From the Rabbi’s Desk

“Seeds of Eternity” Rabbi Reuven Subar

taken from www.ohr.edu

Many people observe the Pesach Seder. This is so, regardless of their affiliation or observance of other mitzvos. Jews who build no Sukkah, who don’t know when Shavuos is, faithfully assemble year after year to tell about the going out of Egypt. Recounting the Exodus is a mitzvah deeply rooted in the consciousness of even the ‘least’ conscientious Jew. Why?

The answer lies in the very first Pesach seder in history. 

After a full year in the desert, the Jewish People celebrated the Pesach festival. They offered the Pascal lamb and ate matzah and maror. But when it came time to tell the Pesach story, whom did they tell? To whom did they recount the acts, the wonders, the Strong Hand and Outstretched Arm? Everybody was there! Everyone saw it with their own eyes! Even babies in their mothers’ womb reached prophetic awareness during the splitting of the Red Sea! 

Only one person – Moshe Rabbeinu – had children who did not personally experience the going out of Egypt. Moshe’s children, Gershom and Eliezer, were in Midian at the time of the Exodus. Moshe, therefore, was the first person in history to pass on the Pesach tradition to children who didn’t know about it first-hand. He was the first to plant the seed of redemption in the heart a new generation. 

Moshe Rabbeinu excelled in the ability to imbue his actions with lasting significance. With his ‘golden touch,’ he impacted eternity with every undertaking. He led us out of Egypt, never again to become a slave nation. The Torah he taught us echoes across eons. And had Moshe been the one to lead us into the Land of Israel, we never would have been exiled from it. 

Because Moshe Rabbeinu inaugurated ‘Sippur Yetzias Mitzrayim’ – the telling of the going out of Egypt – it remains a mitzvah forever rooted in the hearts of the entire Jewish People.

Pesach, One Word.

What would be one singular word to express the value and the meaning of Pesach?  The word is COMPASSION. 

The Maharal explains that the entire concept of Pesach is because G-D was Pasach (jumped) over the houses of the Jews during the 10th plague. The verse is explicit how G-D skipped over the Jewish homes. But the word itself needs translation. The Aramaic Onkelus translates the word as chayas, which means compassion or mercy. This means that because of what we did in Egypt, in following G-D’s command to slaughter the sheep and spread the blood on the doorposts, because of that, G-D had compassion upon us and skipped over the Jews’ houses. 

This means that throughout the Seder one should recognize the compassion that G-D has on us, and in turn we should develop that compassion towards others. 

Where do you see G-D’s compassion to you in your life?

In what area do you think you could increase your compassion on others?

Pesach prep is in full swing. If you’re not actively preparing, you are definitely preparing in your mind, or you are at least wondering why you haven’t started preparing yet. 

This is a quick reminder for all of us. We are the chosen nation. We are the firstborn nation of all other nations. We are the guideposts for all others and the light to shine upon the world. What makes us glorious is our connection to Divinity and our relationship with Torah and its commandments. 

Pesach is a renewal of life, from both a spiritual and a physical standpoint. Whether it’s the intense cleaning or the regal hotel experience, it’s an entirely different change of pace from what we were used to just a month earlier. It clearly requires some sort of alteration for most of us. 

We are part of something bigger. We live beyond time. What we do reinforces the link in our multigenerational chain all the way back to Sinai, and helps it connect all the way to future days. Imagine a scene from a superhero movie, where the train is zooming down the tracks, only the track is broken over the bridge just a few thousand yards away. And the superhero rushes in place to create a makeshift track with his body, so the train can safely pass over the bridge. 

We are the superhero. The bridge is our generation. The train is the entirety of the world. What we do, bridges the past to the future. Our cleaning, our cooking, our Seders, our mitzvos, and our Torah, are all opportunities for us to enhance ourselves, our families, and the entire world.  

I was away in Israel for the year when my father met Helen and when they were married. At the time I really had no interest in having a stepmother. The whole concept was so foreign to me; the only stepmother I was familiar with was from the animated movie Cinderella, hardly a model to look up to. When I got back to the US, I first met Helen, and then at a later time, I met her three boys, two of whom were married already. From Cinderella to the Brady bunch, all of my TV watching was slowly becoming a personal reality. What was next, the A-Team?

Though I was not looking forward to now getting three stepbrothers, in a short while my attitude changed, and I was grateful and I am grateful for my new brothers in my life. The benefit of having stepbrothers later in life is that they don’t come with ‘noogies’ or ‘dares,’ they’re just great people. David, A”H, Ari, and Jay are just phenomenal people with amazing families.

In actuality, Helen was a master at bringing people together. She would sit on the phone with everyone and just ask questions to get a better understanding of who you were. She was always there for my father, may he have a long, good and healthy life; she cheered him on in whatever endeavor he would be a part of. Whether it was golf, which she knew nothing about, or Daf Yomi, Helen would comment regularly how proud of him she was. She would even push him to go do it more. Daf Yomi didn’t need a push, since my father is on his 6th cycle, it’s just second nature for him. She pushed him to do the things that she knew would be good for him. She wanted people to be happy, and my father was at the top of the list.

When my wife and I spent Shabbos of Shiva with my father, we went to a Shabbos take-out place to buy the many many varieties of food that Helen used to serve at her Shabbos meals. When we brought out all of the food, my father wondered in amazement why there was so much food. “We only have two or three dishes”, he said. My wife and I looked at each other incredulously. “You’re joking, right?” I said. “This is probably half of what Grandma Helen served when we came for Shabbos.” My father quickly brought clarity to the situation. There’s only a ton of food when there are guests, even one guest means 10 more dishes to be served. But for the two of them, simplicity was just fine. And all these years, I thought they served this weekly. Nope, only when guests come by, even just one guest; and she made sure to make the foods that you liked.

Once we had a child, she became Grandma Helen (GH) to us, and GH did everything for all of her grandchildren. She spent hours daily working on custom-knitted birthday gifts for all of them. For bar mitzvahs she made a custom Teffilin bag, for girls, custom machzor covers, for weddings custom challah covers, and wow, were are gorgeous. During shiva, a woman from the knitting store, Stitches, came by. Grandma Helen was her best customer. And when she got up to leave the shiva house, she took all the unfinished projects that Grandma Helen was working on and said, “We at the store are going to finish all of these in her memory at no cost.”

She suffered greatly in later years, but she never kvetched about it. Nobody could figure out how or why, but she just didn’t complain. In her early years, she raised three teenage boys by herself, took them wherever they needed to go, had their friends over whenever they wanted, and opened her house to be warm and accepting.

Over the last few years she had many tzaros, but if you asked her how she was, she would say, everything’s fine. She never complained. We don’t understand why Hashem causes some people inordinate amounts of suffering, but I can tell you, she passed the test of not complaining or being angry at Hashem, simply remarkable.

My father and Helen’s marriage was one of mutual respect for 28 good years. They spent hours together, listened to each other, and celebrated everything together, all with no fanfare. No fancy cars or vacations, just simple companionship and caring for each other and for others. She gave him Simchas HaChayim and a renewed lease on life.

Thank you Grandma Helen for all that you have been for my father and our family. May your neshamah be for a blessing and may HKBH shield you in the wings of His Divine presence.

RABBIS DID RUN!

How do you get 40 rabbis to stop speaking? Make them run.

This week I had the great pleasure of joining the culminating event of RabbisCanRun 2023 in Sunrise Florida.

It was a magnificent event spearheaded and run by Rabbi Meir Kaniel, whereby he spends a good part of the year soliciting rabbis to join his program and get into shape. Though training is only 3-4 months long, its a huge undertaking to get people committed to the program. After reaching out to over 1,200 rabbis across the nation and beyond, about 15% respond, and 5% actually sign up. This year we had 40 rabbis sign up and complete their training on race day. But it’s much more than just a race.

The commitment to train also comes along with a commitment to raise money for the program. This is not a small feat, as most rabbis have other commitments when it comes to raising money. I am very grateful for those that gave to my program, because that hurdle is oftentimes harder to overcome than the training itself.

Training means learning how to run properly, and running a minimum of two times per week. Most rabbis don’t have the time available to run, so when you see what people do in order to complete their runs, you are amazed as to the how and the when those runs happen. One rabbi posted his 12am run, because that’s when he had availability, another posted his 4am run, because the run has to get done. I’ve had my share of late night runs as well.  Last year I found myself running in a hailstorm in Los Angeles, and this year, I pushed myself to get my final pre-race run in 34 degree weather in Brooklyn, NY, running the sidewalks of Ocean Parkway. Aside from the freezing (I’m officially Californian) temperatures, the run began in the religious neighborhood, but as I got to the street letters X, Y and Z, the demographics changed dramatically, and I was  excited to turn around and complete a 7.5 mile run at 10:30pm. There’s a tremendously invigorating feeling knowing that you can push yourself out of your comfort zone and feel good about the results.

For those that know me, this isn’t my first rodeo into RCR. It all started in 2018 for me when I ran my first 10k (6.2 miles). Though I’ve graduated since then, I realize that I need a program like RCR to keep me committed to staying in shape. With great help from the Almighty, I was able to run 15k (9.3 miles), which was half of what I had done last year, but perhaps with double the output, recovering from two injuries, a torn calf and a pulled hip. That itself was remarkable. One rabbi who completed the program told me that without my words of encouragement to overcome injury and pain, he would have backed out months ago. I realized that pushing through this wasn’t just for me.

So many rabbis had so many inspiring stories as to how they got there, whether it was the rabbi who had a heart attack and a pacemaker put in, or one with a history of heart disease in his family. Another with a benign tumor in his brain that was removed, and plenty of others who have witnessed congregants pass away partly due to poor health and body maintenance.

Rabbi Kaniel does a phenomenal job in motivating people, training them and giving them the confidence that they can really do the unimaginable. Before race day, he creates a program that anyone would enjoy. We have guest speakers in person, on Zoom and recorded lectures from big names such as Rabbi Akiva Tatz, Dr. David Pelcovitz and more. We heard from a visiting (local) rabbi how he lost 100lbs and transformed his life through running and eating properly. His first 35lbs that he lost came through rigorous calculated eating at Dunkin Donuts for 45 days straight. Plus an entire nutritional exploration of food, exercise and taking care of your body from Dr. Larry Kurz, the RCR doctor on staff. Everybody needs to know about protein glycation, Ghrelin and Leptin, and if you’re not in the know, you’d better get in the know. Helping rabbis understand the human body and to learn how to better take care of it, is a tremendous asset to help our neshamos thrive and grow.

Over the two days, the rabbis spend time meeting and interacting with each other, and getting a break from their everyday lives. It’s a rejuvenating experience and we are most certainly grateful to the wives for enabling this to happen. The goal is for these rabbis to continue training, for greater accomplishments and to stay healthier than before.  If we can inspire more rabbis to be healthier, we can hopefully inspire more communities to do the same.

Rabbi Kaniel’s gift to us is something we all need, but until you do it, you have no idea what you’re missing.

I was looking to fly to NY to visit my father and stepmother after we found out that she had had a stroke. Since I was flying to Florida, I thought I could quickly jump over to NY. But then we got word that she took a turn for the worse, so we planned to fly the red-eye on Thursday night. And then on Tuesday we got word that she had potentially between a few hours and a day. So we booked a red-eye flight for Tuesday night.

When we arrived, we headed on the AirTrain to the rental car place. It was then when I received the text that my beloved stepmother, Hinda bas Tzvi, had left this world. I called my father to see what we could do. He said, just meet me at the house, Chevra Kadisha will be coming soon, there’s no need to come to the hospital anymore.” I said OK, and then told my wife what my father had said. She turned to me and said, “Of course we’re going to the hospital, now is when you need to be there.” We arrived about 1.5 hrs after her soul left this world, and I went up to the room by myself. I walked right into my fathers arms and just hugged him. He broke into tears with no immediate words and we cried together for a minute or two. He then said, “She was so good to me, such a wonderful woman. She suffered so much, so much suffering.” Both were true. She was great for my father, and she suffered so much over the last 3-4 years, yet she never complained.

I stayed with my father in the Hospital until Chevra Kadisha came. And then we headed home about an hour later. My wife went ahead to the house so I could spend time with him. He was somewhat prepared for her passing, especially since the stroke of last week. During our car ride home, he spoke of her pain but was focused on her greatness.  Baruch Hashem, we were able to be with him for the rest of the day and night. During that time we were able to work on scheduling shiva hours, plan for food deliveries, misaskim for chairs and siddurim, schedule funeral speakers, and anything else logistically needed for the levaya as he sat making calls to friends and family. He was grateful for us taking care of all of those things, giving him the freedom to make all the necessary calls.

From the funeral in Boro Park, we drove 1.25 hours to the cemetery, the same place my grandparents and great-grandparents are buried. It was just me and my father through the ride, both ways, where he was able to share his thoughts about life, marriage, and companionship. It was a great time for him to open up and share his feelings. He is about 5 weeks away from his 81st birthday, and now he has to figure out how to spend the rest of his days. For the past 3 years he devoted himself full-time to taking care of my stepmother, but more than that, for 28 years they devoted themselves to each other.

Perhaps this is why some describe mitzvos as opportunities, not merely commandments. I am grateful for the G-D given opportunities to be in the right places at the right times. I hope to share thoughts of my stepmother soon. Yehi Zichra Baruch, May her memory be for a blessing.

https://thechesedfund.com/rabbiscanrun/rcr2023/teams/rabbinachiklein

Join me on my incredible new journey. You are already familiar with RabbisCanRun (RCR), the program where I trained to run a 10k (6+ miles) in Jerusalem. In 2019, we were the second year of Rabbis training to get into shape, and we tried to be better role models for health. Then you stood by my side as I completed a grueling competition in RabbisCanEat, and you may even remember the RabbisCanSpell program! Fast forward to 2022, where I was able to run 18 miles straight in Sunrise, Florida.

This year I had big plans to run a full Marathon (26+ miles) . I had been training well and I got up to 12 miles about two months ago. Then in an unrelated incident, I had jumped and immediately snapped my calf muscle. After hobbling through the day and then getting an MRI a few days later, it was determined that I had torn my calf muscle. That meant that not only could I not run, but I could not even walk.

And so my new unplanned journey began from RabbisCanRun to RabbisShouldn’tJump And then to RabbisGetInjured. With a few visits to the orthopedist to confirm the injury, I asked what can be done. The only thought that I could come up with was “why don’t I just join RabbisCanEat again?” But the doctor would have nothing of it. “It will heal, and you will run again,” he said.

Therefore, I would like you to join me on my next journey, RabbisCanRecover. From the 8 weeks since my injury I made progress going from crutches to walking, and now back to jogging. Believe it or not, but on February 6th, I plan to run 9 miles. This perhaps is an even greater feat than the 18 miles of last year.

And I know as you cheer for me, you will be giving me the strength to push through to the finish.

Along with your moral and spiritual support, I would love for you to throw in some financial support as well, as I raise money for Olami Kiruv outreach. Many people that you know have benefited from Olami’s outstretched arm, with kiruv professionals all over USA campuses, and other organizations that you may be familiar with such as Olami West, led by our very own Rabbi Eli Bloom. Well, the monies I raise will go to support great outreach efforts to bring more Jews back to the fold and lead healthy religious and meaningful lives.

Please click here to lend a hand and show your support:

https://thechesedfund.com/rabbiscanrun/rcr2023/teams/rabbinachiklein

I look forward to recovering and sharing the joys of getting up when you get down.

We just witnessed such a wonderful fundraiser. With over 260 donors and over $110,000 raised in 36 hours!

Thank you all so much for your participation in this event. Of the many things that stand out for me with this fundraiser is:

1. People really love our community. Every one of us touches people’s lives, whether by greeting them, offering hospitality, or just by being yourself, our community has made hundreds of people feel warm and accepted. By being part of the community, you took part in the fundraiser and in fact, you are the fundraiser!
2. The amount that people donated, was huge. Whether the donation was big or small, every donation counts; they are all big.
3. To those of you who made calls or sent out texts or other shares, you made a huge difference.
4. If you made calls, you did more than reach out to people. You gave them an opportunity to give, and in some instances, you were even rewarded with great humility.

Thank you all so much for all that you do,

Rabbi Nachi Klein