Rabbi Abrams Blog

Could we become like this too? This week, a horrifying story hit international news from just a couple miles away in Perris. The Turpin parents, who had been abusing & starving their thirteen children for decades were finally exposed and caught, thanks to their 17 year old girl who escaped and called 911. These kids had been beaten, starved, and chaine  their family trips would make my kids jealous! Lot's of fun trips to Disneyland and Vegas, with everyone dressed up so nicely in matching clothes. A friend of Louise Turpin dubbed her as a "supermom" on facebook! d to their beds without being allowed to go to the bathroom or take showers. Ironically, the pictures that are surfacing of How do these things happen? Obviously these parents were really sick and depraved people, but how did they become like that? Reports are saying that this systematic abuse intensified over time. What started out twenty years ago in Texas as neglect (the parents would leave them at...

67 years ago to the day, the Rebbe accepted leadership of Chabad. You see, his father in law, the Previous Rebbe had passed away a year before and it was the first yahrzeit. Chabad had been without leadership for a year and while it was pretty obvious to many that the Rebbe was the only appropriate candidate, the Rebbe didn't seem interested in the job. The Rebbe had been leading many of the Chabad institutions already and was teaching To rah and saying sichos (public talks), but fervently rejected the title "Rebbe". At the yahrzeit farbrengen of his father in law, just after saying a sicha, (public talk-on Torah) an elder chossid stood up and said, "anyone can say words of Torah, we want to hear a maamor (a much more spiritual kind of talk that only Rebbe's would give)" The Rebbe obliged, reciting his first Maamor based on the verse באתי לגני-"I've (G-d) come to my garden", and so began the 7th generation of Chabad. His father in law, ...