Our Man in the White House

The purpose of this blog is to help you turn Friday night smalltalk into bigtalk. Please print & share.

Is President Obama good or bad for Israel?

That's not the question of the week. That's just to get you to read the rest of this post, since eleven out of ten Jews have a very strong opinion on this question.

(And they're all wrong, of course.)

It's such a charged question that I've been sitting on this topic for weeks, afraid of appearing partisan.

This is not an endorsement of any candidate, party or platform, OK?

But here is an interesting story, worthy of table talk.

First, as you probably know, the Jewish blogo-twitter-facebook-sphere was all abuzz before November 2 about whether or not President Obama is "good for Israel".

During all of these discussions, I never saw anyone mention Jack Lew.

Yaakov Who?

If you google "Jack Lew" you will find many articles about the White House Chief of Staff.

Most of them are highly flattering.

Jacob Lew

Most of them for some reason mention the fact that he doesn't work on Friday night or Saturday.

Such as the Huffington Post:

"He packed in long hours six days a week, taking off every Saturday to observe the Sabbath (he is an Orthodox Jew), honing the type of negotiating acumen that would prove useful for Obama."

The Atlantic Monthly at least finds a reason to mention Lew's private life:

"Faith is another guiding force in Lew's life. An Orthodox Jew, he tries to observe the Sabbath. This means forgoing work, cars, phone calls, and other technology from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday, hardly an easy commitment for a man who has answered to two presidents. The full day of respite from a bruising Washington schedule helps him maintain his characteristic calm, friends say."

The Forward profile revealed even more:

When Jack Lew was appointed chief of staff to President Obama in January, many in the Jewish community wondered how he could observe Shabbat in such a demanding position.
Luckily, Lew has the most powerful man in the world to keep track of time as the sun starts to dip low in the sky on Friday afternoons.

Yaakov Lew

“I saw the president on many occasions on Friday afternoons look at his watch, and ask: ‘Isn’t it time for you to get going?’” Lew said, “or, ‘Why are you still here?’ The president was not checking the clock “because he doesn’t think I can keep time,” Lew said. Rather, the extra care on this issue reflects the President’s wish “to remind me that it’s important to him, not just to me, that I be able to make that balance.”

Questions for your table: With Yaakov Lew as one of the smartest and most powerful players in Washington, does it matter to you that he's Jewish? That he keeps Shabbat? Is that good for Israel? Is it good for the Jews?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - don't forget our awesome suggestions for Channuka here.

Help is On the Way

The purpose of this blog is to help you transform your Friday night table from a meal to a profound encounter. Please print & share.


This week: A Question, a Problem, a Solution for your table

1. The Question: Were you profoundly happy or profoundly disappointed Tuesday night?

Most people I spoke with were one or the other. I have found very few people who (like me) are unconvinced that the differences between the two candidates were more significant than their similarities.

2. The Problem: Since the country - and much of the world - is so divided and believes so much that they are right and the other side is wrong, is that OK? Does unity matter?

3. The Solution: There is one way to create unity, whether between two people or between two groups of people. That is to have a common purpose, a common goal.

Sometimes that common goal is to defeat a common enemy.

This would be a bottom-line level of unity.

Other times, the common goal is something positive, like educating our children.

Right now we have a common enemy, and I would like to use this soapbox to encourage you to join with me in unity to fight it.

Imagine a newlywed couple who are renting a basement apartment.

In the apartment they have all of their wedding gifts.

Furniture.

Linens.

Photo albums.

Childhood mementos.

Many precious books.

All of their clothing.

The basement was flooded by Sandy and they lost...

everything.

Their cars were completely destroyed.

They still have to go to work.

They still have to eat.

They are lucky that they are renters.

Homeowners have the added pain of losing the entire house AND needing to make mortgage payments. AND paying for the demolition of the condemned house. (Can they even think of rebuilding?)

We're not talking about a few hundred people here. There are thousands.

From The Jewish Week: “We have families who have lost all their cars, totaled from storm damage,” Dolgin said. “We have families whose basements are completely flooded, homes that will surely be condemned. One grandfather died in his sleep during the storm, another grandfather had a stroke as the house was flooding. Worst of all, there are many families we have not yet heard from.”

If you are the director of a school with hundreds of children and overnight the school building is destroyed, what do you do?

The needs in New York are enormous and profound.

Just like you shouldn't believe all the bad news you read, you also shouldn't believe all the good news.

From this eyewitness account in Tuesday's Forward: "The newscasters and papers are reporting that we’re turning a page. They’re reporting that the lights are coming on, the subways are running, people are back to work. That is not the case in Far Rockaway.....For three straight days I’ve been in Far Rockaway, I’ve not seen a Red Cross volunteer, I’ve not seen FEMA, I’ve not seen the National Guard."

Yet together, we have enormous resources.

Let's work together to help these people. Now. Today. Please.

If you live close enough to New York to assist with physical cleanup, please go this Sunday.

Bring extra gasoline for generators.

Achiezer provides direct service to many families who lost everything they owned. These families must start from scratch; literally.
Many Jewish groups have relief funds, including the JFN.
The Mazal School was destroyed and hoping to survive as a school.

If you know any victims, you might help them navigate their own recovery with these articles from Consumer Reports:

a. Car damaged or destroyed by flood
b. Preparing to deal with home insurance company
c. Other useful articles

If I have failed to move you, read this journal of a survivor.

Chesed - the giving of oneself to help another - is the foundation of everything Jewish. Everything.


Shabbat Shalom

Exhuming Obama

The purpose of this blog is to help you turn your Friday night table into the talk of the town. Please print & share.

(If you have our iphone/ipad app, The Amazing Jewish Fact-a-Day Calendar, and it has been malfunctioning the past few weeks, some good news. We have submitted an update to Apple that includes fixing many broken links. If you do not have the app, from now through Sunday we have made it FREE. That's right, that is not an error. The app will be free through Sunday night. All owners of the app (paid or free) will receive the 2.6 upgrade when Apple releases it.)

True story: A woman is just leaving the house on the way to do some really important shopping.... and there's a neighbor whom she always finds so annoying.

"Oh what great timing! My phone is out and I really need to make a call. Do you think I could borrow your cell phone for a few minutes?"

The woman really doesn't want to help. She has a tight schedule and a list of errands. Let her borrow someone else's phone, she's thinking.

This woman is being tested. I will offer my interpretation of her test and how it applies to you and me.

Last week, several astute readers caught an error in this email. I had written that the ghost of Samuel came up feet first. In fact, he the story tells specifically that he came up head first, unlike ordinary ghosts.

The reason is quite simple: he was being called by King Saul, and when being called by a king, you don't come feet-first. See Miss Manners, Chapter 1.

So this leads us to the obvious question: Does the same protocol apply to the president of the United States?

If President Obama were to hold a seance to contact the ghost of, let's say, Jimmy Carter, no wait, technically he's he's still alive. Let's say, the ghost of Dick Cheney....

No, he's technically still alive too.

OK, let's imagine Obama, he's rounding the corner to the final stretch of this horse race, he's got Romney so close behind he can feel his breath on the back of his neck. He's tried everything to get those poll numbers higher, nothing is working. He's into the low 50s, but it's too close for comfort.

So he holds a seance in the Rose Room to see if he can get a little pep talk from the ghost of Ronald Reagan.

Wait a second. Would Obama, a Democrat, turn to Mr. Conservative Revolution for eleventh-hour counsel?

Here's a little presidential secret for you: these presidential guys have a lot more in common than you think.

Anyway, the real question is - does Reagan come up feet first like an ordinary ghost, or does he come up head first in honor of the President?

(Believe it or not, this is actually going somewhere....)

On the one hand, King Saul was a monarch-for-life, while Mr. Obama is an elected, term-limited official.

On the other hand, he's the President. You know, hail-to-the-chief and all that.

Where this is going:

One of the most fundamental of all Jewish values is the concept that every person you meet is created in the same Divine image. (For John Lennon that means, "You better recognize your brother in everyone you meet.")

A person with no Torah but treats others well - especially opponents and adversaries - has a foundation to acquire wisdom, and the wisdom he acquires will stick.

A person who knows the entire Torah but has no respect for others, his Torah has nothing to rest on and he will lose it.

If we Jews were living up to the Torah, we would be so ethical that any non-Jew would do business with us on a handshake.

If we were getting the Torah's core message, we would be so concerned for others that there wouldn't be any hunger.

I think we're on the right track. But we're being tested all the time.

Question for your table: When were you last tested in this area, and how did you do?


Shabbat Shalom

Just Dessert

Question for your table: What's the #1 question rabbis get asked?

A: "Where was God in the Holocaust?"

Second question: What's the #1 question rabbis got asked this week?

A: "Is it right to celebrate or be happy about the death of Bin Laden?"

Many rabbis will answer the way I do: It is not inappropriate to be joyful when hearing of the death of a Hitler, a Stalin, a person whose life mission it is to murder thousands or millions of people, especially people like you and me.

Third question: Who gets the "credit"?

Perhaps the following true story will shed some light on the question.

Approximately four weeks prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, the suicide bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in central Jerusalem occured on August 9, 2001. The following is a true story:

"May I please get ahead of you in this line? I have to catch a plane back to America and in a great hurry to get to the airport."

The elderly gentleman generously granted this request and soon the tourist was outside, pizza in hand, rushing towards his cab. But then a huge explosion rocked the air and he realized that the Sbarro restaurant he had just left had been the victim of a terrorist suicide bombing. Rushing back to see what happened to the man who had given him his place and thus had saved his life, he found him alive but wounded. After expressing his deep appreciation for his role in saving his life, he informed him that he was a wealthy businessman back in New York and he would be glad to help him any time he was in need. He left his business card and was on his way to the airport.

The opportunity to keep his promise came less than 4 weeks later. The son of the elderly man phoned him that his father required major surgery in an Israeli hospital and could not afford to pay for it. Upon hearing this, the businessman responded that he was ready to come to Israel to see that everything would go well with the operation and he would cover all expenses.

He soon found himself sitting together with the son who called him in the lobby outside the area where the elderly man was undergoing the critical operation. As they looked up at the television screen they saw one plane after another crash into the World Trade Center. The businessman had offices in one of the buildings.

The person that was saved from the Sbarro pizza bombing in Israel was again saved by the same person from the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

Fourth Question: Just a "coincidence"?

Shabbat Shalom

PS - BestJewishKidsBooks.com now has Seinfeld-approved toys and games - and even more books for parents.

The goal of this email is to offer conversation-starters for your Friday night dinner table. Please print and share.

What is it?

In memory of my grandmother, Yehudis bas Alexander, whose 3rd yahrzeit is on Monday. She epitomized the truism that "you're never too old to learn."

What is it about Israel?

Here's a story, followed by an observation, followed by a question.

The story goes like this.

When I was in Paris way back when, this Jewish family I met told me that you could go study ancient Jewish wisdom in Israel, in English, basically for free.

They called it a yeshiva. I wasn't entirely sure what that was.

Well, I was intrigued, and I went to the Israel tourist office in the center of Paris to find out what my options were.

After sufficient security measures were taken to assure them that I was not a terrorist, I found myself sitting at the desk of a pleasant Israeli woman.

"How may I help you?" she asked.

"I would like to learn about the options for studying in a yeshiva in Israel."

She started to chuckle as if she thought I had made a joke. When she saw that I was not smiling, her eyes widened and she started laughing. Then she called to her colleague, "Chagai, bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-ba-bla-ba YESHIVA!"

Chagai rushed over, blurting, "Bla-bla-bla-bla-bla-ba-bla-ba YESHIVA!?? Bla ba bla ba bla!"

After the laughter subsided and she composed herself, she turned to me. "Sir, we do not send people to yeshiva. We send people to Eilat for vacation. If you want to go to yeshiva you have to talk to a rabbi."

Well, I didn't know any rabbis, not in Paris and certainly not in Israel. But I learned something at least. I learned that Israel means different things to different people.

A couple weeks ago, I challenged President Obama's assertion that our connection to the Land of Israel is based on the Holocaust.

You may have noticed that I didn't offer an alternative - I put the ball in your court.

Any thoughts?

I saw that other bloggers made the same point, but most referred to history - we Jews are supposedly the natural heirs of the Israelites who conqured the land 3,300 years ago and lived there for 800 years before being booted out, and who returned later to settle it once again for 400 years before being disenfranchised a second time by the Romans in 70-135 CE.

This argument is complicated because 600 years later some Moslem Arabs conquered the land, were disenfranchised by European Christians 500 years later, and then some otheSr Moslems reconquered it later, and there are Arab families today who can trace their ancestry back at least several generations.

From their perspective, they belong there more than I do, because my ancestors haven't lived there for nearly 2,000 years.

So the historical argument isn't so cut-and-dry. It feels good for a Jewish person, to feel connected to all that history, but frankly I have as nearly as much history in Eastern Europe as I do in Israel.

So what is it about Israel?

Here's one thought to share at your table. During the seven years that I studied there, and the several trips back that I've made since, I noticed something very strange.

When I'm studying in Israel, I learn more. Rabbis in Israel seem sharper than rabbis here with comparable training. These are subjective impressions, but I've noticed them again and again.

What is it about Israel? The Talmud says that its "air makes you smart".

There's only one way to test this. Next time you plan a trip to Israel, try to set aside at least 1 day to study in some kind of yeshiva (if you need suggestions, ask me - don't ask at the Israeli tourist office!)

Spend a day in some kind of yeshiva and see if it makes you smart.

Shabbat Shalom

Dirty Golden Bears

The news this week is making me think about bears and gold.

In LSJUMB, we used to sing a parody of the Cal (Berkeley) fight song, called “The Dirty Golden Bear”....

The Dirty Golden Bear
Is losing all his hair....

Bear with me as I quote some news items, then your question of the week below.


Item 1: Obama collected a total of $130,000 from AIG in 2008. Chris Dodd (Banking Committee) also got a big check. - ABC News

Other Obama contributors:

Goldman Sachs: $955,473
Citigroup: $653,468
JP Morgan Chase & Co.: $646,058
Morgan Stanley: $485,823
Bank of America: $274,493
Wachovia: $214,151
source: opensecrets.org


Item 2: A BLOGGER WROTE:

I just learned that an elderly couple I've known a long time lost almost everything to Madoff. They both worked hard for many years, right up to retirement in their mid-sixties. They weren't rich, certainly not by the standards of Wall Street or Manhattan society. They said they had checked out Madoff with the SEC, which gave him a clean bill of health.

http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?last=Madoff&first=Bernard


Item 3:
AIG Gave NY Dems $100K Before Historic Loan
March 19, 2009

New York campaign finance records show American International Group donated $100,000 to the state Democratic Committee just before Democratic Gov. David Paterson and his insurance superintendent launched marathon sessions to prop up the embattled insurer.

The contribution was made Aug. 29. Insurance Superintendent Eric Dinallo started negotiating with AIG and federal officials within about two weeks.

On Sept. 16, Paterson announced the “great news” that New York officials helped the giant insurer strike a historic loan deal with the Federal Reserve to keep AIG afloat.

Spokesmen for the state Democratic party, Paterson, Dinallo and AIG had no immediate comment Thursday.

The state’s effort is credited with giving AIG time to survive.

Now Washington lawmakers are blasting AIG for paying more than $160 million in bonuses to employees of a division primarily responsible for the meltdown that led to an $85 billion federal bailout of the company.

It was a big check even for AIG, which showered New York Democrats — and Republicans when they were in the Senate majority — with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. But since January 2006, the largest single check had been for just $2,500, and most were about $350 or $500.

AIG and Paterson singled Dinallo out for keeping the effort under way, in part by putting together a $20 billion state plan that was supplanted by the federal bailout. The $85 billion federal loan saved thousands of jobs nationwide, protected insurance policy holders, and salved _ if temporarily _ the nation’s hemorrhaging financial markets while protecting New York City’s financial sector.

In Washington, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., acknowledged Wednesday that his staff agreed to dilute the executive pay provision that would have applied retroactively to recipients of federal aid. However, Dodd said he was not aware of any American International Group Inc. bonuses at the time the change was made.

Over the years, Dodd has been the top recipient of campaign contributions from AIG employees. During 2007-2008, when he ran for president, he received nearly $104,000 from AIG employees and their families, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that monitors money in politics.

(Source: Associated Press)


Item 4 -
Remember how Secretary Paulson (former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Fed said that we “must” give billions to AIG otherwise we’ll all be sorry.

Now we learned a few days ago that AIG immediately paid these billions to its creditors. Study this list, then read on....

Goldman Sachs ($12.9 billion)
Merrill Lynch ($6.8 billion)
Bank of America ($5.2 billion)
Citigroup ($2.3 billion)
Wachovia ($1.5 billion).
Société Générale ($12 billion)
Deutsche Bank ($12 billion)
Barclays ($8.5 billion)
UBS ($5 billion).

As one blogger put it: “All these firms did business with AIG voluntarily. All these firms knew (or should have known) the risks of doing business with an unregulated firm in an unregulated part of the market. All these firms were willing to take the risk that AIG wouldn't be able to make good on its commitments.”

Congress gave the money. Congress failed to do due diligence. Congress is to blame here, not AIG or business.

Bob Rubin – Current Board member and one-time Chairman of the Board of Citigroup. Served as Secretary of the Treasury during both the first and second Clinton administrations. Before his government service, he spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs. His most prominent post-government role was as Director and Senior Counselor of Citigroup, where he performed ongoing advisory and representational roles for the firm[1]. From November to December 2007, he served temporarily as Chairman of Citigroup.[2][3] On January 9, 2009 Citigroup announced his resignation, after having been criticized for his performance. He received more than $126 million in cash and stock during his eight years at Citigroup. “In 1997, together with then-Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives” (Wikipedia). Rubin is co-chair of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Carla Hills, the other co-chair of CFR, sits on the Board of AIG. (David Rockefeller is most famous former chair of the CFR.)

Judith Rodin – Director of Citicorp and President of Rockefeller Foundation.

Richard Parsons – Chairman of Citicorp – prominent Rockefeller connection: “From the early 1980s through much of the 1990s, Parsons owned a house at Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, (see Kykuit), where his grandfather was once a groundskeeper. For a brief time he had worked for Nelson at the family office, Room 5600, at Rockefeller Center (he currently has a Time Warner office in Rockefeller Plaza at the Center).” (Wikipedia)

Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner, a confessed tax-cheat, is a Rubin protégé and also a member of the CFR.

Let’s look at AIG’s board:

Edward M. Liddy – partner at Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, former board member, Goldman Sachs
Suzanne Nora Johnson - Former Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs
James Orr - Chairman of the Board, Rockefeller Foundation

And finally, the Federal Reserve Board:

Elizabeth Duke – currently member of the Federal Reserve Board, is a former Executive Vice President at Wachovia Bank. Former Chair of American Bankers Association.

Oh, wait, Blackstone – founded by former CFR Chair Peter Peterson. Blackstone recently sold a large part of their company to the Bank of China, part of their $350 billion ownership of US securities (a third of which are mortgage-backed securities). Blackstone Chairman Steve Schwarzman was George W. Bush’s dorm mate at Yale and has raised millions for the Republican Party.

(source: public records)


OK, here’s your question finally: Since there is evidently nowhere to run and hide from these guys, should one bother being bothered?


This Seinfeld episode is a metaphor for our times...

The Next Generation

In memory of Eidla bas Avraham Yonah, who lived to the age of 95, as sharp as she was growing up in Memphis. She was a role model for the idea that you're never too old to learn something new.

If you missed last week's post on the war in Gaza, see the "Here, Israel" link to the right - including how to "adopt" a soldier.


This week: a comment, a story, a story, and a question.

The comment:

I was in San Francisco this week and someone wanted to know: What is the Jewish view of the new leadership in Washington?

The question reminds me of a story, my first day teaching public school in rural Mississippi.

Fresh out of college on the West Coast, I'd never been to the South before. Some of my mostly-black students were suspicious of me for my whiteness as were some of my white neighbors (for my choosing to teach black students. (Most were just surprised that an outsider had taken interest in their little corner of the world.)

The students let me know that what they wanted most from me was to treat them "normal". What the white people wanted most from me was not to make waves. I never had any problems with anyone who met me, only those who saw me from afar, or heard about me.

For example, I once heard through the grapevine that some folks were talking about me because they saw me talking in a friendly way to a certain black person in the grocery store.

Similarly, once I had to call the father of one of my more challenging students in to school to discuss his son's behavior. His son, Toby, was rude to me and often refused to follow directions. The father was six-foot-two and spoke with a deep, slow voice. He came in wearing the dusty clothes of a lumberjack. had to take time off from his low-paying job, and this displeased him.

He spoke to me so deliberately it sounded like he was putting a comma between every word, "I, hear, you, are, too, hard, on, the, children."

It is no accident that Jewish people have been at the forefront of civil rights movements around the world. We should look at Obama's presidency as a great victory for Jewish values. Our vision of leadership is a meritocracy, period.

Or that's the way it's supposed to be at least.

Here's a mini Talmudic story you can tell at your dinner table:

On Yom Kippur, the High Priest used to make a giant break-the-fast feast. Everyone knew and believed that what he did in the Temple that day was on their behalf. So when he came out successfully, the crowd would cheer and escort him. Remember, the High Priesthood can only be held by a direct male descendant of Aaron, Moses's brother. No one else need bother apply.

One Yom Kippur, while being escorted by such a crowd, there was a sudden commotion through the crowd, and all of the people suddenly abandoned him to follow two scholars who had been seen passing down a side street. These were not just any two scholars - they were Shemayah and Abtalion, the greatest of the generation. And they were both descended from converts.

Question for your table - how do you interpret this story? What does it say about merit versus peerage?

(Question for children: How do you decide whom to be friends with? How do the other kids in your class decide?)

I was in record warm weather in San Francisco this week, to return to weather so cold it feels like we're headed for a record low. But things are supposed to warm up next week in Washington...


Shabbat Shalom

PS - sometimes we combine scholarship and royalty - have you heard of the royal rabbi from Swaziland? See also rabbigamedze.com.

Here he is telling his story:

B + W

If you don’t live in NY, you may have missed this poster campaign on the eve of the election.


Shocking?

Real change, deep change, requires departing from prejudices, stereotypes and biases of the past. Usually these are rooted in people’s childhood, so they are very hard to change.

Obama’s first move as Pres-Elect was interesting... He offered the real seat of power (Chief of Staff) to a Hebrew-speaking, shul-going Chicago Jew. Don’t believe it? Look up Rahm Emanuel on Wikipedia.

Someone in China must have cursed us a few years ago....the are sure interesting times.

Question for your table: If you knew that your family and friends would support you unconditionally and lovingly, what radical change(s) would you make in your life?

Shabbat Shalom

Spare some change?

Here’s a thought, a question, and a challenge.

The Thought

Don’t know about you, but I can hardly keep my head on straight, with all of the news.

Trying not to pay attention to it doesn’t help, because everyone else is talking about it.

The news should wake us up to a couple things:

1. A lot of people are hurting.
2. We are all connected

One of the best things I learned this year came from someone else, a local rabbi here in Baltimore. He told me that he always carries a small wad of $1 bills. You never know, he said, when you’re going to be standing in line somewhere, and someone is a little short, you can help them out.

That sounded like a great idea, so I started doing it. I’m not taking sides on the issue of whether or not to give to every pan-handler who approaches you. But maybe to end the year right, practicing a little extra generosity will help us get the message of the 2 wake-up calls I mentioned above.

The Question for your table – What’s the best thing you learned this year? Share your answers in the comments section below.

In the meantime, someone alerted me to 2 terrific Rosh Hashana – themed articles and one video that I’d like to share with you.

Article one is a perspective on the market turmoil by Rabbi Blech: http://tinyurl.com/wallstreetblues

Article two is a practical guide to preparing for RH by Rabbi Friedman: http://tinyurl.com/Rhsteps

And the video is a great and funny example of what can be done if you have the budget to hire a good animator:


If you’re wondering about the third installment of my series, I need some feedback from you – did you watch the first 2, and did you forward them to anyone else?

The Challenge: This is the last Shabbat of the year. It is going to be very tempting to watch the debate tonight. Could you put it on Tivo and watch it Saturday night? Highlights? What do you think?

Wishing you a final Shabbat Shalom for 5768. Make it a good one.

RAS


Rosh Hashana for the Rest of Us Videos

Part 1
Part 2

Speaking schedule:
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur – Baltimore program - “High Holidays for the Rest of Us” - the Concise High Holidays Service!

If you're looking for something similar in another part of the country, let me know, they do exist if you know where to look!

For details, send an email.