In Praise of Uncertainty

October 29, 2025
Jesse Vaytsman

Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Class of 2028

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We live for tomorrow, yet we don’t walk forward

We see the green light, but we don’t reach out

We hear the our dreams cry out to us, and we don’t respond

We know of the present’s beauty, but we live in the past

We feel our calling, but we don’t heed

We pray for a savior when salvation is already in our hands

We long for a triumph that we don’t really want

We wait for wisdom, but we dodge its glance

We run into battles that mustn’t be fought

We run from the battles that we are needed in

We know the cost of silence, but we don’t speak

We have the truth, and we bury it deep

We search for love with a closed heart

We want the things we cannot have

We ask why when we dread the answer

We live.

Not because we are whole,

But because we hope.

Still, imperfect, we hope.

These questions return and relentlessly recur.

We ride endless trains through cities of unspoken thoughts

among people who can never quite answer.

To be met with reproach? Or gratitude?

Maybe

Life breathes in uncertainty.

Imagine how mundane things would be if everything fell neatly into place.

When things break apart, that’s the soul breathing.

The wounds are where light finds a way in.

The movie goes on

and you can write a scene.

Maybe the tragedy of life isn’t imperfection,

but our insistence on perfection.

The unknown isn’t a void to fear,

but a canvas waiting for color.

Every ache, every question, every fleeting joy

a line in the eternal dialogue between what is and what could be.

And in that dialogue, we live:

uncertain, unfinished,

yet endlessly becoming.

Jesse is an Aleph from THE Ohio Northern Region #23’s Mac Miller AZA #505 and is currently serving as Aleph Godol.

All views expressed on content written for The Shofar represent the opinions and thoughts of the individual authors. The author biography represents the author at the time in which they were in BBYO.

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