Rabbi Robert Scheinberg's page

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 ,   here   and   here . The stories from our 2014/5774 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.) (a) One of the most notorious Jewish gangsters was Meyer Lansky.  Born in Russia in 1903, Lansky immigrated to New York as a boy and had become a crime boss by the time he was a teenager - engaging in bootlegging, ...

Many of us continue to be troubled and inspired by events in Paris this past week:  troubled by terrible acts of murder and violence, and inspired by great acts of kindness and self-sacrifice. I wanted to share some of the thoughts that I shared with the community last shabbat, together with some more thoughts as the situation continues to unfold. Paris may be far away from Hoboken, but this is an event that affects many people in our congregational family directly.This week I have spoken with many members of our community who are from Paris, or who have relatives in Paris, including many who have shopped at the Hyper Cacher supermarket and/or participated in the solidarity march on Sunday.  The terrible events in Paris this week could very easily have affected someone with close ties to our congregation. The Charlie Hebdo murders were not random. The perpetrators were Muslim extremists who attacked those who were asserting their right to free speech, equal-oppo...

Little known Hanukkah fact: In the original Yiddish version of the dreidel song, the dreidel is not made of clay, but of 'blai,' which is lead. Lead used to be the most popular material for making dreidels, before it was known how terribly toxic such dreidels would be. From an old guide to Hanukkah crafts, here are instructions for making a dreidel out of molten lead. But if you love your family, please make your dreidel out of clay or wood or plastic and not out of lead!

Everyone knows the Hanukkah story about a little bit of oil lasting for eight days.  But not everyone realizes that this was not actually the first story in Jewish tradition about miraculously long-lasting oil. Earlier this fall, we and communities around the world read a passage from the book of Kings, the Haftarah for Parashat Vayera, which is about miracles performed by the Prophet Elisha, the protege of Elijah the Prophet. One of these stories (2 Kings 4) describes a woman who approaches Elisha and tells him:  I am in dire financial straits; my husband is dead and we are in terrible debt; our creditors now want to seize my two children as slaves. Elisha asks her: “What do you have at home?”  She responds:  “We have nothing at all at home, except for a jar of oil.”  Elisha tells her to borrow jugs and vessels from all her neighbors and then to pour oil out of this jar that she has, into the borrowed vessels.  Miraculously, this jar of oil keeps ...

How was it decided that we should light one candle on the first night of Hanukkah? In this audio message, join me in going back in history to listen to the debate between the ancient rabbis Hillel and Shammai about how best to mark the Hanukkah miracle, and how best to face the challenges of the future.  Chag Urim Sameach - best wishes for a happy Hanukkah holiday!

The Etrog is undoubtedly one of the most unusual Jewish ceremonial objects. If you have spent some time with an Etrog, you know that it smells wonderful, it doesn't taste so great, and it looks like a mutant lemon, (usually) with a distinctive protrusion on one end.  It is one of the Arba Minim , the four kinds of plants that Jews use ceremonially during prayers on the holiday of Sukkot. As I learn more about the Etrog, both Judaically and botanically, I realize what a powerful symbol it is for the Jewish people. In English, an etrog is called a 'citron,' and it's a very early member of the citrus family.  According to many botanical scholars, it’s the very first citrus fruit to be cultivated.  In fact, almost all of the citrus fruits that we know of today - grapefruits, oranges, lemons, limes - are human creations, cultivated by crossing the four original citrus fruits (citron, mandarin, pomelo, and papeda) with each other.  This would indicate that ...

I shared this reflection with my community a few years ago on a Yom Kippur evening.   Each Shabbat morning in our synagogue, before we say the Kiddush, the prayer over wine, it is traditional for the leader to say ' savri meranan ,' or ' savri haverei, ’ which basically means, “Your attention please!”.  This is traditionally followed by everyone saying, with great enthusiasm, “ L’chaim !"  If you know Hebrew, or if you ever saw Fiddler on the Roof , you know that L’chaim! means "To Life!"  Then we say the blessing over wine. You may have wondered where this peculiar Jewish toast comes from.  In fact, it is almost a thousand years old.  The Midrash Tanhuma , a collection of ancient midrashim, describes this practice , in a way that has a lot to teach us about wine, about community, and about each other.  The Midrash says: When there's a death-penalty trial, and the verdict is about to be announced, one of the judges announces: savri ...