It’s been a very rough year for Rabbi Phyllis Sommer and her family. As you read this blog post on August 27, her 7-year-old son Sam will be undergoing a bone marrow transplant to treat his persistent leukemia. It’s a parent’s nightmare. Sam can use all of our good thoughts and prayers, so please send them winging to Milwaukee.

Given everything that is going on (including parenting three other children while living in the Ronald McDonald House), it’s pretty amazing that Rabbi Sommer was able to put the #BlogElul challenge together at all this year. So it’s not that surprising that she didn’t proofread the challenge graphic as carefully as she might have in other years, and here we have change, again.

What should we make of it? I find it particularly poignant that the repeated theme of change falls on the day that Sam changes his bone marrow. The previous days have been employed in killing all of his own cancerous bone marrow, destroying, we pray, every last leukemia cell, so the new, fresh, healthy ones can take root, proliferate and give him the health we all take for granted.

Please G-d, may this day mark the change in Sam’s fortunes. May he go from strength to strength, may that indomitable smile beam from the face of a normal child, going to school, playing with his friends and family, growing and prospering in radiant health. May he and his family know no more sorrow, for many years to come.

And let us say, Amen.