Jewish Youth Face Sin the Teenage Way

For Jewish youth, a lakeside holiday ceremony and Yom Kippur’s call to confession inevitably raises questions about issues in their lives like gossip, procrastination, disrespect and the use of cell phones.

If Jewish youth like 13-year-old Rivkah Buchbinder of St. Louis Park say “awesome” this week, they may really mean it. The sweet wishes of the Rosh Hashanah new year celebrated last week gave way to a self-reflective 10 Days of Awe, ending with Yom Kippur starting sundown this Friday—a holy judgment deadline that has some teens thinking. To aid youth and adults in making a spiritual inventory of misdeeds from the previous year—in a season similar to the Christian Lent—observant families itemize sins with bread crumbs or stones thrown into lakes, and use a reminder list that corresponds to letters of the Hebrew alphabet. If Jewish teenagers were to create their own list, it would include A—addiction to procrastination, B—broken promises, …

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The Fifth District Report

Ellison Calls For Probe of Supreme Court Justice

Clarence Thomas' failure to report hundreds of thousands of dollars on financial disclosure forms merits closer scrutiny, according to Keith Ellison and 20 other lawmakers.

While touring the Middle East, meeting the King of Jordan and the Egyptian military junta, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) lent his name to a letter calling for an investigation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' financial dealings.  Authored by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the letter accuses Thomas of earning around $700,000 from the conservative Heritage Foundation from 2003 to 2007, and says he may have benefited from rides on a private jet and yacht owned by real estate magnate Harlan Crowe. At the same time, the letter says, Thomas disclosed no outside income or conflicts of interest on his yearly financial disclosure forms.  Ellison was one of 19 other lawmakers calling on the House Rules Committee—the committee that sets up rules …

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Kids Blast Trumpets Made in the Shofar Factory

Children will welcome Rosh Hashanah at sundown tonight with their own handcrafted rams' horns, signaling the Jewish spiritual New Year and the start of a three-week High Holy Day season.

“God’s shofar will travel,” said a smiling Rabbi Mordechai Grossbaum, who brought a box of rams’ horns and power tools to a Heilicher Jewish Day School classroom in St. Louis Park on Thursday.   Grossbaum’s mission is “to make Judaism come alive,” driving his Shofar Factory-on-wheels daily to kids at eight citywide Jewish schools and synagogues whose families are about to enter the High Holy Days, beginning with Rosh Hashanah at sundown tonight. “You can push a book in a kid’s face or you can involve him so he enjoys it,” said Grossbaum, as children with hacksaws cut a mouthpiece into the horns, used as home versions of the sacred trumpets that will blast 100 times in temples around the world to awaken spiritual sleepers for a three-week …

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