Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California.

His books, available on Amazon, include:

Are internet minyans kosher?

The question has come up: May one may participate in a virtual minyan on the Internet?  Many of my colleagues tend to rule against such a possibility for a variety of reasons. Judaic law specifies the importance of ten people (we count women in the Conservative Movement) must be clustered in one central place. Even if they are in another room, but within hearing distance of the place where people are praying, they may not be counted as part of the minyan.[1] [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Crowding indoors with family not really that bad

Social distancing provides a practical approach to a community faced with a growing pandemic. Many of us are afraid to go outside and interact with others—without wearing a face mask and protective gloves. Many of my congregants have complained to me about having to stay indoors for such a long period of time. Yet, it has to some degree created some problems with close couples and their families sharing the same space for unusual periods of time. It’s easy to get on your significant other’s nerves because we feel spatially “confined.” Everyone seems to be stepping on each other’s toes. [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Lifestyles, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Pandemics, God, and social responsibility

As the coronavirus is spreading throughout the world, I am social-distancing myself from the rest of the outside world. In quiet but worrisome times like this I enjoy reading literature from history’s most thought-provoking answers—and that is how I decided to re-read Albert Camus’ 1947 short story, The Plague, about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal city of Oran; it is considered to be a classic of twentieth-century literature. [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Torah laws foresaw need for good hygiene

With the coronavirus threatening people’s health in the first major pandemic we have seen in over a hundred years, Jewish tradition has much to say about the importance of handwashing. As a “priestly people,” (Exodus 19:6), priests in the Torah were always instructed to wash their hands whenever they enter into the Tent of Meeting or upon entering the Temple.
Just how serious is this precept? [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Science, Medicine, & Education

Haman, Purim, and Holocaust

During the Holocaust years, Purim celebrations were forbidden to the Jews. Christians and Jews could not even own the book of Esther. Such decrees did not stop the Nazis from poking fun at the Jews on this Jewish holiday. With diabolical glee, the Nazis frequently orchestrated special killings with the Jewish festivals. On Purim in 1942, the Nazis hanged ten Jews in Zdunka Wola to avenge the hanging of Haman’s sons. Similar incidents occurred in the Piotrkow ghetto and in Czestochowa and Radom. [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

How about educating for real jobs?

Not one of Bloomberg’s adversaries bothered to criticize the mayor about a comment he was quoted saying dating back to November 17, 2016, which is the real subject of this article’s focus. “If you think about it, the agrarian society lasted 3,000 years, and we can teach processes. I can teach anybody – even people in this room, so no offense intended – to be a farmer. It’s a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, you add water, up comes corn. You can learn that. Then you had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in direction of arrow and you can have a job. And we created a lot of jobs. At one point, 98% of the world worked in agriculture. Today it’s 2% of the United States.” (Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Business & Finance, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Science, Medicine, & Education, USA

How Maimonides dissected the Exodus account

Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel’s books on Maimonides’ interpretations of the biblical book Exodus, Maimonides Hidden Torah Commentary: Exodus 1-20, reveals much that many people do not know and does so in a clear and easy to read fashion. While 448 pages long, and filled with information, it is only the first of his two books on Exodus. It is superb. His two books on Genesis have already been published. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazinl]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Chula Vista rabbi offers ‘Gentle Judaic Wisdom’

Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel of Congregation Beth Shalom in Chula Vista is one of the most erudite pulpit rabbis in San Diego County, having written numerous books on the Jewish religion and on such Torah commentators at Philo and Maimonides. [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Joe Gandelman, Lifestyles, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, San Diego County

From Torah to rabbinic Judaism

Rabbi Drazin’s newest book sets out to prove that the Judaism that everyone observes today is a relatively later historical development. Judaism continues to undergo endlessly new permutations. This observation applies no less to Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, Renewal, even some of the vestigial practices of so-called “secular Jews,” which to a certain degree follow variations of rabbinical Judaism. Yet, as the author noted, “The term Orthodox did not exist before the 19th century” (p. 175). [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Chula Vista opens Holocaust exhibit

An eerie moment during the opening of an exhibit on Holocaust survivors who settled in the South Bay occurred when organizer Sandy Scheller, giving a speech at the podium, took a phone call, which she pretended was from her late mother, Ruth Sax, whose first name serves as an acronym for the exhibit’s title: “Project Ruth: Remember Us The Holocaust.” [Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, San Diego County, Science, Medicine, & Education

Daf Yomi: A page of Talmud each day

One of the most remarkable traditions that has developed over the last 97 years is the Daf Yomi (a daily study of a page of the Babylonian Talmud), that was first introduced by R. Meir Shapiro. This Polish rabbi wanted to see more laypeople of the Orthodox Jewish communities engage in the Talmud study cycle that takes seven years to complete provided one studies a full page every day. [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

Iran confrontation like Cuban Missile Crisis

History has a way of repeating itself. In 1962, I was a young boy of nine years old when the Soviet Union decided to place nuclear missiles in Cuba. It was a scary time at school; I could remember the old “duck and cover” as we rehearsed hiding under our desks and covering our heads just in case of a nuclear attack. The “Duck-and-Cover-Drill” was a plan originally initiated by President Harry S. Truman in the 1950s. Nobody really believed the duck-and-cover exercise would help, but it did offer a modicum of psychological comfort, which was better than no comfort. [Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel]

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International, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Middle East, USA