Rabbi Robert Scheinberg's page

These are the thoughts I shared with the community on Saturday, November 3, one week after the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. In the Torah reading this shabbat, Abraham suffers the loss of his wife Sarah. We read ויבוא אברהם לספוד לשרה ולבכותה - Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and cry for her. But then Abraham has to begin negotiations to find a burial plot for his wife Sarah. And so he approaches his neighbors, the Hittites, and says גר ותושב אנכי עמכם ger ve-toshav anokhi imakhem - I am a stranger and resident alien in your midst. Will you sell me a grave so I can bury my wife? And they respond to him -- נשיא אלקים אתה בתוכנו -- nesi elokim atah be-tokheinu - Abraham, you may think of yourself as a stranger and resident alien, but to us, you are a leader. In fact, you are נשיא אלקים- you are raised up by God! We hold you in high esteem! Well, if you read to the end of this passage, it turns out that the Hittites don’t end up holding him in high estee

See my other essays on the remaining plants of the Arba Minim (4 Species):  Lulav:  https://rabbischeinberg.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-lulav-growth-frozen-in-time.html Etrog:  https://rabbischeinberg.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-fruit-that-remembers-what-botanists.html Willows:  https://rabbischeinberg.blogspot.com/2017/10/keeping-willows-alive.html Among the Four Species used on Sukkot, the myrtle branches (Hadasim) seemed to me to be the most innocuously pleasant.  The Etrog is fragile; the Lulav is dangerous with its sharp leaves; the willows quickly dry out. The myrtle branches are, in my experience,most likely to survive Sukkot intact without harming itself or others.  And the myrtle leaves have a fresh, vaguely Mediterranean scent   - best unleashed by crumpling up the leaves, or by scratching the myrtle branch itself.   In fact, unlike all the other parts of the Four Species, it is not particularly difficult to keep the myrtles fresh and fragrant for weeks and even months aft

The story is told of a rabbi, a priest, and an imam who all receive a message from God.  The message is that God has finally had it with all of humanity’s sins once and for all. And in six months time, God is going to punish everyone with a flood, but there will be no Noah’s Ark this time. The religious leaders go to their people to share this grim news.   The priest and imam say to their people:  “We now have six months to purify ourselves before we meet our God. We have six months to pray, to beg for forgiveness, and hopefully our God will be merciful to us.” And the rabbi goes to his people and says, "Fellow Jews:  we now have 6 months to learn to breathe under water." Why was I thinking of this old old joke throughout the summer?  Because of a story in the news that you certainly saw. In a year full of so many terrible news stories, with so much sadness and heartache, there was at least one news item that everyone could celebrate - even though it was so stre

I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in astrology.  With one exception. I find it very moving that the astrological sign for this time of year is Libra - the scales - which have been a symbol of justice for so many centuries. One nickname of Rosh HaShanah is Yom Ha-Din - the day of judgment.  Throughout the high holiday season, our prayers use the image of a courtroom.  This is the day when, from the perspective of Jewish tradition, we each feel judged, and we make every effort to judge ourselves.  In the stirring prayer Unetaneh Tokef , we confront the elaborate metaphor that each of us has our verdict inscribed in a fearsome heavenly book, determining our fate for the coming year. So for the sages of our tradition, who were more interested in the zodiac than you might have thought, it was no surprise that the astrological sign for this time of year is Libra - the scales of justice - which our sages referred to by the Hebrew name - ‘ מאזניים Moznayim.’  For them, thi

After Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant earlier this month, I was asked: Is there any classical Jewish parallel to such an incident? I responded that a close parallel may be a story that is well-known to many Jews, especially at this time of year. The Talmud relates that the city of Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman Empire as the culmination of a series of tragic incidents that all began with an incident at a party. According to the Talmud: A certain man had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy named Bar Kamtza. He once made a party and said to his servant, "Go and bring Kamtza." However, the servant got confused with the similar names and made the mistake of bringing Bar Kamtza. (In a study group I led this month, someone quipped: “That’s like if I wanted to invite Sarah Huckabee Sanders to my party and I invited Bernie Sanders by mistake.”) When the host found him there, he said, "You are my enemy!” [alternate transl

Monday July 9, 2018: I have no photos of the mass trial we saw, as photos are illegal in the courtroom, but this (illegally taken) photo published in June 2018 in various news publications accurately reflects the courtroom scene that we witnessed on July 9 in Laredo.  See  http://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-photo-shows-alleged-37-illegal-immigrants-at-mass-trial-2018-6  On Monday morning, our group went to Federal Court in  Laredo  TX to observe immigration cases. I have no photos of this because it is illegal to take photos in the courtroom, but please look at this (illegally taken) photo and article -  https://www.google.com/amp/s/a mp.businessinsider.com/leaked- photo-shows-alleged-37-illegal -immigrants-at-mass-trial- 2018-6  - , as it basically accurately represents what we saw: a group of more than 70 defendants in a mass trial for illegal border crossing. The first thing the judge had to do was arrange the defendants in the courtroom in rows so that the taller

Part 2:   Sun July 8 Photos from the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. This is the largest family detention center in the US, with room for 2400 detainees. ‘Family residential’ is basically a euphemism for the detention of women and children. We were not allowed to enter (we did not expect to). One of the leaders of our group, however, is an immigration attorney who has various clients who have claimed asylum status and are now detained at Dilley. Mothers and children are d etained together while they await their hearings to determine if they meet the criteria for asylum. The attorney in our group noted that increasingly, these hearings take place by video, with the asylum seeker in the detention center, the judge in another location, the attorneys in yet additional locations, and translators on the phone. She suggested that the overall effect of this is that the hearings are chaotic and the judges are then less inclined to regard the asylum seekers as tr

My next several posts will describe my trip to Texas in July 2018 to learn more about the current immigration crisis and some other issues.  Part 1:  Sun July 8 I am spending today and tomorrow in Texas, visiting sites in the   Laredo   area that are connected to the current immigration crisis. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Rabbi Neil Blumofe of the Jewish community of Austin for inviting me to participate in this group with members of his community and some other visitors from out of state - and so grateful to the organizers of the trip. Our first stop, however, was the Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, TX - the site of the horrific massacre last fall in which 26 of the members of their community were murdered during a church service - a huge percentage of this small community. (The total population of Sutherland Springs is about 500 people.). We were guests of the pastor, Rev. Frank Pomeroy. He and his wife were out of town on the day of the massacre, b

The internet phenomenon of the hour is a mysterious computer voice that some people hear unmistakably saying the word “Laurel,” while other people hear the same voice saying the word(?) “Yanny.” Is the voice actually saying “Yanny” or “Laurel”? Like so much else in the world, it depends on your prior context and what you are primed to hear -- and it also depends on what audio frequencies you are hearing most strongly. Thanks to a quirk of audio processing, the higher frequencies in this audio clip incline a person to hear the voice saying “Yanny,” while the lower frequencies make a person more likely to hear “Laurel.” And a particular person’s balance of low and high frequencies will be determined by various factors, including the audio equipment one is using, the quality of one’s hearing, and one’s psychological expectations. Two people can listen to the exact same voice at the same time and hear that voice saying different words. (There is even a tool that one can use to ad

In honor of Israel's 70th Yom Ha-Atzma'ut this week, the organization Koolulam released this video of 12,000 Israelis singing together. In a stadium in Tel Aviv, they learned and performed the vocal parts for the classic song "Al Kol Eleh," "For all these things." If you haven't seen the video yet, you might want to pause to do so before reading the rest of what I have written about it. In 1980, to comfort her sister Ruth on the loss of her husband, the Israeli songwriter Naomi Shemer dedicated a song to her sister called “ Al Kol Eleh ” - “For all these things.”   It has become one of the most popular songs of contemporary Israel. Like many iconic songs, many regard it as hackneyed and cliched.  But there’s a reason why it became such a popular song. It reflects powerfully deep wisdom. The opening words of this song, ‘ Al hadvash ve-al ha-oketz, al ha-mar ve-hamatok ,’ ‘For the honey and the sting, for the bitt

Dear friends, Tonight begins Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day - the day when we remember the effort by the Nazis to obliterate the Jewish people -- and how they nearly succeeded in their diabolical plan, murdering ⅔ of the Jews of Europe, approximately 6 million men, women, and children. The Holocaust continues to exert an influence on the life of our community today, as so many of us have family members who are survivors and so many of us have family members who were killed during that terrible era. (Click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uK5uz7d-Oo to see a video of how Yom HaShoah is marked in Israel today -- with a two minute siren that brings the entire nation to mournful standstill in tribute to those who were killed.) Tonight and tomorrow, many of us are lighting memorial candles in memory of those who have died. Additionally, many of us will gather on Sunday afternoon April 15, 4pm, at Congregation Bnai Jacob (176 West Side Avenue in Jersey City) for a moving tr