FAQ & Features to Get the Most out of The American Rabbi
–> To learn the benefits of subscribing, please click: /why-subscribe-to-american-rabbi/
1) Search Function: A powerful new search engine has been implemented that is excellent at scanning through the thousands of pages on our site and helping you to find relevant material quickly. It also works even if you are not logged into the website (though you must be logged in to see the actual post content.) You can search by an author’s name, keywords, or topic. Also note that you can put two or more words in quotations in the search box, and the system will generate results only of sermons/posts which have that specific phrase in the body of the text (such as “happy occasion”, “tikkun olam“, etc.)
2) Saved Favorites: This is one of the most overlooked and helpful features. At the end of every sermon or posting there is a “Save as Favorite” button. This allows the site to keep track of your personal saved “favorites”. You can access that list anytime you are logged in via the “Favorites” link on the website header (top right). Only you can see your favorites, and only when logged into the site. This is a very useful feature if you want to save a list of material you want to be able to reference again later.
You can clear a favorite from the list by going back to that sermon and clicking the same button that will now be labeled “Flagged as Favorite”, or clear the entire list from the “favorites” page.
3) Sending Us New Material: We always appreciate colleagues sending us new material to post to our site, including regular Shabbat sermons, kavanot, wedding talks, eulogies, and sermons on any topic. So… Please continue to send us your chomer, as it is the “Rabbinic Co-Op” model that makes The American Rabbi such a valuable resource for all our colleagues.
[Note: The easiest way to send us material is via the website: https://americanrabbi.com/submit-material-to-the-american-rabbi/. It is easier for us to post material sent in regular Word format (.doc or docx). PLEASE avoid sending us PDF’s, as they are a particularly difficult to format for posting.]4) Printer Friendly: Every post has a “
Print | Copy/Edit” link (near the top of each page) to help you print out an easy to read version of the material you have selected without the extraneous website links and headers.
5) How to Find the Newest Material on AR: The published High Holiday sermons always indicate the year when they were posted to our website. For all other categories, including weekly Divrei Torah, the newest material generally appears at the top of the category list or ‘blog roll’. (That’s the page you see right after you click on a category menu link, and which displays the first few sentences of each post or sermon – followed by a link to “continue reading”.) As new material is added to the site, it will always show up at the top of any category listing, while older material get pushed further down the list.
6) American Rabbi on Facebook: We recently created a private Facebook group for our current AR subscribers. If you would like to join this private forum, please log onto Facebook and click here to request to join: https://www.facebook.com/
7) Difficulty Logging onto the Site: For Windows computers you might try to hold the “ctrl” and “F5” keys together which will refresh your browser’s memory cache. Or if you are on a Mac, try holding the CMD + R keys together. That clears up any bits of old code that might be interfering with you getting on the site properly.
If you still cannot get onto the site (and you know your correct user name) then enter your user name and click the “forgot Password?” link right under the “Login” button. The system will then email you a temporary password which you must copy exactly in order to log in. (You can then change it in your profile settings to whatever you like). If all else fails, please contact us and we will manually reset your account.
8) Renewals: IF you need to renew an expired subscription*, you can log into the website with your regular user name and password, and then click on the link: “TO RENEW” so you can again access our website content. Please note: If you renew a subscription in late summer, it will expire before the new High Holy Day material appears in June for the FOLLOWING High Holiday season. Renewal payments can be made via Paypal, check, or credit card (and you can pay by regular credit card even if you do not have a Paypal account).
* If you are able to login but cannot navigate to the actual content, it is likely that your subscription has lapsed.