This May 29-30 will be Shavuot, the Holiday that celebrates the acceptance of the Torah. Our Shavuos section features many articles about this important, yet somewhat neglected holiday — please have a look!
Speaking of which, my apologies for “getting ahead of myself” last week, and saying that Shavuos was “Friday and Saturday of next week,” which could have been perceived as saying it was, well, now. The correct dates are above.
Which leads to the next question, given that no one sent a correction… are few actually reading this? Is there anything which you think we could do to make this weekly or bi-weekly message more readable, interesting, or worthwhile?
This past Sunday, there was a rally in Baltimore in honor of Shabbos, because the JCC is considering opening their Owings Mills branch on “Saturday” afternoons. At the rally, Rabbi Yissocher Frand spoke about a man who now observes Shabbos and comes into his yeshiva (Ner Israel) on a weekly basis to study — because he watched the videos that we posted of the rally 12 years ago.
And of course, we at Torah.org had no idea that digitizing those videos would lead to someone actually deciding to observe Shabbos!
For this reason, could I ask you a favor: if your reading and studying with Torah.org has had an impact, please tell us! If you study more, if you have undertaken new Jewish practices, if you are more involved with the Jewish community, we would love to know how we participated in enhancing your Jewish life.
We know our work is worthwhile, and occasionally transformational. But similar to the way no one bothered to correct my misstatement of last week, we won’t know until you let us know. Thank you in advance for your help!
Good Shabbos,
Rabbi Yaakov Menken
Director, Project Genesis – Torah.org
