Rabbi makes office calls
NEW YORK — Jewish doctors, lawyers and business executives too busy for the formal study of their faith can now order in religious lessons, thanks to an organization whose rabbis make office calls.
Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox Jewish educational network based in Israel, has four rabbis on call in New York City as part of its Executive Learning Program, and similar outreach programs in cities around the world including Los Angeles and Washington.
One of the New York rabbis is Stuart Shiff, who was crisscrossing Manhattan on a recent wintry day to give free private lessons to clients including a partner in an accounting firm and a neuroscientist at a prominent hospital.
"If you don't have time, I tell them, I'll come to you before the stock market opens or after it closes!" said Shiff, a father of six from New Jersey.
On Aish's Web site are names of people who have taken an interest in reconnecting with their Judaism, including actor Kirk Douglas and various executives of Bear Stearns, J.P. Morgan and other major financial firms.
One of Shiff's students is Scott Levy, an assistant managing partner in the international accounting firm Grant Thornton, who was raised as an observant Jew but drifted in early adulthood and now has been getting reacquainted with Jewish Scripture.
"The Torah was meant to give you the information to help you become a better person," Levy said.
Shiff has been visiting the executive's midtown Manhattan skyscraper each week for about an hour for the past year.
With an accountant's precision, Levy questioned the rabbi about the story of Moses disappearing to the top of Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments from God, while his people despair that he'll ever return and start worshipping an idol.
"They didn't have like a PDA or anything to know where he was?" Levy asked with tongue-in-cheek.
"No, no text messaging then, 'I'm still OK!"' Shiff said with a laugh, then explained why idolatry is forbidden for Jews. "Judaism believes that you don't need something to hold on to, to know that it's there," he said.
The two men probed the biblical story in all its minutiae, linking it to daily life in the 21st century.
"People say, 'The devil is in the details,"' Shiff noted. "Judaism teaches,'No, God is in the details.' When you care about something, you're meticulously involved with it."
Levy fits the target audience of Aish HaTorah — meaning "fire of the Torah" in Hebrew — as summed up on its Web site: "People with limited free time and limited background in their Judaism have finally found a way to fit Torah into their lives."
The rabbis on call at the New York center are all Orthodox, meaning they follow strict tenets of their faith like kosher dietary laws and not working or driving on the Sabbath, the holiest day of the week.
