tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116927572024-03-06T23:30:15.181-08:00Lubavitch In the NewsChasidim, Chassidus, Lubavitch, Rebbe, Moshiach, Tanya, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Anash, Shluchim, Shliach, Chabad, Mitzva, Torah.
Largest archive of news and blog posts on the internet.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.comBlogger1730125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-37963102864688076282010-11-10T14:36:00.000-08:002010-11-10T14:36:14.651-08:00Op-Ed: Why donors like Chabad<div class="byline" style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">By <a href="http://www.jta.org/user/profile/73337" style="color: #1d74a1; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="click to view">Dovid Efune</a> · November 10, 2010</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Dovid Efune</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">NEW YORK (JTA) -- Two mammoth Jewish gatherings were held recently: the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America and the International Convention of Chabad Emissaries. While both are awe inspiring in their grandeur and focused on Jewish continuity, the Chabad movement continues to grow rapidly and the federations appear to be largely stagnant.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">The JFNA is a well-oiled machine with an established infrastructure, smooth mechanisms and operational hierarchy. By contrast, although there are a number of supporting bodies, Chabad from an organizational perspective appears in some ways to be a band of ragtag rabbis independently operating without an authoritative organizational body, central CEO or board of directors, and endowment, trust fund or investment portfolio.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">As opposed to the federations, few if any studies, polls or annual reports are conducted or written within the Chabad movement, and no center can quantify the precise number of its members. One would be hard pressed to find a flow chart or academic assessment of Chabad’s growth, but agreement essentially is unanimous on its rapid rise.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Chabad institutions have attracted some of the most sophisticated and advanced business and industry leaders as donors. At Sunday's concluding banquet of the conference, the guests included the likes of Michael Steinhardt, Guma Aguiar, Lev Leviev, Eduardo Elsztain and Ronald Lauder. Gennady Bogolubov delivered the keynote speech.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">One may wonder why the informality doesn’t drive away savvy investors that are used to detailed reports, due diligence and rigorous accountability. The answer is simple: Those who give money to Chabad know they will see the fruits of their contribution. Donating to Chabad embodies what has become known as true venture philanthropy or entrepreneurial idealism.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Chabad delivers instant tangible results, which is what any shrewd investor appreciates or giant of industry demands in today’s fast-paced world. Donations are not swallowed up by antiquated mechanical financial infrastructures; there is no red tape, application processes, panels or mazes of bureaucracy. The Chabad institutions are focused on the immediacy of the task at hand and are adverse to anything that will slow them down.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Additionally, donors can be sure that a donation to a Chabad establishment will support a Jewish cause. The federations, by contrast, earmark large contributions for general humanitarian causes in the spirit of "tikkun olam," or repair of the world, but with so many modern-day Jewish challenges with which to contend, many donors are saying that our own should come first.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Much of the donor interest in Chabad can be crystallized further by making a comparison to the Tea Party movement. The movement’s primary concerns include, but are not limited to, cutting back the size of government, reducing wasteful spending, reducing the national debt and adherence to an original interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Chabad’s primary concerns include cutting back the top-down, parochial mode of Jewish practice, maximizing the use of every philanthropic dollar (there are no earmarks or pork barrel spending), lifting the pride and confidence of the Jewish people, and adherence to an original interpretation of Jewish law.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">Chabad is a purist, entrepreneurial, visionary and versatile, action-oriented and results-driven organization. For venture philanthropists seeking immediate high returns, there is no better investment.</div><div style="color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;"><em style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">(<a href="http://defune@gjcf.com/" style="color: #1d74a1; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Dovid Efune</a> is the director of the Algemeiner Journal and the GJCF-the Gershon Jacobson Jewish Continuity Foundation.) </em></div>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-83314127042205893052010-11-10T14:30:00.000-08:002010-11-10T14:30:27.173-08:00Beyond The End Of One's Nose<div class="post hentry" style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><div class="post-body entry-content" style="line-height: 1.4; width: 500px;">There is no doubt that Chabad takes whatever it does to extremes. There is no Jewish group more active in more far-flung places of the world than them. Despite a lack of local resources that would drive out less-committed <em>Yidden</em>, Chabad emissaries live full Jewish lives in scattered places around the globe, providing a taste of <em>Yiddishkeit</em>to any of our brethren who happen to wander by. Their dedication to <em>kiruv</em> is also unmatched and they work with great fervour to bring back lost Jews to Torah.<br />
Unfortunately it is human nature to let extremism cut both ways. While a moderate often refuses to take a defined stand on anything, an extremist will have a firm opinion about everything and a refusal to budge from it. The problem with Chabad's extremism is that its desire to bring Jews back to Judaism is matched by a belief that their Judaism is the only real kind. <br />
As Rav Shmuely Boteach, former black sheep of the movement, notes <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=194526" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;">in a recent piece</a> in <em>The Jerusalem Post</em>:<br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">I knew then in theory what I just witnessed in practice: Chabad emissaries would one day take over the Jewish world. Why? Because of the grandness of their vision and the passion with which they pursued their mission. Other Jewish organizations sought to educate people about their tradition, but Chabad sought to raise all Earth’s inhabitants to a higher God-consciousness, and to make Judaism the driving force in every decision of daily life.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">The passionate dedication of the Chabad emissaries was infectious. They did not preach the Torah. Rather, it coursed through their veins, seeping out of every pore. Hassidic teachings about the approachability of God and the accessibility of a higher spiritual reality were grafted onto the average Chabad activist’s very DNA, becoming an inseparable part of his or her character and personality.</span><br />
<span style="color: #45818e;">WITNESSING THE fulfillment of that promise at the conference was an awakening. Chabad is no longer merely a Jewish movement. It is Judaism. I find it astonishing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew in to attend the Jewish federations’ annual General Assembly but bypassed the Chabad conference. If an Israeli prime minister wants to be part of the unfolding of modern Jewish history, he has to address Chabad. No other organization even comes close to its global reach or grassroots impact. And it is growing exponentially.</span><br />
They don't read newspapers and are unlikely to care about what Rav Boteach says but one can imagine going to the Rebbes of Ger, Belz and Satmar (both of them), all of them significantly larger in size than Lubavitch despite a total lack of outreach, and telling them: "Did you know that Chabad <em>is</em> Judaism?"<br />
Indeed, Rav Boteach should know this. All the <em>shluchim</em> should know that theirs is not the largest sect within Orthodox Judaism and that within the Chareidi community they are relegated to the fringe with the Bratzlovers, a kooky sect that might be scrupulous in the performance of some <em>mitzvos </em>but which endorse beliefs and worldviews unacceptable to the main group.<br />
Then there's the Modern Orthodox and Dati Leumi who would also be shocked to know that they are not Judaism. Never mind the pantheon of thinkers and towering figures they lay claim to. Never mind all the learning and practice. They aren't Judaism because they're not Chabad?<br />
Yet there is the other side that Rav Boteach mentions and must be emphasized. As Rav David Berger notes in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rebbe-Messiah-Scandal-Orthodox-Indifference/dp/1904113753/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289396423&sr=8-1-fkmr0" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;">his book on the subject</a>, Chabad is expanding within significant parts of the Jewish community through a clever strategy. Just as leftists realized long ago that if one infiltrates the school system to ensure that children are raised with a socialist/politically correct philosophy so as to create a large group of support later on, Chabad realized long ago that going where no <em>frum</em> Jews could be found was like mining for gold. There is a reason Chabad is found in isolated small Jewish communities that no one else pays attention to, why they show up on campuses even in cities with a large Torah-observant population and why they pay so much attention to Jewish communities and travellers in such places as Russia and India. <br />
Generally one does not find Chareidim in these places since they prefer large centres where they have resources, <em>yeshivos</em> and other such supports. One doese not find Dati Leumi there either since the movement's focus is on Eretz Yisrael, not <em>golus</em>. Asd a result, if you're a non-religious Jew living in a small town in the American mid-west, or a student venturing onto a university campus, or a villager someone in Siberia, chances are the only <em>frum</em> Jew you'll ever meet is a Chabad <em>shaliach</em>. <br />
The consequence of this is obvious - if all you ever want from the Chabadnik is chicken soup on Friday night and the occasional raucous Purim party, that's fine but if you want to learn more about Judaism you will be introduced to Torah observance but through the Chabad lens which is, in many ways exhaustively documented elsewhere, different from conventional Torah observance. What's more, you will be taught that theirs is, like Rav Boteach say, <em>the </em>Judaism of our ancestors, the only real type, the kind that Moshe Rabeinu, a"h, brought down from Har Sinai.<br />
One might raise an objection by pointing out that Aish HaTorah and Ohr Sameach are hardly different in that approach to <em>kiruv</em>. This is definitely true. Ask an Aish or Ohr rav about the age of the Earth and you will be told the only legitimate answer is 5771 years. They won't teach you about the Rav or Rav Kook either in those places. <br />
But the significant difference is that Aish and Ohr generally restrict themselves to large communties, as I noted above regarding Chareidim in general. You won't find Aish in Woebegone, Minnesota. You just might find Chabad.<br />
Through their <em>kiruv</em>, Chabad is indeed working very hard to present a specific type of Torah Judaism to the non-religious masses who don't know about the depth and variety of Torah observance. They are working hard to convince the multitudes that <em>Nusach Ari</em> is the only siddur God hears you pray and that a certain deceased rabbinical figure really is the Moshiach, that it is a fundamental principle of Judaism and an actual<em>halacha</em> to believe this<em>, </em>and that he is just waiting for the opportunity to reveal himself and bring the final salvation.<br />
That Chabadniks don't realize that Judaism is far bigger than them and that their beliefs are not standard in the rest of the Torah community is regrettable. That the rest of the Torah Jewish community is sitting back while they divert our non-religious brethren into their narrow camp isn't.<div style="clear: both;"></div></div><div class="post-footer" style="line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 1.5em;"><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-1"><span class="post-author vcard">Posted by <span class="fn">MIghty Garnel Ironheart</span> </span><span class="post-timestamp">at <a class="timestamp-link" href="http://garnelironheart.blogspot.com/2010/11/beyond-end-of-ones-nose.html" rel="bookmark" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;" title="permanent link"><abbr class="published" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-top-style: none; border-width: initial;" title="2010-11-10T08:55:00-05:00">8:55 AM</abbr></a> </span><span class="post-comment-link" style="padding-left: 1em;"></span><span class="post-icons"><span class="item-action"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=1097749014220347853&postID=3903609989043847834" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;" title="Email Post"><img alt="" class="icon-action" height="13" src="http://img1.blogblog.com/img/icon18_email.gif" style="border-bottom-style: none !important; border-color: initial; border-left-style: none !important; border-right-style: none !important; border-top-style: none !important; border-width: initial; margin-bottom: 0px !important; margin-left: 0.5em !important; margin-right: 0px !important; margin-top: 0px !important; position: relative; vertical-align: middle;" width="18" /></a></span></span></div><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-2"><span class="post-labels">Labels: <a href="http://garnelironheart.blogspot.com/search/label/Lubavitch" rel="tag" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;">Lubavitch</a></span></div><div class="post-footer-line post-footer-line-3"><span class="post-location"></span></div></div></div><div class="comments" id="comments" style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; margin-top: 2em; min-height: 0px; position: relative;"><a href="" name="comments"></a><h4 style="color: #3d85c6; font: normal normal normal 24px/normal Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; position: relative;">2 comments:</h4><div id="Blog1_comments-block-wrapper"><br />
<dl class="avatar-comment-indent" id="comments-block" style="margin-left: 45px; position: relative;"><dt class="comment-author " id="c5329838102947301040" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: -45px; padding-left: 45px;"><a href="" name="c5329838102947301040"></a><div class="avatar-image-container avatar-stock" style="height: 37px; left: -45px; position: absolute; width: 37px;"><span dir="ltr"><a href="http://ronypony.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="" height="16" src="http://img1.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; border-width: initial; float: right; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px; position: relative;" title="Jennifer in MamaLand" width="16" /></a></span></div><a href="http://ronypony.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;">Jennifer in MamaLand</a> said...</dt>
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-5329838102947301040" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 25px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Well, okay. But are you suggesting we ALL move to Woebegone?
I lived in a small Jewish town; it was challenging - and tiring. While I was there, I WAS Chabad, organizing public menorah lightings, trucking in kosher meat, sending letters to politicians, rounding up the city's straggling few Jewish kids for a month of super-fun camp (run by flown-in bochrim).
I don't quite understand - if Lubavitch's unique brand of mishegas compels them to live in Nowheresville, gei gezundheit. And more importantly, what would you offer the Jews of Nowheresville in return for giving up their Chabad connections??? Or are you simply demanding that every Chabadnik give equal time to the teachings of the Rav along with the Frierdiker Rebbe?
Answers - we want answers, not just more questions!!! :-)</div></dd><dd class="comment-footer" style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 25px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><span class="comment-timestamp"><a href="http://garnelironheart.blogspot.com/2010/11/beyond-end-of-ones-nose.html?showComment=1289400645299#c5329838102947301040" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">10 November, 2010 9:50 AM</a></span></dd>
<dt class="comment-author " id="c7114624767001304810" style="font-weight: bold; margin-left: -45px; padding-left: 45px;"><a href="" name="c7114624767001304810"></a><div class="avatar-image-container avatar-stock" style="height: 37px; left: -45px; position: absolute; width: 37px;"><span dir="ltr"><img alt="" height="16" src="http://img1.blogblog.com/img/blank.gif" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; float: right; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px;" title="Garnel Ironheart" width="16" /></span></div>Garnel Ironheart said...</dt>
<dd class="comment-body" id="Blog1_cmt-7114624767001304810" style="margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 25px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If one has no problem with a Jewish group going around and telling people about a dead Messiah who will be resurrected to bring the Kingdon of God to Earth, only his name is Menachem Mendel, not Yoshke, then there's no problem.
The difficulty is that the Jews in Yenemsville are going to be taught this belief which is heresy to the rest of us.
Should more of us be moving to those small towns? As someone who currently lives in one, I say yes. There is benefit to groups from YU and similar places going on and competing for Jews with Chabad.</div></dd><dd class="comment-footer" style="margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 25px; margin-top: 0.5em;"><span class="comment-timestamp"><a href="http://garnelironheart.blogspot.com/2010/11/beyond-end-of-ones-nose.html?showComment=1289403595060#c7114624767001304810" style="color: #3d74a5; text-decoration: none;" title="comment permalink">10 November, 2010 10:39 AM</a></span></dd></dl></div></div>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-23165150994672931222010-07-23T10:31:00.000-07:002017-01-09T07:01:38.045-08:00Probing the roots of neglect<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "verdana" , "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 15px;"></span><br />
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Dental hygiene among the ultra-Orthodox is often disastrous, a consequence of lack of both money and awareness. The new reform in dental care may help the situation, but some are dubious</h2>
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;">By <span style="color: #434141; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/tamar-rotem-1.592" style="color: #434141; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;">Tamar Rotem</a></span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span style="color: #434141; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none;"><a href="http://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/tamar-rotem-1.592" style="color: #434141; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none;"></a></span></span>Considering the high cost of the As the 12-year-old girl steps out of the treatment room at the Chabad dental clinic in Jerusalem's Mea She'arim neighborhood, she asks: "How long will it take?" The answer she receives from the female dentist, concerning how long the thin metal wires encircling her teeth will have to stay on is apparently satisfactory; the girl gives a little smile.</div>
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Tuesdays is orthodontics day, for girls only, at this clinic for disadvantaged residents, in the heart of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood. Girls aged 10 or 11 flock there: How their teeth look is a very important aesthetic issue for them. Indeed, within just a few years they will begin getting offers for potential husbands.treatment and the large number of children in these religious families, orthodontics cannot be taken for granted. Today - as Chabad dental clinic director Rachel Donat relates, and as emerges from conversations with mothers - the accepted practice for ultra-Orthodox preteens who want to have their teeth straightened is to save up money from babysitting jobs.</div>
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At the clinic, where dental care is subsidized, they charge about NIS 6,000 for the whole process, which may sound astronomical to a girl who slowly accumulates her shekels, but is lower by several thousand shekels than orthodontic care offered by health maintenance organizations and certainly by private clinics.</div>
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In some cases, says Donat, there is a medical justification for orthodontic treatment as a result of teeth being neglected from an early age. Thus, for example, the extraction of baby teeth because of decay is very common at the subsidized clinics run by nonprofit organizations, of which there are a number in Jerusalem. Instead of preserving teeth, parents - to the child's detriment - often prefer to extract and save money.</div>
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The Chabad clinic serves "families that barely make it to the end of the month, in which the fathers study at a kollel" (a yeshiva for married men ), according to Donat, a resident of the Betar Ilit community outside Jerusalem.</div>
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"This is a population that opts for minimal dental care. Whatever hurts is taken care of; they come to the clinic only when a child isn't sleeping at night and there is an emergency. It's shocking to see a 5-year-old child with only one whole tooth in his mouth. It isn't that they don't care, but parents say to me: 'I'd like to [give my child dental treatment], but don't have the money.'"</div>
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Donat adds that many families cannot afford even the lower prices at the clinic, which charges about NIS 100 for a child's filling. "The cheapest is to extract baby teeth. To rehabilitate a tooth, or put a crown on it - that's hundreds of shekels. In very many cases we extract, because there is no alternative."</div>
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Supposedly, all this will change in the wake of the reform spearheaded by Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman, involving free dental care for children under the age of 8. While the reform, which went into effect earlier this month, does not include orthodontics, it does include such services as tooth reconstruction, fillings, extractions, root-canal work, temporary crowns, anesthesia with nitrous oxide, and x-rays, with a deductible of up to NIS 40 per visit.</div>
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Although Litzman's scheme is intended for the entire public, members of the ultra-Orthodox sector are among those that need it most. Donat believes the reform "will solve a great deal of problems," but adds that it is inadequate, as "there are children up to the age of 12 or 13 who also need treatment."</div>
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A dentist who works at a Meuhedet HMO clinic in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood doubts the reform as planned will help much. According to him, his clinic's management recently instructed dentists to limit the number of procedures per visit and thereby save on certain treatments: "A child comes in and might need three fillings on each side. But according to the instructions, and because up to NIS 40 is charged per visit, I can do only two."</div>
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Asked about the policy, a spokesperson for Meuhedet says these instructions come from the Health Ministry, not the HMO itself.</div>
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Another dentist who works at Meuhedet and at a subsidized clinic says the HMO is worried about being inundated with patients, with the advent of the reform scheme. According to her, ever since the HMOs started offering free dental treatment as part of their complementary insurance plans (Maccabi up to the age of 6; Clalit until the age of 18, or 6 under a cheaper plan; and Meuhedet until the age of 12 ) about a year and a half ago, there has been an influx of ultra-Orthodox seeking treatment for their children. She says the HMOs have not prepared themselves for the reform yet, but in any event nowadays, "by law, you have to treat everyone. If you're treating one child for an hour, though, how are you going to take care of the others?" She fears the HMOs will not be able to keep up and people will have to wait a very long time for appointments, which will consequently affect the level of treatment. She also fears dentists' salaries will decrease, good dentists will leave HMOs and the quality of service will decline even more.</div>
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From conversations with ultra-Orthodox parents it emerges that most are not yet aware that they are entitled to free treatment. In general, they are skeptical. Nor has Litzman become the "hero du jour" in the Haredi press, though the reform has been depicted as positive there.</div>
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"It's a pity the reform has come along only now, when I have only one child under the age of 8," says Rivka, a mother of nine in Jerusalem (who preferred, like others, that her real name not be published ). "Today I am paying thousands of shekels for my son because I didn't give him dental care when he was little. I have taken out a loan. The dentist told me this was the result of neglect. I once thought I didn't need to worry, that it was only baby teeth and why invest? When you have nine or 10 children, you say: 'Never mind.' Do you know how much laughing gas costs? Or a filling? Where can I find the money to pay for this?"</div>
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<b>A matter of poverty</b></div>
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Various perceptions have taken root among the poorer ultra-Orthodox populations: for example, that small cavities and baby teeth need not be treated. Plus - as a woman from the Toldot Aharon Hasidic sect related - among women there is usually great attention to oral hygiene, but among men brushing their teeth is not considered essential. Some parents interviewed noted that at the heders and Talmud Torah schools, sweets are handed out as rewards and there is no awareness of the damage they cause.</div>
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According to Dr. Yaron Avda, who in the past worked at the Chabad clinic and is currently employed at another clinic in Jerusalem, people belonging to the religious community will only pay for dental treatment if they are in pain. "When I see other teeth that are neglected while I work," he says, "they usually insist that I not deal with them. I try to persuade them they should get treatment but it doesn't always work."</div>
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Another issue involves dealing with many children, notes Avda: "Our view is that until the age of 8, children can't brush their teeth alone. The model we aspire to is for the big ones to help the little ones. In this [ultra-Orthodox] population, it is common for an older child to accompany a small child to the appointment; therefore, we are trying, for instance, to make the big sister responsible since the mother cannot see to all of them ... Extraction is often a lot less painful for children, but cases come in with teeth entirely destroyed and only the roots left in the gums."</div>
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Today, Avda says, he is seeing a change. "A child comes in with his mouth completely destroyed, we perform very complex treatment and six months later fewer procedures are necessary - in families that care, we really see an improvement. This is a population that wasn't exposed to a dentist before the supplementary insurance plans, and today parents are coming in for preventive treatments as well."</div>
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According to Prof. Harold Sgan-Cohen, head of the community dentistry department of the dental school at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, the upsetting situation in the ultra-Orthodox sector has nothing to do with religion, but rather with poverty.</div>
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"Research has shown," says Sgan-Cohen, "that poor people tend to be sicker and there is a lot of illness that isn't treated because people have no money, and this is the case with dentistry." He notes that poor families are also usually less strict about brushing teeth and often consume a lot of sweet foods. "The cheapest way to quiet a child," he says, "is with chocolate spread or raspberry juice made from syrup."</div>
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Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-51766715260011553452010-07-23T10:10:00.000-07:002010-07-23T10:15:21.344-07:00Noahides establish website for interested followers<div class="story_item_info" style="color: rgb(176, 176, 176); clear: both; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "><div class="story_item_author">by Toby Tabachnick<br />Staff Writer</div><div class="story_item_date">07.22.10 - 11:06 am</div><div class="story_item_date"><br /></div></div><div class="full_story" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; "><div class="story_item_images" style="float: left; clear: left; "></div>Amy Boiles lives in Denver City, Texas, a town of some 4,000 residents, situated near the New Mexico state line. Boiles, like the others in Denver City, was a practicing Christian — until about a year ago, when, as she puts it, she could no longer “pretend that the New Testament is true.”<br /><br />Through a high school friend, Boiles began learning about an alternate way for gentiles to serve G-d. And with the help of Michael Schulman, a Lubavitch physicist in Pittsburgh, she found spiritual guidance, as well as a community.<br /><br />Boiles is a Noahide, a gentile who follows the seven commandments that G-d gave to Noah and his children after the flood to ensure order in the world. The laws prohibit (1) idolatry, (2) blasphemy, (3) homicide, (4) forbidden sexual relations, (5) robbery, and (6) eating meat taken from a live animal (cruelty to animals) and require (7) establishment of courts of justice.<br /><br />“There are two paths to serve G-d and to have a reward in the world to come,” Schulman said, “that of the Jew, and that of the non-Jew. The Noahide has seven commandments given as part of the Torah. If a gentile accepts these seven commandments, the person recognizes that these are coming from G-d, so that’s his path.”<br /><br />Schulman has been running a Noahide outreach organization, Ask Noah International (ANI), since 1999. Although he was employed as a senior research engineer from 1988 through 2006, he no longer works as a physicist, and is devoted full time to Ask Noah.<br /><br />The organization, founded by Chaim Reisner, also of Pittsburgh, boasts an extensive website (<a href="http://asknoah.org">asknoah.org</a>), with educational and outreach materials and essays, and fields the questions of those interested in the Noahide laws. Schulman and Reisner also work to connect Noahides with each other, helping them find community.<br /><br />Boiles was attracted to the Noahide commandments after being inspired from a verse in Genesis where G-d tells Cain he will be forgiven if he improves himself.<br /><br />“This was contrary to Christianity,” Boiles said, “In Christianity, you can only be forgiven through a blood sacrifice — through Jesus Christ. I didn’t know there was another option. I didn’t know that under the umbrella of Judaism there is a place for non-Jews.”<br /><br />“G-d doesn’t require man to go through Jesus. You can go straight to G-d. That’s liberating for me,” she said.<br /><br />At age 61, Larry Telencio, of Naples, Fla., having rejected his Christian background, was searching for meaning. He found ANI on the Internet and now studies the universal laws, as well as Torah, although “not too deeply. Deep delving into the Torah is forbidden to a gentile,” he said.<br /><br />“The Noahide path was basically all the things I believed in,” Telencio said. “I believe in one G-d, and Hashem is the only G-d.”<br /><br />While the Lubavitch are known for their efforts of outreach to other Jews, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, saw a mandate to reach out to gentiles as well, Schulman said.<br /><br />Although the sages of the Talmud understood the importance of spreading the word of G-d to gentiles, that duty was suppressed for centuries in favor of “self-preservation,” Schulman said, after the Jews’ exile following the destruction of the temples. About 30 years ago, Jews began to resume the mission of educating non-Jews.<br /><br />“In the 1980s, the Rebbe said the time has come, and societies are open enough. Jewish people have success in the world. There is a new obligation to pick it up again,” Schulman said.<br /><br />The Lubavitch decided to take up the cause to ensure the Noahide laws were conveyed to non-Jews in accordance with the Torah.<br /><br />“There were others outside Lubavitch that took this up more quickly than Lubavitch groups,” Schulman said. “They were spreading the seven commandments, but in some cases, they were not properly educated. In some other cases, they had their own agendas. There needed to be a dedicated Torah-based organization that has oversight to take up this message.”<br /><br />Schulman became involved with spreading the word of the Noahide laws when Reisner sought some help with his fledgling website.<br /><br />“I became the webmaster,” Schulman said, “and from there, I started seeing how much this was needed. I saw the [Noahide] movement was going offtrack, and saw that it needed to go on the path of a Torah teacher.”<br /><br />The movement is growing, according to Schulman, and is becoming more widely accepted, although there is a notable lack of Noahide communities in the United States, and Noahides here must go to the Internet to find other Noahides with whom to connect.<br /><br />Noahides in other countries, such as the Philippines, the United Kingdom and Kenya, have had more success in building Noahide communities, Schulman said. While these communities do not have rabbis, they have community leaders who aid with learning Chumash and Tanach.<br /><br />Schulman has developed a set of courses on Noahide principles of the commandments and faith, and, more recently, has been putting together appropriate prayer services to help these communities.<br /><br />He is also helping to edit a comprehensive codification of the commandments.<br /><br />“The Rebbe wanted a codification of the Noahide commandments, like the Code of Jewish Law,” Schulman said. “The Rebbe said there should be one for the Noahide communities.”<br /><br />Codification of the Noahide laws has become one of Schulman and Reisner’s “major goals,” Schulman said, and they recruited Torah scholar Rabbi Moshe Weiner to take on the project. While Weiner thought he would be able to complete the project in a year, it has taken four years to cover just the first six of the seven commandments. In 2007, ANI published volume one, covering the first three commandments, and the principles of faith, and in 2008, the second volume, covering the second three commandments, was published.<br /><br />While some Noahides do aspire to convert, most are content living as non-Jews, following the Noahide laws.<br /><br />“It is not a goal at all to encourage conversion,” Schulman said, “although some do decide to go down that road. Most people just want to connect with the truth.”<br /><br />Both Telencio and Boiles appreciate Schulman’s help in connecting them with a virtual Noahide community.<br /><br />“There are no other Noahides in Naples,” Telencio said. “Most of my contacts are through the Internet.”<br /><br />And community, wherever one finds it, is important, especially after leaving behind the religion in which one is raised.<br /><br />“When you leave Christianity and the church, you lose community,” Boiles said. “And my family has been a problem. But I had to do it. Now I see that my job is to align myself with Jews, and that we have a collective mission.<br /><br />“I’m very magnetically drawn to Judaism. Part of me yearns for conversion, but I take this very seriously. Right now my path is as a righteous gentile, and to serve Hashem.”<br /><br />(Toby Tabachnick can be reached at tobyt@thejewishchronicle.net.)</div>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-85727770565100370712010-06-29T07:33:00.000-07:002010-06-29T07:44:42.309-07:00The 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; "><div class="parbase section inlineimage"><div class="multimedia"><figure class="inline-image art left"><figcaption><p class="caption"></p><h2 class="subhead" property="dc:description" style="font-family: 'Georgia Italic', Georgia; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; line-height: 24px; padding-bottom: 17px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; ">Two rabbi watchers release their 2010 list.</h2><div class="byline" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; "><div class=""><span class="by quiet">by </span><a class="author" typeof="foaf:person" property="dc:creator" rel="foaf:publications" content="Michael Lynton" href="http://www.newsweek-interactive.com/authors/michael-lynton.html">Michael Lynton</a><span class="quiet"> and </span><a class="author" typeof="foaf:person" property="dc:creator" rel="foaf:publications" content="Gary Ginsberg" href="http://www.newsweek-interactive.com/authors/gary-ginsberg.html">Gary Ginsberg</a><time datetime="2010-06-28" property="dc:created" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 15px; font-weight: bold; ">June 28, 2010</time></div></div><p></p><p class="caption">This year’s top rebbe is Yehuda Krinsky (center), the head of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.</p></figcaption></figure></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p>In the fall of 2006, Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and his pal Gary Ginsberg, now an executive vice president of Time Warner Inc., began working on a list of the 50 most influential rabbis in the U.S. The friends devised the following unscientific criteria to rank the leaders, whose specialties range from kashrut to Kabbalah: Are they known nationally/internationally? (20 points.) Do they have political/social influence? (20 points.) Do they have a media presence? (10 points.) Are they leaders within their communities? (10 points.) Are they considered leaders in Judaism or their movements? (10 points. ) How big are their constituencies? (10 points.) Have they made an impact on Judaism in their career? (10 points.) Have they made a greater impact beyond the Jewish community and their rabbinical training? (10 points.) NEWSWEEK published that first list around Passover, 2007, with this caveat: “Is the list subjective? Yes. Is it mischievous in its conception? Definitely.” Now in its fourth year, Lynton and Gisberg’s list includes eight fresh names and a new rebbe in the top spot.</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>1.Yehuda Krinsky</strong>—As the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Krinsky is the contemporary face of the Hasidic branch. (2009 Ranking No. 4)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>2.Eric Yoffie</strong>—Yoffie represents 1.5 million Jews in more than 900 synagogues in his role as president of the Union of Reform Judaism. (2009 Ranking No. 8)</p><p></p><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>3.Marvin Hier</strong>—Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Hier is No. 3 for his tireless work combating issues such as anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hate. Hier’s many connections with major world leaders, politicians, and entertainment-industry bigwigs give him an international platform from which to speak on various matters affecting the Jewish people. (2009 Ranking No. 2 )</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>4.Mark Charendoff</strong>—A leading authority on the future of Jewish philanthropy, Charendoff serves as president of the Jewish Funders Network, an international organization of family foundations, public philanthropies, and individual funders. (2009 Ranking No. 3)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>5.David Saperstein</strong>—Having just completed his term as the only rabbi serving on President Obama’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Saperstein continues to act as a major influence in Washington in his role as director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. (2009 Ranking No. 1)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>6.Schmuley Boteach</strong>—Calling himself “America’s Rabbi,” Boteach continues to share his views on marriage, parenting, and relationships with the world, appearing on <i>The Oprah Winfrey Show, </i>counseling various celebrities in their times of crisis and releasing his most recent book, <i>The Michael Jackson Tapes. </i>(2009 Ranking No. 7)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>7.Irwin Kula</strong>—Kula, a bestselling author who serves as co-president of CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership), is nationally known for his commitment to reshaping America’s spiritual landscape. (2009 Ranking No. 10)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>8.David Ellenson</strong>—Under Ellenson’s leadership as president, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion continues to develop, train, and support the dynamic Jewish leaders of tomorrow. (2009 ranking No. 5)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong><b>9.Robert Wexle</b>r</strong>—Wexler continues influencing generations of Jewish students and scholars as president of American Jewish University. (2009 Ranking No. 6)</p></div></div><div class="advertising section"></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>10.Morris Allen</strong>—As program director for Magen Tzedek, the ethical kosher seal, Allen is changing the way the world thinks about <i>kashrut</i> and the ethical issues surrounding the hechsher. (NEW)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>11.Uri D. Herscher</strong>—Herscher is the founder, president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. (2009 Ranking No. 9)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>12.Norman Lamm</strong>—Lamm is the chancellor of Yeshiva University in New York City. (2009 Ranking No. 14)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>13.David Wolpe</strong>—Considered by many to be the No. 1 pulpit rabbi in America and a major leader of the Conservative movement, Wolpe is the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. (2009 Ranking No. 11)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>14.Yehuda Berg</strong>—Berg is known as the world’s leading authority on the Kabbalah movement. (2009 Ranking No. 13)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>15.Joesph Telushkin</strong>—Telushkin is an internationally known bestselling author and speaker. (2009 Ranking No. 15)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>16.Menachem Genack</strong>—In his role as CEO of the Orthodox Union Kosher Division, Genack has steadily supervised and maintained the organization’s stringent kosher requirements throughout a series of recent scandals. (2009 Ranking No. 17)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>17.Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus</strong>—As president of the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis), Dreyfus represents nearly 2,000 Reform rabbis. (2009 Ranking No. 18)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>18.Avi Weis</strong>—A leading Modern Orthodox rabbi who heads the Hebrew Institute if Riverdale, N.Y., Weiss recently caused a stir in the Orthodox community with his controversial decision to grant his student, Sara Hurwitz, the title of “rabba.” (2009 Ranking No. 38)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>19.Jeffrey Wohlberg</strong>—Wohlberg is president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis. (2009 ranking No. 19)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>20.Steve Gutow</strong>—Gutow is president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the public-policy and community-relations coordinating agency of the American Jewish community. (2009 Ranking No. 20)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>21.Yehiel Eckstein</strong>—As founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Eckstein is recognized as the world’s leading Jewish authority on evangelical Christians. (NEW)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>22.J. Rolando Matalon</strong>—As senior rabbi for Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, Matalon presides over a congregation of more than 1,800 families. (2009 Ranking No. 16)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>23.Dan Ehrenkrantz</strong>—In his role as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Ehrenkrantz is recognized as a leading expert in issues pertaining to the Reconstructionist movement and American Jewish history.</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>24.Haskel Lookstein</strong>—Lookstein is principal of New York’s Ramaz School and rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. (2009 Ranking No. 22)</p><p></p><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>25.Sharon Kleinbaum</strong>—Kleinbaum is senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest synagogue for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Jews. (2009 Ranking No. 25)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>26.Jack Moline</strong>—Moline, the spiritual leader of Gauds Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Va., is also the Rabbinical Assembly’s newest director of public policy. (NEW)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>27.Steven Wernick</strong>—Wernick is the newly appointed executive vice president and CEO of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. (NEW)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>28.Art Green</strong>—As dean of Hebrew College’s Rabbinical School, Green is internationally recognized as an authority on Jewish thought and spirituality. (2009 Ranking No. 27)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>29.Peter J. Rubinstein</strong>—As senior rabbi for New York’s Central Synagogue, Rubinstein presides over a congregation of more than 1,700 families. (2009 Ranking No. 12)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>30.M. Bruce Lustig</strong>—As senior rabbi for Washington’s largest synagogue, Washington Hebrew Congregation, Lustig presides over a congregation of more than 3,000 members. (2009 Ranking No. 26)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>31.Sharon Brous</strong>—Founder of Los Angeles’s progressive spiritual community, IKAR, Brous has received international attention and acclaim for her leadership and impact within the Jewish community. (2009 Ranking No. 31)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>32.Michael Siegel</strong>—In addition to serving as senior rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet congregation, Siegel is also nationally known as the co-chair of the Heksher Tzedek Commission. (NEW)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>33.Abraham Cooper</strong>—As the associate dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, Cooper is internationally known as an activist for human and Jewish rights. (2009 Ranking No. 29)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>34.Arthur Schneier</strong>—Known as the first rabbi to host the pope at his Park East Synagogue in New York, Schneier is also the founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. (2009 Ranking No. 36)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>35.Ephraim Buchwald</strong>—Buchwald is the founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program, which aims to address issues such as intermarriage and Jewish assimilation. (2009 Ranking No. 35)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>36.Sara Hurwitz</strong>—Hurwitz rose to national attention when Rabbi Avi Weiss (No. 18) bestowed her with the title of “rabba.” She is considered the first Orthodox woman rabbi ordained in the United States, and in this role she has had an impact on the roles considered acceptable for modern Orthodox women. (NEW)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>37.Kerry M. Olitzky</strong>—As executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, Olitzky is one of the leading rabbinical advocates for outreach to interfaith and unaffiliated families in America. (2009 Ranking No. 34)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>38.Bradley Shavit Artson</strong>—Artson is dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University. (2009 Ranking No. 40)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>39.Naomi Levy</strong>—Considered a leader in the Conservative movement, Levy is a nationally recognized speaker and author as well as founder and leader of the Los Angeles-based Jewish outreach organization Nashuva. (2009 Ranking No. 39)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>40.Harold Schulweis</strong>—In addition to being considered one of the leading voices of the Conservative movement, Schulweis is internationally known for founding Jewish World Watch. (2009 Ranking No. 21)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>41.Marc Schneier</strong>—Schneier is president and founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which seeks to strengthen relationships between ethnic communities in the United States. (2009 Ranking No. 33)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>42.Zalman Schacter-Shalomi</strong>—Schacter-Shalomi is known as the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement in America. (2009 Ranking No. 45)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>43.Elliot Dorff</strong>—As chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. Dorff serves as the leader of Conservative Judaism’s top lawmaking body. (2009 Ranking No. 41)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>44.Bradley Hirschfield</strong>—A nationally known proponent for interfaith dialogues and pluralism, Hirschfield is co-president of CLAL. (2009 Ranking No. 42)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>45.Steven Leder</strong>—In addition to serving as Senior Rabbi at Los Angeles’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Leder is also a bestselling author. (Returning from 2008)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>46.Ed Feinstein</strong>—A noted author and speaker, Feinstein is senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif. (2009 Ranking No. 44)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>47.David Stern</strong>—As senior rabbi for Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Stern presides over the largest congregation in the Southwest. (2009 Ranking No. 30)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>48.Michael Paley</strong>—Paley is the scholar in residence and director of the Jewish Resource Center of the UJA-Federation of New York. (2009 Ranking No. 50)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>49.Jill Jacobs</strong>—A leading expert in Jewish social-justice issues, Jacobs serves as the rabbi in residence at the Jewish Funds for Justice. (2009 Ranking No. 48)</p></div></div><div class="text parbase section"><div class="text"><p><strong>50.Mark Dratch</strong>—As founder of JSafe (The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment), Dratch is a nationally recognized speaker and consultant in matters of domestic violence, child abuse, and professional abuse within the Jewish community. (NEW)</p></div></div><p></p></div></div><p></p></div></div></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-18381821239687259752010-06-16T10:01:00.000-07:002010-06-16T10:10:44.632-07:00Gimel Tamuz: Chabad mourns on the 16th Yahrzeit<div style="text-align: right;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(15, 74, 135); font-weight: bold; font-family:Arial;font-size:large;">ג' בתמוז: חב"ד דואבת בפעם ה-16</span></div><div style="text-align: right;"> </div><div style="text-align: right;">14/06/2010</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">יקי אדמקר וחנן ויזנטל, בחדרי חרדים </div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">הלילה, ליל ג' בתמוז, ימלאו 16 שנה ליום בו עלה הרבי מליובאוויטש זי"ע לגנזי מרומים • אירועי ההילולא בארץ נפתחוצאי</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"> שבת פרשת חוקת, בו ניצחו האראלים את המצוקים, וכ"ק האדמו"ר מליובאוויטש התבקש לגנזי מרומים.</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">בריכוזי חב"ד בכל רחבי העולם נערכות התוועדויות ומתקיימים אירועים לצורך התחזקות בדרך אותה התווה הרבי עבור חסידיו וההולכים בדרכו. </div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">בהתוועדות מרכזית בכפר חב"ד • רבבות ינהרו ל'אוהל' בקווינס</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">הלילה, ליל ג' בתמוז, ימלאו 16 שנה לאותו לילה שחור-משחור עבור כל חסידי חב"ד ורבבות יהודים בעולם, מובישראל נפתחו אירועי יום ההילולא בהתוועדות המרכזית הנערכת בשעות אלו בכפר חב"ד, בה משתתפים אדמו"רים, רבנים, אישי ציבור וח"כים, לצד אלפי חסידים מכל רחבי הארץ.</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">בשעות הקרובות, יחלו רבבות לנהור אל ציונו של הרבי, בבית העלמין מונטפיורי שברובע קווינס בניו-יורק - שם הוכשרו אוהלי ענק לקליטת המוני המתפללים מכל רחבי ארה"ב והעולם. </div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">האפשרות להיכנס אל תוך האוהל בו טמון הרבי, תינתן לכל אדם למשך של 2-3 דקות, וזאת על מנת לאפשר לכולם להשתטח על חלקת מחוקק ספון. </div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">במהלך יום ההילולא יתקיימו בבית 770 בניו יורק שיעורים והתוועדויות אותם יגישו 'שלוחים' מכל רחבי העולם שהגיעו לרגל היום הזה לניו יורק. </div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">במקביל, באותן שעות יעבירו שלוחים התוועדויות ברחבי העולם כולו ומאות אלפי חסידי חב"ד יתחזקו בדרכו של הרבי מליובאוויטש זי"ע.</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">חסידי חב"ד ינהגו ביום ההילולא על פי המנהגים שקבע כ"ק אדמו"ר מליובאוויטש לאחר הסתלקות חותנו, אדמו"ר הריי"צ זצ"ל. הדלקת נר נשמה, כתיבת 'פדיון נפש', לימוד המשניות של אותיות השם, וקיום התוועדויות חסידיות בחוג המשפחה ובכל קהילה ומוסד.</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;">Google Translate:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;">Tonight, the night's Go, will be 16 years that black night - black for all Jews and tens of Chabad-Lubavitch world, Saturday night affair Constitution, which won Harelym the cliffs, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked Ginzei deceived.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;font-size:15px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">Chabad centers worldwide events are held Ahthooaedweut exist for strengthening the way it made a rabbi for his followers going on. </div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">Israel opened Ahhilula Day events held at the Central Bahthooadot these Kfar Chabad, where participants Rebbe s, rabbis, public figures and MKs, along with thousands of followers from around the country.</div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">The next few hours, tens of thousands flock to the start of grade Rebbe, Montefiore Cemetery in Queens in New - York - where huge tents were trained to absorb masses of worshipers from all over the U.S. and the world. </div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">Entering into the tent where a maximum cache will be given to any person for the 2-3 minutes in order to allow everyone to lie down on a patch of legislative Spawn. </div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">During the day Ahhilula will be held at 770 New York lessons Vahthooaedweut them submit 'emissaries' from around the world from this day pilgrimage to New York. </div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;">At the same time, those hours will pass Shluchim Ahthooaedweut worldwide and hundreds of thousands of Chabad will strengthen the path of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rebbe.</div></span><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;">Chabad will act on Ahhilula customs established by Lubavitcher Rebbe after the departure of his in-laws, Ahrei"c Rebbe of blessed memory.</span> <span style="background-image: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline- padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-size:15px;color:initial;">Candle lighting, writing, mental revenue, secondary schooling name letters, and conducting Ahthooaedweut hasidic in the family and community institution.</span></div></span></span></div>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-7253957723788397362010-06-16T09:50:00.000-07:002010-06-16T09:52:19.924-07:00Chabad emissaries gathering in D.C.June 15, 2010<br /><br />WASHINGTON (JTA) -- <br /><br />A Chabad-Lubavitch event is drawing hundreds of emissaries to Washington for meetings with Congress members and Obama administration officials.<br /><br />The Living Legacy Conference, organized by American Friends of Lubavitch, will take place Wednesday and Thursday.<br /><br />Guests at the events include top Congress members, such as U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House of Representatives majority leader, and Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader, as well as a number of U.S. senators.<br /><br />The emissaries will lunch with ambassadors from the nations where they serve; the event is expected to attract emissaries from 40 nations as well as 40 U.S. states.<br /><br />Private meetings also will be held with top administration officials.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-10410394576888529472010-06-16T09:28:00.000-07:002010-06-16T10:14:11.186-07:00Rabbi’s Biography Disturbs FollowersBy PATRICIA COHEN<br /><br />Dressed in a white straw hat, tan chinos and a blue shirt, Samuel Heilman, the co-author of a new book about Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, stood at the rebbe’s grave site among scores of pilgrims — a vanguard of the thousands expected to visit on Tuesday, in the Jewish calendar the 16th anniversary of his death — who arrived at a Queens cemetery a few days early to commune with their beloved leader.<br /><br />“It is very holy,” Mr. Heilman said outside the open-air mausoleum, or ohel, that contains the graves of the rebbe and his father-in-law and predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. Hasidim believe that the spirit of a great sage remains after death, and many Lubavitchers think the rebbe is not only a sage, but also the messiah.<br /><br />The biography’s look at Schneerson’s personal life is already causing a stir in the continuing discussion about his legacy.<br /><br />Mr. Heilman pointed to a headstone facing the ohel that refers in Hebrew to the rebbe as “the Messiah of God.”<br /><br />“It’s etched in stone,” he said. Rabbi Schneerson, the seventh and at this point the last leader of the Chabad Lubavitchers, remains as powerful a presence in death as in life.<br /><br />Over the course of his more than 40 years as grand rebbe, he transformed this tiny Hasidic sect, with its headquarters in Brooklyn, into an influential global network of Jewish followers and emissaries and turned it into one of the most important religious movements within American Jewry. His life and philosophy are essential to understanding contemporary Jewish life.<br /><br />Mr. Heilman, a sociologist at Queens College, and Menachem Friedman, a professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, offer a view into his world in their new biography, “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson” (Princeton University Press). But they have provoked a growing chorus of complaints from people inside and outside Chabad with their characterization of the rebbe.<br /><br />Controversy is perhaps inevitable. “Any attempt to humanize the rebbe is going to provoke this reaction.” said Elliot R. Wolfson, a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University and the author of “Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision.”<br /><br />What some early readers have found most disturbing is the authors’ description of the rebbe as a not especially pious young Hasid. They argue that Rabbi Schneerson’s initial dream was to be an engineer and that he mostly absented himself from Lubavitcher affairs before World War II, living in Berlin and Paris outside of a religious Hasidic community.<br /><br />Only after he escaped from Europe and arrived in the United States in 1941, when he was a childless refugee with little English and few job prospects, and millions of his people had been massacred did he see he himself as having a different mission, the book contends.<br /><br />Rabbi Schneerson was a man who “must be feeling desperate in his anxiety, loneliness, confusion and survivor guilt, whose prospects are unclear, looking for a way out, an answer from God,” the authors write.<br /><br />Sitting outside the ohel visitor center as a large brown tour bus pulled up, Mr. Heilman, a modern Orthodox Jew, spoke of his “profound respect” for the Lubavitchers but noted that his responsibility as a scholar was not simply to celebrate the rebbe’s accomplishments. “They just can’t accept that he transformed himself, that he was not always going to be the rebbe,” he said.<br /><br />Mr. Heilman and Mr. Friedman did not have access to Chabad’s private archives, though there is already a monumental amount of published material from and about the rebbe, with a new collection of 1,200 documents soon to be released. The scholars did speak with many movement members, some of whom are now critical of the biography.<br /><br />Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a Lubavitch spokesman who is thanked in the book, labeled their speculations “psychobabble” and disdained their attempt to put “themselves in the rebbe’s head while ignoring his deeply expressive correspondence and his scholarly approach.”<br /><br />Other critics take the authors to task for not relying more on published material. Steven I. Weiss, the head of news at the Jewish Channel, a cable television network, criticized the book for presenting what he called lurid details and ignoring a vast amount of “primary material which would frequently contradict its assertions.” He also chastised the authors for not noting outright that Mr. Friedman served as an expert witness against the rebbe during a lawsuit in the 1980s over ownership of the Chabad library. Mr. Heilman said, “We have no ax to grind.”<br /><br />And Mr. Wolfson of N.Y.U. argued that bypassing the rebbe’s religious writings was a mistake. “There is no question that Menachem Mendel and his wife were spreading their wings” during their sojourn in Paris and Berlin, he said. But the diaries from those years show that he was also completely absorbed in Hasidic thought and Jewish learning. “The world he lived in was completely structured around his ideas,” he said.<br /><br />Mr. Heilman maintained that Lubavitcher accounts can’t be trusted because they are hagiographies and said that he and Mr. Friedman did not examine the rebbe’s extensive writings on scripture because they were interested in his personal history, not his scholarship.<br /><br />The American and Israeli professors are colleagues and friends who have independently studied the Lubavitchers for nearly 20 years. It was their wives, though, who suggested in 2007 that the two collaborate on a book while they were all vacationing together in Croatia.<br /><br />In Mr. Heilman’s eyes, the key to the movement’s success was Rabbi Schneerson’s global vision. He figured out how to permit younger followers to engage with the modern world while remaining true to their Hasidic beliefs. By becoming shluchim, or missionaries, they could spread Lubavitch practices, thereby hastening the arrival of the messiah and redemption.<br /><br />Rabbi Schneerson told his shluchim not to limit their efforts to the most religious but to every Jew. “They take everyone,” Mr. Heilman said.<br /><br />More books and biographies are on the way, insuring that the Talmudic-like debate about Rabbi Schneerson’s life will continue.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-2484111782656613802010-06-14T07:45:00.000-07:002010-06-14T07:48:17.351-07:00Chabad Lubavitch celebrates moving into new homeCHRISTIANA LILLY<br /><br />June 11, 2010<br /><br />When the congregants walk into the temple, they gaze at the chandeliers hanging from the elevated ceilings, the new marble flooring and the fresh blue paint on the walls. With music playing in the background, they talk and enjoy appetizers and a drink in front of a portrait paying homage to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Within minutes, the foyer is filled with people standing shoulder to shoulder.<br /><br />When Rabbi Mendy Posner and his wife, Chanie, walk into the temple, they are greeted by congregants with hugs, handshakes and proclamations of "Mazel Tov!" It has been a long time coming, but the family of Chabad Lubavitch of Plantation finally has its own, freestanding temple to call home.<br /><br />"In this economy, people think it's a nice dream, but no one believed we could pull it off," the rabbi said.<br /><br />To celebrate the grand opening of the temple, located at 10165 Cleary Blvd., a gala was thrown with about 500 people in attendance, Posner estimated. The social hall was opened up to accommodate the guests in a reception with food, music and memories. A slideshow presentation of past holidays and events was projected onto the wall.<br /><br />Hugo and Hilda Bamberger, who have been coming to the temple since it opened, attended the gala and said they were blown away by the new building.<br /><br />"When you pass the outside, you want to go inside. That's what sums it up," Hugo Bamberger said. "It's a wonderful building and we needed it; we were always squeezing."<br /><br />His wife described her reaction to seeing it for the first time as being "dumbstruck."<br /><br />Shelley Drujak has been coming to the temple for six years, ever since she was looking to make a change in her religious life. She originally attended a conservative church, and after attending a service at the Chabad, she never left. Drujak said it was the warmth, spirituality and acceptance of the people that drew her to stay. With the new building, she said it was a gift to the community.<br /><br />"Every nail that went in was because of the rabbi's dream," she said. "He dreamed of it and he made it happen."<br /><br />The temple is 12,000 square feet, larger than the 800 square feet of the original one that Posner founded in 1993. The groundbreaking was in August 2008, and the rabbi worked closely with an architect to design the building. The new synagogue has children's classrooms, a men's mikvah pool, library, offices for the rabbis, a kitchen and a social hall.<br /><br />"We feel that we'll be able to offer so much more to the community," Posner said.<br /><br />At the front of the temple sanctuary stands the Torah ark, which the rabbi hopes to grow in size as well. He wants it to be 36 by 16 feet with the 12 tribes of Israel. But for now, he is worrying about putting the finishing touches on the temple.<br /><br />Ivor Bamberger, the master of ceremonies for the gala, said the temple is a place for growth in one's Judaism, and the size of the temple shows a need from the growing orthodox community.<br /><br />"If you build it, people will come," Bamberger told the congregants.<br /><br />Copyright © 2010, South Florida Sun-SentinelEditorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-489137174718868052010-06-14T07:35:00.000-07:002010-06-14T07:41:36.544-07:00The shekel drops / Missionaries in Ramat AvivThe battle raging Ramat Aviv isn't just about the neighborhood's character. It's a battle over Israel's image.<br /><br />By Nehemia Shtrasler<br /><br />The sight was elevating: 800 neighborhood residents took a break from what they were doing and went out to demonstrate. Their goal: to protect their homes. They weren't asking for much: just to maintain their way of life, the character of their neighborhood, their values, dignity and right to educate their children as they see fit.<br /><br />Nobody was paying them. They had no political party or foreign sponsors. They collected the money to fund their demonstration themselves because they knew that if they didn't, the missionary group Chabad could continue to slowly take the neighborhood over, just as is happening in Migdal Ha'emek, Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem.<br /><br />A few people set up a counter-demonstration against the 800. They believe that the people in question are merely "good Jews" who just rented a few apartments to preach Torah there. All they want is for us to put on tefillin a little, to light candles on Friday night. What charming simplicity.<br /><br />They don't realize that it's a well-organized plan to take control of the neighborhood. They aren't even aware that a yeshiva opened in the neighborhood staffed by "messengers" who are prepared to sacrifice their souls for their Rebbe.<br /><br />These "messengers" have one explicit goal: to return the people of the neighborhood to Judaism. The more Jews keep the Sabbath and follow the mitzvoth, the faster the Messiah will come. Though actually he already did come, in the form of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, according to Chabad. The Rebbe has died in the meantime, but he lives on - their belief system is a mystical, un-Jewish thing, about which the Rabbi Shach commented: "Chabad is the cult closest to Judaism."<br /><br />As in every neighborhood, here too they identified the most vulnerable point: the young. That's why every Friday they ply the grove by the Alliance school, trying to persuade the children to put on tefillin and drop by the Chabad House for a "conversation." At night they lurk among the trees and on benches for the teens, offering refreshments and sweet talk. They cunningly tell these kids, "You have the soul of a righteous person," and don't cavil at saying that their mothers and fathers are sinners. They even whisper that people who don't honor Shabbat are doomed to hell.<br /><br />Puberty is a vulnerable stage and some of these kids, who want to rebel against their parents anyway, listen. The nice people of Chabad have no problem taking in a youngster and destroying a family in Israel.<br /><br />Where are the police and the municipality as strangers badger children among the trees at night?<br /><br />The Chabadniks understand that the middle class is groaning under its burdens. So they opened a few kindergartens in the neighborhood that charge little and give much, including a hot meal. Some parents succumbed to the temptation - and lost their children. This neighborhood sorely lacks kindergartens without religious affiliation. But the city allows Chabad to open one kindergarten after another, even at the expense of a building that had been a cultural center until two years ago.<br /><br />These Chabadniks with their butter-wouldn't-melt smiles have no problem flouting the law. They rent apartments and turn them into studios. They build without permits, establish hostels and mikvas in violation of municipal ordinances, but the city doesn't block them. Mayor Ron Huldai did denounce Chabad in Ramat Aviv, saying they were harassing the residents. But his job is to stop the harassment, not just talk about it.<br /><br />Imagine what would happen to me if I went to Kfar Chabad, rented an apartment and dared to open a class to teach a modern interpretation of the Bible, or women's rights or Darwinism. In the evening I'd go out and roam the neighborhood, trying to persuade their children to visit my home on Shabbat to see what a nonobservant Jew does on the day of rest.<br /><br />Soon enough you'd have to visit me at the burn ward at Ichilov Hospital, if not worse.<br /><br />And if all that happened, the good souls among us would say: Why did he have to interfere in their way of life? Why provoke them?<br /><br />But when they come from Kfar Chabad to Ramat Aviv, these same good souls say, in the name of an artificial, suicidal liberalism, "We should understand them," and, "We mustn't oppose others because that is unenlightened racism."<br /><br />Only they are allowed to sell their rotten goods, rife with ignorance, superstition, terrible discrimination against women, bottomless hatred of Arabs and Gentiles, and nonsense about the Messiah. We may not even protect our values of humanism, education, rationalism, equality, literature and the great inventions of science that changed the face of mankind.<br /><br />The battle in Ramat Aviv isn't just about the neighborhood's character. It's a battle over Israel's image, and the 800 residents who got up and left their homes and went out to demonstrate last Monday are just the harbingers.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-92145804762190910462010-06-08T13:04:00.000-07:002010-06-08T13:10:22.688-07:00Loss becomes gain<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 13px; line-height: 16px; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">What happens when a religious leader's spiritual guru is no longer available?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">That can be a difficult road, said Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort, director of Chabad at La Costa, who was crushed when his mentor, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">Schneerson, often referred to as "the Rebbe" (a highly venerated leader in the Hasidic community), is largely heralded as leading the modern Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judiasm to found Chabad centers and unite Orthodox Jews nationwide.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">Eilfort, 43, knew him personally: It was the Rebbe who sent Eilfort to the West Coast to open a Chabad center.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"When the Rebbe passed away, that was a very difficult day, a challenging day for all of us in the chabad movement," Eilfort said of the religious leader's death in June 1994. "The Rebbe and his wife did not have any biological children, but when they passed away they left so many orphans."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">Eilfort said it was hard to fathom a world without the Rebbe.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"I was saddened that I would not be able to, in a physical sense, go to him when I had a question," he said. "I wouldn't be able to go and sit at one of his Hasidic gatherings and feel the inspiration when I went, and the way he would be able to take a Torah passage and make it vibrantly relevant in today's age. A little of the shine came off the world for me."</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">And a burden arose.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"I would have to be the rebbe for my children," Eilfort said.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">Yet since Schneerson's passing, there has been amazing growth in the Chabad movement, Eilfort said.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"When the rebbe passed away, maybe there were 1,500 Chabad centers," he said. "Everyone was saying 'Chabad was not going to grow because the rebbe's not there.'"</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">What his followers learned was that the rebbe's directive and approach were very much alive, he said.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"Today there are 3,500 Chabad centers around the world," he said, adding that faith in God has underscored that expansion.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"When things happen that I don't understand, it doesn't challenge my faith: It challenges my way of thinking," Eilfort said.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 18px; ">"I feel my relationship with God is beyond a faith relationship. It's a relationship of knowledge. Just like you know the sun is going to rise tomorrow, I feel ---- I know ---- God in my life."</p></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-34917987232886292672010-05-24T08:48:00.000-07:002010-05-24T09:12:54.965-07:00New bios of Lubavitcher rebbe dig for the man behind the mythBy Sue Fishkoff · May 17, 2010<br /><br />SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Sixteen years after the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a flurry of new publications indicates not only how enduring the interest is in his life and legacy, but how potent the minefield is surrounding his mythology.<br /><br />Writing a biography of a larger-than-life figure is never easy. And when that figure is the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, the charismatic leader of the worldwide <a href="http://www.chabad.org/">Chabad-Lubavitch</a> movement, the usual challenges of sifting through sources and evaluating mountains of research material are complicated by internal politics, religious sensibilities, personal loyalties and a lack of reliable first-person information.<br /><br />Then there’s the Messiah business.<br /><br />Until now, the only <a href="http://www.chabad.org/therebbe/article_cdo/aid/528345/jewish/A-Brief-Biography.htm">recountings of Schneerson's life</a> have been hagiographies written by Chabad followers. Now there are two new biographies by academics outside Chabad circles, with a third in the works.<br /><br />New York University Professor Elliot Wolfson came out last fall with <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231146302?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwurielheilm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0231146302">“Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson,”</a> an examination of Schneerson’s leadership within the context of Jewish esoteric tradition.<br /><br />Next month will see the publication of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691138885?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwurielheilm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0691138885">“The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,”</a> by Samuel Heilman of City University of New York and Menachem Friedman of Bar-Ilan University, an examination of Schneerson’s early life and what the authors describe as his growing Messianic pretensions.<br /><br />And Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of several best-selling books on Jewish life and thought, is in the early stages of a book focusing on the source of Schneerson’s charisma and the influence he continues to exert on people’s lives.<br /><br />The Heilman-Friedman book is generating the most controversy. Written for a lay audience, it frames Schneerson’s mission, and that of the Chabad movement he led, as motivated by Messianism, here defined as the attempt to hasten the Messianic era through human actions. The Messianic mission was so much at the heart of the late rebbe’s leadership, the authors argue, that one cannot be a follower of the rebbe without full commitment to that goal.<br /><br />The authors take a psycho-bio approach to Schneerson’s life, trying to get inside the man’s head to uncover his motivation -- always a tricky business.<br /><br />They focus on Schneerson’s 14 years in Berlin and Paris -- the so-called “lost years” between his 1927 marriage to Chaya Mushka, the daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, and 1941, when the couple escaped Nazi Europe and arrived in New York to rejoin the Lubavitch court.<br /><br />Left to his own devices, they write, Schneerson would have preferred to “settle in Paris, become a French citizen, and live as a Jew of Hasidic background pursuing a career in engineering.”<br /><br />While not explicitly claiming that Schneerson and his young wife fell away from their Chasidic roots, the authors return again and again to the short beard and secular dress Schneerson favored until his arrival in New York, along with other similar details, as evidence of an Orthodox but not haredi lifestyle.<br /><br />“There is no question he was an observant Jew, but he lived in places where Chasidim didn’t live, and he did things they wouldn’t do,” Heilman told JTA.<br /><br />It was, the authors write, a combination of survivor’s guilt -- Schneerson was the only member of his close family to escape the Holocaust -- and the improbability of his becoming an engineer in America that led him by the late 1940s to set his sights on a new career goal: succeeding his father-in-law to become the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe.<br /><br />“Mendel’s whole world had collapsed,” they write. “Now he was a childless refugee in America nearly forty years old with little or no English facility, with no job prospects in what had been his chosen field … a man who must be feeling desperate in his anxiety, loneliness, confusion, and survivor guilt, whose prospects are unclear, looking for a way out, an answer from God.”<br /><br />When Schneerson assumed leadership of Chabad, the authors continue, he was able to use this worldly experience to push a hitherto small Chasidic movement onto the world stage, launching the global outreach campaign that was to become its hallmark.<br /><br />Eventually, they assert, Schneerson believed he was “the prophet of his generation,” the man destined to bring on the Messianic era. And because the rebbe was so alone, with no peers to contradict him, they ask rhetorically: Was he “getting lost in a culture of messianic delusion”?<br /><br />This version of Schneerson’s life contradicts the official <a href="http://www.lubavitch.com/">Lubavitch</a> version of an unbroken journey toward the mantle of movement leadership and suggests a more nuanced life whose twists and turns might easily have led to a different outcome.<br /><br />Even before its publication, the book has engendered considerable objections in Chabad circles. One female emissary said some of her colleagues "have been briefed by headquarters" to steer their people away from it.<br /><br />Lubavitchers are ripping into it, disputing its details as well as its overall thesis, claiming it shows a lack of familiarity with readily available primary sources. According to these critics, the rebbe never trimmed his beard in Europe, he rolled it, and the rebbe attended synagogue regularly in Berlin -- videotaped interviews with Jews who saw him in shul prove it.<br /><br />And the suggestion that Schneerson spent his European years divorced from Chabad activities?<br /><br />Rubbish, they charge.<br /><br />Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, a Lubavitch scholar and dean of Britain’s Machon Mayim Chayin, points to a wealth of correspondence that exists between Schneerson and his father showing the two engaging in deep Talmudic and kabbalistic discourse.<br /><br />“All this is a far cry from" the claim by Heilman and Friedman "that the father was guiding a son who had but an elementary or, worse still, a cursory interest in a Chasidic lifestyle,” he says.<br /><br />In response, Heilman said in an e-mail to JTA, "We do not deny and indeed suggest that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was a primary religious and Chasidic guide for his son. Indeed, we quote from the letters they exchanged. We particularly note the exchanges around the time of the wedding of the son to the daughter of the Sixth Rebbe."<br /><br />On the question of the rebbe's beard, Heilman said readers will be able to judge for themselves by looking at photographs of Schneerson, reading comments from his father-in-law and thinking about when those comments were made.<br /><br />In general, Heilman says, it should come as no surprise that some Chasidim "see things differently from the way we do. But we have presented our viewpoint based on the facts we have gathered."<br /><br />"Our book documents what we have learned about the years in Europe," Heilman said. "We explain that most of the activities of those years were focused around the primary activity that brought the young Schneersons to Berlin and Paris. That activity was pursuit of education, career, and a life distant from Lubavitcher areas of settlement. When they wanted more of the Lubavitcher life, they either returned to the Sixth Rebbe's court or visited with him when he came to where they were.<br /><br />"We never question the future Rebbe's knowledge of Chabad or even his interest in it. But as we document, that interest was not always the center of his concerns while he pursued his engineering studies."<br /><br />Chabad itself, through <a href="http://www.jemedia.org">Jewish Educational Media</a>, is about to release more than 1,200 documents related to Schneerson’s life and work, in English and Hebrew, including his own diaries and important correspondence between him, his father and his father-in-law, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe.<br /><br />One volume will come out in late June, followed later by others, both in print at online at chabad.org. Chabad sources say this information will “clear up many misunderstandings.”<br /><br />Wolfson, a philosopher, presents a much different take on Schneerson’s Messianism than sociologists Heilman and Friedman.<br /><br />The NYU professor portrays Schneerson as having a very deep and radical understanding of Jewish esoterica.<br /><br />“In his prime, his teaching was very dense, very laden with kabbalistic terminology," Wolfson said. "I don’t know how many really understood him; most were simply mesmerized by his style of presentation.”<br /><br />Schneerson’s teachings are rife with internal contradictions, Wolfson says, including the subverting of Judaism’s gender hierarchy and the boundaries between the permissible and the non-permissible. But most of this was destined for the realm of theory. Schneerson never intended for them to be actualized -- not in this world.<br /><br />“What the implications would be sociologically, what a Jewish community would look like if the Torah were superseded by the ‘new Torah’ he spoke about, a kind of law beyond the law, I don’t think he thought that through,” Wolfson said.<br /><br />Wolfson agrees with Heilman and Friedman that Schneerson’s Messianic vision “was there from the beginning.”<br /><br />“I feel he is using the rhetoric of a personal Messiah to mark not so much a political change but a change in consciousness that … involves reaching a state of personal perfection that exceeds the need for the Torah as we have it,” he said. “I don’t think he understood the impossibility of his own vision. And he took no steps to remedy that. He took no steps to name a successor. The whole history of Chabad from the Alter Rebbe [18th-century founder of Chabad-Lubavitch] to [Schneerson] is a Messianic line that comes to a close with him.”<br /><br />Neither book will satisfy Chabad’s strongest critics, nor its closest friends. It remains to be seen whether the deluge of new material about to be published by <a href="http://www.jemedia.org/">JEM </a>will cast further light on the most elusive aspects of Schneerson’s life and leadership.<br /><br />“Like many mythic figures, he was a combination of opposites,” Heilman muses. “But you can’t really be sure what was inside his head. Who was he really?”<br /><br />This article was made possible by the support of readers like you. <a href="https://hq-org2.democracyinaction.org/dia/viewTemplate.jsp?template_key=3330">Donate to JTA now.</a>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-63058782588625800492010-05-24T08:30:00.000-07:002010-05-24T08:35:16.117-07:00Lubavitch's nerve centerJulia Duin<br /><br />The first people I saw when I climbed out of the Kingston subway station on Friday were men in long black coats, wide-brimmed black hats and beards. was in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn borough that is the "Jerusalem" of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, in which the black suits are the norm. Founded 250 years ago in what was White Russia, the movement survived under the leadership of inspired rebbes (teachers), the latest being Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.<br /><br />The dilapidated brick building I faced as I exited the subway was his movement's headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway. The interior was a rabbit warren of dingy hallways with sheets of paper - tacked onto various doors - identifying various agencies.<br /><br />I stepped into one room claimed by Jewish Educational Media, where Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin showed me an array of multimedia archives of talks by the rebbe, plus video of almost every encounter he had had with the thousands of fans who had dropped by to see him on Sundays. He would give each a dollar bill, which they in turn were to contribute to charity.<br /><br />The rebbe founded an amazing missionary corps of rabbinical couples who established beachheads of Jewish culture worldwide. I met such a couple in South Florida while reporting there in the early 1980s, and I've maintained contact with them to this day. Their synagogue turns 30 years old this month.<br /><br />Other endings are not so happy. When terrorists attacked Jews in Mumbai in November 2008, it was a Chabad center that was targeted. Nine Jews died there.<br /><br />I had long wanted to see the nerve center of the Chabad movement. A few hours later, the lower floor of 770, as they call it, overflowed with black-coated men saying prayers in preparation for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Up in the balcony in the women's section, a woman held out a card bearing Rabbi Schneerson's likeness, comparing him to the moshiach, the long-promised Jewish messiah.<br /><br />A Lubavitch friend and I strolled through the snow up Kingston Avenue, "the Champs Elysees of the Lubavitch world," he told me, with delis, a bakery shop, Judaica stories, flower shops and butchers, all kosher. A glossy tourist brochure at a florist portrays a street map of where 43 shuls, or synagogues, can be found in a 77-square-block area.<br /><br />Most impressive was the interactive Jewish Children's Museum across Kingston Avenue from the world headquarters. When the little ones enter on the third floor, they go through a walkway portraying the seven days of creation.<br /><br />There were shofar-shaped microphones in front of an exhibit on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new-year holiday during which the shofar (ram's horn) is blown. There's an olive press to create oil for Hanukkah lamps, a chestful of Purim costumes and a kosher supermarket where children can practice selecting kosher products off the shelves.<br /><br />Then there is a room devoted to observing the Sabbath, with computers instructing children how to construct a Sabbath menu and a talking wine bottle that describes how to say the kiddush blessing over the wine.<br /><br />Lots of Christian youth groups visit the museum, I was told, because of its Bible-friendly atmosphere. And certainly, with a surrounding neighborhood and culture geared to making faith attractive, Crown Heights leaves the visitor almost wishing he or she could be Jewish.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-25192965638064276662010-05-20T21:47:00.000-07:002010-05-20T21:51:30.349-07:00Jewish center dedicates new TorahCHESTNUT RIDGE — Nicky Zion waited in a line <br />Monday night to have a single letter written for her <br />family and, to her, it was entirely worth the wait.<br /><br />"I just think it's so special because it's not every day <br />you get to do this," said the 41-year-old Valley <br />Cottage resident. "I think it's just a very special thing <br />to happen to you."<br /><br />Zion was one of about 100 local Jews to take part in <br />the completion of the Chabad Jewish Enrichment <br />Center's new Torah scroll.<br /><br />Rabbi Chaim Zvi Ehrenreich, director of the Chabad <br />Center, said that each of the 600,000 letters in the <br />Torah has a connection to a Jewish soul and that <br />writing a full Torah is actually considered a mitzvah, <br />a good deed, required by the Jewish text.<br /><br />"Most people don't ever do that in its entirety," he <br />said. "And so today, every family that's here is going <br />to have the opportunity to have one letter inscribed <br />for them."<br /><br />The Chabad Center, at 6 Whitefield Road in Chestnut <br />Ridge, is part of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch <br />movement to promote Judaism among all Jews and <br />was opened in 2001, Ehrenreich said. Since its <br />inception, the group has used older Torah scrolls <br />on loan from other Jewish organizations during <br />their observances.<br /><br />The Torah scroll completed Monday was donated by <br />the Tseytin family of Saddle River, N.J. The scroll, <br />written by a trained scribe in feather and ink, took <br />about a year to complete. Ehrenreich described the <br />donation of the scroll as "very, very generous" and <br />estimated its cost to be between $25,000 and <br />$50,000.<br /><br />"The religious meaning of it is beyond that," he said. <br />"This is the Torah that's handed down from <br />generation to generation to generation from Mount <br />Sinai until today. We're going forward now. This is <br />here for the next 50 years, for the next generation. <br />It's very, very special."<br /><br />The ceremony couldn't have come at a more fitting <br />time. Shavuot, which begins tonight, is the Jewish <br /> holiday during which Moses was given the Torah at <br />Mount Sinai 3,322 years ago by the Jewish calendar.<br /><br />Monday's simcha, or celebration, included a series <br />of traditional Jewish observances such as the <br />picking up and tying of the Torah. Throughout the <br />entire event, guests ate and drank, and danced to <br />music.<br /><br />Ella Tseytin said she is a spiritual person, but not <br />overly religious. She said one reason, among many, <br />that she and her husband, Michael, donated the text <br />was to honor her father, Yakov Shtivelman, who died <br />two years ago.<br /><br />Tseytin said the family wanted to remember <br />Shtivelman, whom she described as an "amazing <br />person" who "believed in people," and the family h<br />oped that the people of Chabad would pray for him <br />as they read from the new Torah scroll.<br /><br />She also said that, after consulting with another <br />rabbi, her family decided that it would be a good <br />idea to help a Jewish group in need.<br /><br />"The idea was to do something good for someone <br />and to feel good doing it," she said. "Maybe it was a <br />little bit selfish, but the idea was to bring something <br />good to somebody else."Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-11821607547849662762010-05-20T21:42:00.000-07:002010-05-20T21:45:39.749-07:00New Sefer Torah in DnepropetrovskThis past Sunday, Dnepropetrovsk was crowded with thousands of people from all over Ukraine at a ceremonial giving of a new Sefer Torah. <br /><br />The Chief Rabbi of Romania flew in especially for the joyous occasion. Edward Sartan, a member of the board of the trustees, and Martin de Yung from Holland, donated the Sefer Torah. <br /><br />A beautiful golden Kesser together with a Choshen and a Yad were donated by Uri Laber, a respected member of the local Jewish community. The Sefer Torah was completed by a local Sofer, Zeev Gelfand, in the Kotzubinskovo Shul. <br /><br />The last few lines were written by the heads of all the local organizations and important members of the community. The procession was through the streets of Dnepropetrovsk to the Golden Rose Shul, the army band of musicians led the procession with joyous Chassidic music. People were dancing in the streets with great happiness of receiving a new Sefer Torah in their city of Dnepropetrovsk. <br /><br />At the Golden Rose Shul, Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, the Chief Rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk, said the first Atoh Horeisoh with great enthusiasm followed by dancing. <br /><br />A very festive Seuda, was held thereafter in the courtyard of the Shul with the Dnepropetrovsk's Pirchei Ukraine choir livening up the event with their latest songs.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-55636589639273317342010-05-20T20:46:00.000-07:002010-05-20T20:52:00.255-07:00Jerry Weintraub talks about faith, lessons learnedThe Desert Sun Profile<br /><br />Bruce Fessier • The Desert Sun • May 16, 2010 <br /><br />Jerry Weintraub doesn't consider himself religious.<br /><br />But, after making millions of dollars as a concert <br />promoter for the likes of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, <br />Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan, and as a producer of <br />films such as “Diner,” “Oh, God!” and the “Karate <br />Kid” franchise, Weintraub began paying attention to <br />what he calls a higher power.<br /><br />“I've had this turmoil about religion my whole life — <br />not just Judaism but Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism,” <br />he says from his walled, two-story estate in Beverly <br />Hills. “It seems like every war is fought over <br />religion. That's why I like to say I'm spiritual, not <br />religious. I believe in a higher power. I don't know <br />what that higher power is, but I believe in it.”<br /><br />Weintraub, who also owns a modern marvel in the <br />Palm Desert foothills, recounts many of his show biz <br />stories in his new book, “When I Stop Talking, You'll <br />Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories From A Persuasive <br />Man.”<br /><br />But he tells them from the perspective of a man who <br />has gained a new level of wisdom after 72 years on <br />this planet. He tries to pass along lessons he's <br />learned from his mistakes as well as his successes.<br /><br />“One of those lessons is that, from the age of 20 to <br />40, I could have been a much better father,” <br />Weintraub says. “I didn't go to ballet recitals and <br />Little League games. I was so involved with what I <br />was doing and the life I was making for my family <br />and myself that I didn't realize how much I was <br />missing. I had a lot of trouble for not being there all <br />the time. On the other hand, I was able to give my <br />family a lot of things they never would have had. I'm <br />still learning about this.”<br /><br />Weintraub said he has had many rather mystical <br />experiences in his life. Some might seem like <br />coincidences — like the day before his Desert Sun <br />interview when a Paramount Pictures executive told <br />him over lunch that he was seeking a script for a <br />team of older A-list actors for a project like “Ocean's <br /> Eleven.”<br /><br /><br />Weintraub said his “Ocean's Eleven” screenwriters <br />had written just such a film, titled “The Belmont <br />Boys.” He told the studio head he'd contact them <br />ASAP. Then he called his secretary to tell her to find <br />the New York-based writers because a development <br />deal was on the line.<br /><br />The next day, he said, he was having breakfast with <br />another studio head at the Four Seasons Hotel in <br />Beverly Hills when he looked around and, sitting in <br />the next booth, were those very “Ocean's Eleven” <br />writers.<br /><br />“I cannot tell you how many hundreds and <br />hundreds of times this has happened to me,” <br />Weintraub said just hours after telling those writers <br />of their stroke of luck. “I don't know if it happens to <br />everybody, but it happens to me. That's not a talent. <br />That's a situation I'm put into.<br /><br />“I'm not saying I don't work at it. I do. But somehow, <br />it's always there for me. It gets there. That's why I <br />believe there's something else.”<br /><br />One of his most remarkable mystical experiences <br />prompted him to post a photograph over his bed in <br />Beverly Hills of the kind of religious figure he was <br />always conflicted about.<br /><br />It isn't accompanied by pictures of his wife or kids <br />or celebrity friends such as Sinatra, George ClooneyEditorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-36372101686519184632010-05-20T20:31:00.000-07:002010-05-20T20:34:05.099-07:00Share Email PrintNew bios of Lubavitcher rebbe dig for the man behind the mythSAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Sixteen years after the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a flurry of new publications indicates not only how enduring the interest is in his life and legacy, but how potent the minefield is surrounding his mythology.<br /><br />Writing a biography of a larger-than-life figure is never easy. And when that figure is the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, the charismatic leader of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the usual challenges of sifting through sources and evaluating mountains of research material are complicated by internal politics, religious sensibilities, personal loyalties and a lack of reliable first-person information.<br /><br />Then there’s the Messiah business.<br /><br />Until now, the only recountings of Schneerson's life have been hagiographies written by Chabad followers. Now there are two new biographies by academics outside Chabad circles, with a third in the works.<br /><br />New York University Professor Elliot Wolfson came out last fall with “Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson,” an examination of Schneerson’s leadership within the context of Jewish esoteric tradition.<br /><br />Next month will see the publication of “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,” by Samuel Heilman of City University of New York and Menachem Friedman of Bar-Ilan University, an examination of Schneerson’s early life and what the authors describe as his growing Messianic pretensions.<br /><br />And Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of several best-selling books on Jewish life and thought, is in the early stages of a book focusing on the source of Schneerson’s charisma and the influence he continues to exert on people’s lives.<br /><br />The Heilman-Friedman book is generating the most controversy. Written for a lay audience, it frames Schneerson’s mission, and that of the Chabad movement he led, as motivated by Messianism, here defined as the attempt to hasten the Messianic era through human actions. The Messianic mission was so much at the heart of the late rebbe’s leadership, the authors argue, that one cannot be a follower of the rebbe without full commitment to that goal.<br /><br />The authors take a psycho-bio approach to Schneerson’s life, trying to get inside the man’s head to uncover his motivation -- always a tricky business.<br /><br />They focus on Schneerson’s 14 years in Berlin and Paris -- the so-called “lost years” between his 1927 marriage to Chaya Mushka, the daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, and 1941, when the couple escaped Nazi Europe and arrived in New York to rejoin the Lubavitch court.<br /><br />Left to his own devices, they write, Schneerson would have preferred to “settle in Paris, become a French citizen, and live as a Jew of Hasidic background pursuing a career in engineering.”<br /><br />While not explicitly claiming that Schneerson and his young wife fell away from their Chasidic roots, the authors return again and again to the short beard and secular dress Schneerson favored until his arrival in New York, along with other similar details, as evidence of an Orthodox but not haredi lifestyle.<br /><br />“There is no question he was an observant Jew, but he lived in places where Chasidim didn’t live, and he did things they wouldn’t do,” Heilman told JTA.<br /><br />It was, the authors write, a combination of survivor’s guilt -- Schneerson was the only member of his close family to escape the Holocaust -- and the improbability of his becoming an engineer in America that led him by the late 1940s to set his sights on a new career goal: succeeding his father-in-law to become the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe.<br /><br />“Mendel’s whole world had collapsed,” they write. “Now he was a childless refugee in America nearly forty years old with little or no English facility, with no job prospects in what had been his chosen field … a man who must be feeling desperate in his anxiety, loneliness, confusion, and survivor guilt, whose prospects are unclear, looking for a way out, an answer from God.”<br /><br />When Schneerson assumed leadership of Chabad, the authors continue, he was able to use this worldly experience to push a hitherto small Chasidic movement onto the world stage, launching the global outreach campaign that was to become its hallmark.<br /><br />Eventually, they assert, Schneerson believed he was “the prophet of his generation,” the man destined to bring on the Messianic era. And because the rebbe was so alone, with no peers to contradict him, they ask rhetorically: Was he “getting lost in a culture of messianic delusion”?<br /><br />This version of Schneerson’s life contradicts the official Lubavitch version of an unbroken journey toward the mantle of movement leadership and suggests a more nuanced life whose twists and turns might easily have led to a different outcome.<br /><br />Even before its publication, the book has engendered considerable objections in Chabad circles. One female emissary said some of her colleagues "have been briefed by headquarters" to steer their people away from it.<br /><br />Lubavitchers are ripping into it, disputing its details as well as its overall thesis, claiming it shows a lack of familiarity with readily available primary sources. According to these critics, the rebbe never trimmed his beard in Europe, he rolled it, and the rebbe attended synagogue regularly in Berlin -- videotaped interviews with Jews who saw him in shul prove it.<br /><br />And the suggestion that Schneerson spent his European years divorced from Chabad activities?<br /><br />Rubbish, they charge.<br /><br />Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, a Lubavitch scholar and dean of Britain’s Machon Mayim Chayin, points to a wealth of correspondence that exists between Schneerson and his father showing the two engaging in deep Talmudic and kabbalistic discourse.<br /><br />“All this is a far cry from" the claim by Heilman and Friedman "that the father was guiding a son who had but an elementary or, worse still, a cursory interest in a Chasidic lifestyle,” he says.<br /><br />In response, Heilman said in an e-mail to JTA, "We do not deny and indeed suggest that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was a primary religious and Chasidic guide for his son. Indeed, we quote from the letters they exchanged. We particularly note the exchanges around the time of the wedding of the son to the daughter of the Sixth Rebbe."<br /><br />On the question of the rebbe's beard, Heilman said readers will be able to judge for themselves by looking at photographs of Schneerson, reading comments from his father-in-law and thinking about when those comments were made.<br /><br />In general, Heilman says, it should come as no surprise that some Chasidim "see things differently from the way we do. But we have presented our viewpoint based on the facts we have gathered."<br /><br />"Our book documents what we have learned about the years in Europe," Heilman said. "We explain that most of the activities of those years were focused around the primary activity that brought the young Schneersons to Berlin and Paris. That activity was pursuit of education, career, and a life distant from Lubavitcher areas of settlement. When they wanted more of the Lubavitcher life, they either returned to the Sixth Rebbe's court or visited with him when he came to where they were.<br /><br />"We never question the future Rebbe's knowledge of Chabad or even his interest in it. But as we document, that interest was not always the center of his concerns while he pursued his engineering studies."<br /><br />Chabad itself, through Jewish Educational Media, is about to release more than 1,200 documents related to Schneerson’s life and work, in English and Hebrew, including his own diaries and important correspondence between him, his father and his father-in-law, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe.<br /><br />One volume will come out in late June, followed later by others, both in print at online at chabad.org. Chabad sources say this information will “clear up many misunderstandings.”<br /><br />Wolfson, a philosopher, presents a much different take on Schneerson’s Messianism than sociologists Heilman and Friedman.<br /><br />The NYU professor portrays Schneerson as having a very deep and radical understanding of Jewish esoterica.<br /><br />“In his prime, his teaching was very dense, very laden with kabbalistic terminology," Wolfson said. "I don’t know how many really understood him; most were simply mesmerized by his style of presentation.”<br /><br />Schneerson’s teachings are rife with internal contradictions, Wolfson says, including the subverting of Judaism’s gender hierarchy and the boundaries between the permissible and the non-permissible. But most of this was destined for the realm of theory. Schneerson never intended for them to be actualized -- not in this world.<br /><br />“What the implications would be sociologically, what a Jewish community would look like if the Torah were superseded by the ‘new Torah’ he spoke about, a kind of law beyond the law, I don’t think he thought that through,” Wolfson said.<br /><br />Wolfson agrees with Heilman and Friedman that Schneerson’s Messianic vision “was there from the beginning.”<br /><br />“I feel he is using the rhetoric of a personal Messiah to mark not so much a political change but a change in consciousness that … involves reaching a state of personal perfection that exceeds the need for the Torah as we have it,” he said. “I don’t think he understood the impossibility of his own vision. And he took no steps to remedy that. He took no steps to name a successor. The whole history of Chabad from the Alter Rebbe [18th-century founder of Chabad-Lubavitch] to [Schneerson] is a Messianic line that comes to a close with him.”<br /><br />Neither book will satisfy Chabad’s strongest critics, nor its closest friends. It remains to be seen whether the deluge of new material about to be published by JEM will cast further light on the most elusive aspects of Schneerson’s life and leadership.<br /><br />“Like many mythic figures, he was a combination of opposites,” Heilman muses. “But you can’t really be sure what was inside his head. Who was he really?”Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-56168726517035216622009-12-28T11:01:00.000-08:002009-12-28T11:08:46.484-08:00How to Find the Bridge? First, Pay Your RespectsThe metal signs are impossible to miss. They are oversize, in a bold blue usually found on signs directing drivers to the nearest hospital. And there are lots of them — 13 in all, according to the city’s count — along a quarter-mile stretch of roadway and its approaches.<br /><br />In fact, probably no thoroughfare in New York City is better identified than the ramp connecting the southbound Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge. The signs all say the same thing: “Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp.” <br /><br />Many drivers no doubt have no idea who that is. And that’s precisely why the signs are there.<br /><br />On March 1, 1994, Ari Halberstam was shot on the ramp as he and other yeshiva students were returning to Brooklyn in a van from a vigil for the ailing Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Ari died five days later. He was 16.<br /><br />The shooting was considered an act of terrorism. Prosecutors said the gunman, Rashid Baz, a Lebanese immigrant who is serving a 141-year prison sentence for the attack, was retaliating for the massacre several days earlier of Muslim worshippers in the West Bank by a Jewish settler from Brooklyn. <br /><br />Ari’s mother, Devorah Halberstam, was intent on keeping her son’s legacy alive, even as his killing has receded from memory.<br /><br />In 1995, the City Council, sympathetic to her loss and to the larger symbolism of the killing and mindful of the political clout of the Hasidic community, formally named the ramp in Ari Halberstam’s memory. But the tribute went far beyond the usual street namings that honor fallen police officers, veterans, victims of 9/11 and others who usually get a green-and-white ceremonial street sign below the one with the original name.<br /><br />While nobody questions Miss Halberstam’s motivation, the unusual scope of the sign tribute has raised questions from some city officials and, occasionally, the curiosity of passing motorists. When several of the signs were removed a few years ago to make room for warnings that the bridge was under police surveillance, the ensuing outcry prompted City Hall to back down. <br /><br />Kenneth K. Fisher was one of the councilmen who introduced the name-change bill, which passed, 49 to 0. <br /><br />“It was real statement by the Council and by the mayor that this was not simply a case of road rage,” he said. Ari’s mother, he said, “was a very effective advocate for the notion that her son’s murder should be recognized, and she happened to come from a particularly politically active sect. Do there need to be quite as many markers indicating where the incident occurred? That was done by the transportation commissioner at the time. The legislation didn’t specify that.”<br /><br />Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, said 13 signs might be excessive, “but at some point you need to get the message out.”<br /><br />Christopher R. Lynn, the city’s transportation commissioner at the time, said the signs were a compromise.<br /><br />“You couldn’t rename the bridge,” he said.<br /><br />The deal was engineered, in part, by Randy M. Mastro, who was Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s chief of staff. “The least the city could do is to honor his memory with a few signs where that tragedy occurred so we never forget,” Mr. Mastro said. Mr. Lynn said he made the final decision. “I remember telling Rudy, ‘When you take that curve, you don’t see the sign,’ ” he recalled. “He said, ‘I trust your instinct.’ So I put up around seven.” The seven signs are on the ramp itself, he said; others are on the approaches to the ramp.<br /><br />Miss Halberstam said that “the number and where they were placed was decided not by me.” <br /><br />But since the signs were put in place, she has been quite protective. A few years ago, outraged after she noticed that some signs were missing, apparently replaced by the police surveillance signs, she sent an e-mail message to Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris. <br /><br />“I just crossed the bridge and there are three signs missing on the ramp,” she wrote in the message, a copy of which was obtained through a Freedom of Information request. “Who did this? Who dishonored my son’s memory? What is going on? Who would do this? Who would stab a knife in my heart like this? Patti, please look into this a.s.a.p. because I will not have a second of peace until this is corrected and restored.” <br /><br />Whether and how Ms. Harris responded is unclear, but soon after Miss Halberstam’s plea, City Hall ordered the signs restored.<br /><br />“Once the signs are put up,” Miss Halberstam said in an interview, “they should not be taken down.”<br /><br />From time to time, Miss Halberstam, who was divorced from her husband after their son’s death, said she gets complaints about the signs. <br /><br />“You hear some negative comments: ‘Why was it done for Ari?’ ” she said. “The reason I wanted this wasn’t just because he was my child. Ari represented an innocent victim of terrorism. He was murdered as an American citizen and because he was clearly identified as a Jew.”<br /><br />Besides her role in the signs and a Web site, arihalberstam.com, Miss Halberstam works for the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, which opened in 2005 and whose focus is tolerance and understanding; it is dedicated in her son’s memory. She has also worked with law enforcement officials on gun control and combating terrorism.<br /><br />“She has taken a tragedy — the most horrible tragedy a parent can go through,” and turned it into something meaningful, said David M. Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. <br /><br />Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, a Brooklyn Democrat and a friend of Miss Halberstam, said: “Most people under those circumstances retreat into hate, anger, bitterness or loss of faith. This woman has built a children’s museum.”<br /><br />The signs leading to the bridge will always remain precious to Miss Halberstam, though she realizes that the shooting is largely forgotten, particularly after 9/11.<br /><br />“The first years everybody remembered,” she said. “We’re up to the second and third generation, and people are saying, ‘Who was Ari Halberstam?’ ” Perhaps, she mused, another sign, with more details about what happened, could be put up on the bridge itself. <br /><br />In the meantime, work on the ramp is scheduled to begin in a few months. City officials vow that not a single sign will be touched.Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-14424793117014220302009-08-03T05:35:00.000-07:002009-08-03T05:36:36.550-07:00Boynton-area eruv gives Orthodox Jews options on the Sabbath<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;">For the past six Saturdays, Ari Sonneberg has held the hands of his two preschoolers as they walked a mile to their synagogue west of Boynton Beach.<br /><br />His wife, Erin, stayed home with their 1-year-old, since the little one can't walk and Jewish law prevents her from carrying him on the Sabbath.<br /><br />But today, the Sonnebergs feel a freedom they had almost forgotten: They can push all three kids in their strollers as they walk to temple because the Jewish community's new, expanded eruv, or symbolic wall, is up and running.<br /><br />"We were impacted enormously by the closing," said Ari Sonneberg, 34, who moved west of Boynton Beach with the family almost three years ago from Boston. "My wife was stuck at home, and she loves to go to synagogue to pray and see friends. I almost had to bribe my two older children to walk with me."<br /><br />The Boynton Beach-area eruv -- a series of boundaries that allow observant Jews to push strollers or carry objects on the Sabbath -- is functional after almost six weeks of disrepair. Jewish law prohibits the carrying of objects outside the home on the Sabbath.<br /><br />The prohibition against carrying comes from the Torah and is also mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah: "Beware for your souls and carry no burden on the Sabbath day." Talmudic scholars explained the law to mean objects may not be carried between thoroughfares.<br /><br />The eruv is considered an extension of each congregant's home, where families are permitted to carry things during their day of rest.<br /><br />When the boundaries of the old eruv, which measured about 10 square miles, began to break on a regular basis a few months ago, Rabbi Sholom Ciment of Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Boynton said he consulted with fellow rabbis to create expanded boundaries that would allow even more Jews to walk unimpeded. They surveyed the area and examined every inch of the proposed perimeter to make sure they could maintain an unbroken boundary.<br /><br />The perimeter must be inviolate for the length of the eruv; natural barriers such as canals and security walls make up most of it, with strings put up by the rabbis filling in the gaps. These strings often break during rainstorms or construction and are inspected each week to make sure they are undisturbed.<br /><br />The new eruv measures 84 square miles, extending from Florida's Turnpike on the west to Interstate 95 on the east, and the Boynton Canal on the north to the L-30 Canal to the south.<br /><br />Ciment said he is thrilled that the new eruv is larger, symbolizing, he believes, the expansion of the Boynton Beach area's Jewish community. A 2005 study showed the number of Jewish households in the area grew 63 percent from 1999 to 2005, to about 60,000, although Ciment says the number has since grown to more than 80,000.<br /><br />About 175 families walk to the Boynton Chabad each weekend, Ciment said.<br /><br />"It's like we have made one large home or one large tent that will ingather the whole Boynton area," Ciment said.<br /></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-27306845883909140332009-08-03T04:32:00.000-07:002009-08-03T04:34:57.463-07:00Once a Place of Hope, Now a Source of Tension<nyt_byline version="1.0" type=" "> <div class="byline">By <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/kirk_johnson/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Kirk Johnson">KIRK JOHNSON</a></div> </nyt_byline> <p>ASPEN, Colo. — The Silver Lining Ranch has often been a scene of anguish over the years, and also of hope. Since the late 1990s, thousands of children with cancer have come here to experience a few weeks of outdoor life in a beautiful spot through a group co-founded by the former tennis star Andrea Jaeger, who became an Anglican Dominican nun after leaving the professional tennis circuit.</p> <p>But these days anguish appears to be winning out. The <a href="http://www.littlestar.org/" title="Little Star Foundation Web site.">Little Star Foundation</a>, which runs the ranch, is teetering on the brink of collapse, Ms. Jaeger said, through that most earthbound and profane of things: real estate. </p> <p>The 6.5 acres that the ranch sits on, just outside downtown Aspen, was donated in 1994 and is now immensely valuable in this enclave of superwealth. But a proposed sale of the property, intended to bolster the foundation’s finances and create a long-term endowment, has backfired. </p> <p>Neighbors of Ms. Jaeger, who is president of the foundation, say the proposed sale, for $13.5 million — to the <a href="http://www.jccaspen.com/" title="J.C.C. Aspen Web site.">Chabad Jewish Community Center</a>, a synagogue transplanted to the central Rockies from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn nine years ago — is illegal, citing covenants of a homeowners’ association that allow the property to be used only as a private home or for treating terminally ill children. Despite the covenants, the <a href="http://www.aspenpitkin.com/depts/39/" title="City Council Web site.">Aspen City Council</a> unanimously <a href="http://aspenpitkin.com/uploads/cc.min.051109.htm" title="Council meeting minutes on Ordinance 8.">approved the sale in May</a>.</p> <p>Most of Little Star’s operations have ceased and many employees have not been paid for months. The loans that were supposed to support the foundation until the sale have come up short. </p> <p>The result is a stew of recrimination, entrenchment and talk of lawsuits. High-minded goals and spirituality have given way to lawyers and money, which Aspen has in abundance.</p> <p>Ms. Jaeger, 44, who was briefly the No. 2 women’s tennis player in the world before injuries forced her from the game at age 19, spoke in tones of nostalgia and grief as she recited from memory the odyssey of the children who had come through her care. </p> <p>In an interview in the silent main building (most of the foundation’s work was transferred in 2006 to a property in Durango, Colo., in preparation for a sale, and to reduce costs), she spoke of the hurdles of illness and life, and — all too often — death, that the children faced. She ran her fingers down the hand-painted tiles left behind on a wall in the recreation room and spoke of their memories and dreams: a relapse and decline, a first experience riding a horse, a hope of living long enough to attend college.</p> <p>“I don’t think they said, ‘I’m going to wake up today and destroy thousands of kids’ lives because I want to choose my neighbors,’ ” Ms. Jaeger said, referring to members of the homeowners’ association. But the blocked contract is having that effect, she said, as children are turned down for help and programs are cut.</p> <p>One member of the five-family homeowners’ association agreed that the results of the standoff were lamentable. But the member, Peter Gerson, said Ms. Jaeger was entirely at fault for entering into a contract in violation of property covenants. </p> <p>“It’s an unfortunate situation, but the Silver Lining Ranch people brought it upon themselves,” said Mr. Gerson, who like all the owners lives far enough away, across a private open space of woods and fields, that the ranch buildings can barely be seen, if at all. </p> <p>At the City Council hearings, the homeowners’ association also raised concerns about a sale to Chabad on grounds that a new use would increase traffic and noise problems on Ute Avenue, where the Silver Lining Ranch has its driveway — even though no other members of the group other than the ranch even use that road to reach their homes.</p> <p>As for having Chabad as a neighbor, Mr. Gerson said he would be for it; the rabbi who directs the center, Mendel Mintz, is a friend, he said. But Mr. Gerson added that the covenants allowed only the two approved uses on the property and that Chabad did not fit.</p> <p>“We’re powerless to do anything,” Mr. Gerson said.</p> <p>The president of the homeowners’ association, Thomas P. Reagan, said of the land covenant: “It was meant to be extremely restrictive, and the proposed use does simply not fit the allowed use.”</p> <p>Some people in town, including a former City Council member who supported the sale to Chabad, point out that the homeowners’ association was not powerless and amended the covenants earlier this year after the contract between the foundation and Chabad had been signed but before the Council’s vote to approve the sale.</p> <p>The conference call to amend the covenants took place in January without Ms. Jaeger’s participation, and the homeowners approved language that would “clarify” the original intent of the covenants — that only terminally ill children or market-based private housing were allowed on Lot 5, the ranch property.</p> <p>“They probably didn’t like the Silver Lining Ranch use either, but they had to put up with it,” said Jack Johnson, who served on the Council for four years before being defeated in an election in May. </p> <p>Mr. Johnson said he thought the association’s goal was to get a private homeowner on the land. “If they continue to bully and block,” he said, “there’s no doubt of their intentions.” </p> <p>Rabbi Mintz said that until the legal cloud was lifted, he could not close on the sale without exposing the community center to liability. He said he had seen no evidence of anti-Semitism, only the expression of wealth.</p> <p>“It’s part of dealing with very affluent people who are used to having things go their way,” he said in an interview at the group’s downtown Aspen community center. </p> <p>But as Ms. Jaeger readily admits, she also had a clear financial motive. Some people say she may have undermined support for her cause by having tried to do the same thing a few years ago that it appears the homeowners’ group wants to do now — shifting the property back to a private, higher-value use.</p> <p>She initially tried to sell the ranch to a family for $24 million, which would have gone a long way to building Little Star’s endowment, she said in the interview. But the City Council denied permission, saying the best use of the land was for nonprofit community use. That reduced the value of the land and buildings almost in half and led to the negotiations with Chabad.</p> <p>Mayor <a href="http://www.mickformayor.com/" title="Ireland’s Web site.">Mick Ireland</a> of Aspen said he thought the newly restrictive covenants were an effort to “straitjacket” the city into allowing a change back into private use as a solution to everyone’s problems — more money for Ms. Jaeger’s foundation and the dropping of objections from the neighbors. Mr. Ireland said that would not happen.</p> “As a community, we want to encourage places of worship and kids’ facilities; that’s what communities do,” he said. “It’s not our job to make a property more marketable.”Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-15924452850793159672009-08-03T04:17:00.000-07:002009-08-03T04:23:41.428-07:00Chabad on the Plaza now up and running<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=""><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><table class="contentpaneopen"><tbody><tr><td valign="top"><span class="small">Written by Marcia Horn, Community Editor </span> </td></tr><tr><td class="createdate" valign="top">Friday, 31 July 2009 12:00</td></tr><tr><td valign="top"><p>He calls his new endeavor Chabad on the Plaza, which is where he and his family live. But Rabbi Yitzchak Itkin has found office space in the Crossroads district.</p><p><br /></p></td></tr></tbody></table></span>The rabbi has rented a desk in Shaul Jolles’ OfficePort KC building, 203 W. 19th St. He and his wife, Chanah, and their son, Meir, arrived in Kansas City several months ago to establish the fourth outpost of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the greater Kansas City area. The others are the original Chabad House, the Torah Learning Center in Overland Park and Chabad at the University of Kansas.</p><p>Rabbi Mendy Wineberg, program director of Chabad KC, said he had been hoping to establish a downtown presence for the past five years. Rabbi Itkin said OfficePort KC is the perfect location.</p><p>“We knew we wanted to be in an area that was between the Plaza and downtown, accessible for everybody,” he said. “… OfficePort (is) a great collaboration of all different people coming together to find a place to work together … and there’s enough space to hold classes.”</p><p>OfficePort KC is the latest redevelopment project in the Crossroads district of real estate broker Shaul Jolles, who is a native of Israel. Jolles rents small office spaces to people on a month-to-month basis.</p><p>“It makes it more interesting and spirited, it’s a much more public atmosphere because you’re not confined to a regular desk and regular office,” Rabbi Itkin said. “It’s a come-as-you-go and work-as-you-go kind of thing.”<br /><br /><strong>Self-sustaining</strong><br />Rabbi and Mrs. Itkin get no subsidy from the central Chabad-Lubavitch movement, so they must sustain themselves by raising donations. But Rabbi Itkin isn’t worried. He believes it is only a matter of time before Chabad on the Plaza becomes a highly successful enterprise.</p><p>“I don’t think it will be as long as we anticipated until people will actually realize what we’re doing,” he said. “One of the areas where we’re looking to focus now is young people just coming out of college and now working in the mid- to downtown area. We’re looking to open up opportunities for them.”</p><p>Rabbi Itkin said he has discovered there is already an identifiable Jewish population in the Crossroads area, so he and Chanah are exploring the idea of holding classes or other events aimed specifically at them.</p><p>Then there is the Jewish Learning Institute, of which Rabbi Itkin hopes to be a part. JLI offers professionally designed classes, which are taught by Chabad rabbis all over the country. Each class is taught simultaneously at Chabad centers nationwide, so you can catch the same class in many different cities.</p><p>Rabbi Itkin said he might bring Chabad of KC’s Men’s Summer Yeshiva, which takes place Aug. 3-25 (See related story), downtown, as well. It consists of four visiting rabbinical students, supervised by Rabbi Shmuely Wineberg of Chabad House KC, who offer to meet with students to study at whatever venue is most convenient — a student’s home, office, a kosher restaurant or Chabad House Center.</p><p>It’s a bit early to discuss his still-developing plans to hold High Holy Day programs and services in the Plaza area, Rabbi Itkin said.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />Some people have heard about Chabad on the Plaza through its new Web site,<a href="http://%20plazachabad.com"> plazachabad.com. </a>But Rabbi Itkin said word of mouth is still the best means of communication.<br />“That’s been our success since the first day we came here,” Rabbi Itkin said. “Someone sees something good, they tell their friends about it, and that’s how it’s been working. So we appreciate the good feedback … and that’s the way I think we’re going to survive.”</p><p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><strong>Men’s Summer Yeshiva returns to KC</strong><br /><br />The Chabad Men’s Summer Yeshiva is an annual program designed to stimulate the study of classic texts by Jewish men and boys.</p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px;">The local Chabad House has participated in the program for many years. It consists of a group of visiting rabbinic students who offer classes to anyone who wants one (or more) on the Jewish topic of the participant’s choice.</p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px;">Possible subjects include Kabballah and mysticism, Talmud, prophets, Jewish law and customs, Temple history, Torah commentary with Rashi, Maimonides and more. Students can study the texts in depth or use them as a jumping-off point for a discussion.</p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px;">Chabad’s Summer 2009 Yeshiva runs Aug. 3-25. Participants choose the topic, time and place they wish to study. Sessions can be set up at one’s office, home or at Chabad. It’s free of charge, although donations are welcomed.</p><p style="margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 15px;">Register online at <a href="http://www.chabadkc.org">www.chabadkc.org</a> or call (913) 649-4852. For more information, send e-mail to<a href="mailto:%20yeshiva@chabadkc.org" style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(13, 80, 122);">yeshiva@chabadkc.org</a><a href="mailto:%20yeshiva@chabadkc.org"><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></a>.</p></span></span><br /></p><p><br /></p></span></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-57680559375933671552009-08-03T04:11:00.000-07:002009-08-03T04:14:51.124-07:00Rabbi encourages positive deeds, attitude<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">NEW PORT RICHEY — Rabbi Shabsi Alpern was far from home Monday night, speaking to a room full of people about God and what he wants from us.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"This is the last place I expected to be tonight," said Alpern, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Sao Paulo, Brazil. His 48th anniversary doing Jewish outreach in Brazil fell on that night.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Rabbi Yossi and Dina Eber with Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco invited the esteemed rabbi, who was spending some time in Miami, to speak to their community in Trinity and share his insights.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"He wanted to make the drive because he knows what it's like to move out to a place like this," said Rabbi Eber, who came to Pasco County three years ago from Brooklyn.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"Because of him and people like him, we have others doing it today. He set the example."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">With a long white beard, small frame and warm eyes, Alpern spoke through stories and anecdotes, but his main message was about serving others.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"Each one of us has a buried treasure within that he has to reveal," he said. "By doing good for others, that's how you find it."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">It's the mission of the Jewish people to use their physical world to elevate and bring out that holiness, he said, with such acts as lighting Shabbat candles, praying and giving food to the homeless.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"Any little thing that you do … you don't know what may be missing here in New Port Richey," Alpern said. "One of you may hit the jackpot. Take advantage of every situation and do something good."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">A good deed is eternal, he said, even if someone does a hundred not-so-good deeds.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The Chabad leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, sent emissaries like Alpern and the Ebers to places like Brazil and Pasco County, and thousands of other locations.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Chabad-Lubavitch is a mystical branch of Judaism that started in Russia 250 years ago. Now based in Brooklyn, the group has 4,000 emissary families around the world reaching out to and teaching nonobservant Jews about Judaism. Two rabbis involved in the organization were killed last November in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The mission is to "reach out to every single Jew in every community all over the world," Eber said, "to bring Judaism to them, bring comfort to them, and be there in any way.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"That's really what it's about," he added, "to make this a dwelling place for God, a caring world. It's a ripple effect."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Vicky Benedon of Trinity told the group that what stands out most in her mind is walking through the Auschwitz concentration camp.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"I have never heard so many people saying, 'Oh my God,' " she said. "There's always a God. The people that survived, survived because of God."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">A couple of people in the audience spoke about suffering and about doubting God's existence. Alpern responded matter-of-factly that he and his parents survived the Holocaust and came to the United States, while the rest of his family died during the war.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">But it still didn't shake his belief in God. When people have questions or doubts, he said, it comes down to two things: Try to get answers, which takes time; and continue being a child of God.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"Misery, violence, the Holocaust, Iraq … he owes us a lot of answers," Alpern said. "We have to have patience."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">While some people may call themselves atheists, Rabbi Alpern said that "everyone has a moment when he believes in God."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"God knows everyone has doubts," Keep on doing good things, he said. "Positive doubt, that will bring you to a positive attitude."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">Alpern also spoke about the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'av, which was Thursday. The day marks the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"Centuries later, people can still cry like it happened yesterday," he said.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The rabbi said it's an especially good time to think in positive terms.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"What good things can we add to our world and our people … to quicken the coming of the Messiah and the building of the third Temple? May it happen speedily in our times."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">The Jewish people have a mission that's not accomplished in just one generation, he said. Each generation builds on each other, he said, and every good deed makes a difference.</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">"The cup is almost full," he said. "We just need to add a few drops."</p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><i>Mindy Rubenstein can be reached at Mindy.Rubenstein@me.com.</i></p><br /><div id="infobox"><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><b>fast facts</b></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;"><b>About the Chabad of West Pasco</b></p><p style="font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1em;">To learn more about classes and services, visit <a href="http://chabadwp.com">www.chabadwp.com</a> or call Rabbi Yossi Eber at (727) 376-3366.</p></div></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-89829612851901682892009-08-03T04:02:00.000-07:002009-08-03T04:06:52.348-07:00Roving Rabbis seek out Jews who are not religiously active<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: 'times new roman'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; line-height: 20px; text-align: left;">ARLINGTON — The Roving Rabbis aren’t a band, but they are looking for an audience.<p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Sponsored by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement and based in Brooklyn, N.Y., the program aims to bring together Orthodox rabbinical students and Jews who are not active religiously.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"The challenge is . . . people don’t know what we want from them," said rabbi Shaya Lowenstein, 22, who’s half of the visiting two-man Roving Rabbi team that’s spending about three weeks in Arlington this summer. "We’re just looking to give them the opportunity to do something religious."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">That opportunity is a matter of some urgency to many: The birthrate and number of American Jews have fallen since 1990, and intermarriage is up. One prominent rabbi recently urged his followers to embark on a "rescue mission" to prevent American Jewry from disappearing.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">The Roving Rabbi program, now decades old, has about 4,000 emissaries worldwide working during the summer. The point is not to proselytize non-Jews but to kindle participation among those born into Judaism.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"As a general rule, Tarrant County is not a very Jewish area," said rabbi Levi Gurevitch of Arlington, who is supervising the work of Lowenstein and Shmulik Raices, also a 22-year-old rabbinical graduate. "I applied to bring them to Tarrant County to help me with my outreach. They’re finding quite a few people, which is why I brought them here."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">But the goal isn’t simply to bring more people to services.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"We haven’t survived by increasing our numbers but by increasing our faith," said rabbi Dove Mandel of the Fort Worth Chabad, which he and his wife started in their house in 2002. "I’m mainly looking for Jews to fulfill their faith. It’s about every Jew fulfilling their covenant with God."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Lowenstein and Raices are staying in the Arlington Chabad center near Lake Arlington, which doubles as the home for Gurevitch and his wife as well as being a synagogue. He provides room and board; Roving Rabbis covers transportation to Texas, he said.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"Hopefully, we’ll grow into a full-fledged center," said Gurevitch, who co-directs the center with his wife. "Right now we’re just in the baby stages of that."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Rabbi Menachem Block served in Berlin and Iowa when he was a Roving Rabbi. He now directs the thriving Plano Chabad center.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"The Roving Rabbis are able to get to communities that don’t have an established rabbi," Block said. "When you’re by yourself there’s only so much you can do."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Counting the Arlington center, Gurevitch said, there are six Chabad centers in North Texas. To locate local residents who might be receptive, Gurevitch bought a sales list, from which names that appear to be Jewish are culled.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"We don’t seek converts," Gurevitch said. "It’s very targeted."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">The temporary help, even if it’s just for a few weeks in the summer, is valuable in making contacts and establishing relationships, particularly with younger people.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"Unfortunately, in America the younger generation seems to be very, very assimilated," Gurevitch said.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Mandel said: "It’s important, because the majority of Jewish people have little contact with their own synagogue. By having energetic young rabbis show up with a smile on their face, it sort of fans the flames of their Jewish spark."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Working as a Roving Rabbi can be as important to the young participants as to those they’re trying to reach, Block said.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"The experience you have . . . is tremendous," he said, calling it "a great program."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"It’s very inspirational."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">Mandel, however, laughed when he talked about the reaction the Roving Rabbis can evoke in some quarters.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"You see two young rabbis wearing black fedoras; they’ve got their fringes at the corners of their garments," Mandel said. " . . . It’s something you see by the thousands in New York City, but not in suburban Texas."</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">That’s something that struck Lowenstein, who did his rabbinical studies in New York. He hopes to get married and start a family before he settles down with a congregation of his own.</p><p style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">"You never know" where you’ll find the right girl, Lowenstein said. "But the chances may be a little better in Brooklyn. The numbers work out a little better there."</p><div class="block-quote" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p class="block-quote-paragraph" style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;">I’m mainly looking for Jews to fulfill their faith. It’s about every Jew fulfilling their covenant with God."</p><p class="block-quote-paragraph" style="margin: 0px; padding: 1em 0px 0px;"><span class="block-quote-credit" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Rabbi Dove Mandel,<br />Fort Worth Chabad</span></p></div></span></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-1131337071695799742009-08-03T03:51:00.000-07:002009-08-03T03:56:11.178-07:003 rabbis in training make a stop in Utah during cross-country trip<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;font-family:'times new roman';font-size:16px;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;" ><p style="margin: 9px 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: 'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">SALT LAKE CITY -- From New York City to San Francisco and back again in a van, the traveling troupe is three young rabbis in training.</p><p style="margin: 9px 0px;font-family:'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><span style="font-size:100%;">These young men came through Salt Lake City because they are members of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, and Rabbi Benny Zippel of Chabad Lubavitch of Utah welcomed them. We found them meeting and greeting downtown.</span></p><p style="margin: 9px 0px; font-family: 'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">They say they are spreading a message of unity and doing good deeds. They say they are pleasantly surprised at how receptive and friendly people have been in Salt Lake and all along the way.</p><p style="margin: 9px 0px; font-family: 'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">They give wristbands which say "I've met the Road Sage, and I've performed a good deed." For those of the Jewish faith, it's called a Mitzvah--the pay it forward concept.</p><p style="margin: 9px 0px; font-family: 'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;font-family:'times new roman';font-size:16px;" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);font-family:Arial;font-size:13px;" ><p style="margin: 9px 0px; padding: 0px; font-family: 'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">And although they follow ancient principles in their faith, the young soon-to-be rabbis have jumped into the technology age. Dov Barber, the Road Sage, said, "We've set up a website. We've set up a blog. We upload photos, Twitter. You know it's all that social networking nowadays. We Twitter a lot, blog. People come, they follow you, and also the idea, is really, you speak about traveling across America. It's only us three, people wanted to come along, so you have virtual followers."</p><p style="margin: 9px 0px; font-family: 'Verdana, Bitstream Vera Sans',Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">Inside the van, there is a board for signatures, for people they have met. Most of them are campers along the way, but in Salt Lake, some young people they greeted downtown wanted to add their names. The Road Sage group will be in San Francisco Friday evening to celebrate the Sabbath there.</p></span></span></p></span></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11692757.post-35858723811767788852009-07-30T04:47:00.000-07:002009-07-30T04:48:37.164-07:00After arrests, Orthodox groups stress importance of obeying the law<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Arial;"><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">WASHINGTON (JTA) -- In the wake of last week’s arrests of several prominent rabbis, some Orthodox leaders are working to ensure that their institutions are following the letter of the law.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">At a Chabad-Lubavitch regional conference over the weekend in northern Virginia, several of the Chasidic movement’s senior rabbis stressed the importance of obeying the law, according to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of the Washington office of American Friends of Lubavitch.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The movement's late spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, "clearly instructed all emissaries of Lubavitch that all activities, particularly those undertaken in the name of the movement, must be lawful,” Shemtov said. “The Talmud clearly rules that the law of the land, especially in the case of a government which allows Jews to live freely, takes on the force of Jewish law.”</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In New York, a leader of Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group bringing together several Chasidic and non-Chasidic communities, helped organize a meeting to stress the same theme. The meeting was to feature two prominent rabbis and two well-known New York lawyers, Benjamin Brafman and Jacob Laufer.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The meeting was announced in an e-mail sent out by Agudah’s executive vice president, Rabbi David Zweibel, to the organization’s supporters. Titled “An Urgent Gathering,” the e-mail said the meeting would be “focusing on the timeless (but also all too timely) theme of ‘Vi'asisa hayashar vi'hatov,’ or making sure one is doing ‘the good and honest thing.’ "</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">“In the wake of recent headlines and front-page photographs that made every feeling Jewish heart ache, it is even more timely for us to take a good, hard look at our obligations to our fellows, to our society, to our government,” Zweibel said in the e-mail, adding that “I am confident that you realize how vital it is that we hear words of mussar [taking stock] and chizuk [reinforcement], and that we learn to distinguish between conduct that conforms with dina d'malchusa [the law of the land] and conduct that does not.”</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The meeting comes less than a week after five New York and New Jersey rabbis were arrested July 23 on charges of money laundering. Authorities say the rabbis accepted large checks made out to tax-exempt charitable organizations associated with their synagogues, usually keeping 10 percent of the money and returning the rest to the donor in cash.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The charges somewhat echo a case involving the spiritual leader of the Spinka Chasidic sect in December 2007, in which religious leaders in New York and Jewish businessmen in Los Angeles were charged with soliciting “tens of millions of dollars” in contributions to their charities while secretly refunding as much as 95 percent of the donors' money, allowing the contributors to claim improper tax deductions.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The head of the Spinka group, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Weisz, agreed to plead guilty to the charges earlier this month.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">A criminal defense lawyer familiar with the Jewish community said he doubted that the New Jersey and Spinka cases signaled any kind of targeting or trend among federal prosecutors of Orthodox Jewish groups.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">“I think it's a coincidence,” said the lawyer, who did not want to be identified. The cases are “instances of somebody trying to reduce their own sentence” by telling the government what he knew about other possible criminality, he said.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In both scandals, a defendant charged with serious financial crimes unrelated to the Jewish community became a confidential informant for the government, wearing a wire to implicate rabbis.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined comment on both affairs and referred a reporter to the individual U.S. attorneys offices that brought the charges.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The Orthodox Union declined comment on the New Jersey scandal.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">One expert said the best ways for charities to avoid getting caught up in any trouble with the law are pretty basic.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">First, “stick to what the mission really is” of the charity and don't start freelancing, said Kenneth Ryesky, an attorney who teaches tax and business law at Queens College in New York.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">One rabbi who did not wish to be identified said he periodically gets a request from a potential donor similar to what the Spinka rabbis were allegedly doing -- accepting a large check and returning most of the money in cash to the donor -- and always rejects the offer immediately.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">That's the best reaction, Ryesky said.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; color: rgb(77, 77, 77); font-size: 12px; line-height: 1.5em; ">“If it doesn't pass the smell test," he said, "don't have anything to do with it.”</p></span>Editorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12953020477427374440noreply@blogger.com0