The other night I received a call from a friend. He was very conflicted and under a lot of stress. He works for a company and receives just enough money to cover his most basic expenses. Worse yet, he sees no room for growth within the company.
The annual gathering of Chabad’s global emissaries, the Kinus Hashluchim, elicits a paradox. Here is an organization that is truly international, operating even more outposts than the United States government. Chabad is not only the world’s largest Jewish educational network, it is quite simply one of the world’s largest networks period. Perhaps only the Catholic Church has a more extensive grid of schools and educational outposts. Yet, for all its internationalism Chabad continues to evince a largely parochial mentality. It is global in scope but not in outlook.
In the past four months, the Crown Heights Jewish Community has seen as many child abuse-related arrests and reports as there have been in the past 20 years.
In the early 90’s I fell in love with Steve Jobs’ new NeXT computer. I had used a Macintosh since I was 19 but after Jobs’ was kicked out of Apple I gravitated to his new invention which blew the Mac away. As Rabbi at Oxford, I regularly hosted world leaders to lecture to our students and I had to have Jobs. So I arranged a meeting with one of his top lieutenants and traveled to Redwood City, California.
Occupy Wall Street has become a powerful movement that is spreading around the globe. Its adherents claim they are outraged & feel hopelessly trapped by a cabal of bankers & corporations. This movement has been developing its own brand of philosophy & ethics.
It is not necessary to go into detail to describe the urgent crisis that is currently taking place in our midst regarding Shidduchim.
My best friend Shevi called me the other day, distressed over the shul her husband started attending. “Malka, you can’t imagine what the women are wearing there,” she said. “Yes I can,” I sadly replied. “He loves the davening, but I feel nervous with him going there,” she continued. “I tried to discuss it with him, but he likes the shul and doesn’t want to stop going. I totally understand, but why should he have to see women dressed that way?”
Dear Doe Namay AKA John Doe,
Your op-ed last week gave me a bigger jolt than my morning coffee. You stated your opinion against ‘Chabad Lite’ because they may, G-d forbid, call themselves Chabad. Do you consider yourself Chabad? Where exactly can I pick up some “Chabad” measuring tape? Is anyone who disagrees with your opinion really a hater? And how exactly can you say, after penning such an article, that you have Ahavas Yisroel?
A brother-in-law of mine residing in Crown Heights sent me an op-ed published on Crownheights.info entitled ‘Chabad Lite.’ In it, the author bemoans the spiraling state of altruistic Chassidic values which is widespread amongst many of today’s youth specifically in Lubavitch circles. It seems, in the words of the author, that people choose for one reason or another to identify with Lubavitch but are not prepared to hold themselves accountable and continuously refine their character and connection to the Rebbe’s ideals as old world Chassidim did.
In Lubavitch there is the phenomenon of the so called “Chabad Lite” community. People who grew up as Lubavitchers, consider themselves Lubavitchers, but do nothing to actually be Lubavitch. They don’t dress like the way a Lubavitcher would dress, speak the way one would speak, or act in the basic way a chossid would act. In general, I have no issue with these types of people; many of them are my friends and neighbors and we get along wonderfully. I have one major issue: they consider themselves Lubavitch, and take part in our mosdos.
President Barack Obama had no reservations attempting to block the execution of Humberto Leal Garcia, a Mexican man that was convicted in 1994 of the rape and murder of a 16-yearold girl in San Antonio. On July 5, 2011, The Guardian reported that: “The White House has asked the US Supreme Court to put the execution of Humberto Leal Garcia on hold while Congress passes a law that would prevent the convicted rapist and murderer from being put to death along with dozens of other foreign nationals who were denied proper access to diplomatic representation before trials for capital crimes.”
Mushki, given the paucity of my experience in conducting Jewish weddings, I feared that I’d perform the ceremony imperfectly and my own daughter would end up living perpetually in sin. So, I brought in the heavy guns – your new grandfather-in-law, Rabbi Zalman Lipsker of Philadelphia – to join me in conducting your wedding.
Each holiday season ushers in its own particular sentiment or experience of the joyousness of that specific juncture in time. Having just concluded the holiday of Sukkos, we recall numerous recitations of “the season of our joy” spanning eight celebratory days, including Shemini Atzeres (plus another day of Simchas Torah outside of Israel). So it would seem more appropriate to address the joy that we experienced over the holiday and reserve the topic of freedom for a later date, perhaps nearer to Pesach, which deals with the Exodus of the Jews from Egyptian bondage.
The following is a letter that I have written to Southwest Airlines about a major kashrus blunder that one of flight attendants did and then went on to brag about. I know that there are no kashrus symbols on Airplane coffee pots, but I felt that since some people think only coffee goes into coffee pots, it should be known that that is false.
It was with great sadness that I read the case of Levy Izhak Rosenbaum and his recent guilty plea in a federal court to having brokered three [illegal] kidney transplants in exchange for payment of money. The slew of negative comments on the news websites made him seem like he is a second coming of Levy Aron. I can’t comment on the character of Mr. Rosenbaum, for I’ve never met the man. Still, I’d like to warn all of you; not so fast!
Yossi and Hindel Swerdlov penned the following open letter to family and friends in honor of the upcoming 2nd Yahrzeit of their beloved daughter Alta Shula A”H:
I think it’s high time there was some new cultural diffusion. I don’t mean cultural diffusion on a grand scale, where one nation spreads its lifestyles and outlooks to another nation or anything of the sort. Rather, I am proposing a small-scale exchange of ideas, lifestyles, and philosophies within two sectors of the Jewish world: Modern Orthodoxy and Chabad Lubavitch.
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