Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg realized at a young age he was drawn to Jewish studies. After graduating from Jewish day schools around Toronto, he decided to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary, a Conservative rabbinical school in New York City, for five years—only to end up a Renewal rabbi years later, ordained just this month.
As the spiritual leader of the Annex Shul in downtown Toronto—and one of a handful of Renewal rabbis in the city—his goal is to connect with younger audiences. That means leading unconventional services including music, dance parties and an emphasis on Earth-based Judaism.
Just ahead of Tu b’Shevat, Rabbi Rotenberg sat down with Ralph Benmergui on Not That Kind of Rabbi for a lengthy discussion about the Renewal movement, eco-spirituality and the age-old relationship between Jews and the land.
Transcript
Note: Transcripts are AI-generated and may contain minor errors.
Ralph Benmergui: Hi everybody, I’m Ralph Benmergui. Welcome to Not That Kind of Rabbi. Well, well, well. Tu BiShvat is tomorrow, or maybe it’s today. You know, I always have that thing about, does it start at night, does it start during the day, which day is it? Does this calendar know that it starts at night? But nonetheless, we shall discuss Tu BiShvat in this fine edition of Not That Kind of Rabbi. My guest today is someone who, while we end up interweaving at this point because we’ve both been to the same place but for different reasons, I was ordained as a mashpiach in the spiritual direction program, a three-year program at something called Aleph. And you can look it up. Aleph is based in the United States. We have an Aleph Canada as well. They provide for cantorial ordination, rabbinical ordination, pastoral ordination, which is a thing that has been created there for people who are more interested in pastoral care, chaplaincy, things like that. And then, of course, the rabbinic stream, which is not an easy hill to climb. It’s not like, “Geez, I think I’d like to be a rabbi.” There are, by the way, organizations out there. That one that I saw out of New York can make you a rabbi in a year. And I’m going to say, not a good idea. So better that we do this a different way, which is to actually put in the. What my guest today has done. I’m so happy because he’s a Canadian and lives in Toronto at this point in time. And I just love the idea that Aleph Canada and Jewish Renewal, which we’ll talk about in this section of the show, are really underrepresented in this country. And it’s wonderful to have somebody in the biggest city and the biggest Jewish city, frankly, in the country who can plant the seeds for renewal here. So without any further ado, I’d like to welcome Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg to the program. Rabbi, how are you?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I’m doing well.
Ralph Benmergui: How does it feel to be called Rabbi? Because you just received your ordination, your smicha, what, two weeks ago?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah, just a few weeks ago. It’s still very fresh.
Ralph Benmergui: Okay, so what was that like?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah, it felt like a very meaningful culmination, as you were pointing out, was a big hill to climb. So for me, it took four and a half years, but really, I’ve been in Jewish learning spaces, feels like my whole life.
Ralph Benmergui: So give me your origin story without any capes or flying involved, but give me the origin story of Aaron Rotenberg. As, as a Jewish being.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I grew up in Thornhill and I was in what felt like a Jewish bubble. I went to, for those listeners that know, Thornhill is already a very Jewish suburb. And I went through the Jewish day school system and unlike some of my other peers, I really loved the Jewish studies. My parents both wanted me and my brothers to have more Jewish education but didn’t grow up with it. Both of their parents came over from Europe after World War II and there was a little bit of a disjunct, and it felt like my generation, me and my brothers were trying to get something back on track.
Ralph Benmergui: Why? Because your parents didn’t engage in Jewish life in a deeper way?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: They did, but they didn’t receive a full education. I think that they both wish that they had more, and I think that we had the sense that our family does have a rich Jewish history, but something about the immigrant and refugee experience that my grandparents had here, the priority was fitting into Canadian society.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah, there’s a real tension there, right? I mean, between stranger in a strange land and wanting to be true to what you believe you come from. So I hear that, you know, you know, it’s not an easy path to. And you want your kids to succeed in this new milieu, so you have to when in Rome, as they say. Right.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: And I think that we’ll get to it. But I think this tension of succeeding and finding our way as individuals and as people in this so-called new land is at the heart of Jewish renewal. And I think was part of the project that Rabbi Zalman, who maybe we’ll talk about, who was the founder of the movement, was trying to figure out also having survived World War II and the Shoah and making it to America and trying to figure out how does Judaism take root here. So I ended up getting connected to NCSY and the Orthodox world and ended up for my first year of undergraduate studies at Yeshiva University in New York, which was a different Jewish experience than what I was brought up with.
Ralph Benmergui: That’s a pretty immersive experience. What made you decide to take that dive?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I think that I was looking for something serious, and I was. I had signed up for and was maybe going to spend a year studying at Yeshiva in Israel, but my parents were a little bit hesitant about that. I wasn’t sure if it’s what I wanted, but it Felt like, oh, Yeshiva, but in New York felt more like the right mix. I was becoming more observant at the time and keeping Shabbat and wanting to have a fulsome community. And I was finding that in Orthodox.
Ralph Benmergui: Spaces, so was the pull? It doesn’t have to be one or the other. But what elements were involved in terms of the seeking that you were doing? Was it more the cultural, the spiritual, the sense of tribe? What was it that you were looking for and trying to seek out?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I might not have termed it spiritual, but I think it was more along those lines. I was looking for meaning in my life and I had questions about what was important. And it felt like my world around me kind of offered answers that felt a little bit dull, like, oh, find a good job, find a partner. That is where meaning is. But I wanted more and deeper answers.
Ralph Benmergui: Where was God in the conversation in your head as you were growing up and going out?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Honestly, a little bit in the background. It felt like God stood in as an answer. Is there something meaningful? Yeah, there’s God out there. And here’s some, like, philosophical arguments that make things make sense. God revealed the Torah to our people, and now we have the Torah, and we can move on from there.
Ralph Benmergui: So what to you is the difference, if there is one, between spirituality and religion?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I probably use them interchangeably. I think that religion has this sense for people that there’s ritual expectations and feels like doing things by the book. And spirituality has this association with expanded heart and ways of knowing that can be more, whatever the opposite of less by the book is more free. But to me, they’re both needed. I think that actually religion and spirituality contain both of these poles of something grounding and connective and something free and exploratory.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting because I think of it in terms of the four in the kabbalistic idea of the four worlds. And I see people yearning for God as Yetzira as a heart centre, and the people who find great comfort in religion in the briar, it’s like, look, there’s rules and we do it and we discuss it and it’s intellectual and it’s all in the service of getting to the top of spirituality at the end of it. But they seem to have different parts of the brain that they engage in certain people. I don’t know if that was your experience for sure.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: And I hope that we can speak more about the four worlds framework, which I think has been very meaningful for me. I think that maybe, I mean, this other framework of Keva and Kavana. I think about religion and spirituality, or at least that’s how they’re understood: Keva being regular practice and Kavana being intention. Actually, they both need to work together.
Ralph Benmergui: Right, so you went to yeshiva, then you didn’t go to yeshiva?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I went to yeshiva, and it wasn’t the exact fit. So I didn’t stay there.
Ralph Benmergui: Check, please.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah, but no. I left with a positive sense, and I took a leave of absence to try out something else. I went to the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative institution just a few blocks south. I was enjoying my time in New York, and that felt like more of a fit for me. It opened me up to academic study of Judaism, which was different, and a more pluralistic environment of people who were, including myself, Orthodox at the time, and Reform and exploring. That milieu of people living together in the dorms, also in this case, of all genders and all different sorts of backgrounds, I found really engaging.
Ralph Benmergui: So you were cross-pollinating at that point? You were in a hive.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah, I definitely felt like there was a lot of interest.
Ralph Benmergui: And what were you getting from all these other bees that were bumbling around?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: A sense that there are lots of ways to be Jewish, that it wasn’t only following a certain kind of Orthodoxy. People hadn’t. And, you know, in some ways, I still find it rare, even around here, to find people with a strong Conservative approach, which is a different way of looking at halacha and Jewish life but very serious, and that being a totally valid and beautiful way to look at their lives. And people who had a strong cultural connection and who were spending hours and hours of their lives studying Jewish texts weren’t looking for something religious or spiritual in their studies and still found a beautiful and valid connection to Judaism. So, JTS, I was there for five years in total.
Ralph Benmergui: But you didn’t become a rabbi out of it.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: I saw the rabbis, and I was like, that’s not me, that’s not what I want.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah, tell me about that. Because, I mean, it’s the name of the show, but why wasn’t that you?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: So really, what was happening at JTS is I was also moving in a direction that felt less, I don’t know how you would put it these days, at least less observant. I felt like, oh, actually, if this Torah is not written by God, maybe I need to shift my wave relating to it. I know that’s a little bit vague because it sort of was changing and in flux, and I think maybe that’s part of it, is that I saw my Jewish life as being part of a journey. I looked at rabbis and thought, oh, they’re the people that know what they’re doing; they tell you how to do it. I think I found some comfort in that in my more Orthodox days, being like, oh, yeah, here are the people that know things and can tell you. And I wasn’t interested in that. I was like, I want to be in a seeking mode.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: And that felt more enriching.
Ralph Benmergui: Where do you start to bump into Rabbi Zalman and Jewish Renewal and Carlebach, and all of that? Where do you start to get into those areas?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: In seeking out options for rabbinic training while being committed to staying in Toronto, Aleph came on my radar because the programme allows for distance learning with a couple of meetings each year in person. It was more than just the practical pieces of the model that worked for me.
Ralph Benmergui: Going to Aleph is going out of the mainstream ways of becoming a rabbi. There’s a whole way of thinking in Renewal. What made you decide that that’s what you wanted to do and not, oh, I’m going to, you know, do Hebrew Union and do Reform or Reconstruction, or, you know, what made you decide that you were going to go that path? Because it is a different path, though.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Maybe in part, it’s because of how it was described to me by my mentor and friend, who’s the other Renewal rabbi in Toronto, Rabbi Shalom Schachter. When Rabbi Shalom described, I asked him about the Aleph program, and he described Renewal not in those terms, not that it’s by definition outside of the mainstream, but actually the role of Renewal is to bring renewed spiritual energy to any community. It could be to the Conservative community. I think Rabbi Shalom was working at Beth Tzedek at the time, a big Conservative shul here in Toronto. That appealed to me, that actually there’s a way of, you know, bringing renewed energy, and it doesn’t have to be its own separate thing; it actually can be part of.
Ralph Benmergui: What does that mean for somebody listening? Renewed spiritual energy? What does that mean?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Maybe the words are vague, but I think that people sense it when you go to, it could be any Jewish place that one might frequent, and it feels like, oh, we’re just doing the same thing again.
Ralph Benmergui: So, yeah, when you just said that, I thought of the classic example for me. In my head, it’s always, you go to a synagogue, go to shul, and if the kids aren’t doing it, you’re doing it, but you do Kahlo, you know, and, you know, everybody knows it, and like everybody does it. But then you get into the Renewal world, and you get Shefa Gold out of New Mexico, just slowing it all down into not even a complete sentence, just ‘ashrey yosh.’ Doing it at that speed, I found there was an ability to capture a certain spiritual energy because I moved out of the sense of being in a rote format where I know it. And the other part of it was I could stop you in the middle of almost any Hebrew prayer in a synagogue if you’re a congregant and say, do you know what you’re actually saying right now? And they’ll say, no. I always say, it doesn’t matter. You’re singing with a group of people, even though you’re singing, in essence, gibberish, because you don’t know what you’re saying, you’re still saying it together, and you’ve been saying it since you were a kid. There’s a whole spiritual energy to that. So that’s what I got out of deciding that, well, this is the way to go. What for you were the things that made you think, I’m going to spend years in a rabbinic programme at this place?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah. So I appreciate, I appreciate what you’re bringing, Ralph, because you’ve been through Aleph Land. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking, I’m not sure exactly who the listenership is, but I also want to keep it tight and accessible to folks here. There’s also the experiences that I’ve had in Aleph that, yeah, let’s not do it the same way. Let’s explore different and new things, which is also something that I found myself being open to when I wasn’t, to begin with. But I feel like even within the regular ‘ashrei yoshrei betecha,’ in that same approach, there are different ways that can be expansive in itself. One of the highlights for me in my time in rabbinical school was doing the Davenen Leadership Training Institute, or the DLTI program, with our shared friend and teacher, Rabbi Shawn Zevit, a program that he started with Rabbi Marcia Prager and Chazan Jack Kessler of blessed memory. The way that program works is people get up and lead a part of the service, and then we relate to it as a lab. So somebody goes up and says, okay, we’re now starting mincha: ‘ashrei yoshrei veitacha odi’elucha salaam.’ They finish the service, and then we open it up and say, hey, how did that go for people? Somebody might say, oh, that’s a tune that really is familiar to me from my childhood. I love that tune. And somebody else says, well, I’ve heard it so many times. Is there a way that you can breathe some life into it? Can you maybe try it again but remember what the words mean? And then you can workshop it and try different things, which is just—it feels almost basic. But in no shul or davening space that I’ve been to was there any workshopping of leading prayer. Just, oh, this is how we do it. Because this is how we do it.
Ralph Benmergui: So does that little orthodox part of your brain go, oh, we shouldn’t be messing with this? Or have you kind of asked that part of yourself to go sit in a corner, observe, and enjoy?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: So, yeah, but I think that actually messing with it doesn’t need to mean changing any of the words or even any of the tunes, right? For me, it feels like I might bring it back to that four worlds framework that we mentioned. Maybe just explained it in a few more words, which also is connected. It’s the framework of the Tu Bishvat Seder, so if we want to also tie it into there, we can. There’s the kabbalistic four worlds that are connected to the four elements, the four letters of the divine name, the four seasons. They map onto lots of different fours. But I think of them in a baseline way as the world of the body, how we exist in our physical being, the world of the heart, our emotions, the world of the head, our thoughts, our contemplative capacities, and our soul, or maybe more spiritual or mysterious aspects that are beyond all of those, and they work together. One of the metaphors is they’re a ladder, that when we’re connected in our bodies, we can open up our hearts, that can open up our ways of thinking, and that can open up our spirits and souls.
Ralph Benmergui: There’s so much to talk about. But let’s talk about Tu Bishvat because it’s that time of the year, and I have a great affinity for Earth-based Judaism and eco-spirituality.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Amazing. Me too.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah. And I’m going out to—actually to Lethbridge to give a talk at a university, the university in Lethbridge, about the climate crisis as a spiritual crisis. That there’s the sacredness of the relationship we have to the world and to each other and to the cosmology is broken, that we’re just not—we have no starscape to look up to. We have no sense of the totality and the smallness in the same moment of who we are. So when it comes to things like that, in your ideas of what your rabbinical world will be, where does that land, that kind of Earth-based Judaism?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: It also is an important part of my emerging understanding of Judaism, which I think I also entered my rabbinic studies being like, oh, that’s something that we just do. That’s a little side piece, right? There are some people that like to talk about the ecology, or maybe we only bring it up on Tu Bishvat and we think about nature and our Tu Bishvat Seder, and some people like to do that, but they’re like kind of, that’s just their thing that those people are interested in. And I think I really have come to understand that it’s part of an essential part of Judaism, the connection with the natural world. And this Earth-based tradition is what Judaism is. And when we put it aside, we’re actually losing part of the essential heart of what Judaism is about. And I am—I think I have been discovering that and feeling ways in which Judaism connects me to the world. The natural world is the same and feels like it is connected to how Judaism connects me to God, to my people. It has—yeah, it’s a really important doorway in, and when we shut it, there’s something that’s missing and, right. It’s an interesting piece because there are some aspects that, right, just need dusting off that we’re already doing. And there’s new approaches, like maybe thinking about eco-kashrut. Yeah, talk about—and there’s also reclamation. There are things that maybe we’ve put off to the side and we can bring back. Okay, so those are maybe all those things. Yeah, like there are ways of thinking in Judaism that are just connected to the fact that our ancestors were involved with the Earth. We feel it in the Torah a little bit, right, that our ancestors were farmers and the holidays are agricultural. And actually to understand how it’s working, there was a deep connection to how things grew, what supported the land.
Ralph Benmergui: To treat the land, how to have a year, every seventh year, where your fields lie fallow. But you can even use it, I think, as metaphors in personal development of a person. In Shabbat, you have the idea of being fallow for that day. You just stop, take your foot off the gas basically, and just become a person. But there’s also the worry that you’re ghettoizing spirituality into one day, and then the rest of the week you go back to, you know, moral relativism and ethical ping pong and all those other things, inappropriate things.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: But the wisdom that I feel in what you’re saying, Ralph, is right. Even that jumping off being like, oh, there’s the seven-year Shemitah cycle that was about letting fields lie fallow. And there’s this seven-day Shabbat cycle that we have as well. Even just noticing those patterns that our ancestors noticed patterns because that’s how the natural world works. And we live in such a built-up environment that things are sometimes harder to see. But just this way of those cycles of seven working on different scales is like an essential part of Judaism and things work on scales in this fractal way in nature too, that the pattern of a leaf is mirrored in the pattern of the branch, which is mirrored in the pattern of the tree itself. If we look to nature, we can see those sort of patterns and I think it’s embedded in our tradition. Right. The seven days, the seven months, the seven weeks of the Omer. It exists on all these scales.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah. And beautifully said. And the tree becomes for the renewal in the Marcia Prager Siddur and Arthur Waskow and people like that, they talk about the tree as the tree gives. I breathe life into the tree, and the tree breathes life into me, which is a scientific fact, you know. But that whole idea of connectedness and sacredness in the relationship is what I worry about the most because I feel we, we’ve become arrogant. We, we are God. I don’t care if it’s 42 degrees Celsius outside, I’ve got air conditioning. I don’t care if it’s 40 below, I’ve got heating. I can get in my car and not feel anything around me. I can walk a street in the city with streetlights and not see more than three stars and one of them is a jet, you know. So I worry and Tu Bishvat, you talk about, tell people what a Tu Bishvat Seder would look like for you.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: A Tu Bishvat Seder is a ritual that was created by the Kabbalists, the mystics, and sat where they would eat a lot of fruit connected to the, right, the rabbinic original source of Tu Bishvat is kind of just as a tax holiday for the trees. Just noting when would you start to count the time that a tree was born, so to speak, to be able to figure out how much you might need to tithe from the tree. It didn’t really have any like ritual components to it. But it was something about the trees. And the mystics loved the image of the tree for many reasons. And there were symbolic pieces brought into different kinds of fruits of the tree, identified four different aspects of shells and seeds, of inner and outer, which also connect to metaphorical understandings of our inner and outer worlds. And they would have a ceremony or a service, a ritual that involved four sections connected to the four worlds that we spoke about, involving four cups of wine, similar to the Seder on Passover, that touched on these four worlds and had a connection with these four different kinds of fruits that allowed for a contemplative connection.
Ralph Benmergui: Nice. Renewal, in essence, is in some ways a marriage of Hasidic Judaism, the non-rational, mystical kind of whirling dervish version of being a Jew, you know. And then, you have on the other side of it, almost like a counterbalance to the Hasidic, is the non-duality of Eastern thought. For me, it is that, you know, there isn’t some God out there and some… You know, I’m of the David Cooper “God is a verb” school of thought, which is that this is what godding is. It’s just to be, you know, in my case, playing hand drums and having people play guitars, but also bringing new energy and movement of the body and things like that, things that we don’t do. Because now it’s turned into, for me, and I have friends who are rabbis in the conventional sense, but even they talk to me about the sort of lack of enthusiasm that they’re seeing in their congregations, that people come and sit and listen and get up, sit down, get up, sit down. Sing, don’t sing, let them sing for me. Get up, sit down. So it’s exciting when you see people in motion and engaged and playing that music together. There’s something wonderful about it for me. So, are you going for that kind of animated experience for people?
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: In short? Yes, we’re going for an animated experience.
Ralph Benmergui: Thank you, Rabbi.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: We’re actually doing something a little bit different each week. We’re trying different things out each week; there’s a different flavor and way that’s happening. So, this past Shabbat, we did have a few people playing instruments, so it was more of that. The previous Shabbat, we didn’t have maybe, I think we had one guitar, but it was more based around discussion. So, there’s a different mode of getting into things. We do different things. This past Shabbat, the more embodied piece, we had a meditation of the 10 Sefirot, the 10 energy centers that are also known as the Etz Chaim, the Tree of Life. So, we did a visualization of the Tree of Life in our bodies, connecting ourselves to the trees, thinking about Tu Bishvat. But the week before or the last time we did Renewal Shabbat, we did an embodied prayer, where everybody shared a prayer and a gesture, and then we turned those gestures into a prayerful dance, which is animating it in a different way. Another time we just had like a dance, we put on music and just had a dance party in the middle of the service to try to get things that we’re trying, different things.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah, yeah. The goal of animating mostly young people.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Mostly young people, yeah.
Ralph Benmergui: I mean, I go to a Jewish men’s retreat every year where most of us are older, and we do the same things. You know, there’s guys who get up and start dancing, and, you know, we play tons of music. Reb Sean and Reb Mark Biller, you know, we do this stuff, and it just… I took one of my sons once, and I said, look, there are going to be people getting up and dancing and stuff like that. You don’t have to get up and dance. It’s not like there’s a good or right way to do this and a wrong way. And so, you know, we did the Kabbalah service which Reb Sean leads, and at the end, I said to my son, so, what’d you think? “That was nuts.” I said, good nuts or bad nuts? He said, no, good nuts. That’s the first time I felt alive in a synagogue service and not thinking, am I doing this right? I just had a great time. So that’s a good thing.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah. But to your point, there is also, like, it hasn’t taken roots in Toronto fully. Right.
Ralph Benmergui: I still…
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: That there is. Even in these services where people are coming open to trying different things, there still is like a bit of a shyness or a reluctance to get up and dance.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah. That’s a big thing to ask of people.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah.
Ralph Benmergui: You know, it’ll be the trick for you. It’ll be how to orchestrate or situate people in a way that they feel safe letting go to open up their hearts, you know, because they can stay in their head and not use their body. And yet, if you ask them if prayer means anything to a lot of people in churches, in mosques all over the world, they’ll say, I know I’m supposed to be connecting to something, but I’m not. I’m just going through the paces. So it’s a real challenge.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Yeah. And maybe also, or if we should succeed in getting that energy. I think also for teachers like Reb Shefa, who you mentioned, I think there is also an understanding of, like, well, what are we bringing this energy towards? Like, for what? Like, to be ecstatic just for the sake of being ecstatic is not what we’re trying to do. And I think there is a certain kind of danger that maybe people are right to be wary of. And I think that we need, you know, in trying to create this sort of approach to davening, to be clear that we’re trying to raise the energy to be able to refine it. Right. Bring us closer to something that is deep and meaningful and essential, not just letting it go for the sake of having fun. Right. There’s something that we’re trying to get to.
Ralph Benmergui: Yeah. Well, Rabbi, it’s been wonderful speaking with you. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I know you and I will be talking more in the future. So looking forward to it.
Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg: Glad for the chats today.
Ralph Benmergui: Rabbi Aaron Rotenberg is a, well, a Jewish Renewal rabbi, recently minted. And I’m excited for what you’re going to be able to do, and I hope people get in touch with you to see if they can connect as well. I’m Ralph Benmergui. This is “Not That Kind of Rabbi.” And if you want to get in touch with me, it’s ralphbenmergui.ca. So you want to get in touch with me? Please do. And please listen to all the CJN podcasts. We have a bevy of podcast opportunities for you to indulge in. In the meantime, you take care of each other. Have a good Tu Bishvat. Go hug a tree. I know it’s cold, but trees warm. Trust me. If you look at the bottom, you’ll see that there’s a little ring where there’s no snow. That’s the heat generated from the tree. So, Etz Chaim, folks, have a good one. Talk soon.
Show Notes
Credits
- Host: Ralph Benmergui
- Producer: Michael Fraiman
- Music: Yevhen Onoychenko
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