, we will be zocheh to witness not just recovery, but an unprecedented recovery. That is the Ashreichem Yisrael of Rabbi Yochanan: that even from the most unfathomable dips, we can be lifted to the highest peaks. And that is also why I created this website in the first place — to leave a paper trail, so that when we are granted a miracle, there will be no mistaking it. Everyone will be able to look back and see clearly just how impossible the situation was, and just how wondrous the salvation truly is.

Growth After Darkness

And the second point is this: spiritual growth so often emerges only after darkness. As Chazal teach, כִּבְרִיָּיתוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם — דִּבְרֵישָׁא חֲשׁוֹכָא, וַהֲדַר נְהוֹרָא — just as at the very beginning of creation, first came darkness and only then light. It is the axiom of the world itself.

And so too in our lives: from within the darkness we now find ourselves in, we have already been blessed with unexpected growth. And with Hashem’s help, we pray that this growth will only multiply, until the light that follows is so much greater than the darkness that preceded it.

Ribono Shel Olam, from the depths of our darkness, let us rise to unprecedented light. May You bless Michal Chava bat Feiga Aviva with an unprecedented, complete and wondrous refuah sheleimah.