Paula Abdul bats for Rabbi Schneerson and Chabad
Entertainer Paula Abdul Helps Celebrate the Mitzvah of Mikvah
By Faygie Levy HoltFebruary 12, 2014 11:47 AM
Paula Abdul addressed some 750 women on her childhood, career, personal encounter with Jewish tradition and her recent trip to Israel. (Photo: Robert Schneider)
Paula Abdul addressed some 750 women on her childhood, career, personal encounter with Jewish tradition and her recent trip to Israel. (Photo: Robert Schneider)
For popular entertainer Paula Abdul, there could be no more fitting celebration of her personal “sense of rebirth” that comes from her connection to Jewish tradition than to be together with more than 750 women on the evening of Feb. 6, honoring the mitzvah of mikvah, and the laws and practice of Jewish family purity.
The daughter of a Syrian Jewish father and a Canadian Jewish mother, Abdul, 51, was raised in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
Dubbed “Dance, Pray, Live,” Abdul—who was raised in a secular Jewish home and said she connects with her Judaism on many levels, including lighting Shabbat candles—was the headline speaker at this year’s annual fundraising event to benefit Mikvah Chana in Livingston, N.J., about 20 miles outside of New York City. The community mikvah is run with the coordination of local residents and local Chabad shluchim, Rabbi Zalman and Toba Leah Grossbaum.
Previous speakers have included Mayim Bialik, child star of the film “Beaches” and the early 1990s TV show “Blossom,” and adult actor in the popular TV sitcom “The Big Bang Theory”; and gymnast Aly Raisman, captain of the gold-medal-winning U.S. women’s gymnastics team at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where she also earned individual gold and bronze medals.
‘Integral Part of the Community’
“I always leave here as a wife feeling happy to fulfill this mitzvah,” said Rachel Joffe, who lives in New York City. “You feel proud going to the mikvah,” she said, noting the wide range of women from different backgrounds and observances who attended the event.
Attendee Aliza Feuerstein of Hillside, N.J., noted that the mivkah “is an integral part of the community, and financially, it needs our support.”
Community member Dara Orbach, mikvah attendant Chevy Kaplitt, community member Seryl Kushner, Rabbi Chaim Mentz, Paula Abdul and Chabad emissary Toba Leah Grossbaum at Mikvah Chana in Livingston, N.J. (Photo: Mendel Grossbaum)
Community member Dara Orbach, mikvah attendant Chevy Kaplitt, community member Seryl Kushner, Rabbi Chaim Mentz, Paula Abdul and Chabad emissary Toba Leah Grossbaum at Mikvah Chana in Livingston, N.J. (Photo: Mendel Grossbaum)
But more than that, she continued, this event helps educate people who might not know about the ritual bath, which is so important to Jewish family life. “I know people who started using the mikvah because of this event.”
The evening’s presentation began with the recitation of tehillim, specifically Psalm 121. Everyone was asked to keep in mind those who might need a special prayer, such as the sick, women having trouble conceiving or individuals searching for their soul mates. Then a local resident, Jodi Rosenberg, spoke about how she came to a previous year’s event, began keeping the laws of mikvah and how that has changed her life.
“When I go to the mikvah, it is my time to regroup, reflect and look ahead. I am a working mother of three girls with an hour commute each day. I have little time for myself,” she said. “This is a time for me to connect to G‑d. The root of the Hebrew word for mikvah means ‘place of hope.’ When I immerse into the natural waters that G‑d has created, I feel a sense of rebirth.”
Erica Green of Livingston said she didn’t know much about the mikvah before she arrived, but joined the event with a group of friends to support the organization and hear from Abdul. “I had a really nice time,” she said. “It’s a little different for a girls’ night out.”
For Livingston’s Pam Tepper, who has been attending the fundraiser for several years now, it is the “camaraderie of friends and the community of women” that brings her back. “There’s a place and a need for women to organize and gather, and to be together and enjoy together. I think this might be one of their biggest turnouts.”
‘A Fighting Spirit’
For many in attendance, though, the highlight of the evening was singer, choreographer and TV personality Abdul, who talked about her childhood, career and recent trip to Israel.
Weighing less than 3 pounds when she was born, Abdul said that as a baby, “my lungs were just a blob and I had a broken windpipe, and every time I would cry, I’d faint.”
Abdul, who toured Mikvah Chana earlier in the day, told the crowd that it is a beautiful mikvah “where you can go and have blessings and pray. It’s like a five-star spa. … It’s lovely that in the Jewish religion, this is important.” (Photo: Mendel Grossbaum)
Abdul, who toured Mikvah Chana earlier in the day, told the crowd that it is a beautiful mikvah “where you can go and have blessings and pray. It’s like a five-star spa. … It’s lovely that in the Jewish religion, this is important.” (Photo: Mendel Grossbaum)
The doctor, she said, called her a “medical miracle.”
She told of braces on her legs growing up, and the fact that one foot is significantly shorter than the other. But, she said, “I had a fighting spirit from the time I born. My life’s path, my destiny, my calling was never a Sunday walk in the park. … I gravitate toward things that were … near impossible.”
Abdul was joined on stage by Rabbi Chaim Mentz, co-director with his wife, Charna, of Chabad of Bel Air, Calif. The rabbi noted that the Feb. 6 evening fundraiser coincided this year with 7 Adar on the Hebrew calendar—the day Moses was born, also prematurely, and the importance of everyone overcoming hardships during his or her lifetime.
Given her childhood history, it’s understandable that Abdul is noted for her practice of always giving an encouraging word to others in her television roles. “My place was to bring light,” she said.
To the standing-room-only crowd of women, Abdul continued: “We can rule the world ... we have to learn to work together, to support each other, to lift each other up.” By doing so, she said, there could be a “universal shift toward kindness.”
Of her time in Israel, Abdul said “it was one of my proudest moments. It was a love affair for me. I cried and did not want to leave.”
There, she visited the Old City of Jerusalem—her favorite place, she said. She also relished the food and managed to eat her way through her travels, joking that she put on “nine pounds in 10 days.”
Naomi Campbell And Paula Abdul Pay Tribute To…The Lubavitcher Rebbe
By Jenny Singer
July 8, 2019
25 years ago this week, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Chabad Hassidic movement who some Jews believe to be the messiah, died.
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, a biographer of Schneerson, who was known to his followers as The Rebbe, says, “He really established what is, as far as I know, the first attempt to reach every Jewish community and every Jew in the world.”
In fact, the Rebbe’s message was so far-reaching as to affect non-Jewish supermodel Naomi Campbell, who took to social media over the weekend to mourn the anniversary of the leader’s passing.
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“The Rebbe taught that we are all inherently good and we each have the potential to change the world for the better, one good deed at a time,” Campbell wrote on Instagram, summing up Hassidic teachings so well she would fit in well in one of Chabad’s roving mitzvah tanks. “With so much discord and division across our society, the Rebbe’s words are more relevant than ever, Campbell added, urging her followers to “learn from his example to always see the good in others, even those with whom we may disagree.”
Campbell, who noted that she has visited the Rebbe’s grave in Queens (a popular destination, even for the likes of Javanka), promised, “Today I rededicate myself to the Rebbe’s life-long mission of creating more light and goodness.” Further down Campbell’s Instagram page, she poses in front of a giant gold crucifix in a church in Rome, exemplifying the à la carte approach to spirituality often practiced by celebrities, see: Madonna, Guy Ritchie, Ashton Kutcher.
Who’d have thunk a former Jehovah’s Witness who has been the face of 25 perfumes (25!) would be a Schneerson acolyte? Actually, anyone who has followed the Rebbe’s teachings and legacy might have thunk it — he really was that good.
Jewish performer Paula Abdul also publicly memorialized the Rebbe, encouraging followers to join her in a Chabad Shabbat candle-lighting campaign and writing, “His teachings to better our world through unconditional love are more urgent now than ever!”
Campbell and Abdul join a prestigious line of Jews and non-Jews alike — including world leaders, academics, and regular people — who were touched by the Rebbe’s wisdom. Of course, it doesn’t matter who’s giving the advice, if the advice is to repair the world through acts of loving kindness. But if the public learns Lubavitcher-style teaching from the mouths of supermodels and Laker girls?
That’s a miracle worthy of the Rebbe.
Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at Singer@forward.com or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
For the women and girls of various backgrounds from across the state and beyond who attended, it was a night of friendship, inspiration, food and sisterhood. (Photo: Robert Schneider)
For the women and girls of various backgrounds from across the state and beyond who attended, it was a night of friendship, inspiration, food and sisterhood. (Photo: Robert Schneider)
Abdul also spoke about Rabbi Mentz, whom she first met in 1990. “I would not have persevered … without this very special man,” and whose family she said she adores.
The underlying reason everyone was present—to raise money for, and awareness of, the ritual bath—was not forgotten as Abdul, who had toured Mikvah Chana earlier in the day, told the crowd that it is a beautiful mikvah “where you can go and have blessings and pray. It’s like a five-star spa. … It’s lovely that in the Jewish religion, this is important.”
“I urge you all to go,” said the entertainer, who was getting on a plane the following day and heading Down Under, where she will be taping a new show. “When I come back from Australia, I want to come back and visit.”
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