www.harfordchabad.org | Blogs | Rabbi's Blog

You don't have to be ready

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:14:00 AM

You don't have to be ready "We think relationships are built on understanding. The Torah's first words to Abraham say otherwise."

If you ask most people what holds a marriage together, they will tell you some version of “love” or “really knowing each other”.

A greater truth might be that a marriage is built on the things you actually do for each other, day after day, long before you fully understand why.

Strange as it sounds, that's the secret of the Jewish connection to Hashem. The Torah hints to this message in the introduction to the very first Jew.

This week's portion, Lech Lecha, opens with G-d's call to Abraham: “Go out from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father's house." The commentator Ramban noticed something odd: When introducing Noah, the Torah told us he was "a righteous man", while Abraham gets no introduction at all. No mention of being righteous", of him smashing idols, nor about teaching the world about one G-d. Just a straight command: go. And he went. Why doesn’t the founder of the Jewish people get an introduction?

That silence is actually the point. The Torah leaves out Abraham's résumé on purpose. The foundation of a Jew's bond with G-d was never his own greatness, how much he understood, or how spiritual he felt. It's something far simpler: G-d asked, and he went.

Everyone else arrives at G‑d from the bottom up. They reason their way to Him and then act. A Jew is the reverse: G‑d reached down and chose us first, so the bond is carried in the doing.

The foundation of the relationship is doing what the other asks.

G-d asks of Abraham to "leave your land". The word for land, eretz, shares a root with ratzon, will. He also says “from your father's house", referring to the comfortable logic of your own mind. Even Abraham, already spiritual and devoted to Hashem, is told to break out of his mold. Real connection begins the moment I do what G-d wants not because it moves me or makes sense to me, but only because He wants it.

We often say: first let me understand more, believe more, feel ready to connect, and then I'll begin. But at Sinai, our ancestors said it in the opposite order: na'aseh v'nishma, "we will do, and then we will understand."

You don't master swimming on dry land and only then get in the water. You get in. The doing isn't a reward, it's the doorway to understanding.

Don't wait to feel spiritually ready. Pick one thing; a blessing before you eat, a few coins in a tzedakah box (or the app here), a line of Shema before bed, checking the mezuzah on your door, the Tuesday course on key concepts from kabbalah and how they come together to answer some of life’s biggest questions, and do it.

Not because you've worked out exactly why, or even how. As Nike says “Just do it”.

Take that single step. Take it because Hashem asked. That is how Abraham began. It's the foundation of any relationship, including our relationship with Hashem. It not just how we keep the relationship intact, it’s how we make the relationship alive.

Wishing you and your family a wonderful Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Did you know? The Zohar knew about AI

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 9:52:00 PM

When you get a text from me, how do you know I wrote it? You don't. It might have been me and it might have been my AI agent.

This week a friend sat in my office, worried. He'd been reading the headlines about AI. "Rabbi, is this the beginning of the end?" As it happens, I'd just been learning a talk of the Rebbe on this week's Torah portion, Noach, which answered his question.

The Torah describes the flood: "In the six hundredth year of Noach's life… all the wellsprings of the great deep burst open, and the windows of heaven were opened."

The Zohar reads this as a prophecy. In the six hundredth year of the sixth millennium, the windows of wisdom above and the wellsprings of wisdom below will burst open. Their purpose is to prepare the world for the seventh millennium, the era of Moshiach.

As Chassidic thought began to proliferate, the world began to change at a dizzying speed. First the railroad and the telegraph and then electricity, the telephone and radio. Later came the internet and now there's AI.

I understand why Chassidic thought prepares the world for Moshiach, however, what does the train have to do with it?

”Everything Hashem created, He created for His glory”. That includes secular knowledge! Science isn't competing with Torah; it's catching up to it.

The Rebbe once applied this to a broken air conditioner in 770. Disappointed in the building managers, he asked why did G-d create air conditioning? Clearly so that people can sit comfortably and learn Torah, and then he suggested that it needs to be fixed!

Here are a few examples.

Radio • A class given in one room travels to the ends of the earth. The waves fill the air even where nobody has tuned in. That is a small preview of Moshiach's era; when "the world will be filled with the knowledge of G-d as the waters cover the sea." Today you can stream a Torah class on your phone at any hour, from anywhere.

The video call • If a human being can see and hear someone across the globe instantly, it becomes much easier to feel what Pirkei Avos means by "an eye that sees and an ear that hears." Nothing we do is unseen.

Physics • The table and the chair look like two different things. Science tells us both are atoms and ultimately just mass and energy. The more we discover, the more the world looks like one thing. Science is slowly telling the story Chassidus has always told: Hashem is One, and all the world's variety flows from that Oneness.

Let me carry it one step further.

The Rambam writes that in the days of Moshiach "the occupation of the entire world will be only to know G-d." I used to wonder who would do the cooking, the paperwork, the inventory, or the bookkeeping?

I don't wonder anymore. More and more of that work is being done by machines, agents, robots etc. What will we do with all that free time? Learn Torah, connect with Hashem and spend quality time with each other.

So is AI dangerous? Anything powerful can be misused. People said the world was ending when the printing press arrived, and again with the factory and the internet. The danger has always been people, not the tools. Only a human being has true free choice. A machine does what it's told.

So a message you receive might be less valuable, because you don't know if it came from a human or a machine. Sitting across the table and spending time together, in person, is worth more today than it was two years ago. AI lowered the value of a message but raised the value of being present. Maybe that’s why it’s called ‘present’.

Those wellsprings, in the times of Noah, came to destroy. The wellsprings today are here to build and raise us up toward Torah and toward each other.

If technology is giving you more time, take that "extra hour" and make sure to use it by learning something with us at www.HarfordChabad.org/Education or sit down with someone, no phone on the table, and just be present.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

The Juggle is Real

Thu, 8 Oct 2026 6:44:00 PM

Nothing here is on autopilot

Your phone screen looks perfectly still right now. It isn't. It's redrawing itself dozens of times a second. If the refresh stopped, the picture wouldn't freeze. It would just be gone. It seems constant, but really, it's a flipbook.

I used to think the world works differently. Hashem built it once, a long time ago, wound it up, and now it runs on its own; the laws of nature, the economy's ups and downs, the doctors with their metrics, the businesses with their bottom line, etc. Our job is to manage as best we can inside the machine.

Chabad Chassidus says that the words "Let there be" never stopped being spoken. They are holding up the sky right now. The world isn't on autopilot. It is being refreshed.

Most of us carry a quiet assumption that the "real world" and our Jewish life are competing. Spirituality is for Shabbos and the rest of the week belongs to the market, the commute, and of course the inbox. Bringing Hashem into the hours that pay the bills can feel unrealistic, even impossible. After all, the world has its own rules.

Simchat Torah was also homecoming weekend for some of the kids. Hoping we could show the kids that the fun part of Judaism matters just as much as the serious part, I texted parents to bring their kids. "It's always a challenge to find the balance living a secular life when there's so many things going on" was an honest response I received.

The juggle is real. I replied that my job is to be the spiritual personal trainer, always encouraging a little more. No pressure:)

I've been thinking about the word "balance" ever since. Balance pictures two weights on opposite sides of a scale, so that every hour given to one side is taken from the other.

But consider where the world comes from. The same Torah that says "let there be light" and "six days you shall work" also says "I am the L-rd your G-d," along with all 613 mitzvos. The world can't truly stand in the way of the mitzvos because both come from the same source. They aren't on two sides of a scale; they are one life.

A person who lives with this awareness lives a G-dly secular life. Walking down the street or in the middle of a business deal, they say a verse from Tehillim or share something they learned in Torah. A single good deed can tip the entire world to the side of merit. When you know the world is Hashem's, your one deed doesn't only change you. It changes all of creation.

The messages we impart are what our kids see.

The Chabad Rebbes had a well-known saying about this week: the way a person sets himself up on Shabbos Bereishis, is the way his whole year goes. So how do we "set ourselves up" this Shabbos?

Pick one moment each day this week. Modeh Ani (here is a pdf) when you wake up is a perfect start. It literally thanks Hashem for returning your soul to you fresh. In that moment, remind yourself that Hashem just made this day new, on purpose, for you.

Come start the Torah from the very beginning with us this Shabbos.

Good Shabbos,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Closed on purpose

Thu, 1 Oct 2026 2:56:00 PM

A couple of weeks ago I told you that on the second day of Rosh Hashanah we struggled to get a minyan. I'll admit that it stayed with me more than I let on. You stand counting heads, eight, nine... and doing the math on whether the Torah comes out of the ark. Then this week, in a group chat with some fellow Chabad rabbis, I read something that put my counting in perspective. Several of them serve in far-flung places, the kind of town where the nearest Jewish neighbor is a mile away. They already know they won't have a minyan this Simchas Torah. Even the chance of it being tight is slim. Without a minyan, you can't read from the Torah publicly. On the day of the year devoted entirely to celebrating the Torah, their Torah will stay closed. And they aren't sad about it. They ARE excited. Planning the dancing, the l'chaim, the kids up on shoulders, the full party! To Paraphrase: “We are celebrating the Torah that is ours; our heritage, our inheritance, even if we can’t read it.” Here's a detail about Simchas Torah that most people miss. Even in the most packed shul in the world, when dancing, the Torah is closed. It's rolled tight and wrapped in its cover. Not one word gets read during hakafos. We just dance hugging it, holding it, or kissing it as we circle the bimah with it. If Simchas Torah were about how much Torah we understand, the scholar would dance the most and the rest of us would stand along the wall and watch. An open scroll shows the gap between who knows and who doesn't. A closed scroll makes that difference disappear. The Rabbi and the person who never learned the alef beis celebrate the Torah in the same way. What we celebrate isn't that we know Torah, it’s that it is ours. Most of us carry some quiet disqualification around. I don't read Hebrew, I’m not observant, I don't keep enough, when I know more, I'll get more involved, I’m a “reform” Jew, I’m unaffiliated …. etc. My colleagues in those remote towns are answering without saying a word: you don't have to be able to read the Torah to celebrate and dance with it. Here's what turned my own counting around. Those rabbis would give a lot for what we have here in Harford County: a pretty regular minyan. To be able to open the Torah and read from it on a Shabbos. That's a blessing, not a given. Let's hold it tight and dance on Saturday night! In addition, come by Sunday morning as we celebrate the yearly completion reading. This Shabbos is Shemini Atzeres, with Yizkor during morning services. See the full weekend schedule and RSVP at harfordchabad.org/sukkot. Come hold it with us, no reading required :) Good Shabbos and gut yom tov, Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

The holy art of having nothing to offer

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 6:03:00 AM

Every Sukkos we bind four plants together (etrog, lulav, hadas, arava) and we're taught they're four kinds of Jew: the scholar, the doer, both, neither, held as one people. True. But here's a reading I only came across recently, and I can't stop turning it over.

You are all four.

The etrog has taste and smell, that is you at your most balanced, learning and doing in easy harmony. I've got this.

The lulav has taste but no smell, that's the you that needs to pull back from the noise of the world and just know (connect with) Hashem, chase something deeper, even if the world has to wait an hour.

The hadas has smell but no taste, that's the you that says enough theory, someone needs help right now, and drops everything to go do it.

And the arava has neither, that's you on the day you've got nothing left to give. No wisdom, no energy. Just you, sitting in the sukkah with a cup of tea. I'm nothing today. And Sukkos says: that one's holy too.

Here's what I tend to do, and I think all of us do, we pick one "I'm a thinker," "I'm a doer" and call it who we are, maybe even our whole identity. Then every other part gets quietly filed under not me.

But watch the four kinds. Leave one out, even if it’s just one and the mitzvah is invalid. You can't even say the blessing. Four out of four, or its not a mitzvah.

You're the same. Wholeness is about being comfortable with recognizing who you are at this moment, the empty one is just as much a part of you as the balanced one, the seeker, the doer. Wholeness is never about being one thing, it's being able to be the you that you need to be when the moment calls for it, and knowing that all of it is you.

This Sukkos, bring all of yourself and come be with us. Get a lulav and etrog, sit down for the kiddush after services, drop by the Services and Subs, and dance on Simchas Torah everything's at harfordchabad.org/sukkot.

Wishing you and your family a joyous Sukkos and a chag sameach or in Yiddish gut yontif,

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Our best Rosh Hashanah in years. That's the part that worries me.

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 9:11:00 PM

Ask a business owner which year almost took them under, and it usually isn't the bad one. The bad year you see coming. You cut costs, you chase every lead, you pay attention to everything. The year that gets you is the one right after the great one. Revenue is up, the phone is ringing, and nobody in the room thinks to ask what happens if it stops. I've been thinking about that all week, because we just had a wonderful Rosh Hashanah. This week we read Ha'azinu, Moshe's final song to the people he carried for forty years. He begins by telling them to look backward. “Zechor yemos olam” remember the days of old. Remember the desert. Remember who fed you there, who fought for you, who brought you to a land you did not plant. And then comes the warning. It isn't what you'd expect. Moshe doesn't warn them about being crushed. He warns them about doing well. “Vayishman Yeshurun vayiv'at” Yeshurun grew fat, and kicked. Abundance came, and with it a kind of forgetting, and eventually G-d "hides His face" and the hard years arrive. The threat in Ha'azinu isn't suffering. It's comfort. It's the good year that quietly convinces you the good year takes care of itself. Which is exactly why Moshe opens with remember. Gratitude in this parsha isn't sentimental. It's protective. You look back not to feel warm about what happened, but to stay awake to the fact that it did not have to. So let me look back with you. Before Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Heschel taught a Rosh Hashanah 101 class and a challah bake for families and their kids. On the first night, about seventy people sat down to a meal at Chabad. The next morning, roughly the same number again in the sanctuary (and the kids program) almost entirely a different crowd. Sunday afternoon we went out to the arts festival at the park and blew shofar for whoever wanted to hear it, and then Tashlich and shofar in the park drew eighty-three mostly new people. What I'll remember isn't the numbers, it's the feeling in the room, tribal, in the best sense of the word. Family, people who walked in and belonged there before anyone said hello. And one more number, because I'd rather tell you the truth than tell you a nice story: on the second day we struggled to get a minyan. That's the one that stays with me. Not because it ruined anything, but because it's the whole point of Ha'azinu in a single morning. A packed house does not guarantee the next morning. No anttendence is not automatic, nothing runs just on momentum. Which brings me to the ask, and it's the same one I made from the bimah on Rosh Hashanah. Think of one Jew in your orbit. The coworker two desks over. The cousin who stopped showing up somewhere along the way. The neighbor you've known for six years and never once mentioned it to. You already know who it is, most people do, within about four seconds of being asked. Invite them, not only to a program, necessarily. To you, to your Shabbos table, to a class, to a coffee where the subject finally comes up. Yom Kippur begins Sunday night. There is no easier invitation on the Jewish calendar and no better one, for a lot of Jews, this is the one day a year the door is already half open. All it needs is someone standing in it saying, come sit with me. Our full schedule is here: HarfordChabad.org/Holydays. And thank you, a place where seventy people can walk in for a meal, where a stranger can show up on a Monday morning and be handed a machzor and a seat, does not keep itself open. You keep it open, every one of those numbers above has your name somewhere underneath it. Ha'azinu doesn't end on the warning. It ends with G-d returning to His people, forgiving them, standing up for them. The song knows we'll drift. It just refuses to accept that the drift is the end of the story. May this year be a good and sweet one for you and your family. Shana Tova and gmar chasima tova, Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Have we tried a Pencil?

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 9:44:00 PM

There's an old story from the space race. Almost certainly not true, but it survives anyway, because the point is.

NASA discovers that an ordinary pen won't write in zero gravity. Engineers spend years, and a small fortune, developing a sophisticated "space pen" that will.

Someone asks what the Russians did.

They used a pencil.

Sometimes we get so sophisticated in solving a problem that we forget to ask whether we already own something that works. We commission studies. We measure affiliation, engagement, identity. We pour real resources into understanding how to make sure our children and grandchildren stay Jewish.

All of it important.

But maybe there's an obvious question we don't ask often enough: What produced the Jewish continuity we already have? Because on this one, we're not short on data. We have several thousand years of it.

The Jewish people have lived under just about every set of circumstances imaginable. Empires rose and vanished. We've known persecution and prosperity, isolation and assimilation. Nearly every external variable has changed at least once. And yet, here we are.

Atem nitzavim hayom kulchem, "You are standing here today, all of you." After thousands of years of Jewish history, those words land as almost astonishing: Still here and still standing.

In a letter written shortly before Rosh Hashanah, the Rebbe addressed exactly this question. Anything meant to last, he explained, needs foundations strong enough to hold up while everything around it changes. And Jewish history itself shows us what those foundations have been.

Toras Chayim, Torah as a way of life. For most of our history, Jews didn't pass Judaism down mainly by talking about Jewish identity. They lived Jewish lives. Shabbos. Torah. A mezuzah on the door. Tefillin. Kosher. Tzedakah. Homes built around Jewish rhythms and Jewish commitments.

None of this takes anything away from Jewish culture, memory, community, or identity. But there's a real difference between an expression of Jewish identity and a generator of it. One shows what's already there. The other makes more.

And so, as we walk into Rosh Hashanah, maybe the question isn't how we secure the continuity of the Jewish people.Maybe it's something much more personal:

What am I doing that's worth continuing?
What happens in my home because I'm Jewish?
What will my children remember seeing me do?
What Jewish practice will be more real in my life next year than it was this year?

That's the conversation I'm hoping we can pick up this Rosh Hashanah. Not a study of the Jewish people from the outside, a look at the one Jewish home each of us actually runs.

Pick one thing. One practice that would be a little more present in your home this year than last. That single pencil line, drawn and drawn again, is how a people that has outlived every empire keeps on standing.

Wishing you and your family a kesivah va'chasimah tovah, a good and sweet new year.

Rabbi Kushi Schusterman

Same glass, very different view

Thu, 3 Sep 2026 6:12:00 PM

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.

Guilty pleasures?

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:18:00 PM

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

G-d owes you money

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:09:00 PM

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

The yeshiva boys looked naive, I was wrong

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 2:41:00 PM

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

A candle, a baby, and everything you've forgotten

Thu, 6 Aug 2026 10:10:00 PM

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

My humility was the problem

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:34:00 PM

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

The Call Without the Call Back

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:49:00 PM

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

The holiest thing you'll do this week isn't pretty

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:28:00 PM

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