Rabbi Aaron Raskin, noted congregational rabbi, author, and teacher, founded Congregation Bnai Avraham in Brooklyn Heights 32 years ago and has been the congregation’s spiritual leader ever since.

His followers call him a spiritual superhero. His positive energy, scholarly acumen, and deep commitment to community, know no bounds. He is known for his hundreds of halachic videos and for his oratory skills. His congregants love that he donned a superman costume on Purim, did cartwheels on Simhat Torah, and stood on his adult son’s shoulders to blow shofar at Yom Kippur’s end.

Rabbi Raskin’s mission?  “I am a public servant, helping and teaching people, enriching their lives, bringing purpose to people and bringing people back to their purpose.”  He utilizes Jewish wisdom to guide individuals to live their best lives.

Born into a long line of prominent rabbis, Rabbi Raskin’s maternal grandfather, Rabbi Jacob J. Hecht, zt”l,  served as an official translator to the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

At four, Rabbi Raskin dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But when he visited his grandfather’s shul at six, he was so enthralled by the experience that his future aspirations took a turn.

Rabbi Raskin is the nephew of Rabbi Abraham Hecht, zt”l, former rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Zion and Rabbi Sholem Ber Hecht, the rabbi of the Sephardic Jewish Congregation and Center in Queens.

Rabbi Raskin’s paternal roots can be traced to the Shaltiel Gracian-Chein family, the heads of the Jewish community of Babylon and later Spain (1061).  The Shaltiel family nasi, Yehuda ben Barzilai, studied under the RIF, R’ Yehuda, a Rishon and author of significant halachic works (1070-1140). Rabbi Shaltiel Chein (1376) was the last rabbi of Barcelona until the 1391 pogrom.

Rabbi Raskin is also the emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and established Chabad of Brooklyn Heights.  He was ordained as a dayan, a rabbinical judge, and consults on Beit Din cases.

Rabbi Raskin is the author of seven books, the most recent, Simanim.

An expressive storyteller, writing has become another spiritual tool employed by Rabbi Raskin to educate and to connect with his followers.

His first book, Letters of Light (2003), was inspired by his childhood fascination with the Hebrew Alphabet. “As a carpenter employs tools to build a home, so Gd utilized the 22 letters of the Hebrew Alphabet to form heaven and earth – the letters continue to be a source of creation, reflection, prayer, and inspiration in our everyday lives.”

In By Divine Design, Rabbi Raskin’s second book, he expounds on the lessons found in the broken, enlarged, and even missing letters of the Torah.

What inspired Simanim the sequel to By Divine Design?

There are no chapter headings, punctuation marks or page numbers in handwritten Torah scrolls. So how do we know how to divide the text into sentences, chapters, and parshiot? Rabbis living between the seventh to tenth century arrived at a brilliant solution to this question and created simanin/mnemonics with a specific numeric value indicating the exact number of verses in each Torah portion. Most simanim are one word. For example, the parasha Chayei Sarah contains 105 verses with a mnemonic of יהוידע, Yehoyada.

105 = 70 + 4 + 10 + 6 + 5 + 10.

Rabbi Raskin expounds on Rav Feinstein’s renowned work and brings the commentary to the next dimension. Rabbi Raskin’s revolutionary book delves into the mysteries of the siman, a seemingly insignificant aspect of the Torah, providing inspirational insights and life lessons for every Jew.

Continuing with the siman Yehoyada, Rabbi Raskin finds Benayahu ben Yehoyada in Chayei Sarah’s haftorah and uncovers connections between this man and Sarah Imeinu.  One similarity is that both were considered alive after their deaths because of their righteousness.  Each parasha’s chapter also contains kabbalistic sources, a story, the gematria (numerology) of the mnemonic, and a positive action to take.

Visit rabbiraskin.org to view his lectures and to order Simanim and his other books including his powerful tribute to women, Thank You G-d For Making Me A Woman.

Rabbi Raskin can be reached at ravraskin@gmail.com.

No one could have predicted the pandemonium and fear that would accompany Covid, with lockdowns, quarantine, the closures of businesses and schools, and sudden scarcity.

Yet, during the darkest of times, the Mitzvah Man Organization was like a beacon of light, reaching out and doing hesed wherever needed. The Mitzvah Man attributes the organization’s success to tremendous siyatta D’Shmaya. In the first two months of Covid, the Mitzvah Man Organization helped 800 people per week!

Calls  came in from all over. Family members living in different states and countries called the Mitzvah Man regarding help for their elderly family members who were living alone, and had started to panic.

Organizations that delivered meals pre-Covid were in lockdown. Pharmacies could not deliver medications. Supermarkets were not taking phone calls.

Mitzvah Man Organization to the Rescue

The Mitzvah Man Organization is highly organized. Volunteers can sign up to visit patients in hospitals, the elderly in senior citizens homes, or individuals at home. Other volunteers cook or deliver meals. One group puts tefillin on elderly men. Drivers shuttle the injured or elderly. Others help with computer/administrative tasks.

The cooking group whips up meals in a pinch. Be it all or part of a meal, Mitzvah Man volunteers are ready to don their aprons and head to the kitchen. Messages are sent out describing the different needs and volunteers reply.

At the height of Covid, a Jewish councilman reached out to the Mitzvah Man for meal deliveries. The Mitzvah Man received calls from a food organization asking for volunteers to facilitate delivering food packages.

The group of driving volunteers is 130 members strong. Most deliveries of home-cooked meals, groceries, medicines, and medical supplies go to the elderly. Many of these recipients are Holocaust survivors living alone in apartment buildings.

Some logistics were required for pickups and deliveries. Many pickups to be delivered to the same building had different time requirements. For example, one neighbor would say, “Please don’t come until 3:00 p.m.” and another would say, “I can’t receive the meal until after 5:00 p.m.”

Many of the elderly were home by themselves, watching the news, and becoming depressed.

550 volunteers participate in the visiting group. During the lockdown, no one could make in-person visits. Instead, telephone visits became a lifeline. When a volunteer would first call, they could hear the nervousness, fear, and depression in the client’s voice. The volunteers worked hard to reassure the clients, especially by telling them to expect a friendly call every day.

One touching case involved the family of a blind woman who called the Mitzvah Man for help. The woman, in her 30s, lived alone. Her nurse was not there, and she could not function on her own. She needed meals and groceries. Arrangements were made. The client requested  books be read to her. 35 volunteers responded. In addition to the physical help for meals and groceries,  the client especially appreciated her readers. They helped her to escape her day-to-day worries and challenges through books. And the readers felt blessed to be helping.

Many clients needed supermarket deliveries. Coordinating this in the height of the Covid craziness was not simple. To facilitate these deliveries, the Mitzvah Man called the store owner on his cellphone. That hesed continued for months.

Nursing homes reached out to the Mitzvah Man when they ran out of masks, gowns, and hand sanitizer. In a blink, the Mitzvah man reached out to contacts in these businesses who were happy to help.

When clients’ ovens, refrigerators, and freezers broke down they feared how they would manage without these basic appliances. Lockdown made everything seem much more impossible. But, the Mitzvah Man specializes in making what seems impossible become not only possible, but taken care of. Among the Mitzvah Man volunteers there are plumbers, electricians, and handymen. When new appliances were needed, the Mitzvah Man’s contacts in the appliance business put a rush on shipping for urgently needed appliances. Arrival was two days later.

Family members were not allowed to accompany patients taken by ambulance to hospitals. How would their family members get basic items to the patient, such as clothing, seforim, and tefillin? The Mitzvah Man, of course! He arranged for family members to send a suitcase to their loved ones in the hospital, and for someone in the hospital to come out to the driver to fetch and deliver the suitcase.

Those were tough times for everyone, but in many situations, it was –

THE MITZVAH MAN ORGANIZATION TO THE RESCUE!

THE MITZVAH MAN ORGANIZATION TO THE RESCUE!