Rabbi Robert Scheinberg's page

Tonight begins Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. For the last several years, I have sent a note to the congregation noting the survivors from our community who have died since last yom HaShoah.   As we know, those who survived the Holocaust as adults are now in their 90’s or older, and the youngest of the survivors -- those too young to remember anything about the experience -- are nearly 70.  Each year, we note the losses of survivors in our community, who were our links to a world destroyed. This year, I think especially of Gerda Stuiver z”l, mother of USH member Jake Stuiver, who died last April in her 80’s, and Lee Berendt z”l, father of USH member Chuck Berendt, who died just a month ago at age 90. Gerda Stuiver was originally from Vienna.  When she was 8 years old, in 1938, she was one of the approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Europe who were brought to England as part of the Kindertransport rescue mission.  She was fortunate to be r...

On March 30, we had an amazing Pre-Passover program for the USH community - Iron Chef Passover Edition! Two teams of chefs from our community competed to make delicious Passover food using some secret ingredients they were told about only immediately before they began to cook.  (Secret ingredients were:  dates; fennel; mint.) Simultaneously, we had workshops on Matzah baking and Haroset making and a seder trivia game.  Then we ate some amazing food and voted!  (Of course it's too late to vote now, but you can see the ballot at bit.ly/ironchefpassover . And the winners were: Best appetizer:    Team Emiril L'Chaim - BAM! -- Deep Fried Matzo Balls w/ dipping sauces! Best side dish:   Team MGSRR - Symon - Same Kukhers -- Vegetable Saag w/ Fennel & Mint! Best dessert:    Team MGSRR - Symon - Same Kukhers -- Matzah Bark! Most creative use of secret ingredients:   Team Emiril L'Chaim - BAM!...

  One of the best-known parts of the Seder is certainly one of the most unusual:  the song or prayer called “ Dayyeinu .”  It is perhaps the best known of all Passover melodies.   This is the song that expresses thanks to God for each of the various steps of the process of the Exodus from Egypt.  After each step, we say “ Dayyeinu - It would have been enough for us.”  “If God had taken us out of Egypt, but not imposed justice upon the Egyptians - It would have been enough for us.  If God had given us the Mannah in the desert, but not given us the gift of Shabbat, it would have been enough for us.”  Etc. The problem is that some of the lines of Dayyeinu just seem completely illogical. For example, I think of the line, “If God had split the Red Sea for us, but not led us through on dry land, Dayyeinu .  It would have been enough for us.”  Really now!  I’m not sure that would have been quite enough for me.  To have the...

At our synagogue's congregational seders for the last few years, we have played the following game:  I have collected unusual Pesach stories, and shared three such stories with the community:  two true stories, and one fictional story.  Participants then have to guess which two stories are true and which one is false.   (If you listen to Wait, wait, don't tell me , you get the idea, except that only one story is false.) You can find previous years' stories here , here and here . The stories from our 2013/5773 seder are below.  Three unusual Pesach stories..... 2 are true, and one is fictional.  Can you figure out which story is not true?   (The answer is at the bottom.) The ideas for this year’s stories are thanks to Rabbi Noah Farkas of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino CA. Story A:   The first ever Israeli Olympic medalist was judo competitor Yael Arad.  In 1992, she won the silver medal in the Barcelona summer games. ...

When my oldest daughter was about 1 ½, she was toddling around our home and found a coin on the floor.  Noticing this, we were a little alarmed - coins, of course, are choking hazards, and toddlers should stay far away from them.  We ran over to take it away from her, but we quickly realized we didn’t have to - because she was carrying the coin over to the tzedakah box - the charity coin box into which we drop coins. Then we realized:  weeks and weeks of giving her coins to put in the tzedakah box as we start shabbat each week, were now paying dividends.  Now, when she found some money, her first instinct was to donate it, rather than to spend it. (OK, I have no illusions that this act was an act of real insight and generosity.  But my wife and I were happy that our first introduction to our child to the world of currency and commerce was in the context of using money to help people.) Tzedakah boxes are on my mind because of the story we read in t...

I was transfixed by Israeli musician Shlomo Gronich's musical setting of Isaiah chapter 6 the first time I heard it, on his "Journey to the Sources" מסע אל המקורות CD.  In honor of this week's haftarah, I made this video that includes the words in Hebrew and in English (adapted from the JPS Tanakh translation). And check out the rest of the songs on that CD, all of which are based on Biblical and Rabbinic texts, through the lens of this extraordinary Israeli secular musician. http://youtu.be/J6DHbXfXgT8

When I was in rabbinical school, I once attended a leadership training seminar in which all those who attended had to share one of their anxieties about assuming a position of  communal leadership.  When it was my turn, I mentioned that one of the things about which I was apprehensive was that it seems to me that religious leaders need to cultivate a charismatic speaking style and stage presence, and that was something that I thought did not come naturally to me. Later on, in the presentation, the speaker addressed my concern and told us a story that was very new and surprising to me.  He said:  Everyone agrees that one of the greatest orators and leaders of the twentieth century was Martin Luther King.  But when Martin Luther King was a seminary student, he was preoccupied by what he perceived as a lack of dynamism in his speaking style.  He felt that he had a lot of ideas -- and a lot of leadership potential -- but he was unsure whether he would b...