Rabbi Breit's Blog

Moses has assembled the people to enter the covenant with God before crossing into the land of Israel. They are told of the danger of forsaking God and the blessing of loving God. Our parsha begins, “You stand this day, all of you, before the LORD your God”. It’s not just men, not just adults, not just the rich, not just citizens. It’s everybody. And they are a diverse group, from prince to woodchopper. The one descriptor that unites...Read more...

When the Israelites are on the threshold of the land of Israel, Moses emphasizes to them that they should not say to themselves, “God has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”. There’s nothing about them that entitles them to a safe and flourishing life in God’s land; "Rather [it’s] because of the wickedness of those nations that God is dispossessing them before you.” (Deuteronomy 9:4). Is Moses saying the...Read more...

Korach’s rebellion begins with an argument. He challenges Moses and Aaron’s authority, saying, “You have gone too far, sons of Levi!” He takes issue with their leadership, or maybe with his own secondary leadership position, or maybe with their teachings, or even, as some of the rabbis say, with God and Torah. He is combative — bringing 250 high ranking men with him to this confrontation, non-collaborative with a strong focus on...Read more...

Fire and brimstone sermons exhort the community to avoid immoral behavior lest they face divine wrath and its consequences. Such sermons often come into popular culture as an example of hyperbolic fear mongering, a torrent of judgment and blame without a lot of realistic guidance. They can feel more like anger looking for a target than compassion looking for a lost soul.

As fires in Israel ravaged Jerusalem forests on the eve of Yom...Read more...

In a sea of complaints, the Israelites leave captivity in Egypt. When they were slaves, the Torah teaches, they cried out and groaned under a heavy load. But one of the very first liberties they take as free people is to complain in their own words, sometimes snarky sometimes biting, to another person.

To Moses they quip, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness?” Hungry, they wish they had...Read more...

El Al’s motto is “hachi babayt b’olam”, “most ‘at home’ in the world”. And while I spend most of my time fruitlessly trying to accrue Delta points, it felt deeply true as I nestled into my flight to Tel Aviv last Sunday. I am at home in the world. And in Israel I feel most at home.

I’d started chatting with the folks next to me in the security line as if we’d been friends for years. Where I sat, the flight...Read more...

The high holiday season can be overwhelming. There is a sense, maybe rightly so, that we should each be overcome with awe and fear. Some of us might secretly await a dramatic reset, heralded by a hurricane or claps of thunder. Or maybe we want a eureka moment where we suddenly discover or understand something in a way that makes the season’s significance finally palpable and obvious. We wait for a moment of teshuvah that should...Read more...

There are some beautiful details that only the Torah reader sees. As you listen to the Torah read out loud in services, you might read along in a chumash (a typed and printed copy of the text). But the person looking at the scroll itself sees something vibrant, varied, and beautiful. Here the words are squished together, there they are stretched out, and everywhere each letter slightly different by virtue of the human hand the wrote...Read more...

When I was a little kid I was crawling through a big plastic tunnel in a line of kids at some indoor playground. The two boys in front of me were messing around and kept stopping, holding up the line of hands and knees, and my face was stuck adjacent to the second guy’s sneakers and rear end. Now if I’m being generous to little Elizabeth, I should also say I was feeling claustrophobic and a little panicked, trying desperately to exit this...Read more...

This week’s torah portion, Nasso, teaches us about jealousy. Torat Ha’Knaot, literally "the Torah of Jealousies", is twenty verses of instruction on how a jealous man can confront his wife of her suspected infidelity. The rules of the ensuing ritual, sotah, seem almost witch-like and arcane. Under priestly supervision, the wife must drink water mixed with ink and curses that will cause her some sort of physical harm if she has in...Read more...

We have met with soldiers, survivors, peaceniks, and Israelis who never expected that their full time job would suddenly become coordinating emergency aid, rescues from armed gunmen, camps for displaced persons, or dozens of funerals.

From her Sukkot travel in Portugal, Chen turned her entire apartment into a command center to collect reports of her wounded, killed, abducted, trapped — her sister, nephews, father, and lifelong...Read more...

The rabbis teach that we must increase our joy for Adar. And this year the month of Adar repeats, with the holiday of Purim (a pinnacle of rejoicing) held off until second Adar. So our calendar this year has served us a full extra month to be increasing joy. And it could come at no harder time. It this time in the life of our people, joy may feel hard, disingenuous, or disloyal. But Adar is here. And Purim is coming. And Purim Katan, or...Read more...

This Shabbat we begin the book of Exodus. We read the story of the children of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, freedom from Pharaoh, and long journey towards the land of Israel. Our communal memory brings up vivid scenes of plagues and a parting sea, maybe with a soundtrack of Paul Robeson chanting in spine-tingling baritone, “Let my people go!” But that’s not what Moses says to Pharaoh. He asks for three days off.

Moses asks...Read more...

My sermon this past Shabbat went through the ways parshat Vayishlach can teach us about grief and prayer. We watch Jacob stand terrified at precipice of grief and danger -- having possibly lost his mother, at risk to lose his wives and children, ready to be annihilated by his estranged brother. There Jacob recites the words: "I am too small for all the lovingkindness and faithfulness that you have shown me, your servant. I...Read more...

I’ve never connected so deeply to our liturgy as I did this past Sunday. In part it was the ruach of Simchat Torah as we whirled in circles and shouted and sang. In part it was the joy of kindergartners visibly delighting in huggable plushie torahs. But mostly it was the feeling of breaking. A part of me had broken apart. Our people have been attacked and our family thrust into war and the sense of safety, bubbly enthusiasm, and joviality I...Read more...

I don’t know much about crypto currency. I’m not a banker or in tech and I don’t have any interest in bitcoin (though I do have a dear friend who wrote a Modern Love column on it once, which clearly I recommend and is the closest I’ve gotten to the subject). To be honest, I thought crypto was “over” — like bell bottoms or Furbies, a fad we hope not to return again. But then I was informed that crypto companies do other things,...Read more...

The Israelites donated vehicles (carts and oxen) to the Levites to transport the elements of the mishkan, the tabernacle. Moses then divided the carts and oxen up among the three Levite families. But to the Kohathites he gave none “because theirs was the service of the [most] sacred objects, their porterage was by shoulder” (Numbers 7:9).

And so the Israelites moved the miskhan, our most holy structure and God’s home,...Read more...

This Shabbat is Earth Day, so here is a lesson from my twenties spent exploring earth.

When I led cycling trips around the globe we had a number of pre-trip tasks to do that I did not particularly like: calling the posh French hotels to confirm our particular American reservations; adjusting and cleaning all the derailleurs so the bikes shifted just right; filling mysterious fluids in the huge boxy Fiat’s engine.

Like most,...Read more...

There’s a mathematical limit to how many people you can know well. Well, there’s a theory of one anyway. A British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, suggests it’s 150. Beyond that size, any social group starts to lose coherence and splinter. Dunbar’s number is based on our cognitive capacity as understood by human brain size and structure. Our ability to know people well and feel comfortable with them takes brain space and time. We learn...Read more...

As a child someone gave me a book of zen koans. Yes this is a little strange, but let’s just accept that it happened. A koan is a stumper question, one asked by a teacher of enlightenment to a student. It’s meant to provoke such advanced meditative reflection that one might gain insight into the deepest reality of existence. You might have heard the more popular, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” A koan may or may not have an...Read more...

A dear friend of mine wants to go back to his pre-Covid self. He feels he has lost a part of himself, the part that socialized easily and fluently, charming new friends without effort. “How can I go back to that me?” he asked me in sadness, “Something of me has been lost”. He is not alone. I imagine that each of us has been, at one time or another, caught in such a riptide of wanting to go back, searching for a past...Read more...