Being busy on Shabbat: “Six days thou shalt work, and on the Seventh day…” you shall be busy! Busy indeed are the people who attend Shabbat program at ‘Beit Warszawa’ in Warsaw. They begin 9:30-10:30 with a study session of Talmud, led by Rabbi Nativ using Hebrew, Aramaic, English, and Polish alternatively. The morning service, […]
Modeling the Jewish Learning and Humanity of Our Late Teacher Rabbi Michael A. Signer.
Beit Warszawa and its Jews
In an American or Canadian Reform Synagogue today, about 10-15% of the younger generation of members were not born or raised as Jews. Almost half of this small minority were formally converted to Judaism by a Reform or Conservative Rabbi (Geray Tsedek). Another third of these people have informally become Jewish by living Jewishly, and […]
Ki Tetze – The Body and the Soul
5th September 2014/10 elul 5774 The mutual influence of the soul on the body and the physical condition of a man on his soul is not a ‘discovery’ of modern medicine. In many issues the Torah expresses this mutual influence. One of them is the Torah’s attitude to skin diseases, which are called by the […]
Bo -5773
“This month is for you the first of months, it is the first month of the year” [Exod. 12:2]. According to our Sages, this was the first mitzvah that the Israelites received as a people, and the legal core of the Torah begins here! Beginning a new calendar by fixing the first month of spring […]
Poles With Jewish Souls Return Home
On November 23, 1939, Hans Frank, head of the Nazi Government General that ruled central Poland, declared that all Jews above ten years of age were to wear a white badge with a Star of David on their right arm. By October of 1940, almost 400,000 Polish Jews had been confined in a 3.5 square […]
Ekev – 5774
The Hebrew language teaches us much about the logic and the values of our ancestors. Different words and terms share the same three-consonant-stem (in Hebrew: ‘shoresh’ =root) point out the dependence or the common denominator which the ancient Hebrew speakers believed these words and terms have, e.g. the noun ‘Shalom’ =peace, and the adjective ‘shalem’ […]