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Author:Chabad Intown

Jan 05 2017

Happily Ever After

Lifestyle, Loving-Kindness, Relationships
by Chabad Intown

We stand under a Chuppah to indicate that the marriage takes place under the Heavenly Eye of G-d.   We place a ring on the finger to demonstrate the Infinite One's involvement in our union.   We circle the groom 7 times to establish a Divine Protective Wall around the couple.   Why all this G-d Involvement in what should be a simple ceremony to demonstrate the committment of two lovers to each other?   Marriage is the union between two finite people. By definition the finiteness of the two means that I stop here and...

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Marthe Cohn Behind Enemy Lines
Jan 03 2017

The True Story of a Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany

IJA Events
by Chabad Intown

Ninety-six-year-old Holocaust survivor Marthe Cohn became a member of the intelligence service of the French First Army and was able to retrieve inside information about Nazi troop movements by slipping behind enemy lines.   Before Marthe Cohn became a spy, she was a devoutly religious 19-year-old French Jewish girl. Her life took an extraordinary turn when the Nazis invaded France in 1939.   While the rest of her family fled south, Marthe decided to fight back. After graduating from nursing school she joined the French resistance and, on account of her perfect German accent...

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Dec 27 2016

Avoid the Guilt and Give the Gelt

Holidays
by Chabad Intown

Chanukah is just around the corner, and it is the most wonderful time of the year.   I intentionally borrowed that phrase because I do know how difficult it is to manage both our Jewish festivities and the ubiquitous twinkly lights, trees, tinsel and glitziness of the season. It is so inviting, and our kids want a piece of it.   There was recently a first in my family in which my 5-year-old twin daughters asked us if we could “pleeeease” put up decorations outside our house. They were very specific: “Outdoors like everybody...

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Dec 21 2016

Chanukah: Who Needs to Justify its Utter Delight?

Holidays
by Chabad Intown

Chanukah is utter delight. Why, then, examine the origin of the delight? Why tempt joy with analysis, especially when the analysis may cause some folks to bristle by philosophizing about the nature of miracles and faith. Regardless, let me take a chance of looking more analytically at Chanukah’ delight in light of spiritual integrity and the Torah’s truth eternal truth.   Some years ago there was an article presented locally that mocked the childish belief of educated adults in the possibility of miracles?   It asserted that faith ought not to be based on...

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Dec 07 2016

The Tire of Perspective

Challenges, Change, Lifestyle, Rebuilding
by Chabad Intown

Imagine yourself driving down the highway. Suddenly a tractor trailer starts veering into your lane. So you do the natural thing and begin to move over to the next lane, but lo and behold there is a car right there. What do you do? You stop imagining! Seriously, this happened to me last night. I instinctively reacted by slowing down thinking that the truck and car will pass me and I’ll be fine. Just when I thought I was safe, the truck that just passed me kicked up a tire...

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Nov 30 2016

Brute Force

Challenges, Change, Lifestyle, Relationships
by Chabad Intown

Spousal Manipulation.  Sounds like a bad idea if you want to have a happy marriage.  Yet we see in this weeks Parsha that Rivka seems to be doing just that in dressing Jacob up in Esau's clothing, preparing animals from the back yard and pretending that they were hunted and teaching her son Jacob to deceive his father.   It opens up an uncomfortable question of, do the ends justify the means? Often times in Judaism and in the Torah, the answer is yes.  But then it begs the question here, what...

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Nov 21 2016

A Jewish Thanksgiving

Holidays, Lifestyle, Prayer
by Chabad Intown

Thanksgiving is not a Jewish holiday but it is quite the Jewish holiday.  In fact gratitude and thanks is fundamental to Jewish thought.  Additionally, Jews have always had an obligation to give thanks and appreciation to our host country.  This is true in particular for this country, the USA which has been a country of kindness to our People.   Gratitude and thanks has many faces and many dimensions.  It starts with a recognition of those that have done kindness to you. This includes of course G-d and then all those that...

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Nov 14 2016

You Can Help Our Country!

Challenges, Lifestyle, Rebuilding
by Chabad Intown

It pains me to see the discord that has evolved in this country throughout the election process and in many ways more visceral this past week since the election.   Republicans blame the Democrats, the Democrats blame the Republicans and the bottom line is friendships are broken, vulgarity is spewed and society as a whole is breaking down. Everybody blames the other one for being immoral or not caring about the values and principles that this country was built on.   Why can't we be more like Israel?! People argue passionately and...

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Nov 09 2016

I Predicted It!

Challenges, Lifestyle, Rebuilding
by Chabad Intown

I predicted it!   No, I didn't predict who would be voted as our new president! I did predict that we would all wake up Wednesday morning and the world would go on. And I was right.   You want to know how I was able to predict this with such certainty?   The answer is in this weeks Torah portion. G-d blesses Abraham and tells him that his children will be as the stars in the sky. Practically speaking, we are far from the number of the stars in the sky as we constitute less...

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Nov 02 2016

The Grind

Lifestyle, Rebuilding
by Chabad Intown

And just like that, real life started…   The month of Tishrei comes to a close and with it the High Holidays and the joyous festival of Sukkos and Simchas Torah seem like a distant memory. We’re quickly thrown into the month of Cheshvan – a month without any holidays. So much so that the month has earned a prefix – Mar = Bitter, because of its holiday deficiency.   At the same time the Portion of the first week of Cheshvan is Noach which is quite the dreary story. It’s hard to come...

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