I love the summertime, although for me it's anything but "vacation". Between our various camps in Greenfield Park -the Camp Emunah junior, teen and Bas Mitzvah camps, and the Ivy League Torah Study Experience for students- my summer weeks are actually some of the busiest of the year.
A young family drove up from Brooklyn to spend Shabbos with us in camp. As most seasoned country-goers might expect, the NY 17 "Quickway" was quick in name only, as there were more than a few pockets of congestion. But what this family was unprepared for was the new construction between exits 121 - 119, which often put traffic at a standstill.
After hitting delay after delay, the faith that they held out for an erev Shabbos "miracle" turned to despair. Shkiah was fast arriving and they were still ten miles from their destination. They were finally forced to pull off the road, with a panicked phone call to us as their last resort. In the end, with the help of our gentile workers they were able to have what they needed for Shabbos, once they arrived on foot three hours later, that is...
Today was my daughter's graduation day. The whole ceremony was well put together. A couple of moments stand out in my mind. One girl spoke very proudly of her grandfather, who was born in Samarkand during the reign of Stalin. Samarkand was a bit more free for those who kept the Jewish faith, or any faith at all. The Muslim majority and religious Jews used to cover for each other at times, making their respective religious observances that much easier.
The girl's father had been a student in an underground yeshiva for two years while living in Samarkand. Unfortunately, the family was transferred to Azerbaijan, where there was no underground yeshiva with which their son could make contact. His Jewish education ended until he was able to emigrate to Israel as an adult. Despite his meager Jewish education, the strength of his two years in the underground yeshiva were enough to pull him to full Jewish observance. In Israel he became a professor of mathematics who drew others to religious observance.
The other story was of the Lubavitcher Rebbe who when he was a young boy ran into an old Jewish man who was opposed to religious observance. When he observed that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was wearing a yarmulka, he pleaded with him to take it off, saying that it looked terribly uncomfortable. He pointed out that it was hot out, and the head covering was making the Rebbe uncomfortable. The Rebbe deflected each argument and plea with tact and respect for the man's advanced years. Finally the old man said, "If you believe that you would be committing a sin, let the sin be on me."
President Obama's speech in Cairo was warmly received by his Egyptian hosts. He and the press hailed his address as a qualitative break from prior American policy towards the Muslim world. An honest look at the historical record would have given the American people and prior administrations credit due for a nuanced view of the Islamic world. Previous administrations differentiated between those in Muslim countries who are tolerant of other faiths and behave peacefully to those in Islamic countries who espouse violence.
On every occasion that George Bush spoke about terrorism he took pains to differentiate between terrorist strains of Islam and more tolerant Islamic governments and forms of faith. Even after 9/11, Americans refrained from reprisals against Muslims living in America. There is a commitment of all Americans across party lines and at a grass roots level to tolerance of religious minorities. For Obama to present himself as introducing this to American life is willfully misleading.
Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do not operate completely separate from respected Islamic governments. Much of their money comes from "protection" money paid with the implicit understanding that the Saudis will be left alone and only "infidels" targeted. The messy question of the Al Qaeda money trail would have messed up the "feel good" tone of Obama's speech. This was definitely expedient but hardly courageous.
A few years ago, my son came home from Yeshiva. He told me about the discussions of the day in Yeshiva concerning the arguments between Rabbi Osdoba and Rabbi Schwai regarding the necessity of a filter for tap water.
My son told me that the discussion became very heated amongst the bachurim and everyone began taking sides. I asked my son, “Which side did you take?" He answered me, “When it comes to Rabbanim, I don’t take sides."
I also have tried very hard to stay neutral, and B”H maintain a good relationship with both Rabbonim. But as I walked home from Shul Friday night, a Balabos approached me and asked me if I had signed the letter supporting the community elections? I replied “Yes”, and he asked me why I was taking a side.
Millions of dollars in stimulus checks are being issued to dead people, according to Fox News. It seems that of the millions of checks being sent out, some are going to some individuals who have died. Fox News reports as follows about a couple of troubling anecdotes.
"Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. He'd been a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but only returned to the United States for a seven-month visit in 1969.
The Santopadres are not alone. The Social Security Administration, which sent out 52 million checks, says that some of those checks mistakenly went to dead people because the agency had no record of their death. That amounts to between 8,000 and 10,000 checks for millions of dollars."
NEW YORK [CHN] — There is a sickness that plagues both domestic and foreign policy. On a domestic level, New york City is at the epicentre of this epidemic of diseased thinking. It is the idea of disarmament. New York City has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation. Even store owners in the roughest neighbourhoods in the city find it almost impossible to get guns legally. Sometimes a storekeeper who shoots an armed robber has to face legal difficulties because he used a gun that was "licenced by the people" and not by the government. Sometimes a grand jury will refuse to indict in such instances, but the poor shopkeeper doesn't even get his gun back.
Every summer, my friend Yudl and I have the same conversation. Summer is coming up. Kids have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. What will happen over the summer? You go out to Avenue J, Kingston Avenue or 13th Avenue. Sometimes you see kids you knew back when they were little ones in yeshiva. Sometimes you hardly recognise them. Punk outfits, weird piercings. What happened?
Sometimes a kid is having trouble in class. He discovers he can be a star at recess. He can run a business in yeshiva selling danishes and Laffy Taffy. He gets busted once, twice. At least he has recognition. If the kid is lucky, the parents will look at his business acumen and his lack of academic achievement. Maybe they will move him to a more suitable yeshiva. I've seen it happen.
Ever notice how it's becoming more and more difficult to get a smile out of someone in passing, let alone a nice "hello"? I believe that I have gotten a clue as to the reason why...
Put yourself in the following situations: 1) You're on your way to shul Shabbos morning when you see your neighbor in the street. You nod and say "Good Shabbos"; 2) You run into a wedding to wish your best to the celebrating families. you push your way through the crush of people to the father of the bride and say "mazal tov"; 3) You come home from the office at the end of the day. Your first grader tells you that he got a 100 on his test. You say, "Wow, that's great".
What do these scenarios have in common? In all of them, there's a very strong possibility that our acknowledgements are not being received at all. And depending on our frame of mind, they all bear the potential to create a terrible breakdown in communication.
Let's face it. Words, especially without enthusiasm, are pretty cheap. Let's also face up to the fact that if we're running a little low on energy, or if we had a tough day at work, our kind words have probably just evaporated into thin air without having done their job of expressing our goodwill.
As the Chief Executive of the State of New York, you bear the enormous responsibility of assuring the well-being its people. It is a responsibility which I can only imagine is awesome and intimidating. Your actions in Albany directly impact each and every citizen and create the climate in which all New Yorkers work, live and play.
Therefore, I write you to appeal to your sensibilities to do what is best for the people of New York State and avoid a catastrophe that could potentially endanger the well-being of countless thousands of children and families. Namely, I urge you to reconsider your efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in New York State.
As a former New York City Commissioner of Human Rights, I insist that same-sex marriage is far from an "equality" issue, as it has been made out to be.
It's been nearly twelve months that's we've been greeted with headline after headline of failed banks, layoffs and government bailouts. By now most of us have learned to be grateful for having a place to come home to.
The economic storm has taken its toll on charitable giving, particularly on hard-hit Jewish institutions. Among them Chabad and its thousands of schools, camps and synagogues has weathered more than its fair share of the damage.
The life's blood of Chabad is the shluchim, the thousands of emissary families who have moved out to every city on the globe to revitalize Jewish communities. It's their energy, commitment and ingenuity that has made Chabad the biggest and the best.
A myth that needs to be dispelled is that there is some measure of funding already set aside of each of the thousands of Chabad centers throughout the globe. If Chabad is such a huge entity, surely there must be hundreds of millions of dollars raised to support their activities, right? Wrong.
"I'm very proud of the District Attorney for moving ahead with Kol Tzedek. He is tackling a problem that has been below the radar until now.
"Until today, a sexual predator had a hiding place in the Orthodox Jewish community, while their victims were forced to live in silence. I have dealt firsthand with a number of victims. Their ordeal is a painful wound that remains with them for the rest of their lives.
More than any other time of the year, we are reminded of the importance of communication during the holiday of Passover. The purpose of the Hagadah itself is to tell our children the origins of our people. Even more so, we are even instructed on how to address children of various temperaments in order to best communicate to them on their level.
And while we cannot presume that all the complexities of human behavior can be reflected in the the "four sons", this simple allegory is nonetheless an important instruction on how to address each child according to his own personality and disposition.
In recent years, we have become painfully aware of the many social ills that afflict our communities. As our numbers continue to increase, we also see a clear increase in the number of our kids that are going "off the path". A growing number of children are feeling alienated, neglected, unfulfilled and are ultimately drifting from the ways of their forefathers. It would be silly for us to pretend that the drug use, promiscuity, criminal activity we have been catching wind of affect only a few "black sheep".
Submitted anonymously to the CrownHeights.CH Inbox
Dear Rabbi lazar,
The Jewish public (community) of Stavropol addresses you. We are the ones most punished by the decision to deport Rabbi Zvi Hershcovich from Russia!
Since the Rabbi arrived to our city, we have become closer to our traditions, and our children began to receive professional lessons in Jewish history. Rabbi Zvi in a short time has become a major part of the young familis and has opened their eyes to Jewish life, and Rebbetzin Chaya has taught us about the Jewish kitchen, and the role of the Jewish woman.
Rabbi Zvi and Mrs. Chaya Hershcovich are given over to the Sunday Jewish school with selflessness, and they have brought new innovative approaches too. We only have gratitude for their leading such events like Bar Mitzvahs, Bas Mitzvahs, Opshernishes, and the reading of Kaddish, all things which did not exist in Stavropol prior to their arrival.
This past Shabbat my family and I hosted Rabbi and Mrs. Nachman Holtzberg, parents of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, the head of Chabad in Mumbai who was brutally murdered with his wife Rivkah. You'd think that a family that watched their son and daughter-in-law slaughtered on TV by Islamic terrorists would feel hatred and a desire for revenge. But what this saintly father asked of our many guests was simply their participation in rebuilding Chabad of Mumbai so that his son's selfless work would continue.
Hashem put us humans into this world. A world with its never-ending ups and downs, both physically and spiritually.
How lucky we are, us Yidden: We received the Torah as a gift. It is a gift from Hashem.
Hashem knows what is best for us and there IS NO OTHER TRUTH besides the Torah. When we follow the Torah guidelines, we are assured by Hashem that we are living our lives in the best possible way, and in the derech that Hashem wanted us to live.
A way that is contrary to how Hashem wants one to live their lives distances one from Hashem, and will ultimately bring one to no good, one way or the other.
To help us live by the Torah’s ways, Hashem gives us leaders to help guide us and remind us of the correct way of life for a Yid.
As part of the OU’s "Safe Schools, Safe Shuls, Safe Homes Initiative," the organization’s executive vice-president Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb has issued the OU’s annual call for parents to alert their children to the dangers of drinking on Purim, which this year falls on the evening of Monday, March 9, and lasts through Tuesday, March 10.
Joy breaks boundaries. I have found this to be universally true. When we stop and invest ourselves, even a little, into celebrating the special things in our lives, we change for the better. And this can be experienced by anyone who will set mundane concerns aside and simply "smell the flowers".
Our holidays are of course, the most appropriate time to bring this kind of joy out into the open. How unfortunate, then, that we so often we get caught up in the material preparations of a Yom Tov that we let them become a burden and a source of stress.
This can be said for any Yom Tov, but as Purim is now upon us, I believe it would be a good idea to have a look at what has become of the mitzvah of shalach manos.
Sending gifts of food to a friend during Purim is a beautiful mitzvah, and must pursue it with all of the pride and energy we can muster. But in recent years and in every household it has become a larger-than-life campaign whose expense is second only to Pesach.
It's open season on large families in America. Ever since Nadya Suleman became infamous as the unemployed, welfare Mom of octuplets, the focus has been not only on her irresponsible behavior in becoming artificially impregnated with eight embryos after she already had six children with no visible means of support, but on the primitive choice of having lots of kids in the first place. One female pundit on CNN said that women who choose to have lots of children are usually uneducated, extremely religious, and bereft of any career.
Now I’m not defending Suleman whose actions are clearly objectionable. But aren’t we overdoing our hatred of her? Since going on the airwaves and talking about her decision to have 14 children, she has had innumerable death threats. Through her website she has received 55,000 messages, nearly all angry and negative. Her publicist (yes, I agree, a bad idea) Joan Killeen said she dropped her client after receiving hundreds of death threats of her own. “They hope I die, they hope my business goes under, they want to rip her uterus out. They say I should be anesthetized and put down like a dog.” What was Suleman’s main crime? Her babies will have to be supported by taxpayers. Fair enough. But have the CEO’s of AIG, Meryl Lynch, and Citibank, who cost taxpayers infinitely more money in order to buy thirty thousand dollar commodes and give their employees bonuses with which to buy Ferraris, received the same threats of violence? Is this woman really the world’s biggest criminal?
These days, the economy has center stage. There's no major news story that does not carry with it the smell of Wall Street, the real estate bubble, foreclosures, government handouts or the like. Without a doubt, there can be no headline more gripping that the one that speaks directly to our wallets.
Money is the root of all evil, or so they say. The desire for money is famous for turning honest men into thieves and cheats. Money is credited with ruining many a personal or professional partnership, for splitting families apart, for creating questionable alliances and for motivating mankind to the vilest deeds.
Certainly, the recent whirlwind of corporate greed and mismanagement, Ponzi schemes and stimulus pork create a very compelling body of evidence for the filthy nature of the greenback.
A horrific story broke earlier this month, which really made me question the good sense and intelligence that we Jews like to pride ourselves on. The Jerusalem Post reported that several neighbors of a Jerusalem family had been aware of the ongoing sexual abuse in their household. Some of them had even been eyewitnesses to the abuse. But no one reported this crime to the authorities.
What's more, it seems that the parents of these children turned a blind eye to the abuse of their children by a male relative, who molested their children over the course of seven years.
Yes, seven.
When questioned, the hapless parents claimed to be unable to intervene, as the family's rabbi warned them that they would be violating Torah law.
While the investigation of this story is ongoing, and all of the details have yet to emerge, the fact remains that there are some very unhealthy misperceptions in our communities when it comes to reporting abuse.
Scanning the new White House website can be an exercise in anger management for conservatives. The two dozen items under “The Agenda” section constitute a laundry list of leftwing policy goals and big government initiatives. But I was encouraged to see that our new president seemed to have at least one item prioritized correctly. Under “Homeland Security,” President Obama acknowledges that “[t]he first responsibility of any president is to protect the American people.”
Sadly, in the opening days of his administration, President Obama appears determined to accomplish something much different: to reassure the Muslim world that we no longer have the resolve to protect ourselves.
Last week, he extended new rights to terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay while authorizing the sentencing to death of innocent children around the world through taxpayer-funded abortion.
Things didn’t improve this week. In his first TV interview as president, with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya news channel, Obama made three assertions that provide insight into our new president’s worldview. It’s not very reassuring.
Although living in Beijing, China, which would seem far from the US and its TV programs, being the Chabad Lubavitch Shlucha here makes me the one that people turn to when they have a Jewish, Chassidic or “Torah perspective Women’s” question. Last week was no different and the big buzz was about the comments made on “The View” by Susie Essman, who plays the role of a Lubavitcher woman in a movie titled “Loving Leah”.
The friends, family and supporters of Sholom Rubashkin are overjoyed that Judge Reade acted in a just and humane way and allowed Mr. Rubashkin to rejoin his family after months of incarceration.
Over the recent months we saw an inspiring unity among all segments of the Jewish community. Jews from all over the world acted both publicly and behind the scenes to fight for justice for Sholom Rubashkin.
The cooperation of a variety of organizations such as Agudas Israel, the Orthodox Union, RCA, Igud Harabbonim, and the help of communities from Chassidim to Sephardim to Ashkenazim was instrumental in this victory.
As the days and Months pass by slowly we are forgetting about the Terrorist Attack in Mumbai India, where our fellow Shluchim Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg HY"D along with 6 others; Leibish Teitlebaum HY"D, Bentzion Chroman HY"D, Yocheved Orpaz HY"D, Norma Rabinovitch-Shvarzblat HY”D, and 2 Secular Yidden from Virginia Alan Scherr, and his daughter Naomi, were all Murdered in cold blood.
Much is being said about the state of book buying and learning. But if we are going to discuss seforim, we should really look back to Hei Teves—the victory of the seforim. Put simply, the message the Rebbe conveyed at that time was that we should do more:
"In recent years great and wonderful things in the area of spreading Yiddishkeit have been accomplished … If so, the question is raised, why was it necessary that in this era and in this area there should be a problem?"
"We must say that the reason for the problems was only to bring a greater level of ascent. The only reason for the troubling and uncertain situation was to accomplish greater things many times over in the spreading of Yiddishkeit." (Hei Teves, 5747, excerpted from "Hei Teves" by Rabbi Bogomilsky)
Dear U.N., E.U. and all other Anti-Semitic organizations out there,
Speaking for Israel and Jews all over, I would like to express my sincerest apologies. For it appears to me that we have upset you, for we had the audacity to defend ourselves against the Arab murderers who are only trying to do what you want them to do, namely kill us all.
Now I know this must be hard to accept, I mean for years now your organizations have been working tirelessly around the clock to attain world peace. By world peace I of course mean a world without an Israel in it. I'm sure it kills you every year when you receive a new globe for your desk with all the new countries, and you still see a tiny Israel there. How dare we continue to exist? When the world clearly does not want us around.
I can bring you proof of that fact by listing thousands of incidents throughout history in which the Jews were killed mercilessly for no reason other then being Jewish. But I won’t since that is too much to type, so instead I’ll bring you the past few months.
For the past few months, day after day, rockets continuously land in Jewish towns; on schools, nurseries, prayer halls and many other such "military locations". Yet for some reason the U.N., E.U. or any other international committee haven't even had a thought about mentioning the rockets, forget about condemning them.
This is the burning question of the day. As we overcome the numbing grief and pain caused by the savage attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai, we are forced to look at the institutions in our own communities. Could it happen here?
The truth is that Chabad has an unmistakable culture of openness which does create a certain level of vulnerability. Honestly, the average Beis Chabad will not thrive if it is turned into a fortress.
I had the privilege to meet personally with some of the most prominent security experts in the world to discuss our dilemma. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the staff at Giuliani Partners; Mr. Jules Kroll founder of Kroll Associates; and Mr. Robert Tucker of T & M Protection Resources. I would also like to credit NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Chief William Bratton of the LAPD, who took time from their respective schedules to give me their assessment of Chabad from a security standpoint.
"All Jews are brothers, literally," writes Rabbi Shneur Zalman in Tanya. If there were ever any doubts as to the truth of that statement, they have been dismissed with the lives and terrible murders of Rabbi Gavriel and Mrs. Rivkah Holtzberg. The entire Jewish nation came together in hope and, later, in grief because of this young couple, showing that we are indeed one family.
Yes. We have lost our brothers and feel an acute pain, fear, and depression that will likely haunt us for quite some time. It also haunts our children. And for that reason we should take care that we are creating a climate of healing in our households, not one of despair.
As I ran my last-minute errands and prepared to leave the U.S., I heard the initial reports of terrorist activity in Mumbai, India. Immersed as I was in my own activities, I did not follow the news closely.
It was not until I was at minyan that I heard about the attack on the Chabad House. With the confusion and chaos that went on, it was only after I had returned home and was watching CNN a few minutes before Shabbat began that we heard reports of the killings there.
Much has been written and said about these tragic events. The Israeli government will certainly use the funerals as a “see what victims we are” platform (they won’t necessarily be wrong). Yet this particular attack, pointed at a Jewish target, tugs at the heart of the average Israeli in a more personal way than for other people, for several reasons.
We are, after all, a country that is sadly all too familiar with the sight of a baby screaming for his missing mother or father. We experience such tragedies with a frequency that would not be tolerated in the U.S. or other major nations. Yet that is a story for another day.
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