Rabbi Robert Scheinberg's page

From the Shofar Newsletter May 2013   What’s the Hebrew word for ‘husband’? Actually, you have two choices.  Both are in use in Hebrew today.  and both were used in the time of the bible.  The first word is ‘ ba’al ’.  If a woman in Israel today wants to refer to her husband, she might refer to him as ‘ ba’ali ’ - ‘my husband.’ But if you know Hebrew, you know that the same word ‘ baal ’ can mean ‘owner.’  For example, ‘ ba’al ha-bayit ’ means ‘home-owner’ or ‘master of the house.’  And more insidiously, the owner of a slave is also referred to in the bible as ‘ baal ’. So you can see this term’s etymological origin.  It is a relic of a time when a woman’s relationship with her husband wasn’t that different from the relationship between a servant and master.  There are some people who won’t use the word baal on principle for this reason.  So what word would they use instead?  The word ‘ ish ’.  Most liter...

Jewish holidays feel different in Israel.  Maybe it’s because outside of Israel, celebrating a Jewish holiday is a somewhat counter-cultural activity, while in Israel, Jewish holidays are mainstream and celebrated by the entire society.   Or maybe it’s because so many Jewish holidays celebrate events that took place in Israel.  And some holidays are celebrated completely differently in Israel from how they are celebrated outside of Israel. Yom Ha-Zikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, falls every year on the day before Israel’s Independence Day, Yom Ha-Atzma’ut.   Israel’s independence day bears some resemblance to Independence Day in the United States.  It’s a day for parades and barbecues, a day for celebrating and not necessarily for reflecting deeply on the meaning of the holiday. But Yom Ha-Zikaron, Israel’s memorial day, bears almost no resemblance to the American Memorial Day that we will observe in May, that is for most Americans simply a d...

"Don't forget your tambourine" One of the most unusual musical theater productions ever staged was a children's opera called Brundibar .  It was written by a Czech-Jewish writer and composer named Hans Krasa, in the early 1940's.  What is extraordinary is the place where he wrote it - which was in the Terezin concentration camp  (sometimes called by its German name, Theresinstadt).  There, tens of thousands of Czech Jews were interred, kept in abominable conditions, subjected to harsh labor, and in most cases, soon deported to Auschwitz where most of them were murdered. So this is not the optimal circumstances for staging a children's opera. And yet, this opera was staged 55 times in Terezin, with musicians and a cast of children from the camp.  (It should be noted that such a thing would only have been possible at Terezin, which was set up by the Nazis as a camp to which they could welcome western observers.  Conditions were certainly better than th...

Last year, my colleagues Grace Gurman-Chan and Rachelle Grossman and I led an online workshop on 'Engaging children in the Passover seder.' You can access the entire workshop (audio recording, and all the materials) at http://bit.ly/sederideasforkids .   It includes a review of the history of the Passover seder, focusing on how at its origins its structure was much more flexible than many people imagine today, as well as all kinds of suggestions and links to great Seder resources.  This may be a valuable resource for you at this time of year!

On the surface, Purim seems like the most lighthearted Jewish holiday, with joking, masquerading, feasting, and delivering treats to friends and family.   But under that surface boils the powerful rage of thousands of years.   When we yell and stamp and make noise during the reading of the Megillah, we express our rage not only at Haman, the villain of the Purim story, but also at those in every generation whose irrational hatred of Jews has led them to violence.   But let us exhibit this rage with caution. The rage of Purim finds dramatic expression in the special Torah reading for the Shabbat before Purim, known as Shabbat Zakhor, the Sabbath of Remembrance. We read (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)   that as the Israelites were wandering in the desert, they were attacked by the tribe of Amalek. The Amalekites chose to fight their battle not against the armed Israelite soldiers, but against innocent, defenseless civilians, the “stragglers in the rear.” The Torah command...