Rabbi's Blog

There's an old Chassidic story about a poor man with a big heart.

He didn't have much, but whatever he had, he shared. So when a Rebbe and his followers once passed through his town, this poor man threw open his doors and hosted them all with everything he could scrape together. The Rebbe, moved by such open handed generosity, blessed him with wealth.

The blessing came true. The man grew rich, and then richer. But a strange thing happened along the way. As his fortune grew, his generosity shrank. The bigger his bank account, the smaller his open hand.

Word of the change reached the Rebbe, who decided to pay a visit.

The now wealthy man was delighted to see him and proudly walked him through his grand home. In the living room, the Rebbe stopped at a large window looking out onto the street. "Tell me," he said, "what do you see?"

"I see people," the man answered. "There's Yankel the water carrier, and Chaim the tailor."

The Rebbe then led him a few steps over to an ornate mirror on the wall. "And now what do you see?"

"Now?" the man said. "Now I only see myself."

"Notice," said the Rebbe, "that a window and a mirror are made of the very same glass. The only difference is a thin coating of silver on the back of the mirror. And yet that little bit of silver changes everything. The moment the silver gets in the way, you stop seeing other people. All you can see is yourself."

Wealth, the Rebbe was teaching, is that layer of silver. It isn't bad, but it has a way of slipping between us and everyone else until the whole world reflects back nothing but our own face.

Here's the part that reframes everything. The Rebbe reminded the man that his wealth had come with a condition. "You were given these blessings," he said, "so that you would share them."

This is one of the quiet themes of the month of Elul that leads up to Rosh Hashanah. Our Sages say the name "Elul" hidden as the initials of the verse "ish l'rei'eihu u'matanos la'evyonim" (Esther 9:22) "each person to his fellow, and gifts to the poor." Elul is the season of giving.

Look closely at how the Torah describes the giving. It doesn't say we hand our things to the poor. It says ish l'rei'eihu, "each person to his fellow." Not a benefactor above and a beggar below, but two equals. Because when you give tzedakah charity, you're not really giving away something that's yours. You're returning something that was placed in your hands to pass along. As the early Chassidim used to put it, "The piece of bread I have is yours as much as it is mine", and they would say "yours" before "mine."

Which means the poor man at your door, or the organization you support isn't the one who owes you thanks. In a real way, you owe them. Our Sages said it plainly: more than the wealthy man does for the poor man, the poor man does for the wealthy man. He's the one giving you the chance to become a window instead of a mirror.

And this isn't only about money. Every one of us has something to give, a kind word, a listening ear, an hour, a bit of encouragement, our knowledge, our patience. The very fact that G d arranged for you to cross paths with someone who needs something is itself the sign that you were the one meant to give it. Nothing in this world happens by accident.

It's no coincidence that we read Parshas Nitzavim, with all of Elul's themes gathered into it, right before Rosh Hashanah. Look at how the parsha opens: "You are standing today, all of you, before G d your L rd" (Deuteronomy 29:9). And then the Torah spells out who "all of you" means "the heads of your tribes, your elders and your officers… down to the one who chops your wood and the one who draws your water." The greatest and the simplest, shoulder to shoulder, standing on exactly the same ground before G d. No one above, no one below. Everyone simply there, as one.

On Rosh Hashanah we're going to stand before G d and ask Him to be generous with us, to grant us a good and sweet year that goes beyond what we've strictly earned. The way we open that door is by learning, this month, to give beyond what feels like it's "ours."

So this week, catch yourself at the mirror. Look for one small chance to turn it back into a window, to see the person on the other side of the glass and give something, anything, without keeping score.

Give a little more than feels comfortable. That's exactly how we ask G d to do the same.

May this year be, for all of us, a year of the test of wealth may G d bless each of us with such abundance that our only real challenge is deciding how much good to do with it.

Wishing you a wonderful Shabbos and a sweet, blessed year to come,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

P.S. Let me share something more personal. Every year, in the weeks before Rosh Hashanah, Fraida and I sit down together and commit to a minimum amount of tzedakah we will give over the coming year. Then, before the next Rosh Hashanah comes around, we make sure we've fulfilled that pledge in full. I won't pretend it's always easy. Sometimes the account is tight right before the holidays, and the practical part of me hesitates, but we go through with it anyway. And every year it brings me back to the very question this story asks: am I really giving something away? Or am I simply passing along something that was entrusted to me to send forward? The answer, every year, is the second one. It was never only mine to begin with.

There's a little bit of guilt that sneaks in with the good things in life. You bite into a perfectly ripe peach, you sit back and relax, settling into your favorite comfortable chair after a long day, you enjoy a really good meal etc. and somewhere in the back of your mind a voice says, "Should I be enjoying this so much?

This week's Torah portion answers this question, through a basket of fruit.

A farmer works the field all year; plowing, planting, sweating, and waiting. Finally, the first fruits ripen and he now has the mitzvah of Bikkurim.  He carries them all the way up to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and hands them over with a declaration of thanks to G-d. 

Most offerings were burned on the altar. The first fruits were not. They were given to the Kohen to eat and enjoy. The most physical, most pleasurable thing you can do with a fig, is to eat it, and that is precisely how G-d wanted them used.

The Torah is teaching us two things at once. First, the farmer's declaration corrects a subtle mistake. It's easy to look at what we've built and think, look at me, "My strength and the power of my hand made me all this." (Deuteronomy 8:17).

Bikkurim, bringing the first fruits to the Kohen, is instead saying, "This is what You, G-d, have given me." It's not mine and I am being generous and sharing, it's Hashem’s that He entrusted to me.

And second (the deeper one), G-d doesn't want the fruits burned up and gone. Taste and pleasure can be holy. Hashem gives the world to us to enjoy. 

This is one of the foundations of Chassidic thought: we don't serve G-d only when we're praying or learning. We serve Him while we're eating, while we're working, and while we're living an ordinary Tuesday. The peach isn't a distraction from the holy. The peach and all the pleasure we get out of enjoying it is holy, but only if we remember Whose peach it is.

It's no accident that we always read this portion just before Rosh Hashanah. When we recognize G-d as the source of everything we enjoyed this past year, we open ourselves to a year of even greater blessing, and even greater joy, in the year ahead.

This week, don't feel guilty about the peach or other permitted pleasures of the world, enjoy them, fully. 

Make a blessing first, pause for a second, and send that enjoyment Upward. Enjoy the world, but make sure it's for G-d.

Wishing you a wonderful Shabbos and a sweet, blessed year to come,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Have you ever finished a job, did the work, and then crickets? The invoice sits unpaid. The check that's apparently in the mail. There's a particular kind of frustration in having earned something and being told it's coming… eventually.

Buried in this week's Parshah among its seventy-four commandments, is one of the most human laws in the entire Torah: "Give him his wages on his day; do not let the sun set over it." Pay your workers the same day, don't make them wait.

Here's where it gets interesting.

Our Sages teach that G-d keeps His own commandments; everything He asks of us, He does Himself. However G-d, who legislated against making a worker wait, appears to keep His own workers waiting a whole lifetime and then some. 

What's going on?

The answer is that we've been picturing ourselves as employees. We're not!

G-d desired a home in the lowest place, down here, in this physical world where His presence is hidden. He handed the world over to us to make it into a place where He can live.

That's not an employee's task. That's a partner. A partner has a stake in the outcome. Not just working for the prize but building the very thing they are going to share in.

That's us.

The big payoff, the profit that we split with G-d, comes at the end, in the World to Come. And what is it, exactly? Not a trophy handed to you for a job well done. “The reward of a mitzvah is the mitzvah." The closeness to G-d you create when you light a candle, give tzedakah, or sit with a friend who's hurting, that closeness is the wage. A partner doesn't get handed a prize separate from the business. They get to enjoy the very thing they built.

A partner in the middle of building still has to eat. You can't tend the flock on an empty stomach. So along the way, right now, this week, G-d is obligated, so to speak, to pay us our "wages and sustenance." The health, the livelihood, the doors that open, the obstacles that quietly disappear are all daily paychecks. Not a bonus. It's what makes it possible for us to do the work.

We're standing now in the month of Elul. Rosh Hashanah is a few weeks away. The judgment of Rosh Hashanah is, at its core, about the material; family, health, and sustenance. In the classic phrase: banei, chayei, umezonei.

The confidence we walk into that judgment with: not as beggars hoping for a handout at the courthouse door, but as partners in building G-d's home. No one starves their partner in the middle of a project. G-d wants you to have what you need, in abundance, precisely so you can keep building.

This Elul, don’t be the employee, grinding away, a little resentful, waiting for a payoff that feels perpetually delayed. Be the partner who understands that the work is the reward and that the paycheck arrives daily. Everything you've been given, your talents, your resources, the corner of the world that's yours, was handed to you for one reason: to build something with it.

You were never just working for G-d, you were building with Him.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

A couple of yeshiva students passed through Harford County recently. As people met them for the first time, you could see a certain reaction forming. These young men were warm, unhurried, and entirely at ease. There was a look in their eyes that's hard to describe. Someone said it kindly, with a slight edge: "They seem so… innocent." What they meant, and didn't quite say, was naive or sheltered. Like life hadn't gotten to them yet.

I wanted to explain what they were actually seeing, yet couldn't find the right words. Then I remembered that someone else had this exact reaction seventy years ago, said it out loud, and got an answer I've never forgotten.

In the 1950s, a Reform rabbi named Herbert Weiner spent several hours in private audience with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He later wrote about it in his book Nine and a Half Mystics. At one point, Weiner got bold. He told the Rebbe that all his Chassidim seemed to share one thing: a kind of open, naive look in their eyes. A sympathetic person, he said, might call it t'mimut, purity and a less generous person might call it something closer to emptiness and simple-mindedness.

It was a rude thing to say to a man's face about the people who loved him. However, the Rebbe didn't take offense. He leaned forward and said: what you see missing from their eyes is a kera, a split.

Most of us, the Rebbe explained, live divided. Part of us is in the "spiritual" world and part of us is in the "real" world. The two are constantly pulling against each other. That tension, that internal tug-of-war, is what reads on a face as depth and seriousness. The look of someone who has struggled. His Chassidim didn't wear that look because they didn't have that split. Their lives weren't cut in two. Where there's no war going on inside, there's no war to see on the outside. What Weiner mistook for emptiness was actually the opposite: wholeness.

And then the Rebbe did something remarkable. Weiner had mentioned, earlier, that he had trouble sleeping. The Rebbe gently turned the whole conversation around and suggested that Weiner's restlessness came precisely from trying to live in two worlds at once. The thing he'd diagnosed as missing from the Chassidim’s eyes was the very thing keeping him awake at night.

I think about that exchange every time I catch myself, or someone else, mistaking a divided life for a deep one.

This is exactly the word at the heart of this week's parsha, Shoftim. The Torah warns the Jewish people, right before they enter the Land, against imitating the practices of the surrounding nations: the sorcery, the omens, the séances, the attempts to contact the dead. And then it lands on a single instruction: "Tamim tihyeh im Hashem Elokecha" - "You shall be wholehearted with the L-rd your G-d" (Devarim 18:13).

Tamim. Same root as tam, the "simple son" of the Four Sons at the Seder. The one we quietly assume is the slow one.

Is the Torah's ideal really to be a little dim? To not think too hard?

No. Weiner's story is the key to why not. Tam doesn't mean unintelligent. It means undivided. Whole. Not the person who knows less, but the person who isn't at war with himself. He's not naive; he's just not split. He doesn't try to outsmart his own destiny or go digging in the dark corners of the universe for answers he was never meant to have. He isn't standing with one foot in each of the two worlds, forever negotiating between them. He's in one world, G-d's world, all the way.

Those yeshiva students aren't sheltered. They'd simply been spared a war that most of us fight every single day: the low-grade tug between the person we are in shul and the person we are in the parking lot. Between what we believe on Shabbos and how we live on Tuesday. That war is exhausting. It's also, if we're honest, what a lot of us have quietly come to call "being deep."

We should all notice one place where we're living split. One world in our head and another in our hands. Let’s try, just for a moment, to close the gap. Bring the Shabbos version of ourself into the Tuesday moment. You may find that what you'd been calling depth was really just fatigue. The wholeness you mistook for someone else's naivety is available to you too.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

You wake up, check your phone and get ready for the day. Along the way, each of us has learned to put up a version of ourselves “a template” that feels safe to show the world. Most of the time it runs quietly in the background. However, here’s the thing: a template isn’t really you. It’s an edited version of you.

The Talmud says that before you were born, a candle was lit above your head. By its light, you were taught the entire Torah, every letter. Then, right before you entered the world, you forgot all of it.

Why teach a baby the whole Torah only to erase it?

This week’s portion opens with “Reeh Anochi”, “See, I place before you today a blessing.” Anochi, “I,” is the same word that opens the Ten Commandments: “Anochi”, “I am the L-rd your G-d.” What G-d gave at Sinai wasn’t only Torah, it was His essence, a piece of Himself inside each of us.

That’s what the candle really is. Not information, an imprint. The forgetting is real; you don’t consciously remember any of it, and yet it never left. It sits underneath every template and deeper than all of them: the part of you already connected to G-d before you’ve done a single thing to earn it.

This changes how we treat each other. That candle lit in every person, is the very same light. The Chassidic masters stress this again and again. The light of the person who seems to have wandered from Judaism is no dimmer then the regular Shul goer who eats only Kosher. It’s the same candle, perhaps just more hidden. 

When we size someone up by their curated “template” self; how observant they look, how they dress, how put together they seem, we’re mistaking them for their external. We’re looking at the outside of the lantern and forgetting there’s a flame inside.

When we make someone feel they have to perform to belong, we’re unknowingly asking them to keep their candle hidden. When we accept people as they are, without commenting either verbally or with body language, without the quiet running scorecard, something opens up. We become the kind of place where a person’s inner light finally feels safe to come out.

This is exactly how G-d relates to us. “Yisrael alu b’machshava”, we arose in His thought. He doesn’t relate to our external, he sees the candle. When He looks at any one of us, He sees the flame He lit before we drew our first breath.

To make others feel welcome, let them be themselves. Hold their differences without judgment, it isn’t just being nice, it’s seeing people the way Heaven sees them.

Maybe, in learning to see the light in everyone else, we will finally trust that it’s burning in us too.

Good Shabbos and may you be inscribed and sealed for a good year.

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Know the feeling of walking into a room and immediately feeling small? Not physically. The other people seem more put-together, successful, or sure of themselves. Did you ever think: I don’t belong here?

This week’s portion, Eikev, describes the desert our ancestors crossed toward the Land of Israel: “the great and awesome desert, of snake, serpent, and scorpion, and thirst where there is no water.”

That great desert is the exile mindset that lives inside a person. One looks out at the world and sees other peoples’ successes and assumes they have it all figured out. Then concludes: I am just a small fish in a big pond. The moment you decide the world is bigger than you, you’ve handed it a power over you it never actually had.

When a Jew is connected to Hashem, nothing in the world holds real authority over him. The haftarah this week says it clearly: kings will be your caretakers and their princesses your nursemaids.

So why do we feel small? We run the numbers wrong. We look in the mirror and see someone unimpressive. We look out the window and see something enormous. And here’s the sneaky part: it doesn’t feel like a spiritual problem. It feels like humility: “I’m just being honest about my place in the world.” But that’s not humility, that’s the opening move of exile. Real smallness before Hashem makes you bigger because you’re plugged into something infinite. Smallness in front of the great world out there just shrinks you.

Recently I started reading a book about major gift fundraising. The very first thing it tells you is that you have to change your mindset. Instead of thinking of yourself as someone asking, or, dare I say, begging, for support, recognize that what you’re really doing is making sure your mission and the donor’s own goal to make an impact (on Jewish life) are aligned. You’re not schnorring, you’re just checking whether alignment exists. It is the same conversation, yet a completely different approach.

That’s exactly our situation. Often we feel insecure, like the underdog, while someone else has all the power. But that’s not the truth. We are a piece of Hashem placed deliberately in this world to change it for good. We’re not begging the world to let us in. We’re encouraging it to align with its G-d given purpose of being a home for Him.

The next time you catch that feeling, in a crowd, at work, scrolling through someone else’s highlight reel, run the numbers again. You are not small or insignificant. You are a piece of Hashem, here on purpose, with a job only you can do. Walk into the room like you belong there, because you do.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Have you ever done something good, put yourself out there, and walked away sure that you accomplished absolutely nothing? You made the call, showed up, said the thing, and got silence back. No thank you, no visible change, nothing. And you thought: well, that was a waste.

This week’s parsha, Vaeschanan, opens with Moshe setting aside cities of refuge. If someone accidentally killed a person, they could flee there and be safe. The Torah is very particular about the roads to these cities: they had to be kept in perfect repair, wide and clear, and at every single crossroads there had to be a sign reading “Refuge, Refuge,” pointing the way.

Picture the world before Waze. You’re on foot, in unfamiliar terrain, and your life depends on getting to the right place quickly. A signpost at the crossroads is everything.

There are two kinds of signs. The stone marker, or regular street sign; it stands in one spot, and it only helps the person who happens to stop and read it. And then there’s a living sign; a human being who stands at the crossroads and actively calls out to travelers, “This way. Go right. That’s where safety is.” (Like the people waving signs “50% off”.)

Our job is to be the second kind.

Not to sit in our own quiet, refined spiritual corner reading our own signposts, but to go out to where other people are standing at their crossroads, unsure which way to turn, and show them the way. To be a living sign that moves, not a rock that waits.

Now here’s the part that speaks to that feeling of “I accomplished nothing.”

The Rebbe, in a talk, describes rabbinical students who would travel from town to town to meet with local Jews. Some of them would come home convinced they had wasted their time. They spent hours on the road, knocked on doors, and as far as they could tell, nothing happened.

Similar to the law of searching for chametz before Passover. You turn the whole house upside down looking for it. Even if you find no chametz at all, the blessing you made was still a real blessing. You did exactly what was asked of you. The mitzvah was fulfilled completely, whether or not you have a crumb to show for it.

Results are not the measuring stick. The showing up and putting in effort is.

The Rebbe Rashab gave an ironclad promise: “There is a real assurance that effort to spread Torah and mitzvos is never expended in vain.” Never. Not once. You may have accomplished something enormous and simply not be aware of it. The effect ripples out in ways you’ll never trace.

Here is a great example about those rabbinical students: A person is sitting at home and glances out the window. He sees a young man with a beard hurrying by. And suddenly he remembers: his own father had a beard like that. He remembers his father telling him, “Every morning when you wake up, say Modeh Ani. Before you go to sleep, say Shema Yisrael.” And right there, at the window, he says the words again and something in him wakes up.

The young man walking by never knew. He’d probably have told you the walk accomplished nothing.

This is not just a nice thought; it changes how we live. Because the moment you believe your impact depends on seeing the results, you stop trying when results don’t show up. You get discouraged and conclude you’re not making a difference and you sit back down.

However, if you actually internalize that the doing is the accomplishment, you become unstoppable. You make the call without needing the call back. You extend the invitation without needing the yes. You do the good deed and trust that the ripples are real even in the silence.

Do one good thing where you’re fairly sure you won’t see a result. Invite the person who probably won’t come. Reach out to the old friend who might not reply. Put up the mezuzah, say the extra prayer, share the word of Torah, without waiting to find out if it “worked.”

You are a living signpost standing at somebody’s crossroads. You may never know that they turned the right way because of you.

Do it anyway. It’s never wasted.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

What's more meaningful to a marriage: a candlelit anniversary dinner or a husband quietly doing the dishes on a random Tuesday night?

We'd all say the dinner. It's romantic, elevated and feels like love. But let’s be honest: nothing says "I see you and I care about you" quite like someone doing the thing they really don't want to do. Whether it’s the dishes, the diapers, or the garbage that is being done with no applause and nothing in it for them. The candlelit dinner is beautiful. The garbage is love.

This week we begin reading the fifth book of the Torah, Devarim, Deuteronomy. The first four books were spoken by G-d directly through Moshe, word for word, no filter. Devarim, Moshe says "on his own." It's still Torah, still holy, and still divine. However, now it's been absorbed into a human mind and repackaged in human words.

Why the change? Because this generation was about to leave the desert.

In the desert, everything was handed to them. Food fell from the sky, their clothing never wore out, their protection came from clouds of glory. It was a spiritual paradise and the Rebbe says, it was also a little selfish. It felt amazing, yet it didn't actually connect them to G-d's essence. It was the candlelit dinner.

The moment they crossed into the Land of Israel, everything changed. Now they had to plant, build, work, and deal with the physical world and its mess. And that, not the desert, is where the real connection lives. Making the ordinary, stubborn, and physical world into a home for G-d is the whole point. That's the garbage, and that's the love.

Devarim comes to us via Moshe filtering G-d’s words instead of repeating what G-d said, because the job now is to bring the highest things all the way down into real, everyday life. If you can only feel it in the desert, you haven't really brought it home yet.

Here's a line I heard: "If I'm spiritual in shul but not a mentch on the street, was I ever really spiritual in shul?" The proof of a spiritual life isn't the beautiful moment in the synagogue. It's the person you are in the parking lot afterward.

Take one ordinary, un-spiritual, slightly annoying task that you'd rather skip, and do it. On purpose, as an act of connection, not meditation, not the perfect prayer. The dishes, that's how you connect to G-d’s essence.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Ever wanted to just be left alone? Just... a quiet corner of life where you don't have to fight anyone’s battles, where you can tend to your own flock, keep your own routine, and let the rest of the world sort itself out.

That's what the tribes of Reuven and Gad asked for in this week's parsha, Matot. The land on the east bank of the Jordan was perfect grazing land for their large herds of sheep and cattle. They came to Moshe with a request: let us stay here and settle our families.

Moshe's reaction was fierce. "Your brothers are going to go to war and you're going to sit here?" And then he goes on to accuse them of discouraging the entire nation and of repeating the sin of the spies, who talked the Jewish people out of entering the Land in the first place.

Reuven and Gad never said they wouldn't fight. They never said Israel wasn't worth conquering. They just wanted to live somewhere quiet. Why does Moshe treat that like treason?

Because of what it reveals underneath.

The spies didn't want to enter the Land either. Not because they doubted G-d, but because life in the desert was, spiritually speaking, easy. Manna fell from the sky. Clothes never wore out. Every day was just Torah; no mortgage, no meetings, no marketplace. Why trade that for a land where you have to plow fields or run a business?

Reuven and Gad wanted the same thing, just with sheep instead of manna. Stay out here, stay simple, stay untouched by the noise of building a society. Let everyone else go do the complicated, physical, sometimes-messy work of settling the Land.

And here's the part that hits closest to home: that instinct isn't wrong. There's a real place in Jewish life for people to learn Torah full-time, undistracted by the marketplace. That's why Yissachar and Zevulun made their famous deal. Yissachar would learn and Zevulun would work and support him, and they'd split the reward. Torah scholars and working people need each other. Masters of Torah, masters of good deeds and both are essential.

But here's what Moshe would not accept: doing it in your own bubble, cut off, uninvolved, unintegrated with everyone else engaged in building the world around you.

Once Reuven and Gad said, "We will cross over and fight alongside our brothers," Moshe didn't argue anymore. He let them stay. Not because their preference changed, but because their posture did. They were no longer opting out. They were showing up for the war and choosing their corner of the map afterward.

Where in your life have you built a quiet corner to avoid the noise? A busy schedule that doesn’t make room for someone who needs you. Maybe it's a spiritual routine so private that nobody else benefits from it. Perhaps it's simply easier to stay on your side of the river.

It's not that quiet and private are wrong. It's that Hashem doesn't want your Jewishness parked on the sidelines. He wants it in the game, transforming the actual, physical, occasionally inconvenient world you and I live in.

A mission for this week: find one place where you've been standing on the sidelines (a person, a cause, a mitzvah) and cross the river. Show up for it, even if your sheep are perfectly happy where they are.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Have you ever felt like just a number? A face in the crowd, a name on a list, one of millions who all sort of blend together?

This Shabbos, July 4th, America turns 250. It's a milestone worth pausing on. It turns out the number 250 is hiding in this week's Torah portion in a way that speaks directly to who you are.

This week’s Torah Portion, Pinchas, contains a census of the Jewish people. On the surface, in a census everyone counts as exactly "one". The great scholar and the simple farmer are alike. However, this counting is different. Generally, the Jews were recorded by tribe; this time, the Torah lists the individual families within each tribe. Reuven's son Chanoch became the Chanoch family. Palu became the Palu family. Name by name, branch by branch.

The first and only other time the Jews were counted by family was 250 years earlier. Yaakov was leaving Canaan to go to Egypt and the Torah lists each one by name. One family, seventy souls, walking into exile.

Two hundred and fifty years later, that one family has become an entire nation. Now, standing at the edge of the desert, they are about to enter the land of Israel.

Here's what struck me. At the two most pivotal moments, leaving the land and preparing to return to it, Hashem stops to name each family individually. Right when they are about to be absorbed into something enormous (exile on one end, nationhood on the other), that is precisely when Hashem insists on calling out each name, one at a time.

To explain why, we need to discuss something else.

When the land of Israel was divided among the tribes, it wasn't divided by logic or by committee, it was divided by lottery. Random and above reason (seemingly). Shouldn't something as important as your spiritual inheritance be worked out carefully and rationally?

A lottery isn't random at all; it’s higher than logic. Every tribe received exactly the portion of the land that matched the root of its soul.  Every single person has a specific spiritual "portion": a mission, a calling, a corner of the world waiting for you to transform and elevate. Not because you reasoned your way to it, but because it was written into your soul from the very beginning.

This is why the Torah names the families. A census could have left them as an anonymous total. Instead, Hashem says: I see Chanoch. I see Palu. I see each and every family. Each one is part of a great nation and each one is irreplaceable.

America at 250 is, in its own way, a story of individuals: people who came from somewhere else, each carrying a spark, each contributing something only they could. A nation is not a blur. It is millions of distinct souls, each with their unique portion.

Every person has a special mitzvah or mode of Divine service that relates specifically to him. That resistance you feel toward a particular mitzvah isn't a reason to give up on it, it might be the very reason it's yours. The struggle is the fingerprint.

Which is it for you? The mezuzah you haven't yet put up? The additional few minutes that you want to celebrate Shabbos, the kosher step you keep postponing, or the shul you keep meaning to walk into? Something unique?

Hashem made sure everyone felt seen and counted. This Shabbos, as America counts 250 years, remember: you were counted too. Not as a number, as you.

Wishing you a joyful Shabbos and a happy Fourth of July.

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Have you ever avoided doing something good because you were afraid of what it might cost you? Have you held back from reaching out to someone because you worried it might complicate your own life? Have you ever thought “I want to help, but not if it means getting my hands dirty?”

This week's Torah portion, Parshas Chukat-Balak, opens with one of the most mysterious commandments in the entire Torah: The Red Heifer. A perfectly red cow, completely unblemished, is taken outside the camp and burned to ash. Those ashes are mixed with water and then sprinkled on someone who has become spiritually impure, rendering them pure again.

Beautiful! But there is one astonishing detail: The Kohen who performs the purification ritual himself becomes impure in the process. The very act of purifying someone else makes him impure. The one who helps becomes the one who now needs help (albeit in a smaller way).

King Solomon, the wisest of men, said he understood every commandment in the Torah except this one. It doesn't follow the rules. It doesn't make logical sense.

That is precisely the point.

Some of the most important things we do in life don't fit neatly into our personal spiritual spreadsheets. We can't always calculate the cost of kindness before we extend it. We can't always protect our own comfort while showing up fully for someone else. 

Those who drift from their Jewish identity, regardless of whether they grew up observant and life pulled them away, or they never really had a positive connection to begin with, are in the category of ‘impure*’ and need to be ‘purified*’. It is the responsibility of those around them to be the “Kohen”. Temporarily losing out on our own spirituality does not absolve us of the obligation.

It is natural to think: I'll invite the Jewish co-worker when I have the perfect Shabbos table. I'll reach out when I know exactly what to say. I'll engage with others spiritually when I'm sure it won't affect my own spiritual routine.

The Red Heifer commandment teaches us to go now. Even when it's inconvenient. Even when it might cost you something. Even when you don't fully understand why. Because their spark matters more than your comfort.

Put on your own oxygen mask first. You do need to tend to your own Jewish life. However, the Torah is also telling us that at times, the act of helping someone else breathe, is itself what keeps you alive.

You might finish that Shabbos dinner feeling like you gave more than you got. You might feel a little "impure", a little out of your routine, a little stretched. That's okay. That's the Red Heifer. That's what love in action sometimes looks like.

Reach out to one person (friend, family member, or neighbor) in your life whose connection to Jewish life is strained. Invite them to join you in something simple. A Shabbos dinner, a Torah class, or a conversation over coffee. Don't wait until you feel ready. They are ready and waiting. All that's missing is you being willing.

Wishing you a Shabbos filled with joy.

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman
 

* The terms "impure" and "purified" are used here in their halachic/ritual sense as defined by Torah law, not as a moral judgment or reflection of a person's worth. Every Jewish soul is inherently holy. These terms simply describe a state of spiritual disconnection, and the longing, conscious or not, to reconnect with the living G-d.

Today is the 32nd yahrtzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. 

Personally, today’s an important day. It’s a day that I remind myself that my responsibility is to follow the Rebbe’s lead.

The Rebbe is the Moses of our generation. The original Moses wanted to be the high priest. He wanted to go into the Holy of Holies and live a life of ecstasy and oneness with Hashem. Despite his high stature, his job was not to live a life sheltered in holiness, but to be a leader who lived in the physical world and transform it. His job was to get his hands dirty and deal with all people; the spiritually elevated and the deeply challenging alike.

Moses didn’t resent it, he embraced it. He understood that Hashem gives each of us a personalized, G-d-given mission. His was uniquely his, for his soul to fulfill its purpose in this world.

When Korach challenged Moses demanding the High Priesthood, Moses responded: I also want to be the high priest and yet Hashem has other plans for me. I recognize that I have to do MY mission and not someone else’s, and you should do YOUR mission. Moses also cautioned Korach that it’s dangerous to do someone else’s mission. Ignoring the warning, Korach suffered a fatal blow.

We need to see ourselves as Hashem does; An awesome soul in a body full of potential! We should recognize how amazing we are and how much good we can accomplish in the world. Often, instead of embracing our own uniqueness and the talents Hashem has given us, we look at others and think less of ourselves. We become jealous and want what someone else has, or to accomplish what someone else did.

Moses and the Rebbe saw every individual as a part of Hashem. We need to also see ourselves, and everyone around us, as our soul; untouchable and untainted. Anything negative is really an external shell.  Reach out to someone and reach inward to yourself. Recognize each one’s greatness, not from a place of ego but by seeing their soul.

Have a great Shabbos and I look forward to seeing many of you at Shabbat 100. We are blessed to have over 100 locals come together to join in the biggest Shabbat dinner in Harford County!

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Imagine having a world-class coach in your corner. You bring her your questions, and she gives you clear direction on what to try and what to avoid. However, when you ask her about one particular project, whether to move forward with it or not, she pauses and says: "This decision is yours to make."

Would you do it?

Many people would hear that as the coach's way of saying no, not a good idea and refrain from going with it. Others may decide to take on the challenge.

Some may pause and try to figure out why the coach isn't guiding them and conclude that they are being told: "You've graduated from needing me to make decisions for you. You no longer need training wheels. You're an adult now and I trust you to make the right call."

Often, the focus of this week's parsha is the mistake of the spies sent to scout the land of Israel, causing that generation of Jews not to enter the land.

When reading inside, many commentaries hold that Moshe is the one at fault as he made the decision to send the spies. When Moshe asked Hashem whether to send the spies or not, Rashi explains Hashem’s response as: "Send for yourself, at your (Moshe's) discretion; I am not commanding you, but if you wish, send." Moshe should have understood that it was not a good decision.

However, the Rebbe explains that Moshe didn't hear Hashem say: "Beware, I, G-d, am not commanding you," Moshe heard, "You are now able to make decisions. I, Hashem, trust you to make the right one." Hashem was giving him agency to make his own decisions.

Moshe passed on this autonomy to the spies. The mistake they made was taking it too far.  Moshe asked for a report on what was happening in Israel. The spies did come back with a report, they took their autonomy too far and shared their conclusion.

Hashem clearly wanted them to enter the land; all they needed to do was report on how to go about it, but they erroneously concluded that they were unable to go in.

This isn't only a story from 3,337 years ago; it's a message for us today. Connecting with Hashem is not supposed to be robotic, simply following what we're told. We need to be human beings who think for ourselves and build our own personal relationship with Hashem. Simultaneously, we need to recognize where we have agency and where we should simply follow and not try to rewrite what Hashem asks of us.

Have a good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman