By Rabbi Levi Volovik / Chabad of the Berkshires

We find ourselves at a time where world Jewry begins the new book of Exodus/Shemot in our weekly Torah portion.

Shemot begins with a new Pharaoh, crushing oppression, and an existential threat to the Jewish people. Yet it is precisely in this Torah portion, against the backdrop of fear and uncertainty, that the greatest light begins to emerge. Moses is born, and is chosen by G-d to lead the Jewish people out of exile.

The opening chapters of Shemot reveal a profound truth: Even when we cannot see G-d’s plan, He is guiding every step.

This is the essence of Hashgacha Pratis — Divine Providence, a teaching emphasized by the Baal Shem Tov that nothing is random. Every encounter, every challenge, every “coincidence,” is part of a higher plan leading us toward redemption.

When G-d first appears to Moses at the burning bush, Moses hides his face, unsure of his ability to lead. But G-d does not reveal the entire journey ahead — He simply shows Moses the next step: “Go to Pharaoh.”

Then another step and another.

As the commentators teach, G-d leads us one rung at a time.

Our job is not to understand the entire ladder — only to keep climbing.

This reminds me of a childhood story of the third Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, who climbed a tall ladder while his friends froze with fear. When asked how he succeeded, he explained: “They looked down at how high they had climbed. I looked up at how far I still had to go.”

Shemot teaches us the same lesson: A Jew looks upward — not downward. Our mission is the next mitzvah, the next act of courage, the next step toward bringing more holiness into the world.

And nowhere is this more powerfully illustrated than in the story I heard from my colleague Rabbi Moshe Bryski.

A man named Jack had lived through unimaginable pain. He lost two children in a tragic car accident and watched his life crumble in the years that followed. Grief swallowed him. He felt abandoned, empty, and without purpose. Finally, overwhelmed by despair, he made a heartbreaking decision: to end his life. But before doing so, he wanted to give his only surviving daughter one final night together — one last memory. He took her to a movie theater at the mall, planning that this would be their last outing.

But G-d had already prepared the next rung of his ladder.

As Jack walked through the mall, he suddenly heard music. There, near the empty fountain, a small group of yeshiva boys were dancing around a simple menorah. It was modest, hardly noticeable, yet filled with unmistakable Jewish warmth. One of the boys saw Jack and his daughter walking by and instinctively reached out, pulling them into the circle.

Jack resisted at first. But his daughter smiled for the first time in months, and he couldn’t walk away. And so he stood there — broken, exhausted, holding his child, watching the flames flicker.

At that moment, something shifted. A reminder that even in the deepest darkness, a Jew still carries light.

Jack later said, “I went to the mall to end my life. I left the mall remembering I still had one.”

But the story doesn’t end there.

Years later, Jack moved into a new neighborhood and by Divine Providence, his next-door neighbor was none other than Rabbi Moshe Bryski, the very yeshiva student who had unknowingly saved his life. Not yet aware of the connection, Rabbi Bryski invited Jack and his daughter for a Shabbat dinner. After the meal, they sat together looking through photo albums of the early days of the Chabad House. Suddenly Jack froze.

There, in one of the photos, was the young rabbi who had danced with him around the menorah on that fateful night.

Trembling, Jack pointed at the picture and said,

“That was you…You were the one who saved me.”

A moment that seemed random, insignificant, almost invisible at the time was revealed years later to be part of a perfectly crafted Divine plan.

And this message resonates even more deeply as we ourselves come straight from celebrating Chanukah — eight nights of increasing light. We just finished placing candles in our windows to proclaim that even the smallest flame pushes back great darkness. The miracle of Chanukah is not only that the oil burned longer than nature allowed, it is that a few courageous Jews believed that their small step, their single flame, mattered.

When a Jew performs even one mitzvah, lights one candle, gives one coin of tzedakah, says one kind word — it doesn’t end with that single action. It spreads outward, touching lives we may never meet, illuminating corners of the world we may never see. Like one flame lighting another, and then another, each mitzvah multiplies the light in creation.

Our own community recently experienced a special Shemot moment —t he opening of the new Chabad Jewish Center of the Berkshires. For more than twenty years, it was our burning bush: a glowing vision calling to us, urging us to keep climbing even when the path was long and the challenges many.

Standing together in our beautiful new Center, I felt the message of Shemot come alive:

Redemption begins the moment a Jew refuses to stop climbing. Redemption begins when we take the next step — even when we don’t yet see the full picture. Redemption begins when we bring light into dark places.

Just like in Egypt, and just like in Jack’s story, G-d places the right moment, the right encounter, the right spark directly in front of us, often when we least expect it.

Our task is simple: Keep climbing the ladder. Keep moving toward the next step G-d places before us.

Keep performing mitzvot because each one sends out ripples of light far beyond what we can imagine.

Rabbi Levi Volovik is co-director (with Sara Volovik) of Chabad of the Berkshires in Lenox.