The Verse That Found Me

Parashat Va’etchanan | Devarim 4:7

Many years ago, I had a dream that changed my life.

It was one of those rare dreams that doesn’t blur when you wake up. I still remember it clearly. I was standing inside a vast, surreal tangle of highway on-ramps and off-ramps. Roads twisted and merged in all directions — endless, layered, chaotic. I couldn’t tell where any of them led.

In the middle of that labyrinth stood a small structure. Simple. Unassuming.

Inside, there was only one thing: a reference — Devarim 4:7.

That was it, the verse that found me. No explanation. No voice. Just the verse reference, resting in the heart of the confusion.

When I woke up, I didn’t let the dream drift away. I opened a Torah and looked it up:

“For what great nation is there that has God so near to it, as Hashem our God is whenever we call upon Him?”

I don’t claim to know with certainty what the dream meant. But I made a decision based on it — a decision that shaped my life in profound ways, and one I have never regretted.

Over the years, I’ve come to reflect more deeply on that verse, and what it might have been saying. I’ve studied it through the lens of our commentators:

• Rashi calls it a privilege — our ability to speak to God directly, without intermediaries.

• Ramban sees it as proof — that our closeness to God reveals the divine origin of Torah and God’s involvement in our lives.

• Sforno reads it as responsibility — a call to live with integrity because the One we serve is near and listening.

• Ibn Ezra adds a condition — that God’s closeness is real, but it responds to sincerity, to truth in the heart.

Maybe the labyrinth was the world’s spiritual landscape — full of pathways, belief systems, and philosophies. Roads upon roads, unclear destinations. And maybe the small structure was something else: a Mishkan in miniature. The Ark in the wilderness. The hidden center where God’s word quietly waits to be found.

I don’t need to explain it beyond that. But this parasha — Va’etchanan — returns me to that moment. And I remember: That in the middle of the maze, there was a door. And inside that door, there was a verse. And behind that verse… was God, waiting to be near.

Shabbat Shalom!