LESLEY SIMPSON gave a talk on November 12, 2025 about what she calls her “little flashlight during a dark time”—L’Chaim: The Jewish Letters Project. The project is a newsletter on the substack platform that features Jewish wisdom letters from around the world. These are letters most often but not always from parents to children about how to create a purposeful life. The letters are sometimes called ethical wills but they are not legal documents and have no legal authority. Their power resides in the voices of the people who have taken the time to write them.
In these letters, Jews share what has made their lives meaningful, how they navigated
catastrophe, and what has sustained them with joy. The letters are as varied as the people who write them.
