Living Jewish in San Francisco: THE RABBI'S BLOGRabbi's Blog
Rabbi Joel Landau (rabbi@adathisraelsf.org) has been the Rabbi of Adath Israel since May 2013. He was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate in Jerusalem and has served previously as a congregational Rabbi in Charleston, South Carolina and Irvine, California. A full biography of Rabbi Landau is available here.
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I’m Baaaaack! B”H, I had an amazing time in Israel and feel like I made a difference in my grandson’s life. In addition to spending time with my children and grandchildren, I dedicated one day to visiting my three older brothers, none of whom are in great health. Two out of the three are old enough to be my father. Doing that wasn’t as easy as it sounds, because they live around an hour and a half distance from each other. Therefore, first I drove to Sha’arei Tikva, a town of around 6000+ residents located in central Israel (just beyond the Green Line) to pick up brother #2 (who is eleven months younger than brother #1) and have him join me to see brother #1, who lives on Kibbutz Lavi in northern Israel, near Tiberius. Then I drove brother #2 home and continued to brother #3, (he’s only thirteen years older than me) who lives south of Jerusalem in a town called Efrat. All in all, I drove well over 300 miles.
The trip wasn’t only about family time. I also met with several people from the Western Wall Heritage Foundation to discuss setting up a Bar Mitzvah for one of our Adath Israel families. However, since the option that would work best for our A.I. family was only $36K (yes, you read correctly, $36K) I needed to find an alternative, which B”H I did.
The last thing I did was go shopping for Pesach. Yup, I brought home a whole suitcase of Kosher L’Pesach food. Usually, I don’t like shopping. However, this experience was really cool. Upon entering the SUPER – Market, I picked up a scanner to scan each product as I put it in the cart. When I was done shopping, I went to a shopping cart scale (to check that the weight cooresponded to everything that was scanned) and headed to a self service pay point and away I went.
Now that’s what I call a productive five-day trip.
So, now that I’m back, my focus is on two things. Pesach and renovating the Shul’s bottom floor. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any help with your Pesach prep or if you need a seder. As of this week, the bottom floor’s flooring and lower sheetrock walls have been removed. But it is going to take several weeks until the renovation can begin. In the meantime, we should be able to continue using the area, though it will be a bit rustic.
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