Become a Seder Leader, Part 2
Social distancing dictate prompts novel options
Due to the coronavirus, virtually all congregations and organizations in the Tampa Bay area have canceled in-person events for the near future and are monitoring the situation regarding events beyond that. Many synagogues are livestreaming their services. Most Chabad centers and Reform and Conservative synagogues are also offering – or making plans to offer – […]
The Poor Rabbi and the Passover Gift
In a village deep in Poland, there lived a rabbi who couldn’t remember the last time he was paid. He led a congregation of poor peasants, for whom their rabbi’s salary was their children’s portion of bread, and so, the rabbi and his family lived in poverty themselves, unable to escape the gnawings of hunger. […]
Tenafly Chabad Middle School Continues Remote Learning
Special El Al flight brings Israelis home from Colombia
A chartered El Al flight from Bogota evacuated nearly 70 Israelis from Colombia on Thursday morning as most flights were canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.Foreign Minister Israel Katz specifically ordered his ministry to organize the flight to help Israeli backpackers who were unable to find flights out of the country. The flight is expected […]
Holocaust Survivor’s Story
Due to the coronavirus, the Eva Schloss event at the Performing Arts Center was cancelled. Nine hundred seats were sold out in record time to watch the event with Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss. Instead only a very small group of people watched the interview at the Chabad of SCV center, while the general public watched […]
Why I Won’t Zoom My Shabbat Services
I miss my community. For two weeks, my Shabbat has not felt the same. And truth be told, even Fridays have not been the same. So much of what I used to do revolved around my community. Preparing the tasty (may I say legendary?) cholent on Friday. Working with my wife to get everything ready […]
A NOVEL RECOVERY
Last year, a friend’s healthy teenage son died suddenly. Her intense grief was compounded, she told me later, by confusion. Why had this happened? She sought out various rabbis and rebbes, made appointments with teachers and mentors, and searched their minds for insight. If they could help her take meaning from her son’s passing, she […]
Pillar of Jewish education in Paris dies from virus aged 64
Andre Touboul, a rabbi affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who led one of France’s most prestigious high schools, has died of the coronavirus in Paris. He was 64. Touboul led Beth Hanna, a Jewish institution of some 1,500 students whose high school was ranked the best in France in 2015 by Le Parisien daily, since […]
G-d’s Time Machine, by Way of a Modern Laptop
“Technology is not here simply to provide utility. It is also meant as a springboard to wonder, allowing us to conceive our reality in ways previously unimaginable. “Technology provides an ever-expanding bank of metaphor to crystallize the most abstract ideas into tangible form. “Don’t think that this is a mere side benefit of technology. On […]