Rabbi Abrams Blog

  Everyone is talking about the hostage deal now.  Is it good?  Is it bad? I don’t really know the details so I can’t even really comment.  And what’s more important than the deal itself, is the follow up to it. But beyond the details of this deal, it’s unfortunately indicative that we’re not leaving the cycle.  And that makes me sad. For decades, it has been Israeli morals (as opposed to Torah morals) to make “painful sacrifices” on the alter of peace and redeeming hostages. Is this deal terrible?  Was it worse than the Gilad Shalit deal of 2011, which let over 1,000 terrorists out of prison, including Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of Oct 7? We will only know after the next Oct 7.   As long as we keep feeding the cycle, we can’t expect the cycle to stop. What is the cycle? The cycle works something like this:  Individual terrorists kill Jews and get sent to prison for life.  Then they take Jewish hostages.  We negotiate a deal to get our...

While at the convention in New York, I spent a lot of time researching high schools. We’ll be sending our eldest daughter, Chanaleh, out of town for 9th grade next year, and we need to find a suitable school for her. You may have gone through this kind of process before.  Maybe not for ninth grade, but perhaps for college. Thank G-d, Chanaleh is a wonderful girl and I’m sure she’ll do fine wherever she goes. But where she goes matters too. If we sent her to public school, I’m sure she’d be a fine doctor or lawyer. If we sent her to an “ultra orthodox school” I’m sure she’d find a studious man to marry and work really hard to support a large family while he would sit in Kollel (yeshiva for married men) all day, and hopefully learn Torah. But we want to send her to a Chabad school. It’s a very special education and worldview that Chabad schools instill in their students. My mother noticed it when looking for an appropriate preschool for me, some thirty plus years ago.  After tou...

Bittersweet conference in NY It’s bittersweet.  I’m meeting up with my colleagues from around the world, enjoying seeing our son, Mendel, meet his online school friends in person, and “recharging my batteries”. But there is a cloud looming over what usually would be very festive and celebratory. You may have heard about the horrific murder of Rabbi Tzvi Kogan HY”D (which stands for  H ashem  Y ikom  D amo- May G-d avenge his blood), from Dubai on Sunday. He was a Chabad rabbi in Dubai, with the mission of ensuring the Jews of United Arab Emirates have kosher food to eat.  He ran a kosher grocery store called “Rimon”. What is a Shliach I’ve written before about what a shliach is.  Shliach means messenger, emissary or ambassador, not just rabbi. Our job as shluchim is to represent the Lubavitcher Rebbe and be his hands and feet in the cities to which we are sent, in the capacity in which we are sent.   A shliach doesn’t have to be a rabbi per se.  A...

Natanya and I are getting ready for a trip to Israel in a few weeks to attend my sister, Rivkah’s wedding (the soldier who is now in university).  This will be my first time in the Holy Land, and we’re very excited about it. One of the places I’m eager to visit is “The Cave of the Patriarchs (and matriarchs)” in Chevron (Hebron).   This is where the founders of humanity and the Jewish people were buried. Adam & Eve Abraham & Sarah Isaac & Rebecca Jacob & Leah Unfortunately, we’ll have to take an armored bus, because it’s in a dangerous neighborhood in the “occupied west bank”, but what I call Shomron. Ironically, of all places in Israel to be disputed, the purchase of this cave & grave is recorded in the Bible (Genesis 23), which we will be reading this week!  After Sarah died, Abraham searched for a burial plot for his wife, and purchased it at an above market rate from Efron the Chittite.  I believe it is the first recorded real estate transacti...

Every four years, I get to remind the community about two rabbinical and important, election related things: While I do follow politics, and have personal opinions, as a rabbi, I am not qualified or authorized to share my personal opinion. My job is to reach out and care for every Jew.  When someone sent me a message that Doug Emhoff (Kamala Harris’ husband) is a nonpracticing Jew, my response was, “Him and a few others.  I love every Jew.”   Mine and Natanya’s mission here is too important to start choosing which Jews should feel at home. I may not be qualified or authorized to talk about a particular candidate, but there is something election related that I am authorized and encouraged to remind everyone: While “free choice” is a principle of Jewish faith, there is one exception.  2,000 years ago, King Solomon wrote, “A king's heart is like rivulets of water in the Lord's hand; wherever He wishes, He turns it”- Proverbs 21, 1. This means, that you and I have more f...

A year ago, things were very different. A year ago, we spoke about “never again” in the abstract.  Many people in Israel spoke of peace deals and two state solutions.   As a SoCal Jewish boy growing up in the 90’s, many of my friends grandparents were Holocaust survivors.  I couldn’t understand or even really believe how it could have happened.  The world was so kind and accepting of Jews. Every year we read in the Passover Hagaddah, “In every generation, they rise up to destroy us, but G-d saves us from their hands” and I couldn’t help but tell myself that our generation was different and this verse didn’t apply today. Now I understand. Some people call it October 7th. I call it the Simchas Torah massacre. Just like we were attacked in 1973 on Yom Kippur, because it was Yom Kippur, in 2023 we were attacked on Simchas Torah, because it was Simchas Torah. What is the Jewish response? Elie Weisel, a famous author, professor and Holocaust survivor met the Rebbe and...