Greater Washington - September 16,2026 - It is hard to capture emotion and inspiration in words. Writing about a feeling is a little like trying to describe a taste, you can explain it, but somehow the description always falls short of the experience itself.
Trying to capture the inspiration of the LEV Experience is much the same. To truly understand it, you need to participate in person. Still, if I may, I would like to open a small window into the inspiration and power of spending Rosh Hashanah with the LEV Experience in Rockville, Maryland.
The program is designed as a unique hybrid, combining traditional tefillah with opportunities for people at every level of Jewish knowledge and observance to participate, learn, and grow. There is beautiful davening and singing, capturing the timeless minhagim and melodies of the Yamim Noraim. Alongside that are explanatory services, inspirational lectures, meaningful discussions, and perhaps most importantly, an overwhelming sense of warmth and family.
But even that description does not quite capture it.
Each year, I find myself searching for the moment—the one powerful idea or experience that I will carry with me into the coming year. And each year, that task proves impossible. There are simply too many moments, each containing its own message, inspiration, and power.
This year, however, one moment stands out.
We were sitting together at the beautiful seudah on the second night of Yom Tov. During the meals, Rabbi Shlomo and Devorah Buxbaum often pose discussion questions for each table. Everyone discusses the question among themselves, and afterward a few people share their answers with the entire room.
That evening, the question was simple:
What is one achievement from the past year that you are proud of?
As often happens, our table wandered somewhat off topic, discussing different aspects of the year and where life had taken us. Eventually, people around the room began sharing.
One person spoke about beginning a new career. Someone else had moved to a new city. There were new schools, new friendships, personal challenges that had been overcome, and other accomplishments that represented a year of growth and change.
Then, about halfway through, a woman stood up.
With a proud smile, she said simply:
“I beat cancer.”
Mic drop.
For a moment, the room was silent.
Then came the smiles.
I leaned over to my wife and whispered, “Nothing can follow that.”
I was wrong.
A teenage girl sitting at our table noticed the silence. She stood up. Tears began flowing down her cheeks.
“I started keeping Shabbos again,” she said. “This is my second Shabbos in many years.”
Two people. Two victories.
One had fought for her life.
The other had fought for a piece of her neshamah.
And there we were, on Rosh Hashanah, celebrating both.
Perhaps there could be no more fitting expression of what Rosh Hashanah—and the LEV Experience—is really about.
Rosh Hashanah is the day on which we proclaim Hashem as King. We speak about Malchus, about being mamlich HaKadosh Baruch Hu over ourselves and over the world. Sometimes those words can feel enormous and abstract.
But perhaps Malchus is also found in moments like these.
It is found in the person who looks back at a year filled with challenge and says, “I made it.”
It is found in someone who reconnects with a mitzvah that had once slipped away and says, “I came back.”
It is found in physical survival and spiritual return. In gratitude for another year of life and in the courage to make that life more meaningful.
And perhaps that is why it is so difficult to describe the LEV Experience.
It is not simply a particular style of davening, a lecture, a song, or a discussion around a table. It is the environment that allows moments like these to happen. It creates a place where Jews from different backgrounds and at different points in their journeys can sit around the same table, celebrate one another's victories, and inspire one another to take another step forward.
And that journey is deeply personal. No two people travel the same road toward growth, spirituality, and connection. Each person has different struggles, different milestones, and different moments that suddenly open the heart. What inspires one person may not be the moment that speaks most powerfully to someone else.
That is part of what makes the LEV Experience so real.
We may all be sharing the same davening, the same meals, the same songs, and the same Yamim Noraim, but each person is experiencing something different within them. One person's defining moment may come during a melody in davening. Another may find it in a lecture, a conversation in the hallway, a discussion around the table, or the words of someone sitting beside them.
The journeys are different, and so are the moments.
Yet somehow, they all meet in the same place.
Some victories are enormous. Some are quiet. Some are physical. Some are spiritual. But on Rosh Hashanah, each one becomes part of our declaration that the coming year can be greater than the one before it.
I entered the seudah looking, as I often do, for something to carry with me into the new year.
This year, I found it in two sentences:
“I beat cancer.”
“I started keeping Shabbos again.”
Two victories. Two very different journeys. Two moments of inspiration.
And one unforgettable reminder that each of us has our own road toward growth, and that sometimes the greatest gift is simply being together when those moments appear.
