Mrs. Sarah Pachter

U-Turn to Rosh Hashanah

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, a simple yet striking question occupies our mind.

How do you crown a G-d you cannot see, touch, or physically experience? How do you make Hashem your King when His presence is not tangible?

On October 7, Ofri Reiner went to Nova with a group of friends. They were dancing, drinking, celebrating, and completely unaware of what was about to unfold. Then the rockets began.

But one of her friends, who had previously experienced a terrorist attack and suffered from PTSD, reacted differently. “I’m leaving,” he told them. They tried to calm him down. “It’s Gaza. There are always rockets. Stay.” But he insisted. Then suddenly they saw thousands of people running.

The festival grounds emptied toward a T-shaped intersection, leaving drivers with only two choices: right or left. They chose right. Traffic barely moved. Then terrorists approached on foot and began firing into the cars. Their driver immediately made a sharp U-turn. The vehicle nearly flipped, but it struck another car, which stabilized it and they kept going. Cars were colliding everywhere, but stopping was not an option.

After roughly thirty or forty minutes, they finally reached what appeared to be safety: a quiet area outside a gated community. They were about to enter when they noticed a man standing outside who seemed lost. They rolled down the window.

“Do you need help?” He looked at their car and suddenly said, “You’re the people who hit my car! We need to exchange information.”

Ofri told me they were stunned. It was October 7. People were fleeing for their lives. Cars had been crashing into one another everywhere, and this man wanted insurance information. But they did not want an argument. So they stopped. They exchanged names, photographs, license and insurance information.

And the moment they finished—literally the moment they were preparing to enter the community—someone came running toward them. “Don’t go in! There are terrorists everywhere. They’ve infiltrated the kibbutz.”

The community they had been about to enter was Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the communities devastated on October 7. Had they not stopped for what seemed like an absurd, frustrating, utterly pointless exchange of insurance information, they could have driven directly into the attack.

What looked like a delay may have been the very thing that saved their lives.

And now let me tell you about one of the soldiers who fought to save Kibbutz Be’eri.

Shraga Rubenstein was only twenty-two years old, yet he was commanding approximately sixty soldiers that day. His unit was among those sent into Be’eri, where he told me the fighting and clearing operation continued for days.

Their ordeal began before they even arrived. They were flying in a helicopter, searching for a place to land, when Shraga spotted a terrorist on a motorcycle firing at them. Minutes later, the helicopter was hit, damaging the fuel system, and the aircraft crashed violently into the ground.

Sixty soldiers were trapped inside.

Smoke began filling the helicopter. The hydraulics had failed, and they could not open the doors. Eventually, the pilot managed to create an escape route, and the soldiers began running out. But they were now standing in an open field, exposed and vulnerable, with terrorists in the surrounding area.

As Shraga ran, he suddenly realized that his buddy was missing. And in the army, a “buddy” is not simply a friend. It is the person you are responsible for and who is responsible for you. Shraga contacted an officer who was still near the helicopter.

“Turn around. Go back. See if he’s inside.” Think about what that meant. The helicopter was damaged, smoking, and at risk of exploding.

The officer turned around. He went back inside and found Shraga’s buddy trapped in the wreckage. Part of his uniform had become caught on the helicopter, and he could not free himself. The officer released him, and the two ran. Approximately thirty seconds later, the helicopter exploded.

They survived.

From there, these soldiers went on to fight at Kibbutz Be’eri.

Once there, Shraga was positioned behind a wall, exchanging fire with terrorists. He would emerge, fire, and take cover again. Then he looked to his side.

A terrorist was standing nearby. The terrorist smiled, raised his weapon, and fired.

Shraga told me that everything seemed to move in slow motion. He could see the bullet coming toward him. And then something extraordinary happened.

Beside him was an iron gate. The bullet struck one of the narrow pieces of metal in the gate and ricocheted away. His life was spared.

How do you understand moments like that?

The Spinner Knob That Saved

I want to tell you one more story.

There was an Israeli paratrooper named Erez Shmuelian. Erez was participating in a routine training exercise and the soldier ahead of him jumped without incident. Then it was Erez’s turn.

As he jumped, a safety cord became entangled around his hand, and the force traumatically severed his hand. His hand landed in one place; he landed somewhere else. It took approximately an hour to locate the severed hand. He was rushed to the hospital, where surgeons performed an extraordinarily long operation and successfully reattached it.

But Erez never regained normal sensation in that hand. The IDF provided rehabilitation—occupational therapy, physical therapy, and assistance adapting to everyday life. They even installed a spinner knob on his steering wheel so that he could maneuver his car effectively with one hand.

But imagine being Erez. Would a spinner knob make everything okay?

Of course not. He was angry. What made it especially difficult was that this had not happened while saving someone in combat. There was no heroic explanation he could give himself. It seemed like a meaningless training accident. He wondered what his future would look like. Would he ever marry? Would he ever build a normal life?

Eventually, he did marry and had two children. Years later, during the Intifada, Erez was driving with his family along a road near their home when three terrorists suddenly appeared and opened fire on their vehicle. The windows shattered. In that instant, he understood that his family was in mortal danger.

And then he remembered the spinner knob. With one hand, he grabbed it and executed an extraordinarily fast U-turn, escaping the gunfire.

Erez later explained that had he not suffered that terrible injury years earlier—had his car never been adapted with that spinner knob—he did not believe he could have turned the vehicle quickly enough to escape. The injury he had once regarded as meaningless became part of what saved his life, his wife’s life, and his children’s lives.

What connects these three stories? The U-turn.

Ofri Reiner’s driver makes a U-turn, and they escape the terrorists. An officer turns around and goes back toward a burning helicopter, and a soldier’s life is saved. Erez Shmuelian makes a U-turn, and his family escapes an attack.

There is another U-turn we encounter, and it is in the Torah.

After the Jewish people have finally left Egypt, Pharaoh and his army are pursuing them and the sea lies before them. They are trapped between two apparent forms of death.

And then Hashem gives them a remarkable instruction: “And they shall turn back” (Shemos 14:2). Hashem tells the Jewish people to reverse direction.

Think about that. After generations of slavery, they have finally escaped Egypt, and Hashem tells them to turn around and head back toward the very place from which they have just been liberated. If you were standing there, would that make sense? You are finally free. Why would Hashem lead you backward?

There are several answers, and I want to give you three. Each corresponds to one of the stories just shared. The first answer is practical.

The Ibn Ezra explains that the maneuver created the impression that the Jewish people were confused and vulnerable. Pharaoh saw them turning back and concluded that they were lost and trapped. That emboldened the Egyptians to pursue them.

What appeared to be a retreat was actually part of the strategy that would bring about their ultimate salvation. That is the first kind of U-turn.

Sometimes Hashem turns you around because the path that appears to be taking you backward is actually positioning you for the rescue ahead. That is Ofri Reiner. At the time, stopping to exchange insurance information seemed absurd. It was merely a practical inconvenience; an unwanted interruption in the middle of an emergency. Only moments later could they see what that interruption had accomplished.

Sometimes what looks like the delay is the deliverance and what like the wrong turn is the road that saves you.

The first expression of faith is accepting that just because we cannot yet see where the U-turn is leading does not mean there is no destination.

Your Point of Return

Let us go further.

Sometimes in life, we have to turn around and look backward before we can understand why Hashem allowed certain things to happen.

The Jewish people enter the Yam Suf, the sea splits, and then they turn around. Suddenly, Egypt is behind them. And perhaps, for the first time, they can look back at everything they have endured and begin to understand, “Oh. This is what it was leading toward.”

The ten plagues, the confrontation with Pharaoh, and even that painful moment when Moshe first approached Pharaoh and, instead of improving, the Jews’ suffering became worse was Divinely orchestrated. At the time, none of it seemed to make sense. But now they could look backward and see that the pieces were part of a much larger story.

That is Erez Shmuelian.

For years, he could not understand why he had suffered such a devastating injury. Why did his hand have to be severed? Why did he have to endure surgery, rehabilitation, and a lifetime without normal sensation? And then, years later, he found himself under terrorist fire with his wife and children in the car. He grabbed that spinner knob and made the U-turn that saved his family. Only then could he look backward and see his past differently.

Sometimes we cannot understand an experience while we are living through it. Sometimes only years later, when we turn around and look back, do we begin to see what Hashem may have been building all along.

The word the Torah uses when the Jewish people turn around is V’yashuvu, a word which sounds much like—teshuvah. To return. It is more than a linguistic similarity. It captures the essence of what teshuvah is.

Teshuvah does not simply mean regretting something you once did. One of its deepest expressions is returning to the same situation in which you once failed, and this time making a different choice. The Rambam famously describes complete teshuvah in precisely those terms: the same type of situation presents itself again, the person has the ability to repeat the wrongdoing, but now refrains because he has changed.

Imagine that you walk over to the water cooler at work and a few coworkers are standing there talking about Lisa.

“She is so annoying. I can’t deal with her.” You join the conversation and say something you probably should not have said. Then you attend a class and hear about the seriousness of speaking negatively about another person and you think about it and decide you want to change. A week later, you walk back to that same water cooler. Same place. Same coworkers. Same Lisa.

But this time, you make a different choice. You remain silent. Maybe you walk away or maybe you even change the subject. That is teshuvah. You returned to the same place, but you did not return as the same person.

That gives us a powerful way to understand the U-turn at the Yam Suf. Hashem takes the Jewish people out of Egypt and then tells them, “Turn around. Go back.” Sometimes, spiritual growth requires a U-turn. You return to the place where you once stood helpless, but now you stand there with faith. You return to the place where you once made a poor choice and now you make a good choice.

The question each of us must ask ourselves as Rosh Hashanah approaches is, “What is your U-turn going to be? Where in your life is Hashem asking you to return?”

I was in Israel on October 7. When the attack began, I found myself inside a bomb shelter with my two-year-old on my lap and my five-year-old beside me. I remember having one terrifying realization: if terrorists reached where we were, I did not know how I could possibly escape. I had two little children with me. I could not simply run.

After October 7, a rabbi said something to me that I have never forgotten.

“What is your moment going to be?” he asked, rhetorically.

Do not allow difficult times in your life to become something that happened around you but changed nothing within you. Do not survive an experience like that, return to ordinary life, and simply say, “Thank G-d it’s over.”

Make one U-turn. If you do, after 120 years, when you stand before Hashem, you can say, “Hashem, I woke up. Something happened to me, and I did not go back to sleep.”

The Yichud Jewelry

Allow me to share what my personal U-turn moment was.

After October 7, there was a flyer circulating on WhatsApp. Some of you may remember it. It was directed toward women and asked a simple question: do you have a piece of jewelry that you no longer wear?

The idea was to donate jewelry to women in Israel who had lost everything in the attacks. Terrorists had entered their homes, destroyed their belongings, and stolen what they could. This initiative was an opportunity to give something personal back and to respond to destruction and tragedy with generosity and unity.

There were collection points throughout New York, but none in Los Angeles. So a friend and I decided to open our homes as drop-off locations. Women began bringing jewelry, and eventually we found someone traveling to Israel who could deliver it.

One woman donated a diamond necklace. But this was not an ordinary necklace.

It was the necklace her husband had given her in the Yichud Room at their wedding. After the chuppah, the bride and groom enter a private room together for the first time as husband and wife, and sometimes the groom gives his bride a special gift.

This woman gave away that gift. And with the necklace, she included a letter. She wrote that yichud means to be alone or in solitude. And then she told the woman who would receive her necklace: “I want you to know that you are not alone. The Jewish people are crying with you. Together and united, we can stand stronger.”

She gave one of the most sentimental possessions she owned to a complete stranger in Israel.

I know this woman, personally. Very well.

That woman was me.

That diamond necklace was my Yichud Room gift. My husband and I made the decision together. It was not about the monetary value of the necklace or really even about the jewelry. It was about unity.

We wanted to be able to come before Hashem and say, “Hashem, we woke up.” But that is not the remarkable part of the story.

The woman who received my necklace was named Allison. She eventually contacted me to thank me and told me about her son, who was serving in Gaza, and how frightened she was for him. We exchanged some messages and developed a small connection. Then life moved on. I did not hear from her for approximately a year, nor did I expect to.

Then, the night before I was scheduled to fly to Israel for a friend’s son’s bar mitzvah, I suddenly received a message from Allison.

She wrote: “Hi Sarah. I’m not sure you’ll remember me, but I’m the recipient of your beautiful necklace. I want to say thank you again.” She explained that when she first received it, she had struggled to understand how a piece of jewelry could possibly change her experience of the war. It was beautiful, and people complimented her on it, but ultimately, she thought, it was just a necklace.

A year later, she felt completely differently. She told me that the necklace had become the one tangible object she possessed that connected something positive to that terrible period of her life. Every Shabbos, she would look at it and think, “I survived. And a generous neshama made sure that I had something beautiful to connect to that time.”

She also told me that her son had completed his army service and was doing well. I received that message the night before flying to Israel. The next day, I arrived for the bar mitzvah.

My friend had hired two security guards to accompany our group throughout the week. I exchanged pleasantries with them, but that was essentially the extent of our interaction.

Then Shabbos arrived.

I was looking for my son, who was spending the year in Israel, because I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity to spend time with him. Finally, I found him. He was sitting and talking to one of the security guards. So I pulled up a chair and joined their conversation.

And who was that security guard?

Shraga Rubenstein. The soldier whose helicopter had crashed and whose friend had been trapped inside. The soldier who had watched a bullet come directly toward his face, only to have it ricochet off a narrow piece of an iron gate. The soldier who had fought at Kibbutz Be’eri.

I could not believe the story I was hearing and I thought, “I have to write about this.” So I pitched the story to an editor. He rejected it. “We have a lot of stories about soldiers,” he told me. “We don’t need this one.”

Normally, I would have accepted that answer. But this time, for reasons I could not explain, I pushed back. “Trust me. I have a feeling about this story.” Eventually, I wrote it and they published it and I returned home.

Then Allison sent me a message. Someone had forwarded her the article I had written about Shraga.

“Sarah, I’m shaking,” she wrote. “Do you know who Shraga is?” she asked me.

Shraga was her son.

Think about that. After October 7, I gave away my Yichud Room necklace to a woman I had never met. That woman was Allison. A year later, on the night before I happened to fly to Israel, Allison unexpectedly contacted me. The next day I arrived in Israel. My friend happened to hire a particular security guard and my son happened to sit down and speak with him. And I happened to join their conversation.

And that security guard happened to be Shraga. I happened to insist on writing his story after it was initially rejected. The article happened to reach Allison. And only then did I discover that the soldier whose story I had fought to tell was the son of the woman wearing my necklace.

You can call each piece a coincidence. But at some point, when enough pieces come together, you begin to see something else. You begin to see a Hand.

And now we can return to the question with which we began:

How do you crown a G-d you cannot see, touch, or physically feel?

Maybe the answer is that you learn to recognize Him. You cannot see Hashem Himself, but you can see His fingerprints. You can look backward at your life and recognize moments that seemed random when they happened—a rejection, an injury, a delay, a wrong turn—and suddenly realize that perhaps they were not random at all.

That is the U-turn. Sometimes the U-turn changes where you are going. Sometimes the U-turn allows you to understand where you have been.

And sometimes the U-turn is teshuvah: returning to the same place, facing the same choice, but deciding that this time, you will be different.

So as Rosh Hashanah approaches, let us ask the question: what is your U-turn moment going to be? What is the one thing you can change that will allow you to stand before Hashem and say, “Hashem, I woke up.” Because perhaps that is how we crown a King we cannot physically see. We begin to look for Him and we begin to recognize His presence in our lives.

And then we respond by changing our lives.