Please join us to mark the 40th yahrtzeit (the anniversary of a person’s passing) of Rabbi Philip Rabinowitz  זצ׳׳ל  on April 5-7 (Adar II 26-28) for a weekend of learning in his zechut and in his memory. Thank you to Judy and Robert Friedman, The Lebenberg Family, Edith Gelfand, Shulamith and Jonathan Klein, and Ricki Gerger, our Rabbi Philip Rabinowitz 40th Yahrtzeit Weekend sponsors.

More information and registration is available for the following events: 

• Community Lunch at Char Bar with Rabbi Yona Reiss (Shabbat, 1:30 PM) (Registration Now Closed) 
• Rabbi Reiss Shiur, "Contemporary Case Studies in Beit Din", with remarks from the Rabinowitz Family (Sunday, 10:00 AM, In-Person at Kesher Israel and on Zoom)  (Registration Required)
• Mensch Foundation Ceremony honoring Rabbi Rabinowitz, Kesherite Herman Wouk, and others (Sunday, 4:00 PM, In-Person at Kesher Israel)
• "Rabbi Philip Rabinowitz: His Life and Legacy at Kesher Israel" with Gabby Deutch, Jeff Jacoby, and Gerard Leval (Sunday, 8:00 PM, In-Person and on Zoom) (Registration Required)

Rabbi Philip Rabinowitz was Kesher Israel's second rabbi, leading the shul for 34 years, from 1950 until his most untimely death and tragic murder in 1984. He had "brought the traditions of the disappearing world of the shtetl" to Kesher and was beloved by all who stepped foot in our shul. 

Rabbi Rabinowitz tended to the needs of his congregants—through the lean years of the 1950s and 1960s, when a morning minyan was not close to guaranteed, to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the community just started experiencing a rebirth. A man of extraordinary loving-kindness, humility, and decency, Rabbi Rabinowitz spent his years at Kesher focused on three things: to study and teach Torah, to sustain the daily minyanim, and to watch over the welfare of his community. His home was always open to anyone in need, even strangers, and he helped assure that the community was immeasurably enriched in many ways.