L'chaim!

Ezzy teaching Talmud at the Shul two weeks ago

Dear friends,

Tomorrow morning is Ezzy’s bar mitzvah, and there’s tremendous excitement all around. The families and friends have descended upon Brooklyn from the four corners of the Earth. The Bar Mitzvah boy has finally decided what he’s going to say. The ancestors have RSVPd. And we are doing what we can to keep our hearts from leaping out of our bodies in gratitude for it all.  

Ezzy will be chanting the full parsha of Behar, one of the Torah’s most beautiful. Its main focus is Shnat Shmita, the seventh year, on which the land gets to rest, and farmers are forbidden from planting, reaping and squeezing more out of it than what comes naturally. For one year, what is yours does not belong to you. Literally Shmita means letting go, like when you’re holding something in your hand and you let it fall. It’s a loving act of release that goes against the rational instict. With one son finishing high school and another having his Bar Mitzvah the next day, we are working hard on that loving release. 

I have to run to pick up the Challas and the Siddurim and the hundred other things on my to-do list, so I’ll let myself release this note now as well. 

Thank you for all the blessings toward our dear Ezzy. 

L’chaim!
Baruch Hashem.
And Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha