Miami, Florida, 21st October 2026, ZEX PR WIRE, Rabbi Steve Karro is asking his community to make one concrete act of giving part of their holiday preparation this year.
A season that asks something of us
Every year, the weeks before the holidays fill up fast. Cleaning, cooking, travel, gifts. Rabbi Steve Karro has spent decades studying the parts of Jewish tradition that ask us to slow that rush down and make room for someone else.
As a rabbi and scribe based in Miami Beach, Florida, he sees the holiday season as more than a checklist of preparations. He sees it as a yearly reminder to look outward.
“Every situation, I ask what the Creator expects from me,” Rabbi Karro said. “Before the holidays, the answer is usually simple. Give something. Give it now, not later.”
The invitation
Rabbi Karro is encouraging people in his community to take on a simple practice ahead of this holiday season: one act of direct giving to someone nearby, done before the holiday itself begins, not during it and not after.
“It does not need to be large,” he said. “It needs to happen before the holiday starts, not get folded into it. That timing matters. It says the giving came from you, not from the season telling you to.”
Why the order matters
Rabbi Karro draws a distinction between giving that happens because a holiday requires it, and giving that happens because a person chooses it ahead of time.
“When you give during the holiday, you are following the calendar,” he said. “When you give before it, you are following your own decision. Both are good. But the second one changes something in you.”
He points to family life as the frame he uses to think about this.
“When your closest family is happy, and the people around them are happy too, that is the real measure,” he said. “Giving before the holiday is one way to widen that circle a little further out from your own table.”
What giving back can look like
Rabbi Karro is not prescriptive about the form giving should take. He suggests people start with someone they already know needs something, rather than searching for a cause far from home.
“Start close,” he said. “A neighbor. Someone at your synagogue. Someone in your family nobody has checked on in a while. The person right in front of you is usually the answer.”
He also encourages people to think about what they can give beyond money: time, a skill, a meal, a conversation.
“Everyone has something they know how to give,” he said. “Teaching, cooking, fixing something, listening. Find yours and give it before the holiday, not during it.”
A practice, not a one-time gesture
Rabbi Karro hopes this becomes something people return to each year, not a single gesture tied to this season alone.
“I want to see this duplicated,” he said. “Not from one person, but from many people who hear about it and decide to do their own version. That is how something small becomes something that lasts.”
He also connects the practice to teaching, which he considers central to his work as a rabbi and scribe.
“Teaching what I have learned means more people can do good for the people around them,” he said. “That is the whole point.”
About Rabbi Steve Karro
Rabbi Steve Karro is a rabbi, scribe, artist, and teacher based in Miami Beach, Florida. Born in Russia, he moved to Jerusalem at age 10 and began his Hebrew education there. At 13, he continued his studies at Yeshiva Ponovich in Bnei Brak, and by 19 he had earned his rabbinic certificate and diploma. Rabbi Karro works internationally as a Judaica calligraphy and oil painting artist, and as a scribe specializing in restoring old Torah scrolls, writing new Torah scrolls, mezuzahs, and tefilin, and checking Torah scrolls, mezuzahs, and tefilin for communities around the world.
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