On a typical weekday, Rabbi Jonathan Klein can often be found marching alongside ministers, monsignors and janitors. Irv Hershenbaum could be pressuring multimillion-dollar almond growers to provide their workers with shade to protect them from the blazing California sun. And “Rabbi Dr.” Aryeh Cohen might well be phoning his Talmud students to let them know…
Ridnik. Vorhand. Koshnitz. These names might sound like remote provinces in Ukraine, but they are also the names of Orthodox micro-congregations bustling here on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They’re referred to as shtieblach (Yiddish for “little houses”), and although many have died out with their congregants, some are making a comeback on the Upper West…
In a nondescript apartment building in Budapest’s Eighth District, Rabbi Sholom Hurwitz stands behind a wooden podium and claps out the beat to a raucous Sephardic melody. About 30 people, most of them men, pray together in the flat’s main sanctuary, a small living room that the congregants affectionately call their shtibl — from the…
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