English Blog

So Much Pain In Uvalde!

Thursday, May 26, 2022 - 5:26 PM

Shock.

Horror.

Pain.

Grief.

Outrage.

The horrific murder of 19 beautiful children and 2 innocent adults rocked our nation—and the entire world—this week. Our hearts are heavy, our eyes filled with tears. We cry for the Uvalde community, and pray for the comfort and healing of all the families.

This massacre, perhaps more than any other, has hit home. We’ve all been students. We all know teachers. Many of us are parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. We know the purity of children and absolute ferocity of parental love.

This was no accident. This was brutal, targeted evil. This deranged gunman first shot his own grandmother and even had the audacity to post about it on social media – the sheer chutzpah!

In a school. A school! The place many of our children spend the majority of their waking hours. A safe place. A refuge.

As a father, my heart clenches painfully when I think about the families and children of Robb Elementary School. Words are inadequate. How can we even begin to fathom their pain and their longing?

And the fear spreads to every student and every teacher in this country. What happened in Uvalde can happen anywhere. The anxiety is palpable.

There have been more than 200 mass shootings in the US in 2022, which means that there have been more mass shootings than days this year.

So what can we do? What is our response?

We can never wipe away the tears of the families in Uvalde; but we can try to combat the dark forces of evil that led us here. The only answer in the face of such monstrosity is love and good deeds. The only way to combat darkness is to bring extra light into the world. Each mitzvah we perform, each resolution we make, will help begin to wipe our tears.

Let’s bring G-d into our lives, lets educate our children about G-d, about loving Him and about praying to Him

Let’s keep the families and victims in our hearts and minds, let’s pray for them and dedicate our mitzvot to their healing.

Let’s pray for an era where there will be no more violence, murder, or bloodshed!

May we merit to see the coming of Moshiach right now!

Facebook’s Hilarious Translations!

Thursday, May 12, 2022 - 4:48 PM

Lately, when I open my Facebook account everything is in English. I’m sure there’s a setting I need to adjust to change it back to the original Hebrew, but for now I can’t seem to figure it out. So I’ve been reading my Israeli friends’ posts in Facebook’s automatic English translation, and it’s become an ongoing source of entertainment.

One read, “Mazal tov to me!” Hmm…I wondered. Did you get a new job? Did you have a baby? Why post mazal tov to yourself without telling us what the mazal tov is?

But when I clicked on the button to see the original text, I realized he wrote, “Mazal tov, Eli!” In Hebrew “eli” can be read as the name Eli, or as “elai” meaning, “to me.” Clearly, the Facebook algorithm doesn’t know the difference!

In another post, a fellow rabbi wrote, “Mazal tov to the young couple that I corrupted last night.” Oh my gosh, what did this rabbi do?! Perhaps I shouldn’t find out…

Turns out the original read, “Mazal tov to the young couple that I married off last night.” I still don’t know how Facebook interpreted that as corrupted, unless they know something about marriage that I don’t!

Next came a post from a woman going on and on about her husband, Chaim, but when I clicked on the original text I discovered she was talking about animals. In Hebrew, “baalei chayim” means animals, but Facebook read it as “my husband, Chaim,” which is not technically incorrect.

Then I saw a post advertising a Sunday carnival with, “Let’s make a mess!” Huh?

I laughed when I saw the Hebrew, “Yalla balagan!” They clearly haven’t gotten the hang of Israeli slang.

For someone like me, who reads and understands both Hebrew and English perfectly, these translations are annoying. They’re never accurate, and seeing the original would serve me better.

I understand why it’s needed—after all, if the post was in a different language I didn’t understand at all, I would appreciate the translation, even if not entirely accurate.

So yes, technology is incredible, and the instant translation is something we couldn’t have dreamed of not that long ago, but at the end of the day, an algorithm can never replace a human.

And that’s important for us to keep in mind as well. We wake up in the morning and follow our routine. We exercise, pray, go to work, come home, go to sleep … hopefully we managed to put on tefillin somewhere in there, do some mitzvot, say some blessings.

But when we do the same thing day after day, we run the risk of switching to autopilot. We stop thinking about why we’re doing what we’re doing. We forget that it’s all about connecting and developing our relationship with G-d; not just checking items off our to-do list.

Judaism has to stay fresh and exciting. Every day we must challenge ourselves to dig deeper, aspire higher, and become better people.

We cannot allow ourselves to be on auto-translate (or auto-pilot)!

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Uriel Vigler

Random Phone Call Results In Legacy Gift

Thursday, May 5, 2022 - 4:36 PM

About 12 years ago, the phone rang in our Chabad office.

Calls and messages of all sorts come in on a typical day: people asking about minyan times, kosher food, programs, services, hospital visits, etc. The requests are frequent and we try to help as much and as often as possible.

The call that came in 12 years ago was slightly different. An elderly woman introduced herself as Isabelle and explained that she had a problem: Chanukah was coming up and she realized that her menorah was stuck on top of her cupboard in a place she couldn’t reach. Could we please help her retrieve it? She’d Googled Chabad and we had come up…

Well, it wasn’t the typical request, but we’re here to help with whatever people need!

Every Chanukah we have dozens of Chabad students combing the streets, giving out menorahs and donuts, so we dispatched a couple to her apartment. Not only did they help her retrieve her menorah, they gave her candles, donuts, and spent time sharing words of Torah, stories, laughter, and light.

And that’s how Isabelle got onto our mailing list. I didn’t see or hear from here until a couple of years later.

Two wonderful women in our community had met Isabelle and developed a beautiful friendship, spending time together on a weekly basis. Seeing the cholent and other food we often have left over after our abundant weekly kiddush, they asked if they could take some for Isabelle. Of course I said yes, so week after week Isabelle participated in our kiddush, if from afar.

Then one day she arrived at shul with her two beloved friends, and we finally met in person and had a delightful conversation. She was intelligent and interesting, knowing what to say and—most importantly!—how to say it.

A few years later, on a random motzei Shabbat, I received a call on the Chabad office line from an attorney. He said that unfortunately Isabelle had passed away, and she had left a note saying that she wanted me to perform her funeral. Of course I agreed, and we had a moving funeral with her small group of friends.

Isabelle was a beautiful woman, both inside and out, and held herself with grace and poise. She was a fiercely loyal friend and often spoke about the deep love she had shared with her husband, and how proud she was of her son’s accomplishments in the art world. Sadly, both had passed away years earlier.

At her funeral I found out that Isabelle actually had a tremendous estate and that she had bequeathed her entire estate to about 30 charities. I was stunned! What a beautiful testament to her kindness and generosity! Helping so many Jewish charities in such a meaningful way.

Our Chabad center received a generous check of $80,000, which we used for our preschool. So if you come to visit our brand new, state-of-the-art preschool, you will see a beautiful plaque in loving memory of this wonderful woman.

May the merit of all the learning of the preschool children be a tremendous zchus for the Neshama of Isabelle!

Rabbi Uriel Vigler