ots@ohrtorahstone.org.il

For the past 25 years, Ohr Torah Stone has been leading a revolution in Torah education in Israel based on tolerance, outreach and women’s rights. But the roots of that revolution were first planted back in the 1960s, when OTS founder Rabbi Shlomo Riskin became the rabbi of the Lincoln Square Synagogue on Manhattan’s upper West Side and spearheaded its remarkable transformation into the embodiment of a new approach to Jewish education that made Orthodox Judaism appealing and relevant for all Jews.

The amazing story of Rabbi Riskin, Lincoln Square and their profound influence on American Jewry is recounted in A Circle in the Square: Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Reinvents the Synagogue, a new book by Rabbi Edward Abramson. An educator and former congregational rabbi who now lives in Jerusalem, Abramson experienced the excitement of those early years firsthand. “I was a student of Rabbi Riskin’s in 1965, a year after he started the shul,” the author explains. “He invited his students there and we became familiar with it. I was so excited about the incipient shul that I even convinced my mother to move there from upstate New York. She became a very active member of Lincoln Square.” Abramson also met his wife, Miriam, at the synagogue.

“In the 60’s, when everyone was searching for meaning and spirituality, Rabbi Riskin harnessed that search, invented Jewish outreach and reinvented the synagogue,” Abramson says. “He has had a profound influence on Orthodox Judaism.”

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