1073: A Love Letter to Hashem

The Miracle Is Not Only What Happened. The Test Is Whether We See It.

בס״ד

Hashem,

There is no way I will ever do enough for You.

That thought came to me with an almost painful clarity.

There is no amount I can pray, no number of mitzvot I can perform, no amount I can build, give, sacrifice, or repair that could somehow balance the gift You have already given me.

Life itself.

And I thought:

If what You wanted was for me to spend my entire life bowing before Your Holy Temple, I would.

I would bow.

Rise.

And bow again.

Because how could I ever give enough back?

But then something inside me changed.

Maybe You did not create me merely to bow before You.

Maybe You created me to live before You.

To love.

To be loved.

To struggle.

To build.

To fall and return.

To experience this strange, beautiful, painful world and somehow find You inside it.

Then I watched something about Flight 1073.

And suddenly these thoughts collided.

The Flight

On September 30, 2026, Flydubai Flight 1073, traveling from Dubai toward Tel Aviv, nearly became a catastrophe.

The aircraft suddenly plunged thousands of feet.

According to investigators and reporting, the captain had been attacked in the cockpit. Despite his injuries, he managed to release the cockpit door. Others aboard were then able to intervene, overpower the attacker, and help regain control of the aircraft.

The plane eventually landed safely in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia.

More than 170 human beings who could have died came down alive. �

Reuters +1

There were people in precisely the places where they were needed.

There was a captain who, while injured, still managed to open the door.

There were people willing to run toward danger rather than away from it.

There were additional aviation professionals aboard capable of helping bring the plane down safely. �

The Guardian

Call those facts courage.

Call them extraordinary circumstances.

Call them providence.

I know what they made me think about.

Hashem.

The Test of a Miracle

The teaching in the video struck me deeply.

The speaker essentially asks:

When something extraordinary happens, do we recognize the hand of G-d within it?

That is the test.

He speaks about the world as containing a kind of mask.

We see pilots.

Passengers.

Altitude.

Emergency procedures.

Timing.

Coincidences.

Human decisions.

All of those things are real.

Judaism does not require us to deny cause and effect in order to believe in G-d.

Perhaps the question is whether those mechanisms are the whole story.

A person can look at the same event and see only coincidence.

Another can look through the same physical reality and whisper:

Thank You, Hashem.

I cannot prove where providence begins and coincidence ends.

Maybe that uncertainty is part of the point.

Faith would hardly be faith if G-d signed every event across the sky.

Then There Was the Number

The flight number was 1073.

The speaker separates it:

10. 7. 3.

October 7.

Three years.

We are approaching three years since October 7, 2023.

I want to be precise here.

There is no evidence that this flight number was assigned as a supernatural message, and the emerging “10 7 3” interpretation is exactly that: an interpretation. �

iTechGuides

But Torah has always taught us to ask what events awaken inside us.

So I am not claiming proof.

I am describing what it awakened inside me.

October 7 represents a moment when G-d felt terribly hidden.

הסתר פנים.

The hiding of the Face.

A day when we asked where G-d was.

And now, almost three years later, an Israel bound aircraft carrying more than 170 souls drops violently from the sky and somehow does not become another day of national mourning.

And its number happens to be 1073.

I cannot tell you that Heaven encoded that number.

But I can tell you what I felt when I saw it:

Remember Me even when I am hidden.

Sometimes the Light Comes Through the Crack

This may be one of the hardest ideas in Judaism.

There are moments when Hashem's presence feels obvious.

And then there are moments when it seems completely absent.

The Torah itself makes room for that experience.

There is hester panim.

There are periods when the world becomes so dark that asking “Where is G-d?” is not rebellion.

It is almost unavoidable.

But perhaps sometimes the light comes through a crack.

Not enough to eliminate freedom.

Not enough to force belief.

Just enough to make us look twice.

And then the choice becomes ours.

What do we see?

ואהבת

That brought me back to what I had written earlier.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ בְּכָל לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל מְאֹדֶךָ

Love Hashem your G-d with all your heart, all your soul, and all your might.

I kept thinking about the word:

ואהבת.

Love.

Maybe G-d does not want me spending my existence desperately attempting to repay Him.

Maybe that debt can never be repaid.

Maybe that was never the relationship.

A parent does not give a child life and then demand repayment for every breath.

The hope is that the child lives.

And perhaps Hashem wants something similar from us.

Live.

Love.

Choose good.

Protect life.

Become better.

Help another person become free.

Return when you fail.

Use everything He placed inside you.

Look at Flight 1073 Again

The thing that saved that aircraft was not hundreds of people lying down and accepting what was happening.

People acted.

A wounded captain acted.

Passengers acted.

Crew acted.

People used the abilities G-d had placed inside them.

And perhaps that itself answers the question I wrote in my notebook.

Maybe serving Hashem is not spending your whole life on the floor before Him.

You bow.

And then you stand up.

And when a door needs opening, you open it.

When someone needs saving, you move.

When darkness enters the cockpit, you fight for life.

Because life itself is holy.

My Love Letter

So Hashem,

maybe this is my love letter to You.

I will bow before You.

But I will also stand.

I will pray to You.

But I will also act.

I will search for You in Torah.

And I will try to notice You in the strange unfolding of this world without pretending that I understand everything You do.

I will not claim certainty where You have left mystery.

But neither do I want cynicism to make me blind.

When something impossible seems to become possible,

I want to notice.

When mercy enters through a crack,

I want to recognize it.

When 170 people come down from the sky alive,

I want my first words to be:

ברוך ה'! Bless G-d

And when I ask what I can possibly give back for this life You gave me,

maybe the answer is simply:

Live it.

Love with all your heart.

Love with all your soul.

Love with all your might.

And when you encounter the hidden Hand of G-d,

do not forget to look.

Grateful to be alive to witness this,

Benjamin J. Friedman