The Rambam, in Hilchos Tefilah, writes that reading the Tochacha of this week’s Parsha, Ki Savo, before Rosh Hashanah is done הלכתש ידכ היתוללקו הנש—so that the year, along with all its hardships, should come to an end. In fact, Reb Shlomo Zalman zt”l cites the minhag of wishing each other היתוללקו הנש הלכת, emphasizing the importance of not being a הבוט יופכ, one who denies the good they have received. Even during challenging times, many great miracles are revealed, and we must give thanks to Hashem for all the goodness and kindness He has bestowed upon us throughout the year.
In a year filled with ups and downs, it is particularly refreshing to witness this year closing with some truly remarkable miracles. Who could have predicted that terrorists would have the script flipped on them, with beepers and walkie-talkies exploding and causing chaos and damage to their lives, communications and operations? It’s a powerful reminder that this entire saga is being orchestrated from above.
It serves as a reminder that ןיע ףרהכ
salvation from Hashem can come in the blink of an eye. These words have instilled hope in us throughout this year, helping us to emerge on the other side of challenges that initially seemed insurmountable.
This week, I attended the Israeli real estate expo at the Pikesville DoubleTree. Outside, Hamas
sympathizers were protesting with signs, vulgarity, and harassment. Among them were even some Jews—individuals with misplaced values and a misguided moral compass. To me, this has been the most heartbreaking consequence following the events of October 7th. How can our own people fail to see the truth?
I’m no kiruv expert, and I don’t go around wrapping Tefillin on others, although I know those methods can help bring our brothers and sisters closer. Still, I hope that at some point—hopefully this year—the words of the Rosh Hashanah davening will come to fruition:
“And every created being shall know that You are its Creator, and every formed being shall understand that You have formed it, and all who have the breath of life in their nostrils shall declare: ‘Hashem, the God of Israel, is King, and His kingship rules over all.’”
In the blink of an eye, may there be an event that awakens everyone to the truth. May all unite this year as one to coronate our King as the Master of the World.
Wishing everyone a peaceful Shabbos, Aaron Menachem
.חמשל .תונהיל
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AMUD A DAY - Five days a week DAILY CHAZARA - Previous day's amud WEEKLY CHAZARA - On Friday & Shabbos
Nismach’s Indescribably Fun and Meaningful Labor Day Weekend Shabbaton
When close to 70 almanas (widows) of all ages, stages, and backgrounds get together to share a weekend, you would think the mood would be sad or morose. On the contrary, this past Labor Day weekend, August 30-September 1, the atmosphere was uplifting, upbeat, and inspiring at the Third Annual Nismach Labor Day Weekend Shabbaton.
The Shabbaton is the highlight of the year for the members of Nismach, a group formed for Orthodox Jewish widows in 2016 by Stephanie Savir-Perlman of Silver Spring. Its activities are patterned after those of Samchainu, the New York-based international support community for presently 2700+ almanas. In 2019, Nismach expanded to include widows from Baltimore. The group is sponsored by Yad Yehuda of Greater Washington. There is no charge to join or to participate in any event. Ahavas Yisrael and STAR-K Kosher Certification, in addition to private donors, helped sponsor this year’s Shabbaton.
The Shabbaton kicked off on erev Shabbos when the women descended upon Michael and Margie Pensak Steinberg’s home - where all five meals and activities took place - to pick up welcome bags and enjoy a piece of hot potato kugel. In addition, professional sheitel touch-ups by Fagie Rosen and Sury Goldman and relaxing mini chair massages by Holistic Massage were offered. The women were hosted in approximately 16 neighboring Ranchleigh homes.
Insightful, inspiring Divrei Torah on a variety of topics were shared by scholar-in-residence, Mrs. Malkie Katz, of New Haven, Connecticut, and Baltimore’s own Rivka Leah Goldman. The delicious meals were peppered with beautiful Shabbos zemiros led by Rebbetzin Evelyn Hyman. The Shabbos afternoon program included a Q & A featuring Rabbi Yisrael Motzen, Rav of Ner Tamid Greenspring Valley Synagogue; and presentations by former Baltimorean, Rosalie Daniel, of Boca Raton, who described growing up frum behind
the Iron Curtain, and Keren Simchas Chosson V’Kallah (KSCVK) founder, Devorah Benjamin, of Brooklyn.
Following Shalosh Seudos and Havdalah, the women were treated to a pizza Malave Malka and live concert by internationally renowned singing star, Elena Tal. As part of her impressive and inspiring hour-long performance, Mrs. Tal was joined by guest artists, violinist Sara Leeba Caplan and one of her own voice students, Shira Miriam Kimelfeld.
The weekend culminated with a farewell brunch on Sunday morning, which featured speakers Breindy Halberstam of Monsey, co-founder of Samchainu, and Baltimore native Estelle Levitas, a nonagenarian who shared her humor and inspirational life story of becoming Shomer Shabbos at the age of 90.
“New friendships were made, and old ones nurtured,” shares co-Shabbaton coordinator Laurie Cohen. “Everyone went home on a high, feeling filled with warmth and love… Today, Nismach has over 170 members from Baltimore, Silver Spring, and the Greater Washington area suburbs. It is the club “no one wanted to join”, but those who do find friends and solace, by others who “get it”.”
Breindy Halberstam was just one of several guests who gave a rave review about the event:
“It was so enjoyable! I appreciate all your hard work. I am sure you had pleasure to see the impact on so many women. It will keep them going through many hard times!”
Yet others expressed sentiments such as: “Thank you for an amazing Shabbos!! I loved every moment of it!”; “Beautiful memories of new friendships and sisters.”; “The Shabbaton was so uplifting! All the speakers were inspiring. Also, I loved the ruach and the singing.”; and “The Shabbaton left me filled up, physically, spiritually and emotionally. I received chizuk from all of you to last until next time we’re together…I thank you from the bottom of my heart!”
By: BJLife Newsroom
Photos: Esky Cook
Nismach provides informal support and camaraderie by offering opportunities to get together – both in-person and virtually. Just some of their events include monthly speakers; weekly art classes on Zoom; paint nights; women-only swims; luncheons; and an annual boat ride on the Chesapeake Bay. Prior to Yom Tov, each woman receives a beautiful gift.
In addition, approximately 80 members participate in a very active
Nismach WhatsApp chat, where information, simchas, concerns, and sorrows are comfortably shared.
For more information regarding joining Nismach and donating, visit Nismach.org.
Hatzalah Museum Acquires Baltimore’s First Hatzalah Ambulance to Preserve Lifesaving Legacy
The Hatzalah Museum is proud to announce the acquisition of the historic ambulance, Hatzalah of Baltimore’s first ambulance M-3,” which will be permanently displayed to honor its vital role in saving lives. This significant addition to the museum’s collection was procured by The Museum’s curator Nusi Josephy B-64/HSF-164.
Originally serving Flatbush Hatzolah (F-904), “M-3” played a crucial role in emergency medical services, transporting countless patients and responding to critical situations. Notably, it was one of the first ambulances to arrive at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a testament to its commitment to emergency response and lifesaving efforts.
Dovid Goldwasser, HSF-79 from the HSF Fleet Department, provided logistical support in transporting “M-3” from Baltimore to New York, ensuring
Adirei HaTorah At
Fits safe arrival at the Hatzalah Museum.
“The Hatzalah Museum is honored to provide a home for ‘M-3’ to enjoy retirement,” said Nusi Josephy. “This ambulance embodies the spirit of Hatzalah’s dedication to serving the community, and we are grateful to preserve its legacy for future generations.”
The museum extends its heartfelt thanks to Hatzalah of Baltimore for their generous donation of “M-3.” This historic ambulance will not only serve as a symbol of Hatzalah’s commitment to emergency medical services but also as an educational piece for visitors to understand the pivotal role of Hatzalah in community health and safety.
The Hatzalah Museum invites the community to visit and experience this remarkable piece of history firsthand, as we celebrate the invaluable contributions of Hatzalah and its life-saving missions.
About Hatzalah Museum:
By: BJLife Newsroom Photos: Yitzy Seidel
The Hatzalah Museum is dedicated to preserving the history and legacy of Hatzalah’s emergency medical
services. Through artifacts, exhibits, and educational programs, the museum aims to honor the commitment of volunteers and showcase the evolution of emergency response.
Ner YisroelYTS Nursery Celebrates
or an Adirei HaTorah event, HaRav HaGaon Yerucham Olshin, shlita, Rosh Yeshiva at BMG, stopped off at Yeshivas Ner Yisroel and after greeting the Rosh HaYeshiva, Moreinu HaRav Aharon Feldman, shlita, said a shiur on Mesechta Nedarim which the Yeshiva is learning this zman.
Alef/Beis
Party!
The nursery class at Yeshivas Toras Simcha celebrated a special milestone. The class had a haschalos Alef/Beis party. The boys came dressed for the occasion, got a special Mazel Tov treat, and were enthralled by Rabbi Shepard’s words of excitement about beginning this learning journey. The party was followed by the class learning their first letter - Alef!
Team Miracle Massage Wins The 2024 “JCNSL – By Tripping Kosher” Title
Congratulations to Team “Miracle Massage” on winning the “Lazar Real Estate” Championship and taking home the “Maryland Softball Competition (MDSC)” trophy!
Read on for details from the Postseason:
the years, The Tov Pizza team came into the game hungry and left satisfied.
Lazar Real Estate Championship Game:
Miracle Massage 15 Tov Pizza 7
Lazar Real Estate Playoff Game:
Tov Pizza 16
Clothier 7
Tov Pizza’s season was one for the history books. While the team started off slow, everything began to mesh about midway through the year. And in the postseason, against the dangerous and formidable Clothier team, Tov Pizza put on an especially dominant showing. Much like an unbaked pizza, the team just needed a little more time to warm up.
With owner Ronnie Rosenbluth looking on from his Owner’s Suite, the boys put forth a full team effort backed by strong defense and an explosive offensive display. Consistent hitting from rookies, Ezra Bernstein, Benny Herskovitz, Yaakov Schreiber, and Yechiel Shreck; rock solid defense from veterans Gavriel Borooson, Deli Traub, and Yaakov Furman; and stalwart leadership from team Captains, Barry Rosenbluth and Shua Novograd, helped launch the team into a championship showdown. Like our community members who have patronized the pizza shop over
The Championship game started like any other JCNSL game. Two teams, playing under the lights on one of the four majestic “Web Interactive Technologies” fields. The grass and dirt were meticulously manicured, thanks to “Eco Pro Restoration,” and all the needed bats, balls, and masks were prepped and ready to go, thanks to Equipment Sponsor, “The Friendship Circle of Baltimore.”
Special for the Postseason, the JCNSL had two of their most senior “I Heart Remodeling” Umpires in attendance, in Mr. Robbie Meehan and Mr. Mike Slawinsky. And of course, all players were decked out in their elegant, button-down “JBZ Management/BZ Cosmetics” league jerseys.
The game pitted the two underdogs of the Postseason against one another, Seed 3 “Tov Pizza” vs Seed 4 “Miracle Massage.” While Tov got off to an early 2-0 lead, Miracle Massage responded and took the lead with an Eli Kelemer HR and a Yaakov Meister bases-clearing triple.
While Tov Pizza, led by Pitcher Barry Rosenbluth, had a late-game surge and began mounting a comeback, Miracle Massage’s unsung hero
of the season, Tzvi Perlman, put the game away by rocking a clutch RBI triple over the outstretched arm of the Tov Pizza outfielder. At that point, there was no looking back. Miracle piled it on with hits from Mordechai Schiermeyer, Zack Lerner, Yitzy Goldberg, Yitzchok Sheen, Aron Meister,
Noam Shiman, and Sasha Zakharin.
The game ended with an impressive OF catch by Aitan Lewis, sealing the deal on an incredible season and a great championship game. With the dust settled, team Miracle Massage named their MVP of the season, Pitcher Mayer Goldsmith.
New from
“Since the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash, the one opportunity we have to form a direct bond with Hashem is Bircas Kohanim.”
– Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman zt”l
by NAFTALI WEINBERGER
What a special moment! The Kohanim stand before us, the conduit bringing down Hashem’s berachos to His people. As they recite the Bircas Kohanim — the sole form of Beis HaMikdash avodah still left to us — we can almost feel we are once again in the Beis HaMikdash, experiencing Hashem’s imminent Presence.
The Priceless Treasure of Bircas Kohanim features stories showing the honor accorded Bircas Kohanim by great Torah leaders, the laws and customs of Bircas Kohanim, and a special section with more than 550 teshuvos in Hebrew from Maran Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l on the topic.
INSPIRING JEWS ... ONE BOOK AT A TIME
Discover the Richness and Depth of Aleinu
by YISROEL BESSER
Aleinu. For so many of us, it’s a struggle to recognize and tap into its awesome power as we conclude each tefillah. At the same time, Aleinu is one of the most moving tefillos of the Yamim Noraim.
In Aleinu — The Power and the Pride, bestselling author Yisroel Besser shares stories and insights that give us a whole new understanding of the magnificent words of this ancient and beloved prayer, authored by Yehoshua bin Nun.
Discover how this tefillah is rich with lessons of gratitude, emunah, protection, and geulah. Understand why it closes out each tefillah, so that it fortifies and carries us from one personal encounter with Hashem to the next.
When Klal Yisrael recites the tefillah of Aleinu, Hashem gathers His Heavenly entourage, and they listen and respond (Mishnah Berurah 132:8). Fallstaff Shopping Center
Phone: (410) 358-2200
INCLUDES OVER 550 TESHUVOS IN HEBREW FROM MARAN RAV CHAIM KANIEVSKY
Greater Washington: Around the Community Donuts For The Dedicated
For many of us, it is hard to believe that the infamous 9/11 happened 23 (!) years ago. Even more unbelievable is that, in general, America has not developed a tradition to mark the day in any meaningful way.
This year, the Silver Spring community decided to change that. We joined a national OU-JLIC initiative that united college campuses and young professionals across America in delivering donuts to first responder locations. We raised money to buy donuts, coffee, and breakfast goods, and visited four separate locations in the Silver Spring community. Each location received three dozen donuts, a carton of coffee, creamer, milk, and breakfast rolls generously donated by a community member who brought them to the meet-up spot. We made sure to label every donut box and all the coffees with stickers that said “Thank you for your service! From Jewish Families of Maryland”, and we also wrote a personal, hand-written thankyou card for each location.
Then we did our deliveries!
The first responders were incredibly moved and touched that we decided to mark September 11th by thanking them for their service. We got many smiles, a few handshakes, tours of the stations, and trips onto fire trucks. All told, we delivered 12 dozen donuts, 4 cartons of coffee, 100+ dinner rolls, reached 4 separate locations, received 25 donations and had 21 volunteers doing deliveries. Yasher koach, Silver Spring!
WEEKLY CALENDAR
SEPTEMBER 23RD-
Monday September 23rd
9:30am Yoga with Deborah Bandos
10:00am Baking with Ms. Hirschman
11:00am
Discussion Group with Rabbi Karp
1:00pm Arts & Crafts with Shifra
2:00pm
Piano with Mrs Schwartz
Tuesday September 24th
9:30am
Yoga with Deborah Bandos
10:15am
Anagrams with Malka Zweig
11:00am
Discussion Group with Rabbi Karp
1:45pm Guitar with Yossi K
Wednesday September 25th
9:30am
Yoga with Deborah Bandos
10:15am
Anagrams with Malka Zweig
11:00am
Discussion Group with Rabbi Karp
1:00pm
Arts & Crafts with Shifra
1:45pm
Guitar with Yossi K
Thursday September 26th
9:30am
Yoga with Deborah Bandos
10:15am
Anagrams with Malka Zweig
11:00am
Discussion Group with Rabbi Karp
1:45pm Guitar with Yossi K
Friday September 27th
9:30am
Rabbi P's Parsha Pointers and Patterns
10:00am
Baking with Ms. Hirschman
11:00am
Discussion Group with Rabbi Karp
2:00pm
Music with Aharon Grayson
Greater Washington: Around the Community
An Evening Of Comedy
What a fantastic evening it was! That’s the feedback that Bikur Cholim of Greater Washington has received about its inaugural Evening of Comedy organized by the all star team : Aviva Kramer, Tamara Goodman and Julia Frankston- Morris.
Comedian Eli Liebowicz entertained a sold-out crowd of over 120 guests at Third Hill Brewery in downtown Silver Spring. Eli had everyone rolling with his relatable observations on the beauty and humor inherent in Orthodox Jewish life. The vibe was relaxed and super friendly and the beer was kosher. Eli had the audience nodding along as he playfully examined the quirks of Orthodox Jewish living and shared experiences that resonated with our community.
The crowd erupted in laughter as he joked about everything from Friday afternoon Shabbos preparations—
turns out it’s a near-death experience in every household --to the perplexing lyrics in a favorite Journeys song. There was a noticeable sense of togetherness and unity throughout the night, sparking one of the bartenders to note at the end of the night that the event made him proud to be Jewish. He asked if BCGW could use volunteers. The answer is yes!
With three new Bikur Cholim Rooms coming to area hospitals and a new cooking kitchen about to open where volunteers will help prepare kosher medically tailored meals for patients and their loved ones, the need for volunteers and financial support is more important now than ever.
We know many people were disappointed that they didn’t snag a ticket to this year’s event but don’t worry as preparations are underway to make this event bigger and better next year.
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
For edits or additions email ads@baltimorejewishhome.com
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
We recently spoke with Mrs. Meira Burkom, Director of YahalomMD, to learn about their work on behalf of the special needs community since launching one year ago.
BJH: What is YahalomMD and how did it start?
613 Seconds with YahalomMD
BJH: How did you become the one selected for the role of heading YahalomMD?
MB: As the mother of a special needs child, I have been thrown into the web of navigating the world of special needs. Over the course of advocating for our child, and with a lot of help and support from individuals, government agencies and non-profit organizations from around the country and within our community, I have become pretty knowledgeable in this area. Considering my familiarity withand my personal connection to - the issue, and my passion to assist families going through the experience, Rabbi Sadwin offered me the opportunity to use my experience for the benefit of the community.
BJH: What would you say is the mission of Yahalom?
to a specialized type of insurance or government agency. We have also worked with parents to determine which of our wonderful local chesed organizations is the best fit for their child. If a family needs any resources or support relating to raising a child with special needs, and is having trouble finding it on their own, Yahalom does its best to connect that household with the existing support structures that are out there. We also hold occasional events and support groups to provide chizuk and self-care for the mothers and fathers of children with special needs.
BJH: Who else do you work with?
MB: Yahalom is a resource organization for families of children with special needs that was created by Agudath Israel of America several years ago for the communities of New Jersey and New York. Rabbi Ariel Sadwin, who heads the Agudah office in Maryland, and has been a resource for both families and organizations relating to special needs (especially in the area of government advocacy), was contacted about creating a local Yahalom branch. After extensive efforts to gather input from the existing special needs organizations in Baltimore and from active individuals and groups, it became clear that our community would benefit immensely from a Yahalom office.
MB: Parents of a child with special needs don’t always know where to turn, whom to call, and what to ask. Yahalom aims to help by supporting, educating, and guiding parents to ensure that they are equipped with all the necessary information and resources that are available when dealing with their child.
BJH: What is entailed in being the Yahalom director?
MB: Being the Yahalom director means assisting families by connecting them to the resources they are having trouble obtaining. Sometimes that means helping a family determine if there is a grant most appropriate for their unique medical and financial situation. Sometimes that means connecting a family
MB: I am fortunate to be part of a strong team of Yahalom directors from communities across the country. Additionally, we formed a local Yahalom Committee of mothers and professionals who meet regularly to bounce ideas off of each other, share dreams, tap into our own networks and connections, and use our creativity to brainstorm for new initiatives to benefit the special needs community.
BJH: What about other organizations?
MB: If not for the support of our local organizations, Yahalom would not exist. There was a groundswell of approval from many of the previously existing organizations focused on servicing the special needs community at our inception, and since then we have maintained this collaborative approach.
BJH: What are some of the recent Yahalom events?
MB: Our opening event featured Rabbi Baruch Rabinowitz (of New York), a wellknown personality in the special needs community, who shared his family’s journey with their special child. Our Mothers’ Event, several months ago, featured a night of relaxation, rejuvenation, and connection. Coming up this Wednesday, September 25th, is our event for fathers that will feature an evening of chizuk with Rabbi Eytan Feiner (of Far Rockaway, NY).
BJH: What would you tell a family struggling with the challenges relating to special needs?
MB: Know that you are not alone. While every child is unique, there are other families out there struggling with something similar. Finding the right connection and support system can really make a difference. YahalomMD is happy to help you find those connections!
BJH: How can our readers support the work of YahalomMD?
MB: As I mentioned earlier, Agudah Maryland is our parent organization, and if you check out the front cover of this week’s BJH, you will see that this week is the annual fundraising campaign for Agudah Maryland. Among the many wonderful things supported by your donation to Agudah Maryland is our work here at Yahalom, and you can find our fundraising link at Charidy.com/AgudahMD/YahalomMD
BJH: How can our readers contact YahalomMD?
MB: They can e-mail us at yahalom@ agudahmd.org, or call (667) 430-0901.
The Week In News
The Week In News
Meta Bans Russian Broadcaster
Russian state media broadcaster RT and other Kremlin-controlled networks have been banned by Meta. The parent company of Facebook and Instagram announced the ban on Monday,
“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” a Meta spokesperson said.
Prior to Monday’s ban, RT had 7.2 million followers on Facebook and 1 million followers on Instagram.
The move comes days after the U.S. Justice Department announced charges against two RT employees for funneling nearly $10 million into a U.S. company to create and amplify content that aligned with Russian interests.
After the Justice Department announcement, RT responded with mocking statements that did not address the specifics of the U.S. allegations.
The Justice Department indictment was just one piece of the recent U.S. government crackdown on RT and other Russian state puppets. Sec-
military equipment to Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
China Releases U.S. Citizen
This week, David Lin, a U.S. citizen who had been held by China since 2006, was released by the Chinese government. The 68-year-old had been behind bars serving a life sentence for what the U.S. government said were bogus charges of contract fraud.
Lin’s daughter, Alice, said that she was notified of her father’s release on Saturday and that he was expected to land in San Antonio, Texas, on Sunday.
“No words can express the joy we have — we have a lot of time to make up for,” Alice said.
Lin entered China in 2006 and attempted to establish a Christian training center in Beijing. China‘s Communist Party disapproves of such activities and routinely roots out underground Christian churches, seeing them as a threat to its power. Only officially-sanctioned, closely monitored churches are permitted under the Communist Party’s rule.
Lin was detained the same year he arrived. He was handed a life sentence after being convicted of fraud in 2009. The charge is often applied to home church leaders who try to raise money for expansion, according to the Dui Hua Foundation human rights group.
The release of Lin — who is one of three U.S. citizens that the State Department considered to be unjustly jailed in China — marks a breakthrough in a longstanding bilateral irritant that has defied resolution for years. “The Chinese first agreed to release him in a meeting between Secretary of State [Antony] Blinken and [Chinese For-
eign Minister] Wang Yi in Laos” in July in a meeting on the sidelines of an ASEAN-related ministerial meeting, said a U.S. official.
The timing of Lin’s release — just weeks after national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s meetings with Wang in Beijing — suggests that Sullivan also played a role in bringing Lin home.
“I know that Jake Sullivan did raise my dad’s case,” Lin’s daughter said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom unsuccessfully pressed for Lin’s release when he visited China in October. Newsom came home with the message from Chinese authorities that Lin would remain behind bars ”through April 2029.”
Two other Americans, Mark Swidan and Kai Li, are also jailed in China unjustly, according to the U.S. State Department. Swidan was detained in China in 2012 and was later convicted by a Chinese court of manufacturing and trafficking drugs and sentenced to death. Li was detained in Shanghai in 2016, charged with espionage and stealing state secrets, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
“Our hope is that David’s release creates the space for additional diplomacy” to free Swidan and Li, a U.S. official said.
New Zealand Increases Tourist Tax
Want to visit New Zealand? Make sure you’re packing more money in your wallet. The country is increasing its International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy (IVL) from NZ$35 ($22) to NZ$100 ($62). The increase is coming into effect on October 1.
“International tourism also comes with costs to local communities, including additional pressure on regional infrastructure and higher upkeep and maintenance costs across our conservation estate,” Matt Doocey, New Zealand’s Minister for Hospitality and Tourism, said.
The IVL, which was originally introduced in 2019, is intended to help cover the costs of environmental protection around the country. According to Doocey, international tourists spent more than $11 billion in New Zealand between March 2023 and March 2024.
But not everyone is happy with the price hike.
Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA), a consortium of travel industry professionals from across the country, lamented, “New Zealand’s tourism recovery is falling behind the rest of the world, and this will further dent our global competitiveness.” The group believes that New Zealand will lose tourists to Canada and the UK, where flights are more plentiful and entry fees less prohibitive.
The IVL is not the only added cost that will hit tourists visiting New Zealand. Higher prices for tourist visas also kick in on October 1, going from $131 to $211.
Citizens of 60 countries and territories, including the United States, Canada, Singapore, Japan and Mexico, who can enter New Zealand are eligible for a visa waiver that will allow them to stay up to three months in the country for tourism purposes. Travelers holding these passports are still required to get an e-visa and pay the IVL.
Due to the new rules, the government expects that it will take longer for visas to be processed this year. Tourists coming for the holiday period should apply for tourist visas by mid-October.
Iran to Deport 2 Million Afghans
Around 4.5 million Afghans live in Iran; many fled Afghanistan after the takeover of the Taliban in 2021. Now, Tehran is set to deport two million of those migrants over the next six months, in one of the largest expulsion programs in recent history.
Police are already detaining these Afghans and bringing them back across the border. Shops in one province have been ordered not to sell food to Afghans.
In order to prevent more migrants from entering the country, Tehran is also building a 13-foot-tall wall along a stretch of the 900-km-long border with Afghanistan
Pakistan also deported at least 600,000 Afghan refugees last year.
Ahmad-Reza Radan, head of Iran’s national police, said, “We are working to deport a significant number of unauthorized foreign nationals whose presence in the country is illegal.”
Eskandar Momeni, Iran’s interior minister, noted, “Afghans are cultivated people, but our country cannot receive so many migrants.
“We plan to handle these matters in an orderly fashion and without much fuss,” he said, referring to the deportations. “Our priority lies with irregular migrants.”
Last month, a video surfaced of a group of police officers arresting a teenager, with one officer pressing on the Afghan’s neck. The migrant was later released, but he is being called the “Afghan George Floyd.”
In another video, police officers take turns hitting an Afghan who leans against the trunk of the patrol vehicle.
In some areas, Afghans face severe restrictions:
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they are banned from buying groceries, renting homes and visiting certain areas. Thousands have had their phone sim cards blocked, while goods are also sold to Afghans at higher prices than to Iranians. Local prosecutors in southern Kerman province have even prohibited bakeries from selling bread to Afghan nationals.
A sign in a bakery in Iran proclaimed, “By order of the honorable judge: Selling bread to non-nationals is forbidden” before adding that any bakeries committing such an offence will be dealt with according to the law. It also gives the address and telephone number of the bakeries union.
Taliban officials believe that the deportations are linked to a dispute over the water rights of the Helmand River between the two countries.
Iran relies on this water for farmland irrigation in its southeastern regions and has accused the Taliban of restricting the supply by constructing dams.
“We all know the real issue is the water, everything else is just an ex-
cuse,” an official from the Taliban’s interior ministry said. “They want more water, and we’re not giving it to them, that’s it,” he said.
“The previous government was giving them more water than Iran was entitled to. There have been discussions with the Iranians to halt the return of Afghans, as the Mujahideen are already struggling to feed millions of impoverished people,” he explained. “Adding this challenge would make the situation even more difficult,” he said.
Even amid the deportation program, Afghans continue to hire smugglers to transport them into Iran so they can escape the hardships of life under the Taliban. While many Afghans remain in Iran and send money back to their families in Afghanistan, some attempt to reach Europe via Turkey.
Putin Expands Army
President Vladimir Putin has issued a decree expanding Russia’s army
by another 180,000 soldiers, which would bring the total number of troops to 1.5 million and total military staff to almost 2.4 million people. His order, which will be executed in December, marks the third time Putin has expanded his military since February 2022, when Russia launched a fullscale invasion of Ukraine. In August 2022, he ordered an expansion of 137,000 soldiers. In December 2023, he increased the number of troops in his country’s military by another 170,000.
Putin’s move comes one month after Ukraine rapidly invaded Kursk, a region in southern Russia, marking the first time since World War II that a foreign power has taken over Russian land. A week ago, Russia intensified its attempts to kick Ukrainian forces out of the invaded region while the Russian military continued approaching Pokrovsk, a key town in Ukraine.
In September 2022, after Ukraine liberated much of the previously captured Kharkiv region, Putin ordered the immediate “partial mobilization” of Russian citizens, thereby implementing a draft for those with military service and calling up military reservists. In response to the mobilization, hundreds of thousands of citizens left Russia and went to Georgia and other neighboring countries, while many protested the decision.
In November 2023, the Kremlin suspended the mobilization since they achieved their goal of increasing the army by 300,000 troops, but a month later, Putin ordered another military expansion.
It is not clear how many Russian soldiers have died since the invasion of Ukraine, although the Ukrainian military’s General Staff and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense believe that approximately 610,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since February 2022.
“Russia’s casualty rate will likely continue to average above 1,000 a day throughout September 2024 as Russia
continues operations on a wide front from Kursk in the north to Robotyne in the south,” the U.K.’s defense ministry said.
Venezuela Detains 3 U.S. Citizens
According to a statement released by the government of Venezuela on Saturday, three U.S. citizens, two citizens of Spain, and one individual from the Czech Republic were arrested for allegedly planning violent “terrorist acts” meant to “destabilize” the country. A government official also alleged that authorities confiscated over four hundred rifles.
Currently, the Biden administration has only confirmed that one of the detainees was a U.S. Navy sailor, adding that it was “aware of unconfirmed reports” of the arrests of two other Americans.
Venezuelan authorities claim that the five suspects were plotting to attack President Nicolas Maduro and members of his government, according to Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello.
Venezuela’s already-sour relationship with the U.S. and Spain deteriorated further after the South American country’s July 28 presidential election, in the wake of which around 2,400 people were arrested, 27 people were killed, and 192 were wounded amid protests against the results of the election. Opponents of Maduro – who claims to have won his third term –have brought forth evidence that the election was rigged, an allegation that Maduro has dismissed but refuses to disprove. The U.S. and other countries have voiced concern over the election’s democratic legitimacy, and the United States has recognized Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the victor.
Recently, one of Maduro’s jets was
confiscated by the United States, with Washington claiming that the plane’s exportation violated U.S. sanctions. Last Thursday, the U.S. unveiled new sanctions against sixteen Venezuelan government officials for obstructing “a transparent electoral process” and failing to release real results.
Cabello alleged that the U.S. government “has links” to what he called the suspects’ planned terrorist operation.
“Any claims of U.S. involvement in a plot to overthrow Maduro are categorically false,” the State Department spokesperson said. “The United States continues to support a democratic solution to the political crisis in Venezuela.”
Two weeks ago, Urrutia fled to Spain amid arrest threats. Last week, after one of Spain’s ministers referred to Maduro as a dictator, Venezuela recalled its Spanish ambassador, summoned Spain’s envoy to Venezuela, and cautioned Madrid against any further “interference.”
Under the decade-long reign of Maduro, the successor to Hugo Chavez, GDP dropped 80 percent in Venezuela, leading seven million people to leave the country.
Russia-Ukraine Prisoner Swap
Scores of soldiers who had been taken prisoner in the Russia-Ukraine war were able to go home over the weekend, as the two nations conducted a major exchange of prisoners on Friday and Saturday. Over the two days, 206 prisoners were allowed to go back to their countries.
The United Arab Emirates mediated the exchange. It was the country’s eighth such mediation since the start of 2024.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that all 103 Ukrainians returned were from the military — 82 soldiers and privates and 21 officers.
Russian Defense Ministry said that the 103 Russian soldiers exchanged had been taken prisoner in the border Kursk region where Ukrainian forces launched a surprise incursion in August.
“Our people are home,” Zelenskyy said on the Telegram messaging app. “We have successfully brought back another 103 warriors from Russian captivity to Ukraine.”
Zelenskyy posted pictures of servicemen wrapped in the national blue and yellow flag, hugging each other, talking on mobile phones and posing for group photographs at an undisclosed location.
Kyiv and Moscow have frequently exchanged prisoners since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, and Saturday’s swap was the third since Ukraine began a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in early August. Ukrainian officials have previously said its troops had captured at least 600 Russian soldiers during the incursion and that this would help it secure the return of captured Ukrainians.
Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s ombudsman, said the majority of the freed Ukrainians had been in Russian captivity since the early days of the invasion.
He posted a short video on the Telegram messaging app showing the servicemen standing in front of a bus and shouting “Glory to Ukraine.” Lubinets said that Kyiv had so far secured the return of 3,672 Ukrainians in 57 exchanges.
On Friday, 49 Ukrainian prisoners returned home. Among them were 23 women, including civilians detained before the full-scale invasion.
One of the women released was Lenia Umerova, who had been taken hostage while visiting her ailing father. Fifteen Azov soldiers, mostly women, who had spent over two years in captivity, were also brought home.
Raids on Ramle
On Friday, police detained a seventeen-year-old whom authorities suspect killed four people and injured nine others in a car bombing in an Arab community in Ramle on Thursday. Officials are not treating the incident as a terror attack but believe the bombing was connected to an on going battle between the Jarushi and Abu Zaid crime families in the area.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who has been criticized for not dealing with the organized crimes racking Arab-Israeli communities, promised that the police would be “going to war” to handle the issue. Early Friday morning, 500 police officers conducted raids on the cities of Ramle and Lod and on Dahmash, an Arab village situated between the two cities.
According to early findings, the car bombing caused a fire that spread to two local shops; the incident was seemingly caused by a grenade that was
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stolen. The car and affected stores have ties to the Jarushi family.
The bombing killed 50-year-old Daa Abu Halawa, her fourteen-yearold and ten-year-old children, and 24-year-old Leen Mugrabi, whose twomonth-old son sustained life-threatening wounds. Mugrabi, the daughterin-law of the crime family head Kamal Jarushi, was reportedly the main target of the attack.
During the raid, police confiscated a Glock handgun and other weapons. Dozens of Palestinians from the West Bank were arrested during the raid for being in Israel without a permit. Additionally, many were detained for allegedly having illegal weapons, although most detainees were freed because of insufficient evidence.
In writing to Ben Gvir, a number of residents of Ramle said they felt “deep frustration and harsh disappointment in your management of matters related to our personal security,” noting that “in the last few weeks, our city has become a playground for criminal gangs that threaten residents’ safety, Jews and Arabs alike, with unfathomable cruelty.”
“If we could go tonight and arrest all the crime families, all the criminals, it would change the situation,” said Ben Gvir, attributing his failure to deal with the crisis to Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara’s refusal to permit administrative detention against suspected criminals. “We know exactly who they are, we have lists of them, which we presented to the attorney general a year ago and six months ago — it’s the same people.”
Administrative detention, which is often used against terrorists, allows the police to detain terror suspects for a long time without trial.
Spain Hosts 2-State Solution Meeting
On Friday, a number of European and Arabic officials met in Madrid to talk over ideas about promoting a twostate solution, which they believe would bring peace to the Middle East.
“Together, we want to identify the
concrete actions that will enable us to make progress toward this objective,”
Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Spain, posted on X, formerly Twitter. “The international community must take a decisive step toward a just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
Before the meeting started, Sanchez hosted the meeting’s attendees at his home. The summit, which was led by top Spanish diplomat Jose Manuel Albares, saw Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa, the foreign ministers of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Ireland, Norway, and Slovenia, the heads of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, as well as the European Union’s foreign affairs chief Joseph Borrel, in attendance.
“The implementation of the twostate solution is the only way to ensure
a just and lasting peace in the region through the peaceful and secure coexistence of the state of Palestine and the state of Israel,” Albares asserted.
Albares added that he would be “delighted” if Israel participated in twostate solution talks, although he noted that Israel was not invited to the meeting in Madrid because the Jewish state isn’t part of “the group of Europeans nor … the Arab-Islamic contact group.”
The ongoing war in Gaza was triggered on October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped over 250 others. Of the 97 hostages still in Gaza, 33 are believed to have died while in the terror group’s captivity. Currently, Israeli officials tend to view peace talks and the prospect of a Palestinian state as rewards for terror.
On May 28, Spain, Ireland, and Norway officially recognized a Palestinian state, which Israel has condemned. Before the end of 2024, the first “bilateral summit between Spain and Palestine” will be held, during which “several collaboration agreements between the two states” will likely be signed, said Sanchez.
Hamas Rafah Brigade Defeated
According to IDF officials, Hamas’ Rafah Brigade has, at long last, been defeated, as over 2,300 of its terrorists have been eliminated and more than 8 miles of tunnels in Rafah have been demolished. Currently, the Israeli military has power over the whole city, as well as the Philadelphi Corridor, which is where the borders of Gaza and Egypt meet. And in a few weeks, if not sooner, a few dozen more Hamas tunnels are expected to be destroyed.
As of now, it isn’t clear what Israel plans to do once the final tunnel is demolished in Rafah.
The general in charge of the ground offensive into Rafah, Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen, who is also the commander of the IDF’s 162nd Division, said, “The Rafah Brigade has been defeated… Their four battalions have been destroyed, and we have completed operational control over the entire urban area.”
Cohen noted that his combat engineering forces found 203 distinct, but interconnected, tunnels beneath the Philadelphi Corridor, going around 300 meters from the border of Egypt to Rafah’s outskirts.
“There are a total of nine underground sites [tunnels] that cross into Egyptian territory, but they have collapsed, they are not usable, they are not active,” Cohen said, noting that the tunnels were either demolished by Egypt or by Hamas. For years, Egypt has tried to destroy the terrorist tunnels that go into Egyptian territory.
Relativ e to other parts of Gaza, Rafah has a special tunnel system wherein every single tunnel is connected. According to some, Rafah’s tunnel network is like an underground city, although it’s larger than Rafah itself.
Recently, as part of the IDF’s campaign into Rafah, the army found the bodies of six Israeli hostages, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi, who were murdered by Hamas, in a tunnel in the Tel Sultan neighborhood. The tunnel’s entrance was in a children’s playroom in a Tel Sultan home.
Hezbollah Pagers Explode
At least twelve terrorists were killed and thou-
sands of terrorists were wounded on Tuesday when the pagers Hezbollah terrorists use to communicate exploded in Lebanon on Tuesday.
Lebanon’s Health Minister Firass Abiad said that over 2,750 people have been wounded, 200 critically.
Iranian ambassador Mojtaba Amani was reportedly injured in the explosion, according to stateowned Mehr News.
In an initial statement, Hezbollah said, “This afternoon, a number of messaging devices known as ‘pagers’ exploded, which are owned by a number of workers in various Hezbollah units and institutions.”
Hezbollah said that it was carrying out an investigation to determine the causes of the blasts. A senior Lebanese security source told Al-Hadath that Israel infiltrated the communication system of individual devices and detonated them.
According to reports, the phones were called before the explosion for a period of seconds to increase the chance that whoever received the call would pick it up and be maximally wounded.
The pagers detonated were the latest model brought in by Hezbollah in recent months, three security sources said Reuters.
A Hezbollah official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the detonation of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group had been subjected to in nearly a year of war with Israel. Israel has not taken responsibility for the explosions
.
3 Hostages Were Killed in Strike
It’s been more than nine months since their bodies were retrieved from Gaza and buried. On Sunday, the IDF announced that an investigation confirmed that hostages Sgt. Ron Sherman, Cpl. Nik Beizer, and Elia Toledano had been killed as a result of a “byproduct” of an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip, although the exact cause of death is still unknown.
On November 10, 2024, the IDF carried out an airstrike near the location where the bodies were later found, targeting the commander of Hamas’s Northern Gaza Brigade, Ahmed Ghandour, who was hiding in a
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tunnel in Jabaliya.
“The findings of the investigation suggest that the three, with high probability, were killed by a byproduct of an IDF airstrike, during the assassination” of Ghandour, the IDF said.
“This is a highly probable estimate given all the data, but it is not possible to determine with certainty the circumstances of their death,” the military noted. The IDF did not elaborate on what such an airstrike “byproduct” could be, although family members have said it’s likely the three suffocated or were killed by carbon dioxide poisoning inside a tunnel following a strike.
According to the IDF’s investigation, the three had been held in a tunnel complex where Ghandour operated. However, when the strike was carried out, the military had no information on hostages being held in the area.
Nik’s mother, Katy Beizer, said Sunday that they were told by the IDF that troops “didn’t know there were hostages there… It’s incredible that they didn’t have that intelligence, that they didn’t think that next to Ghandour there would be captives [being used as human
shields]. It’s hard for me to understand and believe this.”
Amid the war, the IDF has said it does not strike in areas where it has information of the presence of hostages, but in some cases, hostages have been harmed in Israeli strikes due to a lack of intelligence.
On December 14, the bodies of Sherman, Beizer, and Toledano were found by troops in the tunnel network in Jabaliya and brought back to Israel for burial.
A Hamas propaganda video released a week after the three were found showed their bodies and claimed they had been killed in an airstrike. But in January, IDF representatives presented the families with a pathology report showing that the bodies had no signs of trauma or gunfire, indicating that they were not killed directly by an airstrike.
Sherman’s mother told Army Radio last week that, according to the unofficial information the family had heard, the three likely died of carbon dioxide poisoning due to lack of oxygen in the tunnel following the strike.
Beizer and Sherman, both 19, served in the COGAT’s Gaza District Coordi-
nation and Liaison, a Defense Ministry unit that coordinates permits and the passage of goods through the Erez Crossing into Gaza.
Hamas terrorists seized control of the Erez Crossing on October 7 as they invaded Israeli communities near the Gaza border, massacring some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 others.
Toledano, 28, was kidnapped from the Supernova festival with his close friend, Mia Schem, 21, who was released in late November as part of a temporary truce deal with Hamas.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Intelligence Commander Resigns
Brig. Gen. Yossi Sariel, the commander of the IDF’s main signals intelligence unit, Unit 8200, announced that he plans
on stepping down from his position eleven months after the October 7th massacre, which Israeli intelligence agencies, such as Unit 8200, did not prevent because they reportedly didn’t take warning signs of the attack seriously.
Sariel’s successor will be appointed “in the coming period,” the IDF said. Sariel has been the unit’s commander since February 2021, before which he held other intelligence positions.
“On October 7, at 6:29 a.m., I did not fulfill my mission as I expected of myself, as my commanders and subordinates expected of me, and as the citizens of the nation I love so much expected of me,” Sariel wrote.
“In accordance with the state of the war,” he hopes to “carry out my personal responsibility as the commander of 8200 and pass the baton to the next shift” when
the IDF believes it’s the appropriate time, Sariel said.
Sariel noted that “in the years, months, days and hours that preceded the surprise attack,” his unit crafted detailed reports on “Hamas’s operational attack plan.”
However, “the detailed information that was produced and distributed about Hamas’s plans and its preparations did not succeed in shattering the intelligence and military foundations either within the unit or among our partners,” he said, adding that, although such reports existed, the documents were, for some reason, not given to the chief of staff. Additionally, on September 19, 2023, the unit crafted a report showing that Hamas was preparing to launch a serious invasion into Israel, although such information was rejected by top intelligence officers.
Several top security officials have stepped down since October 7, including the heads of the Shin Bet, the Military Intelligence Directorate, the Gaza Division, and the Directorate’s Research Division.
seamless; and teams tend to be better connected to one another.”
Jassy also said Amazon is moving to have fewer managers overseeing teams, pledging to tackle bureaucratic impediments such as what he called “pre-meetings for the pre-meetings for the decision meetings.”
The company will now have a dedicated method for employees to flag any “bureaucracy or unnecessary process that’s crept in and we can root out,” he said. Some employees have said Amazon hasn’t done as good of a job at keeping the startup culture that fueled its success as it has grown into a giant corporation.
In the third quarter of 2024, 33% of U.S. companies required employees to come to the office full time, according to Flex Index’s data. Among technology companies with more than 1,000 employees, only 7% had such a requirement.
Polaris Dawn Safely Home
After conducting the first-ever commercial spacewalk and traveling farther from Earth than anyone in more than half a century, the astronauts of the Polaris Dawn mission returned to Earth safely early Sunday.
Amazon: Return to the Office
If you work at Amazon, they want you back – in the office, that is. In a message posted on Monday on its website, CEO Andy Jassy said the company believes there are significant advantages to having employees in the office five days a week.
When the pandemic hit, Amazon allowed some employees to work from home. Since May 1, 2023, workers were required to be in the office at least three days a week. Now, starting in January 2025, employees will need to be at their office desks five days a week.
Amazon is not alone in calling its workers back to the office. UPS, JPMorgan Chase and Boeing have all called their workers back in. Still, the average office occupancy in 10 major U.S. cities has hovered around 50% for months, according to data from security provider Kastle Systems.
Jassy has said he values in-office culture, and the fivedays-a-week decision comes after Amazon has invested in its office spaces in recent years and pushed its employees to be close to their teams.
When employees are in the office, he said, “We’ve observed that it’s easier for our teammates to learn, model, practice, and strengthen our culture; collaborating, brainstorming, and inventing are simpler and more effective; teaching and learning from one another are more
The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Dry Tortugas, Florida, shortly after 3:30 a.m., carrying Jared Isaacman, a billionaire entrepreneur, and his crew of three private astronauts, according to a SpaceX livestream.
The ambitious space mission, a collaboration between Isaacman and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, spent five days in orbit, achieved several milestones in private spaceflight and was further evidence that space travel and spacewalks are no longer the exclusive domain of professional astronauts working at government agencies like NASA.
The Crew Dragon capsule launched Tuesday, after delays because of a helium leak and bad weather. On board were Isaacman, the mission commander and the founder of the payment services company Shift4; Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon, SpaceX employees; and Scott Poteet, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Late on Tuesday, its orbit reached a high point of about 870 miles above the Earth’s surface. That beat the record distance for astronauts on a mission not headed to the moon, which the Gemini XI mission set in 1966 at 853 miles high, and made Gillis and Menon the first women ever to fly so far from Earth.
On Thursday, Isaacman and Gillis became the first private astronauts to successfully complete a spacewalk.
This was the first of three Polaris missions aimed at accelerating technological advances needed to fulfill Musk’s dream of sending people to Mars someday. A key goal of the mission was to further the development of more advanced spacesuits that would be needed for SpaceX to try any future off-world colonization.
“IF YOU’RE PART OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMUNITY, YOU HAVE BENEFITTED FROM THE WORK OF THE AGUDAH.”
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YOUR PART!
TUES & WED
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DR. SHLOIMIE ZIMMERMAN
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Does One Size Fit All? When "Being Orthodox" Doesn't Work For Our Children
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MRS. ALLISON JOSEPHS
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RABBI YAKOV HOROWITZ
Mental Health and it’s Real Life Implications on Psak Halacha
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RABBI LARRY ROTHWACHS
RABBI DANIEL FELDMAN
RABBI ARYEH LEBOWITZ
Growing up to be a Leader in Am Yisrael
RABBI LEIBY BURNHAM
RABBI SIMON JACOBSON
RABBI YY JACOBSON
Let’s take responsibility for our communities together.
This has been a challenging week. All was going relatively smoothly until we signed up for Ulpan followed by the arrival of the lift.
I do not read or listen to the news but it’s not enough to filter the hard stories going on daily in this beautiful country. Every soldier is a part of an immediate and greater Israeli family. Every single loss or injury resonates loudly.
Ulpan needs a whole reflection of its own; it will get one as soon as I can figure it out. I am not a fan. Why?
While I do understand the importance of language fluency, I can’t navigate the apps or follow the instructions in my gym classes as I am always three steps behind. Sitting hours on end in class is difficult and not easy for me.
Everyone tells me I won’t regret doing it.
We would have been okay if the lift drowned, but it didn’t. I actually have a friend who lost everything, and just recently my granddaughter Tova told me about one that was filled with mold.
We got lucky, the lift arrived, and so far, we can’t find a few things but maybe we accidentally threw them out.
No matter how well planned and even with everyone’s input, there is not enough information nor understanding
School of Thought
The Lift
By Barbara Deutsch
of what it means to pack up your entire life (the older you are, the more stuff there is) and send it in neat boxes that may or may not accommodate the contents) and trust or hope (?) that it will arrive in Israel.
I found out recently that what country you are sending things from may determine the length of time it takes and, in some cases, whether it will arrive at all. Words of caution: all people who make aliyah need to do more research before you order, pack, and fill a lift.
My good friend and former colleague, Michael, and his family made aliyah right after Covid. His wisdom and practical suggestions guided us as we worked through the kinks of aliyah. Michael recommended that we use Sonigo, a shipping company he had used and liked, for our lift. I have learned that Michael is mostly right when it comes to practical suggestions; his positive attitude, counsel, and friendship has helped limit our fumbles.
Everything you want or need is available in Israel. It is not like the days of old when soft toilet paper was a luxury and only cheaply made clothes were for sale. Some things may be more expensive and poorly made – for some reason, aluminum baking tins and Wacky Mac
are hot items for lift packing – but it’s here to be gotten.
After the “crazy” of packing up a house (something that as it proceeded we became more free in giving and throwing away stuff), we were thrilled to be welcomed in Israel by an empty apartment that had room for everything until it didn’t. Our old house was an old turn-of-the-last-century colonial that we decorated with the bric-a-brac of a family growing up with three children. It was filled with curated clutter that no one wanted.
Eighty-five boxes may seem like a lot, but it’s a mere fraction of what most people send. It’s a range – some make aliyah with no lift and bring their stuff in duffels over time. Some do a full lift with furniture and appliances and the necessities of a growing family; and some, like us, do a partial lift with clothes, life’s artifacts, books, and art.
Our new apartment is located on a quaint, broken, and hard-to-find street in Yerushalayim; it is in a relatively new renovated building with open spaces and large doors and windows. It calls for a minimalist vibe which it enjoyed until the lift came.
Our cool and clear-thinking daughter Rachel accompanied by her aides
de camp, granddaughter Ariela, who cleared her busy makeup artist schedule; and surrogate granddaughter Noa, came to supervise the unpacking of the boxes that came in all shapes and sizes. Daughters Tova, “it’s a Tova” wigs, and Penina, newly married, came to help. All of them have other demands on their time and did what they could to help us.
We began with kitchen and household items. Despite our careful packing and downsizing efforts, there was still so much “stuff.” Admittedly, we did not have to bring the beautiful crystal decanter that my campers bought for me when I retired from my 14 mostly wonderful years spent running Machon in Morasha, or the gorgeous pitcher three beloved students, Karen, Shana and Rebecca, got me when I was their Social Studies teacher at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, or even the vase Carmen, Bob’s Brooklyn College colleague, made for us when we got married. We had held onto these things for so long – why wouldn’t we bring them with us to our new home?
I’m “modeh ” that the customized pack of gum from our twin grandson’s Yoav and Jakob’s magnificent bar mitzvah more than ten years ago was not a must; the swag bag with the weekend’s necessities was left intact with that in
it, plus it had a picture of their adorable faces. This keepsake was from a very special time and memory.
Rachel and her team were cutthroat in separating what I do and don’t need. I found myself glued to my spot as I sat overwhelmed with memories and melancholy for times past.
My wise friend Danielle of Peas Love and Carrots fame and my claim to Instagram sightings gave me a solid perspective when I complained to her about the plethora of boxes and the cognitive dissonance I had been feeling in the weeks leading up to the lift’s arrival. This event gave me so much agita over fitting the stuff into my pristine space that I truly could have not cared less if indeed it had incurred a watery death.
According to Danielle, in the weeks of waiting for the lift to arrive, we managed well with the things we had here; we made do or bought what we needed. No one needs 10 black skirts or two sets of anything not food-related in a kosher
Rachel’s perspective: you don’t need it, so get rid of it.
After my family crew left – they were amazing – I snuck out and grabbed back the crystal decanter, the pitcher, and the vase. I threw out the gum.
Ariela, a perfectionist, took account of all that was still needed, determined that a trip to IKEA with Noa was a must, hired a driver, took our credit card and made an in-depth shopping trip of
organized home.
I can’t locate anything.
Rachel posted on a community chat that there were many clean boxes available for the taking. A young man wheeling an empty baby carriage came to inquire. His young family is leaving Yerushalayim – too expensive – for Bet El. As he broke down the boxes to fit the carriage, we talked. It turns out he is originally from Montreal and knows
Once here and unpacked, seeing the parts of our former life flooded me with memories and regrets about throwing anything out.
every organizing tool that’s on the market. She is an admirer of her Aunt Tam
our Canadian son-in-law Jonathan and his family.
It’s Israel.
As the boxes start to empty and clear, we still have books and more books to unpack. I find myself in a better place. The books we will store; there are just so many bookcases you can build to fit a small apartment. The clothes we will give away; there is unfortunately plenty of need. It also does not all have to be done right now.
I still don’t know if you wear white after Labor Day in Israel or anywhere for that matter.
When you make aliyah, it’s so important to have family and friends who are like family. They help you unpack more than things. There are more important things to care about than “stuff.” There is Ulpan on Sunday; what should I do?
Barbara Deutsch is the former associate principal at HANC, middle school princi
Torah Thought We Are Here!
By Rabbi Zvi Teichman
The portion of Ki Savo and its recording of the Tochacha — the ninety eight curses that will befall our people because of our sins — most often coincides with the initiation, among Ashkenazic Jews, of the reciting of the special selichos prayers on that Motzei Shabbos — Saturday evening. (This year we begin on the next one.)
The Hebrew root of this text called selichos is חלס — forgive, since within these selections are petitions to G-d for His forgiveness.
It has been observed by many great sages that the numerical value of חלס, equals ninety eight, indicating that within these supplications lay the ability to stifle the terrible curses.
What is the secret of these powerful prayers? Where does our hope for forgiveness lie?
A cursory glance at the selichos doesn’t seem to forebode much encouragement. The very first words we utter in our opening salvo is: ד' ךל — Yours, my Lord, is הקדצה — the righteousness, ונלו — and ours, is םינפה תשב — the shamefacedness. We start off admitting we have nothing to show for ourselves just to place our heads down in shame.
The next series of selichos only create an even bleaker outlook. We first declare how we loathed Your forthright and honest paths; we clung to abominations and despicable deeds. In the second selichah we go on to admit there is no one who calls to You in righteousness; the good man today is compared to a thornbush. Lastly, in the third one we bemoan that we have spoiled straight paths and perverted Torah, and therefore we avert our faces to the ground.
So how are we to gain Hashem’s forgiveness? Is it merely enough to abashedly admit our deficiencies in order to capture Hashem’s favor?
In the last selichah we recite, the selection we do responsively, a sudden and startling transformation takes place.
Standing with confidence we joyously express before Hashem how as the day of rest departs, הליחת ךונמדק— we come before You first; bend Your ear from on high, O You Who sits to hear Israel praise Him, O that You listen to our song and our prayers. (תוחילס-החונמ יאצומב)
How did we so quickly shed our burden of shame and guilt and now sense entitlement to ask G-d to ‘bend His ear’ towards us?
The assertion how on this eve after Shabbos has departed, הליחת ךונמדק — ‘we have preceded Your coming’, arriving ‘first’, as worthy evidence of being deserving of His attention seems almost childish. After all, we’ve been so bad and have misbehaved, where do we get the audacity to ask of G-d to listen to ‘our song’, our joy, after our own admission of worthlessness?
Even more striking is our proudly presenting ourselves as having taken the initiative to, as it were, preempt G-d in arriving so early. We are facing a day of judgment in merely ten days, where our health, livelihood, children and spouses’ welfare, and our very lives are at stake, and we conceitedly state ‘we beat Hashem to the punch’?!
Over a quarter of a century ago when I merited to live in the holy city of Jerusalem, there was a period of time when I would come home at midday, grab a bite and then catch a lo-
cal mincha. My youngest child, then a young boy of three or four, would often accompany me to mincha, which was a moment of exquisite joy and bonding for the both of us.
One day I was in a particular rush and my son had been misbehaving so I decided he wouldn’t deserve that privilege that day and I left my house alone.
We lived in Har Nof, which is a neighborhood built upon a mountain. Agassi Street, where we lived, was one of the upper streets, while Rechov Ruzhin, the street where the Bostoner Shul I davened in is located, was among the lower ones. The mountainside was dotted with numerous sets of steps, situated between the concrete jungles of apartment complexes that enabled one to descend rather rapidly to the lower regions. I generally drove my car down the mountain which would inevitably take much longer than going down on foot since one had to follow the circuitous road as it wended across and down the mountainside until one would arrive several streets below.
As I was about to enter the shul, I saw a little familiar figure anxiously running towards me from the distance. Lo and behold, my little boy with a smile from ear to ear affixed upon his cherubic face, blurts out in pure pride and ecstasy, “Abba, I came to Mincha!”
Thoughts of his prior misbehavior evaporated into thin air. My mind raced wildly as I calculated how many streets this little tyke had to cross on his own, one of them, Rechov Shaulson, a major thoroughfare, with buses hurtling down it in opposite directions, and the danger that had been involved in his mighty trek. Yet, my heart calmed when I felt the deep love and connection that was overwhelmingly flowing at that precious moment.
I lovingly grasped my little boy’s hand, holding it tight, and we proceeded to daven Mincha.
We are that ‘little boy’.
Despite our mindlessly childish ways and reckless behavior, we arrive on the night of selichos, overpowered with emotions of affection for our Abba, our Tatty, our Daddy, and we shout out with joy, “Abba we came to selichos!”
“Listen, Tatty, to our song of joy, and our desire to connect to You through prayer.”
The Meor V’Shemesh teaches that when we recite the expression regarding Lavan’s nefarious intentions to uproot our people, יבא דבא ימרא — the Aramean [Lavan] sought to destroy our father, the ‘father’ we refer to here is our Father in Heaven.
Lavan lived in a world of manipulation, jockeying for advantage in utilizing any device available to him in achieving his objective. Whether it was the ‘art’ of negotiation or that of the occult, seeking privileged information to gain an upper edge, it was absent of a consciousness of a benevolent Creator who directed the events of life for everyone’s ultimate benefit.
We are often guilty of this Aramean attitude that distracts us from remembering G-d’s care, attention, and endless love. We immerse ourselves in a world of ‘commerce’, calculating our every move to our advantage in the transactions of life, oftentimes overstepping the boundaries of what is righteous, proper and just.
We scamper down the mountain in a sudden burst of enthusiastic awareness, thrusting ourselves into our Abba’s embrace, proudly exhilarating, “Tatty, we came to selichos!”
If we sincerely place ourselves into His open arms, we are hopeful that our Father will forgivingly clutch our hands with abundant love and never let go!
You may reach the author at: Ravzt@ ohelmoshebaltimore.com
PARSHA
OVERVIEW
The parshah begins with the discussion of the mitzvha procedure of Bikkurim.
The Parshah then recounts the 98 curses set upon the Jewish people for failing to observe the Mitzvos of Hashem with joy.
Quotable Quote “ ”
We must labour anew in every generation to distinguish what is sanctifiable and what is not.
TSorahparks
Inspiration. Everywhere.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks zt”l
GEMATRIA
The gematria of
is 414, which happens to be the same as תבהאו - and you shall love.
The connection is quite clear. We are meant to love Hashem and serve Him with joy and good hearts.
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
Pesukim - 122
Words - 1,747
Letters - 6,811
Mitzvos - 6
Thoughts in
QUICK VORT
In Chapter 27, Verse 1, the Torah says:
- which means, literally, “Observe the entire Mitzvah.”
The word רמש, however, can also mean: anticipation, as in רמש ויבאו רבדה תא. Yaakov anticipated what would become - רמש - of the dreams of his son, Yosef.
This is a powerful message for us. Judaism is meant to be lived in the realm of הוצמה לכ תא רמשanticipate the entire Mitzvah. Anticipate, look forward to, be excited and passionate about your yiddishkeit!
We often hear the term הרות רמוש תוצמו as referring to someone who keeps the commandments of Hashem. And of course, that’s essential. But we also have to live our lives in the realm of רמש, where we anticipate the Torah and Mitzvos, where we look forward to serving Hashem, and are passionate about who we are!
The Tzofnas Peneach says about the Arizal Hakadosh that '
- everything he attained in matters of Divine spirit and inspiration was as a result for his great joy with his yiddishkeit!
Make sure to live with joy!
Points to
Talk about the difference between joy and happiness?
Is there even a difference?
The world runs after the “pursuit of happiness.” As yidden, do we believe in this as well?
What’s the difference between
and
and
?
Have a holy Shabbos!
Does joy mean LOL?
Parshas Ki Savo on
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Forgotten Her es Daring Israeli Bombing Raids
By Avi Heiligman
Shortly after the dawn of military aviation, airmen realized that bombs dropped from airplanes would give them a strategic advantage over the enemy. Aviation during World War I saw aerial bombing of trenches, but it was during World War II that bombers had a huge effect on the war’s outcome. Strategic bombing campaigns changed the landscape of warfare as the Allies pounded strategic places like oil fields and railroad junctions. When Israel became a country in 1948, the newly formed IAF took the lessons learned from World War II, as well as several seasoned pilots from the war, and used bombing as an offensive weapon against the enemy. From their earliest missions against Egyptian troop columns to the targeted bombings of Hamas and Hezbollah targets and operatives over the years, the Israeli Air Force has used these bombing raids and campaigns to great effect.
The first mission of the Israeli Air Force took place in May 1948 with Israeli fighters halting an Arab column of troops and supplies headed towards Tel Aviv. This also ended the Egyptian bombing of Tel Aviv. In addition to the fighter planes, an American businessman, Al Schwimmer, was able to procure four B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, but only three made it to Israel. On their way to the Tel Nof Airbase from Czechoslovakia in June 1948, the bombers were sent to attack targets in Egypt. One was sent to bomb the king’s palace in Cairo, while the other two attacked an enemy airbase. The damage they caused was minimal, but it was a morale booster for the troops and public back in Israel. Throughout the rest of the war, they flew more than 200 sorties for the 69 Squadron.
Bombers were used extensively during the period between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Known as the War of Attrition, both sides didn’t gain much ground politically. Israel bombed Egyptian targets in 1970 during Operation Pricha using the F-4 Phantom II that could be used both as a fighter and a bomber. The year prior to the operation, the IAF achieved air superiority over Egypt in fighting near the Suez Canal, but the war still continued as no ceasefire deal was reached. The Pricha missions took place from January to April 1970 and hit targets like enemy training grounds, command posts, missile launch sites, air bases and other strategic locations of military importance.
Some of the most notable Israeli bombings were nuclear reactors of hostile countries. In 1981, eight newly acquired F-16 Falcons took for a 1,200-mile roundtrip to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Called Operation Opera, the mission was to drop bombs in a precision strike on the reactor located
at Osirik. The surprise mission successfully destroyed the site and set back Saddam Hussein’s plan to obtain a nuclear weapon.
On October 1, 1985, the IAF undertook its longest mission in Operation Wooden Leg. A few days earlier, three Israelis were murdered by Palestinian terrorists, and the Israeli government wanted to retaliate. The mission was for eight F-15 Eagles accompanied by two Boeing 707 tankers to bomb PLO headquarters in Tunisia. They flew over 1200 miles (the trip was longer than it took to get to the Iraqi reactor) to reach the target and dropped precision-guided bombs that totally destroyed the headquarters. Arafat was not there at the time, but some 60 terrorists, including his bodyguards, were eliminated in the raid.
In the current war against Hamas and other Iranian proxies, especially Hezbollah, Israeli planes and drones often carry out targeted bombing missions against top level terrorist operators. Ali Al Qadi was senior Hamas commander with the Nukhba terrorist unit and had previously served time in Israeli jail for the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli. He was released into Gaza as part of the Gilad Shalit deal, but in 2023, the IDF targeted him after his involvement in the planning of the October 7 attacks. A week after the attacks, he was eliminated in an IDF drone strike after the Shin Bet and other intelligence units pinpointed his location.
Many other terrorists who took part in the October 7 attacks were eliminated by the IAF. This includes Ahmed Fawzi Nasser Muhammad Wadiyya, who was taken out by an Israeli airstrike on September 3 of this year. Wadiyya was another Nukhba commander and led a group of terrorists into Israel. He was wanted for his role in the massacre of civilians from a moshav situated near the Gaza border. When the IAF targeted him, he and seven other terrorists were using a hospital to try and protect themselves from attack. The IAF took precautions in the attack, and only the terrorists were killed.
Israel has become proficient in bombing raids that are effective in eliminating enemy targets from a distance without too much risk to the attackers. Raids, airstrikes and attacks on enemy personnel and strategic targets have been credited with taking out a lot of enemy capabilities. Most of the pilots and operators rarely get individual credit for their heroism.
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 B-17 Flying Fortress bomber
Prime Minister Golda Meir, with Commander Motti Hod, and a pilot examine a F-4E
PLO headquarters after it was bombed by Israeli fighters
The Osirak nuclear reactor after it was bombed by Israeli fighters
Presents our Annual Rosh Hashana Lecture For the Women of our Community
Small Steps To Make a World of Difference
REBBETZIN AVIVA FEINER
Rebbetzin Aviva Feiner is a much sought after international speaker and beloved rebbetzin of the renown White Shul in Far-Rockaway, N.Y. Having a talent and passion for teaching, she has spearheaded many educational initiatives. Her inspiring articles are featured in Mishpacha Magazine.
Lecture sponsored by: Mr. & Mrs. Orin Hirschman • Ms. Janet Hankin • Mrs. Esther Weiner • Mr. & Mrs. N. Lencz • Eliezer & Ilana Golub
Wednesday Evening September 25, 2024 8:15pm • Free of Charge
11:30 PM Agudath Israel of Baltimore (Sunday and Thursday)
Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah
Healing Hands 2.0
By Dr. Samuel Esterson
According to Israel’s Ministries of Health and Defense, more than 10,000 Israeli soldiers have been wounded since October 7, many of whom require extensive rehabilitation or lifelong care. We sadly mourn the over 700 fallen soldiers since the start of the war in Gaza but tend to ignore the number of wounded. With the advancements in on-the-field trauma care and rapid air-transfer of the injured soldiers from the battlefield to Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, the closest Israeli medical facility to Gaza, many soldiers who would have succumbed to enemy fire are now alive yet left with severe injuries. The current challenges faced by the Israeli medical system is to provide comprehensive physical and psychological rehabilitation to the severely wounded soldiers with less than a full complement of professional staff due to the therapists’ recruitment in reserve army duty. This is where I, along with many other licensed, professional therapists, have taken leave from our regular jobs in the diaspora, to join our Israeli colleagues at hospitals all over Israel.
In July 2024, I was privileged to be invited back to ADI-NEGEV Hospital in Ofakim to take the place of members of the rehabilitation staff who were called into reserve duty. Chief of the orthopedic rehabilitation service, Dr. Shilo Kramer, an American ex-pat, has been successful in recruiting practicing physical and occupational therapists from the USA to volunteer their expertise to assist the manpower shortage in ADI-NEGEV. Dr. Kramer started a WhatsApp group that is now 55 member therapists strong, many of whom have gone to volunteer for several weeks more than once. A few therapists from our community have also volunteered to serve at ADI.
My experience this tour of duty was different than when I went last February, earlier in the war effort. This time, the soldiers made up a larger percentage of the hospital’s general patient population with more extensive injuries requiring longer courses of rehabilitation. Perhaps the heavier damages are due to our enemies using more sophisticated and precise materiel and armaments against our soldiers. According to the Israel’s Defense Ministry, Israel’s rehabilitation departments are preparing for 20,000 new injuries by the end of 2024. Hospitals are re-working their floor plans to add rehabilitation beds and therapy gyms. More than one thousand new wounded men and women are admitted to rehabilitation wards each month to undergo treatment. Here is the story of one of the several soldiers I was privileged to care for, during my tour of duty.
On my first day on the floors, I met Idan, a very sweet, young man, a quiet type, single, 36 year old Moshavnik who, by trade, is an electrician. The moshav is near Ofakim, not far from the hospital and where his family lives. Like many residents in the south, Idan is a religious Moroccan Jew, very proud of his heritage. He often talked about the delicious, spicy meals his mother would whip up from scratch and his Moroccan Jewish practices and traditions. He was tickled when I asked him to video his mother making cous-cous, a favorite shabbat dish on many sefaradi tables, so I could try to prepare it when I returned to the states. Knowing that I am an Ashkenazi, he laughed when I asked how spicy his Mom’s recipe was.
As a soldier, Idan and his co-pilot Lior maneuver a mammoth, armored bulldozer, manu-
factured by the American Caterpillar company, called a “D9.” The D9 is well known in army lingo as the work horse of demolition. In fact, when a terrorist is apprehended and the authorities order the destruction of the terrorist’s home, soldiers like Idan and Lior maneuver the hulking D9 bulldozer and demolish the convicted terrorist’s house. In wartime, Idan and Lior would stealthily navigate the D9 ahead of the soldiers and tanks in order to create a viable, open path where troops can enter an area free of debris and objects that would otherwise impede the troops’ field of vision and access.
After six weeks clearing land in central Gaza, Idan’s commander gathered the unit’s soldiers and told them that an order was received to enter Rafiach on the eve of Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel Independence Day. The soldiers were sent home for 24 hours to spend a few precious hours with family and loved ones, gather strength, and freshen up. The soldiers’ families were anxious about the mission and blessed their loved ones before they departed to again enter Gaza. Unbeknownst to Idan and Lior, this year’s Yom HaAzmaut will be one that he will not soon forget. Instead of Independence Day celebrations, family BBQs, and concerts, Idan and Lior were destined to face the fiercest battle of their lives, clearing olive tree groves where suspected terrorists hide in tunnels and amongst the thick foliage. It was known that Rafiach harbored arch terrorists and an extensive tunnel network. On May 15, 2024, Idan and Lior’s D9 plowed through the first row of trees revealing a suspicious house. Suddenly, from the house, a rocket propelled grenade (an RPG) was fired at the cab of their D9. There was a big explosion and a massive ball of fire in the cab. Both Idan and Lior were in shock from the powerful impact and did not realize what happened. Idan’s first thought was to get out of the bulldozer as fast as humanly possible since another RPG was likely coming his way. There was shattered glass everywhere and smoke enveloped the cab. The two jumped out of the cab, their vision impeded by the thick smoke and bleeding from the attack. They ran about 150 feet to an Israeli tank stationed behind them. The tank crew saw them and directed them to a house nearby where Israeli soldiers and medics were stationed. First aid and a tourniquet were immediately applied and fortunately for Idan, he was evacuated to Siroka Hospital, the local medical center in Beer Sheva for emergency surgery. Lior only sustained surface wounds and remained with the medics. It was only after Idan saw photographs of the D9’s cab weeks later and the extensive damage and splatters of blood in the cab, did he realize that a miracle had occurred. The RPG entered
the window on one side of the cab and passed directly behind Lior’s head, sparing Lior’s life. Instead of continuing in Idan’s direction, the RPG hit a helmet that was positioned by Idan’s side and the missile trajectory was directed upward, right above Idan’s head, exiting out of the cab’s roof.
From the missile’s shrapnel and fire, Idan sustained extensive right arm and hand wounds and a severed radial artery in his forearm. Once he was triaged at the hospital, he was immediately taken to surgery. The shrapnel fragments were removed and the artery was stitched. Initially, beside suffering from extensive nerve pain, Idan had no movement in the right wrist and hand.
My introduction to Idan was weeks later when Idan was transferred to ADI for rehabilitation. He appeared better than many of his fellow soldiers at the hospital because he could walk and basically function using his left, uninjured hand. Many of the other wounded soldiers were not yet walking or functioning. Idan’s surgical wounds were healed but his emotional and psychological wounds, like many of the other soldiers, were still raw.
I was introduced to Idan by a staff therapist who told Idan I was a physical therapist from the USA and that I came to volunteer at ADI for a few weeks to help manage the staff shortage. Wearing a Nike T-shirt and shorts, black kippa pinned to his balding head, Idan greeted me with a big hug and told me how happy he was that I was at ADI and what a great thing I was doing for the nation of Israel. His spoken Hebrew was heavily accented with the typical sefardic, guttural intonations and I had to pay close attention to under-
stand his words. I was embarrassed to hear his praises of me since he was the hero and I was simply the fortunate one with the skills to care for him and his colleagues. I began with Idan asking about him and his family while simultaneously examining his arm, getting an idea of his physical status, and asking about the history of his injury. Idan is a warm, soft-spoken fellow with a big smile but his voice quivered when he told me his story. During that initial meeting, Idan pulled out his phone and eagerly showed me several photos of his D9’s cab, pointing out the blood stained driver’s seat, destroyed cab floor and wall panels, blood splatters on the steps of the tractor where he escaped, the shattered gauges of the tractor, the bullet ridden cab windows, the missile’s exit hole on the cab’s roof, and the dented helmet where the RPG bounced off, changing the missile’s trajectory thereby saving his life. It was surreal for me to see these graphic photographs but for Idan, this was his history.
We became fast friends despite the fact that the treatments and exercises were very painful. Idan was brave and stoic. His poker face did not reveal any discomfort yet I could sense his deep concern regarding his future as an electrician, should he not regain full use of his right hand. We never broached that subject but I was sure that it weighed heavily on his mind. After the three weeks I worked closely with Idan, he made good progress with pain modification, wrist motion, and functional strength, but he still has months of rehabilitation and possible further surgeries ahead to gain the maximum use of his right hand. In just a few short weeks, Idan and I learned so much about each other, about our families, our origins and backgrounds, and our hopes and prayers for peace and security for our nation. Idan is one of the many examples of courage and strength whom I was fortunate to treat.
Upon my departure, Idan blessed me for my service and promised me that when I return he would “reward me for putting up with him” with his mother’s homemade cous-cous! If only for that, I will soon return to care for the soldiers and other heroes who have given so much to Am Yisrael and our beloved State of Israel!
Samuel Esterson has been a physical therapist for 45 years, 35 of which in private practice in Baltimore County, MD. He trained at the world-renowned Rusk Institute for Rehabilitation Medicine – NYU Medical Center in New York City, one of the first rehabilitation centers in the world. He earned a Doctor of Science degree in Physical Therapy from the University of Maryland - School of Medicine in Baltimore. Dr. Esterson is a diplomate of The American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties in Orthopaedics.
IDAN resting on his D9 armored bulldozer prior to entering Rafiach
Blood spattered door handle and the wall of the D9 cab when Idan was escaping after the missile attack
Israeli soldiers identified by the terrorists’ bodycams in Rafiach, Gaza
Idan’s damaged helmet that saved his life when the RPG struck it
Missile’s exit hole through the D9 roof
Mental Health Corner
Bystander PTSD
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a mental health disorder that is caused by exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or violence. It is fascinating to note that PTSD can be triggered by either directly experiencing the traumatic
event or witnessing it in person as it occurs to others.
Some of the symptoms of PTSD are distressing memories of the event, recurring nightmares related to the event, flashbacks, distress related to exposure to cues that some-
a bad person, because I should have been able to save that person.”
how symbolize the event, avoiding anything that might be a reminder of the event, negative thoughts about oneself of the world, hopelessness, memory problems, relationship issues, and emotional numbness. As mentioned, all of these symptoms may occur to someone who was a mere bystander to the traumatic event. Why is this true? Why can witnessing a traumatic event be so overwhelming that it may lead to PTSD?
The answer lies in understanding the psychological underpinnings of PTSD. Although the psychological causes of PTSD are deep and complex and we will only scratch the surface in this article, we hope to present enough of an understanding to explain the nature of bystander PTSD.
A traumatic experience is usually an overwhelming experience that is not part of one’s everyday life. As a result, the mind becomes overwhelmed and does not know how to process and comprehend what just happened. Certainly, our conscious brain can understand it. But, as we have mentioned many times in these articles, our emotions are governed by our subconscious perception.
Let us offer one hypothetical example of bystander PTSD. Reuven was shopping in a grocery store, and a couple of masked men barge into the store and hold the manager at gunpoint, demanding a large amount of money. Moments later, one of the intruders shoots the manager and they run away.
The conscious brain understands the following logical fact. This is an extremely rare event, and the chance of this happening to Reuven is almost zero and should therefore not affect his future behavior and state of mind at all.
The subconscious mind may view this event in a completely different way. “The world is a dangerous place with dangers lurking around every corner.” “If you are not hypervigilant, this may happen to you.” “I am
Not only do you have very little control over the messages emanating from the subconscious mind, you also are faced with the cognitive dissonance of having one set of facts in your conscious mind and an alternative reality in the subconscious. This can be maddening. As you can see, one does not need to have been the actual victim of a trauma in order to have one’s subconscious mind affected by the experience.
For this reason, many therapies focus on changing the narrative of the subconscious mind as it relates to PTSD. This includes interventions such as Cognitive Processing Therapy, Prolonged Exposure, and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). By tapping into the subconscious mind and processing the event in such a way where one’s inner psyche is at peace with the event, one can hope to experience relief from one’s symptoms. As with other mental health disorders, it is not uncommon to require a combination of medication and therapy in order to manage one’s mental health.
Some people may tell you that it is all in your head. This is true! It is in your head, but that does not mean that it can simply be resolved with some extra willpower. The mind is a complex organ and when it is “miswired”, professional intervention is often required. With proper treatment, PTSD can be managed and relief can be achieved.
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
To Raise a Laugh
24-Hour Pressure
Ever since my doctor diagnosed me with high blood pressure, he’s been telling me to remove stress from my life.
Hello, they’re called relatives
No, I’m just kidding, if I know what’s good for me. But I can’t remove stress. Not only is stress an essential part of deadlines, it’s also an essential ingredient in the humor of my articles. Every article, if you remove the punch lines, is actually just about stress. For example, this one.
So in general, I’d been hoping to reduce my blood pressure between doctor visits by losing weight. And it happens to be that overweight people have high blood pressure. How do I explain this? Okay, the way blood pressure works is that it’s a measurement of how hard your heart has to work to pump blood to your entire body via all the little tubes. It’s like water pressure in a hose. So let’s say you’re trying to force water through a hose, and there’s a fat guy sitting on it.
So this morning, when I went to the doctor for my semi-annual checkup that is not my idea at all, he told me that my blood pressure was once again high.
So I blamed him. I said, “Of course it’s high now. I’m at the doctor.”
I’m not even sure how much the blood pressure numbers mean in the first place, because the nurse took my blood pressure, and then the doctor took it a couple of minutes later, and it was ten points off. Points? I don’t know what to call them. Are they points? Pounds per square inch?
Basically, the doctor told me that, at the moment, I had a 130 over 90 blood pressures. Which, if you know math, can be reduced to 13 over 9. So that’s not so bad.
Nevertheless, he said he wanted me to wear a 24-hour blood-pressure cuff. This is a cuff that inflates itself at random times
over the course of the day, often at inopportune moments, such as when you’re carrying groceries. The idea, he explained, was to see if my blood pressure would be high when I was asleep, when I wouldn’t be full of excuses.
And I thought to myself, “I hope I don’t have any bad dreams that night. Like a dream where a giant is suddenly squeezing my arm.”
He was actually surprised that I agreed to the cuff as fast as I did: “None of the other patients say yes so fast.”
Well, none of the other patients have an article to write.
I asked, “When are we doing this?” and the doctor said, “We have to coordinate a day that no one else is using the cuff.” It’s not like I can share.
So I asked, “Would it be easier for my wife to just use the one I have at home to take my blood pressure when I’m asleep? Like I’ll go to bed with the cuff on, and in middle of the night my wife will randomly push the button? And I’ll scream and fall out of bed?”
But they wanted me to use theirs, so that’s the plan -- Plan A was to lose weight, but this one – Plan B – is to wear a cuff for 24 hours, and if I can’t control myself from panicking when the thing turns on when I’m asleep, the doctor will add another pill to my regimen, and I won’t have to lose weight! So that’s good news, right?
But I don’t want to take any pills, ideally. I don’t like to be dependent on anything specific, because of this ridiculous desert-island mentality that I have. I’ve read enough books about people stranded on desert islands, and the first problem they always run into is the one guy who doesn’t have his medication or something. Somebody has to learn to live without his inhaler. So the lesson I always walk away with from these books is, “I don’t want to be that guy.”
By Mordechai Schmutter
So generally, when doctors take my blood pressure, I try to skew it low. I close my eyes and picture myself in a relaxing setting, only my brain is scrambling to find the first relaxing setting I could think of before the readings kick in, so I basically always picture myself on a beach chair looking out over the ocean, with maybe a single palm tree over my right shoulder. I don’t know why that’s my go-to place. I have never in real life brought a beach chair to the ocean, or even really relaxed on a beach. Are the crowds about to show up? Why don’t I hear my kids? How am I going to clean all this sand out of my car? And what’s with the single palm tree? Is this a desert island? Is it possible that every time I try to have less stressful thoughts, I think I’m picturing some tropical paradise, but I’m actually picturing a desert island, which is making me even more stressed? I need to come up with a new place.
So naturally, I asked him what I should do over the course of the day that I’d have the cuff on. Do I want to live normally over these 24 hours or not? Should I try to keep my numbers low? Should I specifically not do exercise, like always? On the one hand, regular exercise lowers your blood pressure. But on the other hand, it raises your blood pressure while you’re doing it.
But the doctor said, “Do what you normally do over the course of the day –nothing special.”
Either way it’s not going to be a totally accurate reading. If I really want an accurate reading, I should probably not tell my wife about the blood pressure cuff. Or my kids. But that will skew it high.
That said, maybe the desert island isn’t the worst idea. Just for a day.
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.
As Oslo Turns 31, the Left Must Abandon Its Hatred Israel Today
September 13, 1993, was the day Israel’s ruling class abandoned Zionism. That day, when then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin stood in the White House Rose Garden and officially recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization—to the rapturous applause of his supporters back home—was the moment Israel’s elite collectively abandoned their attachment to their nation.
The PLO was many things. It was a terrorist organization. It was the architect of modern terrorism, including airline hijacking, kidnapping, the murder of families, the mass murder of children, the assassination of diplomats.
The PLO trained everyone from Khomeini’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the Japanese Red Army, the Baader Meinhof Gang and the Black Panthers. It brought terrorists from every ideological line together and forged them into a revolutionary conglomerate united in their desire to destroy the United States, the West, the Jews and their state, Israel.
The PLO was a political warfare group. It brought genocidal Jew hatred to the West’s radical left. It used the media to romanticize barbarous acts of mass murder and brutal torture as it carried them out.
Through its Western lackies, barely 20 years after the Holocaust, the PLO was able to reinstate Jew hatred as a tool for political mobilization and a major cultural force. Through its propaganda operations, the PLO convinced ignorant young people with guilty consciences that their Nazi parents were really victims. Zionism was demonized as a new Nazism—worse than the first one. And in 1975, 30 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the U.N. General Assembly passed Resolution 3374, which designated Zionism a form of racism.
By Caroline B. Glick
Zionism is often defined as the Jewish national liberation movement. And that is true enough, but that definition obfuscates more than it reveals. Zionism is simply Judaism.
Judaism has three foundations—the Torah, the nation of Israel, and the land
forced renunciation of their faith.
Campaigns to annihilate the Jewish people—whether through genocide, mass expulsions, the Napoleonic code or Communist dictates that required Jews to renounce their national attachment to one another—aimed at disappearing the
Through its Western lackies, barely 20 years after the Holocaust, the PLO was able to reinstate Jew hatred as a tool for political mobilization and a major cultural force.
of Israel. There have been centuries of campaigns to forcibly convert the Jews to other faiths, replete with mass burnings of sacred books aimed at wiping out the Torah and annihilating Jews by physically destroying their sacred texts and spiritually capturing them through
Jews by either physically destroying them or forcing them to reject the relevance of their own identity.
Zionism predated both the [giving of the] Torah and the people of Israel. Judaism began the moment that G-d told Abraham to leave the land of his fathers
and move to the land of Israel where he would become a nation, organized around the laws G-d prescribed.
And that’s the thing—each of the three foundations of the Jews are inextricably linked to the others.
The PLO had three founders—Yasser Arafat, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and the KGB. For Arafat, the PLO was a means to inherit the mantle of the founder of Palestinian nationalism, Nazi agent Haj Amin el Husseini. Husseini spearheaded the modern jihad against the Jews and the British throughout the Arab world. And he used antisemitism as a means to persuade the British and others to support his efforts against the Jews even as he directed his followers to wage war against Britain.
With the help of his Soviet sponsors, Arafat carried out a similar political operation among Western radicals. And like Husseini, Arafat also sought to solidify pan-Arab support for the annihilation of Israel over the long term.
The PLO served Nasser’s purpose in two ways. When he founded the terror group in 1964, Nasser envisioned that the terror group would reinforce his position as the undisputed head of the Arab world. After his stunning defeat in the Six-Day War three years later, he viewed the PLO as a proxy force that would serve as the avant-garde of the pan-Arab war to annihilate Israel and keep it in the headlines while the Arabs rebuilt their forces and organized for a new round of war.
For the Soviets, the PLO was a means to undermine the U.S.-led West’s sense of the morality. The Jewish state was the paradigmatic foundation of the Western nation state. The U.S. founding fathers aspired to build a new Jerusalem in the New World, based on G-d’s law and a belief in man’s inherent fallibility.
The PLO, which asserted that Israel
was a racist, colonialist outpost, was a tool to delegitimize Israel and through it the United States and the Western world. If Israel was born in sin, then the Bible was a lie and the United States itself had been founded on immoral belief in nothing more than racist, European supremacism.
As far as Israel was concerned, the PLO’s dual terrorism and political warfare operations were geared toward Balkanizing Israeli society. PLO surrogates and sympathizers assiduously courted first leftist American Jews and then leftist Israeli activists to peel them away from the vast majority of American Jews and Israelis who recognized the insidiousness of the PLO’s political actions and the pure evil of its terrorism. The idea was to convince them that “peace” would reign if Israel would simply accept the legitimacy of the PLO.
These activists in turn began campaigns in the American Jewish community, and within Israel, to demonize Israelis who rejected the PLO as atavistic warmongers. Over time, their efforts paid off. As the Israeli right rose to power for the first time in 1977 with the support of religious and working class, overwhelmingly Sephardic Israelis, legitimizing the PLO increasingly became the means to unify the left into a cohesive opposition and social class.
Given the nature, goal and modus operandi of the PLO, at its foundation, accepting the legitimacy of the PLO meant rejecting the legitimacy of Zionism, or of the state of the Jews. For Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora, that translated into social and political activism geared toward legitimizing hatred of the Israeli communities whose members refused to attenuate their attachment to Judaism. This was the case whether that attachment was to the traditional Judaism of the Sephardic Jews, the ultra-Orthodoxy of the charedim or the attachment to the land of Israel, particularly Judea and Samaria, of the national religious community in Israel.
Rabin’s decision to accept the legitimacy of the PLO at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993, transformed this hateful, anti-Jewish approach to the people of Israel and their national identity into the national strategy of the Israeli government.
In the event, it failed completely.
It failed completely for two reasons. First, the PLO’s goal was never peace. It was always the annihilation of Israel— all of Israel. So it could never be a true partner to any Israeli, no matter how far
to the left, who wasn’t convinced that Israel should disappear completely. And even those had a problem. Because it turned out that the PLO was just a gateway drug to Hamas, which wouldn’t even pay lip service to the distinction between post-Zionist and Zionist Jews.
The second reason it failed is because the narrative of Israeli criminality and immorality was never true, and most Israelis never bought it. Most Israelis also never accepted the distinction between “good” and “bad” Jews. They never agreed that there was something morally depraved about Zionism, or the Torah or the people of Israel. No matter how hard
that hate is a hard habit to break. If you have been conditioned to believe that your future is dependent on defeating the object of your hate, the only way your opinion is likely to change is if you stop hating. Since 1993, the PLO proved over and over that it is Israel’s enemy, not its peace partner. But accepting the truth meant accepting that the left had brought disaster on the country, and the objects of its hatred—the Jews who refused to renounce any aspect of their identity—had been right all along.
In other words, accepting failure required them to either redefine their class identity or abandon it. The left opted to
As the Israeli right rose to power for the first time in 1977 with the support of religious and working class, overwhelmingly Sephardic Israelis, legitimizing the PLO increasingly became the means to unify the left into a cohesive opposition and social class.
the left tried, it could never get a majority of Israelis to agree with the fundamental principle that guided its policies and actions.
Sure, Israelis want peace. But they don’t think they are the reason peace has eluded the Jewish state and people. They refuse to blame themselves for the aggression and hatred directed against their people and country.
The problem with politics of hate is
alist form of governance. Their ideological roots are not American capitalism. Rather, schooled in elite universities drenched in Soviet-rooted anti-Westernism, the leaders of the new global ruling class are post-nationalist and fully on board with the Soviet view that Zionism, the apotheosis of nationalist aspirations, is illegitimate. To join their club, Israel’s tech titans have been required to disavow their allegiance to their “violent settler” and “ultra-Orthodox” countrymen.
In other words, even when they tried to walk away from the PLO elixir that brought about the disaster of the Palestinian terror state in Israel’s heartland, they were faced with the same choice.
It worked, more or less, until Oct. 7. On that day, two things happened. First, Palestinian terrorists, with their paragliders, Toyota pick-up trucks, RPGs, and sadistic blood lust exploded the myth that technology will free Israel of our need to defend ourselves with the brothers the left desperately hoped to abandon. All the military applications of the Start-Up Nation—the high-tech sensors, signals intelligence, the smart fence, the air force—failed completely on Oct. 7. The only thing that worked that day was the raw heroism and patriotism of the Jews—civilian and security forces who rushed to the south unbidden to save the families and communities being overrun.
The second thing that happened is that the international jet set, the global elite, dropped all distinction between “good” and “bad” Jews. The photos of the hostages from Be’eri and Kfar Azza were torn down with the same hatred that had long been directed toward “violent settlers” or “identifiable Jews” alone. The Jew haters on campuses no longer felt the need to pretend that some Israelis were acceptable.
reinvent itself. It embraced the concept of “Start-Up Nation” as a way to secure its economic and cultural power while maintaining its detachment from the rest of society. By seizing control over the new elixir of high-tech, the left joined the global elite, with its capitals in Davos and Silicon Valley.
But you have to pay to enter the realm of the new globalist elite. The overlords aspire to a post-nationalist, internation-
For the past 11 months, members of the post-Zionist sector have been struggling to get their heads around the shattering of their delusions. Their leaders are trying to double down. But their insistence that the problems lay with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, or the charedim, or messianic settlers, or imbecile yokels who get teary-eyed at songs about Am Yisrael has fewer and fewer takers. Every protest fizzles after a few days. The thrill is gone. With no “peace” or “Start Up Nation” fig leaves to hide behind, the hatred is all that is left.
Thirty-one years since the left embraced the PLO and hate, it must finally abandon it. Israel’s survival depends on it. (JNS)
Yasser Arafat with Gamal Nasser
Common Cents
Make Yourself a High Margin Business: The Blueprint for Personal Financial Mastery
Imagine you’re scouting businesses to invest in. Would you choose the one barely scraping by, with razor-thin profit margins, or the one where profits flow freely, expenses are optimized, and future growth looks bright? Easy choice, right? Now, here’s the twist—what if I told you that you could apply the same principles to your personal life?
Just like a high-margin business, you can streamline your expenses, optimize your personal investments, and grow your long-term financial value. It’s time to think of yourself as the CEO of “You, Inc.” Let’s explore how to transform your financial world by adopting the mindset of a high-margin enterprise.
Step 1: Understanding Your “Operating Expenses”
In the business world, operating expenses include rent, salaries, and all the necessary costs to keep things running. In your personal life, think of your operating expenses as your rent/ mortgage, groceries, utilities, insurance, and those essential (or maybe not-so-essential) subscriptions that quietly drain your bank account.
The first step to becoming a high-margin individual is getting a firm grip on your operating expenses. The key isn’t to live like a monk but to focus on cutting the fat. Let’s break it down.
Example: Tracking Your Operating Expenses
Let’s say your monthly budget looks like this:
• Rent/Mortgage: $1,800
• Utilities: $200
• Groceries: $500
• Transportation: $300
• Insurance: $150
• Subscriptions (Netflix, Hulu, Spotify): $50
• Miscellaneous (Dining out, entertainment): $400
Total: $3,400
Now, let’s pretend you’re a business. Your income is the revenue, and everything you spend is your cost of doing business. The goal? Maximize the margin between your revenue and expenses.
If you’re spending $3,400 a month but only earning $4,000, you’ve got a slim margin which is a start, but that’s not going to build a robust financial future.
The Solution: Trim the Fat
To increase your margin, review those recurring costs like a hawk. Do you need both Netflix and Hulu? Could you renegotiate your insurance premiums? Could you batch-cook meals to reduce your dining-out budget? Every dollar you save is a dollar that stays in your pocket.
For example, by reducing your dining-out budget to $200, trimming subscriptions to $25, and lowering insurance costs by $50 through some savvy comparison shopping, you’d save $275 per month. Over the course of a year, that’s $3,300—money you can put to work (we’ll talk about that in a minute).
Step 2: Maximize Your “Reinvestment”
A high-margin business doesn’t just sit on its cash—it reinvests it wisely to grow even more. The same should apply to your personal finances. Every dollar you save by lowering your expenses is a dollar you can reinvest to grow your financial future. This is where it gets exciting!
You can think of reinvestment as contributing to your savings, retirement accounts, brokerage accounts, or even personal education that enhances your “enterprise value” (more on that later).
Example: The Power of Reinvestment
Let’s say you take that $275 per month you’ve freed up and reinvest it. If you put it into a tax-advantaged retirement account, such as a Roth IRA, and earn a conservative 7% annual return (the historical average return of the S&P 500), here’s what happens:
• After 10 years: $47,940
• After 20 years: $143,280
• After 30 years: $349,452
That’s the magic of reinvestment— your money works for you, growing over time, and thanks to compound interest, those early savings snowball into significant wealth down the road.
By Elliot Pepper, CPA, CFP®, MST
Step 3: Growing Your “Enterprise Value”
In the business world, enterprise value is a measure of a company’s total value. In your personal financial life, your enterprise value is your net worth, and your goal is to grow that value over time.
How do you grow your enterprise value? By focusing on three key areas:
1. Increasing Income: Just like a business invests in new revenue streams, you should look to grow your earning potential. This could mean asking for a raise, taking on a side hustle, or improving your skills through education or certifications. Think of it as increasing your “revenue.”
2. Reducing Liabilities: Your debt is a liability that drags down your net worth. Make a plan to pay off high-interest debt as quickly as possible—start with credit cards, student loans, and any other highcost liabilities. Lower liabilities mean a higher enterprise value.
3. Building Assets: Assets are the bedrock of your enterprise value. Investments in stocks, real estate, and retirement accounts increase your net worth. Just like a
company invests in new product lines or acquisitions, you should be building your portfolio.
Example: Building Enterprise Value
Let’s say you’re able to invest $500 per month into a diversified portfolio with an average 7% annual return. After 30 years, you’d have over $600,000. But that’s not the end of the story—if you’re simultaneously paying down liabilities, such as a $20,000 credit card debt at 15% interest, you’d save nearly $200 per month in interest payments alone by paying it off early. Combine the investment growth with reducing liabilities, and your enterprise value skyrockets.
Step 4: Paying Out Dividends (AKA Passive Income)
In the business world, dividends are a company’s way of rewarding shareholders. In your personal life, dividends can be your passive income streams—money that comes in without you actively working for it. This could be from investments, rental properties, or even side businesses that run on autopilot.
The goal of a high-margin individual is to eventually live off these “dividends” rather than relying on active work.
Imagine having enough income from your investments, side businesses, and rental properties to cover all your living expenses. That’s financial freedom.
Example: Growing Your Dividend Yield
Let’s say you invest in a dividend stock that pays a 3% annual yield. If you have $100,000 invested, that’s $3,000 per year in passive income. Now, if you continue to reinvest those dividends and grow your portfolio over time, you could eventually build a nest egg that provides substantial income.
For instance, if you grow your portfolio to $1,000,000, a 3% dividend yield would provide $30,000 per year in passive income. Combine that with other income streams, and you could easily cover your living expenses without touching the principal. You’ve
high-margin business, however, doesn’t blow all its extra profits on fancy offices and lavish perks; it reinvests to grow even more.
Example: Combatting the Hedonistic Treadmill
Imagine you get a $10,000 raise. The natural temptation is to upgrade your lifestyle—maybe you want a nicer car, a bigger house, or more frequent vacations. But if you’re serious about growing your personal margin, resist that urge. Instead, save or invest that raise. By doing so, you compound your wealth instead of your expenses. A piece of advice I often give is that once you have a balanced budget and are already contributing to your investments, take 50% of all future raises and increase your investment contributions and have the time of your life with the remaining 50%!
financial advisor, an accountant, and even a mentor or trusted friends who offer you advice and accountability.
Your board helps you stay on track with your financial goals, avoid costly mistakes, and provide guidance when it’s time to make big decisions, like buying a house, starting a business, or planning for retirement.
Example: Your Personal Board of Directors
Let’s say you have a financial advisor who helps you stay disciplined with your investments, an accountant who ensures you’re taking advantage of every tax benefit, and a mentor who guides you through career decisions. Together, they help you avoid pitfalls, maximize returns, and stay on track to grow your personal enterprise value over time.
It’s not about depriving yourself or cutting every corner—it’s about operating efficiently, making smart decisions, and building a financial future that allows you to live comfortably, with flexibility and freedom. So, go ahead, CEO of You, Inc.—start running your life like a high-margin business, and watch your net worth soar!
And remember, just like in business, you’ll have ups and downs. But with careful planning, discipline, and a little humor along the way, you’ll get there. Just make sure to send yourself a holiday bonus every now and then. You’ve earned it!
Common Cents is now digital on YouTube @CommonCents613
The decision to start saving and investing is yours, but the “how” can be hard. Email commoncents@
TJH
Centerfold
Assassination Trivia
1. Which U.S. president survived being shot during a speech and continued to speak for 90 minutes with a bullet in his chest?
a. William Howard Taft
b. Theodore Roosevelt
c. Herbert Hoover
d. Franklin D. Roosevelt
2. When President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, he was rushed to George Washington University Hospital for emergency life saving surgery. What did he say to the doctors as they were about to operate on him?
a. “Tell my wife that I love her.”
b. “You are American heroes.”
c. “I hope you are all Republicans.”
d. “I forgive the shooter.”
3. How long did it take to capture John Wilkes Booth after he killed Pres. Lincoln at the Ford Theatre?
a. 4 hours
b. 12 hours
c. 2 days
d. 12 days
4. How many U.S. presidents were killed by an assassin?
5. Why didn’t Lee Harvey Oswald ever stand trial for assassinating JFK?
a. Because he killed himself right after committing the crime.
b. He fled to Cuba.
c. He was shot two days later.
d. He pled guilty.
Answers
1. B-In 1912, shortly after beginning a campaign speech, Teddy Roosevelt, 53 at the time, was shot in the chest. He was saved by the manuscript of his speech which was in his jacket pocket. However, the bullet did penetrate his chest. Before proceeding with his speech, Roosevelt told the audience, “I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot… The bullet is in me now, so I cannot make a very long speech, but I will try my best.” With a bloodstained shirt, he declared, “It takes more than that to kill a bull moose.” He ended up
speaking for 90 minutes.
2. C-The doctors replied, “Sir, today, we are all Republicans.”
3. D-Booth escaped the Ford Theater alive with a broken leg. It is believed that he broke his legs when he jumped from the presidential box onto the stage. But another theory is that he broke his legs while riding his horse away from the scene. He went to a hotel in Maryland where he had a doctor reset his leg. He then fled to a forest in Virginia, where he was apprehended and shot dead by military forces.
4. D-Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kennedy (1963)
5. C-Oswold was shot by Jack Ruby as he was being escorted from the police station. The killing was captured on live TV, becoming the first ever murder seen on live TV.
Wisdom key
4-5 correct: You are a history buff… for the darker side of U.S. history.
2-3 correct: You are a moderate. We need more of you!
0-1 correct: You must work for the Secret Service. (Figure out how to get the gun back in the holster yet?)
Debate Debacle
“They’re eating the dogs; they’re eating the cats; they’re eating the pets of the people that live there” may be the funniest thing ever said in a presidential debate, but there are other memorable lines as well. Can you connect the line with the candidate who said it?
1. “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.”
2. “I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”
3. “I went to a number of women’s groups and said: ‘Can you help us find folks?’ And they brought us whole binders full of women.”
4. “Read my lips: no new taxes.”
5. “Such a nasty woman.”
6. “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
7. “The, uh — excuse me, with the COVID, um, dealing with, everything we had to do with, uh ... if ... Look ... we finally beat Medicare.”
8. “I just don’t see how you can expect to govern this country if you don’t even know how to pronounce ‘subliminal.’”
9. “I think [he] is getting confused. He’s forgetting the difference between his answers and my answers.”
10. “The third agency of government I would do away with – the education, the uh, the commerce and let’s see. I can’t [think of] the third one…I can’t… sorry. Oops.”
Riddle Me This
What is so fragile that saying its name breaks it?
Moderators Call Timeout to Huddle and Discuss Strategy With Kamala
- Babylon Bee headline after the presidential debate
Kamala Safe and in Stable Condition After Attempted Interview
- Ibid.
Media Assures Americans The Real Threat is the Side That Keeps Getting Shot At
– Ibid.
Woman Who Made Career Singing About Her Bad Choices Endorses Kamala
- Ibid., after a famous singer endorsed Kamala Harris
As you get older, you’ll realize that a $30,000 watch and a $30 watch both tell the same time.
A Gucci wallet and a Target wallet hold the same amount of money.
A $10,000,000 house and a $100,000 house host the same loneliness.
A Ford will also drive you as far as a Bentley.
True happiness is not found in materialistic things, it comes from the love and laughter found with each other.
Stay humble… the holes dug for us in the ground are all the same size.
- Tweet by Hall of Fame basketball player Scottie Pippen
You should hide your head in a bag!
- Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) at the end of a contentious back and forth with Maya Berry, the executive director of the Arab American Institute, who has spewed hateful and anti-Semitic rhetoric
TAFF: At the debate the other night you talked about creating an “opportunity economy” — what if we can drill down on that a little bit. When you talk about bringing down prices and making life more affordable for people, what are one or two specific things you have in mind for that?
VICE PRESIDENT HARRIS: Well, I’ll start with this. I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother raised my sister and me, she worked very hard. Um, she was able to finally save up enough money to buy our first house when I was a teenager. I grew up in a community of hardworking people, construction workers, and nurses and teachers, and I try to explain to some people who may not have had the same experience, you know, if, but, a lot of people will relate to this, you know I grew up in a neighborhood of folks who were very proud of their lawn. You know? And, um, and I was raised to believe and to know that all people deserve dignity. And that we as Americans have a beautiful character. You know, we have ambitions and aspirations and dreams. But not everyone necessarily has access to the resources that can help them fuel those dreams and ambitions. So when I talk about building an opportunity economy, it is very much with the mind of investing in the ambitions and aspirations and the incredible work ethic of the American people, and creating opportunity for people, for example, to start a small business. Um, my mother, you know, worked long hours, and our neighbor helped raise us. We used to call her, it was, I still call her, our “second mother.” She was a small business owner. I love our small business owners, I learned who they are through my childhood, and she was a community leader, she hired locally, she mentored, our small businesses are so much a part of the fabric of our communities, not to mention, really, I think the backbone of America’s economy.
We’re going to charge them. I’m telling you right now, we’re putting a 200% tariff on [cars made in Mexico], which means they’re unsellable. And then you wonder why I get shot at. You know, only consequential presidents get shot at.… But you have to do what you have to do. You have to be brave. Otherwise, you’re not going to have a country left.
- Trump, at a townhall event
Exchange between Brian Taff of Philadelphia’s local ABC affiliate and Vice Pres. Kamala Harris, in her first one-on-one interview since running for president
Today’s apparent assassination attempt comes amid increasingly fierce rhetoric on the campaign trail. Mr. Trump, his running mate JD Vance continue to make baseless claims about Haitian immigrants.
- How NBC’s Lester Holt spun Sunday’s assassination attempt on Trump
Do you expect to hear anything from the Trump campaign about toning down the rhetoric, toning down the violence, or would that be atypical of the former president?
- MSNBC anchor Alex Witt suggesting that the victim of the attempted assassination is somehow responsible for it
If Donald Trump wants people, wants Kamala Harris and others to stop saying that he is a threat to democracy, then he should stop threatening democracy.
- Don Lemon, in an appearance on his old network CNN, talking about the second assassination attempt on Trump’s life
Don’t lecture Donald Trump about softening his rhetoric after two people tried to kill him.
- Trump’s running mate Sen. J.D. Vance
When I am often asked what is my truest connection with G-d, I answer that all that kept me going in captivity was the belief that I was not alone, that I had Someone with me who…protected me there, during all those hours in captivity. This is called divine providence. I really think that I always felt divine providence around me. I always felt Him with me, protecting me from every trouble and obstacle. When I came back, I immediately told everyone that I wanted to start wearing a kippa and tzitzit and everyone laughed at me. They thought I was crazy. What has that got to do with anything now? I told them I was thinking about it all the time I was in captivity.
The month of forgiveness has come and I feel that I have a lot to ask forgiveness for and I also feel a connection that is big enough for me to go there to also acknowledge my gratitude. To say thank you for protecting me from my enemies, and ours.
Father, thank you for the privilege of being here. You chose to show me the correct way and You will not regret this. I love you, Tata, and am sure that You are trying to protect the other hostages who are still there.
- Instagram post last Sunday by 13-year-old Yagil Yaakov, who was released from Hamas captivity in Gaza after 52 days
It’s almost shameful to want to have children
- Title of an LA Times op-ed by a University of California professor of gender studies who raises the question in response to gender issues and climate change
Extinctionists want a holocaust for all of humanity.
– Tweet by Elon Musk in response
[At the debate] Trump was constantly under attack by the moderators. So much so that you would think they were working from a slanted roof.
- Greg Gutfeld
Kamala Harris referred to January 6th as the greatest attack on American democracy since the Civil War. She said this the day before September 11th. That’s like saying you had a terrible seat at the theater to Mary Todd Lincoln.
– Ibid.
It was the first DEI debate – different standards were enforced on Trump while Harris had none.
– Ibid.
If it is going to be close, by the way, if it is a razor-thin close election, I’m pretty sure Kamala will win because they will cheat.
– PayPal co-founder and Trump supporter Peter Thiel on the “AllIn” podcast
It Was 3 on 1, But They Were Mentally Challenged People, Against One Person of Extraordinary Genius.
- Trump writing about the debate, on Truth Social
Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…
Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters
Dear Navidaters,
My shidduchim process started seven years ago when I was out of seminary. I was closed-minded in the details and was only looking for a learning guy at the beginning.... Over time, I have evolved and really grown into who I am and what I’m looking for. I’m hopeful that I will find the right one and am working hard to do enough hishtadlus to find him.
Every yom tov, I cringe at the thought of coming home still single; this year even more so as my young niece just got married. I’m looking for any words of wisdom to help prepare me for the holiday with my family as the only one still not married.
Thanks so much in advance.
-Rivka*
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 Kallah Teacher
Rebbetzin Lisa Babich
Iknow it is so hard to go into the holidays feeling like you are lacking something and that everyone around you is in a new stage and you are left behind.
There are two points that come to my mind when hearing your question. Firstly, I think of the Tehillim we say this time of year, L’Dovid Hashem Ori (chapter 27). It ends with the words “Kavei el Hashem, chazak vayametz libecha, vi kavei el Hashem.” We have hope in Hashem and sometimes things don’t go exactly how we want but then we dig deep in our hearts again, renew our strength, and hope in Hashem once again.
I know this past year didn’t bring the yeshuah you have been waiting for but that doesn’t mean anything about the future. Your prayers this year can be the last drop that tips the well of blessings. As Jews, we have to hope. We see it with the Jews in Mitzrayim, and we see it when Moshe had to go up to the Heavens and receive the Luchos for a second time. He needed to reignite his faith in the Jewish people even after the disappointment of the Cheit Haegel. We have to always trust and hope that this year ahead will be so much better than what was.
Secondly, you have a unique opportunity to strengthen your resilience muscles. Throughout life, we are faced with people having things that we don’t and it can be so hard and humiliating at times. The more we tell ourselves, “I live on my own path and no matter what anyone else has right now it has nothing to do with me,” the stronger we will be able to handle life. There will always be people in different stages of life than us or who have more children, grandchildren, money, and success than us. We have to learn to feel confident in our own skin no matter how far ahead someone else seems to be. I know this is hard and easier said than done but we were put on this earth to grow, and
the more we do, the happier and more fulfilled we will be.
I want to end with a blessing that this should be the last year you enter Rosh Hashanah single and that you should have a year filled with so much happiness and joy for you and the entire Jewish people. I am rooting for you; you got this!
The Shadchan
Michelle Mond
Dear Rivka,
Thank you so much for writing into the panel with this question. I am sure there are so many singles who feel exactly how you feel and just knowing they are not alone gives a sense of comfort. You mention at the beginning of your letter that it took you a few years to find yourself and what you are looking for. This hints to the possible feeling that you might be blaming yourself for this taking so long. This is what often happens over time when singles feel all the symptoms of the “if only” disability humans cripple ourselves with. In shidduchim, it looks like this.
If only I hadn’t taken so many years to grow up, then I’d be married.
If only I had gotten serious years earlier, then I’d be married.
If only I didn’t let those good quality ideas slip away, then I’d be married.
If only I moved to (insert state here) years earlier, then I’d be married.
If only I met more shadchaim, then I’d be married.
If only I was open to this kind of person years earlier, then I’d be married.
The list goes on and on, as you can imagine. Not only is this unhelpful but it holds us back from moving forward with a clear and open mind. How can we possibly move forward in a conductive manner if we think we missed the boat?
So, firstly, you must acknowledge that everything happened in a timeline that was meant to be. These past seven years have been transformative and were part of Hashem’s plan for your
life. Look at all the amazing things you have accomplished in the grand scheme of things. You can go into yom tov with your head held high knowing that Hashem is literally carrying you on His shoulders on a path to finding your bashert. Repeat this to yourself until you truly believe it, because it’s true. Just because your timeline hasn’t been speedy doesn’t mean he’s not on the way.
Arm yourself with this knowledge before you go home for yom tov. Work on the positive messaging that you are telling yourself, and view your yeshuah as around the corner. Walk into yom tov feeling Hashem’s hand in your life, and it will make everything feel so much better.
The Zaidy
Dr. Jeffrey Galler
You have evolved and you have grown, and you understand that it is neither healthy nor productive to look back and re-think what might have been, if you had, much earlier, become the person you are today.
And, you understand that some folks find the “right one” relatively quickly, while for others it takes a while.
Besides relying exclusively on shadchanim, it is wise to become active at work, school, shul, and community events. For example, volunteering and networking at one of the many venues that support Israel (like the Israel Chesed Center, 1315 Peninsula Blvd, Hewlett) is a good way to meet people who know other people, who know other people…
Do not despair. Trust that the right person will come at the right time. You are not alone in this journey; your community and family support you, and your time will come.
Don’t Quit
When things go wrong as they sometimes will, When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill,
The more we tell ourselves, “I live on my own path and no matter what anyone else has right now it has nothing to do with me,” the stronger we will be able to handle life.
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is strange with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns And many a failure comes about When he might have won had he stuck it out; Don’t give up though the pace seems slow— You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt, And you never can tell just how close you are, It may be near when it seems so far; So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit— It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.
For all the sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these:
“It might have been!”
-
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Pulling It All Together
The Navidaters
Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists
Dear Rivka,
It is so hard to go home for Yom tov, single. It is something we carry in our hearts every day, but there is something extra hard around going home for the holidays, especially when everyone is married. Our religion centers around family and places marriage as the most important goal to accomplish in life and somehow our value does seem to increase when we have found our beloved – within the community for sure and within many families as well.
Let us look at a reality here… You have grown and evolved. You are not the person you were when you began dating seven years ago, and you are now looking for something different. You are in alignment with yourself, and you know what you want. Can you imagine, had you married someone you had already outgrown and be facing taking him home for yom tov? Just a little twist on perspective.
We are all wired for attachment, and the healthy ones amongst us want that warm and delightful core relationship for the right reasons, that will, G-d willing, be at the center of our own little universe and give us endless joy and intimacy. I get that. And my wish for you is that you have it soon. But what to do until it happens?
The first thing (the very first thing) is to work on a deep sense of knowing that being married does not increase your value as a human being and that not being married does not decrease your value as a human being. Even though this may feel like a drag and you may not want to do this, I invite you to write a list of everything that was accomplished and made possible by your independent self until this very moment. What are the perks of not having met your guy just yet? I know one crucial
one that you mentioned in your email.
And yeah, it is going to hurt going home. It is. That is a natural feeling. And as much as we’d like to reason with those feelings or figure out a way not to feel them, Hashem, with His fantastic sense of humor, kind of set it up so that the way to actually feel better is… to feel all the feelings. Feel them. Expect them. Let them. Sit with them. Ask them what they need to tell you. Honor them. Do not fear them. They are natural, and we can’t cure normal.
I really do believe with a full heart that we are exactly where we need to be. (I don’t always like it or feel at peace with it… sometimes I’m downright upset about it.)
I know people for whom it took a bit longer, and for many of them their relationships have a bit more of a maturity and appreciation to them. They knew what they were looking for. They had work to do on themselves first and they knew it. (How attractive is that!) The fact that you are so self-aware and growth-oriented and open and honest and clearly on your journey tells me a lot about you, and it is my hope and wish that you find a man who appreciates all this about you and adores you and perhaps has been on his own journey toward self-discovery because he values that as well. Those are my personal favorite kind of people and couples… the evolved ones who adore and respect each other. And that is my wish for you. Be proud of yourself for not settling years ago and trusting your gut and doing the work! Go into yom tov with your head held high!
Sincerely, 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.
Health & F tness
Fueling Success Healthy School Lunch Ideas for All Ages
By Aliza Beer MS, RD, CDN
The school year has begun, and making sure every lunch packed is healthy becomes a top priority. Whether you’re preparing meals for young children, teens, or even college students, the goal remains the same: to create balanced lunches that provide the essential nutrients needed to get through the day. While it can sometimes feel overwhelming to ensure lunches are healthy and tasty, this article offers practical tips to simplify the process. We’ll also explore the importance of nutritious lunches, share meal ideas tailored for all age groups, tips for picky eaters, time-saving lunch prep tips, allergy friendly lunch ideas, healthy snacks, and how to handle lunchroom challenges.
Importance of Healthy Lunches
Packing healthy lunches is important for several reasons, particularly when it comes to supporting overall well-being and daily performance:
1. Sustained Energy Levels : Healthy lunches provide a balanced mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy fats that are key to maintaining steady energy levels throughout the day. Complex carbohydrates, such as whole grains, release energy slowly, helping to avoid the mid-afternoon energy slump. Protein sources, like lean meats, beans, and nuts, aid in muscle repair and keep you full longer, while healthy fats from sources like avocados and nuts are essential for brain function. This balance is crucial for students to stay focused and productive in class, enabling them to actively engage and participate in their lessons.
2. Improved Concentration and Cognitive Function: Nutrient-rich foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins, are vital for
supporting brain function. Foods rich in antioxidants, such as berries and leafy greens, protect the brain from oxidative stress, while omega-3 fatty acids found in fish improve memory and cognitive performance. Eating a balanced lunch helps improve concentration, memory, and problem-solving abilities, which is especially important for students during exams and assignments.
3. Supporting Growth and Development: For children and teens, a healthy lunch is crucial for proper growth and development. Foods rich in calcium, such as dairy products and leafy greens, support bone growth, while ironrich foods, like spinach and lean meats, are essential for developing muscles and maintaining energy levels. Additionally, healthy lunches provide the necessary vitamins and minerals to strengthen the immune system, reducing the likelihood of illness and absenteeism from school.
4. Weight Management: Healthy lunches play a significant role in regu -
lating appetite and preventing overeating later in the day. Including fiber-rich foods, such as vegetables, whole grains, and fruits, promotes a feeling of fullness and stabilizes blood sugar levels, reducing the temptation to snack on unhealthy options. This can be particularly beneficial for weight management in both children and adults, helping to maintain a healthy body weight and prevent obesity.
5. Building Healthy Habits: Packing nutritious lunches sets the foundation for lifelong healthy eating habits. It encourages mindful eating, portion control, and an appreciation for a variety of foods, which can contribute to better long-term health outcomes.
6. Preventing Chronic Diseases: A diet rich in whole foods and low in processed foods can reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. For example, replacing processed snacks with fresh fruits and vegetables lowers the intake of unhealthy trans fats and add-
ed sugars. By making healthy lunches a daily habit, you’re actively contributing to better health both now and in the future, promoting longevity and reducing healthcare costs.
7. Boosting Mood and Wellbeing: Eating a well-balanced lunch can positively impact mood and mental health. Nutrient-dense foods help stabilize blood sugar levels, which can prevent mood swings, irritability, and fatigue. In summary, packing healthy lunches is vital for ensuring that both children and adults receive the nutrients needed to stay energized, focused, and healthy throughout the day. It’s an investment in both immediate well-being and longterm health, and academic success.
Meal Ideas for Each Age Group
The lunch ideas in each age group are different, but feel free to use ideas from one age group for another according to your child’s preferences or needs.
For
Young Children (Ages 4-8)
1. Mini Sandwiches: Use wholegrain bread or wraps to make mini sandwiches with lean proteins like turkey, chicken, or tuna, along with veggies like cucumber or lettuce. Cut them into fun shapes using cookie cutters to make them more appealing.
2. Mini Pancake Sandwiches: Stack mini whole-grain pancakes with sliced bananas or berries. Serve with a side of Greek yogurt.
3. DIY Lunchables : Create a healthier version of the classic “lunchable” by packing whole-grain crackers, lean turkey, or cubes of low fat cheese, or chicken, and sliced veggies.
4. Rainbow Veggie Pizza: Use a whole-wheat tortilla as a base, spread a thin layer of tomato sauce, and top with low fat shredded cheese and a colorful
array of veggies like bell peppers, carrots, and spinach. Bake until the cheese melts, then cut into fun shapes.
Tweens and Teens (Ages 9-18)
1. Chicken Wraps: Whole-wheat wrap with grilled chicken, avocado, tomato, and lettuce. Feel free to substitute the chicken with turkey, tuna, or eggs.
2. Egg Muffins: Baked egg muffins with spinach, mushrooms, and cheese that can be made ahead of time and easily packed for lunch.
3. Vegetable Sushi Rolls: Use seaweed wraps to roll up veggies like cucumber, avocado, and carrot with a bit of brown rice. Slice into bite-sized pieces.
4. Bento Box: Create a balanced bento box with a variety of small portions: a serving of brown rice or quinoa, a portion of grilled salmon or chicken, a side of roasted veggies, and a small fruit salad.
College Students and Adults (18+)
1. Mason Jar Salad: Layer ingredients like leafy greens, grilled chicken, cucumbers, and a light dressing in a mason jar for a portable salad.
2. Soup and Sandwich Combo: A thermos of vegetable soup paired with a half sandwich made with whole-grain bread and lean protein like turkey, chicken, or tuna.
3. Mediterranean Pita Pockets: Fill whole-wheat pita pockets with a mix of diced cucumber, cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, feta cheese, and a dollop of hummus.
4. Turkey and Avocado Sandwich: Whole-grain bread with sliced turkey, avocado, tomato, and spinach.
5. Rainbow Salmon Salad: Colorful and crunchy salad consisting of purple cabbage, shredded carrots, scallions, watermelon radishes, cucumbers, sesame seeds, and chunks of grilled salmon with an Asian dressing.
Tips For Picky Eaters
For parents dealing with picky eaters, making lunchtime enjoyable and stressfree is key. Here are some strategies:
1. Involve Them in the Process: Let children help with grocery shopping and lunch preparation. They are more likely to eat what they’ve helped make.
2. Make Food Fun: Present meals in creative ways, like using colorful plates, cutting sandwiches into fun shapes, or arranging veggies in a rainbow pattern.
3. Start Small: Introduce new
foods gradually by pairing them with familiar favorites. For instance, if your child loves cheese, add a few slices of a new vegetable to a cheese sandwich.
4. Offer Choices: Give your child a sense of control by allowing them to choose between two healthy options. For example, ask, “Would you like apple slices or carrot sticks with your sandwich?”
5. Be Patient: Encourage your child to try new foods but avoid pressuring them. It may take multiple exposures before they accept a new food.
Time-Saving Lunch Prep Tips
Busy schedules can make lunch prep challenging, but these time-saving tips can help:
1. Meal Prep on Weekends: Dedicate a couple of hours on the weekend to prepare ingredients like grilled chicken, chopped veggies, or cooked grains. Store them in the fridge for easy assembly during the week.
bread for gluten-free bread or wraps. Consider rice cakes, quinoa, or gluten-free pasta for variety. Include proteins like grilled chicken, eggs, or tofu.
2. Dairy-Free : Opt for plantbased alternatives like almond milk yogurt, dairy-free cheese, or avocado as a creamy addition. Include calcium-rich foods like leafy greens or fortified plantbased milk.
3. Nut-Free : Use sunflower seed butter or tahini as a nut-free alternative to peanut butter. Protein can also come from seeds, legumes, or hummus.
4. Egg-Free : For egg allergies, consider chickpea-based dishes, tofu, or beans as a protein source. Veggie-based wraps and salads are also great options.
Snack Ideas and Healthy Treats
Healthy snacks are just as important as nutritious lunches to keep your kids energized and satisfied throughout the
Eating a balanced lunch helps improve concentration, memory, and problem-solving abilities, which is especially important for students during exams and assignments.
2. Use Leftovers Creatively: Turn dinner leftovers into next-day lunches. For example, roast chicken can be turned into a wrap, and leftover veggies can be added to a salad.
3. Batch Cooking: Prepare larger quantities of favorite lunch items like soups, pasta salads, or egg muffins. Portion them out for several days of lunch.
4. Keep It Simple: Opt for no-cook or minimal-cook options like salads, sandwiches, or wraps that can be thrown together in minutes.
5. Freeze and Store: Items like chicken, fish, or even sandwiches can be made in bulk and frozen. Just make sure you research the guidelines on freezing ready-made food. When your child wants to eat it, just grab it and go in the morning!
Allergy-Friendly Lunch Ideas
For those with food allergies, safe and nutritious lunches are a priority. Here are some allergy-friendly options:
1. Gluten-Free: Swap regular
found in rice crispy treats or chocolate/ candy bars.
7. Freeze-Dried Fruit: An easy and clean snack that is very helpful especially in the winter months when fruit is not as varied or plentiful. Crispy Fruit is an example of one brand that can be purchased on Amazon.
How to Handle Lunchroom Challenges
Navigating the lunchroom can present challenges, but here are some tips:
1. Peer Pressure: Encourage open conversations about making healthy choices. Discuss why it’s okay to enjoy treats occasionally but focus on nutrient-dense foods for energy and concentration.
2. Limited Eating Time : Pack easy-to-eat, bite-sized items that don’t require much effort to consume such as sandwiches, wraps, or finger foods. Avoid packing items that take too long to eat, like whole apples or unpeeled oranges.
3. Picky Eaters Not Finishing Meals: Offer smaller portions of a variety of foods to encourage eating. Focus on including at least one or two items you know they enjoy and consider packing a favorite snack for later.
4. Balanced Lunches in Realistic School Settings: Recognize that some days might be busier or more stressful, leading to less balanced meals. Teach your child or teen that it’s okay and that overall balance matters more than perfection every day.
day! Here are ideas of healthy snacks your children can bring to school.
1. Homemade Granola Bars: Make your own granola bars using oats, nuts (if not allowed), seeds, and dried fruit. Customize with flavors like chocolate chips or coconut for a treat.
2. Fruit Kabobs: Skewer pieces of fresh fruit like strawberries, melon, and grapes for a colorful and fun snack.
3. Veggie Sticks with Hummus: Pack sliced veggies like carrots, cucumbers, and bell peppers alongside a small container of hummus for dipping.
4. Energy Bites: Make no-bake energy bites using oats, nut or sunflower butter, and honey. Add mix-ins like chocolate chips, coconut, or chia seeds for variety.
5. Popcorn and Whole Grain Pretzels: These are healthier options instead of chips when craving something salty/crunchy.
6. Chocolate Covered Rice/Corn Cakes: Much less calories/sugar than
In summary, providing healthy school lunches is a great way to fuel success, no matter the age group. By focusing on balanced meals that include a variety of nutrients, you’re providing your kids with sustained energy levels, improved concentration, and overall well-being. From creative meal ideas tailored to different age groups to strategies for overcoming common lunchroom challenges, the key is to make healthy eating both enjoyable and practical. With the right planning, your efforts will not only help your child thrive in school but also build lifelong healthy habits.
Aliza Beer is a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutrition. She has a private practice in Cedarhurst, NY. Patients’ success has been featured on the Dr. Oz show. Aliza can be reached at alizabeer@gmail. com, and you can follow her on Instagram at @alizabeer
Parenting Pearls Quantity vs. Quality
By Sara Rayvych, MSEd
It’s one of those age-old questions. Is quantity or quality more important? Often, one naturally requires sacrifice for the other. If you have limited time to prepare a yom tov meal, you may have to choose between preparing fewer dishes that are fancier and time-consuming, or cooking more dishes that are simpler and quicker. It can be a challenge deciding whether it’s better to invest in greater quantity or better quality.
We see this quandary in many areas of life. Do you give more tzedaka to just one organization or divide the limited sum between many, with each receiving far less? Is it worth adding in another class, knowing it’ll leave you less time to work on the ones you are already taking? Do you purchase one larger gift for the family or a few smaller ones?
Unsurprisingly, this is a question parents often face. We have limited resources and using them wisely is a skill all its own. It may mean deciding between five cheaper quality school shirts or three better quality ones that will last longer. Some families do one big chol hamoed trip, while others do fewer that are closer to home.
There is one resource we are all limited on and using it wisely affects all we do. This precious item is “time.”
We have 24 hours in a day, with many of those, by necessity, being designated towards sleep. I’ve seen this issue discussed in many parenting areas.
A father mentioned how he goes allout for yeshiva week break, flying the kids down south and spending lavishly, because he works very long days that leave him little time to spend with his children. He sees his children briefly during the week; he sleeps away most of Shabbos from exhaustion. This can be contrasted with the parent who may be home when the kids are but in essence ignores them. Perhaps they’re occupied checking emails, calling friends or simply too drained at the end of the day to have meaningful interactions. They may be present physically but not emotionally.
Whether we prioritize the quantity of time we spend with our children or the quality of the bonding will create a very different parenting model. Recognizing the role of quantity and quality of time can help parents adjust their schedules to best meet their child’s needs.
The Role of Quality
Watching two people sitting side by side, staring forward at a screen in silence, it’s surprising when they later say they were spending “quality time” together. This is despite not saying a word to the other, zero eye contact and being oblivious to the other’s presence for the entire duration. This is in stark contrast to a parent and child sitting at the table with a game of Uno in front of them. As they animatedly put down card after card, you hear some laughter, maybe a groan (not everyone likes to lose), but they’re clearly involved. There are a number of components that go into enhancing the quality of our interactions, and I’d like to briefly discuss a few of them.
Communication is the foundation of relationships. We talk, we make eye contact, we laugh and share. The conversation may be meaningful or humdrum, but it’s still showing interest in each other and valuing their company. Maybe a child is excited by an upcoming trip or nervous over next week’s exam –whatever they share continues to build the bond of connection and trust.
Conversation looks very different de -
pending on the child’s age. With a young infant, it’s predominantly one-way, with the parent talking and the baby listening, cooing or falling asleep. A toddler or preschooler may find discussing an ice cream cone to be the most fascinating topic available. A teenager may spend the entire time discussing – or avoiding – what’s troubling them.
Quality time together should involve some form of interactions and communication – with each other. I stress the words “with each other” because talking to someone else on the phone while you interact with your child detracts from the level of “quality.” The child knows who really has your attention.
Parents are busy, and there are many tasks to occupy them. Your child needs to know you’re mentally with them. This means not only hearing their words but actually listening to what they say. We need to remove (or ignore) other distractions.
It’s a bonus if parent and child are doing a shared activity together. This not only enhances the quality of the interaction, it also creates a more relaxed environment. Kids really enjoy doing things with their favorite adult. Reading books,
taking walks, games, puzzles or making yom tov menus all involve togetherness.
The Role of Quantity
Children need time with their parents. The babysitter may be wonderful, the playgroup is fabulous, but there is nobody else who can replace their loving adults. There is no way of getting around the reality that children need significant time with their parents. As hard as we are working to provide for them and care for their needs, they still need to have us physically present. Even just prioritizing sitting in the room when they do, or reading on the couch next to them, increases the quantity of our presence.
The younger the child, the more their need for physical proximity and closeness to their main caregiver. But this isn’t to negate the need teens and older children have for the security of a parent nearby. Having a constant, consistent adult is crucial towards healthy emotional development. We’re not just there to make sure they eat dinner and don’t set things on fire (chas v’shalom). Our presence provides physical and emotional security, laying the foundation for their future relationships. Their ability
to become independent starts from being dependent on us and having their needs met by someone who loves them and is present for them.
Adding Quality to Quantity
Quantity can be quantified in specific units, such as hours and minutes. Quality has no objective measurement. There’s also no known quota for how
ent but still important directions. Food needs to be prepared, dishes need to be washed and clothes need to be laundered – all part of a child’s basic maintenance. Somebody has to pay the bills, and that usually involves a parent designating some time for work. It’s unrealistic (and unnatural) to expect that a parent will have endless hours a day to spend giving undivided attention to a single child,
It’s our overall attitude that tells a child, “You’re important to me.”
much of either a child specifically needs. It would be convenient if I could say that a 10-year-old requires two hours daily of quality level 4, an hour of quality level 6, and 15 minutes at level 9. Each child is different, and there is no one-size-fits all number.
We also have limited capabilities, requiring us to be pulled in many differ -
especially when parents have multiple children.
With a little intention, we can add quality into the quantity we already have. Connection is created from many smaller, meaningful moments that add up. It’s our overall attitude that tells a child, “You’re important to me.”
Too often, we listen as if they’re a stat-
ic noise on the sidelines. We can make the extra effort to put down distractions when our children come to speak to us and give them our undivided attention. Even if we need to resume our other activity, we can still make those two minutes show how much we value them.
We can maximize the time we do have. We may have a half-hour set aside for dinner preparations. We can invite a child to assist us or simply keep us company from a nearby chair. It’s grocery shopping time, and we can bring an eager assistant along. The busier we are challenges us to make every moment that much more connecting.
Parents should never underestimate the role they play in their child’s life. We may fail to recognize the importance of the little things we do, but our actions add up. It’s truly our presence and devotion that turn a simple, physical structure into a warm and loving home.
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.
Note: Not
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In The K tchen
Rosh Hashana Pot Roast
By Naomi Nachman
Ingredients
◦ 4-pound second cut brisket
(you can also use brick roast, top of rib, California, chuck roast)
◦ 2 large beets, peeled and chunked
◦ 1 large onion, chunked
◦ 1 large carrot, chunked
◦ 2 tablespoons canola oil
◦ Kosher salt and pepper
Sauce
◦ ½ cup tomato sauce
◦ 2 tablespoons silan
◦ 18.5 oz pomegranate jam or raspberry jam
◦ 2 tablespoons soy sauce
◦ 2 tablespoons plum jam
◦ 1 teaspoon Dijon dry mustard
Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.
Prepare a large Dutch oven or wide pot with a lid. Add canola oil and heat on
Season brisket with salt and pepper and sear meat on both sides until a nice brown crust has formed. Remove meat and set aside.
In the same pan, add the vegetables and season with salt and pepper. Stir the vegetables until they get a bit of color.
Place the meat back in the Dutch oven or pan and nestle the meat on top of the vegetables. Pour the sauce over the meat and vegetables.
Cover and simmer on low for 3 hours.
Cool before slicing. Before serving, garnish with fresh pomegranate seeds.
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.
