What can one small mitzvah possibly accomplish? We say Tehillim for a refuah, give tzedakah in someone’s zechut, dedicate Torah learning to someone who is ill—and yet the question remains: how can something so small affect something so large? This class begins with the Zera Shimshon on Shiluach HaKen, who teaches that the problem may be in the question itself. What looks small to us may carry enormous weight in Shamayim.

From the mother bird of Parashat Ki Tetzei, we move to the metzora, Rachel Imeinu, Mashiach, the hidden storehouse of neshamos, and the mystery of how mitzvot create zechut. The central message is simple and powerful: never measure a mitzvah by how small it looks from here. We see the bird; HaShem sees the worlds it moves. May this Torah be a zechut for לְכָל חוֹלֵי עַמּוֹ יִשְׂרָאֵל. 

 The Sin Was the Strategy 

This morning’s Breakfast & Class begins with a troubling question in Parashat Ki
Tetze. Why does the Torah judge Ammon and Moav so harshly? Their crime was not simply that they failed to offer bread and water, nor even that they hired
Bilaam. Rabbi Yissocher Frand, drawing on the Dubno Maggid, the Kli Yakar and
the Tolner Rebbe, points us toward something deeper: they strategized.
They studied our vulnerabilities, created the circumstances in which we might
fall, and deliberately planned a spiritual trap. 

But in Elul, that frightening idea can become an extraordinarily hopeful one. If so
much evil can come from planning how someone might fall, imagine the power of sitting down and planning how we might rise. Together with an insight from
Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen, and the remarkable Talmudic story of Rav Amram Ḥasida shouting “Fire!” before temptation could overcome him, we ask a very practical Elul question: Instead of simply promising ourselves that this year will be
different, what can we actually change in the architecture of our lives to make it easier to become the people we want to be?  

 This Sunday
morning’s Breakfast & Class
begins with the opening words of Parashat Ki Tetzeh: “Ki tetze la-milḥamah al oyevecha”
— when we go out to war against our enemies. The Zohar and the Or HaḤaim reveal
that the Torah may also be describing a much more personal battle: the war
against the yetzer hara, and the beautiful captive as our own neshamah. 

Elul
is not only about discovering what is wrong with us. It is about rescuing what
is still beautiful within us. In this morning’s class, we follow the verses
step by step and discover how Ki Tetzeh becomes a map for Elul — going out to
battle, taking back what was captured, and finally bringing the neshamah home.  

 There is something strange about human nature. The first time someone does something for us, we notice it. The second time, we appreciate it. But when someone takes care of us day after day, somehow the extraordinary becomes ordinary. In this morning’s Breakfast & a Class, based on insight of Rabbi Frand, we look at a remarkable Gemara in Ketubot and Rav Pam’s powerful insight into three seemingly insignificant favors — a hand offered on a bridge, a feather brushed away, and a little unpleasantness quietly covered over. The great Amoraim teach us that hakarat hatov begins long before we say “thank you.” It begins with learning to notice. 

From there, we bring the lesson home — quite literally. What happens when the
kindnesses of a husband or wife become so constant that we begin treating them as part of the job description? Through the unforgettable words of Rabbi Akiva about his wife — “Sheli ve-shelakhem, shelah hu,” “What is mine and what is
yours is hers” — and a very personal reflection on my own gratitude to Chantelle, we ask what Elul might look like if, alongside examining what we need to change, we also learned to see again everything — and everyone — HaShem has already given us.  

 You Don’t Need to Know How the Book Ends — A Birthday, Rosh
Hodesh Elul & Parashat Shoftim 

Yesterday
was my secular birthday. Today is my Hebrew birthday. And tonight is Rosh
Hodesh Elul. In this morning’s Breakfast & a Class,
we used that unusual convergence to ask a question that becomes more meaningful
with every passing year: What are we supposed to do with the time HaShem gives
us? We remembered my dear friend David Golden, who passed away last year the
day after his 110th birthday, and the remarkable way he continued to appreciate
every additional day of life. Hazal teach that there is something special about
the day of one’s birth—but perhaps the real question is not what blessing can I
receive today, but what am I supposed to do with another year that HaShem has
given me? 

From
there, this morning’s Breakfast & a Class
turned to an extraordinary cassette tape I received when I was eighteen—an
astrological reading of my future that I refused to listen to until decades
later, when Rabbi Abittan, z”l, suggested we hear it together. Its astonishing
accuracy led to an unforgettable lesson from the Rabbi and directly into this
week’s Parashat Shoftim: תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ — walk wholeheartedly with
HaShem. Elul asks us to
look honestly at yesterday, but the Torah warns us not to become obsessed with
knowing tomorrow. We don’t need to know how the book ends. We need the wisdom
to learn from the pages already written, the faith to leave the unopened pages
with HaShem, and the strength to make today’s page worth reading.  

 “I know the rule—but my situation is different.” It may be one of the most dangerous sentences we tell ourselves. In this morning’s Breakfast & a Class, we
begin with Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men, who believed he could
multiply wives without allowing them to turn his heart. From there we meet
Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, who was certain he could read by candlelight on
Shabbat without adjusting the flame, and even Ulysses, who understood that the
only way to resist the Sirens was to tie himself to the mast before he heard
their song. 

We then turn to the Torah’s remarkable warning that שֹׁחַד — a bribe — “blinds the eyes of the wise.” Through a powerful Gemara and a memorable story attributed to Rav Chaim Soloveitchik, we discover something uncomfortable about ourselves: bias rarely feels like bias. We usually feel perfectly objective. Perhaps that is the deeper lesson of the Torah’s boundaries and the safeguards of our Ḥakhamim. They are not there because we are foolish or weak. They are there because the Torah understands the human heart better than we understand ourselves. Sometimes the beginning of wisdom is simply admitting: the rules apply to me too.   

Elul: A Refuge in Time — What Are We Doing With the Time
Hashem Has Given Us? 

What is one hour of our life really worth? Parashat Shoftim brings us back to the Ir Miklat,
the city of refuge—a place designed not simply for exile, but for reflection,
rehabilitation, and ultimately return. Rabbi Yissocher Frand points to a
remarkable allusion from the Arizal: the words אִנָּה לְיָדוֹ וְשַׂמְתִּי לְךָ
form the initials אֱלוּל. An Ir Miklat is
a refuge in space; Elul is a refuge in time.
It is Hashem’s gift of a place in the calendar to stop and ask ourselves what
we are doing with the precious life He has given us. 

This week we enter Rosh Hodesh Elul, and next Sunday we Sepharadim begin
Selihot—giving up an extra hour of sleep each morning to wake up in more ways
than one. Through the unforgettable story of Rabbi Ḥanina ben Teradyon, Moshe
Rabbeinu’s forty days, and the Rambam’s call of עוּרוּ יְשֵׁנִים מִשְּׁנַתְכֶם — “Wake
up, sleepers, from your sleep,” we explore the extraordinary value of a single hour. Perhaps the challenge of Selihot is not merely to give Hashem that extra hour, but to allow that hour to change the other twenty-three.  

 This morning at Breakfast & a Class,
we explored one of the most remarkable verses in the Torah: “בָּנִים אַתֶּם לַה׳ אֱלֹקֵיכֶם” — “You
are children of HaShem your G-d.” Why does the
Torah introduce this extraordinary declaration specifically before the laws of
mourning? Drawing upon the insights of Rashi, Sforno, the Or HaChaim, Rabbeinu
Baḥya, and the Nesivot Shalom, we discovered that this verse is not merely
teaching us how to mourn—it is teaching us how to live. Even in moments of
loss, disappointment, failure, and uncertainty, we are never abandoned, never
orphaned, and never beyond the embrace of our Heavenly Father. 

Along
the way, we explored what it truly means to be “children of the
King”—maintaining our dignity in times of pain, recognizing that our worth
comes from HaShem and not from our circumstances, and remembering that no Jew
ever loses the privilege of returning home through teshuvah. This timeless
message from Parashat Re’eh reminds us that our greatest identity is not found
in our successes or failures, but in the enduring relationship expressed in
those two unforgettable words: בָּנִים אַתֶּם.  

 This morning at
Breakfast and a Class, we explored one of the most familiar verses in the
Torah: “Man does not live by bread alone.”
But what does that really mean? After all, HaShem did sustain the Jewish people
in the desert with the manna—a miraculous form of bread. The lesson is not that
we do not need physical sustenance. We do. The lesson is that the bread is
never the true source. The food, the doctor, the paycheck, the customer and the
opportunity are all vessels through which HaShem sends His blessing. 

We
began with a lighthearted insight from my friend Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky
about the difference between what we need and what we want, and from there we
followed the manna into the desert, entered the cave with Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai,
and returned to our own breakfast table. The question is not whether we enjoy
the physical world. The question is whether we remember Who placed the blessing
within it. Listen to this morning’s class, “Not by Bread Alone: What We Need, What
We Want, and Who Sustains Us.”  

At this morning's Breakfast & a Class, we explored one of the most surprising openings in the Torah. As the Jewish people stood ready to enter Eretz Yisrael after forty years in the wilderness, Moshe Rabbeinu told them not to think they were inheriting the Land because of their righteousness. If not because they were perfect, then why did Hashem continue to believe in them? More importantly, what does that teach us about the way Hashem looks at each of us?

Using memorable stories—from a humorous fortieth wedding anniversary, to a struggling violin student, to Sir Edmund Hillary's climb of Mount Everest—we discovered that the DNA of the Jewish soul is not perfection, but growth. We concluded with two timeless teachings: the Kotzker Rebbe's insight that more light allows us to see more dust, and Rabbi Asher Abittan זצ'ל's unforgettable lesson: 'Where you are on the ladder is far less important than the direction in which you are climbing.' If Hashem has never given up on the Jewish people through thousands of years of triumphs and failures, then none of us should ever give up on ourselves. We hope you'll join us for this inspiring class.