Leib Tropper - Educator & Author

Actively involved in the New York Jewish community, Rabbi Leib Tropper founded the Kol Yaakov Torah Center, located in Monsey, New York. An avid traveler, Leib Tropper lists Berlin, Paris, and London as among his favorite destinations.

In many Berlin districts, are small golden plaques called “Stolpersteine” (translated as “stumbling blocks“) line the pavements. The plaques commemorate a Holocaust victim who once resided in Berlin. Many of the individuals named on the plaques were consigned to concentration camps, clinics, or extermination facilities by Nazi soldiers under the National Socialist Party’s regime.

Gunther Demnig, a sculptor from Cologne, created the commemorative plaques in 1994. According to Gestapo records examined by Demnig, both of his parents supported the Nazis, which led him to feel some amount of responsibility for the Holocaust. Initially, Demnig installed the Stolpersteine in the pavement in Cologne and Berlin without permission. He later obtained a permit to continue the project.

Today, more than 22,000 Stolpersteine line the cobblestones and pavements in cities and towns all over Germany. Additionally, the plaques have reached locations abroad, including the Netherlands, Hungary, Belgium, Norway, Ukraine, Austria, and the Czech Republic. The plaques also commemorate other racial and social minority groups that experienced hardship and persecution during the holocaust.

Was in South Jersey giving a lecture to 40 orthodox couples about ‘Jewish Radicalism beyond The Bounds of Halacha’ The lecture was held in the Local synagogue.

The point of the lecture was to Differentiate between a jewish Radicalism that is embraced by people who wish to live their lives in that style from those who Employ all kinds of Tactics to Make others comply and conform.

 Rabbi Leib Tropper continued to Quote the Rambam how a Jew should avoid extremes except when it is related to anger or conceit. Regarding those character malfunctions the extreme is healthy.

Rabbi Leib Tropper borrows the expression from author David Horowitz when he calls these type of zealots ’ religious trotskyists’

 Marx was pretty extreme in his Socialist views but Leon Trotsky was much more extreme. Leon Trotsky was born jewish to the Bronstein family. Went fora number of years to Yeshiva. While he was in Yeshiva he was

Called by His jewish Name “Leib’le Bronstein”. The Rambam expects the g-d fearing man to walk in the middle of the road.

Many leaders of the chassidic World follow contemporaries of the Rambam who take a different position than the Rambam and believe that For judaism to maintain it’s eternal quality one has to follow it to the extreme.

In fact there is a quip that is attributed to ‘Kotzker’ he said ‘Humans walk on the sidewalk, Horses and donkeys walk in middle of the street’.

(To be continued)

A rabbi who now resides New York, Leib Tropper spent five years teaching baalei teshuva in Jerusalem early in his career. Over the years, Tropper has returned to Israel several times to visit family and enjoy the country’s numerous historic sites.

Recently, archaeologists announced the excavation of a 3,000-year-old cistern near the Western Wall in the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden. The first large public water reservoir to be discovered in the city, the underground cistern will provide scholars with new insights into life during the First Temple period. Archaeologists originally assumed the city received all its water from the Gihon Spring, but with this important discovery, researchers can develop new theories surrounding ancient water usage and storage. Indeed, Dr. Tvika Tsuk, a leading archaeologist, hypothesizes that pilgrims visiting the Temple Mount likely used the cistern water for bathing and drinking. 

Managed by the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Nature and Parks Authority, the excavations have also uncovered numerous other earlier structures, but none that compare in size to this 250-cubic-meter cistern.

By Leib Tropper

Horizons was a learning program at Kol Yaakov Torah Center (a “Yeshiva”) in Monsey, New York, offering workshops and seminars to secular Jewish and non-practicing Jewish individuals on the Talmudic teachings and Torah-based lifestyle. Started in 1990 with a focus on religious education, character building, and community leadership, Horizons organized seminars and workshops across North America and worldwide at college and university campuses. These campuses included Stanford, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, and many other schools in rural America and across the European continent. The Kol Yaakov Torah Center is a four-year, private, nonprofit institution of higher learning accredited by the Association of Advanced Rabbinical and Talmudic Schools; the Horizons program was discontinued in 2010.

For nearly 20 years, Rabbi Leib Tropper acted as a keynote speaker and workshop presenter for Horizons, the outreach program that he helped establish and promote at Kol Yaakov. Presenting regularly in Berlin, Paris, London, Jerusalem, and many other locales, Leib Tropper contributed greatly to the organization and made a difference in the lives of Jewish people worldwide through his inspiration and strong belief in personal development and character training based on the tenets of orthodox Judaism.

The Talmudic scholar ,Rabbi Leib Tropper has recently written a Philosophical essay regarding a Most complex issue. Rabbi Leib Tropper wrote this introductory Article regarding Solipsism. Rabbi Leib Tropper Remarked about this topic when asked ‘Solipsm is Rarely gemane to the experience Of those who support or disagree With the solipsistic theory. All Experience the same though there are absolute qualitative Differences. Rabbi Leib Tropper wrote about this obscure topic to various Professors of philosophy nationally and internationally.

Over the course of many years Rabbi Leib Tropper has developed a Relationship with Various leading philosophers Across the globe. The Esteem that these intellectuals hold for Rabbi Tropper is unusual considering That Rabbi Leib Tropper Studied In Rabbinical college and not in A secular oriented environment.

This Essay on solipsism written By Rabbi Leib Tropper is the Introduction of an all encompassing study of the Topic of Solipsism.

Witgenstein,Russel ,Satre andLeibnitz are just some of the Names that are found in Rabbi Leib Tropper’s Paper regarding this topic.

By Rabbi Leib Tropper

A potent spiritual center for three faiths, Jerusalem possesses a rich, yet fraught, history. The 3,000-year-old city, which features locales sacred to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, symbolizes the power of religious belief. From the Church of the Sepulchre to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall, the city houses numerous cultural and religious sites.

One of the city’s most famous buildings, the Dome of the Rock, marks the site where the historic figure Abraham nearly sacrificed his son. In Islamic tradition, the Dome of the Rock was the last place that the Prophet Mohammed stood on Earth before joining Allah. The Damascus Gate, which dates back to the reign of Süleyman the Magnificent in the mid-1500s, offers a unique glimpse into Palestinian life. Finally, Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa holds particular significance for Christian tourists. Upon visiting Jerusalem, individuals of differing faiths will experience the beauty and power of this ancient city.

About the author: A Jewish scholar and published author, Rabbi Leib Tropper has traveled throughout Israel. He has also visited such European capitals as Paris, London, and Berlin.

Rabbi Leib Tropper started  a new program about a year ago called ‘Shoel and Mashiv’ translated means questions and responses.

The over 1,500 questions that Rabbi leib Tropper responded to ranged from laws of Kashruth, laws of charging interest on loans, laws of weddings, laws of prayer, laws of mourning.

From the responses, one can appreciate the vast knowledge and memory Rabbi Leib Tropper was blessed to possess. We begin to understand the immense respect accorded to Rabbi Leib Tropper by so many of the World’s leading Rabbi’s.

Sample of some questions:1) Is honoring one’s parents a requirement if parents are not observant?

2) If there is a medical emergency which requires the patient to be brought to the hospital, should one call a Non Jewish ambulance or drive himself on shabbat?

http://www.leibtropper.org

MAKING IT WORK; Speak No Evil? Quixote Had It Easy.

SOME say it all started in the Garden of Eden, when the snake hissed, ”Hey, Eve, you won’t believe what I heard about Adam.” But today, here in the Domain of Dish, the Hub of Hubbub, the Burg That Buzz Built, there is no denying it. Gotham is Gossip Central.

New York is, after all, the home not only of most of the country’s media companies, advertising agencies and publicity firms, but also of such famously chattering occupations as fashion, finance, publishing, art, music and the theater.

All of which makes even more quixotic the quest of a small band of people who meet once a week in an office building on West 57th Street off Broadway. Their goal: no gossip. Not to speak it. Not to listen to it. And certainly not to believe it.

Adding a piquant note is that this project was organized by Susan Blond, a press agent for rock stars and rap artists whose very job is to place items in gossip columns (and who had more than 15 minutes of fame herself as a pal of Andy Warhol).

On her desk in the West 57th Street building is a small white sign that looks like a no-smoking request, but on closer inspection turns out to say, ”Thank you for not speaking loshon hora,” which is Hebrew for ”evil words” or ”forbidden speech.”

The sign was a gift from Ms. Blond’s brother-in-law, Leib Tropper, who is the guiding spirit and teacher of the group. The Leib Tropper runs a lecture program about Jewish values for college students, as well as the Kol Yakov Torah Center, a yeshiva in the Orthodox community of Monsey, N.Y. But much of his time is devoted to studying the Torah with small groups or individuals, most of whom are not strictly observant.

The class that discusses the evils of gossip is the largest of these groups. On a recent Tuesday it drew about a dozen regular participants of various ages, most of them Jewish, including a lawyer, a psychotherapist, a movie producer, an opera singer, a nutrition consultant, a writer and two young women who work at a big advertising agency.

In some ways, the class is similar to informal Torah study groups that have sprung up during the last decade in offices all over Manhattan, which is how the class began seven years ago. But most of the current participants started attending more recently, drawn, they said, by the charismatic rabbi and his focus on what he calls ”speech therapy, in a spiritual sense.”

The hour long class is free, although some attendees donate money to his school.

Wearing a dark suit and a boldly patterned tie, the rabbi, a bearded man in his late 40’s, sits at one end of a circle of chairs. Speaking quickly and a little loudly, he discusses the religious and secular reasons to avoid gossip, quoting not just Torah scholars and rabbis, but also Mark Twain, Erich Fromm and Richard Nixon.

He tells stories, like the one about two women on a bus in Israel discussing the engagement of two acquaintances. On and on they went, expressing their shock that such a nice young man was to marry a woman whose family was not very religious, not very educated.

A woman seated behind them tapped them on the shoulders and thanked them, saying she was the mother of the groom-to-be and had not realized what a bad family her son almost married into. Now, she said, she would end the engagement.

The two gossiping ladies were ”horrified, mortified,” the rabbi related. They started to grab the woman, to plead with her. Finally, the woman said, ”I’m not the mother of the groom, but I could have been!”

”We don’t see the damage we can do with our words,” Rabbi Leib Tropper continued. ”Things we say in New York can do damage in Jerusalem, or Hong Kong or somewhere else. That is why there is a strict restriction against gossip” in the Torah.

http://www.slideshare.net/leibtropper