Holy Pronouns

June 10, 2026

In our efforts to improve ourselves and our lives, some of us move from a source of pain we want to be free from, and some of us move from a place of inspiration. There are countless methods and leverage points where we can step in and make our move, and thereby implement the change we are looking for.

I would like to propose a perspective that tries to answer two questions. One, why might it be that over the recent years the idea of “identity” and “pronouns” has become such a thing? And two, how can we use what is showing up in the culture around us to create more freedom in our own lives, and more alignment with our deepest values?

On a most basic level, we can acknowledge that the life and the things we have in our lives are created from the actions we take. The actions we take are influenced by the thoughts and feelings we have. The thoughts and feelings we have are determined by what we know about what is happening. And even deeper, they are shaped by our conscious and unconscious core beliefs.

The chain looks like this:

Core beliefs → what we know → thoughts and feelings → actions → the life we live, the experiences we have, and the things we create.

Take a Picasso painting as an example. Someone who knows nothing about art looks at it and feels nothing. Someone who understands the history, the values, the story behind the work, looks at the same painting and feels something completely different.

So what we know shapes what we feel. What we feel shapes what we do. What we do shapes the life we live.

If we want a different life, we can intervene at any one of these levels. Each level offers its own kind of access, and each one carries its own kind of leverage.

The most accessible level is the action level. We can simply do one thing instead of another. For many of us in many situations, that is enough. We see something we want to change, and we change it.

But for those of us caught in deeper patterns, especially compulsive or addictive ones, action alone tends to fall short.

Sometimes someone in our lives, with the best of intentions, tells us, “Stop. Just don’t do it. Can you see what you are doing to your wife and kids?” For most of us, that does not move the needle. Or if it does, the change tends to be short-lived. For those of us dealing with addiction or alcoholism, it almost certainly will not move the needle.

When the action level isn’t getting us where we want to go, we can access change on a deeper level — the emotional level. Methods like Internal Family Systems, or simply parts work, invite us to ask: what am I feeling and why? What part of me is moving the wheel right now?

And we can go deeper still, to the thinking level. CBT and similar approaches help us notice and reshape the thought patterns that have been quietly running underneath.

It is worth pausing here to note that AA itself operates powerfully at this belief and perception level. Clancy, a legendary old-timer in the program, coined the idea that alcoholism is a disease of perception. The Big Book describes the path to sobriety as a spiritual experience — also known as a complete psychic change, or a personality change. The 12 steps offer exactly that kind of intervention.

Each layer goes a little deeper, and each one carries more leverage than the one above it. In my own growth, and in my approach to working with the people I work with, having worked at all of these levels, what I have come to find is that the most fundamental and far-reaching change tends to live at the level of beliefs and identity.

There are four general areas of belief that we hold. I have come to think of them as concentric circles, working from the inside out.

At the very core sit our beliefs about ourselves.

Just outside that, our beliefs about God.

Outside that, our beliefs about other people.

And at the outermost baseline, our beliefs about the world and how it works.

All of these are interconnected and inherently affect one another. A belief at any one level automatically implies a belief at all the others.

Take a core belief that many of us carry, especially in close relationships. We have all heard ourselves say the words, whether out loud or in our own mind: “Wow, I’m so misunderstood.”

Sitting underneath that one belief about ourselves is a belief about other people: “They do not understand me.” And a belief about the world: “No one really knows me.” And a belief about God: “I have been left here alone. Hashem has neglected me.”

One belief about ourselves can quietly shape four entire dimensions of our experience at once. And most of the time, we do not even realize any of it is running.

All of this still sits inside the belief layer. And within our belief system, at its very core, sits a most impactful piece. Identity.

Identity is what happens when an experience stops being described, turns into a belief about ourselves, and eventually stops being a conscious thought at all. It just becomes who we are.

The shift is subtle but huge. “I feel misunderstood” becomes “I am misunderstood.” And once we are inside that “I am,” everything we think, feel, and do becomes the platform through which that identity expresses itself.

Watch how this can happen with language. We say, “I am upset.” On the surface, we are simply describing what we are feeling. But underneath the surface, without realizing it, something else is happening. We are declaring an identity.

If having something challenged feels like a piece of us was ripped off, there is a good chance we had identified with it.

And once we start noticing this, we start to see how often we are doing it. We quietly attach ourselves to things, to roles, to feelings, to opinions, and the line between having something and being something disappears.

Many of us identify with our feelings. With our attractions. With our entertainment. With our fan cultures. With the cultures that grow up around brands and bands and lifestyles. A motorcycle becomes a way of dressing, a way of speaking, a way of being. The thing turns into the self.

We identify with our race. With our job.

“I am a plumber.”

“I am in finance.”

So when a man loses his job, he can lose himself, and sometimes even lose the will to keep living. Because the lack can feel existential.

And we see today that when someone’s claimed identity is challenged, especially around pronouns or self-definition, the response can feel existential, as though their very being has been attacked.

My first reaction to all of this was that something here felt profoundly off to me, deeply at odds with the Torah’s understanding of identity and personhood. But after sitting with it longer, my question shifted. The new question became, how is this even possible? How is it possible that such a profound distortion can take hold?

The conclusion I have come to is that there is a real power being released here, specifically in our generation.

Identity is one of the most powerful forces in human life.

Over the last hundred years, that power has become very accessible. Widely used. And almost always unconsciously.

Once I started seeing it as a power, my next question was the Chabad question. What is the “le’uma zeh”- the holy counterpart of this thing?

I am a Jew. Thank God for that. That gives me an existential grounding nothing else can. No matter what, I am always going to be a Jew.

The Rebbe taught us something foundational.

As long as we are alive, we matter.

We have a mission.

We have a purpose.

That is identity being used to perpetuate, to promote, to support our deepest alignment with our deepest values.

I started noticing something in my own life. For years I had been doing work on my unconscious beliefs about myself. Beliefs that were creating aspects of my life I did not want.

I would catch a belief, name it, and replace it with the belief I needed to hold in order to think differently, feel differently, act differently, and live differently. I did that many times over.

At a certain point, I caught myself in the act.

Wait a second. I am generating my own identities.

And then I noticed something else. The Rebbe had been doing the same thing for us the whole time.

Rabbi Adin Even Israel Steinsaltz once came to the Rebbe for dollars. The Rebbe asked if he came with his wife. He said, no, I came alone. The Rebbe answered back, no. A Jew is never alone.

I did not see that as encouragement. I see it as an identity correction. The Rebbe heard “I am Alone,” capital A, and would not let it stand. A Jew, by definition, is never Alone.

Look at the identities the Rebbe consistently offers a Jew. Tzaddik. Shliach. Heilige Yid. Mashpia. Yes, these are positions. They are also identities to walk around inside of, to live from.

The same lens changed how I show up in 12-step rooms.

A lot of us resist saying the words. “I am an addict. I am an alcoholic.” We hate it. We feel something get taken from us when we have to say it out loud.

For me personally, in the beginning, those words were liberating. They named something that needed admission.

But once I had this identity lens, together with the IFS understanding that I am one person made up of many parts, and the Chabad teaching that the same is true at the spiritual level, I started saying it differently.

I used to say, “I am Moishe Dov, and I am an alcoholic.”

Now I say:

“I am Moishe Dov.”

Pause…

“That is me. That is all of me.”

“I also have an alcoholic in me, and I bring my (inner) alcoholic to meetings.”

After I say “I am Moishe Dov,” I pass the mic to my alcoholic, and he says, “and I am an alcoholic.”

Him. Not me.

That small pause is everything. That is intentional identity. That is creating with the power, instead of becoming a victim to it.

But how do we actually do this — catch a false identity in the act, and step out of it?

Here is something I have found that works. When you notice you are gripped by an identity that doesn’t serve you — “I am broken,” “I am unlovable,” “I am alone” … pause. Simply acknowledge: I have been holding this idea. I picked it up somewhere, innocently, without fully realizing it. And I forgive myself for believing it.

Then imagine those words written on a whiteboard. And erase them.

And then let your deepest truth speak. Not the voice shaped by your worst days, or by family wounds, or by what the culture handed you. The voice underneath all of that.

I am one with Hashem. I am Hashem’s child. I am essentially good. I am essentially rich. I matter. I have a mission. I have a purpose.

Chassidus has a term for the thing we just stepped out of. It is called a ruach shtus — a spirit of foolishness. The word spirit matters here. It isn’t a character flaw or a failure of intelligence. It is something that enters in.

The language is precise. The Chassidic sources use the phrase “nichnas bo” – it enters into him. The distinction is crucial. It doesn’t become him. It visits someone who was already there, already whole, already essentially good. You were there before it arrived. You are still there while it visits. The essential self is not destroyed. It is temporarily obscured.

The Rebbe makes this vivid in a letter to an artist who had written in despair, feeling broken, finding no place for himself. The Rebbe’s response was a direct identity correction. He wrote that the Yetzer Hara — which he called “The Cunning One” — approaches each person with words specifically tailored for that individual. That is why the lie feels so personal. That is why it feels so much like you. Because it was designed for you.

But then the Rebbe went further. Drawing from the Tanya, he pointed the artist back to something far more fundamental: the essential being of every Jew is G-dliness itself. The soul is drawn from G-d’s own wisdom. Underneath every layer of pain, confusion, or false identity — that is what is there.

In the Sicha on Parshas Terumah, the Rebbe teaches that a Jew is by his very nature rich — G-d’s only child. The word zahav, gold, encodes this: one who gives from his essential self, not to ward something off, but as a natural expression of who he is. That richness is not something to earn. It is something to remember.

So when we say at the end of that practice — I am Hashem’s child, I am essentially good, I matter — we are not inventing affirmations. We are accepting the Rebbe’s identity corrections. We are returning to what was always true.

So this is the invitation.

The next time we see someone identifying intensely with a label, defending a deeply held identity, insisting on a pronoun, losing themselves to a fandom, or fusing with a job title, we don’t have to get angry. We are looking at the raw power of identity on full display. We can learn from the display.

We can ask ourselves the only question that really matters. Where in my own life am I using this same power? And am I using it in a way that is making me holier, more useful, more alive, more free, more aligned?

We can pay attention to who we are. Or more honestly, to who we believe we are, deep inside our essence. Our essential being. Our essential identity. Our truest self.

We can adopt the identities that will actually serve a rich, meaningful life. A life of mission, purpose, and alignment. Not the ones we absorbed by accident from culture, from family wounds, or from our worst days.

The power is ours either way. We may as well use it on purpose. Much Love

Moishe Dov