Rabbi Lazer Gurkow of Congregation Beth Tefilah in London, Ontario, Canada, will kick off what is intended to be the first annual Jewish Book Fair at 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 20, at Chabad House Center, 6201 Indian Creek Drive, Overland Park.
The day will begin with a Jewish book sale, followed by a gourmet dinner and speaker Rabbi Gurkow, who is the author of “Portraits of Leadership,” “Reaching for G-d” and “Mission Possible — Living With Purpose.” Signed copies of the latter two books will be available at the book fair.
The Jewish Book Fair will feature a variety of books on Jewish history, Kabbalah, short stories, marriage, women, Jewish texts and children’s books and games.
Rabbi Gurkow was born in Boston in 1972 and ordained in 1995. He began his rabbinical career in Marina Del Rey in 1996, but began to fill in for pulpit rabbis on a regular basis at the age of 16.
The Ontario rabbi is a busy man, writing, traveling and lecturing. In addition to his books, he is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post, Chabad.org and Israel National News. He writes a weekly essay, which you can find by Googling innerstream.ca.
In addition, the 43-year-old rabbi produced a curriculum on leadership for the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, which has been taught to 50,000 students on six continents. This is a subject he feels strongly about. He says leadership is important because we don’t live in a vacuum.
“If we don’t lead, who will? A rudderless generation affects us all, including ourselves,” he said. He believes there is a leader and a follower in all of us.
“G-d made us each unique; we each have strengths where others are weak. He did this so that we could be leaders in our areas of strength and followers in our areas of weakness. Leading is about lifting others. Following is about allowing others to lift us,” Rabbi Gurkow said.
As of press time, Rabbi Gurkow’s topic at the dinner is set to be “Living with Purpose.” The context of the talk will be religious in nature.
He said by assigning a G-d-given purpose to everything we do, we find meaning in our lives. “Most of the things we do are means, not goals. We work to earn money and we do that to purchase things we need and want and we do that to live and we live to have pleasure.”
Thus pleasure is the only goal and everything else is secondary. He says we spend most of our time doing things of little intrinsic value and little of our time with the truly meaningful.
“Finding an element in everything we do that is meaningful and purposeful is how we live with purpose,” the rabbi said. “This means that we are looking for ways to serve G-d and to fulfill His purpose in creation through everything we do.
“If we do this, we make the world a holier place by bringing G-d into otherwise mundane activities. This is the mark we leave on the world.”
According to Blumah Wineberg, coordinator of the Jewish Book Fair, Rabbi Gurkow engages audiences and leads them on provocative journeys of thought with his easy, informal manner.
He has been the pulpit rabbi at Congregation Beth Tefilah since June 2000. He and his wife Basie have six children ranging in age from 2 to 18.
The kosher dinner begins at 5:30 p.m. Cost for the entire evening is $36. For reservation availability, contact Wineberg at or call 913-940-1113.
