On the morning of February 1, 2003, the Columbia Space Shuttle, returning from its STS-107 mission, was destroyed upon re-entry, 16 minutes before its scheduled landing. All its crew members perished, including Ilan Ramon, a combat pilot in the Israeli Air Force, who was the first Israeli astronaut. Prior to his departing to space on Space Shuttle Columbia, where his mission included the manning of a multispectral camera for recording desert aeroso, he arranged to take kosher food as well as a Kiddush cup, a Torah Scroll, and a dollar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of righteous memory.
Links: Pride, Pain and the Suddenness of Life; Remembering Ilan Ramon
This Shabbat is Shabbat Mevarchim (“the Shabbat that blesses" the new month): a special prayer is recited blessing the Rosh Chodesh ("Head of the Month") of the upcoming month of Adar I, which falls on Sunday and Monday of next week.
Prior to the blessing, we announce the precise time of the molad, the "birth" of the new moon. See molad times.
It is a Chabad custom to recite the entire book of Psalms before morning prayers, and to conduct farbrengens (chassidic gatherings) in the course of the Shabbat.
Links: Shabbat Mevarchim; Tehillim (the Book of Psalms); The Farbrengen
People know Yom Kippur as a day of repentance and forgiveness. But Yom Kippur takes you far beyond that.
Because repentance means regretting who you’ve become. Yom Kippur is a day when you are embraced for who you truly are.
You are a pure, divine soul. Today, in that embrace, you experience the bond that divine soul has with G-d, and you want to live that way.
So you rid yourself of some unbecoming things you picked up on the road, and you return home, picking up some beautiful mitzvahs along the way.
On Yom Kippur you return home to the One Who embraces you because you are who you are.