Dear Friends, 
To this day, I can hear my mother asking me, “Fishel, are you wearing your Moshiach glasses?” Moshiach represents the Jewish hope for a healed and redeemed world filled with peace, goodness, and the clear presence of G-d. To wear Moshiach glasses is to look at the world as it is and recognize the beauty, blessing, and possibility within it.
This week’s Torah portion, Va’etchanan, contains one of Moses’ most heartfelt prayers. After leading the Jewish people through the desert for forty years, he pleads with G-d:
אֶעְבְּרָה נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת הָאָרֶץ הַטּוֹבָה
“Please let me cross over and see the good land.”
There is something remarkable in his choice of words. Moses had never entered the Land. Years earlier, ten of the twelve spies sent there had returned frightened and convinced that the Jewish people could not succeed. How could Moses already call it “the good land”?
We often see what we have prepared ourselves to find. Even while standing outside the Land, Moses called it good. He knew that entering it would require courage, effort, and sacrifice, yet he was already preparing himself to notice its beauty, promise, and blessing.
We all see the world through a certain lens. Our perspective and attitude shape what catches our attention, what stays with us, and how we respond to the people and situations around us. When we prepare ourselves to see goodness, we become more able to recognize it. And when we notice goodness in another person and tell them that we see it, we strengthen it and help it grow.
The ten spies approached that same Land through fear, and their report filled the Jewish people with despair. The people cried that night, the ninth of Av, and that date would become marked by national tragedy. There is an important place for honest questions, constructive criticism, and speaking up when something needs to change. But when complaint becomes our entire way of seeing, we leave ourselves very little room to recognize blessing.
This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort, which follows Tisha B’Av, when we mourn the destruction of both Holy Temples and the tragedies our people have endured. Tisha B’Av asks us to face what has been lost. Shabbat Nachamu invites us to begin turning toward the comfort, healing, and rebuilding still ahead. That movement begins by making room to see hope again.
Again and again, people tell Ettie and me that at Chabad of Naples they experience the warmth, friendship, and love of a community that truly sees them. They feel valued and are reminded that they have something meaningful to contribute. We feel deeply fortunate to be part of a community where people recognize the goodness in one another and help bring it forward. That is the beauty of Chabad of Naples.
Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk offered a beautiful prayer whose words later became a beloved song, asking G-d to place within our hearts the ability to see the virtues of others rather than their faults. These are words we should begin every morning with. Imagine waking each day and asking: “G-d, help me recognize the goodness in the people I meet today. Help me strengthen it and bring more of it into the world.”
As I write these words, many of us are shaken by the recent violence in New York and alarmed by the growing hostility toward Jews and Israel. We are especially troubled when that hostility is echoed by those entrusted with leadership. Words from leaders matter. When they inflame division and make hatred feel acceptable, the consequences are real. They create a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers feel increasingly vulnerable. Our prayers are with the victims, their families and the entire New York Jewish community.
This is not a time for silence or passivity. We must remain alert, speak out clearly, stand proudly as Jews, support one another, and be ready to act when our community is threatened. Wearing Moshiach glasses does not mean looking away from danger. It means seeing the danger clearly while also recognizing the courage, unity, faith, and goodness that give us the strength to confront it.
And in the middle of all of this, I am trying to hear my mother’s voice: “Fishel, are you wearing your Moshiach glasses?”
Perhaps these are precisely the moments when we need them most. They help us confront what is painful while continuing to recognize the courage, kindness, faith, and extraordinary goodness around us. They remind us that fear and hatred do not have the final word.
Before a meeting, a family conversation, or a new opportunity, pause and ask: What am I prepared to see? When you look at another person, search for the goodness within them. When you look at yourself, recognize the strength G-d has placed within you and the person you are still capable of becoming.
This Shabbat, I am trying to put on my Moshiach glasses. I invite you to join me. Let us see the good in one another, encourage it, and help it grow.
May G-d open our eyes to the beauty around us and within us. May this way of seeing bring greater comfort, healing, peace, and redemption into our lives and into the world.
With love and blessings,
Rabbi Fishel and Ettie Zaklos