Rabbi Robert Scheinberg's page

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.) Many of us gathered at Congregation Bnai Jacob this afternoon for a moving tribute to those who died, including presentations of music by the USH Choir and memorial prayers chanted by our member Rebecca Weitman.  Our older Learning Center s...

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 see previous editions of this game here http://rabbischeinberg.blogspot.com/search?q=trivia . This is what was presented at our congregational seder in 2016, in honor (?) of that election year. A ll 3 stories this year have to do with people who reached, or aspired to reach, the Presidency of the United States.  2 are true; one is fictional. ======================================================= A: Many of us saw videos of visits to Matzah factories in the spring of 2016 by presidential candidates Ted Cruz and ...

see  http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/haman-on-the-couch/ for something I wrote in honor of Purim this year, making an effort to peer into the mind of Haman, everyone's favorite Purim villain.   Purim Sameach!

Quebec City... Charleston ... Oak Creek ... Har Nof ... Hebron ... Birmingham ...  The word 'sanctuary' implies a place of safety, a place where one can stand or kneel before God in prayer and fully inhabit one's vulnerability. But we also know that houses of worship can be targets of hatred and murderous violence. I remember my reaction upon learning about the massacre or worshippers in the synagogue in Har Nof in 2014 -- and I imagine that Muslims throughout the United Stat es and Canada are feeling something similar now to what I felt, some painful mix of grief and fear and indignation and concern, as I made unsuccessful efforts to cleanse my mind of images of blood and violence in what is supposed to be a place of peace and tranquility. The horrific murders in the masjid in Quebec City yesterday should shake every person of every faith -- because of the precious lives that were lost, and because we know that this massacre could have taken place in our own house...

I have started blogging at the Times of Israel web site -- you can find my thoughts on the US Presidential Inauguration there, at http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/kings-and-presidents-bowing-and-standing/

Israel's policies regarding settlements in the West Bank aka Judea and Samaria are in the news even more than usual -- with the United Nations Security Council resolution two weeks ago, Secretary  of State Kerry's address last week, and the nomination of a US ambassador to Israel who stakes out a position to the right of Prime Minister Netanyahu by stating his principled opposition to a Palestinian state.  One of the more entertaining books about Israeli society of the 1970s and 1980s is Zeev Chafets's book " Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men: Inside the New Israel," published in 1986 ( and with used copies now available for nearly free ). I remember enjoying this book when I was in high school.  I recently took a look at it and was sad to be reminded that more than 30 years and so many lives later, not much has changed regarding the major outlines of the conversation about Israeli policies regarding the future of the West Bank. The choices remain mo...

I write these words as an individual, who serves a Jewish community that is diverse in many ways, including national origin, race, sexual orientation, and political perspective, among other points of diversity.  I don’t have the illusion that everyone in our community will agree with what I am writing below, but it is my hope that you can find at least one thing with which to agree.   My tendency at times of joy and at times of difficulty is to look to traditional Jewish writings for wisdom and solace. Here are 4 traditional Jewish texts that are helping me through this day. Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, 2nd c. CE), 4:10:   ואל תאמר קבלו דעתי, שהן רשאין ולא אתה   “[Rabbi Ishmael taught:]  Don’t say to someone else, “You must come around to my opinion!”  That’s up to them, not to you.” Western democracy may be young, but the idea of majority vote and (in some circumstances) majority rule has been a hallmark of Jewish tradition for t...