A Soulful Journey

 A western rancher asked his district superintendent to assign a pastor to his community. -"Well, how big a man do you want?" "Oh," replied the rancher, "We're not too particular but when he's on his knees, we'd like him to reach heaven." This is what we all must strive to do.

 "To what can scholar be compared? The Rabbis answer, "To a vial of fragrant perfume.  When its cover is removed, its fragrance is diffused.  When covered, its fragrance remains inside, not diffused."  - Avodah Zarah 35b The purpose of learning to to share what we know with others.  The world then benefits as its fragrance is spread.

In 1937 when I had been in Reading for five years, we invited a prominent guest of honor to speak at a congregational dinner. There were two rabbis in those coal mining towns of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre at that time, Max Artz and Louis Levitsky, who were known of course as the two minor prophets. Max as the minor of the minor prophets was selected to be the guest speaker.  I learned how to be a rabbi, an administrator, an executive and a manipulator that might in Reading, Pennsylvania. He turned to a lady beside him. “How long has Rabbi Routtenberg been here? Does he have a car?” She said, “No he does not have a car.” And so he said,  “Well what kind of congregation is this? This is a disgrace! This is not done.” The following morning I was presented with a 1937 Chevrolet. When I saw Max Artz a few weeks later, he asked me to give him a mazel tov. ”Why?” ”I got a new car.” ”How did you get a car?” ”Well, when I went back to Scranton and told him that you were gettin...

“God could effect miracles without assistance; the rabbi generally had to rely upon prayer or merits.” Jacob Neusner Our rabbis, sages and tzaddikim are our teachers but the miraculous is solely the province of God. Rely only on Him.

The Rabbis discussed two types of leaders: 1.     There are those who study but are of little account for they do not act. 2.     There are those who act but do not study (and as a result do not grow).

Jackie Mason was born into a family of rabbis. While a pulpit rabbi and delivering sermons he “started to tell a few jokes to make it more palatable. As the jokes got better I started to change cover and a minimum. Pretty soon I was the only rabbi was a gentile congregation.” If the story is true, it  proves  we want to hear God's word, not be entertained.

Joseph Herman Hertz's passionate love of rabbis was poignantly conveyed in a story told after his death in 1946.  It related back to his 1920 pastoral tour of Jewish countries in the British Commonwealth, a tour undertaken in the same year in which he officially launched the writing of the Pentateuch. On his return journey from Bulawayo, just as the train was about to leave the railway station...a man of Jewish appearance passed and repassed his window.  When Dr. Hertz approached him with the traditional Shalom Aleichem the man told him how he and three other Jewish families from Que Que had traveled some ten hours by train on the road from Bulawayo to Salisbury, hoping to see him.  But though he was so anxious to hear of there Jewish life of that miniature Kehilla Que Que, he did not manage to do so because the train was already beginning to move ahead and he had only time to ask: "Is there are Shass (a complete set of the talmud) in Que Que?"  "Two sets (zwei Shas...

Reb Yoshe Ber, the Brisker Rav, was asked why large cities have only one rabbi and smaller cities have two.   “It’s very simple,” Reb Yoshe Ber replied.   “When a wealthy man buys one fat cow, it supplies him with plenty of milk.   A poor man, on the other hand, buys two goats and has nothing from both of them.” It is an oddity of human nature how we fight for things most vigorously when they have the least import.

There is an odd thing about the way we live our lives.  We tend to see everything through the lens of how we spend our time.  The expressions we use, the images we emerge out of the tapestry of a woven existence. There is the tale of a prominent rabbi, a member of the CCAR (Reform Movement) who had had passed away.  A colleague was called to deliver a memorial lecture in his name.  In the delivery, he began, “We now remember those colleagues who have gone to the great conference in the sky…” - told by Rabbi Louis Jacobs

In 19 th century Russia the Cossacks used to routinely steal away Jewish children from their parents for conscription into the army.  At that time the rabbis used to tell the parents and their offspring, “Always refrain from sucking he bones of meat and make sure you use a spoon for soup.” They were deliberately given these instructions so that if the children were “khapped” when they grew up and returned to a community, they would be recognized as Jews. -Rabbi Louis Jacobs What was taught to one generation is in valuable to the next: We must teach our children skills of survival that always include a later spiritual return to their “home.”