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 see previous editions of this game here http://rabbischeinberg.blogspot.com/search?q=trivia . This is what was presented at our congregational seder in 2019.  2 are true; one is fictional. Answers at the bottom! ============================== ========================= 2 stories are true, one is fictional.  STORY #1: What would you do in order to spend the Passover Seder with your family? At 7am on the morning before Passover 2018, an Uber driver from the Bronx, who sh...

I began my sermon with a brief description of my trip to Pittsburgh this January to spend a shabbat filling in for Rabbi Jonathan Perlman at the New Light Congregation, which lost 3 congregants in the terrible Tree of Life massacre. (If you are curious why I have chosen the spelling ‘antisemitism’ (uncapitalized and without a hyphen), see here. ) ….Rabbi Perlman’s community, called New Light, used to have its own building, but a few years ago they sold their building and began to rent space from the Tree of Life synagogue. Rabbi Perlman says he had never heard live gunfire before, but the moment he heard the sound, he knew what it was and that he had to hide and get others into hiding. He was able to hustle the other three people with him at the front of the room into a safe area, an electrical storage closet behind the wall where the aron kodesh, holy ark is. So in that storage closet, which was pitch-black because they couldn’t find the light switch -- were four people: R...

Last November, the record was set in Israel for the most expensive document ever to be sold at auction in Israel. The story of that document starts nearly 100 years ago. In 1922, Albert Einstein had recently learned that he had won the Nobel Prize. He had a previously scheduled lecture in Tokyo, so in Tokyo he was receiving numerous letters and telegrams congratulating him on winning the Nobel Prize. Someone had sent him a package, so a bellboy from the hotel came up to deliver the package to Einstein, who looked in his pocket to find some change to give as a tip to the bellboy. But he didn’t have any. So he told the bellboy instead: “Let me write you a note. Maybe someday it will become more valuable than a regular tip. And if not, then well I’m just giving you some good advice from my experience.” So he wrote, in German, on the Japanese hotel stationery, these words: “A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessn...

For the last several years, 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 have listened 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 on my web site here http://rabbischeinberg.blogspot.com/search?q=trivia . Here are the stories that I shared at our congregational seder last year. Answer (and relevant links) at the bottom. Feel free to use it if you wish! ========================================== STORY #1:  American Jewish history is full of conflicts between Jewish tradition and sports. Hank Greenberg didn’t play in the World Series on Rosh HaShanah. Sandy Koufax didn’t play in the World Series on Yom Kippur. Many elementary school age kids get to relive these famous values clarification dilemmas on a week...

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...

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 ...