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On My Mind

Mrs. Aliza Feder's Newsletter

Five Easy Steps to Yira'as Shamayim.

Lol.

Welcome back to routine.

It’s been almost a month since I last appeared in your inbox. When I wrote my last newsletter during aseres yemei teshuva, many of you had just listened to my class, Practically Speaking: How to Do Teshuvah. More than one hundred women joined this list after that class, so if this is your first regular newsletter from me, welcome. And to those of you who have been here for a while, welcome back. There is something comforting about returning to ordinary life after the intensity and disruption of the yamim tovim, even if we know it won't be long before “ordinary” begins to feel slightly less exciting.

I should probably tell our new readers at the outset that you will not actually be receiving five easy steps to yiras Shamayim from me today—or, most likely, ever.

I have been thinking a lot about that teshuvah class, because the response to it surprised me. It is certainly not the most sophisticated class I have ever given. There are other classes into which I have poured far more complicated ideas, more unusual sources, and more original thought. This particular class is really pretty simple. It explained, practically speaking, how to do teshuvah.

And yet women keep reaching out to tell me how helpful it was. (You have no idea how much every piece of feedback is appreciated btw!) Again and again, I heard some version of the same sentence: “I never really knew what I was supposed to do before.”

That sentence is staying with me.

Teshuvah is hardly an obscure subject. We speak about it every year. We learn about its beauty, its power, and the closeness to Hashem that it makes possible. 

But then we sit down and wonder: So...What exactly am I supposed to do now?

Am I supposed to think about everything I have done wrong? Feel terrible? Choose one thing to work on? Say Vidui? Make a kabbalah? How long am I supposed to spend on this, and how do I know when I have actually done teshuvah?

It’s possible to know a great deal about the oppurtunity of teshuvah and still not know how to do teshuvah.

The response to the class helped me understand something about the kind of teaching I most want to offer. I love big ideas. I genuinely get real pleasure from a beautiful Torah thought, and I will probably always be the person who wants to understand one more layer and find one more source. But I am realizing more and more that an idea has not completed its journey simply because we have understood it—or even because we have been deeply moved by it.

At some point, it needs a handle.

But here's the part I'm realizing: a handle does not make the thing itself smaller. A handle simply allows us to hold something that would otherwise be too large, or heavy to carry into our lives.

This is not a new idea. In the introduction to Mesillas Yesharim, the Ramchal makes the interesting admission that he did not write his sefer primarily to teach people things they did not know:

“החיבור הזה לא חברתיו ללמד לבני האדם את אשר לא ידעו, אלא להזכירם את הידוע להם כבר ומפורסם אצלם פרסום גדול.”

“I did not compose this work to teach people what they do not know, but rather to remind them of what they already know and what is already widely familiar to them.” 

He continues to explain that because these truths are so well known and so obviously true, we frequently overlook and forget them. Rarely is the thing we need another idea. Sometimes the problem is that the ideas we already know have never become sufficiently real, clear, or usable to shape the way we live. I tell my students constantly that everything they need to know they probably already learned in seventh and eighth grade. The rest of their lives is going to be about integration.

Famously, the Ramban gives his son an instruction that may be one of the most important directives for learning Torah:

“וכאשר תקום מן הספר, תחפש באשר למדת אם יש בו דבר אשר תוכל לקיימו.”

“When you rise from the sefer, search within what you have learned for something that you can fulfill.” (Iggeres HaRamban)

Notice that he doesn’t say that we should happen to see if there is an obvious practical application. He says: תחפש. Search for it. Look through what you have learned and ask: Where does this meet my life? What would it look like in practice? What can I now do differently because of this Torah?

That does not reduce Torah to a life hack. What it does is ask Torah to complete its journey.

We live in an age that offers us an almost limitless supply of inspiration. There is always another clip, another quote, another beautiful vort, another moving story. It is entirely possible to consume Torah content all day and still be left without any greater clarity about what to do when we lose our temper, feel nothing during davening, become consumed with jealousy, realize that we have dropped a kabbalah, or arrive at Elul knowing that we ought to do teshuvah but not knowing where to begin.

Maybe that’s part of what Chazal are warning us about when they describe a person whose wisdom exceeds her actions as a tree with many branches but few roots. When a strong wind comes, the tree is overturned. But a person whose actions exceed her wisdom is compared to a tree with deep roots; even the strongest winds can’t uproot it. (Pirkei Avos 3:17)

It goes without saying that Chazal aren't diminishing chochmah. They are telling us that ideas need somewhere to take root. Otherwise, we can accumulate more and more branches—beautiful thoughts, moving classes, fresh inspiration—without building the inner structure that allows them to withstand real life.

This is also why, despite all the very sensible people telling me that I would get a way bigger audience if I wrote shorter, more regular posts (no one has patience to read Aliza, and people love a daily less than two-minute WhatsApp boost!), I do not intend to begin producing daily short-form content. 

Daily content would almost certainly help me reach more people. I understand why it works, and I know that there are talented people who use that format beautifully and meaningfully. But I do not want my role in a woman’s life to be to provide her with a small daily spiritual lift- and then have to return tomorrow for another one.

And I really don't want to become another part of the endless stream of content she consumes.

I want to offer something she can take with her.

That means that I communicate less frequently. It may mean staying with one subject for longer than sixty seconds, or one paragraph It may even mean allowing some space after an idea instead of immediately replacing it with the next one. But I would rather help a woman become able to do something than simply make her want to hear something else from me tomorrow. I dream of building a community of thoughtful, deep, engaged women who are committed to the process. 

There is, after all, an enormous difference between making Torah accessible and making Torah bite-sized. There is a difference between making an idea simple and making it slight. And there is a difference between a shortcut, which allows us to avoid the complexity, and a handle, which allows us to hold it.

That’s what I hope we do in my tiny corner. Every other Wednesday, I take a question, struggle, or idea that has been on my mind and try to think it through with you—ALWAYS drawing on Torah sources, the realities of ordinary life, and, whenever possible, a framework that can help us carry the idea forward after we have finished reading.

Sometimes that will mean explaining exactly how to do something, as I did in the teshuvah class. Sometimes it will mean offering a framework through which to think: Is this growth or guilt? Is this ideal genuinely wrong for my life right now, or is it simply difficult? Is this a meaningful kabbalah or an Elul fantasy? Am I using technology, or is it quietly reshaping what feels normal to me?

I will not always be able to tell you precisely what to do, because authentic avodas Hashem cannot be reduced to one identical prescription for every person. But I hope I can help you identify your next honest step.

And because some questions need more room than even one of my admittedly long newsletters can give them, I have also created a number of recorded courses. There is nothing in particular that I am promoting this month. Think of this simply as a map: if one of these is the question you are carrying right now, this is where you can continue the conversation.

• If you understand bitachon intellectually but still find yourself living with anxiety, grasping for control, or wondering how emunah is meant to change the way you move through the world, the Proactive Bitachon course explores a practical, source-based approach to living with greater trust, calm, and awareness of Hashem’s shefa. Learning these concepts has changed my life. 

• If davening often feels like words you say rather than a relationship you experience, the Tefillah course is about building a more personal and meaningful relationship with tefillah—not merely understanding more words, but learning how to use tefillah for connection, clarity, and alignment.

• If tznius has ever felt superficial, restrictive, or almost entirely about clothing, the Tznius course goes back to the deeper middah beneath the halachos and explores what tznius can teach us about dignity, privacy, identity, and the particular power of a Jewish woman.

• If you are tired of trying to become someone else’s version of an eved Hashem, Authentic Avodas Hashem helps you understand how your personality, circumstances, strengths, and struggles can become the raw material for a more personal, sustainable, and honest avodah.

• If you want to give a teenager—or your own inner teenager—a clear, relevant foundation in hashkafah, the Teen Series addresses the questions girls are genuinely asking about tafkid, mitzvos, emunah, the yetzer hara, and what it means to live as a neshama in the real world.

• If you are not looking for another lecture about whether technology is good or bad, but you do want to think honestly about what it may be doing to your attention, expectations, relationships, and inner world, TechTalks is the place for that conversation (stay tuned for more exciting news on this front!).

So, no five easy steps to yiras Shamayim for me (or you, sorry), but enough clarity, depth, and structure to take one real step toward it.

Still reading? You’re my type of person:).

If you are new here, I am so glad you found your way to this community. And whether you are new or have been reading for years, I would genuinely love to hear from you: What is an area of avodas Hashem whose importance you understand, but whose practical application has always felt unclear? Where have you heard many beautiful ideas but still found yourself wondering, “What am I actually supposed to do?”

Please reply and tell me. Your answer may help determine what we explore here next.

And if there is a friend who would enjoy these kinds of conversations, now would be a wonderful time to invite her into our community. You can forward her this email or have her sign up with this link. I would love to welcome her too.

A gutten vinter,

Mrs. Aliza Feder

PS. Ok, my newsletters aren’t usually this long. Sometimes they are quite short. Consider this an initiation rite?