Hashem asks only one thing of you. Then the pasuk lists four more. So which is it?

In Parshas Eikev, Rabbi Prisman opens a question that sits in plain sight in Devarim, and finds the same puzzle again in L'Dovid Hashem Ori, where Dovid HaMelech asks for one thing and then names several. The answer reframes what yirah actually is: not dread of punishment, but awe -- the same letters as re'iyah, seeing. And it explains why Chazal read the word Ma as Me'ah and built a hundred brachos a day on top of it. A man once told Rabbi Yaakov Galinsky he was still researching his surgeon. Galinsky asked him about the pilot.

A man gets blamed by the Gemara for destroying Jerusalem — and he didn't do anything. He wasn't invited to the party. He didn't start the fight. He just stood there and watched someone get humiliated and thrown out, and said nothing. That silence, Rabbi Prisman argues, is the real story of the Churban — not hatred, just people who stopped noticing each other. This Tisha B'Av, that's the connection worth making: not just mourning a building, but closing the gap between not hating someone and actually feeling their pain.

Ahead of Tisha B'Av, a hard question worth sitting with: if "I don't hate anyone" is the bar you're clearing, is that actually enough?

A family did everything to find their daughter a match — every segulah, every school, every tzedakah — and nothing worked. Then a Rav asked one question that had nothing to do with shidduchim: is theresomeone you're holding a grudge against? What they uncovered, and what happened the very next year in their own backyard, is one of the most quietly stunning stories about what's actually blocking our brachos.

This episode is about why sometimes the good isn't missing — it's just waiting for us to clear something out of the way first.