When God is Found in a Ringtone

Here is a sure way to tell you are in Israel. If the Hebrew and the vibrant mix of Biblical and Jewish life were not enough of a giveaway, you would still know it by the sounds. On a short train ride one morning, I heard the very popular Israeli song Tamid Ohev Oti, which translates to “Always Loves Me,” twice before we reached Tel Aviv. Once from an older woman’s ringtone, and again from a man whose Instagram reel started playing too loudly. The song, written by Yair Elitzur, has become an anthem of faith here in Israel, a reminder that belief here does not live only in prayer books but in everyday sound.

“Hashem yitbarach tamid ohev oti,” “God, may He be blessed, always loves me,”

I smiled. Where else would a love song about God echo across a train car? It made me smile because only in Israel could something so seemingly normal feel a little bit holy

This week we enter the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, the only month without a single festival or fast. After Tishrei, a stretch bursting with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah, the sudden quiet feels almost jarring. The sukkah has been taken down. The cantorial soundtrack of the high holidays has been turned off. The air cools, and the first rains will hopefully arrive, both a blessing and a minor inconvenience. It is no wonder people call it Mar-Cheshvan, bitter Cheshvan. After weeks of visible spirituality, this month feels… ordinary.

But of course Cheshvan is not empty at all. Rather, it’s an invitation after the intensity of the festivals to meet God again in the everyday.

לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃

lo va-sha-MA-yim HI le-MOR: mee ya-a-LEH LA-nu ha-sha-MA-yi-MAH, v’-yi-ka-CHE-ha LA-nu, v’-yash-mi-E-nu o-TAH, v’-na-a-SE-nah

It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?”

As Moses neared the end of his life, after decades of miracles in the wilderness, he told the Israelites that God’s voice would no longer come from the mountain’s thunder. Holiness, he said, was no longer beyond reach. It would now live in their words, their breath, and their way of life.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a leading 21st-century Bible Scholar, captured this beautifully in his essay “Not in Heaven.” “To find truth, beauty, and spirituality,” he wrote, “you don’t have to climb to heaven or cross the sea. The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”

That idea, that God is near, transforms how we experience Cheshvan. In contrast to Tishrei, a period full of sound and symbolism: the shofar, the sukkah, the prayers that lift us upward. Cheshvan asks something very different of us. Can we carry that awareness of God into our ordinary days that follow? Can we hear the sacred sounds even when the music stops?

On that train ride, listening to ringtones and reels, I thought about how this was exactly what made Cheshvan holy. Faith does not always need ceremony to sustain it. The song, Hashem yitbarach tamid ohev oti, od yoter tov — “God always loves me, and I love Him even more” — sounds almost childlike, and that is precisely its strength. It reminds us that holiness does not depend on grandeur. It can live in the smallest moments, in a ringtone or a melody you did not choose to hear but recognize all the same.

When the train pulled into the station, the people gathered their bags. We all got off, scanned our exit ticket, and moved on with the rhythms of our days. The moment was over as quickly as it began, but its message lingered. Lo bashamayim hi. Not in heaven. Not far away. Right here.