Breaking News, Sacred Pauses, and the Holy Work of Rest
The bright-red, all-caps “BREAKING” alerts on the New York Times homepage never fail to spike my adrenaline. I am hooked to the constancy of the 21st-century news cycle, and these days our news is filled increasingly with violence that hits closer and closer to home. Just yesterday we woke up to news about the horrific murder of two Israeli Embassy staff members—Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim—who were killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., where the American Jewish Committee was hosting an event. Taking in such vile antisemitism by way of online breaking news bulletins is agonizing and terrifying. Reading about devastation while we sit on the train, or when we first wake up in the morning and check our phones, can make us feel so alone. We scroll, we click, we absorb, and somewhere along the way, we start to break.
And yet, we don’t want to disengage. We shouldn’t disengage. We know it’s our responsibility to stay aware, to speak up, to show up—to speak out against hate, to hold power accountable, and to care deeply when things fall apart. In such a fast-moving world, being informed feels like a moral obligation. We understand the importance of bearing witness, standing in solidarity, and speaking out. But the cost of constant vigilance is steep.
In the midst of this maelstrom, I sometimes find myself caught between extremes: too full of emotion to carry on as usual, and simultaneously too busy with daily life to really feel the magnitude of this moment. Perhaps you’ve felt this too.
Into that chaos steps this week’s double Torah portion—Behar and Behukkotai—which gives voice to this uncomfortable dynamic and offers a kind of spiritual recalibration.
Behar introduces us to the mitzvah of shemitah, the sabbatical year. Every seventh year, the land is commanded to rest. No planting or harvesting, no business as usual. Shemitah, like Shabbat, does not come into our lives at “natural stopping points,” when we’ve completed all of our work and are finally ready to rest. It inserts itself awkwardly into the endless economic and social cycles of life and demands that we stop, whether or not we feel ready to lay down our work.
This is not simply a lesson in agricultural law—it is a spiritual posture. The constant human drive to leave our imprint on the world is mandatorily suspended. Behar reminds us that we are not defined solely by our productivity, or by our engagement with the world’s crises. There is holiness in letting ourselves breathe. Rest is not a detour from the work of justice; it is what makes that work possible. One of the most remarkable aspects of Behar is its insistence that rest is not just a luxury—it’s a divine commandment.
Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Mandatory Palestine, wrote about the spiritual toll of constant vigilance in the introduction to his work Shabbat HaAaretz (The Sabbath of the Land):
“If…the constant conflict between the ideal heeding of the appeal to practice lovingkindness and truthfulness, compassion and pity, on the one hand, and the ragin oppression, coercion, and pressure of the quest for material gain, inevitable in daily life, on the other, cause the distancing of the Divine light from the cognitive capacity of the nation…The periodical suspension of the normal social routine raises this nation – when morally settled – spiritually and morally, and crowns it with perfection.”
Behar reminds us: You are not just a worker, not just a consumer, not just a news-reader, not even just an activist. You are a soul. And souls need peace.
But Behar is only half the picture. Behukkotai, the final parashah in the Book of Vayikra, calls us back toward responsibility. It urges us to “walk in God’s statutes,” to remain steadfast in our commitments to each other and to the Divine, even and especially when the world feels dangerous and uncertain. The litany of blessings and curses in the parashah reminds us that our actions matter, that covenant requires consistency, and that our choices to engage or disengage have profound consequences.
Maimonides captures this balance beautifully in his Hilkhot Teshuvah (Laws of Repentance 3:4):
“A person should view themselves as being precisely balanced between merit and guilt… If they perform one sin, they tip their balance and that of the entire world to the side of guilt and bring destruction upon themself. If they perform one mitzvah, they tip the scale for themselves—and for the entire world—toward merit.”
In other words, we are not asked to do everything. But we are asked to do something. To believe that one act of kindness, one courageous stand, one quiet mitzvah has the power to shift the world’s trajectory. In the face of unrelenting news and systemic injustice, our choice to stay engaged still matters enormously.
Behar needs Behukkotai, and Behukkotai needs Behar. Together they model a sacred rhythm: rest and engagement, release and responsibility. We do not rest so that we can work, and we do not work so that we can rest; both are divinely commanded, and we must make space for both in our lives. We are meant to do both—to honor our limits and to push our world toward goodness; to pause with intention and to act with purpose. That’s the sacred dance of these parashiyot. Rest and work. Retreat and return. Pause and push.
Yesterday, I attended JTS’s ordination and watched some of my closest friends become rabbis and cantors, including our own BJ Rabbinic Fellow (now Rabbi!) Anina Dassa. Sitting in a room full of dozens of Jewish leaders whom I so deeply admire, I felt a profound sense of peace and optimism that clashed with the horror of this week’s attack in D.C. Even though our world is on fire, I was able to rest for a few moments in the knowledge that the future—for our people and for the world—still has the potential to be wildly bright. This Shabbat, may we all feel a sliver of that peace, and after Havdalah, may we all jump back into the work of building a better world, together.
Shabbat shalom.
Joe