Todah: A Life of Wholeness

Grief, Gratitude, and the Strength to Keep Building the Life She Began

In memory of our holy soldiers who fell sanctifying God’s Name and the Land of Israel:

Ephraim son of Liat and Shmuel, Yosef Malachi son of Dina and David, Eliyahu Moshe Shlomo son of Sarah and Shimon, Yosef Chaim son of Rachel and Eliyahu, Netanel son of Revital and Elad, Yakir son of Chaya and Yehoshua.

Our family is moving through a wave of layered grief and gratitude.

Sabba, Savta, and their first granddaughter, Aliza!

We are holding the loss of our dear mother, mother-in-law, grandmother, great-grandmother, and wife, #LynnGimpel, a woman who lived a truly remarkable life and knew exactly what mattered. She chose her family again and again, placing her husband, children, and grandchildren at the center. She built a life of values, commitment, and choosing God in the way she lived every single day.

At the very same time, we are preparing for the wedding of our dear children, Aviram and Aliza. The wedding was meant to take place this week and has been pushed off, but it will come very soon. And when it does, we will celebrate. We will dance. We will bring real joy—because life continues, building continues. That, too, is part of what my dear mother-in-law stood for.

So we are holding everything at once: a deep sense of loss, a powerful gratitude for a life well lived, and gratitude for the continuation of that life into the next generation.

It was from within this place that these psukim in #ParshatTzav drew me in:

"זֹאת תּוֹרַת זֶבַח הַשְּׁלָמִים… אִם עַל תּוֹדָה יַקְרִיבֶנּוּ" (Vayikra 7:11)

"This is the law of the sacrifice of the peace-offerings that one may offer to Hashem: if he offers it as a thanksgiving offering…"

What exactly is this korban?

Why does it carry two identities—todah, gratitude, and shelamim, wholeness? Why is gratitude defined as wholeness?

Here is something even more surprising:

Why is there chametz here at all? In the Beit HaMikdash, where chametz is almost entirely absent—why would a korban of gratitude include it?

And one more question:

Why does this korban have such a limited time to be eaten? Why the urgency, why the possibility of it becoming piggul if it is not eaten properly and quickly?

These details invited me to look more deeply.

The korban Todah is not a separate offering. It is a type of shelamim. Gratitude, in the Torah’s language, is about wholeness, shleimut.

The korban itself defines what that looks like.

It includes matzah—something simple and contained.

It also includes chametz—something expanded, full, and complex.

Gratitude is a response to a life that holds both what is clear and what is complicated, what is complete and what is still painful.

That is why it is both todah, gratitude, and shelamim, the full picture.

The Netziv (HaEmek Davar, Vayikra 7:12–15) explains that a korban todah is brought when a person recognizes that what they experienced had meaning. This korban is brought by a person who realizes that they were carried, protected, and brought through something.

Gratitude comes from seeing a fuller picture.

The Ramban (Vayikra 3:1) explains that shelamim are a korban of connection—between a person, God, and others. It is eaten together.

That is also why the korban todah must be eaten quickly.

There is too much food to eat alone. It pushes a person to gather others, to share it, to speak it out.

Gratitude is not private. It expands, brings people in, and becomes communal.

This is exactly where we are standing.

There is real pain in losing Ima, Mom, Savta, GG, Lynn. And there is deep gratitude for the life she built—for the way she chose her family, again and again, and made them the center of everything. She lived with courage, stepping beyond comfort and achieving what seemed impossible.

Her life was not private. It was shared with her husband, whom she loved deeply, even more than herself, with her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchild. It was built in relationships, in giving, in presence.

And now, even in her absence, that continues.

It continues in her children, in her grandchildren, and in the wedding we are preparing for. This is the next step in the very world she built.

So we stand here holding both.

We are not doing it alone—we are doing it held in the embrace of our family, our community, and all those who are standing with us, carrying this moment together.

Maybe this is the Torah’s definition of todah:

To recognize the fullness of a life, and to share that recognition.

To Abba, Daniel, Micah, and Jeremy—המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים, may Hashem comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Mazal Tov, dear Aviram and Aliza

To Aliza and Aviram, and to the Dagan, Abitbul, Perlman and Gimpel families—Mazal tov. To

our precious couple, may you carry on the legacy of choosing one another as a first priority and living life without boundaries. You are very loved.

May we learn from her life to build with fullness, to love with commitment, and to hold both the brokenness and the blessing with strength and gratitude.