Aaron Raskin

Aaron Raskin was born to Benzion and Bassie Raskin and raised in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. His maternal grandfather was Jacob J. Hecht, official translator of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, and Shea Hecht is his maternal uncle. His grandfather's strong influence[1] plus the fact that Raskin himself came from a long line of rabbis, with all his maternal uncles being rabbis, helped him decide to embark on a rabbinical path. Raskin graduated from the United Lubavitcher Yeshiva and the Rabbinical College of America with a BA in Rabbinical Studies.[2]

Raskin served as a shliach (emissary) of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Great Britain, and was the representative on Jewish leadership on a visit to the House of Lords. In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who had served on the Ethics Committees during the administrations of President George H. W. Bush and New York Governor Mario Cuomo.[3]

Raskin was involved for many years in conversions to Judaism, particularly at the start of his career. He continues to offer classes geared toward baal teshuvas (returnees to Judaism) and potential converts. Many members of his synagogue's community are converts to Judaism from other faiths, mostly Christianity.[16]

Raskin is a strong proponent of involving non-Jews in learning and following the Seven Laws of Noah ("Noahide Laws"). He adheres to the tenets of respecting the concepts of the Righteous Gentile, and maintains friendly relations with Brooklyn Heights' secular communities. As Raskin sees it, non-Jews can, and do, play a role in the life of his synagogue's community, a policy that is unusual in Orthodox and Hadidic Jewish circles. Among the most visible are Domenico Lepore, an Italian, and his British-born wife, Angela Montgomery, who have studied extensively with Raskin on the topic of corporate management techniques; Lepore has forged a Talmudic and Torah-based approach to problem solving with Raskin's help.[17] At Raskin's invitation, Lepore presented a lecture on this topic alongside a panel of rabbis and scholars at Brooklyn's Borough Hall on the occasion of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's yahrtzeit (death anniversary) in 2011.

Raskin is known by local journalists and public relations people as a quotable source of information about Jewish law, who can speak to the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle in secular, pop-cultural contexts and outlets.

Raskin was featured in the February 2006 issue of National Geographic magazine about the Chabad Lubavitch movement, with a large photo of Raskin and his wife instructing a new female congregant in the recitation of blessings over the Sukkot festival's Lulav and Etrog (palm frond and citron) as they stood in a high wind on the Brooklyn Promenade at the beginning of the article.[18][19] In October 2011, Raskin commented for ABC News' Good Morning America program about the alleged infidelity existing between Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, both of whom had been documented attendees and students at the Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre.[20]

In an interior Chabad ranking, Raskin was listed as top "rising rabbi" in the United States, and fourth globally.[21]

Raskin is married to Shternie,[9] who directs the Gan Menachem-Kiddie Korner preschool. They and their six children live in Brooklyn Heights.

Raskin has had six books published to date. On March 8, 2020, his newest book, Parsha Mnemonics was published, and it is now available on Amazon.com. Other books published include the following:

In March 2017, Thank You, G-d for Making Me a Woman, now also available on Kindle through Amazon.com. [24] This book aims to show that it is a mistaken belief that Judaism values the male contribution to its daily liturgy and life more than the female. In a clear and compassionate style, it lays out traditional observance and new scholarship with simple language. Ultimately, the Jewish woman's role as ubiquitous force in daily life becomes clear: her power is subtle, mystical, transformative. Her role isn't marginal, it's essential.

In 2013, Sichos in English (an imprint of the Lubavitch movement) published his book, Guardian of Israel: Miracle Stories of Tefillin and Mezuzah.[25] It focuses on two of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's favorite Mitzvah ("commandment") campaigns: for Jews to place a mezuzah on their doorpost; and the mitzvah incumbent upon Jewish males to don tefillin (phylacteries) daily. Raskin is convinced of the 'miraculous' nature of these observances, and compiled human interest stories from across the globe that relate what people feel might be confluences and personal revelations associated with them.

In March 2011 Sichos in English published Raskin's By Divine Design: The Kabbalah of Large, Small, and Missing Letters in the Parshah, where Raskin investigates the graphic design of the individual Hebrew letters as they appear in the weekly Torah portion.[26] In a rather unusual approach, he dwells on anomalies and discrepancies he finds in the letters' size, shape, and contextual usage. He also peppers his reference material with time-worn Jewish jokes that he uses in his sermons.[27]

He co-authored The Rabbi & the CEO in 2008 with Swiss corporate management consultant Thomas D. Zweifel (Select Books, publisher), giving advice to corporate professionals on how to use the tenets of the Jewish Torah in the secular environment of their respective businesses.[28] This book is now available in German, as well.

Raskin authored Letters of Light[29] in 2004 (also published with Sichos in English), a small volume in which each chapter is devoted to a discussion of a single letter of the Hebrew alphabet (22 letters in all).[30] Many of Raskin's books have also been translated into Spanish, German, and Portuguese.

Raskin's weekly lectures on various Jewish topics, over 300 lectures, are broadcast online at the Chabad movement's Jewish.TV website.[31]