LIVE FROM THE OU: RABBI WEINREB’S HIGHLY ACCLAIMED TISHA B’AV PROGRAM ONCE AGAIN TO BE WEBCAST WORLDWIDE
For the nineteenth time this year, going back to when he was a pulpit rabbi in Baltimore, MD, Orthodox Union Executive Vice President Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb will present his incisive and inspiring commentary on selected kinot (elegies) on Tisha B’Av morning, which falls this year on Tuesday, July 24. The program will be webcast worldwide, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, live from OU headquarters in New York via the OU website, www.ou.org, as well as on www.ouradio.org.
A key purpose of the broadcast is to enable Jews who are unable to come to synagogue that day due to work or family responsibilities — or who must leave services early — to observe Tisha B’Av with its full significance while attending to their other activities.
The webcast of the Tisha B’Av program annually provides a worldwide audience for Rabbi Weinreb, including Israel, Europe, Australia and South Africa, as well as from devoted students across the United States and Canada.
Rabbi Weinreb’s masterful blend of diverse sources — ancient to modern, halachic and aggadic, religious and secular — has consistently drawn praise from members of the web broadcast’s global audience, who send him congratulatory emails.
“I am always preparing,” declared Rabbi Weinreb. “Whenever I read or study anything during the year, I consider how I might use it on Tisha B’Av; at a Shabbaton; for an OU advocacy speech; for an op-ed; at a major holiday; for a Daf Yomi shiur; and for other presentations.”
This year’s theme will be The Tragedy of Failed Leadership. Through the prism of selected traditional kinot, plus several supplementary ones of Rabbi Weinreb’s choosing, he will explore the concept of leadership, especially in terms of the numerous examples of heroic but failed leadership in Jewish history.
He will pay special attention to the Holocaust; to the imprisoned Israeli soldiers; to victims of the Intifada and 9/11; as well as to the importance of Shemittah, (the seventh year in the sabbatical cycle), which is approaching this coming year. Rabbi Weinreb will draw from traditional sources such as Midrash Lamentations Rabbah, and from works of Nachmanides and Rabbi Moshe Alshech; from the writings of victims of historical catastrophes; as well as from secular sources, ranging from Virgil’s Aeneid to the recent best-selling book by Daniel Mendelssohn, The Lost.
To view the webcast, you may pre-register at www.ou.org, or join in at any time on Tisha B’Av. This year, the webcast will originate directly from OU headquarters at Eleven Broadway. Shacharit will be at 8:00 am, and the webcast will start at 9:00. For security purposes, anyone who wishes to be present must register by emailing 9avminyan@ou.org.