March 10, 2023 | 17 Adar 5783
Candlelighting 6:03 p.m. | Havdalah 7:03 p.m. | Vol. 66, No. 10 | pittsburghjewishchronicle.org
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Local rabbis wrestle with Local rabbi proposed changes for new clergy becomes certified mohel
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Rabbi Zalmen Raskin (center) is Pittsburgh’s newest mohel. He was trained by Rabbi Avi Nidam (left) and Dr. Awizerat (right).
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Photo provided by Rabbi Zalmen Raskin
By David Rullo | Staff Writer
P Green’s comments generated conversation online as to the rabbinate’s role within non-Orthodox Jewish life. Likewise, Pittsburgh’s spiritual leaders responded to the article and its concerns about professional responsibilities and the future of the American Jewish landscape. “I’m not surprised by the piece, but I’m saddened by it,” said Rabbi Daniel Fellman, senior rabbi at Temple Sinai. “Rabbis act as symbolic exemplars, dugmah in Hebrew. “I think that for us as rabbis, we have a responsibility to model the Jewish family as best we can,” he continued. “And I think we do that best when we’re married to Jews and we’re raising Jewish children. While I’ll happily officiate an intermarriage, I think there’s a line there. And I think that rabbis being married to Jews is an important symbolic piece.”
ittsburgh’s newest mohel is on a mission to not only help families fulfill the mitzvah of brit milah, or circumcision, but to help educate them about the procedure along the way. “I’m a passionate educator,” Rabbi Zalmen Raskin said. “That’s really the focus and the ideology of anything I do. It’s about education and the communication of ideas, which really brings inspiration and conversation and relationship, which is really important.” Raskin moved from his native Melbourne, Australia, to Pittsburgh to teach at the behest of Rabbi Yossi Rosenblum, CEO of Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh. It wasn’t until January, though, that Raskin hung a shingle on his door advertising services as a certified mohel. Raskin began thinking about becoming a mohel after Rabbi Moshe Barrocas, whose children he taught, suggested it. “We had a good relationship, and he said, ‘I think you would be an excellent mohel; would you consider taking it on?’ At first, I was like, ‘I don’t know if that’s for me,’ but Rabbi Rosenfeld encouraged me — the rabbi of the community — and Rabbi Admon encouraged me as well.” Rabbi Elisar Admon is also a mohel but,
Please see Rabbis, page 10
Please see Mohel, page 10
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LOCAL LOCAL Minto volupta ssimim Israeli artist brings Jackie Kennedy to Beth Shalom
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Photo by coldsnowstorm / E+ / Getty Images Plus
By Adam Reinherz | Staff Writer
O
n Jan. 31, Hebrew College in Boston (non-denominational) determined it would “no longer consider marriage to a non-Jewish spouse an impediment to admission or ordination in its rabbinical program.” Weeks earlier, the (Conservative) Ziegler Rabbinical Program announced it was shifting from a curriculum typically lasting five or six years to one requiring three years of in-house study followed by a year of residency and online learning. Additionally, the year-long mandated study in Israel is being replaced by a 10-12-week summer visit. Rabbi Arthur Green, former rector of the Hebrew College Rabbinical School, in a column first appearing in The Times of Israel, then the Chronicle, lamented that the seminaries were “giving in to assimilation…. reducing of the standards of Jewish difference from the general American population.”
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