Yeshivat Nesher Hagadol

  | MAGAZINE FEATURE | FOR THIS CHILD WE PRAYED    By All credit goes to  Aharon Kliger , Yisrael Hershkowitz  & The  Mishpacha   | APRIL 25, 2023 Email Print Rebbe Abish Meir of Spinka meets the medic who saved his life Photos: Elchanan Kotler He was just ten years old when it happened, the horrifying car crash that took the lives of four rabbanim, including Rebbe Abish Meir’s own father, on the way back from the Baba Sali’s funeral 39 years ago. Three months after he was nearly left for dead, and having defied every medical prognosis, little Abish Meir stood up on his battered, shaky legs for the first time.   IT was a rainy Sunday, 4 Shevat, 1984, and Shimon Yifrach’s shift as an ambulance driver for the Maged David Adom station in Ashdod’s Rova Daled had been pretty routine. It had been a stressful day for all emergency personnel: The holy 94-year-old Baba Sali — Rav Yisrael Abuchatzeira — had passed away the night before, and thousan...

  May a  Kohein  pronounce the words differently than the  tzibur ? A  Kohein  who cannot pronounce the words of  Birchas Kohanim  properly should not  duchen . Examples of mispronunciations mentioned in the  poskim  include a lack of differentiation between  aleph  and  ayin ,  hei  and  ches,  and  shin  and  sin . If, however, a particular mispronunciation is common among the local populace, they will not become distracted by the  Kohein ’s dialect and he may  duchen . Similarly, since most people cannot distinguish between an  aleph  and an  ayin,  a  Kohein  is not disqualified for being unable to do so. A  Kohein  who has a different  havarah  from the people whom he is blessing may still  duchen . Since it is common for people to have different  havaros , this is not considered distracting. Some  p...

  | MAGAZINE FEATURE | TWISTS, TURNS, AND TRUTH  By  Yonoson Rosenblum   | MARCH 28, 2023 Email Print All credit goes to the Author and The Mishpacha Magazine The Sklare Family saga inverted the Jewish American dream Photos: Eli Greengart, family archives T he general trajectory of American Jewry is well-known: an immigrant first generation, which in many cases held on to the kashrus and Shabbos observance of their birthplaces; a second generation with warm memories of their parents’ religious rituals but a dominant focus on achieving financial and social success; and then a third generation with no strong memories of observant bubbes and zeides, and pitifully insufficient connection to the Jewish community or tradition to provide a buffer against the twin sirens of assimilation and intermarriage. Ironically, the story of the Sklare family takes the opposite trajectory. It begins with Marshall Sklare, a leading scholar and famed chronicler of the Conservative movemen...