A Message to the Community from Rabbi Dr. Brielle Paige Rassler
June 2026
Hello everyone. I am grateful for the opportunity to share with you an excerpt from my first message to the Temple Micah community as your new spiritual leader, from our Friday night service on June 12th. I hope you have a wonderful summer and I look forward to connecting when we return in the fall.
This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shlach, centers around the infamous story of the spies. G-d instructs Moshe to send spies into the land of Kna’an. They are to scout out the land and report back to the Israelites. No doubt G-d and Moshe foresaw this as an opportunity for the community to be encouraged about this sacred and long-awaited gift that they are on the precipice of inheriting.
Unfortunately, it does not turn out that way. The spies affirm that yes, the land does flow with milk and honey. Yes, it is beautiful and bountiful beyond their wildest dreams. But, after generations of slavery and the trauma of the Exodus, they are scared. And they are tired. “The land is great,” they say, “but it is too much for us. The people are too big. The cities are too strong. We just can’t go there. It is too much.”
Ten of the spies affirm this message, and two of them do not. Two of them, Caleb and Joshua, saw that yes this new paradigm is big, yes it is scary – and yes it can be ours. We can enter, we can continue to progress, and we can continue to live into the promise that G-d made for us to live and thrive in freedom and joy.
So, what happens? G-d allows both narratives to be true. The people will experience a 40-year period of wandering and incubation. Those who are stuck in the old paradigm, who do not have the capacity to endure another chapter of the unknown – they do not have to stretch any further.
And while those who have reached the limits of their capacity to grow into new paradigms will die in the desert, the promise of that new paradigm will not. Caleb and Joshua will live, and they will lead a new generation of ideas and ideals into the archetypal Promised Land.
This is a story of progress – and regression. A story of faith – and fear. It is a story of what happens when we cannot “go there” – and what happens when we can.
This story lives within all of us, within our communities, within our families. Every generation has a role to play in the arc of progress, and every generation has its limits.
At the turn of the 20th century, Luis, Loyosh Berger, traveled with his brother from his homeland of Hungary to the big apple of New York in the great land of America. A land, he had heard, which was flowing with wealth and opportunity. When he arrived, he was stunned by what he saw. “Baby brother,” he said, “we are not in Satmar anymore.”
Loyosh returned home, disillusioned from the promise of prosperity and freedom from anti-semitism that this land supposedly promised. He preferred the shtetl life – with all of the comforts of the only world he had ever known. “My family will never return there” he vowed. “It is too much for us, too big. We will stay here.” And stay he did, until at last, in 1944 – 40 years after his journey to America – he was murdered in the Shoah.
Loyosh had reached his capacity to expand. He needed to stay and he allowed himself to do so – to protect his way of life and his connection with Yiddishkeit. He allowed himself to stay – and – he allowed his daughter to go. And now, four generations later, his great-great granddaughter is a Rabbi, in Lawrenceville, New Jersey!
I invite you now to think of your own ancestral story, the places in your family’s history where someone said, “I just can’t or won’t go there.” – the “there” may be a literal place, a figurative place, a political or ideological place.
Wherever it is, see them, see their choice, and see the story that informed it.
Now, see the places that their ancestors couldn’t or wouldn’t go – see how the boundary they handed to you was an expansion of a boundary handed to them.
Next, see your own story. What have you done with the boundaries and expansions that were given to you? How are you called to be a gift to your lineage? And where are the places you can’t or won’t go? We all have these places, it’s ok. Try to remain detached from judgment, defensiveness, or justification. Just see it and feel it.
Now we look to the future. Who are you passing the arc of progress to? Your children, grandchildren, students? How will they transform your family legacy for the next generation? And the generation after that? Feel the arc growing longer and longer – into worlds of possibility we can’t even imagine.
Finally, look around. Here, in this room, with your Temple Micah family. You all have journeyed together for years, some of you for decades. You have experienced deep tragedy and even deeper joy. You have inherited an arc of progress, with boundaries and expansions. You have wandered and imagined, together, where it will go and what it will be next.
Tonight, I am humbled and honored to stand before you as the new spiritual leader of this community. I take seriously the trust you are placing in me – to honor the boundaries and expansions of the past, and stretch with excitement and curiosity into the possibilities of what the future can hold.
I am grateful for the generations of my family and the generations of spiritual leadership in this community that have made it possible for me to stand here tonight. I am grateful for the generations of your families and the generations of congregants within this community who have made it possible for you to stand here with me.
May we continue to awaken to the ways in which we have been prepared for this moment – individually and collectively. May we honor the boundaries and expansions handed to us, and journey forward with open hearts and a commitment to hand the next generation a moment on the arc of progress that we can be proud of. And may it be in great joy.
Rabbi Dr. Brielle Paige Rassler is a licensed psychologist, spiritual director, composer, artist, and award-winning author, originally from South Florida. She currently serves as Lead Chaplain of Integrative Wellness at Penn Medicine Princeton Health, serving as the dedicated spiritual care provider for the Princeton Center for Eating Disorders and providing rabbinic services to patients throughout the Princeton Medical Center. She has also served as a guest leader with many congregations, including Romemu and Kehillath Shalom Synagogue in New York, and Mishkan Shalom in Philadelphia. In addition to her emerging series of sacred text translations, she has written a reference guide to the Talmud, a manual for religiously integrated treatment of Jewish women with eating disorders, and has released two albums of original liturgical music. Her Psalms have been featured in multiple publications, and her full translation, “Psalms: A Millennial’s Poetic Interpretation” was named a Gold Award Winner of the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards. She maintains a private practice and travels widely as a guest leader and teacher at institutions and communities of all kinds. You can learn more about Rabbi Brielle at www.BriellePaigeRassler.com.