The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute

Yehuda Avner served on the personal staff of five Israeli Prime Ministers. In 1977, after meeting with President Carter at Camp David, Menachem Begin sent him to report to the Rebbe.

Slow cooked stews dominated Saturday menus in Jewish homes for millennia, in every continent, period, and culture. An 1800’s poet even penned an ode to the dish. The custom originated with the Biblical prohibition of lighting a fire on the Jewish Sabbath.

Historically, even non practicing Jews continued to identify as Jewish despite horrific persecution and prejudice because it is their truest, immutable essence. A lesson from a British soldier in the Holocaust years – the now world-renowned academic, Bernard Lewis.

A lesson in the wonder behind the myriad details of Torah law, borrowed from scientific observation of the hair-raising precision on which the forces vital to existence balance.

This video was produced for Lesson 4 of The Jewish Course of Why, a course by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute.