What an amazing week this has been, with so much to be thankful for! Last Shabbat we celebrated two bnei mitzvah in our community and heard one of the most musical and special tefillot we experienced in a long time, led by the members of Kol Ish. Our terrific Chanukah carnival took place on Sunday and our teens did an amazing job staffing and running it. On a personal note, our family celebrated a special simcha this week as Jessica’s brother Scott Abramowitz got engaged to Anna Weisberg. This is a wonderful simcha for so many reasons- Anna and Scott are terrific together and well suited for one another; our kids love Anna and we do as well. We knew Anna was a keeper when she spent Shavuot with us three years ago during the storm and ensuing several days of power outage, and we didn’t get sick of her at all!
Rabbi’s Recommendations
Today (Thursday) is the fifth of Tevet, a day celebrated by Chabad Chassidim as a “Chassidishe Yom Tov,” a special day marking a watershed event in the history of the chassidic group (other Chassidic communities have their own similar days). In the pantheon of these special days on the Chabad calendar, this one is one of the most recent. It celebrates a court decision in 1987 awarding custody of the library of the Lubavitcher Rebbe zt”l to the Chabad Chassidim, and not to the Rebbe’s nephew, Barry Gurary, who had taken items from the library and sold them to collectors. While it may seem strange to mark a day of celebration over a victory in secular court, Chabad chassidim considered it to be a test of the very foundations of what their movement was built upon. At stake for them were not simply who owns the library, but who was the custodian over Chabad’s heritage, who had legitimate claim to the leadership of Chabad and even the very definition of a Chassidic Rebbe. For more about this court case, read here and here .
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ariel Rackovsky
Congregation Shaare Tefilla 6131 Churchill Way Dallas, TX 75230
