Rabbi Abrams Blog

Wishing you a relaxing Shabbos.  There is nothing like the deep rest of Shabbos to revitalize a weary soul after a long hard week.  My wish for you is to experience this deep rest and get this rejuvenation. Just a couple days before Shavuos, our daughter, Moussia, celebrated her Bas Mitzvah. It’s the day when a “girl becomes a young woman” and we are so proud of her. The theme of the Bas Mitzvah was “Yogati umatzasi Taamin”. The Talmud says: “If someone tells you they tried hard but did not succeed, don’t trust them. If someone tells you they didn’t try but did succeed, don’t trust them. If someone tells you they tried hard and they succeeded, trust them” The Rebbe chose this wise and empowering passage from the Talmud as one of the 12 Torah Verses we drill into our children.  (I actually wrote a draft for a children’s book on them, which you can read  here .) Moussia personifies this particular verse.   Some kids are just “naturally good” at lot’s of stuff. And...

The Great Lag Baomer Parade in NY was absolutely fantastic! It was a lot to schlep the whole family, but it was totally worth it. When we returned, I spoke with Ron. He asked about the parade, and I invited him to come with me to NY another time, which he immediately jumped on with excitement. I asked him why he didn’t come with us for Lag Baomer, to which he responded, “I wasn’t sure if I was invited”. I told him that we really wanted to bring a Temecula delegation with us, referencing my email asking the community to join us, and showed him my to-do list, highlighting “bring group” for Lag Baomer. It really was a priority to bring a group with us. It was my intention to call everyone I thought might like to join, but I really am busy and sometimes proactive one on one communication just doesn’t happen, even though I really want it to.  Just like I wrote this email last Wednesday, but got interrupted and only am sending it now… What I want you to know is that whenever I write, “yo...

The Jewish Children’s Pride Parade was an invention of the Rebbe and a brilliant idea that changed the course of post-Holocaust Jewish America. It features the most inspiring Jewish and Torah themed floats, Jewish children marching bands, and a Jewish wonderland. About ten years ago, I begged my father to attend with me and our 3 toddlers. He reluctantly came but was busy doing some work on his phone during the procession.  He thought it would be a regular children’s event, ie boring for adults. But once I tapped his shoulder to asked him to watch the floats and the children, he stood up and watched them march by for hours , with tears streaming down his cheeks. In the early 1950’s the Jewish people were not in great shape.  The American Jews were very few and assimilated.  The European Jewish immigrants were refugees and broken from the Holocaust. In those days, the saying, “S’ iz shver tzu zayn a Yid- it’s hard to be a Jew” was common. Jews were not holding their heads ...

It was nice to shut the news off for Pesach, because a lot of negative things have been getting a lot of attention.  Indeed, antisemitism is dominating headlines again. I have been working through my personal feelings as well as  trying to get clarity on the Rebbe’s response. Indeed, the Rebbe’s approach was novel. He didn’t put much into fighting anti-Semitism, and when asked about it, would not take the bait and instead spoke about how all of humanity is really one, saying things like, “All mankind came from Adam so that no one should be able to say I am better than you.” The few times the Rebbe did speak about it, he framed it more as a reality than a virus.   On the one hand he believed that we can’t educate people out of it, that until Moshiach comes and the “wolf lies with the lamb”- metaphorically symbolizing that the nations will dwell with Israel in peace, anti-Semitism will not be rooted out. On the other hand, rooting out the anti-Semites and cancelling them is...

Tonight we’ll eat matzah, read the Hagaddah and tell the story of the slavery & exodus from Egypt. We will read, “In every single generation they rise up to destroy us, but G-d saves us from their hands.” I grew up in generation that said “never again”.  It was peaceful, and while I heard stories from my friends parents and grandparents of antisemitism & the Holocaust, I never experienced it myself. It was as if antisemitism was a thing of the past and people became sophisticated enough to move on.   For the past seven months, this line in the Hagaddah has kept popping into my head.  No amounts of marches, monuments, lectures and rallies will rid the world of antisemitism until Moshiach comes.  I’ve come to trust in G-d & the Torah, not the promises of politicians and secularism. On other hand, just because antisemitism isn’t disappearing so fast, it’s not a reason to worry. The second half of the sentence clarifies that while in every generation until Mo...

As you know, over forty volunteers have delivered shmurah matzah to over 700 people in 400 homes so every Temecula Jew can celebrate Passover. For years, Michael Brenner has been a star volunteer.  Every holiday, he is the first to sign up to make deliveries.  He has his set route, saved their addresses in his GPS everyone on his route knows him by name. On Tuesday, while en route from delivery three to four, he was hit by a van.  His car rolled over 450 degrees (complete rollover and landed on the drivers side).  It was super scary and unbelievably dangerous. But Michael walked out without a scratch (actually pulled out, because he was trapped inside with the deployed, smoking airbags). This was a miracle. All night we were both thinking about what happened and how it could happen.  Is the sarcastic saying  “no good deed goes unpunished” really true?  Doesn’t the Talmud (Pesachim 8A) teach that “a mitzvah messenger never gets harmed”? The next morning...

Over the past few weeks, I’ve come to a new realization:  I love my job as a shliach. Property development has been (and still is) very exciting.  I really enjoy the adventure of it, and the satisfaction of seeing a vision come true. But it is very consuming from many angles.   And I know that all this construction has taken away from my ability to serve the community (hopefully we’re still keeping up, if not being as proactive as I’d like). This past week it’s become very clear to me that this construction project is a means to an end, and the end is a home for the Jewish community of Temecula.  This campus will give the community the infrastructure to grow, and serve everyone with the right tools. I can’t wait to reach the finish line, so we can get back to putting all our focus where it should be, namely on the community. (It’s interesting to note that a few weeks ago I heard a story about Rabbi Rubin, the shliach to Albany, NY.  In his first years on the job...