Pacific Jewish Center | Rabbi » iphone app

Jewish iPhone Apps By RustyBrick

rabbifink — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:36:04 +0000

A few months ago I wrote a short post about the great Misheberach list in the iPhone Siddur.

Today, on DovBear I wrote a review of a few of the great Jewish iPhone Apps developed by RustyBrick.

Head over there to read the full review.

Men (Learning) at Work

rabbifink — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:54:18 +0000

This blog post is about men learning at work. By learning, I mean studying Torah.

I taught a class today at Teichman Enterprises.

It was a really great experience and I was inspired and I want to share my feelings with you.

If you are looking for the Australian musical artists known as Men at Work who sing that great song called “Down Under” (the one the “Piamentas” ripped off and sing to the words “Asher Bara”) click here for Men at Work.

If you don’t know what I am talking about watch these two videos…

Okay – got that? Now Watch this:

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fig44jXBpj4&feature">http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fig44jXBpj4&feature</a>

But I digress.

Back to our previously scheduled blog post.

I heard from my Rebbe that he is often approached by men who work long hours and feel as if they are spiritually drowning because they have such limited time to work on their spirituality.

His advice was that once a day, while at work we should contemplate on the reasons we are working. We are working to support a family, a wife, children, to provide the opportunity for them to grow Jewishly, so that we can send our children to expensive Jewish schools and so we can give charity, and so that we can experience a beautiful Shabbos together and if we are able to focus on that for just a moment it can make a tremendous difference in our work. Literally transforming our mundane job into a spiritual activity.

Truly, this is a beautiful idea.

Today I witnessed and participated in an equal if not better solution.

Teichman Enterprises has a weekly Torah class in their office. A catered lunch and a Rabbi teaching Torah is sure to insert some spirituality into a mundane work week. It is the perfect way to integrate the spiritual with the more mundane.

I was privileged to teach the class today and I was inspired. The attendees were attentive, interested and thoughtful.

It is impressive that so many people were willing to take time off from work to come hear words of Torah.

Notable among the attendees was Meish Wilson from Venice and the Pacific Jewish Center.

Today we learned about the special silver trumpets that were blasted before many moments in Jewish life. We learned about the root of sin and the path to recovery from sin as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I hope the attendees did as well.

(One correction, I mention R’ Yehuda HaLevi in the class, in fact it was R’ Shlomo Alkabetz, my error and I apologize.)

Today was a big day for iPhone owners and before the class we talked about the marvels of the iPhone over lunch. Thanks to the magic of the iPhone (and an app called iTalk) you can listen to the class on your computer right now!

Click below to listen.

Enjoy the class. (35 minutes)

The iPhone / iPod Touch Siddur Misheberach List

rabbifink — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 21:59:21 +0000

The Amazing iPhone Siddur (iTunes link – will open iTunes) has impressed me from day 1. I was in my Camp Regesh office on Tisha B’Av talking to my friend / colleague Mo Kiss. I had just got my iPhone and he tells me about a friend of ours who does web development who had just finished coding a siddur for the iPhone. The application is impressive with the full range of Tefillos for all nuschaos and all the brachos you could ever need. The siddur knows when to add special sections for special days like Rosh Chodesh and the Torah reading for Moday and Thursday is automatically adjusted to the day’s reading. Additional it uses the built in GPS to find the nearest Minyan as well as all the pertinent zmanim such as sunrise, sunset, candle lighting times and havdala times. All these features are great and I purchased the application for these basic features. I use it and recommend it to friends. It is nothing short of ingenious.

What prompted this post is the latest feature the have added. There is now a section for each user to add their own “misheberach” list (prayer for sick people) and it pops into your iPhone siddur at the appropriate spots. This is a great addition on its own but the most beautiful thing that has been added is the fact that this list can be shared with all the other iPhone siddur users. This means that if you allow your list to be public then anyone with the application can also pray for the people on your list and you can pray for anyone on their lists. That is amazing. Now misheberach lists can be shared effortlessly across the world! We can all pray for complete strangers who are sick using their full Jewish name. What a tremendous service and idea this is! That is worth a blog post! I must say that this idea is incredible and I hope it is used across the board. Anyone who has an iPhone or iPod Touch should pay the $10 for the application and use it. Especially the misheberach list feature…