Disoriented. Yet Completely at Home.

At first, I was convinced my driver was drunk.

I couldn’t understand why he was driving so strangely, why the car felt off, and why everything seemed just a bit… wrong. I wondered if it was me, jet lag after a long flight, and my head not quite on straight. Something was deeply disorienting.

And then I remembered: I was in London where they drive on the other side of the car and the other side of the street!

I had traveled to London for just a few hours to attend the wedding of a family we met during our time at St. Jude, a family with whom we have remained deeply connected ever since. They are Satmar Chassidim from London, and in many outward ways, we are nothing alike. Our communities, our dress, and our lifestyles look worlds apart.

And yet, at the Hachnasas Sefer Torah we held last year in memory of Esti a”h, the father, my dear friend, surprised me by attending. When he spoke, he repeatedly referred to me as “my brother.”

So when my brother made a wedding in London, I had to be there.

In many ways, London was disorienting. I had to consciously retrain myself to look the “wrong” way before crossing the street, knowing that cars were not coming from where I instinctively expected them to be.

But alongside that unfamiliarity was something profoundly comforting.

The beauty of Judaism is that you can walk into almost any shul in the world and feel at home. The Kerias Shema they recite there is the same one we say here. The same Parsha is read. The same Shmoneh Esrei is whispered and repeated, word for word.

You can step into any Beis Medrash in the world, and no matter how differently Jews may dress, speak, or live, the shelves are lined with the same seforim, Gemaras, and Chumashim. After Minyan, I sat down to learn next to a Jew I had never met before, who looked nothing like me, lived thousands of miles away, and yet we instantly shared the common language of Daf Yomi and of Menachos.

Chazal already captured this paradox centuries ago:

כשם שאין פרצופיהם שווין זה לזה, כך אין דעותיהם שוות.

Just as no two faces are the same, so too no two minds are the same.

And yet, despite that difference, we remain bound by one Torah and one covenant.

It is so easy to become consumed by what divides us. And there are real differences, to be sure. But those differences pale in comparison to what unites us.

This is the brilliance of our people.

We share a common language of thought, of values, of priorities. A language that allows any two Jews, no matter how different, to truly speak to one another.

This week, that truth feels especially close to home. This Shabbos, we have the privilege of hosting 21 soldiers from Golani through Peace of Mind, an exceptional a therapeutic intervention in which IDF veterans receive time and space to process their combat experiences. Together, they served on October 7, in Gaza, and in Lebanon.

They come from different backgrounds, different levels of observance, and different professions. And yet, the moment they walk into our community, are hosted by our members, and bond together with our families, those differences fade into the background. We are not hosting strangers. We are welcoming family.

Perhaps this is why our rituals matter so much. In a world that constantly shifts beneath our feet, with different countries, cultures, languages, and norms, Torah gives us something fixed to stand on. The same words, the same rhythms, and the same sacred moments bind Jews across continents and generations. They remind us that even when everything feels unfamiliar, we are never truly lost. Wherever a Jew stands to say Shema, wherever a Torah is learned, wherever a chuppah is raised, we are standing together. That shared inheritance doesn’t just connect us to our past, it quietly insists that our future, too, is a shared one.

Was being in London disorienting? Absolutely.

But at the very same time, it felt unmistakably familiar.