A Shabbat Message
04/04/2025 03:38:19 PM
Dear Friends,
With much of my family having come from the Former Soviet Union, I've grown up on stories of my family members having to be extremely cautious about what they said or...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
03/28/2025 02:33:48 PM
Dear Friends,
Tonight we reach Shabbat haChodesh, the Shabbat preceding the new moon, marking the start of the month of Nissan, the month of Passover!
Passover is called z’man cheiruteinu— the festival of our freedom. This should make...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
03/21/2025 01:56:57 PM
Dear Friends,
A distressed man once approached the Chazon Ish, an early 20th-century Russian-Israeli rabbi. He explained that he didn’t have enough money to pay his taxes that year, and so, he wouldn’t be allowed to vote in the coming election. The Chazon Ish...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
03/07/2025 10:05:49 AM
Shabbat Shalom,
I just returned yesterday from a sunny week in Siesta Key, Florida. Despite leaving Minnesota 12 years ago, I am a midwesterner at heart, and midwesterners go to the west coast of Florida. But still, Florida is Florida. We stayed just off...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
03/07/2025 10:04:53 AM
Dear Friends,
This week has been heart-wrenching. I keep coming back to Yarden Bibas’ eulogizing words, expressing his pain in failing to protect his wife and children despite his having fought back on October 7 and having been taken hostage. I continue to be moved to...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
02/28/2025 04:13:43 PM
Dear Friends,
This week has been heart-wrenching. I keep coming back to Yarden Bibas’ eulogizing words, expressing his pain in failing to protect his wife and children despite his having fought back on October 7 and having been taken hostage. I continue to be moved to...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
02/21/2025 02:40:05 PM
Shabbat Shalom,
You may not be familiar with the Hebrew terminology, but you are likely aware that kavod hamet, honoring the deceased, is a mitzvah more important than almost any other. The laws that dictate how to care for the dead are layered with detail and meaning, from...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
02/14/2025 10:56:22 AM
Shabbat Shalom,
The Ten Commandments in this week’s parasha, Yitro, is a bit of a misnomer. Don’t get me wrong, most of them are indeed commandments, but the first “commandment” is arguably not a commandment at all but rather a declaration:
“I the Lord am your God...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
02/12/2025 10:55:11 AM
Dear Friends,
This week’s Torah portion takes us back to our first taste of freedom, when we leave Egypt and begin the long journey to our promised land. Though we had no GPS or printed maps, we had something even better. The Torah tells us that “God went before [the...Read more...
A Shabbat Message
01/31/2025 03:04:39 PM
Shabbat Shalom,
As I walked into the building this morning, I ran into Peter Klein, past-president of B’nai Abraham and keeper of the in-house archives. Amidst boxes of files, pictures, and everything in between from the past 100+ years, Peter pulled for me a document...Read more...