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7 PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS FOR JEWISH PRIDE & A WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP CULTURE

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ADAM NEUMAN, CHIEF OF STAFF AND SPECIAL ADVISOR TO THE PRESIDENT, BALTIMORE RAVENS

Discover how Adam, a proud Jew, supports the strategic vision and operations of one of the most successful franchises in the NFL.

CHAIRS: Jesse Cleveland • Josh & Sherry Mauer • Scott Nawy • Andrea Polsky • Brandon Sacks

HOST COMMITTEE: Stan "The Fan” Charles • Efy Flamm • Maury Garten • Coach Katz • Brian Litofsky Syndi & Robby Saltzman • Gary Stein

Dear Readers,

Over the past few weeks, an onslaught of distressing stories has dominated the news. Terrible auto accidents, tragic fires, soldiers lost in Gaza, and stories too harrowing to detail have inundated our feeds. For a fleeting moment, they capture our attention. We might share them, engage in brief discussions, or even donate to related causes. But soon enough, they fade from our consciousness as we move on to the next headline.

Is this response a fundamental aspect of human nature? Have we always coped with tragedy in this manner, or is it a reflection of how news is consumed in 2024? Does social media, with its relentless emphasis on scrolling to the next story, contribute to our desensitization? Have we become numb to the sensationalism of advertisements seeking donations for these tragedies plastered across news sites and feeds?

It certainly prompts reflection. While we scroll past and move on, the families and friends affected by these tragedies can-

not simply click away from their reality. Their lives are irrevocably changed. We exist in an era where every incident makes immediate news. It is unrealistic to expect an emotional response to every story without overwhelming ourselves. However, there is no simple solution, but reducing our compulsion to follow every breaking news story in real-time is a prudent start. This approach can heighten our sensitivity to news that genuinely warrants our attention.

Ultimately, we understand that these events do not happen by chance; everything occurs for a reason. The impact of such stories should extend beyond fleeting sympathy. Tragedies are meant to stir more than just the immediate families—they should move us all. We must glean something meaningful from these narratives.

Wishing everyone a peaceful Shabbos.

Aaron Menachem

Send us your: community events, articles & photos, and mazal tovs to editor@baltimorejewishhome.com to be featured in coming editions!

Wellness Lunch & Learn SUMMER SERIES

Join this engaging summer program featuring LifeBridge Health medical professionals and JCC staff. Enjoy movement, conversation and fun!

Wednesdays, July 10-July 31

Noon-1:30pm

Free. Lunch Included. Open to the Community. Registration required.

JULY 10 - CELEBRATING LIFE BY PURPOSEFUL PLANNING with Chaya Lasson, RN, Director Jewish Hospice and Palliative Care, Bridging Life

JULY 17 - PREDIABETES AWARENESS AND PREVENTION with Lori O’Donnell, certified Lifestyle Coach and JCC instructor

JULY 24 - AGING WITH POSITIVITY

with Hannah Kilburg , LCSW-C Director of Outpatient Behavioral Health Services, Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital

JULY 31 - TAI CHI AND BREATHING FOR PAIN RELIEF with Christina Gentile, DP, DPT, Chronic Pain Specialist, Sinai Rehabilitation Center

Questions? Contact: Laura Kurcfeld lkurcfeld@jcc.org Sherri Zaslow szaslow@lifebridgehealth.org

Agudath Israel of Baltimore Buries Nearly 70 Cubic Yards of Shaimos

Agudath Israel of Baltimore is incredibly grateful for the tremendous effort and dedication from those individuals in our community who involve themselves in the collection and burial of sheimos throughout the year. This included the shaimos dropped off at the Agudah all year long, shaimos dropped off during the special collection on Sunday morning, and shaimos supplied by many other shuls, schools and institutions, including: Bais HaMedrash & Mesivta of Baltimore, Bais Lubavitch, Beth Am, Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, Bnos Yisrael, Cheder Chabad, Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh, Levindale, Machzikei Torah, Mercaz Torah and Tefillah, Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah (Liberty Jewish Center), Ner Tamid, Yeshivas Ner Yisroel, Shearith Israel, Sheves Achim, Sinai Hospital, Third Way (Shaarei Tefillah), Torah Institute, and Yeshivas Lubavitch.

We are extremely grateful to all the volunteers who assisted this past Sunday, June 30, 24 Sivan, in loading the trucks and the actual burial: In alphabetical order, they are: Jacob Applebaum, Eliezer Arasteh, Chizkiyahu Arasteh, Yitzi Adlin, Amitai Barth, Eitan Barth, Shalom Barth, Chanan Berdy, Moshe Baruch Cohen, Nochum Cohen, Yosef Cohen, Dovid Clay, Chaim Frankel, Eliyahu Frankel, Shraga Goldberg, Tzvi Goldberg, Noam Harris, Rav Shraga Herskowitz, Yosef Jaffee, Zalman Lachman, Uri Meyers, Yisrael Novice, Eliyahu Rayman, Yisrael Yehudah Rayman, Noach Yisrael Salzberg, Meir Sandhaus, Ephraim Silver, Shaya Swiatycki, Avraham Weiskopf, and Tzvi Zackam.

Thank you also to our drivers Dovid Cotton, Levi Dashevsky, and M. Alars.

We especially acknowledge the Jewish Cemetery Association, headed by Steve Venick, and Mike Patrick for providing and excavating the burial site for the sheimos.

We also take this opportunity to thank Dovid Mandel, Jacob Applebaum, and everyone else involved

in sorting and bagging the shaimos all year long.

The Baltimore chapter of Women’s Torah Initiative through the OU and Torat Imecha (70+ strong) celebrated a siyum on Nach Yomi this evening at Cocoaccinos. This joyous occasion marked the completion of Neviim

Rishonim. We were excited to honor this significant achievement and the dedication of our participants.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in celebrating Torah learning and growth!

Around the Community

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Celebrates Torah with a Siyum on Bava Metzia

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, under the leadership of Rabbi Daniel Rose, held its Daf Yomi Siyum on Masechta Bava Metzia at the home of Phil & Dayna Klitzner. The attendees enjoyed a delicious catered meal by the host and were inspired by divrei

Torah from the Ruv, and Rabbi A J Esral with a very moving address by Dr. Edo Levi, who gives a daily daf shiur at BJSZ.

This was also a celebration of all Torah learning at BJSZ with many more opportunities becoming available at BJSZ in the near future.

Ohel Moshe’s Move to Temporary Relocation Due to Expansion

Ohel Moshe (Rabbi Zvi Teichman) temporarily relocates just across the street to the former Millers space, next door to Rite Aid. As their expansion project is, b’H, well underway, the Shul has fully relo -

Each week brings exciting new advancements toward the completion of our Mikdash Mi’at. Structural walls and insulation are being completed throughout the building, giving us a peek into the flow and magnitude of our holy, beautiful new space. The main entrance and front lobby are truly a sight to behold. Boasting exquisite archways and spacious gathering spaces, the grand lobby provides

cated all minyanim, shiurim, and programs to this temporary space at 2849 Smith Ave.

access to the main sanctuary, our breathtaking courtyard, and pathway to offices, classrooms, and Beis Medrash. The lobby area also includes two spacious coat rooms for multipurpose year-round storage.

With Hashem’s help, we look forward to the completion of our Mikdash Mi’at and BUILDING HOLINESS together with you.

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613 Seconds with Mrs. Malka Zweig

BJH: Tell us about yourself

Mrs. Malka Zweig: I grew up in Washington DC where my father, Rabbi Hillel Klavan z”l served as Rav for almost fifty years. I am the oldest of four children. At home we were raised with a sense of responsibility for community and commitment to helping others. When I married, my husband was learning in Ner Yisroel, where he continued on for several years of Kollel. We returned to Baltimore about ten years later when my husband assumed a position in Bais Yaakov, ultimately becoming the Menahel of the High School.

BJH: What is your involvement with Baltimore’s senior citizens?

MZ: I became the Chesed Coordinator in the Bais Yaakov High School and was afforded the opportunity to devote the lion share of my time and energies to working with seniors in our com-

munity. Under the auspices of the Associated through the Jewish Community Center and Chai, I have been able to provide many opportunities for our Seniors, creating programs for smaller groups in their home setting and larger luncheons and social events outside of their homes. I also work part time with the residents of Sterling Care Assisted Living and with participants at the new L’Chaim Day Program.

BJH: What is the L’Chaim Day Program, and how is it unique?

MZ: The L’Chaim Day Program creates an opportunity for seniors to enjoy socialization, activities and health care (when needed) in a structured environment. There are activities that stimulate the mind, exercise, music and learning, and at the same time medical care provided by competent nurses and therapists. At the end of the day, however,

these individuals can go back to their homes and families. A unique aspect of this program is the flexibility afforded to the participants allowing them different scheduling options (full day, half day, hourly) in order to service each individual according to their different needs.

BJH:What do we need to know as a community regarding how to treat our seniors?

MZ: Seniors living in our community benefit greatly from activities and programs that enable them to interact with others outside of their homes while being able to remain in their homes. Socialization is a key factor in helping the healthy aging process of seniors. As a community we need to be sensitive to the needs of our seniors. We need to teach our children how to be respectful and caring. We need to provide services that can enable them to live enriched

lives. It’s important to realize that we can come to their aid in many different ways to make their lives fuller and richer.

BJH: What are your future plans?

MZ: I feel privileged to be working with this segment of our population. My family knows that I have a passion for seniors and I only hope to be able to continue the special relationships that I have developed with them for many years to come, all in good health, iyH!

BJH: Thank you for your work with this treasured segment of our community. We wish you much continued hatzlacha.

To learn more about L’Chaim Day Program, visit www.lchaimdayprogram.com or call 410358-6461.

The Week In News

The Week In News

grants” through the Darién Gap.

U.S. and Panama Deal with Darien Gap

This week, Panama announced that the United States and the Central American country have signed an immigration agreement dealing with closing “the passage of illegal mi-

“In the agreement signed today by the Panamanian Foreign Minister Javier Martínez-Acha and the Secretary of Homeland Security of the United States Alejandro Mayorcas, the U.S. government undertakes to cover the cost of the repatriation of immigrants who enter illegally through Darién,” the Panama government said in a statement.

The U.S. would also support Panama with “equipment, transportation and logistics” regarding foreigners found “in violation of the immigration laws of Panama.”

In turn, Panama agreed to “comply with all international agreements and conventions on the rights of immigrants and those in refugee status,” it added.

The Darién Gap, located in Panama, is a mountainous rainforest region connecting South and Central America. The 66-mile hike through the Darién Gap brings migrants from Colombia to Panama, with many people risking the trek to head to the United States and Canada. A sizeable increase

in the amount of people traveling through the Darién Gap has become apparent.

On Monday, Panama’s new President Jose Raul Mulino told his citizens that Panama will no longer be a passageway for migrants.

“I will not allow Panama to be a path open to thousands of people who enter our country illegally supported by an entire international organization related to drug and human trafficking,” Mulino said at his swearing-in ceremony.

“Panama will no longer be a transit country for illegals,” he added.

“The numbers of illegal immigrants passing through the Darién are shocking,” Mulino said, adding that he intends to “appeal to international solidarity regarding the cause that generates the problem and will seek solutions with the countries involved, especially with the United States, which is the final destination of such immigrants.”

At least 174,513 migrants crossed the Darién Gap from January to June 6 of this year. The latest figures are

higher than around the same period in 2023, when more than 166,000 crossings were reported, according to Panama’s National Migration Service. According to migration service figures, a record 520,000 people crossed the jungle last year.

Stormy Skies

Strong turbulence forced a flight from Madrid to Uruguay to make an emergency landing in Brazil. Thirty passengers were injured in the commotion.

“Our flight UX045 bound for Montevideo has been diverted to the Natal airport [in Brazil] due to strong turbu-

Greater Washington Weekday Minyanim Guide

6:15 am Young Israel Shomrai Emunah M-F

6:25 am Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua M-F

6:30 am Beth Sholom Congregation M-F

Beit Halevi (Sfardi) M, T

Chabad of Silver Spring M-F

Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah OLNEY M-F

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah S YGW M, Th

6:35 am Ohr Hatorah M, Th

6:40 am YGW S, T, W, F

Magen David Sephardic Congregation M-Th

6:45 am Beit Halevi (Sfardi) S, T, W, F

Kemp Mill Synagogue M, Th

Ohr Hatorah T, W, F

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah M, Th

6:50 am Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah M, Th Silver Spring Jewish Center M-F

Chabad of Upper Montgomery County M-F

6:55 am Young Israel Shomrai Emunah T, W, F

7:00 am Kemp Mill Synagogue T, W, F

Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua S Silver Spring Jewish Center S

Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah T, W, F

Young Israel Ezras Israel of Potomac T,W,F

7:05 am Kesher Israel M, Th

7:15 am Kemp Mill Synagogue M, Th Kesher Israel T, W, F

Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue M-F

Ohr Hatorah S

7:30 am Chabad of DC M-F

Chabad of Potomac M-F JROC M-F

Kemp Mill Synagogue T, W, F

Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua M-F

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah S Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Sfardi) M-F

7:45 am YGW (Yeshiva Session Only) S-F

8:00 am Beth Sholom Congregation S

Kemp Mill Synagogue S Kesher Israel S

Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah OLNEY S

Southeast Hebrew Cong., Knesset Yehoshua S

8:00 am Chabad of Upper Montgomery County S

Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah S YGW (High School; School-Contingent) S-F

Young Israel Ezras Israel of Potomac S Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Sfardi) S

8:15 am Ohr Hatorah S Kehilat Pardes / Berman Hebrew Academy S-F

Silver Spring Jewish Center M-F

8:30 am Chabad of DC S Chabad of Potomac S JROC S

Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue S

Silver Spring Jewish Center S YGW (Summer Only) S-F

8:45 am Young Israel Shomrai Emunah S-F

9:00 am Chabad of Silver Spring S Kemp Mill Synagogue S

mincha/maariv Before Shkiah, S-TH

Beit Halevi (Sfardi)

Beth Sholom Congregation

Chabad of Potomac

Chabad of Silver Spring

Chabad of Upper Montgomery County

JROC

Kemp Mill Synagogue

Kesher Israel

Magen David Sephardic Congregation

Ohev Sholom Talmud Torah/The National Synagogue Ohr Hatorah

Silver Spring Jewish Center

Southeast Hebrew Congregation, Knesset Yehoshua Woodside Synagogue/Ahavas Torah

Young Israel Ezras Israel of Potomac

Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Asheknaz) Young Israel Shomrai Emunah (Sefarhadi) maariv

8:15 pm OSTT (OLNEY) S-Th SHC, Knesset Yehoshua M-Th

8:45 pm YGW

1:50 pm YGW Summer

2:15 pm Silver Spring Jewish Center M-F

2:20 pm YGW School Days

2:45 pm YGW S-Th

4:30 pm Ohev Shalom Talmud Torah OLNEY S-Th mincha

9:00 pm Silver Spring Jewish CenterFall/Winter

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The Week In News

lence,” Air Europa said in a post on X.

The plane went into a dive at one point during the flight due to the turbulence. Passengers without seatbelts hit their heads on the ceiling. Some people suffered from fractures.

The news comes as the latest development in a string of bad publicity for the airplane manufacturer Boeing.

While there’s no evidence so far that the injuries on the Air Europa flight had anything to do with a safety malfunction, Boeing has recently faced a series of whistleblowers alleging safety issues at the company.

Riots Rock Turkey

Allegations against a Syrian man in Kayseri, Turkey, led to protests across Turkey aimed at Syrian-run businesses.

The man had been accused of hurting a young girl. When reports of the abuse came to light, local residents began to riot, setting fire to cars and Syrian-run businesses in the central Anatolian city.

“An investigation was immediately launched on the issue. However, later our citizens gathered in this region, acted illegally in an attitude that does not suit our human values, and damaged houses, workplaces, and vehicles belonging to Syrian nationals,” Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.

He said that dozens of people were detained, and the crowd was only dispersed in the early morning hours.

The local governor of Kayseri called on people “to act calmly, with moderation and common sense.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed opposition parties, some of which have taken a hard line on removing the estimated 3.6 million Syrians from the country, for stoking “hatred politics.”

Erdogan himself has pledged to create the conditions for large numbers of Syrians to voluntarily return to

Syria.

“Xenophobia and hatred towards refugees in our country should not be ignited because this does not give any positive results,” he said in a speech on Monday.

The riots in Kayseri also sparked backlash inside Syria. Video from the town of Atareb, which is currently under the control of Turkish troops, showed people chanting against the Turkish army’s presence and throwing objects at an armored vehicle.

In another town, Ghazawiah, also in northwest Syria, protesters were seen pulling the Turkish flag down from a military site.

At the “Bab al-Salama” border crossing with Turkey, the Turkish flag was removed, burned and replaced with a Free Syrian Army flag.

Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country but has often struggled to integrate Syrian refugees fully into society. Syrian refugees have become a lightning rod in a country struggling with a dismal economy. Many Syrians accuse Turks of racist treatment. Countless Syrian children are not in schools because of a requirement that Syrians remain in the districts they were registered in originally — even after events such as last year’s deadly earthquake in southern Turkey forced many of them to relocate.

Years ago, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Erdogan had been close. But their friendship collapsed when Erdogan backed the Free Syrian Army that sought to oust Assad from power in Syria’s civil war. Last week, Erdogan said he was open to meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to restore ties between the two countries.

Vienna is Most Livable

In a recently published Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranking of the world’s most livable cities, Vienna, Austria, took the number one spot.

The organization, which is affiliated with The Economist, graded 173 cities based on five criteria: health care, culture and environment, stability, infrastructure, and education.

This year marks Vienna’s third consecutive year nabbing the top spot, with the EIU considering the city “perfect” in each of the five criteria, except in culture and environment, as Vienna doesn’t have many major sporting events.

In second place came Copenhagen, Denmark, and in third came Zurich, Switzerland, which rose from sixth place this year. Melbourne, Australia, which was ranked fourth last year, also took the third spot in 2024. Calgary, Canada, and Geneva, Switzerland, both came in fifth. Vancouver, Canada, and Sydney, Australia, tied for seventh place, while Osaka, Japan, and Aukland, New Zealand, shared the ninth spot.

The most livable city in the United States, according to the ranking, is Honolulu, Hawaii, which came in at 23. Atlanta, Georgia, took the 29th spot. California’s Los Angeles was ranked 58th and New York City reached the 70th slot. In the United Kingdom, London came in the 45th spot. Tel Aviv, Israel, on the other hand, declined twenty spots from last year, ranking at 112th because of Israel’s ongoing war against the Hamas terrorist organization.

“Since we conducted our survey, there have been more instances of civil unrest and demonstrations around the world, such as the campus protests across the U.S., suggesting continuing stress on livability that is unlikely to ease in the near future,” noted the EIU’s deputy industry director Barsali Bhattacharyya.

Since many cities in Western Europe have been experiencing “increasing instances of disruptive protests,” thirty cities in the region were ranked slightly lower in the stability category, achieving an average score of 92/100.

Cities in North America were generally given the best education scores. Cities in Canada, however, were ranked poorly in the infrastructure category because of the country’s “acute housing crisis.”

“The situation is particularly worrying in Australia and Canada, where the availability of rental properties is at an all-time low and purchase prices have continued to rise despite inter-

est-rate increases,” the EIU wrote in the report.

On the other side of the world, Damascus, Syria, took the bottom spot on the list, while Tripoli, Libya; Algiers, Algeria; and Lagos, Nigeria, were also ranked as some of the worst cities.

Russian Satellite Breaks Up

A Russian satellite that stopped working in 2022 collapsed in space on Wednesday at 10 AM MST, breaking into over 100 pieces of debris. In the wake of the incident, NASA ordered U.S. astronauts on the International Space Station to shelter for an hour. After an hour, the astronauts left the shelter and resumed their usual work.

The satellite, known as RESURS-P1, was an Earth observation craft and was in a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 220 miles.

According to U.S. Space Command, the satellite, which exploded into “over 100 pieces of trackable debris,” does not currently pose any danger to other satellites.

A large amount of space debris could potentially trigger a Kessler effect, wherein debris would be continuously colliding, making it too dangerous to send more satellites or spacecraft into space. There are currently around 25,000 pieces of space debris larger than four inches that were created by satellite explosions.

In 2021, Russia launched an anti-satellite (ASAT) missile at one of its disused satellites, creating thousands of new pieces of space debris. The U.S. and other Western nations condemned Russia for doing so.

According to Harvard astronomer and space-tracker Jonathan McDowell, there is currently no evidence that the RESURS-P1 was also struck by an ASAT.

“I find it hard to believe they would use such a big satellite as an ASAT target,” he said. “But, with the Russians these days, who knows.”

The Week In News

India Wins Cricket World Cup

India won the men’s Cricket World Cup on Saturday, defeating South Africa to end a dry spell in tournament victories that had lasted more than a decade, even as the nation was dominating the sport globally in other measures like talent, cash and influence.

The tournament was played across several Caribbean islands, with a few matches in the United States. When the final, in Barbados, ended with India declared the champion, it was close to midnight back home, where joyful crowds poured into the streets.

“Maybe in a couple hours it will sink in, but it is a great feeling,” said Rohit Sharma, India’s captain.

It was a closely fought match, and a deeply emotional one for India, in part because many of its senior players, including Sharma, 37, were near the end of their careers. India last won the World Cup in T20, the shortest format of cricket, in 2007, when Sharma was just getting started. The top prize had also evaded Virat Kohli, 35, one of cricket’s most recognized icons. Rahul Dravid, India’s coach, had never won a World Cup during his long and illustrious career as a player.

All three men ended the night on a happy note, with Sharma and Kohli announcing their retirement from the fastpaced short form of the game. Dravid, who finished his stint as India’s coach, is normally a quiet, stoic presence. But after the win, he was screaming and celebrating.

India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, and prime minister, Narendra Modi, both congratulated the team. “In the field, you won the World Cup. But in India’s villages, streets and communities,

you won the hearts of our compatriots,” Modi said.

Cricket, followed by hundreds of millions of people, is a crucial part of India’s global brand – perhaps even more important than the country’s film industry. The governing body of cricket in India has at times been accused of using its outsize economic heft to dictate terms around global cricket events, reflecting its status as the richest contributor and a destination for the world’s best players.

In an indication of how cash-rich India’s cricket is, Jay Shah, secretary for the Board of Control for Cricket in India, announced Sunday about $15 million in bonuses for the winning players and support staff. That is in addition to the roughly $2.5 million winner’s prize that comes with the trophy. (© The New York Times)

Iran Considers Nukes

Reports from The New York Times indicate that Iranian officials are now

actively considering producing nuclear weapons.

Iran has long had an official anti-nuclear weapon policy. However, the government has held that it could elect to start creating nukes if it is believed that Iran is in serious danger. According to The Times, Iran’s “power circles” are engaging in a “strategic debate” over whether it’s “time to weaponize the nuclear program and build a bomb.”

Iran has enough enriched uranium to create three, if not more, nuclear bombs. The country has also, in recent weeks, built 1,400 “next-generation centrifuges” at its Fordow enrichment facility. Thus, Iran is capable of doubling its nuclear inventory in a matter of weeks or months if it elects to do so. The Fordow facility is extremely

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The Week In News

deep underground, so much so that only “repeated, precise strikes” by the U.S.’s biggest “bunker buster” could possibly hit the nuclear base, according to The Times’ report.

Iran has now “cemented its role as a ‘threshold’ nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it,” the report explained based on interviews with numerous U.S., European, Iranian, and Israeli officials.

“American officials are divided on the question of whether Iran is preparing to take that final step,” the report added.

Although officials from the U.S. claim that there is no proof that Iran plans on using its uranium to build nuclear weapons, “Israelis argue that such efforts are indeed underway, under the guise of university research,” The Times added.

“Even though it would still take more than a year to actually produce a weapon, the question is whether American or Israeli spy agencies would detect the move and be able to stop it.”

At a Pentagon meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that “time is running out” to stop Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.

“The greatest threat to the future of the world and the future of our region is Iran,” said Gallant. “Now is the time to realize the commitment of the American administrations over the years to promise to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.”

Fearing that Iran could start producing a nuclear bomb as soon as this coming January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly instituted several working groups two weeks ago to handle the issue.

against Hamas.

Since the tragic day of October 7, 173 shipments from U.S. military and civilian cargo planes have arrived in Israel. Most of the deliveries took place in October, which saw 22 shipments; November, which saw 47; December, with 32; and January, with 20. Starting in February, the number of weapon shipments saw a major drop, according to Haaretz, with the U.S. sending just eight planes in February and eleven planes in March. In the wake of Iran’s unprecedented drone attack on Israel, the U.S. sent seventeen planes to the Jewish state in April. In May, seven U.S. deliveries arrived in Israel via plane, while in June, only nine planes landed.

Haaretz’s figures exclude the 100 leased cargo planes that weren’t sent from U.S. Army bases. Additionally, the U.S. planes that arrived in Israel during diplomatic visits were also not included in the statistics. U.S. maritime arms shipments to Israel were also excluded from the published figures.

In separate statements, the Biden administration and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the U.S. and Israel were working on settling the weapons issue. A top official from the Biden administration announced that there have been some unintentional “bottlenecks” in the U.S.’s weapon deliveries to Israel.

“There are some things we are able to maybe pull up a little faster or reprioritize,” the official admitted. “The progress made [during Gallant’s meetings] was the ability to sit down with the people who do this work every day and go through every single case and where it is in the system.”

U.S. Weapons to Israel Decreased

According to statistics released by Haaretz on Thursday, U.S. weapon deliveries to Israel began declining sharply four months into Israel’s war

Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the U.S. was “withholding” weapons shipments to Israel, causing a “dramatic drop” in deliveries. In response, the U.S. insisted that only one heavy bomb shipment had been withheld.

The Week In News

According to another U.S. official, fewer weapons have been sent to Israel because the Jewish state hasn’t been requesting as many weapons as of late, since the war in Gaza has been slightly cooling.

The U.S. has delivered over $6.5 billion worth of weapons to Israel since October 7, according to a senior Biden administration official, almost $3 billion of which was sent in May.

Jenin Terror Attack Kills One Soldier

In an effort to eliminate Hamas terrorists in the West Bank city of Jenin, the IDF conducted an overnight operation from last Wednesday night to early Thursday. During the operation, one soldier was killed and sixteen others were injured.

The slain soldier was 22-year-old Cpt. Alon Sacgui, a resident of Hadera who served as the Kfir Brigade’s Haruv reconnaissance unit’s sniper team commander.

The soldiers were in a Panther armored personnel carrier when an underground bomb exploded at around midnight, causing slight injuries to those inside the tank. After more troops arrived to help evacuate the injured soldiers, a second improvised explosive device (IED) exploded, killing Sacgui and causing ten light injuries, as well as five moderate and one serious injury. Early IDF investigations found that the killed soldier and those wounded were not inside the armored personnel carrier when the second bomb exploded. Those inside the tank sustained minor injuries.

As a precaution, the military used a D9 bulldozer and backhoe to search beneath the Jenin road before crossing over it, as terror groups in Jenin often place IEDs underground to ambush IDF troops. However, the bulldozer and backhoe failed to detect two big IEDs

that were buried 5 feet underground and ended up killing Sacgui and injuring sixteen other Israeli soldiers.

The attack was claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group.

Noa Argamani’s Mother Dies

Liora Argamani, Noa’s mother, died this week at a hospital in Tel Aviv. She had been suffering from brain cancer.

Noa had been kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova festival on October 7 and was rescued on June 8 by Israeli special forces. Terrorists killed 364 people at the festival and took more than 40 others into Gaza.

Ichilov Hospital said in a statement that Liora “spent her final days alongside her daughter Noa, who returned from captivity, and her close family.”

Liora, 61, had publicly appealed in November for her daughter’s release, saying she did not have long to live and wanted to see Noa before she died. She eventually became so sick that she couldn’t publicly advocate for her daughter.

In October, Liora, sitting in a wheelchair, was asked in an interview with a local television station how she imagined their reunion.

“At least to be able to hug her,” Liora answered.

On Saturday night, Noa spoke in a video that was screened during a demonstration in Tel Aviv calling for the government to reach a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.

“As an only child to my parents, as a child to a mother who is terminally ill, the thing that occupied me the most in captivity was concern for my parents,” she said, adding that it is “a great privilege to be by my mother’s side, after eight months of uncertainty.”

Noa boyfriend, Avinatan Or, is still being held hostage. At least 116 hos-

tages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza — though 42 of them have been confirmed dead. 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released prior to that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 19 hostages have been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military.

More Sorrow

Two soldiers were killed during fighting in Gaza this week as the Israeli military used fighter jets and attack helicopters to support ground troops in the Strip.

Master Sgt. (res.) Nadav Elchanan Knoller, 30, was a platoon sergeant in the 8th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 121st Battalion and was from Jerusalem. Maj. (res.) Eyal Avnion, 25, was a deputy company commander in the 8th Reserve Armored Brigade’s 121st Battalion and lived in Hod Hasharon. Unfortunately, with their deaths, the total number of lives lost in the IDF during the Hamas war comes to 322.

Another reservist of the 121st Battalion was seriously wounded in the same incident, which was still being investigated by the Israel Defense Forces.

In another incident, a soldier in the 401st Armored Brigade’s 52nd Battalion was seriously wounded by anti-tank fire in Gaza, as troops continued to battle the terror group in Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah, as well as in Gaza City’s Shejaiya, and in the Netzarim Corridor in the Strip’s center.

The IDF had ordered civilians to leave the area of Khan Younis overnight on Monday and then carried out a wave of airstrikes in the area. The strikes targeted areas where the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group had fired rockets into Israel on Monday.

At least 1.9 million Palestinians of

the 2.3 million Gazan population are currently in the “humanitarian zone,” located in the al-Mawasi area on the Strip’s coast, in western neighborhoods of Khan Younis, and in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah.

A few hundred thousand Palestinians remain in northern Gaza, according to the estimates, and around 20,000 Palestinians remain in the Rafah area.

New Mexico Flooded

Parts of New Mexico were flooded over the weekend, forcing the rescues of at least 100 people. Most of central New Mexico remained under a flood watch into Tuesday, including Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Las Vegas and Ruidoso.

The flooding severely damaged the areas left bare by wildfires; those areas are void of trees, grass and brush to halt and absorb the waters.

National Guard spokesman Hank Minitrez confirmed troops had assisted over the weekend in the rescue of at least 100 people stranded by flood waters in vehicles or otherwise, mostly in the Ruidoso area,

Ruidoso Mayor Lynn Crawford said he’d “never seen anything like that.”

“It was insane,” he said on Monday.

Ruidoso spokesperson Kerry Gladden said there had been 26 swift water rescues in their village alone on Saturday and 51 on Sunday.

According to the National Weather Service, quarter-sized hail and 60 mph wind hit the Albuquerque area late Saturday night. Heavy rain from a severe thunderstorm brought flash flooding to many parts of the city and downed power poles, leaving up to 20,000 residents without electricity for hours.

The Week In News

Boeing To Buy Spirit AeroSystems

On Monday, Boeing announced that it would be buying Spirit AeroSystems, a company that plays an important role in supplying and manufacturing airplane parts for Boeing. The acquisition values Spirit at $4.7 billion ($37.25 per share). With the manufacturing company’s net debt included, the transaction value is estimated to be $8.3 billion.

In March, Boeing initially declared that it intended to acquire Spirit, which was owned by Boeing until it was sold in 2005. By reacquiring Spirit, Boeing believes that it will be able to make its airplanes more safe.

“We believe this deal is in the best interest of the flying public, our airline customers, the employees of Spirit and Boeing, our shareholders, and the country more broadly,” said Dave Calhoun, the president and CEO of Boeing.

Spirit AeroSystems manufactures several important parts for a number of Boeing planes, including the 737 Max’s fuselages. After they are manufactured, the parts are sent to Boeing factories, where they are assembled. Since Spirit is also a supplier for Airbus, a competitor to Boeing, the acquisition will split the Spirit company, with Airbus purchasing the manufacturer’s “major activities” relevant to Airbus, including production of A350 fuselage sections in Kinston, North Carolina, and St. Nazaire, France, as well as A220 wings and mid-fuselage in Belfast, United Kingdom, all for just $1, according to Boeing’s rival. Spirit’s dealings with Airbus made up 19% of the supplier’s 2023 revenue, or $1.1 billion.

Spirit will pay Airbus $559 million in compensation. Although Boeing initially sought to force Airbus to pay more money, Spirit refused to participate in such a deal.

In January, an Alaska Airlines 737 Max had a door plug blowout mid-flight.

Many other incidents, as well as a number of whistleblowers, have raised concerns over the safety of Boeing airplanes.

Stay Away from Soda

Want to live longer? Don’t eat ultraprocessed foods. According to a new study, eating those foods can reduce a person’s lifespan by 10%

The study – still unpublished – followed 500,000 people over three decades. It noted that the risk went up to 15% for men and 14% for women once the data was adjusted, said study lead author Erikka Loftfield, an investigator at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Asked about their consumption of 124 foods, people in the top 90th percentile of ultraprocessed food consumption said overly processed drinks topped their list.

“Diet soft drinks were the key contributor to ultraprocessed food consumption. The second one was sugary soft drinks,” Loftfield noted. “Beverages are a very important component of the diet and the contribution to ultraprocessed food.”

After drinks, refined grains such as ultraprocessed breads and baked goods were popular with consumers.

The NOVA classification system sorts foods from minimally processed like whole foods such as fruits and vegetables to processed foods such as deli meat and sausage to ultraprocessed. Ultraprocessed foods contain ingredients “never or rarely used in kitchens, or classes of additives whose function is to make the final product palatable or more appealing,” according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The list of additives includes preservatives to resist mold and bacteria; emulsifiers to keep incompatible ingredients from separating; artificial colorings and dyes; anti-foaming, bulking,

bleaching, gelling and glazing agents; and added or altered sugar, salt and fats designed to make food appetizing.

The preliminary study, presented Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition in Chicago, analyzed dietary data gathered in 1995 from nearly 541,000 Americans ages 50 to 71 who were participating in the US National Institutes of HealthAARP Diet and Health Study.

Researchers linked the dietary data to death rates over the next 20 to 30 years. Compared with those in the bottom 10% of ultraprocessed food consumption, people who ate the most overly processed food were more likely to die from heart disease or diabetes, according to the study. Unlike other studies, however, researchers found no rise in cancer-related death.

The U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans already recommends limiting sugar-sweetened beverages, which have been linked to premature death and the development of chronic disease. A March 2019 study found women who drank more than two servings a day of sugary beverages – defined as a standard glass, bottle or can – had a 63% increased risk of premature death compared with women who drank them less than once a month. Men who did the same had a 29% increase in risk.

Scientists say that people should stay away from processed meats such as bacon, hot dogs, sausages, ham, corned beef, jerky and deli meats; studies have linked red and processed meats to bowel and stomach cancers, heart disease, diabetes and early death from any cause.

Ultraprocessed food manufacturing has exploded since the mid-1990s, with estimates that nearly 60% of the average American’s daily calories come from ultraprocessed foods.

she decided to test their knowledge and train them to identify numbers, colors and letters.

“Their job was to only peck the number or letter that I taught them to peck and ignore the other ones. Even if I add a whole bunch of other letters that aren’t the letter they are supposed to peck, they will just peck the letter that I trained them to peck,” Carrington explained.

Carrington decided to have all of her chickens attempt the Guinness World Records title for the most tricks by a chicken in one minute.

One of the chickens, Lacy, emerged as the clear winner of the flock, correctly identifying six letters, numbers and colors in one minute.

The focused nature of the tricks led Guinness World Records to create a new category for Lacy: the most identifications by a chicken in one minute.

“The chicken is a very underestimated animal, and I think if you could stop to think the chicken is a smart animal ... you could maybe look at other animals and think ‘Maybe they’re smarter than I thought,’” Carrington said.

So they’re not so bird-brained after all…

An Honest Day’s Work

Chicken Scratch

These fowl are not just fine feathered; they are fine readers, too.

Last year, Emily Carrington, a veterinarian, bought five chickens. She had wanted the hens to produce eggs for her, but once she got them,

Hadjer Al-Ali is an honest homeless man living in Amsterdam. Looking for empty plastic bottles in public trash cans at the Amsterdam central

The Week In News

station, Hadjer found a wallet stuffed with 2,000 euros in cash. Although the wallet did not have any identifying information on it, he turned in the wallet – and the cash – to police.

“Because we think that honesty should pay, he got a ‘silver thumb’ prize that we sometimes give to citizens and a gift voucher worth 50 euros,” authorities added.

If the money is not claimed within one year, it will go to the finder.

But when the public heard what Hadjer did, donations poured in for the man who had been living on the streets for 18 months. An online campaign raised more than 34,000 euros in just one day. People have sent him messages offering him a job.

“I want to thank everyone so, so, so much... I can’t describe how I’m feeling at the moment... I’ve been inundated by people saying the sweetest, nicest, things,” Hadjer said in a video post on Instagram.

“I can’t find the words, I don’t know what to say, I’m full of adrenaline,” he added, saying he could rebuild his life with the money collected.

Can’t bottle up those feelings of happiness.

Spiderman Arrested

Climbing buildings is his forte, but police aren’t too happy with Marcin Banot scaling tall buildings.

The Polish daredevil was arrested in Buenos Aires on Tuesday as he tried to climb a 30-story building without ropes, only to be removed by firefighters.

Banot was dressed in an Argentine football jersey and was intercepted after climbing 25 floors of the Globant building as onlookers gathered below.

More than 30 firefighters, ambulances and police cars were rushed to the scene after someone inside the building

called police.

Banot had tried to climb the same building last week but was prevented by authorities.

The 36-year-old has pulled similar stunts in other countries and has hundreds of thousands of followers on social networks.

Can we call him a social climber?

Big Bike

Ivan Schalk had big dreams. The Dutch man had always wanted to build the world’s longest bicycle. Now, with a team of engineering experts, the 39-yearold achieved the feat with a bike that measures 180 feet and 11 inches long.

“I’ve been thinking about the idea for years. I once received a Guinness World Records book in which I came across this record,” he told Guinness World Records.

Schalk, who has experience building carnival floats, finally set out to make his dream into a reality, and recruited a few fellow Prinsenbeek residents to his cause.

“Prinsenbeek is known for its volunteers and high technical employability,”

Schalk said. “You can hang out in front of the TV, but we’re not like that here in Prinsenbeek. We have the technical knowledge and want to apply this knowledge to the maximum.”

The team spent years building the dream bike, pausing for two years because of the pandemic. Finally, they took their big bike for a 100-meter ride, with one team member operating the handlebars up front and another pedaling in the back.

The team then broke the record for the world’s longest tandem bicycle by adding extra pedals and more team members into the mix.

The bicycle will now have a new home at the local history museum in Prinsenbeek.

Wonder if you need a bigger helmet to ride such a big bike.

Torah Thought

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

By Rabbi Zvi Teichman

This week we retell the fatal episode of the ‘mother of all disputes’, that of Korach and his cohorts.

Despite Korach’s frustration in the ‘inferior’ position he held vis-a-vis Moshe and Aharon, we are taught that there was one final ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’, leading towards Korach’s full blown rebellion.

When Korach and his fellow Levites were instructed by Moshe to take a razor and shave off all their hair as part of their initiation to their new roles, everything unraveled. (ז ח רבדמב)

Korach’s wife observed her husband totally shorn, a shocking sight indeed. Imagine, Korach who is described in the Zohar (.טמ ג"ח) as the םיולה לכמ לודג,

the ‘greatest among all Levites’, who certainly must have sported an impressive ‘rabbinical’ beard, and who was no youngster at the time, suddenly walks in the door utterly bald! Infuriated, she exclaims angrily, “Moshe is treating you like ‘excrement’!”

(ד חי ר"דמב, .יק ןירדהנס )

It was at this fatal moment that he initiated the uprising that ended so tragically.

Ironically, the same Zohar tells us that Korach who was created as an ‘image of the above’, received his unique name specifically because of this special halacha requiring a onetime shearing of all his hair, חרק meaning ‘bald’.

What was the secret of this mysterious title of fame?

In contrast to the ‘foolish wife’ of Korach who ‘handily led to the destruction of her home’, the ‘wisdom of the wife’ of Ohn ben Peles ‘built her home.’ (א די ילשמ)

The Talmud (םש) relates how Ohn, who had sworn allegiance with the rebels, feared they would come to get him to join the insurrection. His wife cleverly induced him into a drunken slumber. She stood at the door of her home with her hair uncovered anticipating that when the ‘posse’ would come to fetch him they would quickly detour upon discovering her with exposed hair. She succeeded and he was spared.

Korach and his wife’s self-destructive quest for hair seems to be intriguingly contrasted with Ohn’s wife’s proud display of her hair that saved her husband from the fate of the rebels!

What are our Sages trying to teach us?

Lastly, there is a tradition from the Holy Arizal that the Prophet Shmuel, a descendant of Korach indeed “corrected” the sin of his grandfather Korach.

Fascinatingly, there is an opinion that Shmuel HaNavi was a Nazir Olam, a category of Nazarite who never cuts his hair completely, leaving it to eternally grow. (.וס ריזנ)

How incongruous, that Korach is thusly named accentuating ‘baldness’, yet his ‘tikkun’ is from Shmuel, who from birth is destined never to remove his hair!

What is the deeper symbolism behind all these ‘hairy’ issues?

The Great Malbim (תורעשו םינש ךרע למרכה) writes: Hair... is what is produced from the inner excesses of the body that escape outward... The Masters of the hidden wisdom, the sages of truth, use the term “hair” ... to allude to the sprouting forth of numerous inner intellectual ideas and emotions that a person achieves... that are symbolized by the physical hair that penetrates outward from within...

The Hebrew word הרעש for hair is like the word הרעס which can mean a tempest or excitement, appropriately so since hair is the outward expression of the storming emotions that stir beneath it that erupts wildly above. (.זט

The Great Maharal directs us to the Torah’s first portrayal of this idea as evidenced in the emphasis the Torah places in observing the contrast between the ‘hirsute’ Esav and the ‘smooth’ skinned Yaakov.

The tame, pure and controlled nature of Yaakov is smooth and complete, as opposed to the constant and uncontrolled

growth of hair emblematic of the deficient and incomplete essence of Esav. (הבושת

The human mind and soul are comprised of many ambitions and drives. When they are defined and directed in purposeful goals is the moment that man discovers perfection. When each emotion and thought entangles confusingly absent of calm and focused thinking, that is when man becomes frustrated and anxious.

The Talmud points out that despite the hundreds of thousands of hairs on a human head, nevertheless each one stems from its own follicle. If two hairs came from the same follicle, the person would be blinded. (.זט ב"בב)

Perhaps this infers that if we don’t comprehend the exact source of our many drives, we become blinded to the reality around us and will act out of confused ambition to the detriment of our own healthy personal development and will impose our ambitions inappropriately.

The Levites were summoned to represent the Jewish ideal of self-perfection. Their induction would require a declaration of their willingness to shed selfish ambition for the sake of absolute devotion to Hashem.

Korach was a tempest of many stirring positive emotions but was unwilling to contemplate his true purpose. He couldn’t face the ‘bald truth’!

Men particularly are subject to the scatteredness that develops from multiple aspirations that lead them astray from their specific purpose. Women on the other hand have the capacity to ‘multi-task’, using their manifold talents and dreams towards one goal — the construction of a home.

The wife of Ohn smartly utilized the symbol of her eruptive inner self to preserve her home. She implemented the understanding that each hair indeed has its own follicle, and therefore never became short-sighted as the wife of Korach did.

The Nazir epitomizes the one who can tame and dedicate his storming soul into one directed goal, not succumbing to personal temptation.

Shmuel HaNavi finally brought the raging ambition of his ancestor to its ultimate perfection!

May we calmly identify and understand our drives and emotions so that we may place each one in its befitting ‘follicle’, thereby serving G-d with a clear, positive and calm purpose.

You may reach the author at: Ravzt@ ohelmoshebaltimore.com

OVERVIEW PARSHA

Korach's leads a rebellion against Moshe and Aaron. Moshe tries to reconcile, but to no avail. Korach and his followers get swallowed by the earth. Many Jewish people die in aplague. Aharon's position of authority is confirmed. The Parshah also discusses guarding the Mishkan, as well as gifts to the Levites and Priests.

Quotable Quote “ ”

“To be cured of potential violence towards the Other, I must be able to imagine myself as the Other.”

- Rabbi Lord J. Sacks zt”l

GEMATRIA

There are exactly 95 pesukim that make up Parshas Korach. It's interesting, the mistake of Korach was that he didn't see הפי , as Rashi says:

Fascinatingly, the gematria of

is 95!

Rabbi Ori Strum is the author of Ready. Set. Grow. (Mosaica Press).

His shiurim and other Jewish content can be found on Torah Anytime and Meaningful Minute. He also likes your feedback: rabbistrumo@gmail.com

TSorahparks

Inspiration. Everywhere.

Pesukim - 95

Words - 1,409 PARSHA STATS

Letters - 5,325

Mitzvos - 9

Thoughts in

QUICK VORT Chassidus

The very first Rashi in Parshas Korach, at first glance, is quite strange. Rashi says:

- this passage is beautifully expounded in the Midrash R' Tanchuma.

Why does Rashi feel the need to say this? It's not typical for him to explain a passuk in this way, to tell us to look somewhere else.

Perhaps, Rashi - by saying this pshat - is actually explaining the overall mistake of Korach, and as such, is giving us a practical takeaway lesson from Parshas Korach.

Korach had an inability to see הפיto see the beauty and good - in someone else. This mentality led to his demise.

Rashi, to explain the mistake of Korach, starts off by saying: This passage is תשרדנ

- beautifully expounded - in the Midrash... There is beauty in what he has, and I recognize that. Korach failed to live in this way. Let us see the הפי in others!

The Noam Elimelech says an amazing thing.

When the Mishnah in Avos says

- this is the argument of Korach and his assembly - it doesn't say who they argued against.

Why?

Because, in essence, they were arguing amongst each other! Each one had their own negative approach and preconceived notion!

Points to

Ponder

The same Hebrew letters that make up the word Korach — חרק — can also spell Kerach, which means ice!

I challenge you to think about the possible deeper connection between Korach and ice!

Feel free to submit your responses, I’m curious what you have to say!

Parshas Korach on

Every year, when we approach Parshas Korach, we attempt to understand the nature of Korach’s rebellion against Moshe and Hashem. The parsha begins (Bamidbar 16:3), “And they gathered against Moshe and Aharon, and they said to them, ‘You have more than enough! The entire congregation is holy, and Hashem is among them. Why do you exalt yourselves over the congregation of Hashem?’” Rashi there explains that Korach’s complaint was that “they all heard the words from Hashem’s mouth.” In other words, the entire Jewish people are prophets because they heard “Anochi Hashem Elokecha, I am the Hashem your G-d” and “Lo yehiyeh lecha, You shall have no other gods before Me” from G-d’s mouth, so why do they need Moshe Rabbeinu?

The Yismach Moshe said that he remembered three of his previous lives. He remembered that one of those lives was during the generation of the desert. He remembered that Korach was a very big person and not simply an honor seeker. Korach spoke of very exalted concepts, and he remembers that it was a very difficult test to avoid following Korach. The Yismach Moshe remembered that, with much difficulty, he avoided taking sides in the dispute between Korach and Moshe. Although it was extremely tempting, he did not follow Korach, though he did not support Moshe either.

A simple reading of the pesukim yields the impression that Moshe was all alone with no supporters. The Gemara, however, tells us that the sun and moon came to defend Moshe Rabbeinu.

From the Fire

Parshas Korach Turning Toward the Source of Light

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted for publication by

Binyomin Wolf

According to the Gemara (Nedarim 39b), “The sun and the moon ascended from the heavens and said before [Hashem], ‘Master of the World, if you justify [Moshe] ben Amram, we will illuminate, and if not we will not illuminate” and the world will be plunged into darkness. We must understand why it was the sun and moon in particular that came to Moshe’s defense. In addition, we see that Moshe’s challenge to Korach was set for the following morning, the intersection between day and night, during the transition between the time of the sun and the time of the moon, as it says (Bamidbar 16:5), “in the morning, Hashem will make it known who He has chosen.”

In order to understand how the sun and the moon connect to the dispute between Korach and Moshe, we must first understand how the Jewish people

received the Torah on Sinai. The Gemara (Shabbos 82b) tells us, “When Moshe ascended to the higher world, the ministering angels said before Hashem, ‘What is this child of a woman doing among us?’ Hashem said to them, ‘He has come to receive the Torah.’ They said, ‘You seek to give this treasure which has been hidden for nine hundred and seventy-four generations to flesh and blood?!’” We see from this episode that the Torah is so lofty and exalted that it is completely unfathomable that a human being can have any connection to the Divine wisdom of the Torah.

The biggest miracle in history, bigger than the splitting of the Red Sea and the plagues in Egypt, is the fact that Moshe brought Divine wisdom down to earth and that we still have it today. The angels’ claim sounds true. How is it pos -

sible that Hashem’s thoughts, as embodied in the Torah, can be understood or remembered by man? Although it seems as if such a thing is not possible, we know that this is indeed what transpires when a Jew studies Torah. And this only happens through the process outlined in the introduction to Pirkei Avos, “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Yehoshua...”

The miracle of our connection to the Torah only exists because of the unbroken chain of the mesorah, the tradition from Moshe Rabbeinu who brought the Torah from the heavens until today.

Therefore, if a person separates himself from his rebbeim, teachers, the gedolei Yisroel, and the tzaddikim, who serve as his link to Moshe and Har Sinai, then he has no way to effect the miracle of the Torah’s connection with his mind. Without a connection to the unbroken chain reaching back to Moshe Rabbeinu, the miraculous link between heaven and earth, his mind once again becomes a piece of flesh and blood that can no longer contain the Divine wisdom of the Torah.

When we nullify ourselves to our teachers and the tzaddikim, the masters of the mesorah, the tradition leading back to Har Sinai, we connect to the unbroken chain connecting us to Moshe Rabbeinu and the Giver of the Torah Himself.

It is said that the Divrei Chaim of Zanz, zy”a, had a chavrusa with the author of the Minchas Chinuch. Although both men were giants in Torah, their study sessions were “not going.” After discussing the issue, they decided that their chavrusa was not succeeding because there was no “giver/receiver” re -

lationship between them. As we said above, the Torah was meant to be transmitted from rebbe to student throughout the generations. Because both giants in Torah were on equal footing, there was no “giver/receiver” dynamic in their chavrusa, and it was not working out. They therefore decided that every day they would switch off so that one day, the Divrei Chaim would be the “rebbe” and the Minchas Chinuch would be the “student,” and the next day, it would be the opposite. Only then was their chavrusa successful.

We can now understand the problem with Korach. Because he said, “We are all neviim , prophets, so we no longer need Moshe Rabbeinu,” he severed his connection to Har Sinai and the Giver of the Torah. He lost everything. The Jewish people are compared to the moon (See Sukkah 29a, Bereishis Raba 6:3), which can only give over the light it receives from the sun. It has no light of its own. If the moon were to consider itself self-sufficient and say that it does not need the light of the sun, it would no longer have any light at all. Every month on Rosh Chodesh, the moon “runs out” of light and once again turns to the sun to receive its light and then begins to shine again till it reaches its fullness in the middle of the month. Similarly, when Korach said that the Jewish people no longer needed Moshe, his claim threatened to sever the link between the Divine and mankind, which would have had cataclysmic consequences.

That is why the sun and moon told Hashem that they would not shine if Hashem failed to justify Moshe in his dispute with Korach. If the Jewish people lost the giver/receiver relationship connecting them to the source of Divine light, the sun and moon would also cease their giver/receiver relationship and the world would be deprived of physical light as well. If the giver/receiver, rebbe/ student, or parent/child relationship is broken down, we no longer have any true existence. The sun would never rise and the moon would disappear.

The Gemara in Bava Basra 74a relates a story in connection with this point in one of the wondrous tales told by Raba bar Bar Chana:

[The Arab Merchant] said to me, “Come, I will show you the hole in the ground which swallowed up Korach.” I went, and I saw two cracks which were emitting smoke. He took a few pieces of wool, soaked them in water, put them on the tip of a spear and inserted them into the cracks.

When he took them out, they were singed. He said to me, “Tell me what you hear.” [I put my ear near the cracks in the ground] and I heard them saying, “Moshe and his Torah are true, and we are the liars!” The Arab said to me that every thirty days, they are shaken up in Gehenom and brought to this place like meat that is being stirred in a pot and they say, “Moshe and his Torah are true, and we are the liars!”

locaust and Judaism and now insisted that she wanted to become a Jew. He asked if Rav Gutnik could please “talk some sense into her” and convince her not to abandon her family’s ways. Although he was reluctant to get involved in the affairs of a non-Jewish family, Rav Gutnik agreed in order to simply do someone a favor.

When Rav Gutnik met with the girl, she insisted that she wanted to convert. He tried to explain to her that every-

Just

like the moon recognizes on Rosh Chodesh that it needs the sun in order to have light, Korach now recognizes every Rosh Chodesh that the Jewish people are nothing without Moshe Rabbeinu,

Because the Rebbe had said so, Rav Gutnik dutifully called the family, explaining that although he did not know why, the Rebbe in New York told him that he should meet with the girl’s mother. A few minutes after the mother sat down to meet with him, she began crying and confessed that she was really Jewish, that she had survived the Holocaust, and that because of her horrific experiences, she wanted to run away from everything Jewish, fled to Melbourne, and hid the fact that she was Jewish. She told him that even her husband did not know she was really Jewish.

According to the Rashbam, when the Gemara says that every thirty days, Korach and his followers call out, “Moshe and his Torah are true,” it means they make this proclamation every Rosh Chodesh. Just like the moon recognizes on Rosh Chodesh that it needs the sun in order to have light, Korach now recognizes every Rosh Chodesh that the Jewish people are nothing without Moshe Rabbeinu, who serves as the link to Har Sinai and Divine wisdom. Korach now realizes his mistake. Just like it is obvious that the moon has no light if it does not turn to the sun, if a Jew turns away from his rebbeim, teachers, and the tzaddikim like Korach did to Moshe, that Jew has no existence.

The third of Tammuz is the yahrtzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zy”a, and I would be remiss if I did not tell over a story about the Rebbe. Recently, I asked a talmid of mine who is a Lubavitcher for a story about the Rebbe that I had not heard before, and he told me the following:

The well-known philanthropist and businessman, R’ Yosef Gutnik of Melbourne, Australia, is the son of an important rav and talmid chochom in Melbourne, Rav Chaim Gutnik. Approximately 45 years ago, a non-Jewish man called Rav Gutnik asking for help. He explained that his fourteen-year-old daughter learned about the Holocaust in school and became obsessed with it. She began reading books about the Ho -

one grows up in a certain way and that she should follow in her parents’ ways. Judaism does not seek converts – she could live a righteous life as a gentile following the seven Noachide laws. If she wanted to consider conversion as an adult, that was another matter, but she should follow her parents as long as she was living in their home. She compliantly agreed, and he thought that was the end of it.

But a few weeks later, the man called Rav Gutnik again, complaining that his daughter was crying every day that she had to become Jewish. He asked if the rav could speak with her one more time. He agreed and met with the girl. After trying to convince her once again to listen to her parents, she refused to listen, saying that she simply had to become Jewish. Rav Gutnik then made the following proposal. He told her about the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York. He told her that the Rebbe speaks English and that she should write about her predicament to the Rebbe and that Rav Gutnik would support whatever the Rebbe advised her to do. Rav Gutnik gave her the address, she agreed, went home, and wrote the letter.

A few weeks after his last meeting with the daughter, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s secretary called Rav Gutnik with a message from the Rebbe. The Rebbe told Rav Gutnik that he should stop speaking with the girl’s father and should instead speak with her mother.

Rav Gutnik now understood the girl’s connection with Yiddishkeit. And the irony of the fact that it was the Holocaust which caused the girl’s mother to run away from Yiddishkeit and which caused her daughter to become interested in Yiddishkeit was not lost on Rav Gutnik. Amazed that the Rebbe knew to tell him to speak with the girl’s mother, the next time he was in New York, he asked the Rebbe how he knew that he should talk to the girl’s mother. The Rebbe told him that it was not ruach hakodesh, Divine inspiration (although no Lubavitcher would believe that). Instead, after reading the passionate letter written by this girl, the Rebbe felt that it simply could not be that such a letter was written by a non-Jew. He therefore assumed that she must already be Jewish. That is why he said that Rav Gutnik should speak to the girl’s mother.

A Jew can try to sever the giver/receiver relationship, like this girl’s mother did. But such a life is not a life at all. Only two things can happen if someone severs the connection. The person must either reestablish the connection and once again draw from the Divine light (as the woman’s daughter did) or the person’s existence will be completely negated and will fade away from any connection with the Jewish people.

May it be Hashem’s will that we all renew our connection to the baalei ha’mesorah, those that connect us to Moshe Rabbeinu and the Giver of the Torah, so that we will renew ourselves by turning to the Source of the Divine light, so that we will be “renewed in the future like the moon” with the coming of Moshiach, may he come soon in our days.

Rav Moshe Weinberger, shlita, is the founding Morah d’Asrah of Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, NY, and serves as leader of the new mechina Emek HaMelech.

Political Crossfire

As Iran Picks a President, a Nuclear Shift Open Talk About Building the Bomb

By David E. Sanger and Farnaz Fassihi

With the rest of the world distracted by wars in the Gaza Strip and Ukraine, Iran has moved closer than ever to the ability to produce several nuclear weapons, dramatically bolstering the speed at which it can produce nuclear fuel in recent weeks inside a facility buried so deep that it is all but impervious to bunker-busting bombs.

The sharp technological upgrade goes hand in hand with another worrisome change: For the first time, some members of Iran’s ruling elite are dropping the country’s decades-old insistence that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes. Instead, they are publicly beginning to embrace the logic of possessing the bomb, arguing that recent missile exchanges with Israel underscore the need for a far more powerful deterrent.

In interviews with a dozen American, European, Iranian and Israeli officials and with outside experts, the cumulative effect of this surge appears clear: Iran has cemented its role as a “threshold” nuclear state, walking right up to the line of building a weapon without stepping over it.

U.S. officials are divided on the question of whether Iran is preparing to take that final step or whether it will determine it is safer — and more effective — to stay just on the cusp of a weapons capability, without openly abandoning the last of its commitments as a signer of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Most officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because so much about Iran’s nuclear program, from assessments of its status to secret efforts to infiltrate and slow it, is highly classified.

And they caution that while Iran could now produce the fuel for three or more bombs in days or weeks, it would still take considerable time – maybe 18 months – for Iran to fabricate that fuel into a warhead that could be delivered

on missiles of the kind it launched at Israel in April.

But Iran’s nuclear expansion comes at the most delicate of moments.

The Iranians are acutely aware that the United States is determined to avoid a broadening of the conflict in the Middle East, and there have been back-channel messages between Washington and Iran to underscore the dangers. The Iranians themselves, one senior administration official said, know how much they have to lose if the war spreads.

Yet as one European diplomat involved in discussions with Iran put it, if the Iranians had been enriching uranium at current levels just a few years ago, when the region was not such a tinderbox, Israel would almost certainly be considering military options to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who came right to the edge of ordering such action on several occasions in the past, has said little about Iran’s recent buildup, preoccupied by the war with Hamas in Gaza and the risk that it will spread to open conflict with

Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon. There are now indications from Israeli officials, however, that they are focusing anew on Iran’s recent advances.

They are also focusing on the change in the way Iran talks about its long-running nuclear program, which Israel –sometimes with the active participation of the United States – has tried to cripple in recent years.

As Iranians prepare to go to the polls Friday to elect a successor to President Ebrahim Raisi, who was killed in a helicopter crash last month along with the foreign minister, top Iranian officials have dropped the ritual assurances that Iran has only peaceful uses in mind for its nuclear program. One official close to Iran’s supreme leader recently declared that if Iran faces an existential threat, it would “reconsider its nuclear doctrine.”

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, raised Iran’s nuclear surge in meetings this week with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and CIA Director William Burns, people familiar with the meetings said.

In April, Iran had fired hundreds

of missiles and drones at Israel, most of which Israel intercepted. But the attack, which was retaliation for an Israeli strike that killed several Iranian armed forces commanders at Iran’s embassy compound in Syria, was a serious escalation. The Iranians most likely emerged from the experience determined that the country needed a more potent deterrent, U.S. officials and outside experts have concluded.

“Iran is sending a clear message that if the pressure of sanctions continues, if assassination of its commanders continues and if Washington or Israel decides to tighten the noose, it will then break all the chains,” said Hossein Alizadeh, a former Iranian diplomat who defected in 2010. He spoke from Britain, where he now lives.

According to independent estimates based on production statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which still has limited access to Iran’s facilities, the country has now enriched enough uranium at 60% purity – which can be converted to bomb-grade fuel in days or weeks – to make at least three weapons.

David Albright, a nuclear expert, said in an interview that once Iran finishes installing the new centrifuges in Fordo, its underground facility, Iran should be able to double that inventory in a matter of weeks or months.

Even though it would still take more than a year to actually produce a weapon, the question is whether U.S. or Israeli spy agencies would detect the move and be able to stop it.

In a statement issued Monday, the United States, Germany, Britain and France underscored the dangers.

“Iran is growing its stockpile of high-enriched uranium to levels unprecedented for a state without a nuclear weapons program,” the countries said, adding that “such activity has no credible civilian justification.”

Facilities Left in Place, and a Deal Abandoned

The last time Washington felt it faced a true nuclear crisis with Iran was 2013, when President Barack Obama dispatched Burns, then a top State Department official, and Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to explore the possibilities of a deal with the newly elected Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani.

Burns and Sullivan – who today, in very different roles, remain key players in the decision about how to deal with Iran’s expanding capabilities – emerged with a six-month deal to restrain the Iranian program in return for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. An acrimonious on-again, off-again negotiation followed for a permanent deal, and one was struck in the middle of 2015.

Under its terms, 97% of Iran’s nuclear fuel was shipped out of the country to Russia, which at the time was working alongside the United States, the European Union, Britain, France, Germany and China to keep Iran from obtaining a weapon.

But there was a weakness in the deal, acknowledged by negotiators at the time.

Iran insisted that it had to hold onto its major enrichment facilities, resisting American and European demands that they be dismantled. So the underground facility at Fordo remained, spinning nonnuclear material – a concession that the lead U.S. negotiator referred to at the time as a “bitter pill.”

So did the main enrichment site at Natanz, which is much closer to the surface and easier to destroy. (Iran is now building a deep-underground facility at Natanz, but it will not be ready, U.S. intelligence officials estimate, for several years.)

While the U.S. and Israeli air forces often practiced what it would take to bomb Fordo, even building a mock-up of the site in the Nevada desert, military officials say it would take repeated, precise strikes by the U.S.’ largest “bunker buster” to reach down that deep.

For all the recriminations nine years ago from Republicans in Congress about the nuclear agreement, Iran initially stuck to its terms, limiting its production to token amounts of nuclear fuel. IAEA inspectors came and went with regularity, and while there were arguments about reconstructing the history of Iran’s past activities, the agency’s cameras provided a 24/7 eye on the chain of custody of Iranian fuel.

And, largely out of the sight of inspectors, Iran developed its new IR-6 centrifuges, able to produce fuel far faster than the old IR-1s that it struggled with for years, preparing for the day when, under the provisions of the agreement, it could install the new machinery.

Then President Donald Trump abandoned the 2015 accord. He argued that the reimposition of sanctions would break the Iranian regime and predicted that the country would beg for a new deal.

Trump was wrong on both counts. The Iranians slowly began reactivating the plants. They removed some cameras and banned some inspectors. And they began enriching to 60% purity – putting the country far closer to bomb fuel than when Burns and Sullivan were sent off for secret negotiations 11 years ago.

An effort by the Biden administration to reconstruct the key elements of the deal collapsed in 2022. Rafael Grossi, the director general of the IAEA, said after a recent trip to Tehran, Iran, that the 2015 deal that Trump pulled out of is now dead.

“Nobody applies it, nobody follows it,” he told a Russian newspaper recently. “There have been attempts to revive it here in Vienna. But unfortunately, although they were relatively close to success, they failed for reasons unknown to me.”

Denials of Weapons

Plans

Begin to Crack

Iran has insisted that it cannot manufacture or use nuclear weapons because of a 2003 “fatwa,” or religious edict, issued by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The country said the fatwa remained in effect even after Israel stole, and then made public, a huge archive of Iranian documents that made plain the country was trying to design a weapon.

U.S. officials say there is no evidence of a current effort to weaponize Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium; Israelis argue that such efforts are indeed underway, under the guise of university research.

For Iran, the risks of moving to weaponization are high. While Iran has removed or deactivated some of the IAEA’s cameras, it is clear that the program is deeply penetrated by Israeli, American and British intelligence services.

The cat-and-mouse game with inspectors and Israeli and Western spies

has been going on for years. But the recent nuclear expansion can be traced to the missile launches in April, when Iran and Israel went to the brink of war.

Soon after, three senior officials with close ties to Khamenei began declaring that Iran’s no-weapons doctrine was reversible if the country faced an existential threat. (Shiite Islam allows clerical scholars to reverse edicts and fatwas to reflect the demands of current times.)

The officials were Kamal Kharazi, an adviser on foreign policy to Khamenei and a former foreign minister; Abbas Araghchi, a prominent diplomat who served as deputy foreign minister and a nuclear negotiator for the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers; and Gen. Ahmad Haq Taleb, a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who serves as the commander for protecting and defending Iran’s nuclear sites.

If Israel threatened Iran’s nuclear facilities, Haq Talab said in a speech in mid-April, “it’s entirely possible and imaginable that the Islamic Republic will reconsider its nuclear doctrine and policies and reverse its previously stated positions.”

A few weeks later, Kharazi told Al-Jazeera that Iran had the capacity

to produce a nuclear bomb but that it has not decided to do so.

“If Iran’s existence is threatened, we will have no choice but to reverse our nuclear doctrine,” he said.

And in late May, Araghchi said at a conference in Doha, Qatar, that Israeli attacks “could force others to rethink their security calculations and their nuclear postures.”

The statements seemed coordinated, or at least a reflection of the debate taking shape within Iran’s power circles about whether it was time to weaponize the nuclear program and build a bomb, according to four Iranian officials, including diplomats and members of the Revolutionary Guard. All were privy to the continuing strategic debate.

Sharp divisions remain, but “at this point, many Iranians are starting to believe and say out loud that building nuclear deterrence, given all the threats we face, is not just a military strategy,” said Mehdi Chadeganipour, who served as an adviser to former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “It is pure common sense.”

© The New York Times

Shacharis

Neitz Beit Yaakov [Sefaradi] M-F

Ohel Yakov S-F

6:00 AM Shomrei Emunah Congregation M-F

6:10 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore M, Th

6:15 AM Kol Torah M, TH

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah M-F

Shearith Israel Congregation M, TH

The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei IsraelM, TH

6:20 AM Agudah of Greenspring M, TH

Agudath Israel of Baltimore S, T, W, F

Arugas HaBosem (Rabbi Taub's) S-F

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation M-F

Kehilath B'nai Torah M, TH

Pikesville Jewish CongregationM, TH

Shomrei Emunah CongregationS, M, TH

6:25 AM The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei IsraelT, W, F

6:30 AM Agudah of Greenspring T, W, F

Chabad of Park Heights M-F

Darchei Tzedek M-F

Kehilath B'nai Torah T, W, F

Khal Bais Nosson M-F

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek M-F

Kol Torah T, W, F

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah M-F

Ohr Yisroel M-F

Pikesville Jewish CongregationT, W, F

Shearith Israel Congregation T, W, F

Shomrei Emunah CongregationT, W, F

6:35 AM Aish Kodesh (downstairs Minyan)M, TH

Ohel Moshe M, TH

6:40 AM Aish Kodesh (downstairs Minyan)T, W, F

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion CongregationM, TH

6:45 AM B”H and Mesivta of Baltimore (Dirshu Minyan) S-F

Beth Abraham M, TH

Greenspring Sephardic Synagogue M-F

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

Ner Tamid M-F

Ohel Moshe T, W, F

Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim M-F

6:50 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore M, TH

Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] M, TH

Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh M, TH

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion CongregationT, W, F

Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh M, TH

Derech Chaim M-F

Kol Torah M-F

Ohel Moshe S

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] M, TH

Shomrei Emunah CongregationM, TH

The Shul at the Lubavitch CenterM, TH

6:55 AM Beth Abraham T, W, F

Kol Torah M, TH

7:00 AM Aish Kodesh (upstairs Minyan) M-F

Agudath Israel of Baltimore S, T, W, F

Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] T, W, F

Arugas HaBosem (Rabbi Taub's)S

Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh T, W, F

Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh T, W, F Greenspring Sephardic Synagogue S

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach TzedekS

Kol Torah T, W, F

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah M-F

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S, T, W, F

Shearith Israel Congregation S, M, TH

Shomrei Emunah CongregationT, W, F

Shomrei Mishmeres Hakodesh M-F

The Shul at the Lubavitch CenterT, W, F Tiferes Yisroel M-F

7:05 AM Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's) M, TH

7:15 AM Kedushas Yisrael S Kol Torah S

Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's) S, T, W, F

For edits, additions, or sponsorships, email ads@baltimorejewishhome.com

Baltimore Weekday Minyanim Guide

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

Ner Israel Rabbinical College S-F

Shearith Israel Congregation T, W, F

Shomrei Emunah CongregationS

Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim S

The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei IsraelS

Tzeirei Anash M-F

7:20 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore M, TH

Beth Tfiloh Congregation M-F

Kol Torah M-F

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] M, TH

Shomrei Emunah CongregationM, TH

7:30 AM Agudah of Greenspring S

Agudath Israel of Baltimore S, T, W, F

Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi] S

Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim S-F

Bais Hamedrash and Mesivta of Baltimore S-F

Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh S

Beit Yaakov [Sefaradi] S

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion CongregationS

Chabad of Park Heights S

Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe AryehS-F

Darchei Tzedek S

Kedushas Yisrael S-F

Khal Bais Nosson S

Ner Israel Rabbinical College (Mechina) S-F

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S, T, W, F

Shomrei Emunah CongregationT, W, F

7:45 AM Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation M-F

Talmudical Academy S-F

Darchei Tzedek M-F

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

Mesivta Kesser Torah S-F

Mesivta Shaarei Chaim S-F

7:50 AM Derech Chaim S

Ner Tamid S

Ohel Moshe M-F

8:00 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore S-F

Beth Abraham S

Darchei Tzedek S

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach TzedekS

Kehillas Meor HaTorah S

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

Ohr Yisroel S

Pikesville Jewish CongregationS

Shearith Israel Congregation S

Shomrei Emunah Congregation S-F

The Shul at the Lubavitch CenterS

Tiferes Yisroel S

Tzeirei Anash S

Yeshiva Tiferes Hatorah S-F

8:15 AM Kehilath B'nai Torah S

Kol Torah S

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

8:20 AM Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim S-F

8:30 AM Agudath Israel of Baltimore S-F

Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's) S-F

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

Ohel Moshe S

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi] S

Shomrei Emunah Congregation S-F

Shomrei Mishmeres HakodeshS

8:45 AM Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

9:00 AM Aish Kodesh S

Agudath Israel of Baltimore S-F

Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim S

Beth Tfiloh Congregation S

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion CongregationS

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

Moses Montefiore Anshe EmunahS

Shomrei Emunah Congregation S-F

Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim S-F

9:15 AM Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

9:30 AM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

9:45 AM Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah S-F

10:00AM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah S-F

Mincha

Mincha Gedolah Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/Tzemach Tzedek

12:30 PM Kol Torah

12:50 PM One South Street, 27th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202

1:00 PM 10055 Red Run Blvd Suite 295

Milk & Honey Bistro 1777 Reisterstown RD

1:25 PM Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim

1:45 PM Ohel Moshe

Wealcatch Insurance

1:50 PM One South Street, 27th Floor (M-Th)

2:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F)

Big Al @ The Knish Shop Party Room

Kol Torah

Market Maven

Reischer Minyan - 23 Walker Ave 2nd Floor

2:15 PM Pikesville Beis Medrash - 15 Walker Ave

2:30 PM Bais Medrash of Ranchleigh

Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh Tov Pizza Mincha Minyan

Ner Israel Rabbinical College

Mesivta Shaarei Chaim (Etz Chaim Building)

Shearith Israel Congregation

2:45 PM Kollel of Greenspring

Shearith Israel Congregation (S-Th)

3:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F)

Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

3:05 PM Kedushas Yisrael

3:15 PM Hat Box

4:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th)

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

5:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F)

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

5:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th)

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

6:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-F)

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

Shearith Israel Congregation (S-Th)

6:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th)

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

7:00 PM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th)

7:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (S-Th)

14 Min Before ShkiAh Kol Torah

Mincha/Maariv Plag

Ohel Yaakov

Shomrei Emunah Congregation

Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim

Mincha/Maariv Before Shkiah

Aish Kodesh

Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Agudah of Greenspring

Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim

Beth Abraham

Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion Congregation

Darchei Tzedek

Kehillas Meor HaTorah

Kehilath B’nai Torah

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek

Machzikei Torah (Sternhill’s)

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

Ner Tamid

Ohel Moshe

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi]

Ohr Yisroel

Pikesville Jewish Congregation

Shearith Israel Congregation

Shomrei Emunah Congregation

Shomrei Mishmeres

Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim

The Adas: Chofetz Chaim Adas Bnei Israel

The Shul at the Lubavitch Center

Tiferes Yisroel

Maariv

8:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

8:45 PM Darchei Tzedek

Ner Israel Rabbinical College (Mechina)

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

Ohr Yisroel

8:50 PM Mesivta Shaarei Chaim (Etz Chaim Building)

8:55 PM Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh

9:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Arugas Habosem

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

Shomrei Emunah Congregation

Suburban Orthodox Congregation Toras Chaim

9:15 PM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

9:20 PM Kol Torah

9:30 PM Agudah of Greenspring

Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Kedushas Yisrael

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

9:40 PM Ahavat Shalom [Sefaradi]

9:45 PM Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim

Kollel Erev Birchas Yitzchok (Luries)

Kollel of Greenspring

Machzikei Torah (Sternhill's)

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

Ohr Hamizrach [Sefaradi]

Yeshiva Tiferes Hatorah

9:50 PM Aish Kodesh

Community Kollel Tiferes Moshe Aryeh

Ohel Moshe

10:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Darchei Tzedek

Kehilath B'nai Torah

Khal Ahavas Yisroel/ Tzemach Tzedek

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

Shearith Israel Congregation

Shomrei Emunah Congregation

10:05 PM Kol Torah

10:10 PM Ner Israel Rabbinical College

10:15 PM Derech Chaim

Khal Bais Nosson

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

10:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

10:45 PM Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

11:00 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore

Mercaz Torah U'Tefillah

11:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (Sunday and Thursday)

Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah

Agudah of Greenspring - 6107 Greenspring Ave Agudath Israel of Baltimore - 6200 Park Heights Ave Ahavat Shalom - 3009 Northbrook Rd

Aish Kodesh - 6207 Ivymount Rd Arugas HaBosem - 3509 Clarks Ln Bais Haknesses Ohr HaChaim - 3120 Clarks Ln Bais Hamedrash and Mesivta of Baltimore - 6823 Old Pimlico Rd Bais Medrash of

Forgotten Her es Heroes During the Revolutionary War

By Avi Heiligman

The basics facts about the American Revolutionary War that are taught in schools pretty much follow the same storyline. Patriots in the Thirteen Colonies were upset about the British rule, especially with regards to taxes, and decided to take up arms to drive out the British. The British weren’t too happy about the rebellion and sent troops to the colonies. Fighting started in 1775 with the Declaration of Independence being ratified on July 4, 1776. General George Washington became the commander of the Continental Army and had some victories as well as a few defeats until British General Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown in 1781. This led to the Treaty of Paris in 1783 with Britain acknowledging American independence. The war officially ended with the treaty, and in 1787, George Washington became the first president.

While these basic facts are correct, there are a lot of details and heroes that get overlooked in this short version.

The armed conflict began in April 1775 with colonial militia fighting the British at Lexington and Concord. They managed to push back the British to Boston – the phrase “the shot heard around the world” is attributed to the battle. The Battle of Yorktown was the last of the fighting of the war. British forces stayed in Charleston and Savanah until late 1782.

Fort Knox, Kentucky, was named after Henry Knox who witnessed the Boston Massacre in 1770. He tried to diffuse the situation but was unsuccessful. Five years later, the 25-year-old former bookseller joined the army and impressed General Washington who had come to command the army during the British siege on Boston. Knox, who was soon commissioned as a colonel in the army, realized that cannons from recently captured forts could be used to break the siege. He proposed his plan to Washington who, in turn, made him in charge of transporting the cannons over 300 miles over mountains and frozen rivers. It took six weeks to transport the cannons as they fell through the icy rivers, but the men transporting the cannons recovered them and pressed forward. They reached the heights that Washington had captured, and this forced the British to move their fleet from Boston. Knox was then chosen as Washington’s chief artillery officer, was the logistical mastermind behind the famous crossing of the Delaware River, and was very active in the victory at Yorktown. He later became the first Secretary of War for the United States.

Around 2,500 Jewish families were living in colonies in the 1770s, and about 100 of them joined the American cause for independence by taking up arms. Francis Salvador was the first Jewish

soldier to be killed while fighting the British. Born in London to a Sephardic Jewish family, he moved to the colonies and owned land in South Carolina in a district called Ninety Six or “Jew’s Land.” He soon became involved in the Revolution and was elected as a delegate to South Carolina’s Provincial Congress. Salvador was the highest-ranking Jew in the state, and he pushed for the colonies to become independent of the British.

The British riled up Native Americans to fight the colonists, and Salvador rode 30 miles to warn colonists of the danger.

The “Southern Paul Revere,” as Salvador is sometimes called, joined Major Andrew Williamson as he led a militia of 300 men to fight off the attack that also included British Loyalists. On August 1, 1776, the Americans were led into an ambush, and Salvador fell wounded into the bushes. He was found by the Indians, scalped and died of his wounds a short while later.

Baltimorean Reuben Etting heard about the Battles of Lexington and Concord and signed up to fight against the British. Unfortunately, he was taken prisoner and when the British heard he was Jewish only gave him pork to eat. He refused to eat it and survived off of scraps from other prisoners. After abuse and mistreatment by the British, Etting was released from prison but died shortly thereafter.

Not all war heroes wore uniforms, as was the case of Abigail Minis. Born in 1701 to an Ashkenazi Jewish family, Minis soon moved to the colonies with her husband Abraham and was given land in Georgia by the governor. Her husband died in 1757, leaving her to run the large plantation while caring for her eight children. During the Revolutionary War, Abigail fed and financially supported American troops who endured hardships throughout the Siege of Savannah. After Savannah fell to the British, she moved to South Carolina but not before bringing food to Jewish war hero and prisoner of war Mordecai Sheftall.

The American patriots that fought the British for their freedom during the Revolutionary War will be remembered as heroes. Not all of their stories are known to the general public, but their sacrifices allowed the United States to become an independent country. July 4 has become a day for parades, barbeques and fireworks to celebrate American independence as well as a time to reflect on the heroes of the past who have made America what it is today.

Avi Heiligman is a weekly contributor to The Jewish Home. He welcomes your comments and suggestions for future columns and can be reached at aviheiligman@gmail.com.

A painting depicting the signing of the Treaty of Paris

Reuben Etting Henry Knox

Francis Salvador

is biden Fit For office? The History of U.S. Presidents Plagued by Health Issues

By Shloime Schwartz

From the very first moments of last Thursday night’s debate, President Joe Biden’s age-related issues were on full display on the biggest stage possible. Concerns about his advanced age began while Biden was on the campaign trail in 2020 but have been downplayed by the President, his supporters, and the media. During the debate with Donald Trump last week, the reality could no longer be ignored. The president looked feeble and brain-fogged, losing his train of thought, mumbling incoherently, and staring blankly off into space. In the aftermath, his entire candidacy is being called into question, as Democrats panic and the American public debates whether their president is physically and mentally fit for office.

Biden is far from the first commander-in-chief to have his presidency affected by medical issues. Presidents are only human, and just like anyone else, when they are sick, their ability to function is impaired. But because of the position they occupy, their health issues can have reverberations that are felt far beyond the Oval Office. Throughout American history, the health of the President has often left its mark. Which doctor they went

to, or what medicine they chose, or the decision to conceal an illness have all altered the political course of the country in major ways.

Abr AhA m LincoLn

Lincoln is seen as one of the greatest presidents in American history, but he was also plagued by numerous medical issues. His tall figure and distinctive facial appearance have led to some speculation about

Lincoln suffering from Marfan’s syndrome, a genetic illness which causes issues in the joints, spine, and cardiovascular system. Lincoln also suffered from the results of illnesses, accidents, and violence including smallpox, malaria, getting kicked unconscious by a horse, having a thumb nearly severed, getting frostbite, being clubbed in the head during a robbery attempt, and being beaten by his own wife.

Despite this impressive list of physical injuries and ailments, it was emotional and mental issues that played a far greater role in Lincoln’s life and presidency. It is well documented, by sources from Lincoln’s own time and later historical research, that the president suffered from clinical depression, or “melancholy” as it was known in that era. After traumatic episodes, disappointments, failures and betrayals, Lincoln would fall into bleak depressive episodes, some of which were so severe that his friends would effectively put him on suicide watch, hiding his shaving razors and monitoring him closely. In his own writings, Lincoln describes his bleak moods with his trademark eloquence: “A storm [in his brain], punctuated

President Abraham Lincoln was plagued by melancholy

by thunderclaps of thought –self-critical, fearful, despairing…intensity of thought, which will sometimes wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to the bitterness of death.”

Lincoln dealt with his issues in a variety of ways, including seeking out humorous books, plays, and poems that would lift his mood. He also took blue mass pills, which were then a common medicine prescribed to those suffering from melancholy. Blue mass pills were made from elemental mercury and caused terrible side effects on Lincoln. Although they seemed to help his depression, they would also make his hands shake and send him into unexplainable fits of sudden rage, uncharacteristic for the usually gentle and courteous Lincoln. In 1861, five months after he was elected, Lincoln ceased taking the pills and slowly returned to himself.

In the subsequent years of his presidency, Lincoln impressed those around him with his supreme self-control and how he was able to control his anger despite the many situations that should have rightfully caused him to explode.

Ultimately, Lincoln, along with Winston Churchill, who suffered from similar issues, serve as examples of how individuals with depression can overcome their illness to accomplish great things. Author Joshua Wolf Shenk, who wrote a book about Lincoln’s depression, makes the argument that Lincoln’s sensitivity to pain and suffering – which played a role in his depressive episodes – also made Lincoln such a great leader: “If Lincoln were alive today, his condition would be treated as a ‘character issue’ – that is, as a political liability. His condition was indeed a character issue: it gave him the tools to save the nation.”

Dr.

Like several other presidents, James A. Garfield was the victim of an assassination attempt. But unlike Presidents Lincoln, Kennedy and McKinley, who quickly succumbed to their injuries, Garfield lived for two months after he was shot. In fact, many historians have made the case that medical treatment for the assassination was what actually killed Garfield, not the assassin’s bullet.

On July 2, 1881, Garfield was shot by a disgruntled and deluded Republican voter named Charles Guiteau. Guiteau, who had been kicked out of a cult in upstate New York and was living homeless on the streets of Washington, D.C., believed that he had helped Garfield win the election and that he deserved to be appointed consul to Par-

is. After stalking and harassing several members of Garfield’s staff, and having been rebuffed for the consulship, Guiteau hatched his assassination plot. He waited for Garfield in a train station and shot him twice in the back.

According to the analysis of modern physicians, Garfield’s bullet wounds were not life-threatening, and with proper medical care, he could have been back home from the hospital within three days. What led to his ultimate demise was the unsterile medical practices of the 1800s and his treatment by a quack doctor named Dr. D.W. Bliss

After traumatic episodes, disappointments, failures and betrayals, Lincoln would fall into bleak depressive episodes, some of which were so severe that his friends would effectively put him on suicide watch, hiding his shaving razors and monitoring him closely.

In the mid-1800s, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis had proposed that dirt and unsanitary conditions could spread infections and that doctors should wash their hands and sterilize their instruments. This was a new idea that met with a lot of pushback from the medical establishment, who believed that hand-washing was a practice for peasants and laborers, not highly educated doctors. Semmelweis was humiliated and disgraced by his peers for his suggestions and died a broken man, but twenty years later, his ideas had begun to be accepted.

Dr. D.W. Bliss, who was brought in to treat Garfield, belonged to the old school of medicine. Bliss had a checkered past; he had fled the field of battle at Bull Run during the Civil War, abandoning the soldier he was meant to be treating, and later on, he was jailed for taking bribes while serving as the head of a government hospital. Still, Bliss was well connected and

highly regarded by many and was selected to care for Garfield because he was known to have treated Lincoln after his assassination fifteen years earlier. While it was true that Bliss had been present at Lincoln’s deathbed, he had done nothing medically for the president, a detail he concealed from the public.

Bliss’s gruesome gaffes and blunders began from the very beginning. Alexander Graham Bell invented a special device to detect bullet shards in Garfield’s body, but Bliss used it incorrectly, then publicly bashed Graham and discredited the device as defective. He probed the president’s wounds with unwashed hands and instruments, widening them from three inches to twenty-one inches. Since the president could not eat, Bliss transfused beef extract into his patient’s body. He became fixated on the idea that the bullet was near the president’s liver and continued to search for it, causing infections and blood poisoning that eventually killed Garfield.

In the end, it was the callous ineptitude of this unscrupulous careerist that led to the death of America’s twentieth president.

WoodroW Wi L son

Some of the more conspiracy-minded commentators have suggested that the closest parallel with Joe Biden’s situation may be Woodrow Wilson, who was president from 1913-1921, during the stormy years of World War I and the uncertain era that followed.

In 1919, during his second term as president, Wilson arrived back in Washington, D.C., after a strenuous tour of the Western states, trying to convince the American public to support his proposal to form a League of Nations. He suffered a massive stroke, which left him paralyzed and partially blind. With the president incapacitated and bedridden, Wilson’s team faced a quandary. Term limits had not been instituted yet, and the popular Wilson was seeking to run for a third term in the 1920 election. The stroke, however, had wrecked Wilson’s health, and with it, his ability to govern. Doctors who assessed him said that his judgment was off, he had very little impulse control, and that he was emotionally dysregulated. Even after months of recovery, he still had not come back to himself, Wilson’s wife Edith, along with a few close advisors, kept Wilson’s condition a secret from the public. They controlled what he saw and who he spoke to,

JA mes A. GArF ie Ld

Charles Guiteau, James A. Garfield’s assassin

Bliss, who treated President James A. Garfield

President Woodrow Wilson with his wife Edith

with Edith taking the lead. She effectively became a proxy for a significant amount of presidential power, and her decisions made a big impact on governance. When the Secretary of State was found to be conducting meetings without her or the president present, she had him fired. At a time when essential international negotiations about the League of Nations were ongoing, the First Lady refused to allow the British ambassador to see the president, because one of the ambassador’s aides had made disparaging comments about her. When reviewing proposals, she would add notes, and she would review classified information despite the fact that she had no security clearance or training.

Because of her outsize influence, some historians have called Edith Wilson the first female president of the United States. Her influence can be seen in the roles of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, who despite having no qualifications other than being married to the president, sought to exercise their influence on American life via their husband’s role. Some commentators have explicitly compared Jill Biden to Edith Wilson, suggesting that she has become a shadow president behind her incapacitated husband. Eventually, Wilson’s health problems became known to the public, and despite his desire to run for a third term, he was replaced by James Cox as the Democrat candidate for the 1920 presidential election. Wilson died soon afterward, in 1924.

John F. Kennedy

For a brief time on November 22, 1963, the nation held its breath, waiting to see if the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, could save the life of the stricken young president. Ultimately, John Fitzgerald Kennedy succumbed to the assassin’s bullet, and the mourning nation was sent off on a radically different trajectory.

This was not the first time that Kennedy had been at death’s door. In 1954, when JFK was the junior senator from Massachusetts, he underwent back surgery after being told by his doctors that he was at risk of being paralyzed. The surgery led to an infection, and JFK’s condition deteriorated. He slipped into a coma, and in an eerie foreshadowing of his ultimate demise, the media alerted the nation that JFK was at death’s door.

JFK recovered from his 1954 scare, but the myriad issues that had caused it were concealed from the public. A central focus of JFK’s appeal, and his endur -

ing legacy, was his youthful energy and the vigorous aura he portrayed. Ironically, JFK was perhaps one of our most sickly presidents, riddled with a variety of health issues from the time he was a child. JFK had bouts of whooping cough, measles and scarlet fever that almost killed him. In 1947, at age thirty, he was diagnosed with Addison’s disease, a rare endocrine disorder where the body does not produce enough of essential hormones. At the time, doctors thought JFK would only live for another year; he maintained the optimistic hope that he could survive for another decade.

Addison’s disease weakened his body in many ways, and JFK simultaneously struggled with a variety of other ailments, one of the most consistently problematic being back pain. He was initially treated with steroids for back pain in the 1930s, which caused degeneration of his spinal discs. While president, JFK sought out the services of the notorious Dr. Max Jacobson, also known as “Dr. Feelgood.” Jacobson is -

Because of her outsize influence, some historians have called Edith Wilson the first female president of the United States.

sued vitamin shots to JFK, which actually contained methamphetamine, amphetamine, and powerful painkillers. Some historians have speculated that these powerful drugs, which are now illegal, affected Kennedy’s performance at the 1961 Vienna Summit, his first face-to-face meeting with the Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev. These meetings took place in the wake of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and were a highstakes moment to discuss critical issues between the two countries at the height of the Cold War. JFK later criticized his own performance at the summit, and some have said that Jacobson’s treatments made JFK unfocused, irritable, and subject to wild mood swings. Later, when other doctors forced Jacobson out, Kennedy’s leadership skills and style improved noticeably.

ronAL d re AGA n

“I want you to know that I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” With this classic retort – emblematic of President Reagan’s signature wit – concerns about Reagan’s age (73, at the time) were largely deflected. Although Reagan and Biden could not be further apart politically, the issues faced by the current president are most closely paralleled by his conservative predecessor.

Just shy of 70 when he assumed office in 1980, Reagan was the oldest person elected U.S. president, a fact that his opponents harped on incessantly. After an uncharacteristically weak and gaffe-ridden performance in his first debate against Democratic challenger Walter Mondale in 1984, those concerns were heightened. In the second debate, Regan returned to form, eloquent and sharp, issuing the legendary quote about age being an issue in the campaign. The 1984 election turned out to be one the biggest victories in Republican history, winning the electoral votes in every state besides Michigan, a landslide almost inconceivable in today’s political climate. In Reagan’s second term, criticism of his mental acuity continued. In 1994, five years after he left office, Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and many of his critics seized this as evidence that Reagan had been impaired while in office. That debate has continued until this day, with very little evidence to support it. Doctors who examined Reagan throughout his presidency found no signs of any dementia or Alzheimer’s; his cognitive tests were consistent with a man of his age and the copious documents that tracked his schedule while in office show that he always maintained a full slate of events. Ultimately, Reagan serves as a counterbalance to Biden: an old president can be one of the greatest of all time, despite unfair criticism, if he has the energy and the vision to lead and inspire.

President Ronald Reagan recovering from a standard procedure

donAL d Trump

Another president who parallels Biden is his opponent. Almost a full year older than Reagan when he first assumed office, Donald Trump has faced daily attacks of the sort that the media suppressed about Biden: being mentally unfit for the presidency. But where Biden comes off as vacant, slack-jawed, weak, and exploitable, Trump is accused of being aggressive, impetuous, unstable and unwilling to be influenced by “more reasonable” people in his circle. Lacking Reagan’s polished wit but possessing chutzpah in spades, Trump memorably rebuffs these criticisms by describing himself as “a very stable genius” and bragging about his report card grades from elementary school. Ultimately, Trump can point to the concrete evidence of doctor’s assessments and his palpably different energy level, which may prove to be the deciding factor in his return to the highest office in the land.

JFK suffered from back problems

Mind Y ur Business Embracing Creativity

This column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas” radio show. The weekly “Mind Your Business” show – broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus. Prominent guests include John Sculley, former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; and Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE; among over 400+ senior-level executives and business celebrities. Yitzchok Saftlas, president of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs

at 10pm every Sunday night on 710 WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.

Since 2015, Yitzchok Saftlas has been speaking with leading industry experts on the “Mind Your Business” show, sharing insightful business and marketing strategies.

In this article, we’ve gathered tips from five creative leaders on how to channel your creativity to produce content that expresses yourself while truly connecting with your audience.

Know Your Audience

Linda Kaplan Thaler, Advertising Hall of Fame i nductee and President of Kaplan Thaler Productions

In order to connect with an audience, you really need to get inside their heads. For example, one of my first big accomplishments in advertising was writing the “I don’t want to grow up” Toys R Us jingle. I knew the ad had to be a song, because it needed to be the kids who retained the message, not the parents. The kids were going to be the ones who nagged their parents to buy their Barbie at Toys R Us, as opposed to any other store. So, I started writing the song, but I couldn’t get it right. I said, “I’ve got to think like a child. Could somebody bring me a toy piano?” Now, I have a master’s in music. I can certainly play a regular piano, but using the toy piano helped me get in the range that a little kid would sing in. It was that mindset that got us to the final jingle. Virtually overnight, kids started singing it everywhere. I remember that it had only been on TV for a week, when I overhead a four-yearold girl singing it on her way to the bus stop. Her mother said, “If you don’t stop singing that song, you’re never going make it to school on time.” I knew we had a hit. Decades later, kids around the world can still sing the song to me in their native languages. That was my first realization that to understand your audience, you have to know who they are and get into their headspace. In this case, it was about getting into the headspace of a little four-year-old kid. It was about bringing out that inner child that still resides somewhere within all of us. If you can truly channel your audience, you’ll be able to connect with them on a profound level.

c re AT e Yourse LF

c ountry Yossi, noted Musician and r adio Personality

As a creative person, you have to create yourself. Don’t let anybody try to mold you into something that they want you to be. You’ve got to look deep inside yourself to discover who you are and what your strengths are. Everyone is imbued by G-d with a certain talent. You have to find out what yours is and use it. And I don’t just mean to use it to become rich or famous, but to use it to find and fulfill your G-d-given purpose. It won’t be easy. You have to be shtultz; you need a strong backbone. No matter what setbacks you encounter, you need to keep trying. Don’t give up. It doesn’t matter how many times you fail. You’re not truly a failure until the moment you decide not to get back up. You can get knocked down many times in a fight, but if you get back up, you’re still in the fight.

As you try again and again, taking different approaches, you will discover exactly who you are and where your strengths lay along the way. But, you have to be willing to try new things and to not be afraid.

It was about bringing out that inner child that still resides somewhere within all of us.

c re AT ive dic HoToMY

Ari Boiangiu, o wner of Blue Melody Group

The moment a creative person gets offered that first dollar to share their art with the world, a tremendous dichotomy grows. Making a living through creativity raises the questions: what am I doing this for? And what do I have to do to my art, to present it in a way that’s going to help me make a living?

This is something that you will have to take on a case-by-case basis. Of course, things go much smoother when the client is able to just put his trust in the artists that he hired and say, “You guys are great, we know you’re great. So, just show us why you’re great and do your thing.” That kind of client takes away any doubts that you will have to compromise on your creativity. However, this is often not the case. You have to remember that art is only one side of the coin. The other side is customer satisfaction, and it is just as important if you want to make a living through your creativity. Our job is to make the customer happy. As a musician, if a customer wants to give me an absurd set list, a bunch of obscure songs that I have to learn or anything else that’s outside of my wheelhouse, that’s just something that I’ll have to work on. Because, there’s a special level of service and customer satisfaction when you can do those crazy things for your client. So, you need both sides of the coin. You need to be able to express your unique creativity, while also keeping in mind what the client is looking for.

Posi T ioninG Yourse LF

s teve c ohen, Acclaimed Professional Magician

When I met positioning expert Mark Levy, I told him that I was trying to think of a stunt that would put me in the public eye. But, Mark told me, “You don’t need a stunt. You need to drill down into who you are and figure out what it is about you that’s unique and different that we can then promote. Take David Blaine, he’s known as the street magician. Penn and Teller are considered the bad boys of magic. They have these hooks that people can latch on to.”

And so, he did an interview with me, and after all kinds of data analysis, he realized that I perform mostly for the well-to-do crowd. No one had ever claimed to be a magician specifically for the very rich. Around that time, I was featured in a magazine that said, “Steve Cohen is the millionaire’s magician. He performs for A-List celebrities and members of country clubs.” Mark said, “That’s it. You’re going to be known as the Millionaire’s Magician from now on.” I thought it sounded ridiculous, but he said, “You have to go all in on this, Steve.” Everyone else said not to do this, because I was going to alienate my audience. But Mark told me, “If you can’t turn away the $2,000 gig, you’ll never get the $20,000 gig.” And he was right. Once I started branding myself as the millionaire’s magician, the media ate it up. They just took that name and brand at face value, and my career snowballed from there. That’s the power of creative and niche positioning.

TH e Power oF desiGn

shifra Mendelovitz, President of Act2 i nteriors

Design can be a much more powerful tool than people realize. Well executed designs can drive productivity, ROI for your business, and even overall happiness. We were once called in to redesign the interior of a middle-range residential building. The management company warned us that tenants were very unhappy, constantly complaining, and many were leaving, leading to a lot of vacant apartments. After we finished our work there, the super came to me and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I am having the best time now. No one is complaining. I’m not getting any more angry calls. Everyone is happy. People are ringing my bell every day to ask for apartments, but we don’t have any left. All those vacancies have been filled.” So, how did a redesign cause such an attitude shift with their tenants? When people don’t feel good about their surroundings, they will be much more likely to find things to complain about. But with a pleasing interior that is designed to make them feel good, they will suddenly find themselves much happier, and their complaints just don’t feel quite as important anymore.

Mental Health Corner Is Self-Esteem Important?

By Rabbi Azriel Hauptman

There is a long-standing belief in the parenting field that children need to develop a healthy self-esteem, and parents are the ones who are primarily responsible for this task. Therefore, parents should always praise their children for all of their accomplishments, big or small, and then the

child will think of him or herself as a capable and talented person. This approach, if used indiscriminately, is a blunt instrument that may backfire. Let us explain.

The foundation of a person’s ability to function and thrive as a

human being is not if he or she thinks that they are better than others, rather if he or she believes that their life has an intrinsic value and that the mere fact that they exist gives them infinite worth. Chazal echoed this sentiment when they said that saving one life is tantamount to saving the entire world (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).

Who are the people who are most responsible for instilling this feeling into a person? Of course, it is their parents. Why are parents uniquely qualified for this noble task? Because parents are the ones who love all of their children equally and unconditionally, even if some are more talented, smarter, or better looking than the others. Parents are the ones who will love their child no matter what they do, good or bad. When children see that their parents love them unconditionally, and this message is hammered into their psyches day in and day out, then children will grow up believing about themselves that they are loveable and valuable human beings regardless of their talents and accomplishments.

This is known as self-worth as opposed to self-esteem. Self-worth means that I feel that I have intrinsic worth and value as a human being. Self-esteem implies that I hold myself in high esteem due to certain traits, talents, or accomplishments.

When one’s self-perception is built on a foundation of self-esteem and not self-worth, then one can only feel worthwhile and valuable as long as those talents and accomplishments are sustained. The second they falter, they will fall into a deep depression, since their only reason for feeling worthwhile as a human being is no longer true. This is included in Chazal’s teaching (Avos 5:15) that “all love that is conditional on something, when the thing ceases, the love ceases; but all love that is unconditional will never cease.”

Positive reinforcement is indeed critical in helping a child build on their accomplishments and thrive.

The problem arises when a child feels that their parent’s love is conditional on meeting the parent’s expectations. Certainly, children crave their parents’ admiration, but when this becomes entangled with love for the child, then you have a recipe for a child developing negative self-worth, since they are being led to believe that their value as a loveable human being depends on their accomplishments.

A healthy self-worth is also vital in dealing with life’s challenges. Everyone makes mistakes in life, and one grows by learning from mistakes. What is the most important factor in developing the ability to grow from failure and not become broken? You guessed it! It is self-worth. This is because when one has a foundation of self-worth, then the mistake is something he or she did, but it is not who they are. The core person is still intact and remains unaffected by the blunder. However, when one has negative self-worth, then a mistake will completely destroy their self-esteem, since they defined themselves based on their successes, which has now been shattered by their failure.

If one was raised by a narcissistic parent who was incapable of expressing unconditional love, then the child may grow into adulthood with many emotional issues that are rooted in the fact that they do not have a healthy sense of self-worth. One of the goals of therapy for such an individual is to begin to foster those healthy feelings of self-worth. It is quite a task, but it can be done, and it is well worth it. As Mark Twain once said, “The worst loneliness is to not be comfortable with yourself,” and there is no way to be comfortable with yourself if you do not have a healthy self-worth.

This is a service of Relief Resources. Relief is an organization that provides mental health referrals, education, and support to the frum community. Rabbi Yisrael Slansky is director of the Baltimore branch of Relief. He can be contacted at 410-4488356 or at yslansky@reliefhelp.org

As the school year began to wind down, I became filled with mixed emotions that kept banging at my very filled anxious, churning brain.

I did expect a sense of separation from what I had loved my entire life to be hard, very hard. The reality of it is much harder than I thought it would be but not for the expected reasons.

Right now, it’s not about the work or the job but rather about the people. The conversations with colleagues are so poignant and heartfelt that when engaging in them, I cry and have to quickly disengage.

The line that I hear most often: “Thank you for giving me the courage and strength to take chances and to believe in myself.”

Yeah, for me, that’s a hard one to process.

At the first of the “good luck on your big move” parties, I refused to acknowledge that I was retiring. I was given three big scrapbooks filled with memories. I had proclaimed that I was not accepting anything as a gift that had to be put in a suitcase. I was adamant. No one cared; I was presented with a magnificent memory book filled with photos and letters.

Do you remember when there were real photo prints that were not scrolled down on a phone?

I was also given two big fat looseleafs filled with four years of my Reflections and a promise of a bound one that will be filled with the best 25. I wonder who chose those and which ones they are?

Two weeks later, I still cannot bring myself to read the sentiments. Just looking at the cover brings a huge lump to my throat. As I’m not ready, I will put the lot in my suitcase. And as it is my way, I will cherish the place that they have carved for themselves in my heart. I plan to comment privately to my dear colleagues – I won’t move on from these people I care about. At this time, one week away from our flight, our house is filled with soon to be homeless furniture, stuff that will be accompanying us on the flight, stuff for the lift (a small one) and what is going to shluchim through an organization that picks up small household items, clothes,

School of Thought

New Beginnings

By Barbara Deutsch

shoes and assorted stuff that people accumulate and then decide they don’t want or need. Actually, why has it ever part of their lives at all?

It’s called chesedcenter.com; they are pleasant, easy to work with and come when they say they will. We are happy that our no-longer-needed things have found new homes and are helping people who will use them.

when needy, only want new.

So what should happen to things that are still good but no one wants?

There can be comparisons made to people as well.

In these final and hectic weeks, as we prepare to leave our familiar and move onto adventure, there have been many speeches. When I am asked to speak, I try very hard to limit my comments to words

At this time, I find myself here, Cedarhurst, there, Israel, nowhere and everywhere.

We are loath to give away furniture that is in excellent condition and perfectly useful when the piece has served its purpose and is no longer needed. We want to get paid for it even though we have used it for years and years.

No one wants or has use for a perfectly good piano.

When we want to donate or give away useful things to people who are in need, we are insulted that they don’t want it, even though they need it and it’s free.

“I don’t need your junk!”

I was told that young couples, even

and ideas that will mean something to the audience. At the HANC goodbye party, I had so much to say but it was too hard to express the full scope of my gratitude to the wonderful people with whom I have worked these last 15 years.

I said what I said and thanked no one in particular. I probably will have more to share about this in the future; right now, not sure.

My dear friend and “like a daughter” Nicole married off her second child recently, a daughter. Not so long ago, Nicole lost her mother after a long struggle with ill-

ness. I determined that I would bring her mother to the sheva brachas, a disparate group of neighborhood, childhood and camp friends.

I started my remarks with a conversation about how we met in the gym. I am more than 25 years older than she is; we became part of a cohort that “worked out” daily, 5:00 am on the dot for her. Jan, Nicole, Debby, Autumn, Malkie and the other Malkie straggled in.

We were a motley crew with wide age differences between us. All of us wore baggy t-shirts, stretched-out sweats or skirts, everyone in top-of-the-line sneakers; we were athletes after all.

During Covid, the gym closed, and everyone led isolated lives in their homes. Nicole took it upon herself to take care of me and my husband Bob; she shopped, she shlepped and forbade us to leave the house.

Now I walk at 6:00 am – I’m older and need sleep – with another member of our group, Autumn. You can find us walking along the railroad tracks in the pre-sunrise darkness.

During my sheva brachas speech, I discussed Nicole, her relationship with her mother, her sister and our gym history. After my comments, a friend of Nicole’s and my son commented that he saw me walking early one day in my “gym” garb.

Afterwards, he called my son and commented, “I think I just saw a homeless woman walking. She looks a lot like your mom.”

It is me.

At this time, I find myself here, Cedarhurst, there, Israel, nowhere and everywhere. I need to be home, in Yerushalayim, and useful. And useful.

Mrs. Barbara Deutsch is currently the associate principal at HANC 609 and a longtime reflective educator, parent, grandparent, and new great-grandparent. Even after all these years, she still loves what she does and looks forward to working with kids every single day.

To Raise a Laugh

Outside the Shop

One of the most annoying things about your car being in the shop – aside from the fact that the longer it’s there, the more problems the mechanic is going to find, statistically – is that you’re short a car.

So if it were up to me, I’d almost never go to the mechanic, unless my car was making weird noises or smelled funny. I have a similar philosophy with going to the doctor. My wife, on the other hand, is a big believer in bringing our car to the mechanic just to see if anything is wrong, which she prefers to being stuck on the side of the road because something is wrong. And wouldn’t you know it? Every time she brings it in, they find a problem! So the system works.

And that’s why we brought the minivan in this week. There was nothing wrong with our van, that we knew of. But my wife’s sister is making a bar mitzvah this Shabbos in Maryland. (She lives there; she didn’t just pull a state out of a hat.) And that’s 4 hours away if there’s no traffic, which there is. So my wife wanted to get the van checked out before we went, because that’s considered a long drive. At least for our van, which these days basically takes me to school, which is a ten-minute walk, plus we do carpool in it, which is a little bit longer because kids don’t like to walk, and we also use it when we want to transport sheetrock back from Home Depot with our faces pressed up against the windshield.

So the mechanic called us back and let us know that the car was leaking coolant. At first, I thought he said “choolant.” I don’t know how that made sense; I thought it was slang for something. Like oil. So I said, “At least the kishkes aren’t falling out.”

But that’s how it works. You send a car to the mechanic, he’s going to find something. He doesn’t get paid to tell you nothing’s wrong. Basically, a mechanic is like a doctor. The doctor says, “Come in for a checkup every once in a while, even if nothing hurts!” and then you come in, and he tells you some-

thing like, “You’re leaking coolant.”

(“Oh, thank goodness! I thought you said choolant.”)

The mechanic said that #1, he had to order a piece from the manufacturer, and that could take time to come, and #2, it’s possible that while taking out the old piece, he would break some more pieces.

I like that our mechanic is honest like that. Yes, he’s breaking things, but it’s possible that every mechanic is breaking things and not telling you and just tacking that on beforehand as part of the initial price. But our guy says, “I might break things,” and we’re like, “Well, at least you’re trying not to. Here’s some money for fixing all the additional things you’re breaking.”

See, people say they want an honest mechanic, but they really just mean “a mechanic that doesn’t charge so much.” Instead, we’ve got a mechanic that is honest enough to say, “I might break this,” or “I’m just waiting for another piece. The computer says it hasn’t shipped yet, but don’t worry -- I’m going to keep refreshing.”

I don’t need this. I just need my car back. You can even replace it with a car that looks reasonably like the one I gave you. I won’t know. I’ll just assume my wife moved the seats.

But no! He’s honest.

So basically, I’ve been dealing without a car all week in preparation for this bar mitzvah. Also, we left a bunch of things in the van when we dropped it off that we don’t have access to, such as all our little adaptors. But on the bright side, they also have my son’s skateboard. My son has a skateboard that he used to keep in the house, which annoyed us, because the way you play with a skateboard in the house is you wait until your parents are trying to concentrate on something, and then you loudly roll it across the floor until you hit a wall. Then you roll it in the other direction until you hit a wall. (Every direction you go in our house, there’s a wall.) And then your parents say, “Stop

By Mordechai Schmutter

skateboarding in the house!” And you say, “I’m not! I’ll put it away.” And then you shove it back across the house to wherever it goes, and it hits a wall and bounces back to the middle of the room so that someone else could find it and start playing with it.

So one Chol Hamoed, we went to a park and convinced him to put the skateboard in the van, and then we just never reminded him to take it out. It lives in the van now. That way, he has it when we go somewhere, but it’s never in the house. The only downside is what the skateboard does when we make a short stop.

I’m not complaining about the van being away all week. I’m managing. A lot of families have only one car. But usually, that car is big enough for their family. That’s probably the main feature they look for, in a car. We have two cars in total – this minivan, and then another car that is comically small. You can fit 3 kids across the back if everyone inhales when you shut the door. And the issue is that we have to somehow get to this bar mitzvah without a van, when the bar mitzvah is the reason we sent the van to the mechanic in the first place. This is our bigger car. We should have given the mechanic our smaller car. If we would have known.

So I turned to my wife, and I volunteered, out of the goodness of my heart, not to go. But then she pointed out that I’m also supposed to speak, apparently. That’s how my sister-in-law locked me in.

So my wife started trying to find relatives who were going to this simcha too, but not with full cars. Long story short, we hosted my in-laws on Thursday night so they could drive a couple of our kids the rest of the way on Friday. And then, in the little car, it was just 4 of us, plus a flying insect who wouldn’t leave no matter how many times I opened the window. Have fun moving to Maryland, you tiny idiot.

Mordechai Schmutter is a freelance writer and a humor columnist for Hamodia and other magazines. He has also published eight books and does stand-up comedy. You can contact him at MSchmutter@gmail.com.

TJH Centerfold

Franklin Facts

By age 12, Benjamin Franklin left school and served as an apprentice at a printing shop owned by his brother, James. Despite being almost entirely self-taught, Franklin later helped found the school that became the University of Pennsylvania and received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the College of William and Mary, the University of St. Andrews, and Oxford.

At the age of 42, Franklin was rich enough to retire and become a “gentleman of leisure.” Franklin’s retirement allowed him to spend his remaining 42 years studying science and devising inventions such as the lightning rod, bifocal glasses and a more efficient heating stove.

Franklin invented the “glass armonica,” which was an instrument designed to replicate the otherworldly sound that a wet finger makes when rubbed along the rim of a glass. To play the instrument, the user would simply wet their fingers, rotate the apparatus and then touch the glass pieces to create individual tones or melodies. The armonica would go on to amass a considerable following during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Thousands were manufactured, and the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss all composed music for it. Franklin would later write, “Of all my inventions, the glass armonica has given me the greatest personal satisfaction.”

Forbes ranked Benjamin Franklin the 89th richest man in American history.

According to legend, Benjamin Franklin was not allowed to write the Declaration of Independence because everyone thought that he’s trying to slip a joke into the document.

Benjamin Franklin had a son who remained loyal to the British and fled to London after the war.

Among Franklin’s inventions are swim fins, library chair, extension arm, Philadelphia or Franklin stove, lightning rod and bifocals. He never patented his inventions as he considered them a gift to the public.

It was Franklin’s idea to use a matching grant combining public money with private donations to build the Pennsylvania Hospital. It was the first time that this concept was used.

Franklin is the only Founding Father to have signed all three documents that freed America from Britain, the Declaration of Independence, The Treaty of Paris and the United States Constitution.

In 1728, when he was 22, Franklin wrote his own epitaph.

Declaration of Independence Trivia

1. How old was the youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence?

a. 70

b. 38

c. 26

d. 22

2. There are 24 known copies of the version of the Declaration known as the “Dunlap Broadside,” named after John Dunlap. Who was he?

a. Vice president of the Congress

b. A printer

c. An early historian

d. The first Librarian of Congress

3. In 1989, a Philadelphia man found an original copy of the Declaration of Independence in the back of a picture frame that he bought at a flea market for $4. It was verified as one of the 24 surviving copies from the official first printing of the Declaration. How much did it sell for in 2000?

a. $1,200,000

b. $8,100,000

c. $36,000,000

d. $47,000,000

4. Why didn’t George Washington sign the Declaration of Independence?

a. Because when they approached him to sign it, he explained, “I’m fully in support, but I don’t want my name on it because I’d rather work behind the scenes.”

b. Because he said that he wanted to discuss it with his wife first and would do so when he returned to Virginia.

At that point, the Declaration was already complete.

c. Because he wrote it and is listed as the author.

d. Because he was in New York preparing to defend Manhattan from the British.

7. What is the first word of the Declaration?

a. We

b. When

c. Whereas

d. Wherefore

5. Which of the following was included in the Declaration of Independence?

a. A list of bad things that the King of England had done to the colonies

b. A threat that the colonies would take over the country of Britain if the King did not stop the fighting

c. A declaration that George Washington was president

d. The Bill of Rights

6. Which two states voted against the Declaration of Independence?

a. Pennsylvania and South Carolina

b. New York and Virginia

c. Delaware and Maryland

d. Colorado and California

6-A

7-B (The first sentence in the Preamble: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of Nature’s G-d entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”)

Wisdom key

6-7 correct: If you would have been around in 1776, you would have been one of the Founding Fathers. Nice wig!

3-5 correct: Not bad, although you are not exactly Benjamin Franklin.

0-2 correct: It’s a good thing America wasn’t relying on you in 1776!

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

Leaders said that thousands of children were going to die, and it didn’t materialize, and no one seems to be trying to explain why.

- David Adesnik, senior fellow and director of research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, talking to Fox News about the dreaded famine that experts said would take place in Gaza which never materialized

This party should not in any way do anything to work around Ms. Harris.

– Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), longtime Black political kingpin, warning Democrats not to skip over Vice President Harris, if Pres. Biden bows out of the race

The fact that people keep coming back to this is so offensive to so many of us. They still don’t get that the message you’re saying to people, to this Democratic Party, is, we prefer a white person.

- An anonymous Democrat operative talking to Politico about rumors that someone other than Kamala Harris will be the Democrat nominee if Pres. Biden drops out of the race

The experts told us Joe was fine. The experts told us to take the vax. The experts told us the laptop was fake. The experts told us the border is secure. The experts told us 2020 was the MOST legitimate and secure election in history. Remember who the propogandists are. Never trust any of them again.

- Tweet by End Wokeness

To prepare for the debate, the President has been sequestered since last week. He doesn’t mind – he thinks that he’s a juror on the O.J. trial.

– Greg Gutfeld, Fox News

We’re successful, we’re debt free, we own everything. Why have people who are having a hard time paying their rent pay more for our drink? Maybe it’s my little way to give back.

- Arizona Iced Tea founder Don Vultaggio on the Today Show, explaining why the brand’s tall cans are still only 99¢

Democratic officials have tried to spin this in many ways. But behind the scenes, make no mistake, most Democratic officials witnessed the same shocking spectacle that you did: the difficulty that the presumptive Democratic nominee, the current president of the United States, had just articulating his basic thoughts during the 90 minutes of the debate.

- Debate moderator Jake Tapper, CNN

I decided to travel around the world a couple of times…shortly before the debate. I didn’t listen to my staff…and then I almost fell asleep on stage.

- Pres. Biden at a fundraiser giving an excuse for his abysmal debate performance

Just like the Hunter laptop incident, like the freakouts over every lost Supreme Court decision, like the concocted “ethics” problems of Supreme Court justices, like the entire Russia collusion hoax, the Biden coverup is rationalized in the name of decency.

– David Harsanyi, The Federalist

[Biden] was so bad that Jimmy Carter watched the debate and said, “Wow, that guy’s almost dead!”

It was so bad that Nanci Pelosi’s face unfroze.

It was so bad that Vladimir Putin denied poisoning him.

It was so bad that Anthony Fauci blamed it on bat soup.

It was so bad that ABC sent grief counselors to The View.

It was so bad that even Kamala Harris is worried that Kamala Harris may become president.

- Greg Gutfeld, Fox News

When will politicians, or at least the intern who runs their account, learn that lying on this platform doesn’t work anymore?

- Elon Musk responding to Kamala Harris tweeting that Trump would ban abortion nationwide

I fully support the prime minister’s idea that he can never allow a permanent ceasefire [if] Hamas is allowed to be functional. That’s my red line on that.

– Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), at a press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel

I could never support Israel being bullied into an artificial kind of permanent ceasefire against an enemy like Hamas.

- Ibid.

While a new career as a firefighter might not be in the cards for Bowman, an unemployment application is. We wish him all the best of luck and good riddance.

- National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman after Jew-hater Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D-Bronx/Westchester) – who several months ago pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol in order to stop a vote from taking place – was defeated in the primaries

BREAKING NEWS!!! Jamal Bowman wins renomination. Oh wait…false alarm.

- Tweet by Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX)

The Congressional seat in the Bronx and Westchester was not “won.” It was bought.

– Tweet by Climate Defiance, after Bowman lost

Maybe if you wanted to fix the climate, you wouldn’t be [upsetting] the people who control the weather.

– Reply by Kyle Beckley

For once, Jamaal Bowman can actually blame the Jews for something real.

- Stephen L. Miller

We’ve lost our minds completely. With our own hands, we are rehabilitating Gaza, before disarmament, and mainly the hospitals, which are the centers for terrorism. Mr. Prime Minister, stop this foolishness. This time, it won’t be possible to say that we didn’t know.

- Finance Minister Betzalel Smotrich, after Israel restored electricity to Gaza

He won a few prizes for being stupid including a chauffeured ride to a local medical facility to check his injuries before arriving at his less than luxurious accommodations at Ivey’s Iron Bar Lodge!! At the lodge, he was given a freshly washed 2 piece ensemble to get comfortable in, before being shown to his sleeping area in our open floor plan.

- Facebook post by the Brevard County (FL) Sheriff’s Office after a 66-year-old beat up a 29-year-old who tried stealing his truck

The individual who is responsible for a heinous criminal act is the criminal.

- Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas when asked if the open border bears responsibility for the heinous murder of a 12-year-old girl in Houston by illegal aliens

I don’t know what Mayorkas is smoking because it needs to be legalized.

- A Border Patrol source to The New York Post after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argued that there is vetting at the border

I think they shouldn’t include anyone of that caliber — a wife beater, murderer. I can’t imagine why they would include someone like that.

- Fred Goldman, whose son was killed by O.J. Simpson along with Nicole Brown, condemning BET for including a tribute to Simpson at their awards show

Welcome to summer! The kids are officially transitioning from school to camp mode. These in-between times are hard, and kids can be thrown off during this period. Be gentle on yourself and your child.

It’s also a hectic time, and parents have many things on their mind. Whatever your child’s summer plans, there are many necessary preparations. Whether it’s clothing, snacks or summer gear, there is so much to do and too few hours to accomplish it all. Each season brings its own excitement and challenges. As we begin the hotter weather, it seemed prudent to review some basic safety issues. Kids are young and excited about the warm weather. They may not take the necessary precautions to ensure their own safety. As the loving adults in their life, it’s our job to be proactive and keep them safe.

Keep Hydrated

Keeping hydrated is one of the basic rules of survival. It’s also one that kids neglect as they’re running around outside getting that amazing fresh air and sun.

Sending along a reusable water bottle helps keep H2O ready. It would seem obvious that if you provide a water bottle then a child will drink from it. Sadly, this is not a realistic assumption, and parents need to verify their child actually had some sips. Hydration can be easily assessed by urine color. Dehydration is serious, and if you have any questions please reach out to a medical professional.

It’s wise to write your child’s name on their water bottle. Most water bottles look similar, and it’s not uncommon to find rows of water bottles lined up and nobody knows which is theirs. The AAP considers water superior to sports drinks. Please consult your child’s pediatrician about the role of Pedialyte or electrolyte drinks.

Fun In The Sun

The sunshine is exciting but burns are dangerous and need to be addressed by a physician. Please ensure your child has full protection, even when the sun doesn’t feel strong. In addition to sunscreen –which must be reapplied throughout the

Parenting Pearls Summer Safety

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

day and after water – children can wear longer, loose clothing and a hat to stay covered. Be careful about ears that peek out from baseball hats. Rashguards have become common and can protect children while swimming. While on the topic of swimwear, it’s worth mentioning that bright colored bathing suits are more visible than darker suits under water, ensuring your child is easily seen at all times.

Children require constant supervision around water and should only swim with a lifeguard present. Water should not be kept unattended in baby pools or anywhere that it can be accessed by others.

Bicycles and Scooters

I’ve been pleased to see the increased usage of helmets. Baruch Hashem, children no longer need to be concerned with being teased for basic safety measures. Helmets should be considered mandatory for those riding skateboards, bikes and scooters –especially electric models.

I’ve noticed an alarming but bizarre trend of children wearing helmets with the chin straps unfastened. Alternatively, the straps are closed but very loose. In either scenario, the helmet is not securely on their head and where it needs to be to protect them. If the helmet can easily fall off or be pushed aside, then it’s not truly on. Children often need an adult’s assistance to ensure it’s on properly and being used correctly each ride.

Traditionally, bikes and scooters

worked based on human effort. Today, we have electronic models that not only require minimal human input, they also go exceedingly fast. These carry an increased risk, and parents need to carefully consider whether this item is appropriate for their child.

Walking down the street in the main shopping area, I was suddenly confronted with a teenager riding their motorized bike or scooter towards me. Fortunately, the rider made sure to swerve before reaching me, frightening us in the process. This has happened on a number of occasions. It’s not only unsafe, it’s a true lack of derech eretz.

Sidewalks are meant for pedestrians. It’s where we push babies in strollers and little ones walk holding their parent’s hand. It’s not intended for vehicular traffic.

Children and teens should not ride bikes or scooters in crowded pedestrian areas –certainly not motorized ones. They should be taught how to safely maneuver their bikes and pass a pedestrian when that inevitably occurs.

Cautious Drivers

School is out, and more kids are walking around town. Please drive extra cautiously and always be alert for children in the vicinity. Children may dart out from between cars or chase an errant ball. While it’s the parent’s responsibility to provide proper supervision for their youngster, we all need to do our part.

Teach children how to safely cross the

road. This includes older children who may be distracted by a phone or other item. Children should cross at crosswalks, certainly not from between cars since a driver cannot see a child that is behind a vehicle. Children mimic adult behavior. If they see us dashing between cars or crossing against the light, we risk them doing the same.

The temperature inside a vehicle rises very quickly. Infants and children should never be left in cars. We’ve all heard of the many tragedies with “forgotten baby syndrome.” Rather than careless neglect, this mostly occurs when a parent has a change in schedule or is distracted. In many of these tragic situations, it occurred when the parent that doesn’t normally bring the child to daycare was given the job and they accidentally followed their normal routine, forgetting the child in the car. Babies and toddlers often fall asleep in cars and may not even be aware their parent is exiting the vehicle. Similarly, children shouldn’t play in cars. It’s not a toy and requires an adult’s presence.

There are many methods parents can use to remind themselves of their precious passenger in the back. Suggestions include placing something in the back seat that you routinely take out of the vehicle with you, such as a purse or left shoe (right shoe is used for driving), always checking the front and back of the vehicle, or leaving something such as a diaper bag or stuffed animal in the front seat whenever your child is present. It’s easy to think that only a negligent parent forgets a child, but it’s important to remember this has mostly happened when a child’s presence in the car was not part of the normal routine.

While there are necessary precautions for parents to take, the summer is the perfect time to get out and enjoy Hashem’s beautiful world. It’s a time to create warm memories and connect with family. Have a wonderful summer!

Sara Rayvych, MSEd, has her master’s in general and special education. She has been homeschooling for over 10 years in Far Rockaway. She can be contacted at RayvychHomeschool@gmail.com.

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

I went on a few dates with a really nice guy. We had quality, deep, good conversations. The problem started when we started going out to more public places. We went to a restaurant for our fourth date. When we got to the restaurant, the waiter asked where we wanted to sit. Aaron (not his real name) chose a seat in the back but then, as they were clearing a different table, he seemed distracted. He kept looking over to that table. I asked him if everything was okay, and he said he wanted to move to that table instead. Since he wasn’t asking them to move us, and I saw he wanted it, I asked the server if we could move. At that point he kept repeating, “No, no, it’s okay. I don’t want to bother anyone.”

On our next date, we went to a game arcade place, and at the end, when it was ready to cash in our tickets, he literally could not make a decision what to use his tickets on. I mean, we are talking about stuffed animals and knickknacks.

Ever since we have started to do dates that are not just sitting and talking, I sense an overpowering issue with decision-making coming from him – those two are just a few examples.

Overall, he is a really good person and has a lot of the things I’m looking for. Does it seem like I’m just overthinking it or is this a real issue?

Thanks, Tammy*

Disclaimer: This column is not intended to diagnose or otherwise conclude resolutions to any questions. Our intention is not to offer any definitive conclusions to any particular question, rather offer areas of exploration for the author and reader. Due to the nature of the column receiving only a short snapshot of an issue, without the benefit of an actual discussion, the panel’s role is to offer a range of possibilities. We hope to open up meaningful dialogue and individual exploration.

The Panel

The Rebbetzin

Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S.

This is not a question for the panelists. You are a smart woman and have picked up on a possible challenge for him. Good for you!

Bring up the subject of dealing with personal challenges and be vulnerable. You go first in bringing something up. See what he brings up. See if he can be vulnerable and feels safe with you. That may take some time. Soon, you may be able to bring this up with him carefully but directly. See where it goes. This is what opening up and relationships are all about – developing trust and openness in a healthy environment. Good luck.

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

Dear Tammy, what you have just experienced is a common circumstance daters experience. It is absolutely crucial while you’re dating to be creative and see your date in different environments and social situations, just for this reason.

As you are progressing over time, you are starting to see a side of Aaron that you don’t like, and that worries you. He seems to be indecisive and

self-conscious, and these are things that make you feel that despite your deep conversations over your first few meetings, he is not the right one.

I do not think you are overthinking. You are merely gathering information to see if he is right for you. It is possible he is just not the right one but give it time and patience. You don’t need to make any rash decisions you might regret later.

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

In the late 1800s, poet Katherine Craster wrote about a 100-legged insect:

A centipede was happy — quite!

Until a toad, in fun, Said, “Pray, which leg moves after which?”

This raised her doubts to such a pitch, She fell exhausted in the ditch, Not knowing how to run.

This simple, whimsical poem seems very light-hearted but has very deep, profound significance. When the centipede started to overthink a seemingly simple activity, the hapless creature became paralyzed with indecision.

Today, psychologists actually label this problem as “The Centipede Effect” and try

Pulling It All Together

Thank you for writing!

It seems like you are into Aaron, and yet you are wisely noticing a potential issue: difficulty around decision-making. It doesn’t seem, at least on the surface, that you are overthinking. Sometimes when we are overthinking, it is because we are not having direct con - versations about what we are overthinking with the person we are overthinking about. You will learn more about the issue from speaking directly

to help patients who suffer from “Analysis Paralysis.” They discuss how hyper-reflection, or overthinking a decision, can lead to the inability to make a decision.

How serious is this problem? It could be fairly harmless, innocuous, and merely annoying. However, this problem could be very, very serious and become a major impediment in life. For example, in baseball, there is a condition known as the “Yipes,” when a player suddenly starts overthinking a simple task, and, bizarrely, becomes frozen and unable to do so.

Consider the “Yipes” case of Yankee second baseman, Chuck Knoblauch. Suddenly and inexplicably, he started “overthinking” the routine task of tossing the ball to first base and became completely incapable of throwing accurately. Alarmingly, he committed 26 throwing errors, and one of his wild throws actually hit another player’s mother in the face, as she watched the game from the stands.

Sadly, this highly successful player had to retire from baseball.

Now, you have made some very astute observations about your boyfriend, and have possibly discovered a very troubling defect: a serious inability to make decisions. However, I wonder if his indecisiveness is because he actually has a serious problem, or because he is simply very nervous when he’s on a date with you.

So, what should you do? I found an interesting Human Resources website. It teaches interviewers what questions to ask, so that they can learn to reject prospective employees who will not be good at making decisions at work. You might wish to sneak in some adapted form of

with Aaron about it.

Kindly mention to him what you’ve noticed and ask him about it. Get a sense of his understanding of the behavior. It may be something he is aware of and working on, or it may be something he doesn’t think is an issue.

In my opinion, when two people can speak about issues openly, and no one gets defensive, this is one of the best indicators of a relationship having the strength

When the centipede started to overthink a seemingly simple activity, the hapless creature became paralyzed with indecision.

these questions during your next date with Aaron:

Tell me about a time when you had to make a tough decision. Why was it difficult? What was the outcome?

Tell me about a time when you had to make a big decision on short notice.

When you have to make a big, difficult decision, what is your typical approach? Do you ask for advice or go with your gut?

Getting Aaron to discuss these issues might help you clarify if his indecisiveness is, or is not, a big red flag.

I asked a psychologist how he might help cure a pathologically indecisive patient. He wrote to me, “Well, I would have to decide if I should utilize either Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), or Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), or Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT).”

I read this psychologist’s response to my wife, who is usually very decisive. I asked her if she thought those treatment approaches could help cure an indecisive person. She answered, “Maybe.”

to go to the distance. No one is immune to “issues.” We all have issues. I think that’s part of what makes us human. Through intimate discussion, we develop closeness. Through defensiveness or lack of self-awareness, we develop space and distance. When in doubt, bring it up. Your answer will organically reveal itself.

Pay attention to your intuition.

All the best, Jennifer

Jennifer Mann, LCSW is a licensed psychotherapist and certified trauma healing life coach, as well as a dating and relationship coach working with individuals, couples, and families in private practice at 123 Maple Avenue in Cedarhurst, NY. To set up a consultation or to ask questions, please call 718-908-0512. Visit www.thenavidaters.com for more information. If you would like to submit a dating or relationship question to the panel anonymously, please email JenniferMannLCSW@gmail.com. You can follow The Navidaters on FB and Instagram for dating and relationship advice.

Your Money Don’t Try This at Home

By Allan Rolnick, CPA

Fire up your smartphone, open any social media app, and prepare yourself to be barraged by dumb people doing dumb things. Just Google “deadliest TikTok challenges,” and you’ll find an all-you-can-eat buffet. Basting a chicken in NyQuil before baking? (Why?) The “Benadryl challenge”? The “choking challenge” that’s been linked to over 20 deaths?

“But surely,” you say, “the people posting tax advice on social media apps are different. They’re trained professionals with nothing but my best interests in mind!”

You weren’t born yesterday, were you? (Were you?) Let’s take a look at some of the skibidi, sus, and just plain bad tax advice floating around on social media.

There’s a video circulating on Instagram where a sales trainer and real estate investor excitedly reveals how you can write off 100% of the cost of your truck. You can wait until December 31 to buy it, and you don’t even have to drive it to deduct it. Sounds great, right?

Well, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn the video leaves out a couple of important points. First, you can write off 100% of the cost only if you use it 100% for business. So much for driving

it zero miles – if there’s no business use during the year, there’s no deduction! If you don’t have a business, or your business isn’t making money, you’re out of luck. Also, much of your savings is really just a loan – when you sell the truck down the road, you’ll owe tax on part of your proceeds.

contribution limit back when the video was recorded.)

Hiring your kids to shift income from your high tax rate to their 0% tax rate is a long-established strategy. But IRS rules require their salary to be “reasonable compensation” for the work they perform for the business. And who’s to

Finally, there’s a TikTok video with a narrator interviewing a “man on the street” who just happens to be sitting in the driver’s seat of a stylish cream-colored Ferrari.

There’s another video out there where a narrator tells you two things you need to do immediately when your child is born. The first is to pay them annually $12,000 federal-tax-free to pose for photos on your family business website; the second is to deposit $6,500 of it into a custodial Roth IRA. ($12,000 was the standard deduction for a single taxpayer, and $6,500 was the Roth

say those photos are worth $12,000 when you can license perfectly acceptable stock photos of smiling babies for less than the cost of a box of Pampers? How much cuter is your kid, really?

Finally, there’s a TikTok video with a narrator interviewing a “man on the street” who just happens to be sitting in the driver’s seat of a stylish cream-colored Ferrari. The narrator discovers our

driver is a consultant who made over $7 million that year, who pays no tax, and who used the savings to buy the Ferrari. The narrator asks the tax-free driver for the best financial advice he’s ever received – and the driver responds with something called the “Augusta Rule.” Now, that’s a terrific strategy for renting your home to your business for up to 14 days per year to avoid tax on some of your business income. But it rarely saves more than a few thousand dollars per year unless you’re living in Stately Wayne Manor. It’s not even a rounding error for someone making $7 million. Go ahead and have fun scrolling through any tax videos that pop up on your social media feed. But you already know to take what you see with a pretax-sized grain of salt. Send them to us before you act. Maybe there’s some truth in that strategy. More likely, we’ll have a laugh sharing them with our tax pro friends!

Allan J Rolnick is a CPA who has been in practice for over 30 years in Queens, NY. He welcomes your comments and can be reached at 718-896-8715 or at allanjrcpa@aol.com.

Headlines Halacha

A Call to Rabbanim, Shul Presidents, and Shul Members

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

For whatever reason there is, there is a hidden and relatively invisible group of people in our community: the single mothers of Klal Yisroel. And although many in our communities have tried to institute programs where people volunteer to bring these women’s sons to shul or volunteer to bring them to father-son learning programs, by and large, these programs kind of fall apart after a few months.

And the divorced women who live in our communities are a group whose numbers are growing dramatically.

Most of these women are not members of our shuls either. These women have children; they have struggles and questions, too.

These women need a rav who can address the important issues of their lives and of their children’s lives. They need a rav who can help them decide which two of their five children should be the one to go to summer camp. They need advice that only daas Torah can give them.

The Suggestion

Each shul should consider taking in between five and ten single mom families to this effect and offer them free or heavi-

ly, heavily discounted membership. True, everyone else is a paying member, but this is a huge need in Klal Yisroel.

In the Far Rockaway/Five Towns community alone, this author has a list of over seventy-five single mothers who could use such assistance and there are, of course, many more.

Please reach out to me if your shul can offer this to any of them.

The Halacha

What does halacha say about these women and their plight? The pesukim in the Torah tell us about orphans, widows and converts. But what about the growing number of divorcees? And if, in fact, the answer is that we should devote more resources to this invisible group, then we really have to do it.

A few years ago, a woman approached a number of gedolim in Eretz Yisroel about the plight of divorcees and obtained a remarkable letter. (Because there was a slight factual miscommunication in the recipient of the letter, it was never published at the time.) The three gedolim? Rav Aron Leib Shteinman, zt”l; Rav Chaim Kanievsky, zt”l; and Rav Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz, zt”l. The letter is

translated below:

To the Honorable Organization..

We have heard of the remarkable acts of chessed that you do with widows, rachmana litzlan, in a most befitting manner. Now you approach with a question in regard to divorced women:

Do they have a similar halachic status in regard to tzedaka and in the manner in which to deal with them on an equal basis?

Our opinion is that the circumstances and situations are equal in their importance.

May the Holy One Blessed Be He enable you to continue in your blessed handiwork.

One who signs with wishes of blessing,

[Rav] Michel Yehudah Lefkowitz, Bnei Brak 5769 [zt”l]

We too join with what has been mentioned above,

[Rav] A.L. Shteinman [zt”l] [Rav] Chaim Kanievsky [zt”l]

Make Them Feel As a Person, Not

a Chessed

One important point that we must have in mind is that it is the greatest

chessed for chessed not to be done as if it is a chessed. All people have what to contribute, in conversation and in social activity. Our obligation is to realize that everyone is created b’tzelem Elokim, in the image of Hashem, and that there is depth to who they are as people. Their social contribution, their thoughts, and their opinions matter, and they are enjoyable company.

There was a famous bakery owner in Williamsburg, Mr. Gelb, who not only gave needy people challah and cake for Shabbos and yom tov, but also gave them change so that their self-esteem would remain intact. An even higher level that can sometimes be achieved is to actually render any assistance in such a manner that even we do not detect or perceive it as chessed, per se.

Practical Steps

So, practically, what does this mean? We can help in two ways. Baruch Hashem, one of our askanim, Rabbi Dovid Greenblatt, has created an excellent organization called “Sister to Sister.” This organization is a remarkable way to lend assistance to this invisible group.

A second way, however, is to seek out

members of this invisible group and actively help them. Some of these divorcees have an ex who baruch Hashem cares enough about his children to provide them with even more than the court-mandated child support. Others often get a pittance. And some get nothing at all.

We must also not forget that divorced men also need to be welcomed into our homes and need emotional support and assistance. Often, men are perceived as the evil ones when they, too, have suffered enormously. Whatever happened in a marriage is not our concern. Ahavas Yisrael and chessed must be applied to all parties – these mitzvos are gender-neutral.

Tzinius

When helping them, it should be done in the most tzinius manner possible and with the contributions of both the husband and wife. It should also be done in a manner where they do not feel that you are doing it as a chessed. There are many ways to do this.

– Learn with their child

– Notice their kids in shul

– Offer to take the children along with yours on an outing

– Help them keep up with homework

– Shabbos invitations

– Extend invitations earlier rather than later

– Occasional financial help or a gift

– Offer to babysit once a month

– Ask if they need anything at Costco

– Offer to build them a sukkah – or to use yours

– Help them deal with fixing their car

– Help them deal with the IRS

– Help them in general negotiations

– Help them ensure that their kids have friends

– Sheitels – look out for a new one for them.

– Avoid avoiding them

One important point that we must have in mind is that it is the greatest chessed for chessed not to be done as if it is a chessed.

– Ask in general, “Is there anything specific I can do for you?”

– Just call to say hello

– Bring them flowers for Shabbos

– Get to know their favorite food items and that of their children

– Suggest shidduchim when possible and appropriate

– Suggest shidduchim for their children

– Help them deal with fixing the house

– Don’t be judgmental

– Don’t stigmatize

– Don’t say things in a pitying way

– Be sensitive to call them back

– Avoid saying insensitive things or asking insensitive questions

Loving Chessed

The pasuk in Michah (6:8) states, “What does Hashem require of you? Merely to do justice and love chessed.”

The idea is that we must foster and develop a love of chessed. Rav Sher explains that there are three elements to this love:

1. To love doing acts of chessed ourselves.

2. To love and appreciate a situation where chessed is being performed by others.

3. To love the existence of opportunities for chessed in the world.

The Chofetz Chaim writes (Ahavas Chessed 2:1) that not only must one love chessed, but one must stick to this character trait and always go beyond the measure of what is required. He gives the analogy of a parent. A loving parent gives more food and clothing than the child requires; we must do likewise in sticking to the middah of chessed.

The dramatic rise in divorces provides us all with an unprecedented opportunity for chessed. This chessed should be performed with the utmost consideration and thought for their self-esteem and self-perception. They are our brothers and sisters, and should be treated as such.

This article should be viewed as a halachic discussion and not practical advice. The author can be reached at yairhoffman2@gmail.com.

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Often overlooked, water is one of the most critical components of our health, helping to maintain bodily functions, enhancing our physical performance, and supporting our overall well-being. Although it’s important, many individuals do not consume enough water daily, ultimately leading to dehydration and potential health risks. Keep reading to learn the significance of hydration along with attainable ways to ensure sufficient water intake.

Let’s delve into water and its role in the body. Water makes up around 60% of the human body, helping the body function properly, with every cell, tissue, and organ depending on it. These are some of the roles that water has on our bodies.

Cellular Function: Water plays a crucial role in cellular processes, transporting nutrients within cells and to cells. More so, water helps maintain cell structure and helps with chemical reactions.

Regulating Temperature: Through sweating and respiration, water helps to regulate body temperature. Water absorbs and dissipates heat, helping the body stay cool and preventing overheating.

Digestion: For proper digestion, water is key in dissolving nutrients and helping to make them ready for absorption. Additionally, it helps with metabolism, helping to convert food into energy.

Joints: Water helps lubricate our joints by reducing friction and wear. Specifically, water is essential to help maintain and prevent joint-related issues.

Furthermore, there are endless health benefits of water and staying properly hydrated. These benefits impact both our physical and mental health.

Performance: Physical performance can be impaired by dehydration, leading to reduced endurance, decreased strength, and fatigue. To reach optimal athletic performance and maintain adequate energy levels, keeping hydrated is imperative.

Cognitive function: Even slight dehydration can affect our concentration,

Health & F tness The Importance of Staying Hydrated

By Tehila Levine-Soskel, RDN, CDN

mood, and memory. Mental clarity and brain function is supported by adequate water intake.

Weight: Staying hydrated and drinking enough water can help with weight management. It helps increase our satiety and reduces the chances of overeating. Swapping water for high-calorie beverages is one way to contribute to your health.

Skin: Healthy and radiant skin can be attributed to those who stay well hydrated. Water helps reduce the appearance of fine

inadequate fluid intake, illness, or other factors. Being aware of the signs of dehydration is key, as well as taking preventative measures. Symptoms of dehydration include thirst, dry tongue, dry lips, fatigue, dizziness, lightheadedness, reduced urine output, muscle cramps, and other negative health factors.

Preventative measures to ensure you are properly hydrated are as follows. Firstly, make sure you have regularly drink water. You can do so by making a

Incorporating hydrating foods into your diet is another way to increase your water intake.

lines and wrinkles by maintaining skin elasticity.

Digestion: Water helps support the function of the gastrointestinal tract, preventing constipation.

Kidneys: Proper hydration is crucial to maintain kidney function, reducing the risk of kidney stones and other infections.

Dehydration occurs when the body loses more water than it has, whether from

habit out of it. Carry a water bottle around with you as a reminder to stay hydrated. Drink when you first wake up and throughout the day. Don’t wait to start drinking towards the end of the day.

Incorporating hydrating foods into your diet is another way to increase your water intake. Fruits and vegetables like cucumbers, celery, watermelon, strawberries, tomatoes, lettuce, cantaloupe, oranges, and

zucchini all contain high water content and can be included in your diet.

Coffee and alcohol are considered diuretic beverages, meaning they can increase your fluid loss. Limiting the amount of coffee and alcohol you drink can also help you stay better hydrated. Focus on water being your main choice of beverage. Setting reminders to drink more water, whether through alarms or reminders on your phone, can help you be more mindful to drink more.

Certain groups of people may require specific attention to hydration. Firstly, those pregnant and nursing have increased water needs to help support both mother and baby. Secondly, children may be more susceptible to dehydration, especially during the warmer weather. Parents should remind and ensure kids are drinking frequently. Older adults are at a greater risk for dehydration due to adipsia, which is the reduced thirst sensation, and other health conditions. Regular water intake encouragement in this population is key. Lastly, athletes need to watch their hydration levels and may benefit from electrolyte drinks to help replenish.

Hydration is an integral aspect of our health that should not be neglected. From supporting cellular function to enhancing cognitive and physical performance, water plays an essential part in maintaining overall well-being. Even just mild dehydration can impact your mental and physical health. By familiarizing yourself with the signs of dehydration and engaging healthy habits to promote water intake, you can ensure you’re helping meet your body’s hydration needs.

Tehila Soskel is a registered dietitian nutritionist with a private practice in the Five Towns. She sees clients for weight loss, diabetes, and other various diseases. Appointments can be made for in-person or virtual sessions: 516-457-8558, tehilasoskelrd@gmail.com, tehilasoskelnutrition.com.

Zahava Ament, 4

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Chezky, 8

Elchonon Riselsheimer, 6

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In The K tchen

Stuffed Mini Eggplants with Techina

By Naomi Nachman

This recipe is from my friend Yocheved Gross (owner of Hair and Blush Academy), who is a fabulous cook. This stuffed eggplant is so versatile, so feel free to make it your own! Whether you serve it as an appetizer or main, it’s sure to be a winner.

Ingredients

◦ 12 mini purple eggplants

◦ 4 tablespoons avocado oil

◦ 1 large onion, finely diced

◦ 6 cloves garlic, minced, or 6 frozen cubes

◦ 1 pound extra lean chopped meat

◦ 2 tablespoons fresh parsley, cleaned and chopped

◦ 2 teaspoons fresh basil, cleaned and chopped

◦ ¾ teaspoon kosher salt

◦ ½ teaspoon fresh black pepper

◦ 1 red bell pepper, finely diced

◦ 1 yellow pepper, finely diced

◦ Chopped chives, to garnish

◦ Prepared techina, for serving

Preparation

Prepare the Stuffed Mini Eggplants with Techina

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cut the mini eggplants in half, keeping the stems intact. Scoop out the eggplant flesh, reserving the skins, and dice finely.

2. In a skillet, heat the oil. Add the onion and garlic and sauté in the oil until cooked through. Add the diced eggplant and sauté until soft. Add the meat and sauté until all the liquid is evaporated and the meat begins to brown. Remove from the heat and break up the meat with a fork so that there are no large chunks.

3. Combine the meat and eggplant, parsley, basil, salt, and black pepper. Spoon the mixture into the eggplant skins and sprinkle with the diced red pepper. Transfer the stuffed eggplants to a greased baking dish and bake, covered, until the eggplants are completely soft and cooked through, at least an hour and a half to two hours.

4. Before serving, garnish with the chopped chives. Top with techina.

Naomi Nachman, the owner of The Aussie Gourmet, caters weekly and Shabbat/ Yom Tov meals for families and individuals within The Five Towns and neighboring communities, with a specialty in Pesach catering. Naomi is a contributing editor to this paper and also produces and hosts her own weekly radio show on the Nachum Segal Network stream called “A Table for Two with Naomi Nachman.” Naomi gives cooking presentations for organizations and private groups throughout the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan area. In addition, Naomi has been a guest host on the QVC TV network and has been featured in cookbooks, magazines as well as other media covering topics related to cuisine preparation and personal chefs. To obtain additional recipes, join The Aussie Gourmet on Facebook or visit Naomi’s blog. Naomi can be reached through her website, www.theaussiegourmet.com or at (516) 295-9669.