The first milestone was that I turned 40. In a different generation, we would have said that I was now “over the hill.” And even though that phrase is less common today than it once was, still, in our Jewish tradition, 40 remains a significant number. It is typically used to indicate a period of time that was both long and challenging. The flood of Noah’s ark lasted 40 days and 40 nights. The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years. For me, turning 40 signified something similar: that I have now lived long enough to have faced some of the challenges that life inevitably brings.
The second milestone, which occurred less than two weeks later, was that I ran my first half-marathon. The preparation required considerable effort and perseverance. I logged more than ten months of training. I went on nearly 100 runs. I sustained two moderate muscle strains, for which I needed physical therapy. It was a challenging process that culminated in a challenging run.
I actually did not plan for these two events to occur in such close proximity to each other. But once I realized that they were going to, I found that there was something accidentally meaningful about it. Turning 40 and running a half-marathon both were milestones that required prolonged effort. Taken together, they felt like a personal challenge – a test of my grit and character. And as a result, I have spent a lot of time over the past year thinking about two closely related yet subtly different character traits. I have spent a lot of time thinking about endurance and resilience.
The American Psychological Association draws a helpful distinction between the two. Endurance is the ability to sustain effort over time, to withstand extended hardship through persistence and stamina. Resilience, by contrast, is the ability to adapt to difficult circumstances, to respond to hardship with flexibility and adjustment. The goal of endurance is to make it through a challenge. The goal of resilience is to come back from a challenge perhaps stronger than we were before, having grown.
It strikes me that the Jewish people is both long-enduring and incredibly resilient. Our 3000 year history has been marked by adversity. And yet, throughout that period, we have not only endured, we have thrived. We have evolved our tradition; we have adapted to new circumstances; and as a result, despite our many tribulations, we have contributed immensely to culture and society.
The renowned psychologist Froma Walsh argues that the key ingredient to a person’s resilience is what she calls our “belief systems” – or, the lenses through which we view the world. [1] Given this, we might wonder: what are the Jewish people’s belief systems that have allowed us, over the past 3000 years, not only to endure, but to thrive? What wisdom might we gather from our tradition so that in this new Jewish year, each of us might develop a little more resilience?
Perhaps the place to start is with our people’s origin story. Our Torah recounts how, while the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, Moses first encountered God in the desert. One day, while he was tending the flock, he noticed a wondrous sight: a bush that was on fire, but was not consumed by the flames – and from within the blaze, the voice of God emerged and spoke to him.
The sages of old ask: why did God choose to appear to Moses in that particular form? Could not God have just as well appeared in the form of a shimmering pool or a whirlwind of sand? The sages respond by saying that the medium was the message: that just as the bush was not consumed by the flames, so too would the Israelites not be consumed by their servitude. [2] It is an image that would stick in our people’s imagination for countless generations.
God showed Moses a symbol of endurance, that the Israelites would survive their challenges. But at the start of a new Jewish year, our goal is not merely to endure adversity, but also, to develop resilience: the capacity to adapt and grow. Toward that end, our High Holy Day U-n’taneh Tokef prayer suggests two helpful tools.
First, in what is likely its most famous passage, the prayer reminds us just how little of our lives are actually within our control: “On Rosh Hashanah, this is the written – on Yom Kippur, this is sealed: who will live and who will die; who by fire and who by water…”
It can be a frightening realization, to face our existential vulnerability – frightening, but also, potentially helpful. The prayer reminds us that life will almost certainly present us with unexpected, painful experiences. Our child is unhappy at college. An argument with our sibling leads to estrangement. A friend is diagnosed with an incurable disease. U-n’taneh Tokef helps us to recognize that these challenges are a normal part of being human. It does not make them any less painful. Rather, it helps us to integrate them into our lives – to see them not as impossible burdens, but rather, as difficult realities that we can learn to navigate.
This, so far, is the prayer’s first tool for resilience. And a second tool is quick in coming. The prayer famously goes on to say: u-t’shuvah, u-t’filah, u-tz’dakah ma’avirin et ro’a ha-g’zeirah – that “repentance, prayer, and righteous giving can temper the harshness of the decree.”
We should be careful not to misunderstand this teaching. It does not mean that repentance, prayer, and righteous giving will change our fate. Rather, it means that these three habits might just help us to change our character. Repentance might allow us to repair our relationship with our spouse, to replace our emotional distance with closeness and affection. Prayer might allow us to listen more closely to the quiet yearnings of our heart, to gently dissolve the protective crust that has formed over our soft spots. Righteous giving might allow us to extend our circle of concern beyond just ourselves, to feel a sense of responsibility for and contribute to the well-being of others. If we can cultivate these three habits, then, when unexpected, painful challenges inevitably arise, we might be better equipped to meet them with resilience – and, perhaps, even to grow.
Contemporary psychology says something similar, that resilience can be learned and practiced. Research shows that we develop resilience by encountering manageable challenges and discovering that we can handle them. These experiences provide us with what researchers call “psychological evidence”: the recognition that we have faced challenging circumstances before, and were able to find a way through. [3]
Jewish life expresses this insight in our own particular idiom. For many of us, psychological evidence can be found not only in our own personal experiences, but also, in the stories we inherit from past generations. There is a reason why so many of us continue to cherish the frying pan that our grandmother once used to make latkes, or the kiddush cup that is engraved with our great-grandfather’s name – why we continue to retell the story of how she immigrated to this country with nothing, or of how he helped to establish the synagogue in our hometown. These artifacts and stories are more than just heirlooms; they are psychological evidence – an inherited pool of resilience from which we can draw.
Our tradition also understands that relationships and community are essential tools of resilience. We see this especially vividly in our customs around grief and mourning. There is a reason why a Jewish funeral is only supposed to be conducted in the presence of a minyan, in the presence of at least ten people. And after the funeral is over, we do not go back to the solitude of our lonely house. Rather, we go straight into the week of shiva – seven days during which the house is full of family and friends, full of food and photos. We share memories. We share tears as well as laughter.
And when the week is over, there is the custom of getting up from shiva – of leaving the house, and having our friends accompany us on a walk around the block. It is a ritual meant to indicate not that our grief and our pain have subsided – but rather, that we can integrate them into our lives, carrying them with us as we reenter the world.
To help us with this task, there is a certain noteworthy tool that the Jewish people has developed over the millennia. And although this tool is not exactly a religious practice, it is, nevertheless, an identifiably core feature of our Jewish culture – namely: that we Jews have mastered the art of finding humor, even in the face of hardship.
Humor can be a tool for resilience in at least two notable ways. First, humor can provide relief from the stressors of life. In the recent HBO documentary [4] about Mel Brooks, Susan Stroman – who directed the Broadway production of The Producers – relates the following story. While the musical was being developed, Stroman’s husband died of cancer. The next week, Mel Brooks came to her office door and said: You will cry in the morning. And you will cry at night. But in between, when we are together in the rehearsal room, you, and I, and this company of characters will find ways to make each other laugh. “He was totally right,” she says. “And it ended up saving me.”
Or, as the sages of the Talmud put it long ago: “A place is reserved in the World-to-Come for those who bring laughter to the downhearted.” [5]
But there remains a second, even deeper way in which humor can be a tool for resilience. Humor can help us change our relationship with a difficult experience. It allows us to reclaim a measure of power over the things that trouble us. Whether it is the ancient custom of ridiculing the wicked Haman, [6] or the more recent quip from Fiddler on the Roof: “May God bless and keep the Tzar… far away from us” – we Jews have a long and rich history of using humor to reclaim a sense of agency, even in the face of adversity.
These, then, were the thoughts and Jewish ideas that had been rolling around in my head over the past year – as I anticipated turning 40 years old, and as I trained to run my first half-marathon. I had come to see these two milestones as a personal test: to see whether, after 40 years of life, I had developed the tenacity and endurance to meet life’s challenges and succeed.
And then, on the morning of the race, as I reached mile-marker 12, and had only one mile left to go, I felt my body starting to get overheated – and I had to stop running.
I was crushed. I not only felt like I had failed to run the whole race – but also, felt like I had failed to live up to the emotional challenge I had set for myself: to be strong, to push through, to arrive at age 40 believing that I am the kind of person who meets life’s challenges with determination. Later that week, I cried the hardest that I have in years.
And although I had spent the preceding 10 months pondering the topic, it was only then, after the race was over, that I began to more deeply understand the difference between endurance and resilience.
Resilience is not the ability to push through and do hard things. Nor is it the belief that, if we have enough determination, we will always succeed. Nor is it a guarantee that we will never feel disappointment or pain.
Rather, resilience is the recognition that difficult, painful experiences are a normal part of life – and that a healthy way to face them is to adjust our expectations, to adapt to our circumstances, and to find a new way forward. Not necessarily by running another half-marathon – although I do indeed intend to do that – but rather, by finding a way to carry those experiences with us, to integrate them into our lives, and perhaps even to learn and grow from them.
The Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years – for as long as I have been alive. And, devastatingly, our Torah story comes to an end before they are able to enter the Promised Land.
And perhaps that is the point. Resilience is not about some finish line that we are trying to cross. Rather, it is about developing, along the way, our own capacity to thrive.
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[1] Froma Walsh, Strengthening Family Resilience (1998), “Chapter 3 – Belief Systems: The Heart and Soul of Resilience”
[2] Midrash Exodus Rabbah 2:5
[3] Deborah Gilboa, MD, on the What Matters Now? podcast, produced by The Times of Israel: “Dr. Deborah Gilboa: The neuroscience of resilience” (July 11, 2026)
[4] Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! (2026), directed by Judd Apatow
[5] Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 22a
[6] See Adele Berlin, JPS Bible Commentary: Esther (2001)
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