Five Towns Jewish Home 12.22.22

love looking through the photos we receive from readers each year depicting how they celebrate Chanukah with their families.

On Chanukah, you’ll find each family lighting the menorah come nightfall. But how each family performs the mitzvah differs depending on minhagim and tradition. In some homes, only the head of the household lights the menorah; in other homes, every family member partakes in the mitzvah. Some use candles; others use oil.

The tunes they use for the brachos and “Maoz Tsur” may be different. Some dance; most sing; others take a few minutes to gaze at the flames.

Perhaps that’s why I love seeing photos that TJH readers send in each year depicting their Chanukah celebrations. It gives me a small glimpse into the homes of our readers and a hint of how they celebrate Chanukah.

Because there are eight days of Chanukah and we want our homes to be filled with joy during all those days, there are a lot of different ways that we bring in the Chanukah festivities. Whether it’s special foods we make, interesting games we play, or unique songs and dances we perform, each family tries to “light up the nights” in

their own special way.

Chanukah is also a busy time. It’s a week of many parties and get-togethers – sometimes a few a night. Bedtime seems to get later and later, as the children spend time playing dreidel or with their new toys and the adults forget that there’s school tomorrow. Add doughnuts, latkes, and ice cream into the mix, and it’s really hard to get kids into bed.

But amidst the busyness of the yom tov, we need to remember to take a few moments to focus on what really brought us here: the miracles of Chanukah and the miracles we see daily in our lives. If we can spend some time remembering the miracles and appreciating the goodness – all miracles! – we have in our lives, then we can elevate those doughnuts and latkes we eat on Chanukah to a higher realm.

Wishing you and your family a wonderful, joyous yom tov filled with light that continues to glow for you throughout the rest of the year.

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

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HEALTH & FITNESS

Eight

by Tehila Soskel RDN, CDN

Dear Editor,

I noticed a troubling trend over the past few Chanukahs. What started out as these rather large, bizarre dreidels on some people’s lawns has now turned into some people decorating their lawns with Chanukah figures and even “Chanukah lights.” It’s completely out of touch with everything that Chanukah is about—on Chanukah, we are fighting back against the prevailing outside secular culture. We did not capitulate. We stood our ground and even went on the offensive.

In their divine wisdom, our sages detailed how we should celebrate: by lighting the holy Chanukah neiros. There are worlds of spiritual beauty in those Chanukah candles even though externally they may not seem as glitzy as, l’havdil, some X-mas light displays.

I get that people want Chanukah to be fun for the children, but that should not come at the expense of eroding the difference between our holy holiday and “their holiday” (I will leave it at that).

Think about what you are teaching your kids when you put up these “Chanukah displays/lights” outside the home. Sorry to be judgmental, but to me, when I pass one of those homes I have two thoughts: 1) these poor parents are so scared of their kids not having THE BEST TIME that they are even willing to put up foolish X-mas-like decorations to make sure that their little munchkins don’t become scarred by just having a regular good time; and 2) I feel bad that this family does not have the ability to appreciate the beautiful subtleties of Chanukah – neiros, draidel, singing, family bonding, and, of course, jelly doughnuts…so wholesome, memorable and fun, even if it seems subtle.

Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting that there is something wrong with hanging up a big dreidel on your wall or even in the window, etc. All I’m saying is that it is pathetic to put up Chanukah lights outside of our houses and to fill our lawns with Chanukah characters. Let’s enjoy what we have rather than try to mimic what they have because what we have is eternal and still quite beautiful!

Wishing you a freilechen Chanukah! A Reader

Dear Editor, Chanukah, a time for celebration and at the same token a time for reflection. Every Chanukah, we, the Korman family from Far Rockaway, reflect on our Chanukah miracle our survival from carbon monoxide poisoning, and make it our point to remind the community to please make sure you have working non-expired carbon monoxide detectors in your home or are connected via your alarm company.

May Hashem continue to show us miracles and protect us from all the “poisons” of this world.

The Korman Family

Dear Editor,

The petirah of Rebbetzin Toby Weitman this past week closes an era which I have been fortunate to be a part of. As someone who has been working in TAG for thirty years, my kesher with the entire Weitman family is deep and abiding, and I feel like I lost a mother as well.

Actually, Rebbetzin Weitman could be considered the mother of TAG. As a full partner with her extraordinary husband, Rabbi Moshe Weitman, z”l, they

built a Bais Yaakov at a time when no one thought this community would ever support such a radically different outlook towards chinuch habonos. Through many challenges, this couple managed to change the very landscape of chinuch in our community. It is truly amazing to realize that this woman, who never merited a Bais Yaakov education, would be the catalyst to ensure that thousands upon thousands of girls receive theirs.

Upon her marriage, she followed her new husband to Monticello, New York, where, at the age of 18, she became the Rebbetzin! They both served as wonderful role models for that community and inspired them to reach greater heights in their Yiddishkeit. I still remember how, for many years, they would receive an anniversary card from a lady in Monticello and the Rabbi, z”l, would dictate a thank you letter to her to let her know how much it meant that she kept up this strong kesher.

When I became part of the TAG Women’s League presidium, I began to work with Rabbi Moshe, z”l, who had to approve our projects. A few years later, his secretary was moving to California, and my friends encouraged me to apply for the job. After all, they said, I might as well get paid for working for TAG. I have to admit, that I did not think it was a great shidduch, and I learned later, neither did he. But lo and behold, we ended up working together until his petirah, and I admired, respected, and found him to be an amazing boss. An added bonus was seeing his wife, Toby, working in the small school office, answering phones, soothing girls who did not feel well or needed a band aid, aka being the school nurse, and running off copies for the teachers. Nothing was advanced as it is today with an entire copy room. Instead, she and her co-worker Mrs. Susie Goldfeder worked with an amazing item called carbon paper which left blue all over your fingers, and the copies were run manually on a mimeograph machine.

Later on, I had the privilege of closely watching when Rebbetzin Weitman worked in my office as a receptionist. I learned so many things from watching her. She never let a minute pass by. If the phones were quiet, out came her Tehillim. Her way of interacting with parents was full of respect and care. When a child walked into the office for something, she always gave them a smile and asked their names and what grade they were in.

While she may not have been a teacher in TAG, she taught by example. Her dress and her demeanor always reflected

her status as a Bas Yisroel a royal daughter of the King.

The kibbud av va’eim she gave her illustrious parents, extended to her fatherin-law who lived with them for years. She was always patient and loving, even when he was having a difficult time. This holy example of kibbud av va’eim has filtered into her own children, who were dedicated to her well-being at all times.

Rabbi Meyer Weitman joined his father when it became obvious that his father’s health was deteriorating. He sat with him side by side and watched and learned from “the master.” He always demonstrated the utmost respect, and it was wonderful to see him interact with his mother.

Her devotion to her immediate family and beyond was evident in the many, many erev Shabbos calls she received and her tefillos by licht bentching with the names of all her relatives had to begin early on Friday morning.

This community has lost a pioneer, TAG, the school she nurtured, has lost a mother and

this writer has lost a role model and friend who will be sorely missed.

Tehi zichra baruch.

Soshie Hirth

Dear Editor,

I’d like to inform the community of an important development. Domestic violence is now and in the future to be referred to as domestic abuse. This includes not only physical abuse but also emotional abuse, religious abuse, and financial abuse, to name a few ways one spouse may exert excessive control over another.

The reclassification has become necessary. Too many women and families may be staying in abusive situations thinking that there must be physical violence for them to receive support or that they must wait to reach a breaking point to leave an unsafe environment.

Are we seeing more domestic abuse now? Or are more women finding the strength to leave abusive situations? Is any of this Covid-related? What are other causes for the current uptick; maybe if we treat root causes instead of results, we’ll be more effective in the long run. And most important: How do we support these families most effectively moving forward?

If you or anyone you know is living in an unsafe situation involving domestic abuse, please share or use my contact information below. We’re here to help.

Esther Miller

Project Director, JCCRP Success Space for Women

Convicted of Nazi Crimes at 97

that she had nothing left to say. Previously, Furchner had attended but remained silent throughout 14 months of court hearings.

More than 60,000 people died in the Stutthof concentration camp near Gdansk, in today’s Poland, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website — many by lethal injection and in the camp’s gas chamber, others from disease or starvation.

Dutch PM Apologizes for Slave Trade

A 97-year-old woman who worked as a secretary at a Nazi concentration camp was convicted by a German court on Tuesday of being an accessory to the murder of more than 10,505 people and 5 counts of attempted murder.

In what could be the last trial of its kind, Irmgard Furchner — dubbed the “secretary of evil” by German media — was handed a two-year suspended sentence for helping the Stutthof concentration camp to function during World War II.

The trial, which was briefly delayed when Furchner went on the run by fleeing in a taxi, took place in juvenile court because she was 18 and 19 years old when she worked as a secretary for the camp’s SS commander.

Furchner was charged with “aiding those in a position of responsibility at the former Stutthof concentration camp with the systematic killing of those imprisoned there, due to her work as a shorthand typist/secretary in the Camp Commandant’s Office between June 1943 and April 1945,” according to a court press release.

Her defense lawyer had asked for her to be acquitted, arguing that while it was clear that thousands of people were killed in Stutthof, the evidence did not show beyond doubt that Furchner knew about the systematic killing at the concentration camp, according to a press release by the court. In Germany, proof of intent is required for criminal liability.

Earlier this month, Furchner broke her silence and delivered unexpected final remarks. She said she was sorry for what had happened, she regretted that she had been at Stutthof at the time and

It’s many centuries later, but this week, the Dutch prime minister officially apologized for more than two centuries of Dutch slavery.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte offered the official apology on Monday on behalf of the Dutch government, mere months ahead of the 160th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the country.

Speaking at the National Archives, which he called “the home of our national memory,” Rutte said the story that emerges from those millions of historical documents “often is ugly, painful and even downright shameful.”

By 1814, more than 600,000 enslaved African people were shipped to the Americas, mostly to Suriname on the northern coast of South America, by Dutch slave traders, Rutte said. In Asia, potentially more than 1 million people were traded in areas under the Dutch East India Company.

“For centuries, the Dutch State and its representatives facilitated, stimulated, preserved and profited from slavery,” the prime minister said. “For centuries, in the name of the Dutch State, human beings were made into commodities, exploited and abused. For centuries, under Dutch state authority, human dignity was violated in the most horrific way possible. And successive Dutch governments after 1863 failed to adequately see and acknowledge that our slavery past continued to have negative effects and still does.

“For that, I offer the apologies of the

14 Dutch government. Today, I apologize.”

The Dutch government will be creating a fund for social initiatives in the Netherlands and Suriname that will aim to give the history of slavery the attention and action it deserves.

Rutte acknowledged that “it is true that no one alive now is personally to blame for slavery.” Still, he added, the Dutch state bears responsibility for the suffering.

A year of commemoration will start on July 1, the 160th anniversary of when the Netherlands abolished slavery. On that date, the king, who Rutte said “feels very engaged with this subject,” will attend the commemoration ceremony.

UK to Relax Some Travel Restrictions

They are the rituals of modern travel: the frantic drinking from water bottles in airport security lines, the shampoos tossed into the trash, the fights over whether Bolognese sauce is a solid or a liquid.

And, as far as the British government is concerned, those days should end by June 2024.

On Thursday, the British government said that new technology at its airports could let it substantially relax and speed up security checks, allowing liquid containers of up to 2 liters in hand luggage and doing away with a requirement to extract big electronics, such as laptops or tablets, from carry-on bags.

Some airports say the world have started introducing similar technology and scrapping the requirements, but experts said that Britain was ahead of the game in making a countrywide announcement.

layed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, airports in Britain will have until June 2024 to upgrade equipment and screening processes, the government said.

This week, the Bank of England unveiled new pound notes with King Charles III’s portrait that are expected to enter in circulation in mid-2024. Bank notes with the images of the late queen and the current king will circulate at the same time. (The Bank of England via The New York Times)

This is not the first time that Britain has made such an announcement. In 2019, then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans for all major British airports to introduce the screening equipment that would lead to the relaxing of the liquids rule by this month. The investment in new technology was de -

All airports in Britain will be required to adopt the latest technology in screening carry-on bags, said Laura Wilson, spokesperson for the Department for Transport, but the technology could vary between airports and be put in place at different times. Mark Harper, the transport secretary, said he would ensure the use of the security technology at all “major” British airports by the June deadline.

The new screening equipment, which uses a type of X-ray technology, essen-

tially provides a 3D image of the contents of a passenger’s bag and makes use of what the government said were “highly advanced threat detection algorithms.” It was tested in some airports over the past four years, and the British government said it proved effective.

Jeffrey C. Price, a professor of aviation at the Metropolitan State University of Denver, said that the United States — where some exceptions to the liquids rule exist — was also integrating more advanced technology in airport checks, but that the process was slow because the technology was expensive.

“We are years away from announcing a change to the current liquids rule,” R. Carter Langston, spokesperson for the

Argentina World Champs

inching forward slowly behind a police escort, surrounded by tens of thousands of people waving the Argentine flag and setting off firecrackers in the night.

Tuesday was declared a national holiday. Hundreds of fans lined the streets to peek at their champions during a victory parade.

Crowds of supporters had camped out at the team’s training site on Monday ahead of the team’s arrival, with photos showing fans spilling out of cars parked on its grounds. Some laid on blankets on the grass while others lounged on picnic chairs around coolers.

35-year-old announced his retirement prior to Sunday’s game.

With the World Cup under his belt, Messi has cemented his status as one of the all-time soccer greats alongside Maradona and Brazil’s Pelé.

Protests Rock Peru

tionwide state of emergency as it sought to quell widespread violence after last week’s ouster of Castillo, a leftist, when he tried to dissolve a Congress, controlled by right-wing parties, that was trying for the third time to impeach him.

Many demonstrators are also calling for a new constitution and the return of Castillo to power. But on Thursday, a judge ordered him to remain detained for up to 18 months in jail while prosecutors prepare a case against him for alleged rebellion, conspiracy, and abuse of power.

The country of Argentina has been on a high since Sunday, when its soccer team won the gold in the World Cup in Qatar against rival France. On Tuesday morning, the winning squad arrived home in Buenos Aires to adoring crowds.

Captain Lionel Messi stepped off the plane first, holding the gold trophy aloft, followed by his triumphant team onto a red carpet at the airport, greeted by reporters, officials, and a live band.

As the team bus departed the airport, it was immediately swarmed by cheering supporters dressed in the national colors of blue and white. Videos show the bus

In Sunday’s game, Argentina took an early lead in the first half – but France roared back in the second half, reaching a 2-2 tie that forced the match into extra time.

Messi scored his second goal of the match to restore his team’s lead – but France’s Kylian Mbappé scored a second penalty to grab his hat-trick and take the final to a penalty shootout, which ended with triumph for Argentina after France missed two shots.

The triumph in Doha was Argentina’s third World Cup win and its first since 1986, when the legendary Diego Maradona led the team to victory in Mexico.

This was Messi’s last World Cup. The

The death toll in protests that have convulsed Peru rose above 20 on Friday, with tensions centered in the highland city of Ayacucho, where eight people were killed in clashes between anti-government demonstrators and military officers.

The demonstrations and ensuing violence have hampered efforts by the new president, Dina Boluarte, to establish control over the country, with two ministers in her government resigning on Friday and protesters in the streets chanting, “Dina! Murderer!”

Despite authorizing the military to help restore order this week, Boluarte has struggled to contain the violent protests sparked by the abrupt downfall of her democratically elected predecessor, Pedro Castillo, who tried to illegally seize control of Congress and the courts last week. The protests have shuttered regional airports, choked off roads across large swaths of the country, and resulted in curfews being imposed on several provinces.

On Friday, hopes for a quick resolution to the crisis remained elusive. Congress rejected a proposed constitutional reform that Boluarte had hoped would calm tensions, and clashes resumed in Ayacucho and other regions. But efforts to negotiate an end to the tensions were hindered by a lack of visible protest leaders to take part in any dialogue.

“People want a fight, but there’s no head. There’s no direction,” said Alfredo Sauñe, a 43-year-old farmer from a highland region in Peru’s southern Andes who had traveled to the capital, Lima, to take part in demonstrations.

Like many other protesters, Sauñe wants new general elections and the shutdown of Congress.

The developments came two days after Peru’s government declared a na-

Patricia Correa, the outgoing education minister, posted a picture of her resignation letter on her Twitter account on Friday, saying the death of Peruvians at the hands of the government “has no justification.”

Minutes later, the resignation letter of the culture minister became public. (© The New York Times)

Philippines Communist Leader Dies

Jose Maria Sison, who launched one of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgencies, died last week at age 83, the Communist Party of the Philippines announced on Saturday.

The former university professor died in the Netherlands, where he had lived in self-imposed exile since the collapse of peace talks in 1987, when the rebellion that has claimed tens of thousands of lives was at its peak.

“The Filipino proletariat and toiling people grieve the death of their teacher and guiding light,” a statement from the party said.

The Philippines’ defense ministry said Sison’s death could finally lead to an end of violence in the country, calling Sison the “greatest stumbling block” to peace.

“The death of Sison is but a symbol of the crumbling hierarchy” of the communist movement, it said, calling for remaining rebels to surrender.

“A new era without Sison dawns for the Philippines... Let us now give peace

20 condition that it could reclaim the heirloom every Chanukah.

22, 2022

Its visit to Germany this year, organized by the German Friends of Yad Vashem, began with a trip to Kiel and ended Monday, the second night of Chanukah, with the lighting of the menorah on a windowsill at Berlin’s grand Bellevue Palace, the official residence of the German president.

“We are experiencing the wonderful gift of reconciliation,” said the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at the start of the ceremony. “And today, we see that 90 years after this menorah was last lit in Germany, there is once again a daily Jewish life here.” (© The New York Times)

A Fatal Wave

city of Durban on Saturday, according to local emergency medical services (EMS).

“EMS responded to reports of a freak wave that swept a group of beachgoers against the pier causing multiple injuries,” spokesman Njabulo Dlungele said.

He added that a teenager was among the three people declared dead at the scene at North Beach, which was closed after the incident. The three people who died were swept out to sea by rip currents.

Another 17 people were injured, according to the KwaZulu-Natal provincial government, which said in a statement posted on Facebook on Sunday: “The details of the incidents are still sketchy at this point, however, it is believed that a freak wave put many people into distress while swimming and they tragically drowned.”

A team of 35 lifeguards undertook a mass rescue effort, and paramedics attended to more than 100 people involved in the incident.

Japan Increases Military Spending

the “greatest strategic challenge” to international order and toughens its assessment of a more belligerent Russia.

Speaking to reporters at a press briefing after the Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said that Japan had reached a “turning point” in its history that necessitated the buildup.

“In Japan’s neighboring countries and regions, there is a more obvious shift toward attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by might,” he said, noting that Japan would take a wide range of measures, from military to diplomatic, to respond to the change

On Friday, Japan announced a new national security strategy that will double the amount earmarked for the country’s military defense, breaking with decades-long precedence on spending restraints as it seeks to strengthen its military capabilities to counter China’s rising power.

The new strategy represents the latest step in Japan’s years-long path toward building a more muscular military and reducing its dependence on U.S. forces. After decades of resistance to the idea, recent polls show that more than half of the country now supports at least some military buildup, amid China’s growing aggression toward Taiwan and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Three beachgoers were killed by a “freak” wave in South Africa’s coastal

Durban is a popular destination for South African and foreign vacationers, with beaches flooded with visitors during the holiday season.

The new plan, approved by the Cabinet on Friday, reflects the geopolitical shifts that have swept the region since the previous version was released nearly a decade ago. In 2013, the document described China and Russia as strategic partners. Now it deems Beijing’s rise as

That has allowed Kishida to push forward defense measures that would have been viewed as extreme even recently in officially pacifist Japan, including the acquisition of missiles that could be used to target bases in enemy territory in response to an attack.

24

“One year ago, I couldn’t imagine that the Japanese people would support this kind of security initiative,” said Tetsuo Kotani, a professor of international relations at Meikai University and a senior fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs.

When Japan released its first national security strategy nine years ago, it identified North Korea and its nuclear program as the country’s greatest security concern. While the North’s flurry of missile tests this year and its expanding nuclear arsenal show that it has not receded as a threat, the security strategy now labels China the biggest challenge. (© The New York Times)

Mexico is Dangerous for Journalists

2022 has been deadliest year in at least three decades for Mexican journalists and media workers, with 15 slayings. Last week, two gunmen on a motorcycle attempted to assassinate radio and television journalist Ciro Gómez Leyva in his armored vehicle 200 yards from his

home. Gómez Leyva, one of Mexico’s most prominent journalists, managed to survive. He is a regular critic of the government and a frequent target of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s tirades against press criticism.

at journalist Flavio Reyes de Dios, director of an online news site in Palenque, a town in the southern state of Chiapas. A vehicle without license plates followed him and then ran his motorcycle off the road, injuring the journalist, the press advocacy group Article 19 said.

Jan-Albert Hootsen, the Mexico representative for the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that this year the only nation to see more journalists killed is Ukraine, which is fighting the Russian invasion.

As the talks began, Russia had just finished carrying out a wave of predawn attacks with Iranian-made drones on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, Ukrainian officials said, continuing a pattern of nighttime strikes that Moscow has adopted to try to evade Ukrainian air defenses.

Solidarity has grown among Mexico’s press corps amid the carnage, and its members are making increasing noise after each killing. They also have pushed back against a longtime government narrative that the victims weren’t real journalists or were corrupt.

Still, the killings — 15 counted by The Associated Press — have continued to rise.

This year, many of the dead were small town reporters running their own outlets on a shoestring. Others were freelancers, including for national publications, in big cities like Tijuana.

Also on Thursday, assailants took aim

Some are opining that the massive killings are due to the fact that the government may be behind some of them. Others note that the press has become more independent and aggressive, going after key people in society.

Putin Visits Belarus

Most of the exploding drones targeted power plants and other important infrastructure in Kyiv, where at least four loud explosions were heard. The city government issued warnings for residents to take shelter.

Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said that critical infrastructure had been hit and that power and heat had been knocked out in some neighborhoods. In the region around the capital, three people were wounded and nine houses were damaged, the police said in a statement.

The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, dismissed speculation that Belarus could become more directly involved in the war, telling reporters on Monday that such talk was based on “totally stupid, groundless fabrications.”

President Vladimir Putin of Russia made a rare visit to Belarus on Monday to strengthen his bond with the country’s president and his closest regional ally, Alexander Lukashenko, a fellow strongman who has been under growing pressure from Moscow to provide more support for the war in Ukraine.

Appearing together at a palace in Minsk after their talks, Putin and Lukashenko spoke about the need to withstand Western economic pressure. Putin said the two had also discussed the formation of a “unified defense space,” without describing what that would entail, and had agreed to continue joint military exercises.

Putin’s visit took place as Russia continued its nighttime bombardment campaign against Ukraine’s power plants and other crucial infrastructure, deepening the country’s misery. And the trip seemed certain to escalate concerns in Kyiv about the possibility of a fresh ground offensive that could use Belarus as a launchpad.

Ukraine has repeatedly warned in recent days that Russian forces could be preparing a new assault from Belarus aimed at trying once again to seize Kyiv, only about 55 miles from the Belarusian border, or at disrupting the flow of Western arms and aid into Ukraine from Poland.

Peskov similarly dismissed warnings from the United States at the start of the year that Russia was planning to invade Ukraine, insisting that Moscow had sent troops to Belarus only for training exercises. (© The New York Times)

Terrorist Dies of Cancer

A founding member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terrorist group convicted of killing seven Israelis and five Palestinian collaborators died of cancer in Israeli custody on Tuesday morning.

Nasser Abu Hmeid, 51, was diagnosed with lung cancer last August. His cancer had since spread throughout his body.

The Palestinian Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs Commission, along with other Palestinian groups, accused

the Israel Prison Service of negligence and deliberately killing Abu Hmeid, saying his cancer should have been discovered earlier and treated better.

The Prison Service rejected the allegation, saying the prisoner “received regular and close care from IPS medical staff and external professionals.”

In recent months, Palestinian groups had called for Abu Hmeid to be released from prison due to his health condition and threatened to carry out attacks if he

died in Israeli custody.

Following Abu Hmeid’s death, some Palestinian groups called for a general strike in the West Bank, including the Palestinian Bar Association and General Union of Palestinian Teachers, who called for work to halt beginning at 11 a.m. on Tuesday.

In 2002, Abu Hmeid, the right-hand man to arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, was convicted of murdering seven Israelis — Eliyahu Cohen, Binyamin

and Talia Kahane, Gad Rejwan, Yosef Habi, Eli Dahan and Salim Barakat — in a number of terror attacks during the Second Intifada that he either personally carried out or directed from afar. During the trial, Israeli authorities described him as a “killing machine.”

He was also convicted of 12 counts of attempted murder and a number of other security-related charges and has been serving multiple life sentences.

Abu Hmeid had also previously been

found guilty of murdering five Palestinians who collaborated with Israel in 1990 but was released a few years later as part of the Oslo Accords.

IDF Downs Hezbollah Drone

The Israel Defense Forces announced on Tuesday the interception of a drone crossing from Lebanon into Israeli airspace.

The military said it suspected that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group launched the small unmanned aerial vehicle.

According to the IDF, the aircraft was monitored throughout its flight until being downed in an unspecified manner near the border moshav of Zar’it.

The military added that it would continue to prevent any attempt to violate Israeli sovereignty.

In July, the IDF shot down three Hezbollah drones sent towards Israel’s Karish offshore natural gas platform. Bottom of Form

The UAVs flew at low speed and low altitude in an attempt to evade Israel’s interception systems; however, they were detected “at an early stage” before being neutralized “at the optimal operational point.”

In February, the IDF used electronic warfare to bring down a drone launched by a Hezbollah special-forces unit from Lebanon.

A drone the IDF downed in January contained images apparently showing a Hezbollah-affiliated force training with UAVs. (JNS)

Knesset Tackles New Bills

Following an intense session, the Knesset Plenum on Monday approved a bill increasing the minimum number of MKs needed in order to split into a new faction in the parliament, marking a political achievement for Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu in his quest to form a government.

Within his Likud party, Netanyahu might soon face standoffs with some disgruntled MKs who are not appointed to the government positions they desire. The new law eliminates the current option for four MKs to break away from their parliamentary group in that kind of scenario.

“The incoming government has a new catchphrase: ‘Bite Us,’” accused outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid during the plenum session before the vote. “The

message is that it only cares about itself. Charedim only care about charedim, Religious Zionism only cares about settlers and Likud members only care about Netanyahu and his trial. Anyone else, who didn’t vote for them, can ‘go bite them’— they will not work or be responsible for him. They have no interest in common life, in abiding the law, in balancing between Judaism and democracy and between security and civil rights.”

Netanyahu sarcastically replied to

Lapid via Twitter.

“Yair Lapid is unable to make a shot at the goal even after the game has ended,” he wrote, referring to the World Cup, which ended the day before. “He still does not accept the election results—he lost and the right-wing won. Very soon we will form a strong right-wing government that will fix Lapid’s failures and take care of all of Israel’s citizens.”

During the plenum session, outgoing Justice Minister Gideon Saar addressed

the proposed bill and took a shot at Netanyahu. “This bill raises an interesting question: can it be that the designated Prime Minister does not trust his own party members, so he has to block them by force from splitting?”

Netanyahu’s main political concerns within Likud are focused on a group of senior party members, including Israel Katz, Dudi Amsalem, David Bitan and Danny Danon. Under the previous law, four MKs could form a new faction in the Knesset without any ramifications. The new law, which rolls back the change initiated by Lapid’s government in order to destabilize Likud, reinstates the previous situation in which at least one-third of a party’s members are needed in order to split and form a new faction.

The bill was the first in a “legislation blitz” that also includes the “Deri Bill,” aimed at enabling the leader of the Shas party, Aryeh Deri, to serve as a minister in the next government despite his recent conviction in tax evasion charges; and the “Ben-Gvir Bill,” aimed at shifting powers from the police commissioner to the designated minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir. Both bills are expected to pass in the next few days, before the new government will be sworn in. (JNS)

EU Wants to Give Palestinians Area C

The European Union is formulating a new program to protect Palestinian claims in parts of the West Bank fully controlled by Israel, known as Area C,

according to a confidential document reported by Israeli television.

The six-page document from June 2022, titled “European Joint Development Programme for Area C,” says that the EU “aims at defending the right of Palestinians living in Area C and preserving Area C as part of a future Palestinian State in line with the Oslo Accords.”

It also lays out practical steps such as mapping out land in Area C, according to Israel’s Channel 13 news, which broke the story on Monday.

The EU document discusses the need to provide legal aid to Palestinians in Israeli courts to protect their claims, and to monitor Israeli archaeological digs in Area C, which it sees as a tool Israel uses to tighten and justify its control over the West Bank.

Ultimately, the EU would like to see Area C combined with Areas A and B, with no distinction between them, according to the report.

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, the West Bank was split into three administrative divisions, with Area A controlled by the Palestinian Authority, Area B under split control, and Area C — the largest section, constituting about 60 percent of the territory — remaining fully under Israeli control.

Area C, which is the only contiguous section of the West Bank and contains the most fertile land and valuable natural resources, was supposed to be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction. The Israeli settlements are located in Area C.

The EU’s delegation to Israel did not confirm the report authenticity.

“Our policy regarding the West Bank has not changed: The EU is united in its commitment to achieving a two-state solution with the State of Israel living live side by side in peace, security and mutual recognition with an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable State of Palestine, with Jerusalem as the future capital of both states,” it said.

Area C is home to around 400,000 Israelis, with 70% of the land off-limits for Palestinian development.

Israel Deports Palestinian to France

France on Sunday denounced as “against the law” Israel’s deportation of a former Palestinian security prisoner

with French citizenship and claimed that eastern Jerusalem, where the convicted terrorist resided, is “occupied.”

possible assistance and that he can lead a normal life in Jerusalem, where he was born, resides and wishes to live.

“France also took several steps to communicate to the Israeli authorities in the clearest way its opposition to this expulsion of a Palestinian resident of [eastern] Jerusalem, an occupied territory under the Fourth Geneva Convention,” the statement continued.

Israel’s Interior Ministry announced earlier in the day that Salah Hamouri, currently a lawyer and field researcher for the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, a group linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist organization, had been deported from the country.

“We condemn today the Israeli authorities’ decision, against the law, to expel Salah Hamouri to France,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement in response.

It added that Paris had “fully mobilized, including at the highest level of the state, to ensure Salah Hamouri’s rights are respected, that he benefits from all

Hamouri was previously sentenced by an Israeli court to seven years in prison, as part of a plea bargain in exchange for admitting to plotting to murder the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. Hamouri was released by Israel as part of the 2011 Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.

Born to a French mother and a Palestinian father in Kafr Aqab, a neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem, Hamouri retains French citizenship; his wife and children reside in France.

“Today, in good time, the law has been implemented against the terrorist Saleh Hamouri and he was evicted from Israel,” Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said in a statement on Sunday.

“This has been a lengthy procedure and it is a major achievement, a moment before ending my term I was able to lead to his eviction using the tools at my dis-

HOURS

SUNDAY 10:00AM - 10:00PM

MON-THU 8:00AM - 10:00PM

FRIDAY 8:00AM - 4:00PM SATURDAY 6:30PM - 9:30PM

32 posal and to promote the fight against terrorism,” the minister added. “I hope that the incoming government continues this policy and evicts terrorists from Israel.” (JNS)

22, 2022

Title 42 On Hold

the Biden administration to respond the next day to an emergency appeal filed by a group of Republican-led states.

The brief order from Roberts means the policy that allows officials to swiftly expel migrants at the U.S. border will stay in effect at least until the justices decide the emergency application. This does not mean that the policy will remain in place indefinitely.

A federal district court judge had vacated the policy last month, calling Title 42 “arbitrary and capricious.” The judge said the program could remain in effect until December 21.

tastrophe that is occurring at our southern border,” adding that “unlawful crossings are estimated to surge from 7,000 per day to as many as 18,000.”

Late Friday night, the DC Circuit US Court of Appeals ruled against the states, holding that they waited an “inordinate” amount of time before trying to get involved in the case. That order triggered the emergency application at the high court, which was addressed to Roberts, who oversees the DC-based appellate appeals court that ruled in the case.

Roberts is likely to refer the matter to the full court.

site.” His account was briefly suspended.

On Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts put a temporary hold on the termination of the Trumpera immigration policy known as Title 42 that was set to end on December 21, leaving it in place for now.

In a brief order, Roberts signaled that the court wants to act quickly and asked

Already, federal officials and border communities have been bracing for an expected increase in migrant arrivals as early as this week, as the issue of immigration continues to ignite both sides of the political divide. The Department of Homeland Security has been putting in place a plan for the end of the program that includes surging resources to the border, targeting smugglers, and working with international partners.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich – who took the lead for the states – said in a statement earlier Monday that “getting rid of Title 42 will recklessly and needlessly endanger more Americans and migrants by exacerbating the ca-

Should Elon Musk Quit as Twitter CEO?

Last week, Twitter suspended about two dozen accounts that tracked the locations of private planes, including one that followed Musk’s private jet, justifying the decision with a new policy that banned accounts if they shared another person’s “live location.” The accounts of some journalists from The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and other outlets were also suspended last week, seemingly under the same policy, and then reinstated after Musk asked users if they should be allowed back. Fifty-nine percent responded yes in a Twitter “poll” with 3.7 million votes.

After asking users whether he should stay on as chief executive of Twitter, Musk said in another tweet: “No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.”

There are signs that Musk’s ownership and focus on Twitter are interfering with his other business ventures. Since Musk acquired Twitter, the value of Tesla has sunk. The car company’s share price was $225 on Oct. 27, the day Musk completed the acquisition of Twitter. On Friday, Tesla shares closed at $150. (© The New York Times)

Elon Musk asked Twitter users on Sunday if he should step down as head of the social media site. More than 17 million votes were cast and delivered a clear verdict: 57.5% said he should quit, in a Twitter “poll” that closed after 12 hours on Monday.

Musk had said that he would abide by the results of the vote. After voting ended, there was no immediate response from Musk on Twitter.

If he follows through, Musk would be handing over the reins of the company that he bought for $44 billion in late October. The turbulent weeks since then have been marked by mass layoffs at the company, falling advertising sales, executive resignations and various high-profile user accounts suspended for infractions of newly invented policy.

On Sunday, Twitter announced a policy to prevent users from sharing links and user names from other social platforms, like Instagram, Facebook and Mastodon, and then apparently curtailed the same policy.

But for some users, the chaotic weekend was a breaking point.

Musk’s latest actions with Twitter were “the last straw,” Paul Graham, a founder of the startup accelerator Y Combinator, tweeted on Sunday. Graham had supported Musk’s takeover, but on Sunday, he wrote, “I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my

Terrible Turbulence

At least 36 people on a Hawaiian Airlines flight were injured, with 20 taken to emergency rooms, after their plane encountered “severe turbulence” on a flight from Phoenix to Honolulu on Sunday.

Eleven patients were in serious condition, Honolulu Emergency Medical Services said in a statement. Among those transported to the hospital was a 14-month-old child. Three crew members were among the injured.

The patients’ injuries included a serious head injury, lacerations, bruising and loss of consciousness.

Witnesses say that the plane felt like it was encountering normal turbulence. Then, the turbulence intensified.

“It felt like free-falling,” a passenger said, describing being lifted off her seat with her seat belt on.

Trump Referred for Criminal Prosecution

control of the House in January, mounted a modest response. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the No. 3 House Republican, was one of the few to react with a statement, accusing the committee of staging a “partisan charade.”

The executive summary, a 154-page narrative of Trump’s relentless drive to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election, identifies co-conspirators who aided Trump. But it singles out the former president as the primary cause of the mob violence.

The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol accused former President Donald Trump on Monday of inciting insurrection, conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an act of Congress and one more federal crime as it referred him to the Justice Department for potential prosecution.

The action, the first time in U.S. history that Congress has referred a former president for criminal prosecution, is the coda to the committee’s 18-month investigation into Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election that culminated in a mob of the former president’s supporters laying siege to the Capitol.

The criminal referrals were a major escalation for a congressional investigation that is the most significant in a generation. The panel named five other Trump allies — Mark Meadows, his final chief of staff, and lawyers Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Kenneth Chesebro — as potential co-conspirators with Trump in actions the committee said warranted Justice Department investigation. The charges, including a fourth for Trump of conspiracy to make a false statement, would carry prison sentences, some of them lengthy, if federal prosecutors chose to pursue them.

The committee’s referrals do not carry legal weight or compel any action by the Justice Department, which is conducting its own investigation into Jan. 6 and the actions of Trump and his allies leading up to the attack. But the referrals sent a powerful signal that a bipartisan committee of Congress believes the former president committed crimes.

Trump attacked the committee as “highly partisan” before a final meeting the panel held Monday to release an executive summary of its final report on the Capitol attack and to vote on referring the former president to the Justice Department.

Republicans, who have vowed to investigate the committee after they take

“That evidence has led to an overriding and straightforward conclusion: The central cause of Jan. 6 was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed,” the summary stated.

(© The New York Times)

Foie Gras Friendly

The State of New York has determined that New York City’s ban on foie gras, stuffed goose or duck liver, violates state law, according to documents filed in New York City Superior Court.

The states Department of Agriculture and Markets informed city officials last week that the ban “unreasonably restricts” the operations of two farms that sued the city over the ban, La Belle Farm and Hudson Valley Foie Gras.

New York City had originally passed a bill in 2019 to ban restaurants and retailers from selling the fatty duck or goose liver, considered a delicacy by some.

In a letter to New York Mayor Eric Adams and Division of Legal Counsel Chief Stephen Louis, the department requested that the “City confirm that it will not enforce its ban on the sale of force-fed products” marketed by Hudson Valley Foie Gras and La Belle Farm.

The city ban on foie gras was to go into effect November 25. However, a state Supreme Court judge in September put the ban on hold as the lawsuit by the two Upstate New York Farms proceeded through the courts.

The original bill to ban foie gras called the luxury good a “force-fed product.” City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera

38 – the prime sponsor of the bill – called force-feeding an “inhumane practice.”

What makes foie gras so contentious is the method of preparation. Foie gras is made of fattened duck or goose liver, and it has long been considered a French delicacy – so much that France has protected it as part of its cultural heritage. But the product is made by force-feeding ducks or geese, a practice that many people have found troubling.

In 2012, California’s foie gras ban went into effect, only to have the ban overturned in 2015. Then, in 2017, the ban was upheld by a circuit court judge – a decision that was backed by the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2019.

ley, it was bumped to the top spot in part because it’s home to the largest number of individuals making $100,000 or more each year. It’s also home to the third-lowest percentage of adults living below the poverty level.

In Arlington, the marriage rate is 44 percent. Frisco, Texas, had the highest marriage rate of all U.S. cities at 62.6 percent.

On the other side of the happiness scale, Birmingham, Alabama, ranked the least happy city in the nation, coming out in the bottom five among personal bankruptcy filings per capita, life expectancy, and percentage of residents living in poverty.

It was joined by Newark, N.J., and Memphis, Tennessee, which ranked as the second and third least-happy cities in the report.

Kids’ Meds Limited

It’s Sunny in California

Want to be happy? Move to California. Six of the top 10 happiest cities in the United States are located in the Golden State, according to a new ranking from SmartAsset that assessed 13 different metrics related to personal finance, wellbeing, and quality of life.

Sunnyvale, California, nabbed the top slot on the list. Located in Silicon Val-

Sunnyvale was followed by Arlington, Virginia; Bellevue, Washington; Fremont, California; and Frisco, Texas, on the list.

California cities tended to score highest in the quality-of-life category, with lower percentages of people living in poverty, higher marriage rates, and lower crime rates overall, data showed.

Plano, Texas; Roseville, California; San Jose, California; Santa Clarita, California; and Irvine, California, rounded out the top 10 happiest cities.

With the exception of Arlington, married couples make up the majority of the other nine happiest cities’ populations.

This week, CVS and Walgreens both put limits on the purchases of children’s pain relief medications due to increased demand and supplier challenges.

CVS is restricting both in-person and online purchases to two children’s pain relief products. Walgreens has limited online purchases to six over-the-counter fever reducers per transaction, but it currently does not have an in-store purchase limit.

“Due to increased demand and various supplier challenges, over-the-counter pediatric fever reducing products are seeing constraint across the country,” Walgreens said in a statement. The limits were put into place “in an effort to help support availability and avoid excess purchases.”

The limits were placed to “ensure equitable access” for all customers, according to a statement from CVS.

According to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, sales of pediatric pain relievers are up 65% from this time last year.

“Supplies of these products are being replenished as quickly as possible, and there is not a widespread shortage in the U.S. However, with demand for children’s pain and fever medicines reaching unprecedented levels following this early and severe flu season (along with cases of RSV and COVID), we understand why some retailers have adjusted to impose limits on purchases,” the group said in a

The moves by CVS and Walgreens come amid a brutal respiratory virus season that continues to strain pediatric hospitals. Young children are particularly vulnerable to RSV, which has hospitalized more than 4 out of every 1,000 children younger than 5 this season, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to RSV cases, which has been shown to have decreased nationally, flu activity remains high, along with cases of Covid-19.

Earthquake Hits California

A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Northern California’s Eureka area early Tuesday, leaving at least two people dead. At least 12 people were injured, although none seriously. Roads and homes were damaged; thousands were left without electricity. Residents were woken from their sleep from the rumbling.

The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 2:34 a.m. PT, was in the Pacific about 15 miles from Fortuna, a city of about 12,000 people in Humboldt

County, part of California’s forested Redwood Coast. Fortuna is near Eureka and about a 280-mile drive northwest of Sacramento.

No Spring Chicken

Darwin said she started rescuing chickens in the 1990s, and in the early 2000s, a Nankin hen laid a clutch of eggs in her coop. One of the eggs failed to hatch, and she was preparing to throw it away into a pond for the fish and turtles to eat when she heard a faint chirp.

“I ended up peeling it out of the egg,” she recalled. “As the chirping grew fainter, I feared the chick would not survive. A pitifully wet, wadded-up mess sat in my hand. I wrapped it in a towel and carried it close to my heart as I set up a cage and mounted a heat lamp with one hand.”

The chick, Peanut, was rejected by her mother, and had imprinted on Darwin.

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in the area.

More than three dozen smaller quakes – as powerful as a 4.6 magnitude – struck the area afterward. Tuesday’s temblor comes a year after a 6.2 magnitude quake struck just off Humboldt County’s Cape Mendocino on December 20, 2021, and caused minor damage to buildings in the area.

Peanut is 20 years old – and she’s not such a little nut. In fact, she’s not a nut at all. Peanut is a chicken and may just be the world’s oldest chicken.

Marsi Parker Darwin is applying to Guinness World Records for recognition of owning the world’s oldest living chicken.

“I’m hoping they’ll give credence to my witnesses like my niece in her thirties who loved Peanut as a teen and a friend who moved to California 18 years ago and loved Peanut and was astonished when he moved back to see her again, among others,” Darwin told The Sun

“I realized I had a house chicken, at least for the time being,” she said.

Peanut has since become a part of Darwin’s flock, but she still spends her winters indoors and has been known to serve as a “lap chicken” when Darwin attends outdoor events.

Guinness World Records lists a category for oldest living chicken on its website, but the page does not identify a current record-holder. Looks like Peanut may have a chance at being the world’s oldest chick.

No harm, no “fowl” in trying!

A Menorah Masterpiece

has slowly been skiing his way across the world. With his family, he has skied in Italy, Morocco, Chile, South Korea, Australia, Colorado, and Mount Hoegh in Antarctica.

“Antarctica (was my favorite) because I got to ski next to the penguins,” the small skier said.

Maddock’s older sister, Keira, completed her own seven-continent skiing goal in February of this year.

A menorah in Tel Aviv is making headlines for being the world’s largest menorah made completely out of Legos. It was built last Thursday and measures more than 14 feet tall.

Amnon (Marc) Appelbaum, a commercial real estate developer and engineer who was appointed by the project as a measurement specialist, said, “I hereby declare that this menorah beats the current Guinness Record for the largest LEGO brick menorah, which was 4x4x0.3 meters. I measured it to be 4.5 meters high, which is 14.7 feet, by 4.4 meters wide.”

The giant Chanukah lamp is made out of more than 130,000 Lego bricks.

Yoav Gaon, CEO of Tor Group and LEGO Israel, noted, “The Lego values of creativity, imagination, learning, fun and quality were brought to life through the incredible event of creating the largest menorah from 130,000 Lego bricks, as hundreds of kids, parents and grandparents attempted to break the Guinness record.”

The menorah is standing tall at the Tel Aviv shopping mall Dizengoff Center. Talk about pirsumei nisah.

Skiing on All 7

Continents

The current Guinness World Record for youngest person to ski on all seven continents is Victoria Rae White, who was 10 days and 79 days old when she completed her journey in 2008.

Sounds pretty cool.

What a Hike on a Two-Person Bike

Talk about traveling together – and we mean, together.

Laura Massey-Pugh and Stevie Massey have been circling the globe for the past six months. The British couple are never far apart from each other when they travel, as they’ve been navigating the world on a tandem bike.

Together, they have traversed 18,000 miles and have ridden through 21 countries. They arrived in Berlin on December 1, the city where they had begun their journey 180 days before. Now, they are hoping to nab a world record for their feat.

It’s one thing to be an avid skier when you’re eight years old. It’s another to be able to say that you have skied on all seven of the world’s continents. And it’s another to be the youngest person ever to do so.

That accomplishment comes from Maddock Lipp, an 8-year-old boy from Golden, Colorado. He skied on the final continent – Antarctica – last week.

Since he was 4 years old, Maddock

The couple, who took a ride on a tandem bike on their first date, said they were inspired to attempt the record for fastest circumnavigation by tandem bicycle (mixed) after reading about fellow Britons Cat Dixon and Raz Marsden, who set the female team version of the record in 263 days, 8 hours and 7 minutes.

Hopefully, Laura and Stevie will be gifted with the world record. For now, they’re happy that they no longer are pedaling furiously each day.

“It was just a massive sense of relief,” Massey-Pugh said about reaching their goal. “To finally be able to stop riding and to see certain friends and family loved ones that we’ve not seen for six months was absolutely immense.”

Sounds like a bumpy ride.

Around the Community

Baking Bread & Breaking Bread

JCCRP Hosts 1st Interfaith Challah Bake

The JCC of the Rockaway Peninsula was joined by female community stakeholders from the Jewish and non-Jewish communities of Far Rockaway for the first interfaith challah bake last week. Members of the non-Jewish community were paired with a member of the Jewish community to learn how to braid and bake challah and schmooze together.

Mrs. Chaya Gibber, TAG Assistant Junior High Principal, opened the event with a beautiful introduction about the beauty of the special mitzvah of challah. The Challah Fairy taught

the group how to braid the challah and shared personal insight about the Holocaust, community, and the unique women’s mitzvos.

Local Councilwoman Selvena Brooks-Powers had recently returned from a trip to Israel with the JCRC-NY and shared about her personal experiences in Israel.

“No matter what community you are from, the women are the cornerstone of the community. We hold it up for something special… This is our foundation. Just as the challah will bake and cook, this is our foundation for our relation-

ship, and we will continue to bake it and grow together.”

Attendees included Commanding Officer Captain Nancy Cooper and Detective Lynn Blanchette from the 101st Precinct, P’nina Rapfogel representing NYS Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, Mrs. Wendy Gerson, Darchei Preschool Director, Mrs. Shoshana Soroka from The Jewish Home, Mrs. Judy Silverman from Ani Ledodi, First Lady Cresent Mullings from Far Rockaway Community Church of the Nazarene, NCAAP President Audrey Robertson, and Far Rockaway NCAAP President Elaine Short-Kirk.

JCCRP Executive Director Allison Deal said, “It was a unique opportunity to strengthen community relations through increased direct engagement in a unified and meaningful way with the community before Chanukah.”

A special thank you to the UJA Federation of NY and the JCRC-NY for the funding to allow our community to experience such a meaningful event. Thank you to JCCRP staff for organizing this event, uniting the communities, and spreading the light of our community in the days before Chanukah.

Inspiring a Supportive Community: Shalom Task Force’s Annual Brunch

Over 300 community members came out in support of Shalom Task Force (STF) at its annual brunch on December 11 at the Sephardic Temple. This year, STF honored Jenny Gerber as the Guest of Honor for her incredible dedication as an educational volunteer, advocate and board member of the organization. STF recognized 18Forty and Rabbi Dr. Dovid Bashevkin as Community Changemaker and their work to surface important conversations in the Jewish community. Senator Toby Ann Stavisky and Assemblywoman Stacy Pheffer Amato were recognized for their Public Service and lauded for their exceptional commitment to STF and survivors of domestic violence throughout New York State.

In addition, STF’s Young Leadership Boards were honored with the Next Gen Leadership Awards. The Young Leadership Board includes Emily Hamer (HANC), Emma Halpern (YULA Girls), Hannah Amar (Frisch), Molly Seghi (KYHS), Noyah Shebshaievitz (YOFHS), Raffi Weil (MTA), Roey Novick (Kushner), Sabrina Graff (SKA), Sarit Katz (Central), Shanna Miller (DAT), Shira Cohen (NSHAHS), Tamar Weiss (Central), Abby Liska (Fuchs Mizrachi),

Abigail Fishman (DAT), Andrew Berger (HAFTR), Emma Greenwald (SAR), Frieda Catton (YOFHS), Holden Applebaum (NSHAHS), Jamie Berger (KYHS), Moshe Jacobson (DRS), Olivia Ansel (Kushner), Phoebe Rynhold (Frisch), Rafaela Torossian (Heschel), and Zoe Mendelsohn (Yula Girls), students from high schools across the country.

The theme of the brunch was “Inspiring Supportive Community,” and the focus was on how everyone can take actions to help create a community that supports survivors and fosters healthy relationships. Dr. Shoshannah Frydman, Executive Director, shared that “we need to find ways of destigmatizing conversations about hard topics- including abuse and relationships. We need to normalize accessing help and learning skills about how to build healthy relationships....

Dr. Frydman thanked the overflow crowd and emphasized that by “showing up” in support of Shalom Task Force it is also a concrete step and a statement of care and a message to survivors that they are not alone, and that the community stands together with them.

Rabbi Bashevkin, in his poignant keynote address, shared that in his work he is approached by many that are suffering and are alone and often do not know where to turn. He shared the need to find ways of offering healing and help to those suffering in the most inner sanctum, the family and in marriage. He asserted that the litmus test of religious life is how we treat our families – and that we need to support the work of helping those suffering and help build healthy and safe relationships.

Shalom Task Force has been serving the Jewish community since 1993 with the mission to combat domestic violence and foster healthy and safe relationships with a focus within the Jewish community. Its services include a hotline/chatline that supports victims, free legal services, educational workshops and outreach programs.

If you or your loved one has questions or concerns about relationships or are currently in an unhealthy or abusive relationship – we are here for you. Please call, text, or WhatsApp the confidential Shalom Task Force Hotline at 888-8832323 or chat with a live advocate at shalomtaskforce.org. To help spread awareness and bringing DV and relationship education to your community, email at info@shalomtakforce.org.

Masbia: Chanukah Latkes Illustrates the Exorbitantly High Cost of Poor

People’s Foods and Basic Household Food Staples

Large amounts of emergency food, including ingredients to make Chanukah latkes, for 5,000 families to be distributed by Masbia Soup Kitchen Network. While high-end food costs are starting to come down, poor people’s food – or basic household ingredients – is still going up. The cost of ingredients to make latkes, such as potatoes, eggs, and oil, are up more than 300% from last year.

Thousands of families get raw food ingredients from Masbia every week through the digital breadline by using the Plentiful app or through the DoorDash delivery system. Masbia also serves hot, ready-to-eat dinner at all three locations every evening.

“We are in urgent need of resources,” said Alexander Rapaport, Executive Director of Masbia Soup Kitchen Network. “The high cost of food is making it

extremely challenging for us to keep up with demand. I am asking everyone to keep Masbia in mind this giving season to help replenish the depleted food inventory.”

“It wasn’t too long ago when a dozen eggs, a 5-pound bag of potatoes, and a 96-ounce jug of oil cost $7 or less. Now you’re lucky if you can get it for $25. That means more families struggle to pay for food. It also means it is harder for Masbia as an organization to stock up on those supplies in the time when the need has risen.”

To help with fundraising, chef and cookbook author Naomi Ross is offering The Giving Table cookbook to people who make generous donations to Masbia. Naomi has been volunteering to help feed the needy at Masbia for many years, and her work with Masbia is featured in the cookbook itself.

“In the cookbook, I mentioned how People Magazine described Masbia as ‘a restaurant without a cash register’ and that dinners are served restaurant-style by dedicated volunteers. At the same time, Masbia also runs a massive logistical operation and large-scale food distribution center that goes through roughly 50,000 pounds of food each week, giving fami-

lies raw food ingredients to be cooked at home. Thousands of families in need get food at Masbia every week. Hundreds of people in need get dinner at Masbia every day,” said author Naomi Ross.

To learn more about Masbia Soup Kitchen Network and Naomi Ross’ cookbook offer, go to masbia.org/givingtable.

These are ways to break the stigma and show that we care.”

CIJE DNA Presentation at TAG

Chanukah Toy Drive for Our Community Children

TAG’s 7th grade had a special class with Mr. Heshy Wieder and Mrs. Yaffa Lamm, visiting lecturers from CIJE. CIJE, together with Rockefeller University, developed an interesting and interactive presentation to teach students genetics, hereditary traits, and how we can use this science to learn about the Jewish people’s migration throughout the world.

The girls learned how their genetic makeup affects their eye color, hair color, health, and even whether they have attached or detached earlobes. They were able to design their own alien babies and choose which genetic traits the baby inherited from the parents. Mr. Wieder helped the girls understand how Jewish history, past, present, and future, are written on our DNA.

After an informative PowerPoint presentation, the girls were able to extract their own DNA and actually see it in a test tube. It was a great hands-on lesson to understand “The Code Within Us.”

700 k ids received toys from the JCCRP Chanukah Toy Drive!

Chesed starts at home, and right here in Far Rockaway and the Five Towns there are families and children in need. JCCRP aims to help those in need and for Chanukah, that means making sure families that are struggling are able to give their children the same toys that everyone else is gifting their children.

Brand new toys were collected and donated by our community members at local bins in grocery stores and dentist and pediatrician offices. 284 Target gift cards were given to children age 12 & up. This year’s toy drive was held l’iluy nishmas Dr. Steven Krauss.

Toys were sorted for clients by the Committee on motzei Shabbos at TAG. Toys were divided by ages and gender. Clients came to pick up their toy boxes in a dignified way, each child receiving multiple toys. The client feedback started pouring in: “I just wanted to say thank

you for making my children’s Chanukah a blast! They are really enjoying their Chanukah presents!”

“Thank you so, so much for enhancing my children’s Chanukah! The gifts were so thoughtful and appreciated. It felt wonderful to be able to give more to them. We are really thankful. Have a happy Chanukah!”

Thank you to the Chanukah Toy Drive Committee: Naamah Aisenbaum, Sara Austein, Rahely Fruchter, Lara Klein, Daphna Mishaan, Fraidy Osina, Devorah Pelman, Rebecca Richman, Hudis Saltz, Tamar Samuels, Esther Satt, Tamar Scharf, Rocky Stern and Lily Weichholz. Thank you to Season’s Express who graciously gave free Slurpees to anyone that donated a new toy!

Please help JCCRP cover the cost of the Target gift cards by donating at JCCRP. org/donation.

Rav Daniel Osher Kleinman, mechaber of Sefer Kovetz Halachos from Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, shlita, and rav of K’hal Nachlas Dovid in Brooklyn, spoke at Mesivta Chaim Shlomo on a recent Motzaei Shabbos.

Mrs. Charlene Aminoff spoke at the BYAM PTA Annual Women’s Tea last week

Shaaray Tefila of Lawrence Joins Adopt-a-Kollel Family

This Shabbos, Parshas Vayeishev, marked the launch of a new Adopt-a-Kollel partnership between Congregation Shaaray Tefila of Lawrence and Kollel Aderes Eliyahu of the Old City of Yerushalayim, commonly known as the “Zilberman Kollel.”

The shul’s Rav, Rav Uri Orlian, spent much time researching kollelim to find a

kollel that he felt would be the right fit for his kehillah. After finding the Zilberman Kollel, he expressed how “deeply gratified” he was to partner with such a kollel.

On Shabbos, Rav Orlian gave a passionate drasha about the importance of the partnership. Then, on Sunday after Shacharis, a sign-up event took place.

Rabbi Yaakov Bender, Rosh HaYeshiva of Yeshiva Darchei Torah, congratulating fourth graders Gedalia Fischman and Akiva Meir Hildeshaim on their personal narratives.

On the second day of Chanukah, the rebbeim and talmidim of Netzach enjoyed a Chanukah mesiba with divrei Torah, ruach and singing

Eighth graders at Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island visited the Inwood Mikvah with their rabbeim as they learned the intricacies of Hilchos Mikvah.

U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand Joins Met Council Chanukah Day Of Service

On the eve of Chanukah, Sunday, December 18, 2022, Met Council, America’s largest Jewish charity dedicated to fighting poverty, hosted a Chanukah Day of Service to benefit home-bound Holocaust survivors with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Attendees from throughout New York City gathered at Community Board 12 in Brooklyn to pack food for survivors with Senator Gillibrand and her teenage son.

Joining Met Council CEO David G. Greenfield and Senator Gillibrand were several officials, including NYS Senator Simcha Felder and NYC Councilman Kalman Yeger, as well as Chairman of Community Board 12 Yidel Perlstein, District Manager of Community Board 12 Barry Spitzer, and representatives of the NYC Public Advocate’s Office, the NYC Comptroller’s Office, and the Brooklyn Borough President’s Office.

Greenfield discussed the work his organization does to help Holocaust survi-

vors, noting that the New York City area is home to tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors. Met Council’s Holocaust Survivor Program provides over 3,900 low-income Holocaust survivors with financial assistance, social programming, and case management. In addition, its Holocaust Survivor Kosher Home Food Delivery program facilitates the delivery of fresh food packages directly to the homes of over 2,100 Holocaust survivors each week.

“We have seen dark times over the past few years, and we have seen a rise in antisemitism like never before, a rise in hate crimes, and a rise in violence,” said Senator Gillibrand. “We as elected leaders have to do everything we can to protect our communities and to make sure that the Jewish community is not targeted and is not having to withstand a constant barrage of antisemitic attacks.”

Senator Gillibrand spoke about the

need to secure more resources to fight antisemitism, including her efforts to strengthen the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which helps nonprofits, synagogues, and other faith-based institutions protect themselves against hate crimes, and her efforts to enhance the U.S. State Department’s role in combating and monitoring antisemitism around the world by elevating the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism to the rank of Ambassador.

“Senator Gillibrand is a longtime partner of Met Council who has consis -

tently spoken out on important issues pertaining to the Jewish community and beyond and undertaken initiatives that benefit the neediest among us,” said Met Council CEO David G. Greenfield.

“In addition to her forceful denunciation of antisemitism and her enduring commitment to combating bigotry and hatred, Senator Gillibrand’s work as a key member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry has had a tremendous impact on Met Council’s efforts to fight poverty and food insecurity.”

The Jewish Home

YOSS ECC Multi-Generational Annual Chanukah Workshop

It was so nice to greet the multi-generational teams of grandfathers, fathers and sons at the Yeshiva of South Shore Annual Pre-1A Chanukah Workshop. We enjoyed watching these teams hammer away as they built menorahs and memories together. The menorahs were original and creative, and the environment was festive and fun. The whole evening was topped off with a great kumzitz, led by Rabbi Rotbard, with musical accompaniment by Rabbi Drebin.

Strongman Jon Pritikin Encourages Mercaz Academy Students to Stand Up to Bullies

As School Counselor Stephanie Bobroff gathered grades four, five, and six to watch a video for the first assembly in the Mercaz Academy series on “Being an Upstander,” there was a steady hum of conversation. But then the video started, and the room went silent.

Produced by the Afikim Foundation, for which Mercaz parent Mor Keshet is Director of Special Projects, the video told the story of a boy who had speech and reading difficulties. He was teased by other children, told he would never amount to anything, and always found himself eating alone at lunchtime. The bullying continued until he met a teacher

in high school who believed in him, freeing him to believe in himself.

Mercaz students were shocked by the story. But they were even more shocked when they joined a Zoom call immediately afterwards with Jon Pritikin, a motivational speaker who had set two world records for his feats of strength. At first, they didn’t see the connection between the video they had just watched and the confident, successful, strong man they saw on the screen in front of them. Mr. Pritikin revealed that the story of the child in the video was true in every detail. It was his story.

Students could hardly believe that

HAFTR Celebrates Chanukah 2022

On Sunday, December 18, HAFTR kicked off its Chanukah celebrations with a Pre-K Chanukah Chagigah. Students sang songs for friends and family. The event ended with students showing off beautiful menorahs that they made along with everyone enjoying delicious doughnuts. The Chagigah, however, was only the first event in HAFTR’s Chanukah line-up.

Throughout the week, HAFTR has events and meaningful activities lined

up to make this Chanukah incredibly special and memorable for students. On Monday morning, students in the lower school participated in a beautiful musical Hallel led by Rabbi Klein. Students will also be partaking in Chanukah Musical IQ drum circles, Chanukah crafts, Chanukah parties, and more over the course of the week.

On Wednesday, Mordechai Shapiro will be coming to the school to give a private Chanukah concert to students. This

this man who could break a baseball bat with his bare hands – Mercaz principal Rabbi Kalman Fogel displayed the bat Mr. Pritikin had broken during an in-person visit a few years ago – could ever have been bullied. Did he really have no one willing to stick up for him? (No, but he had never told anyone about the trouble he was having, and he encouraged everyone to let people know if they were being bullied.) What did he say to the bullies later, after he set his records? (They never contacted him, but he wishes they would so he could tell them that he has forgiven them; holding onto anger isn’t helpful.)

What inspired him to never give up?

“I found something deep in my heart that told me that someday, it would get better,” Mr. Pritikin explained.

The Guinness Book of World Records record-breaker shared how our words and actions affect others and what each and every student can do to be an upstander in our school community.

event is being made possible by HAFTR’s wonderful PTA.

There will also be a special menorah lighting ceremony using the giant menorah outside of HAFTR High School. The menorah, designed by Israeli artist Yaron Bob, is built from pieces of rockets that were fired from Gaza into Sderot, Israel. The menorah was donated by the Bokor and Segal families. It is a symbol of the Jewish people turning darkness into light which is something truly worth

LIPA Commission Hearing: The Rockaways

Jackie Bascom, senior housing case worker at JCCRP, testified on behalf of JCCRP at the Public Hearing on the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) on December 15 at the Rockaway YMCA. During this public hearing, the Commission, including Senator James Sanders

Jr. and NYS Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato, received testimony from stakeholders and the public on ways to make their utility services more affordable, reliable, transparent, accountable, effective, environmentally sound, and efficient. This commission was created to in-

vestigate and report to the legislature on the establishment of a public power model for the operation of the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA).

The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) currently contracts its utility operations to PSEG, a third-party private

celebrating this Chanukah. This year’s menorah lighting ceremony will be sponsored by the Bokor family.

service provider. This model has failed Long Island ratepayers in multiple ways, including in its responses to Superstorm Sandy in 2012 and Tropical Storm Isaias in 2020. The new commission aims to provide the legislature with the specific actions, legislation, and a timeline.

Hundreds gathered at the annual menorah lighting held at the Staten Island Mall this week

Yeshiva of Central Queens Capital Improvements

Over the summer of 2022, Yeshiva of Central Queens (YCQ) carried out an extraordinary modernization project, which improved heating, air conditioning, ventilation, lighting, computer technology, and classroom/ faculty space. YCQ welcomed students back on the first day of school, September 6. Here, we talk with Mr. Israel Glaser, chairman of the YCQ Board of Trustees.

Mr. Glaser, please discuss the history of this capital improvement.

Yeshiva of Central Queens (YCQ) was founded over 80 years ago in Jamaica, Queens. In 1975, YCQ relocated to where it is today, in Kew Gardens Hills. In 2001, a new state-of-the-art junior high school building was completed. For 47 years, the elementary school building has been a home for thousands of students. Recently, it began to show its age, particularly regarding mechanical systems, heat, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). The Board explored various options, studying ways to address these conditions, and consulted with professionals in the industry, including mechanical engineers, architects, and air conditioning professionals, to determine what would be the most effective way to address these concerns.

Why did the Board decide to complete this project this year?

First, the Board understood the many health benefits of improved ventilation. Second, government climate change regulations relating to energy efficiency are now on the horizon. Third,

YCQ was approved for Universal Pre-K, which required adding new classrooms and changing the configuration of some existing classrooms. Finally, the Board saw an opportunity to improve other aspects of the environment within the elementary school building by upgrading the lighting, fire safety, and ceilings within the classrooms, offices, and corridors. Ultimately, it was determined that a complete replacement of the mechanical systems would be the most efficient approach to addressing the heating, ventilation, and cooling systems of the elementary school building. Once the Board committed to that, they expanded the program to include other essential improvements. It took a full year of planning to begin the work and started when the last student and teacher left the building in June 2022.

Which improvements are visible?

Upon entering the elementary school building, a difference is immediately noticeable. The main lobby is brighter and more spacious. The school now features brand new ceilings, brighter lighting, and a newly installed fire sprinkler system. In the classrooms, new smartboard technology has been installed. YCQ has created office spaces to accommodate new personnel, including the Director of Admissions, and Curriculum Coordinators. Reconfigured classrooms on the first-floor house the UPK program. We were excited to unveil a new spacious staff lounge, with private rooms for nursing mothers, and an outdoor terrace, ex-

clusive for staff to enjoy.

Which improvements are not visible?

Since most of the improvements revolved around the HVAC systems, a lot of the work took place behind walls and in ceilings. When the final HVAC equipment is installed and the system is turned on, the difference will not be seen, but felt, with improved climate control and comfort for staff and students.

Who was involved in the planning of the project, and how?

The multi-faceted collaboration included Dr. Joel Wein, President, Rabbi Mark Landsman, Principal, Rabbi Yaakov Lonner, Executive Director, and Rabbi Avraham Kovitz, Administrator. Mr. Aaron Kessler served as Project Manager. A cooperative effort took place between Mr. Carlo Swensen, Mr. Kessler’s Assistant, the entire Maintenance Crew led by Mr. Richie Nunez, and the IT Department led by Mr. Benjamin Wexler. Mr. Kessler planned, researched, and coordinated efforts with Rabbi Landsman and his team of assistant principals from the elementary school – Mrs. Melissa Cohen (now Associate Principal), Rabbi Joshua Rohr, and Morah Sharon Korn, who was involved in the design of the UPK classrooms. Volunteers who lent their time and wisdom included Mr. Alex Olsen, Mr. Joseph Hametz, and Mr. Barry Gavarin z”l. Mrs. Aliza Peled, Mr. Zisha Barth, and the Executive Committee demonstrated extraordinary commitment to YCQ. Which facets are you particularly proud of?

YCQ appreciates the financial sacrifice parents make every day to send their children to Yeshiva, and therefore,

YCQ spent millions of dollars on this capital improvement without raising tuition at all. With Hashem’s help, over 80 years, YCQ has accumulated a modest endowment. A significant portion of that endowment was used to cover the enormous costs of this project. Looking forward, YCQ will embark on a fundraising campaign to replenish YCQ’s endowment so that future generations of YCQ students will have similar financial security.

Were there any surprises during the work?

Of course, there were issues that came up throughout the construction, expected with a project of this magnitude. The biggest challenge was timing, because YCQ functions as a learning institution ten months a year. Construction could only begin when YCQ’s semester ended and needed to be substantially complete before classes resumed on September 6, 2022, leaving about 12 weeks to work. With tremendous gratitude to Hashem, nothing prevented the work from continuing at a steady pace.

Working on the improvement of a Yeshiva is a huge mitzvah for a community. Did you learn any important lessons during the campaign that you can share? It was an honor and privilege to be involved in this project. Most everything about this endeavor took place in the ceilings, and so the lesson I took away is what can be accomplished when we look up! Every detail required siyata dishmaya, and we were fortunate that Hashem held our hands throughout. Our prayer is that He continues to do so, as we educate the next generation of leaders of the Jewish people.

5 Towns Hockey League

The 5 Towns Hockey League is finishing up what was an amazing season. Playoffs are beginning, and champions will soon be crowned. The most amazing aspect of the 5 towns Hockey League is that all participants improve tremendously. When they start in pre-1A and move up as they get older, they become real hockey players. They are the ones that are the best in their camp’s hockey leagues and the ones that make the teams when it comes to organized school sports. The skills they learn in the game of hockey follow them forever. The best emails we get are from parents after the summer telling us that their son was the best in the division in

A Day at SKA

Asubstantial turnout of eighth graders from many metropolitan elementary schools received a taste of what their high school experience at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls would be like. On Wednesday, December 14, student ambassadors welcomed aspiring high schoolers who got a glimpse of some of the highlights SKA has to offer, along with the warmth and energy it projects.

The incoming students were able to attend several ongoing core and elective classes, giving them the chance to observe the unique academics that are available at SKA.

Seats at each table at the delicious and informative lunch were filled with SKA ambassadors, enveloping the eighth graders with their enthusiasm. This was also another opportunity for the visitors to familiarize themselves with the many SKA activities and events offered.

Following lunch, it was time for clubs!

hockey or that he made the high school hockey team.

Of course, sportsmanship and middot play a big role as well and that is stressed every game of the season.

The 5 Towns Hockey League, which is in its 25th year, has over 30 teams participating and enjoying the game of hockey. Every season, FM Home Loans, the corporate sponsor, provides an amazing giveaway from Nike hats to duffel bags. This coming season, they will give every participant a new 5 Towns Hockey sweatshirt.

Looking forward to the winter/spring season www.5townssports.com

The eighth graders participated in a variety of creative opportunities such as sushi making, dance and basketball among others and a Gallery of Inspiration workshop with Mrs. Kaminetsky. The day provided a wonderful preview of what an incredible high school experience at SKA could be.

We look forward to welcoming the Class of 2027!

Chanukah Fun at Shulamith

The light and simcha of Chanukah filled the halls of Shulamith all week long, imbuing the students with the meaning and spirit of the Chag. The week began with a bright start, as upper grade students danced their hearts out at a glow party with “Dance with Mimi.” Lower grade students got a chance to shine during a HollyRock game show. Between trivia and hoola-hoop competitions, the laughter could be heard throughout the building.

Shulamith is grateful to the SWO

for sponsoring day trips on Tuesday. Lower grade students had fun bowling at Woodmere Lanes, while upper grade students enjoyed their time at Always Summer Indoor Volleyball. Wednesday brought class parties and competitive Dreidel tournaments. The students radiated with Achdut as Big and Little Sisters competed to become Dreidel Champions.

On Thursday, upper grade students showed their hakarat hatov by creating flower bouquets and hot chocolate kits for families of Hatzalah members. Stu-

dents also packed kits for Tzahal, which our very own Maya Klein will be delivering in Israel for her bat mitzvah. After all this, we welcomed Gary Wallin with glowing smiles for a lower grade Chagiga. Fifth grade’s incandescent performance during their Macabee games was incredible!

In addition to the phenomenal programming, students also responded enthusiastically to our Menorah contest, using their creativity to build amazing Menorahs.

Shulamith owes a debt of gratitude

to our dear principals, Mrs. Elka Ginsparg and Dr. Gross, for their dedication and inspiration, and to Mrs. Michelle Farbman, Dean of Students, for her hard work and dedication in planning this week and bringing these beautiful programs to Shulamith. A special thank you to Morah Chana Schwartz, Mrs. Danyel Goldberg, and Mrs. Amy Small for assisting in the planning and to the entire faculty at Shulamith who brought Chanukah into their lessons in innovative and creative ways and helped make this an unforgettable week!

Around the Community

Nestled in the hills of New York, YSZ High School for Girls took their Shabbat experience to a new level. Accompanied by teachers and friends, they created a Shabbat that would be hard to forget.

Mrs. Rina Zeriyker, menahelet, observed, “There is nothing like a Shabbat to bring people together and encourage genuine conversation, real seeds of growth.”

The transformation from the start to the end of Shabbat was akin to a metamorphosis of a butterfly, working to internalize a concept all Shabbat and then witnessing a breakthrough on Motza’ei Shabbat in how the students related to the theme.

“B’chol libi dirashticha,” with all of my heart I seek You out Hashem, was the central theme of the Shabbaton. The refrain was portrayed and felt through the numerous sessions and workshops given by faculty members over Shabbat. A special table discussion was prepared for every seudat Shabbat where students shared their positive experiences with each other. “It was an opportunity to learn from one another and notice positive characteristics in others that we knew about prior but are now able to pinpoint,” shared Ms. Greenberg who joined the girls for Shabbat.

On Motza’ei Shabbat, the students enjoyed the pool, crafted a handmade stunning project with resin, and were joined by additional faculty members.

The climax of the evening was undoubtedly Rabbi Mordechai Benhaim’s workshop where students were riveted by an hour-long perspective followed by a Q and A session. Tzipy Kaimov, a student, immensely appreciated the symposium stating, “We had the opportunity to talk about ideas, halachot, and life with Rabbi Benhaim.”

“Shabbat was incredibly spiritual,” expressed student Hodaya Yaacobov. “I felt Hashem’s presence with us.” On a similar note, Leah Zavlyanov, another student, described the weekend as “inspirational.” Leah conveyed, “I am tremendously grateful for the amount of tireless work of the devoted staff making certain that every detail was properly handled. Having more of our teachers join the program on Motza’ei Shabbat was very special!”

The talmidot walked away from the Shabbaton with a personal boost of confidence, and a deeper understanding of their relationship with Hashem and one another. Naomi, a freshman, pointed out, “Spending time with friends in a spiritually uplifting environment was interesting and informative.” The students explored their inner workings and learned how to zero in on their personal goals. There is nothing quite like a Shabbaton that successfully transforms, uplifts and inspires.

Ms. Biyaminov participated in the complete Shabbaton and succinctly summed up the occasion, “Shabbat was amazing; just incredible.”

HAFTR Hosts CIJE Robotics Tournament

On Tuesday, December 13, 2022, 500 people walked through the doors of the HAFTR Lower School gym, but they didn’t come for your typical sports. They came for a Robotics Tournament run by the Center for Initiatives in Jewish Education (CIJE). Throughout the afternoon, 25 schools and around 80 robots competed to complete different challenges.

CIJE is relatively new to the world of robotics tournaments. This is its fourth year running. Each year the tournament gets bigger and bigger as the program continues to grow in popularity.

Jewish students are typically exclud-

It’s JOH Time!

Chanukah is a powerful time to rekindle inspiration that gets muted in the daily grind. At Shulamith High School, our girls are constantly seeking hands-on learning and growth, embracing any opportunities they find for concrete, meaningful, and deliberate change. Our incredible JOH program, which was initiated in Elul and is still going strong, encourages students to disengage from phone usage for Just One Hour every night. Their feedback has proven just how liberating it is to systematically limit their use of technology.

To reignite the initial inspiration, SHS kicked off Chanukah with a schoolwide JOH workshop. In small group sessions, facilitating faculty members compared technology to fire; its potential so constructive or potentially destructive. We can choose to harness fire for its ben-

ed from STEM and robotics tournaments as most competitions fall on Shabbos. CIJE fills that gap. Through the tournament, CIJE engages Jewish students in cutting edge secular education without compromising on Jewish values.

The Robotics tournament gives students the space to grow through STEM, an opportunity that they wouldn’t otherwise have. In an interview with HAFTR staff, Adam Jerozolim from CIJE said that this year he received a powerful email from a teacher. The teacher told him that a student with special needs who is normally apart from the rest of the class was able to flourish through the

experience of participating in the tournament. This student not only excelled but ended up leading that school’s robotics team.

HAFTR is proud to participate in and

host such an incredible program. Thank you to all the students who participated in the Tournament and to everyone who came out to support the teams.

eficial purposes, such as cooking, heating, or lighting, but must remain ever cognizant of its capacity to damage and destroy. Access to technology is a reality of lives, and while we engage with it for multitudes of productive purposes, we need to keep sight of the pitfalls and retain our control over its influence.

Each group was given a set of cards printed with Torah values and their sources, covering a full spectrum of ideas, from friendship to time management, mesorah to beauty. For each value, the girls assessed technology’s impact, discussing whether it becomes undermined or misrepresented. Students then ranked and presented their top three values, while explaining their choices and recognizing how they may be threatened by the infiltration of technology.

The full school ended the program

together with an uplifting closing message from the principal, Mrs. Munk. She reiterated the power of the fire of Chanukah that lights up the long winter taking hold and stressed the power we each have to take command over whatever is darkening our paths. Over 100

SHS girls have continually participated in JOH since its launch, and BEZ”H even more will feel compelled to join. In addition to a dreidel sponsored by Thank You Hashem, each girl received a JOH pop-socket as a reminder of this important endeavor.

A Shabbos With Dr. Erica Brown, YU’s Most Recently Appointed Director

By Alan Kirschner

On the Shabbos of Parshat Vayeitzei, Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst had the opportunity to host Dr. Erica Brown. As Yeshiva University’s newly appointed director of the Sachs Herenstein Center for Jewish Thought, which is in memory of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs, YILC welcomed all topics of discussion throughout the various Shabbos festivities.

During a Friday night dinner with over 120 people, Dr. Brown spoke about the concept of religious boredom, high-

lighting that the key to educating our children and society is about following their natural curiosities and wonders throughout Judaism, which will in turn allow for more passion and continuity. This led to a discussion during the Oneg, with even more members of the community, about thick and thin identity and the idea that it is, in fact, possible to change what is most central to us and our identity. While people often feel that they cannot change their core, it is something that is possible.

On Shabbos morning, Dr. Brown addressed hundreds of congregants in the

Main Shul on the topic of good leadership, good followership, and the importance of creating space for good leaders. In a world where everyone is looking for what to do next, or how to show their kids to be good people and good leaders, not only was this an important topic to understand for those in the workforce, it bodes just as important for everyday life and leading and focusing on ways to lead and follow in the best possible way. Last but certainly not least, the Shabbos was concluded at the Seudat Shlishis with the discussion of finding imperfection when we are the closest

to perfection and shifting our life back into perspective. Many people are hyper-focused on the concept of perfection and striving for all of what that might be to them, but sometimes our greatest achievements are when we learn from the imperfect moments.

What a wonderful Shabbos, learning from such a learned, published, and remarkable teacher. Thank you, Dr. Erica Brown, for joining us for the weekend and allowing us the opportunity to speak about such thought-provoking topics within Judaism and every day struggles within ourselves and the community.

Each morning of Chanukah, the talmidim of Yeshiva Ateres Eitz Chaim enjoyed a lavish breakfast, shiurim focused on insights into the nissim and halachos of Chanukah. As we know, based on the parshios which we lain during this time as well as the story of Chanukah, this time is essential to work on relationships and bein adam l’achaveiro. The Yevanim wanted to take away the kedusha from Torah and create confusion and machlokes, yet we show our victory when we unite “Mi la’Hashem elai” and practice the “k’lal gadol

baTorah” of “V’Ahavta L’reiacha Kamocha.” To strengthen our unity, on the first day of Chanukah, the talmidim had an awesome time at the American Dream Mall, ice skating, the amusement park, and many more activities.

On the second day of Chanukah, talmidim experienced a “behind the scenes” tour at Stern’s Bakery in Brooklyn. We learned about the importance of the minhag, the many segulos, and of course the delicious benefits of eating jelly doughnuts on Chanukah.

Continuing with achdus, on day

three, the Yeshiva was filled with ruach and simcha as talmidim enjoyed an incredible Chanukah Mesiba packed with divrei Torah, songs and trivia.

t Shulamith ECC, Chanukah truly lights up our days with fun, learning, and a deep understanding that Hashem made the special miracle in the Beit Hamikdash because He loves us and takes care of us always. This is a message that we convey to the children daily so that they will internalize it and carry it with them as they grow and

experience the world.

Since all teaching at Shulamith ECC is intentional, the Morot thought long and hard about how to best help the children understand the miracle that Hashem made. As conveyed by noted Jewish Early Education expert Rivka Behar, “In order for young children to truly understand a holiday, they need to experience

the essence of the holiday in a hands-on way.” Since the essence of the holiday of Chanukah is the miracle of a small amount of oil burning for a long time, the children were given the opportunity to explore and discover the properties of oil. Touching oil, painting with oil, mixing liquids with oil, squeezing oil from olives and cooking with oil all helped the children understand that oil is real and the story of Chanukah really happened. Until they tried it, the children did not

really know that a little bit of oil should only burn for a short amount of time. Once the children saw the natural order of things, they came to appreciate the Neis of Chanukah that much more.

As the glow of the Chanukah lights reflects in the eyes of our young children, we pray that their pure bitachon and enthusiasm for Yahadut will only increase as they learn and grow. We at Shulamith ECC wish the entire community a Chag Chanukah Sameach.

Night of Light at Young Israel of Plainview

How many ways can

make a menorah? The Young Israel of Plainview had a Motzei Shabbos “night of light”

into the Chanukah spirit! The youngest members of the youth program painted wooden menorahs and dreidels to be centerpieces in their homes, while the older children built circuit menorahs, with instruction by Mercaz Academy’s Education Technology Director, Mrs. Lynda Last. All of the children worked together to build a tall meno-

rah out of Mega Blocks that was almost as tall as some of the adults in the room and were also invited to participate in creating edible menorahs that were delicious! There was a raffle for all of the participants, as well as doughnuts for snacking.

The program was run by youth director Eitan Bedziner, with extra sets of hands provided by parent volunteers, David Gross and Danny Rosen. Everyone left the event ready to celebrate Chanukah with lights!

YOSS Takes 1st Place at CIJE Robotics Tournament

The Robotics and STEM students at the Abraham and Sarah Silber Middle School Division at the Yeshiva of South Shore have once again claimed a top spot in the CIJE Inter-Yeshiva Robotics Competition, coming in first place this year!

Under the guidance of our Robotics and Stem Director, Mrs. Elisheva Pinsky, and our Mechina English Principal, Mr. Daniel Winkler, the eighth grade students brilliantly designed and manipulated their robots in a tri-state competi-

tion, coming away with the highest score of all the competing yeshivos after all the rounds were completed.

Congratulations to our team coach, Mrs. Elisheva Pinsky, and coach Yehuda Jacobs, (YOSS alumnus), who worked tirelessly with the boys preparing them for the tournament.

The tough competition required the students to design and build robots with the capability and functionality to drive around an arena; release discs from the 3 types of dispensers;

collect the discs inside the robot, and move the discs from the robots to a shooting mechanism with enough speed and torque to get the discs under a fence. The boys utilized the skills, strategies, and team-building exercises they have been working on, and once again, rose to victory in the Inter-Yeshiva competition.

The competition was held locally, in Inwood, and we thank CIJE for arranging the event and the many loyal YOSS parents who came to the event

to cheer on their sons and see YOSS nachas firsthand.

Robotics is just one of many extracurricular activities at which the Yeshiva students are engaged and excel!

Yasher Koach to our Team Champions: Akiva Cunningham, Natanel Greenstein, Levi Orman, Gavriel Ovits, Akiva Sector, Moshe Shtern and Moshe Trump. They have been collaborating both in and out of yeshiva for many months leading up to the competition, focusing on math, engineering, and advanced technology!

By Jen Zwiebel

Last Tuesday night, American Friends of Bar-Ilan University hosted an exclusive VIP tour and pre-viewing of Sotheby’s Halpern Judaica Collection. Dozens of people from the New York and New Jersey area came to enjoy a wonderful experience. Attendees had the opportunity to behold spectacular one-of-a-kind Jewish antiquities from the 18th century up close and see just how our Jewish history lives on.

Bar-Ilan University (BIU) exemplifies our Jewish heritage and perpetuates our legacy for generations to come as it helps educate over 20,000 students a year from

all over the world in our homeland of Israel. Thanks to our regional board members and co-chairs for the event, Melodie Scharf and Harvey Kaminski, for their help in making this evening a success. Special thanks to the Sotheby’s NY staff, and AFBIU colleague, Samuel Konig, Director, Northeast Region. We hope to do more fun things together as we help our Jewish history live on and thrive in Israel at BIU.

For more information and to get involved with American Friends of BarIlan University, please visit afbiu.org or contact Jen at 917-715-2415. We wish you and your families a very Happy Chanukah!

LFG Chanukah Magic Show

This past Tuesday, Little Friends Gan of North Woodmere hosted Syltig the Magician for a special Chanukah magic show! Parents joined their Nursery children at school for a show followed by doughnut decorating. It was a spectacular Chanukah event!

Little Friends Gan of North Woodmere is a legal, licensed 3-year-old nursery school run by Director Elkie Fogel. It is a small, warm school that helps nursery

children play to learn and learn to play! The school can be contacted at littlefriendsganNW@gmail.com.

Sephardic Congregation of Hewlett Annual Dinner

Yasher koach to Shulamith’s Torah Bowl team on winning their meet against five other schools!

SKA students enjoyed Chanukah breakfast at the homes of faculty members this week

Photos by Gabe Solomon

SKA Honor Society Welcomes New Members

Mazal tov to the 38 new members of the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls Re’ut Chapter of the National Honor Society! Membership to the National Honor Society is based on scholarship, leadership abilities, character and service to the school and community.

The SKA juniors were welcomed to the induction ceremony on Wednesday evening, December 14, by the school principals, Mrs. Elisheva Kaminetsky and Mrs. Bluma Drebin and presented with their certificates by Mrs. Drebin.

The keynote address was delivered by renowned speaker Mrs. Nechama Kamelhar, Director of Family Engagement for New York, NCSY. Passionate

and energetic, Mrs. Kamelhar spoke to the girls about seizing opportunities, inspiring others, and their roles as the “Jewish future.”

After Mrs. Kamelhar’s meaningful talk, the evening’s co-chairs, Mrs. Shira Greenberger and Mrs. Arielle Parkoff, introduced the inductees, who presented poems, reflections and artwork on the evening’s theme, “Finding Meaning in the Journey,” to administration, faculty members and parents.

Thanks go to faculty members Mrs. Greenberger and Mrs. Parkoff for guiding the SKA students through the induction process and organizing this impressive ceremony.

Welcome to the new SKA members!

Celebrating Pure Chinuch at YKLI

By Mordechai Kastlebaum

Yeshiva Ketana of Long Island will celebrate its 27th Annual Dinner next month at the Sands Atlantic Beach. It will be a historic dinner for the Yeshiva, as it welcomes two master mechanchim to new posts in the Yeshiva’s hanhala, as it further expands its goal of pure chinuch.

Rabbi Eliezer Feuer, shlit”a, was newly appointed this year as the Manhig Ruchni and has already made a significant impact on the talmidim. His warmth and charisma have added a wonderful new dimension to the day-to-day learning at YKLI. Rabbi Feuer has a clear mission to raise the banner of ruchnius in the entire yeshiva, and he is working tirelessly to achieve that goal.

Rabbi Avi Schulman, shlit”a, has been selectively chosen as the Yeshiva’s new Mashgiach.. His engaging

demeanor and his empowering, cando attitude have instantly endeared him to our talmidim. Rabbi Schulman interacts with each talmid with care and respect to bring out that boy’s best and to ensure that each student is utilizing his talents and strengths to the fullest.

The dinner will also honor two families who have been integral to YKLI’s growth for years: Mr. and Mrs. Ariel Aber, and Mr. and Mrs. Ari Weinstein. Both families are dear friends, supporters, and confidants, always ready to help the Yeshiva in any way. This dinner celebration will be a fitting honor to their unwavering dedication and support.

You can pay tribute to the honorees by placing a journal ad, and reserving your seat at the dinner. Go online to YKLIDinner.org or call 516-7912800.

Nissim Black Visits Ezra Academy

Last week, the Ezra Academy of Queens had the pleasure of hosting music super-sensation Nissim Black. Nissim spent an hour with the students discussing the journey he has taken throughout his life that led him to Judaism. Some of the challenges and obstacles that he spoke about were so relatable that the students were moved to action. They asked many questions that led to a different and deeper understanding. The students have internalized so

many of the messages they heard that day and are continuing to speak about them.

Every speaker that visits Ezra is an inspiration to a group of students who are working toward growing into more observant Jews as they journey themselves and continue to strive toward building solid Jewish homes as adults. Ezra thanks Nissim Black for helping make a difference in the lives of Ezra Academy students.

Rabbi Scheiner, Rosh HaYeshiva of Mesivta Shaarei Chaim, gave a shiur on inyanei Chanukah last Motzei Shabbos at the Fagin family in Woodmere

Grades 2 through 5 at YOSS were visited by author and illustrator Andrew Galitzer during literacy week. He shared his story with the boys and then gave a quick drawing workshop during which he guided them to create their own Chanukah comic.

The children at Gan Chamesh have been immersed in a wide variety of Chanukah activities that reinforce all they have learned about this special holiday

Did you know? There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.

First graders at YOSS celebrated literacy week by meeting author Meish Goldish

A YOSS Chanukah to Remember

This week, the talmidim at Yeshiva of South Shore experienced a beautiful Chanukah Mesiba (and doughnuts, of course!) to mark this special Yom Tov. The music and singing were led beautifully by Rabbi Drebin and Rabbi Wolf. All the boys sang along with so much energy and simcha. The ruach in the room could absolutely be felt! It was amazing to watch as they got into each song and sang magnificently.

Our Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky, said divrei Torah and gave chizuk to the talmidim. In addition, we held many raffles for fantastic seforim and great prizes, including a gorgeous crystal menorah!

May we continue to get nachas from the talmidim’s accomplishments and growth as Bnei Torah

Wishing the YOSS family, and Klal Yisroel, a freilechen Chanukah!

2nd Annual Chanukah Toy Giveaway

Thousands of toys were given to children in the community at the 2nd Annual Chanukah Toy Giveaway on Sunday! Toys, hats, chocolate

packages, and doughnuts were given out for free to children in the community in front of BBY on Sunday, December 18. Many thanks to the sponsors of this

A Visit to Central

It’s all hands on deck when eighth graders make their annual campus visit to Central. Faculty, administration, and current student ambassadors work together to welcome prospective students and put our (collective) best foot forward. The last round of interviews took place this past week, with a promising group of approximately eighty eighth graders visiting Central.

“It was so much fun to see all their smiling faces,” said Director of Technology, Mrs. Marci Karroll, who took badge photos of all visiting students. “It was also really cool to see the siblings of current Central students.”

Visits enabled the eighth graders to get a full sampling of the Central experience, complete with interviews and visits to two classes, ranging from History to Chumash. Eighth graders were just as likely to learn about the transcendental-

ists in American Literature as they were to study the animal kingdom in Biology. Perhaps most importantly, visitors were able to talk with current Central students, known as student ambassadors, about life in and out of the classroom. Ambassadors held question-and-answer sessions during lunch and escorted the visiting students to and from classes.

“It’s an immense privilege to be able to be a student ambassador because the ambassadors that I met on my visit day when I was in eighth grade had such an impact on my high school decision,” said junior Tiferet Tuchman. “During our FAQ, it was truly evident that the ambassadors feel a deep connection to Central, and I think that was communicated to the eighth graders, as well. I really love Central, and I’m so happy I had the opportunity to show these students what Central is all about.”

YOSS Visits a Batim Macher

On Tuesday, December 13, Rabbi Judowitz’s seventh grade class at Yeshiva of South Shore took a trip to Brooklyn to visit a Batim Macher. A Batim Mater is a person who creates Tefillin Batim. Rabbi Michael, who has been making Batim for over twenty-five years, demonstrated to the boys how Batim are created from start (rawhide) to finish (perfectly square and black).

The boys were shown and had a handson experience making the letter “Shin” which is placed on the Tefillin Shel-Rosh in a very special way. They also watched as he showed how he used a foot pedal machine to square and sand down each Bayis.

To round off the trip, the boys had an enjoyable lunch at Pizza Palace in Flatbush.

event: RNSP, Hatzolah, the local 101st Precinct, NYPD 101st Precinct Explorers, JCCRP, Achiezer, and Smiles

Through Cars. United Uniforms, Rocka-

way Kosher, Smart Novelty, Future Care Consultants and Plumb Pro made this a much-appreciated community event just hours before Chanukah started.

HAFTR Second Graders Receive Their Very First Chumash

On Sunday, December 11, 2022, HAFTR second graders received their first Chumash in a beautiful Chagigat Chumash. Family and friends, including parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents joined the celebration.

The event opened with the recitation of Tehillim, followed by words of welcome from Mr. Joshua Gold, HAFTR’s principal. He shared an empowering message: “Today we are celebrating our students receiving their Chumashim, but more significantly, we are here to celebrate their future, and all the incredible things they will go on to do, both individually and collectively, with Torah learning and Torah values informing and guiding their lives.”

The second grade students then sang songs for the audience. The songs highlighted their love of Torah and their pride in becoming the next generation of talmidei chachamim and chachamot. Students were each given a beautiful Chumash engraved with their names. Together, they recited a Shehechiyanu and held up their Chumashim for the audience to see.

Rabbi Asher Klein, HAFTR’s Mashgiach Ruchani, delivered the divrei bracha to the students.

After the ceremony, the celebration continued in the school gym which was filled with interactive activities. Students got to personalize their Chumash covers, decorate picture frames, play a Torah game using iPads, enjoy goodies and even look inside a Sefer Torah.

The Chagigat Chumash successfully marked this special milestone for HAFTR’s second grade students and their families. Thank you to everyone who

came out to celebrate and to all the families who made this celebration possible by sponsoring the event.

Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal hosted Mayor Adams, NYPD Commissioner Sewell, and other top City officials for a town hall focused on the rise in attacks against Jewish New Yorkers. Joined by Queens Jewish Community leaders from all around the borough, Rosenthal, Adams, and Sewell fielded questions on city and state strategies to tackle the drastic rise in hate related attacks around NYC. The meeting was held at Shevach High School in Kew Gardens Hills, where students also voiced safety concerns to the panel amid recent crimes in the area.

Attendees leaving the open, but honest meeting, were hopeful following the

Mayor’s outline of strategies moving forward that focus on college campuses, youth education and heightened awareness in the realm of social media which has been a breeding ground for radicalization in recent years.

“Jewish New Yorkers deserve to feel safe in their homes and communities,” said Assemblymember Daniel Rosenthal (D-Kew Gardens Hills). “I thank Mayor Adams, Police Commissioner Sewell, and all the Queens Jew-

ish Community for their cohesion and collaboration in attacking this epidemic. While Jewish families gather for Chanukah around our city, they should feel comfort in the laser focus our local governments officials have on these issues.”

Special Children Center children and volunteers enjoyed the Five Towns Center Chanukah Party this week

Rav Elya Meir Sorotzkin A Life of Love for Torah and Talmidim

By Avrohom Birnbaum ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications

He was a self-made man. Yes, he came from a princely family of Torah greatness. Yes, he was endowed with superb intellect. But perhaps it can be said that Rav Elya Meir Sorotzkin zt”l soared to greatness despite these unique qualities, not because of them. Because his was a life of constant growth.

The fact that he was gifted never stopped him from trying even harder. As a young bachur, he understood that he would only be able to truly grow in Torah away from home in Telshe Cleveland. Only when he was just another talmid, not as the son of the rosh yeshiva. Nothing could stop him, not homesickness, not a different culture, nothing. Rather, his challenges built him.

That is the person you will meet in this new ArtScroll book, Rav Elya Meir Sorotzkin.

He became a rosh yeshiva at a very young age and, with “blood, sweat and tears,” as he would often say, built Yeshiva Tiferes Boruch into one of America’s premier institutions. More: He built individual talmidim. Because he personally went through the painstaking process of self-discovery and growth, he was able to identify with the struggles and triumphs of his talmidim in a way that few could.

The last years of life were akin to a flame that burns increasingly bright before it is extinguished. Nothing could stop him from carrying on with his life’s mission of learning and teaching Torah, transmitting Torah in its purity and splendor to his talmidim.

His body was battered. His doctors viewed his ability to continue delivering his shiur until the last day that he was conscious as a medical miracle.

It wasn’t.

It was a culmination of a life of ratzon, of willpower, of never letting the physical get in the way of the spiritual.

This book will give you a deep appreciation for Torah. It will show you what a lifelong impact a rebbi can have on his talmidim and later their wives and children too. On every page, there is an inspiring story with which any reader can identify.

This book will elevate you, inspire you…and obligate you.

The following are some choice stories from this riveting book.

The Kol Nidrei Request

It was Yom Kippur, just after Kol Nidrei, but it wasn’t just any Yom Kippur. It was the second to last Yom Kippur of the rosh yeshiva’s life. He was already very ill. The talmidim did not know just how advanced his illness was, but they knew that his condition was life threatening.

It was during the break between Kol Nidrei and Maariv when Dov decided to approach the rosh yeshiva to ask for a brocha. The rosh yeshiva looked like an angel to him, wearing his kittel, the seriousness of the day etched on his face.

The rosh yeshiva was happy to accommodate and gave Dov a heartfelt brocha. He then took Dov completely by surprise by uncharacteristically asking, “Now, please give me a brocha.”

Initially, Dov was caught off guard — he, a mere talmid, should give his rosh yeshiva a brocha? When he found his voice, he gave a most heartfelt brocha for a refuah sheleimah, nachas from his children, from his talmidim, from the yeshiva, and that the talmidim should continue to shteig.

The rosh yeshiva answered amein and then embellished his request. “Firstly,” he said, “please give me a brocha that I should have nachas from you … and secondly, please give me a brocha that I should have a geshmak (enjoyment) in learning!”

“That completely took me by surprise!” Dov recalls. “Here is a rosh yeshiva who has been leading a yeshiva for thirty years, giving daily shiurim, imbuing thousands of talmidim with a geshmak in learning, and now he is dangerously ill. Nevertheless, the only thing on his mind after Kol Nidrei on Yom Kippur is that he needs a brocha for a geshmak in learning. His love of Torah was incalculable!”

Indeed, once, after he had been diagnosed with his illness, the rosh yeshiva met Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel, rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Gedolah Zichron Moshe of South Fallsburg. During their conversation, Rav Elya Meir asked Rav Wachtfogel, “Is the rosh yeshiva davening for me?”

“Of course!” Rav Elya Ber immediately replied. “Eliyohu Meir ben Rochel l’refuah sheleimah!”

“No!” the rosh yeshiva exclaimed. “That is not what I meant. Is the rosh yeshiva davening for me that I should have hatzlocha in learning and being mechadeish Torah?”

The Gauge

It was a fascinating observation made by numerous talmidim. By watching Rav Elya Meir davening the tefillah of Ahavah Rabbah, you could easily detect the difficulty of the sugya that the yeshiva was then learning. The more difficult the sugya, the more intense was his tefillah.

“When the yeshiva was learning the difficult areas of Perek Lo Yachpor in Maseches Bava Basra, his Ahavah Rabbah was so intense that you almost felt you could touch it,” was the way one talmid put it.

Reb Shaya Plotzker said it even more powerfully: “A certain rosh yeshiva once said in a shmuess that if someone wants to understand true love of Torah, he should come to Bais Medrash Govoah on Shavuos morning and listen to the tefillah of Ahavah Rabbah. I add that if you want to truly understand what ahavas haTorah is, come to the Springfield Yeshiva on any day!” The Ahavah Rabbah of the rosh yeshiva was said with such feeling that there was no person who experienced it who didn’t feel aroused to invest more time, effort, and energy into learning.

Floodgates of Tears of Joy

It was a very happy day in the life of Yosef Modes. He was engaged! One of the first phone calls he made to share the wonderful news was to the rosh yeshiva.

The call came through to the rosh yeshiva when he was in the middle of testing a bochur. This bochur later shared what he saw during his exam.

“The rosh yeshiva was asking me a question on Tosafos when, suddenly, the phone rang. After checking the caller ID, Rav Elya Meir indicated that he had no choice but to answer the phone. After he said ‘Hello,’ I heard the muffled voice of a person telling him something. Within seconds, the rosh yeshiva’s face began to change, and before I could register what was happening, he had put his head down on the desk and burst into tears! The next thing I knew, the rosh yeshiva put down the phone and asked me to step out. Of course, I did as requested, but I was too curious to leave fully, so I stayed by the door. I then heard the rosh yeshiva exclaiming joyously, ‘Yosef! Mamash? It’s true? Mazal tov!’ The simcha, the tears,

the raw emotion was a manifestation of a deep bond that I had never seen before.”

But that was not where his loving care ended. In many circles, the custom is that at some time during the engagement, the chosson spends a Shabbos with his future in-laws. As can be expected, that Shabbos is often very awkward and is anxiously awaited by the chosson.

It was the Shabbos when the new chosson, Yosef Modes, would be visiting his future in-laws. About ten minutes after he walked into the house, the phone rang and his kallah’s mother summoned him, saying, “You have a telephone call. It’s your rosh yeshiva. He wants to make sure that you arrived and that all is well.”

What a message for both the chosson and his future in-laws. With a few minutes of his time, the rosh yeshiva showed the future in-laws that their chosson has a close connection with his rosh yeshiva, and that his rosh yeshiva sincerely cares for him. As for Yosef, he suddenly realized with startling clarity just how much the rosh yeshiva sought his welfare and how nothing was too small or too insignificant when it came to a talmid.

Three Tales of Tears

Rabbi Dovid Aryeh Kaplowitz was in the rosh yeshiva’s office discussing something pertaining to his talmidim when their conversation was interrupted by the ringing phone.

The caller was a married talmid who needed chizuk. Someone in his family was very ill and he was having a difficult time dealing with it. Calmly, with tremendous warmth, the rosh yeshiva imparted words of encouragement, infusing his talmid with the strength he needed to deal with the ordeal.

Finally, the rosh yeshiva hung up the phone, but that was not the end of the story.

After hanging up the phone, the rosh yeshiva put his head down on his desk and began to cry heartrending tears. He was crying like a parent who wants nothing more than to remove a child’s pain but feels helpless.

A different time, Reb Dovid Aryeh was again in the office when the phone rang. This time, the caller, a talmid who had been married for several years, shared wonderful news. He had just been blessed with his first child! The rosh yeshiva’s face lit up with joy, and after showering his talmid with mazal tov wishes, he

Sefer Chofetz Chaim – Vol. 2

The Laws of Rechilus, Translated and Elucidated

ArtScroll/Mesorah Publications

Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan’s Sefer Chofetz Chaim is the foundation of the “shemiras halashon revolution” that changed the way we speak — and the way we live our lives.

ArtScroll’s new translation of this work, the product of thousands of hours of research and writing by a dedicated team, makes the words of the Chofetz Chaim accessible to all, while notes and annotations bring valuable new insights.

This new masterpiece of halachah includes:

Translation, elucidation, and explanatory notes

Many halachos clarified with real-life scenarios

Extensive insights to bring the halachos into our contemporary lives

Essays on difficult topics in the halachos, including lashon hara in the media

Plus: A unique and vital 85-page section on giving and getting shidduch information. We share here a portion of that special shidduch section.

Giving & Getting Shidduch Information When Someone’s Life Is On the Line

The Chofetz Chaim said that when it comes to giving shidduch information, people often speak up when they should be quiet and remain silent when they should speak up. He explained:

In people who have important information that needs to be passed on, the Satan stirs such a dread of speaking lashon hara that they hold their tongues. On the other hand, the Satan encourages those who are eager to transmit fleeting negative impressions by persuading them that they’re observing the mitzvah of “Do not stand by idly while your fellow’s blood is shed.”

A word, a phrase, even just “making a face” can change the course of two people’s lives. Sometimes that’s all it takes to destroy what might have been a wonderful match and to create a negative impression of a young man or woman that persists for years.

Everyone in the community is a potential provider of shidduch information.

Your words can cause a promising shidduch to be abandoned, while withholding crucial information could allow a shidduch to proceed that will lead to great pain. So every one of us has to learn what we are allowed to say...and how and when to say it.

Proper Ways to Inquire About a Potential Shidduch

When investigating a potential shidduch, you’re required to say, “I’m asking you for this information about X because someone is considering a shidduch with him/her.” You have to state this up front even if you feel that this might make your source sugarcoat the information or hide facts that you need to know.

There are two reasons for this:

1. The first is so that neither the person asking nor the person answering questions will be guilty of speaking lashon hara. Certain information may be divulged only when the intent is for shidduch purposes; otherwise, the person giving information would be guilty of the sin of lashon hara, and the person requesting information would be guilty of the sin of “Do not place a stumbling block before a blind person.”

2. The second is so that the person responding will know how to phrase his answer in a way that meets the requirements of speaking l’to’eles — for a constructive purpose. NOTE: Negative information given within the halachic category of “to’eles” for a shidduch, when spoken the way the Torah prescribes, is not lashon hara. The Torah is not “allowing” lashon hara for the purpose of a shidduch. It is defining this type of speech as something completely separate from lashon hara.

Three Categories of Information

Category 1: Objective Essential Information

Objective essential information is in the category of “Do not stand by idly while your fellow’s blood is shed,” if it were withheld. This means that as long as the

rules of to’eles listed below are met, such information must be passed on.

But people are often driven to give too much negative information because they think that all information falls into this category. Be aware that holding back negative information does not always violate the negative commandment of “Do not stand by idly while your fellow’s blood is shed.”

The only flaws this negative commandment covers are ones that are detrimental to establishing a Jewish home, a happy marriage, and a wholesome relationship: seriously flawed character traits, lack of tznius or other halachic imperatives, and definable health or emotional problems. You must volunteer Category 1 information even if you aren’t asked.

Category 2: Subjective Essential Information

Is he smart? Is she personable? Category 2 information covers such things as middos, commitment to learning, intelligence, family, and age. This information is important, but not necessarily crucial. In this category, you may not volunteer negative information, but you must always tell the truth if asked.

When considering whether to pass on negative information, ask yourself whether this quality would be detrimental to the establishment of a happy, wholesome Jewish home. If the answer to that question isn’t clear, it is better not to inform anyone of it until you check with a rav.

Category 3: Unique Personal Preferences

Many minor issues don’t stand in the way of a good marriage. If a woman says she won’t consider anyone who doesn’t share her love of music, withholding the fact that a potential spouse has no taste for music doesn’t violate “Do not stand by idly while your fellow’s blood is shed.”

But if asked, you may answer truthfully. Doing so does not violate “Do not go as a tale-bearer,” even if the information may be detrimental to the shidduch, since it is being offered for a constructive purpose. Under no circumstances may a person lie; however, when choosing not to an-

swer in the belief that the shidduch might be successful despite this particular piece of information, you have not violated the commandment of “Do not stand by idly while your fellow’s blood is shed.”

What is Relevant Information That Must Be Shared?

Expert judgment is often needed to determine whether it’s necessary to mention a particular quality. Even a tinge of a problem can be enough to derail a shidduch, yet a problem that looms large in your mind may not be a problem at all to a potential spouse.

The natures of the people involved in the potential shidduch are thus relevant. Someone who is impatient with slowness, for instance, will not present a problem to a potential partner whose personality leans toward thinking and acting quickly.

If you were raised in a calm, quiet home, then what you might feel is a show of anger or temper might seem to the couple involved to be in the normal range of behavior. However, if there is a level of anger significant enough to impair a person’s ability to establish a peaceful home, then that information must be shared.

The question then is, where does the line between “personality” and “problem-causing anger” lie? Therefore, whenever you’re unsure how to answer a request for shidduch information, first consult a rav who has expertise in this sensitive area. When you’re the one collecting shidduch information, you have to take into consideration the personality of the person who’s responding to your inquiry. From what perspective is he/she making the assessment? By no means may a shidduch inquiry open the door to any and all types of information to flow back and forth between those concerned.

hung up the phone and burst into tears — tears of joy. He then exclaimed, “I have been davening for them and worrying about them for so long!”

Another talmid, Reb Dovid, also had

not been blessed with children for some time after his wedding. He refrained from telling the rosh yeshiva until finally, after a long waiting period, he had good news to share. Ecstatic, he called the rosh yeshiva to tell him that good news was coming.

To his surprise, his news was met with sobs. After a short lapse, the rosh yeshiva said, “Dovid! You don’t know how much simcha you have given me by sharing this news! I have been davening for you three times a day!”

Rav Elya Meir was a rebbi who cared so much that he cried for the pain of his talmidim. He was a rebbi whose love was so all encompassing, his sincere rejoicing in their good fortune also at times aroused copious tears.

Chanukah Lights, Sights & Delights

Here are some photos TJH readers sent in for our Chanukah contest, What Chanukah Means to You. Judging from the entries, family, doughnuts, menorahs and lots of joy saturate our homes on Chanukah!

TJH Centerfold

Dilly Dairy-ing

Cows spend about 10 hours a day eating and 8 hours a day lying down. (Sign me up!)

The average American consumes almost 25 gallons of milk a year ... that’s 400 glasses! (I personally spill the milk out once I’m done dipping the cookie.)

Americans eat about 350 slices of pizza per second, or almost 3 billion pizzas per year. (I totally don’t believe that—I never ate more than 2 slices in one second!)

Around 300 varieties of cheese are sold in the U.S. Wisconsin producing more than 25 percent of those varieties. (And, to add insult to injury, Wisconsinites are known as “cheeseheads.”)

Vanilla is the most popular ice cream flavor in the U.S. (It’s my favorite too…when it’s topped with Reese’s Pieces, hot fudge, mini peanut butter cups, cookie dough, crushed Oreos and caramel.)

It takes three cups of broccoli to equal the calcium in one cup of milk. (How about this — I won’t eat broccoli and I won’t drink milk!)

Milk remains fresh for 7-10 days after the expiration date if refrigerated at 35-40°F. (Thanks but no thanks.)

Cows have an acute sense of smell and can smell something up to six miles away. (And they still refuse to put on deodorant!)

It takes 12 pounds of whole milk to make one gallon of ice cream. (Who only eats one gallon of ice cream?)

Cows can go up stairs, but not down stairs. (I guess I’m not a cow then —I can go down stairs but not up stairs.)

You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

Two cows are chatting over the fence between their fields.

The first cow said, “I tell you, this Mad Cow Disease is really pretty scary. They say it is spreading fast; I heard it hit some cows down on the Johnson Farm.”

The other cow replies, “Nah, I ain’t worried. I’m a helicopter.”

Round Pastry Trivia

1. What is the most common spelling for the delectable round pastry that we all love?

a. Donut b. Donettes c. Donutt d. Doughnut

2. Which of the following donut shops has been around for the longest?

a. Chris’ Donut Shoppe b. Yum Yum Dooughnuts c. Dunkin’ Donuts d. Krispy Kreme

3. Approximately how many donuts are eaten in the U.S. every year?

a. 77 million b. 120 million c. 640 million d. 10 billion

4. How many powdered donuts did my hero, Joey Chestnut, eat in 6 minutes at an eating competition this past summer? a. 59

b. 98 c. 116 d. 257

5. Why are donuts made with a hole in them?

a. Dunkin’ Donuts started the trend so that they can sell munchkins separately and everyone copied them. b. It enables vendors to differentiate between donuts that have filling and those that don’t have filling.

c. Because if they weren’t made with a hole in them the world would be perfect, and we just can’t live in a perfect world. d. It enables them to cook more evenly.

6. Which U.S. city has the most donut shops per capita?

a. The Five Towns (is that a city?) b. New York City c. Chicago

d. Boston

7. The largest donut ever was made in Utica, NY, in 1993. How much did it weigh? a. 120 pounds b. 230 pounds c. 780 pounds d. 1.7 tons

Answers

Glaze Key

6-7 correct: You are D’Best! 4-5 correct: Not bad…like a dayold donut from Dunkin Donuts — it’s still great but not “Oh my gosh” great.

1-3 correct: You have as much donut intelligence as a donut hole!

Parshas Mikeitz

By Rabbi Berel Wein

The entire narrative of the story of Joseph and his brothers, as he sent off the Jewish people to Egyptian society, slavery and ultimate redemption, is meant to illustrate to us the guiding hand of Providence in human affairs.

There is no question that all of the participants in this dramatic narrative acted according to their own wishes and wisdom. Yet the confluence of all of these

conflicting personalities and ambitions leads to the desired end of the fulfillment of the prophecy and promise of G-d to Abraham about the future fate of the Jewish people.

This principle, that man proposes but G-d disposes, is one of the basic beliefs of Judaism and is vindicated, for good or for better, throughout the history of the Jewish people and humankind generally. All of the twists and turns of daily and

national life, the seemingly random and inexplicable events that assault us on a regular basis, somehow have a purpose and a goal. They help us arrive at the situation and circumstance that G-d’s destiny has provided for us.

The difficulty in all of this is that very rarely is this pattern revealed or are we aware of it. The L-rd told Moses that “you will see My back, not My face.” We see things much more clearly in retrospect than in the ability to judge present events

attributed events to Divine providence and G-d’s will.

That is why Joseph is seen as the main antagonist to Eisav, for Eisav always attributed events to random chance and to human action and power. We will see later that this was also the main contest between Pharaoh and Moshe. Pharaoh continually maintained that the troubles of the Egyptians were coincidence and that all of the blows that he sustained were due to circumstance and nature. Even

and somehow predict the future.

All of the dreams of Joseph will be fulfilled but no one could have imagined at the onset of the story how they could have been fulfilled and under what circumstances, of both tragedy and triumph, they would come to be the reality of the narrative of the story of Joseph and his brothers.

Of all of the brothers, Joseph seems to be the one that is most aware that he and they are merely instruments in G-d’s plan. The rabbis teach us that Joseph was distinguished by the fact that the name of G-d never left his lips and that he always

when his wise men stated that the finger of G-d was pointing at him, he refused to admit that it was the Divine presence that was driving Egypt to destruction.

We also live in a world where many see the events that surround us as being mere happenstance, random events engendered by human beings. However, Judaism knows better and teaches better, and we are therefore confident that all of the processes ordained for us millennia ago will yet be completely fulfilled. There is a Divine hand that guides the affairs of mankind.

Shabbat shalom.

All of the twists and turns of daily and national life, the seemingly random and inexplicable events that assault us on a regular basis, somehow have a purpose and a goal.

From the Fire

Parshas Mikeitz

Chanukah Dreams

By Rav Moshe Weinberger Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

The story of Yosef and his brothers stretches over four parshiyos and the central theme of these parshiyos relates to the interpretation and unfolding of dreams. In the words of the Abarbanel, “the primary aspect of this story is dreams and their interpretation.” The dreams in the story act as catalysts, setting each step of the story into motion. The four dreams, or sets of dreams, are, as explained by the Abarbanel: (1) Yosef’s dreams, which aroused his brothers’ hatred and jealousy, as they said (Bereishis 37:19), “behold, here comes the master of dreams;” (2) the dreams of the butler and the baker, which ultimately led to Yosef’s release from prison; (3) Phaorah’s dreams and Yosef’s interpretation, which led to Yosef’s appointment as viceroy over Egypt and enabled him to eventually bring his whole family down to Egypt and support them; and (4) Yaakov’s prophetic dream (Bereishis 46:24) “in a night vision,” which led him to

descend down into Egypt. While dreams have no significance in halacha (Sanhedrin 30a), “matters in dreams cannot elevate or cause descent,” the dreams in these parshiyos cause the elevation of Yosef and his and his family’s descent into Egypt.

In order to understand the role of dreams, we must first understand a little bit more about the nature of day and night. There are places in the world where it is day for the entire summer and night for the entire winter. In the Jewish calendar, we have a similar phenomenon. From the month of Nissan till the month of Tishrei, throughout the spring and summer months, we have all of the chagim d’Oraisah, the Torah-based holidays: Pesach, Shavuos, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkos. The summer months are filled with light. In contrast, from Mar-Cheshvan till Adar, during the fall and winter months, we have no Torah-based holidays. The wintertime

is like one long night. It is a cold, hard, difficult, and confusing time, a time of darkness, with short days and long nights. The holidays of Chanukah and Purim are like the dreams of the Jewish people in the long night of the winter. There are, however, two aspects to dreams. On one hand, they are filled with nonsense (Zacharia 10:2, Brachos 55b), “dreams speak emptiness.” On the other hand, some dreams have the power to reveal the truth of one’s life, as the Gemara (Brachos 57b) says, “A dream is one sixtieth of prophecy.” And as the pasuk (Bamidbar 12:6) says, “If there shall be prophets among you, I, Hashem, make myself known to him. I will speak to him in a dream.”

Sometimes, we cannot attain higher levels when we are active, when life is filled with light. It is like when a rebbe begins speaking and the student’s hand shoots in the air, thinking he knows the answer, so he does not hear anything else

the rebbe says. While it is good that his mind is active, he is so filled with his own thoughts that he cannot listen to his rebbe. Similarly, sometimes one has a conversation, and at the beginning of the conversation, he has already thought of his response. He therefore fails to listen to anything else the other person is saying because all he can hear is the product of his own active mind.

Therefore, sometimes we can only attain a new level of understanding when we slow down, when the night, a time of inactivity, comes. When the race of life quiets down, during the “night” of the year, we can begin reflecting on the truth of life and dream of how things should be and where we are headed.

The name of our parsha is Mikeitz, which means “at the end of,” but it can also mean to “wake up.” When we have a dream about how life can or should be, and then we wake up, such a dream can act as the catalyst for a person to fulfill

his dreams during his waking hours.

Sometimes, if a person is wrestling with a particularly difficult problem, and he cannot come to a solution, he eventually goes to sleep without an interpretation, without a resolution. But after sleeping and dreaming, suddenly everything becomes clear. The same thing happens to the Jewish people. We sometimes experience a time of great confusion and descent. But then we begin to dream of how it could be, how it should be. Such a dream is not nonsense or idle imagination. Such a dream can lift a Jew or the entire nation to new heights and from these heights, everything becomes clear.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook, in Oros Hakodesh (53), in a selection called “Great Dreams,” writes:

Great dreams are the foundation of the world. There are many different levels. The prophets were dreamers, “I will speak to him in a dream.” Poets are dreamers who dream while awake. Those who think great thoughts about how to improve the world are dreamers. We all dream about Hashem causing his children to return to Zion.

The coarseness of life in society, where one is immersed only in physicality, takes away the light of our dreams

from the world. It negates a person’s expansive radiance, his supernal ascent and prevents his dream from penetrating into reality. This causes the world to flounder in pain from the stinging poison of a reality without the radiance of these dreams.

dreams, to clarify our purpose and direction. Chanukah is our great dream during the long winter night, which illuminates the darkness of Greek secularism, who attempted “to darken the eyes of the Jewish people.” Chanukah awakens the great light and paves the way for

Such a dream can lift a Jew or the entire nation to new heights, and from these heights, everything becomes clear.

But this pain is the suffering of love, which cleanses the world, clarifying it. How mistaken are those who exult in this course, defective reality. But when one sets his dream free, then, unbound by reality and its limitations, it rebels against reality and becomes more real than the current state of physical reality.

The dream then becomes a clear vision. Then we speak directly with Hashem, in a clear vision and not indirectly.

We must lift up our nation’s lofty

“the establishment the candle of the son of Yishai Your anointed.”

Rav Tzvi Hirsch Koidinover, the Rav of Frankfurt, wrote in the Kav Hayashar (section 96):

In each and every thing that we do during the eight days of Chanukah relating to the lighting of the candles...in many places, we find that the Chanukah candles are precious before Hashem... It has a great and wondrous holiness without measure. If we had Divine inspira-

tion, we would make the blessing over the candles and then understand and comprehend, through the mitzvah, the kindling of the future candles [of Moshiach] because the Chanukah candles prophesy like a human prophet.

We see from this that by spending a few quiet moments with the candles, we can see the future and access the dreams of what we could be. Dovid Hamelech tells us that when we reach the times of Moshiach (Tehilim 126:1), “ha’yinu k’cholmim, we will be like dreamers.”

On the eighth day of Chanukah, which is called “Zos Chanukah,” we can access (Tehilim 118:23) “Mei’eis Hashem hay’sah zos, hei niflas b’eineinu , This [“Zos”] was from Hashem, it is wondrous in our eyes.” May Hashem open our eyes to stop and contemplate during this quieter time of the year in order to dream of what our lives can be like so that we may begin to work to actualize that dream.

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

Think. Feel.Grow.

Yosef and the Battle for True Beauty

By Rabbi Shmuel Reichman

The day had finally come. For months, I had been trying to meet this famous sage, renowned not only for his wisdom, but for his beautiful, majestic physical appearance. I had heard the stories, but I wanted to experience it for myself. After what seemed like an eternity, I was finally able to get an appointment.

Upon arriving at the sage’s house, I could barely contain my excitement. This was it; I was finally here. I knocked and patiently waited for someone to answer. A moment later, the door opened and standing in front of me was the most hideous individual I had ever seen.

Not to worry, I thought to myself. This must be his attendant. But after the man introduced himself as the sage, my heart sank. Oh well, I thought. I should have known that he could never live up to the stories. This is what happens when you have unrealistic expectations. I considered leaving, but after coming all this way, I decided to continue as planned, spending the day with this sage.

As the day went on, it became clear that while the sage may not have been physically beautiful, he sure was a wonderful human being. He spoke with such compassion, and his kind eyes revealed tremendous depth. He treated me like a treasured friend, despite having just met me. He showed genuine interest in me; he wanted to learn my story and hear my questions. We discussed ideas, shared our experiences, and enjoyed a meaningful afternoon together. As we walked through his garden, I saw the reverence and care that he showed all forms of life, even the animals and insects. He shared his philosophy with me but never judged me or made me feel uncomfortable.

After a long day together, he brought me back inside and excused himself for a moment. As I sat there thinking, I finally realized the lesson I was supposed to

learn. Beauty is not about the physical; it’s about how we live our lives, how we choose to see the world. It’s the values we embody, the character traits we develop.

I was still reflecting on this when I heard the sage reenter the room. I turned my head to face him and almost passed out. There, at the entrance of the room, stood the most beautiful person I had ever seen. I was overwhelmed with shock and confusion.

The sage sat down beside me and smiled. “You probably want an explanation. Every day, people come from near and far to witness my physical beauty. After several years of teaching, I found that when someone sees my face when first encountering me, they are not able to experience all the other dimensions of my persona and character. Physical beauty can be wonderful, but without emotional, intellectual, and spiritual beauty, it is merely a distraction. I therefore decided to take a new approach. Every morning, when I greet a new guest, I disguise myself as a hideous, grotesque individual.

After disregarding my physical casing, they are able to spend the day focusing on all of my other characteristics, learning, growing, and enjoying themselves. At the end of the day, I take off the disguise and reveal my physical beauty as well. But now, the physical beauty no longer hides everything that lies within me, it reflects it.”

Yosef and Chanukah

Parshas Mikeitz and the story of Yosef always fall out around Chanukah. This is not coincidental; the commentators discuss Yosef’s connection to Chanukah at great length. An obvious connection between Yosef and the Greeks is their association with beauty. Yosef is the only male in the Torah who is referred to as “beautiful” (Bereishis 39:6), and the Greeks originate from Yefes, whose name literally means “beauty.” In a similar vein, the Gemara states that despite the general prohibition of translating the Torah into other languages, it is permissible to translate the Torah into Greek due to the

beauty of the language (Megillah 9b).

Additionally, in Parshas Noach, Noach blesses his two sons as follows: “Yaft Elokim l’Yefes, v’yishkon b’ohalei Shem — Hashem will grant beauty to Yefes, and he will dwell within the tents of Shem” (Bereishis 9:27). Yefes is the ancestor of the Greeks, and Shem is the ancestor of the Jews. This seemingly paints the Greeks as a positive force, as a beautiful nation, fitting to dwell within the framework and boundaries of Judaism. However, the Chanukah story and other incidents throughout Jewish history reveal a very negative and harmful relationship between the Jews and the Greeks. What, then, is the meaning behind the Torah’s positive portrayal of the Greeks, and what is the meaning behind their beauty?

In order to understand why both Yosef and the Greeks are referred to as beautiful and the powerful connection between them, we must understand the spiritual concept of beauty in all of its depth. To do so, let us trace the spiritual concept of beauty back to the creation of man, before Adam HaRishon’s sin.

Adam HaRishon

Before Adam sinned, he looked nothing like you or I do today. When we look at one another, all we see is flesh and bone, but if you looked at Adam before he sinned, his appearance was angelic, transcendent, luminescent. The Midrash says that he wore kosnos ohr (skin of light). When you looked at Adam, you didn’t see his body but saw Adam himself, i.e., his neshama. When you look at a lightbulb, all you see is radiant luminescence; only if you look very closely can you just make out the surface of the bulb. The same was true regarding Adam; he was luminescent. Only if you looked very closely could you just make out his physical body. His body was transparent, with the outside loyally and fully reflecting his inner

100 self. This is true beauty, where the inner and outer melt into a oneness, where the physical perfectly reflects the inner spirituality; where the physical projects something much deeper than itself. Beauty is the harmony and synthesis of different components, resulting in something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts.

When Adam sinned, however, the world fell, and Adam’s body fell as well. The physical no longer revealed the spiritual; it now hid it instead. Now, when we look at each other, we don’t see our true selves; all we see is a physical body. What was once light is now darkness. People can’t see your inner world, your thoughts, your consciousness, your emotions, or your soul; all they see is your external body. Now, in order to reveal yourself to other people, you must actively use the physical to reveal the spiritual. Only through your words, actions, facial expressions, and body language can people gain a glimpse into who you truly are. The body used to be incandescent and reveal, but now it only hides. It is up to us to reveal what lies inside.

The Chanukah Battle

The conception of beauty was a fundamental point of contention in the

battle between the Jewish People and the Greeks. The Greeks did not believe in using the physical to reflect anything higher; they viewed physical beauty as an end unto itself. Their focus was solely on the external; to them, beauty was phys -

This is why the Greeks come from Yefes, which means “beauty,” and why their language is referred to as beautiful. Ideally, the Greeks could have reflected true beauty, a perfect harmony and oneness between physical and spiritual beauty.

Gemara explains that all of the world’s beauty was given to Tzion, and it gave a tenth of its portion (maaser) to the rest of the world (Kiddushin 49b).

ical perfection, detached from anything deeper. The Greeks introduced the Olympic Games, competition that idolizes the physical body. For the Greeks, true godliness was physical and intellectual perfection, albeit completely detached from each other. The physical and intellectual were completely independent; mind and soul did not permeate the physical but remained distinct and separate.

This is the ideal that Noach hoped for when he said, “Yaft Elokim l’Yefes, v’yishkon b’ohalei Shem — Hashem will grant beauty to Yefes, and he will dwell within the tents of Shem.” Ideally, the Greeks would have harmonized with the Jews, joining the physical with the spiritual. Instead, they chose to corrupt true beauty, disconnecting the spiritual from the physical and projecting the physical as an independent end in and of itself.

Yosef

and True Beauty

Yosef is connected to Chanukah because he represents the harmony between the physical and the spiritual; he successfully utilized the physical to reflect something higher. The Torah calls him “beautiful” because his physical body projected something infinitely deeper than itself. This is the profound meaning behind the name that Pharaoh gives Yosef, Tzafnas Paaneiach, which means to “reveal the hidden” (Bereishis 41:43). A name reflects inner essence, and Yosef’s middah was true beauty — the ability to harmonize the physical with the spiritual, the hidden with the revealed. Yosef represents our victory over Greek ideology, the ability to hold on and stay true to a life of Torah, to see the physical as a reflection of something infinitely deeper than itself.

The Greeks attacked Yerushalayim, trying to disconnect us from the Beis Hamikdash, the place where Hashem connects most intimately and deeply with our physical world. The place of the Beis Hamikdash is referred to as Tzion, a unique, beautiful and distinguished place. The pasuk in Tehillim refers to Tzion as the place of ultimate beauty: “MiTzion michlal yofi – From Tzion comes the embodiment of beauty” (Tehillim 50:2). The

Yavan represents external, surface beauty, while Tzion represents true beauty. Yavan is comprised of the letters yud, vav, nun, while Tzion is comprised of those same three letters, along with a tzadi in front, the same root and shoresh of the word tzaddik. Yosef is referred to as “Yosef HaTzaddik ,” because he places the tzadi in front of Yavan, turning surface beauty into Tzion, true beauty. (While the common spelling of the letter tzadi is tzadi, there is a very old tradition of referring to the letter as “tzaddik ” as well; see Shabbos 104a. See also Magen David, letter tzaddik. See also Osiyos d’Rabi Akiva and Sefer HaBahir for more examples of the tzadi-tzaddik connection.) Yosef represents the ability to shine inner, higher beauty through a physical medium. It is no coincidence that the gematria of Tzion is 156, the same gematria as Yosef. This is the hidden light of Chanukah, the light that illuminates the truth, helping us see that which lies beneath the surface. Beauty is much deeper than a description of how a person looks; it’s a way of life. A beautiful life is a life of oneness where we synthesize all the aspects of who we are; where our thoughts, words, and actions all reflect a higher purpose, a higher source, a higher reality. This is the beauty of Yosef; this is the light of Chanukah.

Rabbi Shmuel Reichman is the author of the bestselling book, “The Journey to Your Ultimate Self,” which serves as an inspiring gateway into deeper Jewish thought. He is an educator and speaker who has lectured internationally on topics of Torah thought, Jewish medical ethics, psychology, and leadership. He is also the founder and CEO of Self-Mastery Academy, the transformative online self-development course based on the principles of high-performance psychology and Torah.

After obtaining his BA from Yeshiva University, he received Semicha from Yeshiva University’s RIETS, a master’s degree in education from Azrieli Graduate School, and a master’s degree in Jewish Thought from Bernard Revel Graduate School. He then spent a year studying at Harvard as an Ivy Plus Scholar. He currently lives in Chicago with his wife and son where he is pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago.

To invite Rabbi Reichman to speak in your community or to enjoy more of his deep and inspiring content, visit his website: ShmuelReichman.com.

Yosef represents our victory over Greek ideology, the ability to hold on and stay true to a life of Torah, to see the physical as a reflection of something infinitely deeper than itself.

Thanking Hashem The Purpose of Creation

by Rabbi Daniel Glatstein

Maseches Shabbos states in the name of Rav Huna: One who is accustomed to lighting candles will merit sons who are talmidei chachamim. Rashi and the Maharsha point out that this refers to both neiros Shabbos and neiros Chanukah. Thus, one who takes care to light the menorah on Chanukah will merit to have sons who are Torah scholars.

The question we perhaps would not dare to ask, but are likely to be troubled by, is articulated by the son of the Raavad , Rabbeinu Yitzchak Sagi Nahor. There are many people who are careful to light the neiros on each and every night of Chanukah, yet few are seen to merit sons who are talmidei chachamim!

Rabbeinu Yitzchak answers that it is true that all of Klal Yisrael lights the neiros on Chanukah, and the vast majority do fulfill the mitzvah. However, it is a very small minority who exhibit care to make sure that they perform the mitzvah of ner Chanukah with all the nuances, specifics, and minutiae. One who does take care to incorporate all the minute details into his performance of the mitzvah of ner Chanukah will most assuredly receive this havtachah of having sons who will be talmidei chachamim.

There are peratim, specific details, about the fulfillment of the mitzvah of ner Chanukah that most

people do not fulfill, and that is why we do not see many people having sons who are talmidei chachamim. One such specific detail that not everyone takes care to fulfill is found in the words of the Biur Halachah (in the name of the She’eilos U’Teshuvos Mahari Bruna). One often sees the lighting of the menorah accomplished by placing the flame of the lit candle, the shamash, against the wick of the ner in the menorah. As soon as the wick is lit, the shamash candle is moved away and placed adjacent to the next wick as the subsequent light is kindled. This process is repeated until all the required lights of that specific night are lit.

However, says the Biur Halachah, one who performs the mitzvah in this manner may not be yotzei at all. We pasken, Hadlakah oseh mitzvah, the kindling of the menorah is the performance of the mitzvah. This requires that one must keep the fire of the shamash against the wick being lit until the majority of the wick catches fire. It is insufficient to just allow the neiros to catch the flame; the majority must be burning before proceeding to the next ner. That is, the flame being used to light the neiros on the menorah must be kept alongside the wick being ignited until the majority of the wick is burning.

There are numerous additional details about

the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, such as knowing the precise time to light. There are many opinions as to when the menorah should ideally be kindled, and one should consult his posek to see what time he should be careful to light.

The question of Rav Yitzchak Sagi Nahor seems to remain without a satisfying resolution. Rav Yerucham Olshin points out that we are blessed to live in a time when there are, in fact, many people who know and observe all the nuances of the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, and many people do fulfill the dikdukim and hiddurim and particulars of the halacha, and yet most people who do so are not necessarily blessed with sons who are Torah scholars! Many bnei aliyah truly merit to fulfill the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, with oil that is mehudar and the finest wicks, yet they are not uniformly merited sons who are talmidei chachamim. How do we reconcile this reality with the promise of the Gemara?

The Alter of Kelm makes an astounding proclamation. He writes that he and his contemporaries never in their lives fulfilled the mitzvah of Chanukah properly. What is so challenging about the mitzvah of ner Chanukah that prompted this statement? Lighting candles does not seem to be such a daunting task that a tzaddik such as he would have any difficulty performing it!

Ner Chanukah is Dear to Hashem

The Rambam writes that the mitzvah of ner Chanukah is “chaviva hi ad me’od, very beloved” by Hashem. One must therefore take great care to perform it properly so as to publicize the miracle and to increase the praise and gratitude of Hashem for having performed these miracles for us. Even if someone does not have food to put on his table, he must borrow money or sell his clothing to raise the necessary funds with which to purchase neiros for Chanukah.

This statement is remarkable, as it is unique to the mitzvah of ner Chanukah. The Rambam does not state this for any other mitzvah. No other mitzvah in the Torah does Rambam label “cherished” or “beloved to Hashem.” Krias Shema, tefillin, shofar, talmud Torah, and Shabbos are all mitzvos d’Oraisa — yet the Rambam makes no comment that these mitzvos are beloved to Hashem.

The Alter of Kelm seeks to understand this Rambam. What is so special about the mitzvah of ner Chanukah that makes it so beloved to Hashem? Why does the Rambam maintain that one must even sell his clothing to purchase neiros Chanukah? We know that kavod habriyos, preserving a person’s dignity, is so important that it is docheh, it pushes away, actions that might otherwise be prohibited! For example, if someone is walking in public when he realizes that he is wearing an item that is shaatnez mi’d’Rabbanan, he is not permitted to remove the item while in public. His personal dignity trumps the Rabbinic prohibition! How do we then understand the psak of the Rambam that for the mitzvah of ner Chanukah we cast personal dignity aside and instruct the pauper to remove the shirt from his back and sell it so he can purchase candles?

The Gemara tells us that if someone placed his

Chanukah candles in an irresponsible location, and it is subsequently knocked over by someone riding a camel, he is not liable for the damage caused by the resultant fire — however extensive that damage may be.

One would have thought that the owner of the menorah should have lit the candles in a more secure location, and therefore, his negligent placement of the flames which led to the conflagration should render him liable for the damage that resulted. However, we do not employ this argument, since the inconvenience of having to place the candles in a safer location may have caused him to completely neglect lighting the menorah — and that concern is more important. We allow a person to light in the place he finds most convenient, and he is then not liable for any damage that is caused as a result of his placement of his menorah.

Once again, we see the unusual importance ascribed to the mitzvah of ner Chanukah.

The Alter points out yet another example of the critical importance of ner Chanukah. Chazal teach us that if someone has limited funds, and can afford to purchase either wine for kiddush on Shabbos or candles for Chanukah, he should use his money for the ner Chanukah. The lights of Chanukah take precedence.

What is it about ner Chanukah that makes it more important than other mitzvos?

Mai Chanukah

The Gemara strives to explain what Chanukah is all about: “Mai Chanukah, what is Chanukah?” The Gemara proceeds to discuss the pertinent halachos: on the eight days of Chanukah we do not eulogize the dead; additionally, one is not permitted to fast. The Gemara then synopsizes the events of Chanukah and states that a year after the miracle of the oil, the Chachamim established these days as Yamim Tovim, a time when we should recite Hallel and give thanks to Hashem.

This is what Chanukah is: a yom tov of praise and thanks to Hashem. However, as Rashi is quick to point out, it is not a true yom tov in that it is not forbidden to perform melachah

If we were to capture the establishment of Chanukah in a nutshell, we would state: Yemei hallel v’hoda’ah — Days of praise and thanks.

We know what hallel is; it is reciting the tefillah of Hallel, as we do on other Yamim Tovim and Rosh Chodesh. However, what is meant by “hoda’ah”? Rashi explains that this refers to reciting the tefillah “Al HaNissim” in the bracha of Modim

It would seem, then, according to Rashi, that one who omitted one of these components on any day of Chanukah did not celebrate Chanukah on that day. If someone did not recite Hallel or did not say Al HaNissim, then he did not observe Chanukah!

Rav Shmuel Felder, shlit,a points out that since Hallel and hoda’ah are the very definition of Chanukah, if someone were to inadvertently omit Al HaNissim from Modim, he has not fulfilled the obligation of Chanukah. Although halacha dictates that he need not repeat the Shemoneh Esrei, he has not fulfilled the requirements needed to actively celebrate Chanukah.

On Sukkos and Pesach, Yaaleh V’Yavo is merely

an addition, a hosafah, to the tefillah. On Chanukah, Al HaNissim is much more than that: it is a critical part of the tefillah. Without it, there is no Chanukah! Rabbi Felder advises one to make a siman of some sort in his siddur to ensure that he will remember to say Al HaNissim, for if it is omitted the entire celebration of Chanukah remains unfulfilled.

According to Rashi , celebrating Chanukah can thus be summed up as Hallel and Al HaNissim However, examining the Rambam’s phraseology in describing the formation of Chanukah should alert us to further analysis. The Rambam writes that because of the miracle of Chanukah, the Chachamim of that generation established that these eight days, starting with the evening of the twenty-fifth of Kislev, should be days of simchah and hallel, happiness and praise. We light the candles each night of Chanukah to publicize the miracle.

Conspicuously absent from the Rambam’s instructions about how to fulfill the yom tov of Chanukah is

Chanukah” thus seems to be well juxtaposed to the sugyos surrounding it.

However, when the Gemara explains and provides the answer to mai Chanukah, the discussion seems to be completely off target! There is no mention of the neiros Chanukah! True, praise and hallel are mentioned. Hoda’ah, too, is included — as well it should be. But where is the mention of the mitzvah of neiros Chanukah? How can the most obvious — and, one might argue, the most important — commemoration of the miracle be omitted? When we think of celebrating Chanukah, the first thing that comes to mind is kindling the lights of the menorah. Rav Eliyahu Mizrachi therefore asks, why would the Gemara leave it out?

Gratitude Through Lighting

Rav Betzalel Zolty marshals the Riyaz , who advances a revolutionary way of understanding the above Gemara. In the Riyaz’ s citation of the legisla-

the mitzvah mentioned in the Gemara of hoda’ah, giving thanks. The Gemara had said “hallel and hoda’ah,” yet the Rambam paskens “simchah and hallel.” Why, asks Rav Betzalel Zolty, does the Rambam omit a word from the Gemara? Why does he leave out the mitzvah of hoda’ah as part of the fulfillment of the yom tov of Chanukah?

Rashi interprets “hoda’ah” as the recitation of Al HaNissim. However, in Hilchos Chanukah, the Rambam does not mention the practice of reciting Al HaNissim. The Rambam mentions the recitation of Al HaNissim only in Hilchos Tefillah, together with the practice of reciting Al HaNissim on Purim.

Clearly, the Rambam disagrees with Rashi , maintaining that reciting Al HaNissim to express hoda’ah on Chanukah is not part and parcel of executing the requirements of the day. He holds it is a mere addition to Shemoneh Esrei, similar to Yaaleh V’Yavo. It does not define the day but serves as a fulfillment of “l’hazkir me’ein ham’urah b’tefillah, to recall the occurrence as part of the davening.”

Why is it, asks Rav Betzalel Zolty, that the Rambam does not consider reciting Al HaNissim as an integral part of Chanukah, not mentioning Al HaNissim at all in Hilchos Chanukah but only in Hilchos Tefillah?

Maseches Shabbos, in the perek Bameh Madlikin, discusses the halachos of neiros Shabbos. In the course of the discussion, the Gemara introduces Chanukah and queries what Chanukah is about and how it is to be celebrated.

This discussion on Chanukah seems appropriately placed among the sugya of neiros Shabbos. “Mai

tion of Chanukah stated in the Gemara, he writes, “They were kovei’a the holiday as a time during which we would complete the entire Hallel, and on which we would thank Hashem through the lighting of the candles and by saying Al HaNissim in Shemoneh Esrei.” The Riyaz is saying that a fulfillment of expressing our gratitude to Hashem is accomplished by kindling the neiros Chanukah. Hoda’ah is expressed by hadlakas ner Chanukah!

Lighting the menorah is different from all the other mitzvos. Other mitzvos are specific actions that we perform because that is what Hashem commanded us to do. We don’t need a reason, and indeed we do not have a full understanding of the objective of the mitzvah. It is our duty and our honor to perform the mitzvos simply because Hashem told us to: kach tzivani

haBorei

Ner Chanukah, however, is different. It is not sufficient to simply light the candles because it is a mitzvah to do so. The mitzvah is to light the candles to thank Hashem for the miracle — kindling the flames is an expression of hoda’ah. The manner in which we express our gratitude to Hashem is by lighting the menorah.

If one were to light the menorah without feeling grateful, without thinking that he is showing Hashem appreciation and gratitude, then he is not performing the mitzvah properly. His actions are only fulfilling the “shell” of the mitzvah but are failing to capture the essence of the mitzvah.

With this explanation of the Riyaz , we can understand the Gemara and the Rambam . The Gemara

If one were to light the menorah without feeling grateful, without thinking that he is showing Hashem appreciation and gratitude, then he is not performing the mitzvah properly.

104 would not, and, in fact, did not, omit the lighting of the candles. The Gemara states that Chanukah was established as a day to express thanks to Hashem — an act that is accomplished by lighting the menorah. When the Gemara discusses Chanukah being a day on which to express gratitude to Hashem, this is referring to lighting the menorah, which is the medium through which our deep thankfulness and appreciation to Hashem is conveyed.

The Rambam does include hoda’ah: “u’madlikin, and we light [the menorah].” This is the expression of hoda’ah, which is absolutely a critical part of Chanukah, even according to the Rambam

Thus, says Rav Betzalel Zolty, the Gemara teaches us the root of the mitzvah — hoda’ah — and the Rambam tells us the practical manner in which this is fulfilled: by lighting the menorah, we express our thanks to Hashem.

Let’s return to the Rambam quoted above and analyze his words a little more closely. The Rambam writes: “ The mitzvah of ner Chanukah is extremely

praise….” We light the menorah k’dei l’hodos, in order to express thanks to Hashem.

Rav Shlomo Zalman employs this principle l’halacha and teaches us two remarkable chiddushim.

If a person realizes, on Chanukah, that he will not reach home in time to fulfill the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, his wife can light in his stead. Since it is an obligation of the household, his wife lighting the menorah suffices to discharge his obligation. However, this is only insofar as the obligation to light; one will have fulfilled his chiyuv to kindle ner Chanukah. But the feeling of hoda’ah, the sensation of gratitude that must accompany the lighting of the menorah, cannot be accomplished via an agent. To fully be yotzei the mitzvah, one must still have in mind the hoda’ah toward Hashem. Without personally engendering feelings of gratitude and appreciation to Hashem, he would not fulfill the mitzvah, even though his wife lit the menorah. While a wife can be a shaliach for the action of lighting the menorah, she cannot perform this aspect of the mitzvah on her husband’s behalf.

Reb Betzalel explains that the Gemara is teaching us that the ikkur mitzvah, the main mitzvah to fulfill, is the mitzvah of hoda’ah; it is not that the menorah is the ikkur and the hoda’ah accompanies it. Actually, the hadlakah is merely a hechi timzeh, a practical manner, with which to fulfill the primary obligation on Chanukah, which is to express gratitude to Hashem. This is also why the Gemara did not want to mention hadlakah, lest one think that the main mitzvah is to light the menorah, when in actuality this is not the case.

Therefore, adds Reb Betzalel, if one lights the menorah without the kavannah to thank Hashem, then he has not satisfied his chiyuv.

Each Mitzvah an Act of Gratitude

At its foundation, each mitzvah is a statement of gratitude to our Creator. There may be other reasons for doing a specific mitzvah, but at its core, each and every mitzvah is an expression of hoda’ah to Hashem for creating us and for providing for us ever since.

Our main function on this world can thus be summed up as follows: Ribbono Shel Olam, I recognize and acknowledge that You created me, and that You give me everything I have.

This is the purpose of Creation, and this is the purpose of doing mitzvos.

precious and dear, and a person must be very careful to perform it, so that he can publicize the miracles and praise and thank Hashem for the miracles He has performed.”

The Rambam explicitly tells us that this precious mitzvah of lighting the menorah is the vehicle through which we publicize the miracles, praising and thanking Hashem for having performed them for us. Lighting the menorah is inherently an expression of hoda’ah to the Ribbono Shel Olam — and it is the practical way in which we fulfill the hoda’ah

One might think that lighting the menorah is a mitzvah that merely leads to pirsumei nissah and expressions of thanks toward Hashem. We learn here that kindling the lights of Chanukah is in itself the actual expression of gratitude toward Hashem. It is not merely a vehicle that allows us to invoke sentiments of gratitude and appreciation; it is intrinsically the expression of hoda’ah

A Fundamental Role

Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach teaches us that this is precisely what we recite in HaNeiros HaLalu: “T hese lights we kindle upon the miracles, the wonders … in order to express thanks and

The hoda’ah must be performed personally. Furthermore, we know that mitzvos tzrichos kavannah, mitzvos require intention — even mitzvos d’Rabbanan. Therefore, before lighting the menorah, a person must specifically have in mind that he is about to fulfill the mitzvah of hadlakas ner Chanukah. Rav Shlomo Zalman teaches a novel halachic requirement, that the kavannah one must focus on prior to lighting the menorah must include hoda’ah to Hashem, because the purpose of lighting the neiros is to feel and display gratitude toward Hashem. If one does not, then he has not discharged his obligation. Even if one lights the menorah at exactly the right time, but he does not think about the fact that the kindling of the flame is l’hodos u’l’hallel, then “chaseir lo ha’ikkur, he is missing the main part” of the mitzvah.

Rav Betzalel Zolty advances the same principle, addressing the fact that the Gemara says that Chanukah is a time for hoda’ah and that it does not mention hadlakah, kindling the flames. After all, if someone attempted to celebrate Chanukah only by expressing hoda’ah, by only demonstrating tremendous gratitude to Hashem, but would not light the menorah, he will not have fulfilled his obligation. So why does the Gemara omit it? Would it not be preferable that the Gemara be more precise with its instructions and tell us to light the menorah?

All the mitzvos are thus a form of gratitude. But there is one mitzvah that we can identify whose sole and single designation is to express gratitude to Hashem. There is a mitzvah that has absolutely no other purpose other than to thank Hashem, as it is a designated expression of hakaras hatov and thanks to Hashem. This is the mitzvah of ner Chanukah, which was enacted specifically to fulfill the main purpose of Creation.

Thus, we learn that when the Gemara writes that Chanukah was enacted as an occasion of hoda’ah, the Rambam identifies that hoda’ah as referring to lighting the menorah, the mitzvah that was enacted to express our deepest feelings of gratitude to Hashem. Small wonder, then, that the Rambam writes that of all the mitzvos, it is the mitzvah of ner Chanukah that is most beloved to Hashem! The single mitzvah that is most cherished by Hashem must be the mitzvah that fulfills the tachlis hayetzirah, the purpose of Creation, the mitzvah that is an intrinsic expression of gratitude to Hashem: the mitzvah of lighting the menorah.

Therefore, the Gemara tells us, one who is accustomed to lighting the menorah in the right way, in the ascribed manner of it being a genuine expression of gratitude and thanks to Hashem, will merit children who are Torah scholars.

May Hashem bless us with siyata diShmaya to light the menorah in the proper way, and may we then all be zocheh to banim u’bnei banim oskim b’Torah u’b’mitzvos

Rabbi Daniel Glatstein is the Mara D’asra of Kehilas Tiferes Mordechai in Cedarhurst, NY, and author of numerous seforim in Lashon Hakodesh and in English for ArtScroll. He is an international lecturer and maggid shiur. His thousands of recorded shiurim are available on Torahanytime.com, podcast, his website rabbidg. com, and other venues.

This article has been reprinted with permission from The Light and the Splendor by Rabbi Daniel Glatstein, published by Artscroll.

At its foundation, each mitzvah is a statement of gratitude to our Creator.

What Are The Candles Telling Us?

By Sivan Rahav-Meir

The holiday of Chanukah marks the victory of the Chashmonaim in their rebellion against the Greeks, the rededication of the Holy Temple, and the miracle of the jug of oil. The Sages of Israel gave instructions to celebrate it by lighting candles, giving thanks, and rejoicing for eight days.

In the words of a famous chassidic saying: “We need to listen to what the candles are telling us.” Here are several lessons our Sages learned from the chanukiyah that apply not only to Chanukah but to our lives throughout the year.

1. Appreciate the importance of tradition. Unlike many other holidays, the events of Chanukah do not appear in the Tanach, as they took place later. Instead, over many generations, the Sages developed the laws and customs we keep today. Thus, the essence of the holiday teaches us about the importance of tradition, the words of our Sages, and the Oral Torah.

2. Prepare for darkness. We do not light the candles in the morning, but rather when darkness falls. We are not taken aback by the darkness but know that periods of darkness are part of life. It is precisely when darkness comes that we need to be prepared, knowing that such times call upon us to bring light.

3. Illuminate the street. We do not light candles solely to light up our homes on the inside; we also make sure our candles can be seen from the outside. We must strive to light up the street, the world outside.

4. Increase light. The manner of lighting on Chanukah is known as “ mosif veholech ” (steadily adding or always doing more). Every day, another candle is added. It does not matter how much we did yesterday, we must move forward and do a little bit more each day.

5. Strive for stability. The candles are set in a certain place and must not be moved. A Jew must know that the light and values in his life are rooted in his soul, infuse his daily activities, and are secure. No one can confuse or move him from fulfilling his purpose.

6. Give light to others so they can continue to shine. After we light them, the candles continue to shine on their own. When we educate and influence others, we need to make sure that what we teach is meaningful. If we do this, our students will give light on their own throughout their lives.

The LeZion Berina Institute in Beitar Illit is a high school for new immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Several years ago, Knesset member Yuli Edelstein visited there and told the students one of the most inspiring stories about Chanukah that I have ever heard.

Edelstein spoke about what happened on December 19, 1984, the day on which he was sentenced to

three years in a forced labor camp in southern Siberia. The official charge was drug possession, but the real reason for his sentence was his Zionist and Jewish activism. Edelstein told his story as follows:

“This was after three months of solitary confinement. I arrived at the courthouse for the reading of my sentence. The courtroom was full of police and security officers. At a typical trial, it is permitted for relatives to come, but they filled every seat with security personnel in order to prevent family members from being seated. Only my wife and mother managed to get inside.”

After the verdict was read, police surrounded twenty-six-year-old Edelstein and escorted him to his prison cell. On the way, he somehow managed to push his head through the ring of guards. He had only one thing to say to his wife, whom he had not seen in three months and might not see again for many years. What was it that he was compelled to shout at this moment?

“Tanya, which candle is it today?”

The Russian security officers thought that the prisoner, upon hearing his heavy punishment, had gone mad. At first, his wife actually thought the same. She did not understand what he was talking about. But then he shouted again, “Tanya, which candle is it today?” Only after the third time did she come to her senses and shout back, “Tonight we light the second candle!”

This was the morning of the first day of Chanukah 5744 (1984). Yuli Edelstein did not have a calendar in solitary confinement, but while listening to the verdict, he heard the secular date announced and realized that Chanukah was supposed to begin around that time of the year. It was important to him to know how many candles were to be lit that day.

Edelstein grew up in an assimilated family but had discovered Judaism and become observant. That evening, no longer in solitary confinement but in a cell with other prisoners, he somehow managed to get hold of two matches. He stood next to the bars of his jail cell window and lit the two matches.

This article has been excerpted from Days Are Coming by Sivan Rahav-Meir, published by Maggid Books.

Sparks of Light

Balancing Darkness and Light

By Rabbi Benny Berlin

There are just over eight weeks between Sukkos and Chanukah, and the contrast between the two holidays – and their approaches to light –highlight an intriguing revelation about their close proximity.

Sukkos, in contrast to Chanukah, is not a well-known holiday outside of Orthodox Jewry. What might surprise most (even those of us who are familiar with Sukkos) is that it actually bears numerous similarities to Chanukah, serving as one another’s paralleled counterpart on the Jewish calendar.

On a surface level, both holidays are celebrated over eight days and share in the concept of hiddur mitzvah, which means going above and beyond to use the best of our financial resources to fulfill the customs of the holiday: For Sukkos, we search for and purchase beautiful sets of the Arba Minim, whereas on Chanukah we seek out the purest olive oil for our Chanukiyas. On both, we also say “Hallel,” showing thanks to Hashem for the miracles He did for us on the corresponding holiday.

More profoundly, both holidays share in their special commandments to focus our attention toward the other nations of the world. On Sukkos, during the time of the Beis Hamikdash, the Jews gave unique offerings every day to pray for the wellbeing of the nations of the world. Similarly, on Chanukah, we try to spread inspiration to our neighbors around us by lighting our candles where people can see them in our windows.

Both holidays, in their own way, beg the eternal question the Jewish people face: how do we navigate and engage with the secular world that surrounds us while also remaining true to the ways of the Torah? The answer to finding that delicate balance is revealed in the juxtaposition that characterizes the two holidays.

The sukkahs we erect for Sukkos

symbolize the Ananei HaKavod, the Clouds of Glory that protected our ancestors while they sojourned in the desert for 40 years, ultimately leading them

mies in the desert. On Sukkos, we focus on the elements we grapple to keep out, hence the commandment to put sufficient s’chach so that the shade coming

found in the ransacked Beis HaMikdash and that it was able to keep the menorah alight for eight full days.

When considering both holidays in close succession, they help guide our most common conundrum: what elements do we, as God-fearing Jews, shield ourselves from to maintain our identities as a small nation and which ones do we seek out in order to emanate an abundance of light and inspiration, as we are so commanded?

As the famous quote goes, “No man is an island”; we all rely on one another. Despite all of the contributions that prominent Jews have made to the fields of medicine, science, infrastructure and society, it is disappointing, to say the least, when one person’s hostile words overpower all that good and spark an entire wave of hatred towards our people as happened of late.

As observant Jews, we care about everyone around us: all cultures, races, and religions. This point is further bolstered by the revelatory messages in Chanukah and Sukkos, with the special commandments to spread light and pray for the wellbeing of other nations. When we are treated with reproach, and it might make us long for the shade of the sukkah, we are nonetheless commanded to put ourselves “out there,” to inspire the nations of the world on Chanukah. May everyone see in our holiday menorahs the message of what we are trying to give: love and light to all those around us.

This holiday, if we can bring the world even just a little extra light, its power can be tremendous and dispel a lot of the recent darkness around us.

into the holy land. Instead of the holiday commemorating the daunting journey we made as a nation, it highlights the clouds as the beacons that led and protected us from the harshness and ene -

through the roof should overpower the light.

In contrast, on Chanukah, at the surface, we celebrate light – the miracle that a small amount of pure olive oil was

Rabbi Benny Berlin is the rabbi of BACH Jewish Center located in Long Beach, New York. For more information, visit: https:// www.bachlongbeach.com/.

Delving into the Daf Is Dried Fruit the Top Banana?

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

There was a villager – we’ll call him Reuven – with a taste for fine liquor and a nice collection of schnapps barrels. Reuven knew how to enjoy his liquor responsibly. His brother, Shimon, on the other hand, didn’t know when to stop. Shimon loved visiting his brother and helping himself to some of the stash. But even after feeling tipsy, Shimon would go back to the barrels for just one more shot. He would drink until he made a public spectacle of himself.

Reuven couldn’t stand watching Shimon get drunk, especially on his dime. Reuven repeatedly warned Shimon not to drink excessively but to no avail. When Reuven finally had enough, he made a neder that Shimon could no longer benefit from his liquor. Shimon was obviously miffed, but he would no longer drink Reuven’s liquor because he didn’t want to transgress the biblical prohibition of violating a neder

But in the end, without a brother to share his liquor with, Reuven eventually traded his schnapps collection for dried fruit.

Shimon cleaned up his act and became an upstanding member of the community. His daughter became engaged to a fine young man. The only issue was that Shimon could not afford to pay the dowry that his son-in-law was promised. Shimon turned to his brother for help. Reuven offered him

his dried fruit collection. After all, which chassan wouldn’t want some dried fruit for a dowry? Shimon thanked Reuven profusely but then remembered the neder. Shimon was not allowed to derive any benefit from Reuven’s liquor – and that very same liquor had been exchanged for the dried fruit.

The Mishnah in Nedarim (57a) discusses a situation where one vowed not to eat

Chasam Sofer said that we need to consider the intent and mindset of the person who made the neder. In truth, Reuven was upset with Shimon for his public intoxication. Yet Reuven did not forbid Shimon from coming to his house and having a meal. Nor did Reuven say that Shimon couldn’t take his horse out for a ride. He only forbade Shimon from imbibing his schnapps.

for his daughter. The Gemara says that if someone uttered a vow that a certain individual may not derive any benefit from him, the vower may still feed that individual’s young children. Feeding a child is not considered a direct benefit to the parent. The Chasam Sofer argued that the logic should apply all the more so in this case.

The daughter who is about to be married is an adult, and the father has no legally enforceable obligation to provide her with a dowry. A beis din cannot force a father to provide a dowry for his daughter. Therefore, even if Shimon could not benefit from the dried fruit, it would still be fine. Only Shimon’s daughter and the chassan would benefit from the dried fruit, not Shimon himself. The chassan and kallah can therefore freely consume the dried fruit.

certain fruits, which were then exchanged for another item. The Mishnah says that the person who uttered the neder cannot derive benefit from that new item. The Mishnah is teaching us that sometimes the prohibition of the neder transfers over to a new item that was meant to replace the original item that was subject to a vow.

Here, too, perhaps the prohibition that prevented Shimon from drinking Reuven’s liquor should transfer to the dried fruit that was exchanged for the liquor. The question was posed to the Chasam Sofer. The

Therefore, we can assume that Reuven’s intent was only to curb Shimon’s alcohol consumption and to forbid the actual liquor but not any non-alcoholic item that it might be exchanged for. Certainly, Reuven would have no issue if Shimon enjoyed a dried apricot or two. According to this reasoning, the prohibition should not transfer to the dried fruit.

Further, the Chasam Sofer argued that even if we were to concede that Shimon could not derive any benefit from the dried fruit, it would still be permitted as a dowry

We can assume that after the Chasam Sofer issued his ruling, the chassan was overjoyed at his newfound wealth of dried fruit. After all, there are some chassanim who don’t even have dried fruit.

Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow is a rebbe at Yeshiva Ateres Shimon in Far Rockaway. In addition, Rabbi Sebrow leads a daf yomi chaburah at Eitz Chayim of Dogwood Park in West Hempstead, NY. He can be contacted at ASebrow@gmail.com.

Shimon was not allowed to derive any benefit from Reuven’s liquor – and that very same liquor had been exchanged for the dried fruit.

Mazal Tov, You’re Invited to a Wedding

By Rafi Sackville

My wife Keren and I met on a wintry February evening in 1985. Eight weeks later, we were married in Jerusalem. Over the course of those eight weeks, we arranged a shul for the chuppah, a caterer, and a place to live; we helped co-ordinate our families arrival from New York and Melbourne, rented a wedding dress and all the accoutrements that come with planning a wedding, and we purchased a tie for me. My late father initially wanted us to invite acquaintances of his, people we didn’t know. We were insistent; we wanted nothing fancy. We wanted a small crowd. We’d make the wedding meal in a friend’s home.

Which is precisely what we did. In total, there were approximately 40 people at our wedding. Since then, we’ve made bar mitzvahs and a wedding all with the same approach in mind.

Recently, we attended a friend’s son’s wedding in Haifa. It was beautiful. The encroaching winter remained at bay while we partied outdoors under a mid-November sky. There was a smorgasbord serving the typical range of pre-supper delights: sushi, chicken and turkey, a carving station. The tables in the elegantly decorated hall that seated over 300 guests were adorned with delicate flower arrangements that looked as if they’d teeter over with the slightest movement of cutlery.

I looked around and wondered about the excess. For one, I’ve never understood smorgasbords. People gorge themselves on so much food there’s never much room left for the main courses. I was thinking this because, knowing our friends as I do,

I understood how the expense of such an occasion would have severely stretched their limited financial resources.

Considering that an average wedding in Israel can cost hundreds of thousands of shekels, it is surprising just how many families go out on a limb to marry off their children. That’s a lot of money when you consider the average earner brings home less than that annually. So, how do people do it?

For one, there is an accepted Israeli practice whereby guests write checks covering the cost of their plate. This might run from 400-600 shekels and rising for each plate. This is what Keren and I did. We deposited a large check at the entrance to the hall.

The thought nagged at me, though. Our friends are simple people who live in the footsteps of the Golan Heights. The cost of the wedding was, for all intents and purposes, out of their league. Yes, there was the bride’s family, who would foot half of the bill, but even so, the cost of the five-hour event might have been mitigated had our friends decided to limit their list of invitees to family. I, for one, would have understood if my friend had not invited us.

Our neighbors from across the way will soon be marrying off their son. She has eleven siblings. She told me that before they could even start making a list of friends she wanted at the wedding, there were at least 450 family members she was obliged to invite. Take that in for a moment – her siblings, their children, their children’s children. That’s a lot of people.

Now consider the cost to a family

that receives an average five wedding invitations in the course of a given year. The financial newspaper “Globes” estimated that more than a third of Israelis will spend between 1,000-3,000 shekels annually for the pleasure of their invitations. For many, that is an economic burden they’d prefer not to carry. That is why some people prefer attending celebrations without their spouses.

Some people refuse invitations but will turn up for the chuppah. Yet it is difficult to turn down a wedding invitation. It’s just not what people do. As one article on the subject succinctly put it, “Stop at the bank on the way to the wedding.”

Gifts, the like of which we used to give when I was a boy, are things of the past. Oftentimes, the degree of familial closeness will determine the size of gifts. Family members tend to give more. So, how much should one fork out before they’ve hit the smorgasbord?

I turned to KamaKesef (how much money), a website calculator that offers suggestions as to how much money one should give at any given celebration. I was shocked. Had I attended the wedding alone, I should have given 400 shekels. Having attended with Keren, I should have given 700. Were I a pensioner, that amount drops by only 50 shekels. Not having been at many weddings over the last few years has cast me as a guest who isn’t exactly in the loop. Multiply that 700 by five, and one would need to spend upwards of $1,000 a year at celebrations.

Are there ways to limit costs? Some prefer to forego the smorgasbord and flow-

er arrangements; others to have recorded, rather than live music. Some will hire fewer staff or borrow a wedding dress. Some will have a large list of invitees but only invite family to the meal.

I mention all this because as we settle in to 2023 the economic reality we were once used to has become an anachronism. The cost of living has sharply increased in Israel. Our family’s weekly shopping list has changed little by way of content over the last two years. What has dramatically shifted skywards is the cost of our purchases. What used to cost us a hundred American dollars is now edging closer to over 50% more. The cost of everything, let alone smachot (celebrations), has risen and shows little sign of becoming more manageable for the simple man-on-thestreet.

Back in April 1985, I felt pride in having limited the total cost of our wedding to approximately $1,000. I told my father so. He gave me a bemused look and placed his hand on my shoulder.

“Yes, you’ve done well, but you didn’t take into account the expense of flying the family out from Australia,” he gently reminded me.

It’s mindboggling. The actual cost of our wedding would cover four and a half weddings we’d attend as guests in an average year.

Mazal tov.

Rafi Sackville, formerly of Cedarhurst, teaches in Ort Maalot in Western Galil.

Light from Within: An Ordinary Jew Who Killed a Terrorist

His pure faith overcame a darkness that drives many to despair

by Ronit Segev

JUDEAN HILLS - It was Chanukah. Which year, he can’t remember – it was the late nineties in Israel – but the place he remembers all too well, and day after day he would pray that G-d would take him out of there and that some Chanukah, some year, he would be able to rejoin his wife and little girl and light candles together, sing Hallel, play dreidel games, and enjoy latkes. But for now, thick walls separated them from him, and the people surrounding him were inmates and guards. He had been sentenced to life.

Yoram Skolnik had requested a hanukkiyah in order to fulfill the mitzvah of the holiday, but prison officials had refused. In Hebrew, there is a word for the reason: staam. A reason that is no reason. Caprice. Officially, they said they feared he might make a bomb out of the candles. A bomb? Come on. The assertion was ridiculous, and everyone knew it, but time after time the authorities wielded their power against religious inmates, particularly this one. They told him to build a hannukiyah by hollowing out potatoes, filling them with vegetable oil, and using scraps of linen as wicks. Yoram was incredulous and angry. This was

Israel, the land of the Jews! And he’d have to make a hanukkiyah as Jews were forced to in the camps in Poland?

The strange and almost quixotic thing about Yoram is that he did not give up. Perhaps logically, he should have, for really, there was little hope, but he greeted their refusal with disbelief and a sense of justice that things ought to be different. And he prevailed: he got his hanukkiyah, even though it took the intervention of a Knesset member, Rehavam Ze’evi.

The story of the hanukkiyah is a parable that helps me understand the source of Yoram’s strength, a strength that enabled him to actually thrive even with a life sentence. Paradoxically, even in a situation that can drive others to hurt themselves, Yoram found his faith in G-d strengthened. I wanted to find out why. In the end, I discovered a modern-day story that mirrors the story of Chanukah itself. As the Maccabees found themselves in an internecine cultural struggle, so did Yoram. His is a story of ultimate dedication, simple faith, and the deepest kind of love. Even if you vehemently oppose the action that landed him to prison, look at what he did once he

was there. His story shows how a person’s spirit can flourish even amidst intense suffering.

When A Jew is Murdered… and Another, and Another

The day I meet Yoram, he’s painting a house, and his clothes are ragged and smeared with white stains. He comes across as humble, with soft, quiet eyes, and a self-effacing and deferential manner. If you were in a hurry, Yoram is the type of guy who’d offer that you cut in line ahead of him. He eschews publicity. This is his first interview for an English-language news magazine since he was released from prison nearly twenty-two years ago.

Yoram’s story begins in 1993. He was 24, and he and his wife Sigalit had a fifteenmonth-old baby girl. They lived near Hebron. Yoram worked as a school bus driver while studying to be a teacher; Sigalit was already teaching kindergarten. Every day, as they would drive to work, Arabs on the hills above would shoot at cars with Israeli license plates and hurl down cinder blocks and homemade grenades. And in the cities, it was a festival of bus-bombing

and Jew-stabbing. The PLO justified it all by branding it a spontaneous “intifada” –in Arabic, “uprising,” against the Jewish occupation of Judea and of all of Israel. For Yasser Arafat, the war made strategic

sense. Quietly, PLO and Israeli negotiators were working out what they would reveal on September 13, 1993 as the Oslo Accords. Israel would cede control over much of its Biblical heartland in exchange for Arafat’s promise of peace.

Israeli lawmakers debated: was it moral to give up the holy land that G-d had given Jews for the sake of saving lives? The argument turned out to be a canard. Even as the deal was percolating, the result was more dead Jews, not fewer, and the reason was predictable: from the PLO’s perspective, violence was working; Israel was surrendering land. It was rational, then, to attack more. From Israel’s perspective, the idea of Oslo was that Arafat would police the Arabs so that Israel didn’t have to, and Prime Minister Rabin had to give him a chance. That is why the months before Oslo were open season on Jews, as were the years following it.

In the region of Hebron, murders of Jews were attempted every day, and funerals of Jews were held almost as frequently. Yes, terrorists were caught, but they were released only a few years later, in exchange for a kidnapped Israeli soldier, or for the body of a kidnapped Israeli soldier, or simply as a “gesture of goodwill” to Arafat. Once released, these terrorists continued doing what they’d been so good at: murder. The phenomenon of terrorist-commitsmurder-is-jailed-is-released-commitsmurder-again was so common it became a running gag for comedians. In one skit, two Arabs want to earn a degree, so what do they do? Why, kidnap a soldier. They’re sent to jail, where they get PLO stipends and free education, until – to their chagrin – they are freed in a prisoner exchange! Before completing their degree! So what to do? Kidnap another soldier, of course. When I watched this show, I laughed. The reaction of someone who does not live in this environment is horror.

During these months, Yoram called emergency dispatchers to report close to one-hundred attempted murders on the road. His greatest fear was for his wife. Si-

galit’s car had been smashed by rocks again and again, and Arabs threw a stun grenade at her. But he and Sigalit never discussed moving away. That would not have been just a personal defeat; it would have been a national one. So it was for the entire nation that the Skolniks and thousands like them clung to these hills of Judea, despite all the dangers.

And then, one March day in Jerusalem, at the ORT Canada school, an Arab went on a stabbing spree. The principal heard the students screaming, and, unarmed, raced out of his office and tackled the terrorist.

Prime Minister Rabin called on citizens to

used his knife; if he hadn’t been stopped, he’d have used the grenade, too. Children’s mutilated bodies would have been strewn across the courtyard. On the other hand, the terrorist’s hands were tied; Yoram could afford to wait for the police, and he could avoid going to jail; but then, this terrorist would be sentenced to a few years, and he’d return to this school or to another, and there would be more dead. Yoram saw these scenes as already scripted; such was the political climate.

Yoram describes the turmoil that pulsated through him. The indecision. The uncertainty. And then, the piercing realization

say, seeking approbation at his expense. If you’re a marginalized “obstacle to peace” in Judea, and you want to be accepted by your enlightened, cosmopolitan brethren in Tel Aviv or Geneva, you vilify Yoram Skolnik. You’re not like him. You wouldn’t do anything like that.

But another explanation is that they genuinely thought he did wrong. After all, if everyone does “what is right in his own eyes” – the refrain of Sefer Shoftim – the result will be anarchy. Jews are supposed to be moral exemplars, and that, according to Israel’s doctrine of “purity of arms,” means not to harm those who pose no immediate threat; and here, the terrorist’s hands were tied.

What many could not see – but what many Jews on the ground felt – was that the army’s hands were tied, too. Deferring to the army works when the army is doing its job. But what about when the army isn’t?

His words resonated in Yoram’s ears the very next day.

To Kill a Would-Be Killer

Yoram’s emergency walkie-talkie crackled with an alert of a terrorist attack in the town of Susya, near Hebron. He arrived before police and found the terrorist lying on the ground, his hands tied with twine. The Arab had been lurking near a school and stabbed one person, but Jews overpowered him, searched him, and found a hand grenade. They assumed he’d planned to lob it into the schoolyard while kids were playing.

Yoram recalls his moment of decision, looking down at the terrorist, lying near his bloody knife. The grenade, now out of his reach. Yoram thought: this guy’s already

that he could act no other way. With that knowledge came great relief – and action. Yoram raised his gun and fired.

“I felt, at that moment, that I had done the right thing,” Yoram tells me quietly.

He felt he had no other choice in order to save other Jews.

He never imagined that his action would ignite a national debate about a citizen’s role in security. Near Hebron, at the gate of the Jewish city of Kiryat Arba, a banner proclaimed, “We are all Skolnik.”

But in Susya, some residents denounced Yoram to police, to reporters – to anyone, really, who would listen. In his eyes, their betrayal stung even more since he had sped to the scene to help them; the terrorist had threatened their children. Not only were they not defending him, they were selling him out – arguably, his supporters

The debate reflected a cultural divide in Israeli Jewish society that continues to this day. Some believe that this land is ours by divine right and that a Jew’s life is more precious than a terrorist’s; others believe that “divine right” is xenophobic, that a terrorist must have suffered a trauma or injustice and should be given a second and third chance, that this land is not really ours, that we should look to the West for guidance, and, and above all, for acceptance. Oft-repeated mottos on the street include, “Make Israel Great Again,” referring to former President Trump. You also hear, “Israel needs a Putin.” Many Israelis want to be accepted (not entirely clear by whom), but whoever it is should be big and powerful. We haven’t quite grown up yet; we lack confidence to stand on our own.

Lest you think we’ll mature in a decade or two, open the Book of Samuel. Thousands of years ago, the Israelites beg the prophet to “give us a king like all other nations.” Sounds cosmopolitan. But one moment. We also revere Shimshon, David, and the Maccabees – all

“take personal responsibility for maintaining security.”

You have two choices in that situation. You can go crazy, knowing you can't help and feeling the pain, or you can believe Hashem will help.”

heroes in our struggle for national and religious independence. So we Jews are caught between countervailing forces. And the tension between them is the essence of the Chanukah story.

You may have grown up thinking that Chanukah is a story of religious freedom of the Jews against the Greeks. But read the Books of the Maccabees, and you’ll see it was also a civil war. The Hellenized establishment Jews against ragtag bands of radical vigilante extremists who lived in caves in the hills of Judea and Samaria and believed in “religious coercion.” Those “nutcases.” Those “zealots.” As you light the hanukkiyah this year, as you celebrate their victory, remember: that’s what we’d call them today.

No one wants to be considered a “bloodthirsty nutcase.” The Susya residents were protesting their innocence: to kill is immoral; since they had not killed, they were not immoral.

Light Behind Bars

Yoram was jailed and charged with murder in the first degree. He was stunned. He was sure that once he explained what had happened, the judges would understand, especially given Rabin’s statement about individual Jews taking responsibility for security.

Public opinion was divided; many supported him, including the Rishon LeTzion, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu. But in Israel, over 90% of defendants are found guilty; Yoram was no exception.

After sentencing, he was moved to a special prison ward for religious Jews. Since he was a political offender, he could not be jailed in a mixed ward with both Jews and Arabs.

Yoram, painfully, recalls that he offered his wife a divorce. He thought it the right thing to do.

“I could not expect her to go on as a living widow,” he said.

None of the inmates sentenced to long years remained married. But Sigalit re -

fused his offer. Every week, she came to visit him with their little girl. She would spend long hours waiting for buses and lose an entire workday. She would drag with her bags of canned food and vegetables, since the kashrut of prison food was questionable in Yoram’s eyes. Sometimes, she would be turned back at the prison gates and sent home without explanation. Other times, she was allowed in, but only for an hour in the main room crammed full of inmates and their families, constantly watched by wardens. In his little girl’s preschool, children taunted her that she would never see her father free. His wife struggled to pay the bills.

“You have two choices in that situation. You can go crazy, knowing you can’t help and feeling the pain, or you can believe Hashem will help. I believed Hashem would help her, and me, in our individual struggles,” Yoram said simply.

What kept him going was the knowledge that he had done the right thing. He was not tormented by that question, as other inmates were about their own actions. He also believed that really, only Hashem controlled his fate, not a human judge, not a prison bureaucrat, not even Israel’s president, who had the power to commute his sentence. So Yoram was in good hands. Hashem does only good. If he was in jail, there was a reason. He didn’t need to understand the reason, and he didn’t try. If Hashem wanted to free him, He would do so instantly. Yoram kept meditating on those simple thoughts over and over, until he cultivated what he calls a complete and blind faith in Hashem.

“You could call it repression or self-protection,” he admits.

But it worked. With all the uncertainty whether he would ever be released, and with the knowledge of the suffering of his wife and daughter, Yoram was, perhaps eerily, relaxed and at peace. He was a passenger in the car. The Master of the Universe was at the wheel.

So it was that even with a life sentence, he believed that his freedom was imminent.

Illogical? Yes. Against all odds? Certainly. Insane? Arguably. Yoram looked at the world of logic and disregarded it. He didn’t need it. He had a better, more effective tool for dealing with suffering: belief, blind belief, belief so simple that sophisticates would scoff at it as childish. There’s a word for it in Hebrew: temimut. It brings to mind something beautiful and rare and fragile and wholesome. One of Yoram’s beliefs was that the situation was so ridiculous it could not possibly go on. Hashem would not let it go on.

“I think the approach of faith was correct,” he reflects.

The years dragged on. He told me that during that time his faith became simpler, perhaps because it had to. He kept repeating: this is absurd, I know it’s so absurd, it’s so absurd that I know Hashem will bring me out of this place. Even more remarkably, Yoram hadn’t grown up with this faith; it had begun to grow within him when he was about nine years old and had matured and blossomed in prison.

Yoram was a child of secular kibbutznik parents. When he was nine, they moved to the United States. Yoram’s mother was traditional, what Israelis call a masortit. She had a quiet belief in G-d and kept Shabbat in her way. She did not want Yoram to grow up without any Judaism, so she sent him to a Chabad school. Yoram fell in love with Chabad. He describes the teachers as bursting with exuberance of life and radiant with the joy of their connection to Hashem and the Jewish people. It was this warmth, this love, which first planted the seeds of connection in him.

Over the years, he learned more about Judaism, and as a teenager, he decided to become religious. His parents supported him. When they returned to Israel, Yoram attended The Jerusalem Yeshiva for Youth, a deeply spiritual high school which follows Rav Kook’s teachings. It was this school which taught him the missing third link to G-d and the Jewish people: the Land. Yoram went on to study in the yeshiva of Hebron, then served in the IDF as a mili-

tary intelligence officer. When he married, it was the love of the Land which caused him to choose to live in a town on the outskirts of Hebron.

In prison, Yoram could not pursue his teaching degree, since, he says, the university program was offered only to the mixed ward and to Arab terrorists, so he studied Torah. He taught a Talmud class after the evening prayer. He attended classes of rabbis who drove long distances to spend time with the inmates. But even in the religious ward, prison is an ugly place. The inmates there were a mix: political offenders, such as Yoram; religious Jewish criminals; Jewish members of crime families who could not be jailed in the regular wards for fear they’d be offed by other crime families; and regular Jewish criminals who’d convinced prison authorities that they were newly observant (ba’alei teshuva) so they could benefit from the religious ward’s better conditions.

Yoram got along with most of the inmates, even those who had been jailed for heinous crimes such as murdering their

Yoram with his wife Sigalit

own family members. Most of the prisoners believed the worst about each other, but Yoram wondered to himself: is it possible that the judge made a mistake? Is it possible that the inmate is honestly protesting his innocence? Who was he, Yoram, to decide the man was a liar – or worse? And so Yoram treated everyone with dignity and respect.

He also helped fellow inmates with their appeals to the court for better conditions. For example, the prisoners did not have showers, only a hose attached to the wall above a hole in the ground, which served as a toilet. Anyone wanting to shower had to stand on the edges of that hole. It was not just unsanitary, it was disgusting and humiliating. The appeal was accepted. Proper toilet, not just hole in the ground? Accepted, but only for Yoram, since only his name was on the appeal. Toilet not in the inmates’ room, so they could daven in the morning? Denied. Chanukah candles? Denied, until MK Rehavam Zeevi intervened. Sifrei kodesh to restock the few ratty books in the prison beit midrash? Denied. The inmates resorted to smuggling in Gemaras.

Yoram carved out meaning for himself because he clung to the belief that G-d does only good. He had to explore the goodness of the situation, pursue light, and, in its absence, create it. He fought to receive food of a better kashrut not only because he believed the other kashrut wasn’t really kosher – but because the struggle itself proved to him that even in prison there was still something worth fighting for, something worth living for. That’s the hanukkiyah. It’s resistance, it’s meaning, it’s connection to G-d. His wife says he would teach their daughter Torah via telephone from prison, even though every minute cost money. His quest for the light brought him light. Faced with adversity, many people conserve their energy. But conservation of energy doesn’t fuel your soul; expenditure of energy does. It’s the collapsing inward that’s deadly.

His faith was so simple, so pure, so childlike, he became impervious to set-

backs. They did not depress him. He would press reset and expect that at the next appeal he would succeed. There was seemingly no cumulative, corrosive effect of failure. Every time an appeal was turned down, he was more incredulous than disappointed: how could Hashem allow this injustice to go on?

As Yoram pauses to drink some of the tea which cooled long ago, I repeat his question to him: how can you believe in a G-d Who allows injustice to go on? The age-old question posed by the Book of Job, which resurfaced in our parents’ generation about the Holocaust.

scrutiny and forced them to make changes. They got back at Yoram in the ways they could: sometimes, during visiting hours, they would place a heavy metal screen between Yoram and his wife; other times they would turn her back at the gate. The revenge was petty and painful, and when I asked Yoram if he hated them for it (or, for that matter, if he hated the Susya residents who testified against him at his trial), Yoram was frankly surprised. He told me that although he was imprisoned in an ugly whitewashed building in the rundown city of Lod, their prison was far worse –the prison of the spirit. In the struggle of

Court was rejected, he had no further legal recourse; his only hope was that President Weizman, a left-wing secularist, would pardon him.

Political Chaos, Personal Freedom

1997 rolled around, and with it, one of the worst embarrassments for the Israeli Mossad. “The Khaled Mashal Affair” was their botched plot to murder Mashal, a Hamas kingpin in Jordan. Not only had they failed, Mossad agents had been exposed and arrested by Jordanian police. It was an international scandal, made worse by the fact that the Mossad agents initially claimed to be Canadian tourists. Israel frantically tried to free its agents and to mend rifts. It agreed to all Jordanian demands, including freeing seventy-one Hamas terrorists.

Israelis on the street, including families of those murdered by Mashal and his henchmen, were furious. President Weizman agreed to meet a supporter of Yoram’s, Shmuel Medad, who went on to form the Honenu legal rights organization.

Yoram thinks for a moment. A person deeply perturbed by the question must, he says, seek answers – but he himself had not been perturbed by it. With simplicity that astounded me, Yoram explained that he knew it could not go on. And if it was going on – if appeal after appeal was rejected –then there was a reason. He, Yoram, didn’t need to know the reason. All he needed to know was that he must do good in the situation he found himself in. He knew Hashem was with him; he knew, too, that he had done the right thing. His belief was so strong he felt serene. I asked Yoram if he was ever angry at G-d. He smiled and said no: “I was the one who pulled the trigger.”

Yoram’s quiet activism in prison may have made him popular among inmates, but it infuriated prison authorities. His constant appeals put them under judicial

morality and Jewish identity, they were lost, clinging to cultural fads, or, worse, to power. He felt genuinely sorry for them. One day, he knew, he’d get out of prison. Would they?

The inmates in the religious ward, except the political inmates, squabbled and fought. Knifings were common. Once, Yoram saw one inmate holding a makeshift knife creep up behind another prisoner. Yoram sprang at the attacker, slapping the knife out of his hand. The furious inmate screamed at Yoram that friends outside would slaughter his child. Yoram experienced a momentary flash of terror before he calmed down: Hashem would protect his child. He, Yoram, had prevented a death. He had done the right thing.

Still, the years behind bars stretched on. When Yoram’s appeal to the Supreme

“The President showed me his hand and turned it over,” Medad recalls. “He told me, everything you think, I think the opposite. But of one thing you’ve convinced me. If we free Arabs, we free Jews.”

Weizman commuted sentences of fourteen Jewish political offenders, including Yoram. Yoram’s life sentence was cut to fifteen years, then to eleven years. Some restrictions were eased: he was now allowed to visit his wife and child at home once a month.

By this time, Yoram had been in prison seven years. As with every prisoner who serves two-thirds of his sentence, Yoram was up for an early parole. It was granted by prison authorities but rejected by the Supreme Court, following an appeal by Zehava Galon, leader of the Left-wing Meretz party. It was another six months before he was allowed to appeal. The appeal was turned down. Yoram served another year before prison authorities once again grant-

He had a better, more effective tool for dealing with suffering: belief, blind belief, belief so simple that sophisticates would scoff at it as childish.

ed him early parole, and, once again, an appeal was filed against his release. This time, it was rejected by the Supreme Court, and he was released.

At the Knesset, left-wing and Arab parties convened a hearing to protest Yoram’s upcoming release. Arab MKs claimed that there were double standards, since a Jew who murdered an Arab is released early, while Arabs who murder Jews are not (they conveniently forgot those seventy terrorists released in the Khaled Mashal affair and others that were released in the years that followed). They then demanded that if Skolnik were released, Arab terrorists should be released as well. Despite the fact that both the Left-wing MKs and the Arab MKs

opposed Yoram’s release, the Left-wing MK Yosef Paritzky inadvertently threw a wrench into the opposition. He responded that the Arabs’ demand for the release of Arab terrorists indicated the Arab MKs supported Yoram, since they don’t believe terrorists should serve time at all. Confusion followed his statement. The meeting ended without a conclusion.

Yoram was released in 2001 on condition that he undergo therapy, post bond, and not live in Judea or Samaria. Israeli media heralded him as anything from a hero to a murderer of a murderer. Typically, international media neglected to mention that he’d killed a terrorist, choosing to frame the story as a settler/Jew killing an

“Arab man” or “Palestinian.”

Yoram’s challenges did not end with his release. Adjusting to life as a free man, he recalls, meant assuming responsibility. Prison teaches you to be passive, to do as you’re told; being innovative and economically responsible for a family is a huge change. The family lived from month to month. Yoram worked at any job he could find: real-estate broker, sofer stam, and then house painter, his profession until today.

The Legacy of the Chanukah Candles

Israel’s soul-searching continues today in the debate about a death penalty for terrorists. Essentially, Yoram was making the case for such a law in 1993. If you put a terrorist to death, you don’t give the PLO an incentive to kidnap an Israeli soldier to bargain for his release. Thus, a death penalty for terrorists would save Jewish lives. Had there been such a law, Yoram would not have fired those shots. He would have felt that the state was fulfilling its responsibility of protecting its Jewish citizens. He’s not sorry for what he did; for him, it was an act of deep love towards his fellow Jews.

Today, Yoram and his wife have eight children. His back is slightly stooped from labor and from time, but his eyes are a clear and straightforward blue. When we sit down for the interview, he asks me: “Do you want the real story, or what they published at the time?”

I want the real story, of course. But more than that, I want the backstory: what he felt when it happened, why he remained religious despite tribulations, and how his family succeeded in sticking together. I want to understand his internal quietude, the radiance, and the humility. I want to understand the secret of the faith that sustained him while in prison and helped him transition afterwards. Tears, trouble, and fear are the chaotic backdrop to the persistent human question: did I do right?

And how much louder and more persistent is this question for those whom so -

ciety has condemned as wrong. It takes a great faith in G-d, as well as a deep knowledge of the internal compass within, to cling beyond a doubt to the conviction that you did right. To live with the palpable feeling of G-d’s presence around you, knowing that He does only good. To be proactive and to do what good you can and to believe there is a reason and purpose. To pray and to believe your prayers are being heard. To remain steadfast in a relationship with G-d, even when that, too, is condemned as “fanatic” and “extremist.” Because the internal fight in Israel, as it has been since Jews returned to the Land from Egypt, is not only a nationalist one: it is a theological-moral-cultural one. We commemorate this struggle and indicate which side we support; once a year, we light candles for eight days running.

Whether you feel a visceral connection with G-d or it’s something you have to work on, Yoram’s story shows that faith in G-d is something you can cultivate. He did it through extreme focus even under extreme stress. Much as soldiers describe their extreme focus in combat: bullets go whizzing past, smoke, you can barely see, you just focus on your job. You load one shell after another. An explosion. Did you hit them? Did they hit you? You see blood. You drag your friend away. Oh. He’s not the one bleeding, it’s you. You didn’t even notice. You were just focused on your job. Yoram stayed focused on his beliefs: Hashem does only good. There is good here. I must find it. I did the right thing. Ergo, this is absurd. Soon He will set me free. Over and over and over. That was his compass. Forget about logic, alternatives, or details. Amidst confusion, simplicity. The focus quiets the mind, rejuvenates the soul. No matter the turbulence of the outside world. It’s just you and me, G-d. Just us.

A person like that has those candles burning inside all year round. They never go out. Comments? Email ronit.segev@ contactoffice.net.

Zak williams Talks about the Power of comedy, community, and connection

By SuSan Schwamm

mental health challenges and issues have, in the past, been spoken about behind closed doors. now, a community initiative, nafshenu alenu, in partnership with the Five Towns Gural Jcc, is helping to bring these subjects to the forefront of our conversations, highlighting ways that we can help each other with regards to mental health struggles. It’s an organization that is passionate about helping to band our community together to support mental health awareness.

Stuart Katz and Rabbi Dr.

yehuda Septimus are the forces behind nafshenu alenu.

Over the course of the next few months, nafshenu alenu will be presenting weekly programs focusing on different mental health topics. Each week, a guest speaker will speak in a different shul or community center in the Five Towns and address a different mental health subject, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders.

The first forum took place in Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst earlier this month and featured Zak williams, mental health advocate and son of comedian Robin williams. Zak took a few moments of his time to speak with TJh about his passion for mental health, his mental health journey, and why community support is so vital for people’s wellbeing.

Zak, you recently kicked off the Nafshenu Alenu initiative in the Five Towns community with the first event held at Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. What was the gist of your message for the community in your speech?

The focus was on a topic I call mental hygiene, which can be different for different folks, but it generally revolves around nutrition, fitness, mindfulness, meditation, potentially prayer, community support, therapy – things like that. In kicking off the Community Focus series for Nafshenu Alenu, we wanted to focus on the discussion around community support because that’s a universal need for people in terms of helping. Connection and community is essential. And that is effectively the core theme of the series and for Nafshenu Alenu.

In the past, and probably present as well, mental health issues have been placed under the rug, behind the closet, behind 20 locks on a door. There’s generally been a big stigma to mental health issues – and not just in our community, I would say even in the whole world.How do we bring out community support for these issues that in the past have been something that’s been dealt with so hush-hush?

Well, I think the challenge is that often mental health and discussing mental health issues is conflated with dealing with serious mental illness, but the fact is we all deal

with mental health on a spectrum. And the more that we can acknowledge that, the more we can break the stigma down relating to things like serious mental illness, but also, we can look at where we all fit as individuals on that spectrum at different points in our life.

I think that’s really where we need to be thinking about how our communities can evolve to accept the fact that there is a spectrum, that each one of us is on our own mental health journey, and ideally, we can find meaningful connection and happiness along that spectrum. In the United States, the challenge is that the terms “mental health” and “crisis” are synonymous with one another. And as a result of that, when we talk about mental health, we think about crisis care.

But the good news is, when we talk about mental health, if we introduce the topics of prevention, of everyday activity like mental hygiene, we can actually layer it meaningfully into the daily conversation in a way where it doesn’t involve someone ending up having to be institutionalized. Someone had an overdose. Someone ended up hurting themselves or others. That’s crisis, and really what we need to orient is way before any of that happens, how can we identify things we can do to take care of ourselves? How can we identify issues that are starting to snowball? How can we discover and learn about ourselves, our families, our community, our friends, and say, “Hey, you’re not taking care of yourself. Let’s find out ways in which you can?”

That’s what I love about this community initiative, because it upholds all the values of Jewish culture, Jewish community, but also brings forth an accessibility in the conversation. For me, I find that a program like this is essential. It needs to exist not only in spiritual institutions but in institutions everywhere. We need to be able to think about prevention. We need to be able to think about taking care of ourselves so that we can show up for others. It’s the very meaning of service.

of the recovery community. And, fun fact, I’m of Jewish heritage.

Really? I didn’t know.

We only found out a few years ago. My maternal grandmother was adopted into an Italian-American family. She was Jewish.

Wow. Zak, welcome to the fold.

Thanks. We only found out a few years ago, but it was interesting. But I think it’s important. The reason why I bring up spiritual practice and the like is because I think it’s an essential element for so many people’s mental hygiene rituals. And where I think things can kind of go awry

You spoke about mindfulness and gratitude. Are there any rituals that you do daily or weekly to focus on gratitude?

Yes. I wake up in the morning and I list several things – doesn’t need to be more than a few – that I’m grateful for, that I can ground my day in. Personally, I’m very appreciative of my family, my children and my wife, my siblings, and my parents. And then extending beyond that, the opportunity to be of service, to be grounded in the capability of taking care of myself, to show up for others. That’s something I’m deeply grateful for. I’m grateful of the work that I’m able to do, and I’m very grateful of my health because it’s something that if I take for granted, one day it could be taken from me. Every day it’s a blessing that I have my health.

You mentioned that you’re so grateful for your family. Do you feel that being a dad has given you a different outlook on certain things?

is if we just rely upon doing something once a week, once a month. In this day and age, in this modern era, just therapy is not going to cut it, right? We can’t just do one thing occasionally. We really need to think about how we can integrate daily habits into our lives to live richer, more meaningful, more connected lives. But the universal of it, and something that I find deeply important, is connection is everything. And a constant across the board is community.

Absolutely. Well, it gives me an outlook specifically around mental health. One of the reasons why I do the work I do is that I can hopefully contribute to change that will enable my children to grow up in a stigma-free world. That’s one of the chief drivers of motivation for me.

How do you take care of yourself and focus on your mental hygiene?

Community is front and center there. Meaningful connection with others, service, nutrition, and mindfulness – mindfulness really grounded in gratitude. My personal spiritual practice is related very much to recovery. I’m part

What do you mean by connection to the community?

People being connected with one another. You can’t thrive in isolation. This is so essential to the work of

Over the past few years, mental health issues are becoming topics that are being discussed openly. Have you seen that in the work that you do?

I have. But we’re also now unifying it under the topic of mental health. Now that we’re able to really start identifying and be open and vulnerable about our feelings and positions on these types of topics, I think that is a positive evolution in the right direction.

Stuart Katz and Rabbi Yehuda Septimus and Nafshenu Alenu because they emphasize community. They emphasize in-person connection. And that’s an absolutely essential element of it.

“we need to be able to think about taking care of ourselves so that we can show up for others.”

With the audience at the Nafshenu Alenu event

Zak with Stuart Katz and Rabbi Yehuda Septimus at the recent event

124 Can you tell us a bit about your journey into mental hygiene and mental health?

After my father died by suicide, I was having a really tough time of things. I was doing unhealthy things like self-medicating using alcohol to manage my anxiety, depression, and the complex PTSD I was diagnosed with. And I realized something had to change, and I had to focus on specifically the advocacy to start the healing process. But in order to do that, I first needed to show up for myself and say, “Hey, I’m worth it.” That’s what ultimately kicked off my journey.

types of anxieties. In the developed world, we are exposed to so much. We’re over-marketed to. There’s so much news. There are so many stressors. There’s technology; there’s social media. So it’s a different type of stress and anxiety that’s cropping up. Also, the food that we’re eating can be less nutritious if we’re eating fast food or processed foods. There’s more sugar. There are just all these different things that are contributing to more stress on our systems. The main thing is being aware of what it is

who went through the Holocaust, there is also the nature of generational trauma. It also manifests in the activation and de-expression of genes through epigenetics. It’s important to acknowledge that there’s the trauma of the Holocaust not only in survivors but also in their descendants.

Is there something that we can do to reach out to the younger generation to teach them about mental hygiene?

There’s a part of me that wants younger children to start slowly in their discovery journey. You don’t want to immerse people into everything relating to mental health and crisis and so forth off the bat. I think the time to really focus on education is high school specifically. And then younger than that, of course, we want to layer in education, but we want to start slow.

Nowadays, we hear of many more children and teens having anxiety issues. Do you feel that children or teens nowadays have more anxiety than years ago or is it just being labeled in a different way that it used to be?

That’s a really good question. I say there’s different

that’s stressing us out and understanding historically that what we’re dealing with now is a different animal. And when I say “we” I mean not only the Jewish community but cultures all throughout the world. And so, the lens that I have is different. And we need to acknowledge it in new and innovative ways so that we can deal with the stress and the traumas and the anxieties of everyday life in a way that best supports them.

When we talk about Jewish communities and those

You said that your father, Robin Williams, in a way, started you off on this journey towards mental health when he took his own life. But what wonderful lessons do you have from your dad that you take with you on this journey and keep with you today?

It’s very simple. What he instilled in me is to try to be kind, always.

It’s who he was. It was just part of his being. He was a kind person, and he shared with me that the importance of kindness takes precedence over everything else.

Did you feel that his humor was a way to deal with things, or was that just the natural disposition that he had?

His way of performing through stand-up, through acting, and so forth was his way of managing. It was soothing for him. He loved to perform because it helped calm him and helped invigorate him. He was pretty introverted. But at his foundation, performing really related to him feeling like he was being of service. He loved helping people laugh.

“connection is everything. and a constant across the board is community.”

Dating Dialogue What Would You Do If…

Dear Navidaters,

I’m desperately seeking advice and would appreciate the diversity of your panel’s perspective.

I’m dating a great girl for the past two months. She is everything I’m looking for, and I am attracted to her. The problem is there are sometimes we go out that I’m feeling much less attracted. This is particularly when we eat out. She eats a bit sloppily. Examples include: she takes big bites when eating, talks with her mouth full, will blow her nose at the table with a napkin, eats from the salad bowl directly with her fork. On a few occasions when we’ve eaten at friends’ houses for Shabbos, I’ve seen her pick at food with her fingers straight from the pan.

I grew up with parents who are OCD with cleanliness and are sticklers for proper table manners. I absolutely can’t bring her over for a meal, let alone marry her, the way she conducts herself at a table. It sounds dumb, but is it time to call it quits on the relationship because of these things or is there something I can do about it? I certainly don’t want her to change who she is for me...

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

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.

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

The Rebbetzin

Lisa Babich

Thank you for your question. As I read it, it seemed like a familiar one. That is because no matter who we marry we are coming from different cultures, backgrounds, upbringings and, yes, “rules of etiquette.”

I remember having a teacher who told us she once told her husband he was eating like a pig after he scarfed down food. They were from different countries and upbringings, and in his country calling a human a pig was the lowest insult imaginable. He was unable to talk to her for three days.

Why am I telling you all this? It seems that you and the girl you are dating come from very different upbringings surrounding table manners. With that said, you do like her, and it sounds like you are attracted to her as long as she is not eating. I think there can be a delicate way to discuss this with her. You know the dynamics of your relationship and if humor vs. serious talk is the best way to go. I think if she understands how sensitive this is to you and how much it is affecting your relationship, she will be open and able to change.

This is not the first time I have heard of this exact situation, and if both sides are willing to be flexible and grow, then there is no reason why this can’t work. This is not just in the area of table etiquette, but in many differences that can potentially come up in a relationship. I hope this helps, and I wish you much hatzlacha!

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

pick at the gooey part of the brownie they want to taste, or innocently lick their fingers at the table. This boils down to table manners. Many of these people did not learn that it was rude or unsightly to eat this way.

It also boils down to how the person has been “trained” at home. Unfortunately, our generation is very much “on the go.” It has become the norm to grab a bite to eat and eat it sloppily in the car while driving back to the office in time for lunch break to be over. If you open a social media app at lunchtime, you might see an influencer (or two, or three) sitting at a cafe with the camera towards them, taking messy bites from wraps, burgers or salads while promoting products. Talking while munching, lettuce falling out of their mouth, you get the gist. Our generation watches these things, and it becomes normal.

I am not going to say the girl you are dating must be sloppy or inappropriate, because it could just be this is a product of our society. However, seemingly, your family is the exact opposite. You care about manners and table decorum. This makes me wonder how much else is different that would bother you in a marriage as well. At the end of the day, you are the one who has to make this decision.

Without trying to change her, talk to her about your feelings. If this is something that won’t make a difference in her life, and she doesn’t mind working on it, you will have to be patient with her.

Remember, if you choose her, you are choosing her along with all of the idiosyncrasies that come with her. Good luck with this conversation, and I hope you have clarity!

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

Pygmalion (1913), Broadway’s My Fair Lady (1956), and Hollywood’s Pretty Woman (1990). In these tales, the gentleman transforms the girl from an uncivilized commoner into a refined princess. She, in turn, turns out to be a hidden gem with a heart of gold, who, simultaneously, helps the guy evolve into a much better version of himself.

These tales end with the couple living happily ever after. The question for you is can you succeed in changing your girlfriend’s table manners?

I see three dangers here: First, is it possible that you are experiencing commitment anxiety and are using this excuse to convince yourself that the relationship can’t succeed? Guys sometimes find similar excuses (“She walks or talks too fast,” or “She breathes too loudly”) in order to avoid commitment. Only you can answer that question.

Second, her eating habits might be symptomatic of a person who is generally sloppy, unhygienic, and difficult to live

with. Is her car filled with junk, and does it smell like a pigsty? If so, you might wish to end this relationship.

Third, in your efforts to “improve” her, she might conclude that are a very controlling person, despite your claiming that you, “Don’t want to change who she is.” You can be sure that she will be worrying, “Will I have to live with someone who will constantly complain that I am wearing too much or too little makeup?

L

et’s make this simple. If you cannot imagine bringing a girl home without being embarrassed by her, it is most likely she is not for you.

Now let’s get into the nitty gritty. I know many people who eat the way you describe. You will see them pick out leftovers straight from the pan after the meal, pick from the salad from the bowl,

Your story is a popular theme that appears often in Western civilization literature. A sophisticated, cultured gentleman takes an unsophisticated, uncouth young lady under his wing and teaches her how to dress, how to speak, and how to act in public.

Think of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew (1580), George Bernard Shaw’s

Remember, if you choose her, you are choosing her along with all of the idiosyncrasies that come with her.

Will I spend the rest of my life being told what to do and what not to do?” Most women would not wish to share their lives with an overly controlling husband.

So, can you succeed in improving her eating habits? You can try.

Remember that positive reinforcement works much better than negative reinforcement. Specifically, it is more effective to praise someone when they are engaged in

proper behavior, rather than criticize them when they are engaged in negative behavior.

Accordingly, it might be effective to praise her when you witness good table manners, by remarking: “I love the way you look so dainty and lady-like when you carefully cut your food into small pieces like that,” or “I find it so charming when you wouldn’t answer me when your

mouth was full.”

By contrast, it is rude and ineffective to remark: “I get nauseous when you eat with your fingers,” or “It’s disgusting when you speak with a mouthful of food.”

Psychologists use a term called the “Pygmalion Effect.” When good behavior is reinforced and when a person believes in his ability to succeed, it increases the probability of success.

Pulling It All Together

The Navidaters Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

As hard and uncomfortable as it may likely be, real couples have really hard conversations. If this is something that is on your mind so much so that you are considering breaking up, then you need to talk to your girlfriend about this. The way in which you do it is very significant as this is the type of conversation that can potentially make someone feel ashamed and/or leave her running for the hills. Put it all on you.

“There is something I want to talk

about. I grew up in a very proper home, maybe even a little too proper, bordering on OCD. I’m so into you. I’m crazy about you. I see a future with you. I am just struggling with my ideas around table manners. I notice that we are different when it comes to that. I’m wondering if you’ve noticed it, too. Would it be OK to talk about this? I’ve been concerned

Tzipora Grodko’s answer from last issue was inadvertently left out. We print her answer below.

Dear Atara, I know so many women who can relate to you, feeling confused by the hope and promise of a relationship while facing the reality of a “let’s just see where this goes” attitude. Simply put, the purpose of dating is for marriage. However, many men will date for the purpose of dating, unaware of their fears or disinterests towards marriage. This leads to broken hearts, confused and unhealthy relationships, and personal stag-

By contrast, psychologists use a term, called the “Golem Effect.” When bad behavior is reinforced and a person’s abilities are belittled, this negative stereotype is reinforced, and it decreases the probability of success.

Good luck, and let’s hope that this relationship has a happy, Hollywood ending.

about bringing it up because I don’t want to hurt you.”

Start with something like that, with the caveat that I am having a hard time telling if you’re a tad on the rigid side or your girlfriend truly is unmannered. Do you struggle with flexibility in other areas of your life? If you do, that may something worth looking into as you date and enter marriage, G-d willing. Rigidity is a characteristic that is very hard on a partner. If you don’t struggle with flexibility, please disregard.

Marriage is a lifetime of sensitive conversations. If you and the woman you are dating are meant to be life partners and travel this lifetime together, and if you present with sensitivity and kindness, you will be able to weather the storm of this conversation. If you are not for each other, better to know now.

Good luck and all the best.

Happy Chanukah to all!

Sincerely, Jennifer

nation. This non-committal (conscious or subconscious) attitude is even more common in relationships that don’t practice the laws of shomer negiah, as physical needs are being met, prolonging the attention of emotional and foundational priorities.

It sounds like you and Mark have passively fantasized about a future together, creating the expectation that you are committed to each other. However, his actions/words seem to reflect differently. The million dollar question is: Is he marriage minded? If Mike isn’t ready for that step (with anyone), then I don’t believe spending more time with you will change that. On the contrary, I think it’s the opposite. I think spending time

apart will clarify if he is ready to be in a committed relationship, or if he needs to work through his own emotional fears or concerns. If you feel like you want that commitment, talk it out. Gain clarity. Receive concrete responses and don’t give in to charismatic vague explanations. You know your worth and need to protect yourself while setting a standard.

I believe that the right person will fight to make the relationship work, and it will cause them pain to consider a future without you. That may be Mike, but you need to have a very serious talk with him to find out. I don’t think any of us can give you a definitive answer, but I truly believe that your heart knows what you deserve.

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. She also teaches a psychology course at Touro College. 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.

When good behavior is reinforced and when a person believes in his ability to succeed, it increases the probability of success.

School of Thought

By Etti Siegel

Q:Dear Etti,

My kids are upset, and it is a yearly occurrence. Everyone in school is talking about their Chanukah parties and their Chanukah vacation plans, and due to the fact that we live far from family, we don’t have Chanukah parties or vacation plans. To be honest, they are not the only ones miserable about the situation. I also get down this time of year, but I try not to show it.

-Party-less on Chanukah

A:

Dear Party-less on Chanukah, I know it feels like you are the only ones in this situation – I know as a fact that you aren’t! There are quite a number of families all home feeling the same way! A few people I know make a block, neighbors, or friends Chanukah party. They don’t wait to be invited; they initiate the fun.

But you don’t need to look outside your home for Chanukah fun! Sit down with your children and fill up your calendar with activities. This is a chance for your older children to take charge, and once they finish rolling their eyes (a teenager’s response in many cases), they will enjoy the power. There are so many ways your younger children can shine as well.

School nights need an hour or so of scheduled fun; vacation days need more.

Put on Chanukah music . There is so much research on music and how it makes people happy. This is a great time to infuse the atmosphere in your home with Chanukah music. Watch music change the mood!

Decorate the house . Let the children make signs and hang them all over the house. They can draw their own or color in pages from magazines or coloring books.

Play dreidel. You can use pennies, chocolate coins, chocolate chips, and even nuts can be fun! The game is in the spinning

and the surprise of what it lands on each time.

Bake cookies. Chanukah shapes are fun, but so is just the fun of baking cookies! Decorating cookies are even more fun, so put out lots of edibles and watch the kids create!

Make latkes.

Play homemade Chanukah games and party games Www.kosher.com has easy and fun Chanukah games you can play, guaranteeing a lot of laughs with very little preparation. There is a free downloadable matching game you can print and play as well. You can also play “Pin the Candle on the Menorah” if you have an artist in the house who can draw a menorah. Then all you need are a blindfold, strips of colored paper, and tape. Spin the blindfolded child around, then have them try to tape the candle to the menorah. So much fun!

Perform skits. They can be Chanukah-related, as they act out scenes from the Chanukah story, or they can be family parodies. The point is to have family bonding time, not Broadway shows.

Invite a couple that also lives far from family. There are so many couples with or without family, young and old, who are alone for Chanukah. They would appreciate an invite!

Invite a family with kids your kids’ ages, even if they have other Chanukah parties. Pick a night they aren’t busy and have supper and play games with them.

Here are pictures from a family I know throwing a fun party for neighbors. The 3rd and 4th graders ran the event under their mother’s direction and fun was had by all!

Accept your situation and turn it into a plus! Have fun!

Happy Chanukah, -Etti

Mrs. Etti Siegel holds an MS in Teaching and Learning/Educational Leadership and brings sound teaching advice to her audiences culled from her over 35 years of teaching and administrative experience. She is an Adjunct at the College of Mount Saint Vincent/Sara Shenirer. She is a coach and educational consultant for Catapult Learning, is a sought-after mentor and workshop presenter around the country, and a popular presenter for Sayan (a teacher-mentoring program), Hidden Sparks, and the Consortium of Jewish Day Schools. She is a frequent contributor to Hamechanech Magazine and The Journal for Jewish Day School leaders. She will be answering your education-based questions and writing articles weekly for The Jewish Home. Mrs. Siegel can be reached at ettisiegel@gmail.com.

Parenting Pearls

A Community for Every Child

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

Iwas recently speaking to an acquaintance who shared with me the sense of community her child felt after joining a group that shared the same hobby as her. I was happy for her child to have finally felt a sense of connection with a group of people that brought out so much positivity in her.

I was also deeply saddened. From previous conversations, I had understood that her child was not feeling accepted by the frum community around her. I was unsettled when the reality hit that a member of the Jewish people living among us felt disconnected from her peers yet camaraderie with an outside group. I asked myself, how is it that someone else gave her a greater sense of family than her own Jewish brothers and sisters?

We know there are 12 Shevatim and 70 faces to the Torah, yet we often have a more limited expectation of those we accept. Some children will look or sound different than our own but that makes them no less special. Sadly, it’s not unusual for kids to single out a peer or make fun of those that are different. I remember when I was younger, and a very overweight young man was running down the halls. I was embarrassed for him when another

child shouted out an impolite reference to his sprinting girth. He could’ve been the sweetest young man, but all the other boy saw was his overly large size.

Children should be encouraged to see beyond the physical presentation and limitations of others to see the beautiful neshama inside. While teasing and mocking certainly have no place in our community, even choosing to not be friends with another because of their externals is wrong and denies both of them the possibility of connecting to a wonderful person.

Characteristics such as height, weight, and coloring are all from Hashem. Hopefully, we are setting an example for our children as to how to treat others that may not look like ourselves. While this article certainly won’t address every scenario, it will cover a few areas we may want to encourage our children to be sensitive towards others.

We should never permit our children to be in a situation that is potentially risky to them in any way. Your child comes first, and their feelings and safety need to be the priority always. Most of the times that children exclude or tease others isn’t due to safety concerns but misunderstandings and outright meanness.

Speech Issues

I don’t generally watch movies nor do I have easy access to them. When a homeschooling mother that I respect highly recommended a film, I made an exception and decided it was worth the time. It was based on the true story of a teacher who suffered from Tourette’s syndrome. Tourette’s syndrome is a condition of the nervous system that causes sudden and uncontrollable tics such as twitches, movements or sounds. He suffered from the condition starting at a young age, and his frequent tics caused him much suffering and punishment from the adults around him. His goal was to become the teacher he never had and be there for his students.

His frequent tics – often consisting of loud barking noises – turned off many principals, and he failed numerous interviews before finally being hired as a classroom teacher. While there were definitely parents that hesitated to have their child in his class, far more begged to enter his classroom. The children quickly adjusted to the tics and enjoyed having a teacher who was so compassionate and dedicated to their education.

He went on to receive numerous

awards for his teaching. Rather than his vocal tics being a hindrance, they taught him how to be a caring adult that was sensitive to the needs of his students.

Many children are mocked for speech issues which may include a lisp, stuttering, or incomprehension. It’s never acceptable to mimic the speech patterns of a struggling person in order to tease them. These outward speech issues never affect the beauty of a person’s words, and we can easily teach our children that it’s worth the patience to hear another speak.

Parents of children with speech challenges should recognize their child’s struggles and be sensitive.

Family Dynamics

Shalom bayis is a bracha we all daven for. Unfortunately, not everyone is blessed to be raised in a home with two loving parents and devoted siblings. Families come in all varieties and may include single parent, stepparent, or grandparent-led families. While most children in our community will be blessed to have wonderful siblings, some don’t have any siblings at all, while other youngsters may have a sibling suffering from any of a number of issues. Sadly, some siblings

may even be abusive or unhealthy to be around.

Children are never at fault for their family’s home life and shouldn’t be penalized. It’s hard enough growing up in a home that is different from their peers or emotionally unhealthy. We certainly shouldn’t exacerbate the issue by discouraging our children from playing with them during recess.

While we naturally associate a traditional mother-father led family as the standard, it’s important to remember that any family arrangement has the potential to be conducive to a child’s growth and development. Unfortunately, there are homes led by a married couple that are far from loving, and each situation is unique.

When I was very young, one of the couples in our community divorced. Far from the support available today, divorce was extremely uncommon, and the family was treated like they were contagious. Our family maintained a closeness to them that has lasted till today.

It would be two decades later before their child confessed to me how she felt during that time. One point she made clear was how much she enjoyed being in our home. She described her home

life as quiet, yet everyone was miserable; coming into my parents’ home, the world could be flying but everyone was happy and she appreciated being with us.

You can’t send your child to a home where you are unable to guarantee their physical or emotional safety – from an adult or child – but that doesn’t preclude

bar mitzvahs, and graduation parties. These rules were created for a very important reason: it’s extremely painful for a child to discover they were left out. You may think the excluded child won’t find out, but they will eventually. Many adults can still remember being that youngster and finding out everyone had a great time

be singled out. I’d like to briefly mention a few more. Shy or quiet children may find it harder to make friends. Any child with special needs or experiencing social awkwardness will also risk being passed over by their peers. All these children can provide meaningful friendships once children learn to appreciate them.

We know it’s the middos of a person that matter, yet the outside is often what we focus on. Externals – such as height and weight – can all prompt teasing from children. How children dress and their family’s finances are all irrelevant to their internal value.

you from inviting that child over and hosting. Many children coming from unhealthy home environments have thrived being exposed to the loving home of a friend or mentor.

Parties

Birthday parties and other events ideally should include the entire class. Many

at an event they were excluded from.

Not every activity will require full class invites. If your child just wants a few buddies to join you at the park, you don’t generally offer the entire class. In these situations, we still want to invite in a way that it’s clear particular children weren’t being ignored.

Special Circumstances

There are so many reasons a child will

We can encourage our children to see the light inside others as they disregard that which is insignificant. When the flame of each neshama joins together, our nation’s fire burns that much brighter. May every member of Klal Yisroel feel connected to the whole.

Have a wonderful Shabbos Chanukah!

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.

I asked myself, how is it that someone else gave her a greater sense of family than her own Jewish brothers and sisters?

Eight Nights of Chanukah

By Tehila Soskel, RDN, CDN

Beautiful menorahs with flickering lights sparkle as you pass each window. The colorful decorations hang across your walls, and the house smells scrumptious. The stores are stocked with all types of delicious doughnuts, crispy latkes, and so much more. Everywhere you go it smells and feels like Chanukah.

I don’t know about you, but Chanukah is my favorite holiday. We are surrounded by family at parties, and there is so much happiness for all eight days – eight wonderful days and long nights that go by in a flash.

People often tell me that they find Chanukah to be difficult with so much being revolved around food. Bigger and more lavish dinners served each night; higher-calorie foods that are not usually served being offered each day.

If you ask me, I find Chanukah to actually be one of the easier holidays to stay on track with our diets. For most of us, the only meal that is bigger than usual is dinner. With all the other holidays, there are at least 2-3 meals a day which include washing on bread.

Firstly, it is important to remember to enjoy and appreciate the holiday and not let that be a reason to enjoy it any less.

Let’s discuss some ideas and tips to a healthier Chanukah while feeling our best. I want to preface by saying that everything is in moderation. You will not gain weight by having one latke, one doughnut, or a few chocolate coins. The key is to be able to enjoy, move on and be consistent.

Here are some tips to help you feel your best this Chanukah

1. Eat all your meals

Eat your regular breakfast and lunch as you would on any other day. Don’t skip. Skipping meals will cause you to overeat when you finally sit down at the meal.

2. Don’t

save up all your calories for one meal

Have you ever had a really busy day that you didn’t make time to eat and after running around you finally sat down to eat? Did you enjoy a regular portion as you would any other day? Or did you end up overeating more than usual?

Making sure to eat all your regular meals will help pace yourself instead of stuffing yourself when you finally sit down to eat.

In addition, try to not have the attitude that you’re going to save up your calories for a big meal later. Instead, have something light to hold you over. Some snack ideas include an apple with nut butter, veg-

just because it’s in front of you.

Do you ever eat something out of boredom or because the serving plate is in front of you? If you are hungry and want it, enjoy it. But if you’re not hungry and don’t care much for it, try to skip it.

7. Stay hydrated

We often mistake hunger for thirst. Make sure to be drinking at least 8-10 cups of water a day.

8.

Sleep

Sleep is so important for our health, and most of us do not get enough of it. Studies have shown that almost half of adults do not get the recommended amount of sleep of 7 hours a night. Try turning off your phone or any other electronics at least an hour before bed.

9.

Be realistic with your goals

etables and hummus, low-fat yogurt with berries, and cottage cheese with whole wheat crackers.

3. Slow down

The table is filled with all types of delicious foods and desserts, and you want to try it all. Firstly, it’s important to realize that it takes our brains around 15-20 minutes to signal to our stomachs that we are full.

I recommend that you make a plate for yourself, sit down , and don’t rush through it.

A balanced plate may look as follows: half your plate with non-starchy vegetables, ¼ protein, and the other ¼ whole grains.

4. Choose your foods Eat the foods you actually want, not

5.

Contribute to the meal

Bringing a salad or a healthy dessert can be a good way to ensure you’ll be able to choose a healthier option.

6.

Get moving

Move your body. It may be cold outside, but we can still bundle up and go outside for a bike ride, walk, or jog. Bundle up and get moving.

You also may be busier and not have as much time, so the best thing is to plan ahead.

Set realistic workout goals for yourself. For example: If you usually workout four times a week for 45 minutes, try to go two times a week for thirty minutes each time. If it’s less than that, it’s okay – try to move your body and get some exercise in.

If you try to restrict yourselves from everything, you will just want it all. Don’t make yourself crazy. The most important thing is to relax, enjoy the yom tov, and spend time with your family and friends. Learn to enjoy and be present.

I hope you find these tips helpful and focus on all the good things this yom tov. Remember to shift your focus to the more important things. If your meals don’t look the same as they usually do, or you don’t get to go to the gym as normal, move on. You’re human.

Have a freilechen Chanukah!

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

Bringing a salad or a healthy dessert can be a good way to ensure you’ll be able to choose a healthier option.

Grandmother Deja Vu

By Miriam Hendeles

We’ve all had the experience. You’re standing somewhere, in a particular situation of your daily life, and suddenly you think, “Hey, I’ve felt this feeling before. This feels so familiar... When did this happen to me? Where was I when it happened in the past?”

It’s called “having a deja vu.”

Just this morning, I had a deja vu experience.  Except the difference was that I didn’t wonder “where or when.”

I knew exactly where. And I knew exactly when.

It was as if I was back several decades ago, experiencing something in the exact same way.

Before I drive you crazy with wondering what in the world I’m talking about, I’ll tell you the story.

Normal Grandmother Stuff

Last night, my married son called me to ask if I could babysit the kids for one hour in the early morning.

“Just till my friend picks them up for carpool at 8 am, Ma, OK?”

“Sure – no problem. Just tell him to honk at 8, and I’ll bring them outside,” I answered my son.

No Deja Vu yet – very normal. Grandmother stuff. Watching the kids.

This morning, the kids came. One was watching a video on an iPad and the other was crying, “I want my Daddy! I want my Mommy!”

Still very normal.

At 8:05 am, while checking email, I received a call from my son.

“Ma, Joe* is waiting outside. Can you bring the boys outside?”

Deja Vu – All over again

“Sure,” and as fast as I could, I called, “Boys! Come! Get the backpacks! Let’s go! Carpool is waiting!!”

One kid ran out immediately. The younger one ran out, realized he forgot his lunchbox and then ran back in.

I helped Joe buckle my be-backpacked grandson in the backseat of the van, but I was feeling anxious that the 3-year-old was still, sans lunchbox, scrounging around the house for it... while the clock was ticking at their respective schools.

I turn around, and there is the little guy. “I has it, Omi! Here my lunth box!”

Great. Whew. I helped the lunchbox guy get into the car seat and Joe

strapped him in right next to Joe’s little daughter and son. I noted that Joe was just a tad nervous – probably about getting the kids to school on time, and a flash of that anxiety shot through my psyche as I recalled the same exact feeling all those years of carpool.

Dormant Feelings

The rushing, the panic, the last-minute tasks of breakfast, packing lunches (hopefully the night before), the watching the clock (the distractedness while the carpool arrives), the running out to the car.

The pride of the freshly washed and dressed children. All eager for their first day back at school after a long holiday vacation. Will they have a good day in school today? Will things go well for them?

These are feelings we never forget. We experienced them then. And we are having them again now –while observing the next generation go about their daily parenting activities.

We may be grandparents who just watch the kids for brief periods of time and then give the children back to their parents.

We grandmothers may seem as if we don’t “get it.” Like we don’t remember a thing about raising kids. But trust me, we remember. We recall. We never ever forget.

And yes, just a forgotten lunchbox held by a skipping pre-schooler down a front lawn to a waiting mini-van, filled with buckled-in kiddies, are enough to trigger those dormant feelings.

Just enough to get those feelings to tumble out all over the front sidewalk and cause me to go back into my house and sigh.

Ahh. Memories and deja vu.

These feelings empower me to have appreciation for what the younger generation is going through. To recall what it was like for us, and to be there to support them – when we can.

What do you think? Have you had a “been there, done that, and really remember the feelings” experience lately? How does that affect your relationships in a positive way?

JWOW! is a community for midlife Jewish women which can be accessed at www.jewishwomanofwisdom.org for conversation, articles, Zoom events, and more.

◦

In The K tchen

Cake Doughnuts

By Naomi Nachman

I recently recorded an episode of my show “Sunny Side Up” on kosher.com just in time for Chanukah. I had the creators of SML Cakes on the show. SML are three sisters who bake incredible cakes in the Five Towns and run an Instagram account @smlcakes. One of the sisters, Mikki Schaechter, baked doughnuts with me.

To watch the episode, go to Kosher.com and look for my show “Sunny Side Up.”

Ingredients

◦

½ cup margarine

2½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour

◦

1½ teaspoons baking powder

◦

¼ teaspoon baking soda

◦

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

◦

½ cup granulated sugar

◦

¼ cup light brown sugar

◦

2 eggs, room temperature

◦

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

◦

1 cup oat milk or other non-dairy milk, room temperature

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray doughnut pans with baking spray.

2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl

with a hand mixer, beat margarine and sugars on high speed until light and fluffy, about three minutes.

3. Reduce mixer speed to medium; add eggs and vanilla, beating until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low. Combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and baking powder, and then add mixture in two batches, alternating with milk, and beat just until combined.

4. Transfer batter to a piping bag or a re-sealable plastic bag and snip a half-inch hole in one corner of bag. Divide mixture evenly between prepared pans. Bang pans several times on counter to release air bubbles.

5. Bake until tops of doughnuts spring back when lightly pressed, 15 minutes. Let cool 20 minutes, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool before decorating.

6. To make icing for the doughnuts: Mix 3 cups of confectioners’ sugar with 3 tablespoons of boiling water. Mix until it’s a thick liquid. If it’s too thick, add a few more drops of water; if it’s too thin, add more sugar. Drizzle on doughnuts. Decorate the doughnuts with sprinkles as soon as you spread the icing before the icing dries, so the sprinkles will stick better to the doughnut.

Recipe shared with me from Shani Sulzberger, Mikki Schaechter, and Lily Eisenberg.

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

Pho

T o C ou RT e S y o F ko S he R . C o M

Mind Y ur Business

Jeanne Stafford: “Reinvention Happens Routinely”

This column features business insights from a recent “Mind Your Business with Yitzchok Saftlas”

show.

weekly “Mind Your Business”

–broadcasting since 2015 – features interviews with Fortune 500 executives, business leaders and marketing gurus.

former CEO of Apple and Pepsi; Dick Schulze, founder and Chairman Emeritus of Best Buy; and Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair of GE; among over 400+ senior-level executives and business celebrities. Yitzchok Saftlas, president of Bottom Line Marketing Group, hosts the weekly “Mind Your Business” show, which airs at 10pm every Sunday night on 710 WOR and throughout America on the iHeartRadio Network.

On a recent 710 WOR “Mind Your Business” broadcast, Yitzchok Saftlas (YS) spoke with guest Jeanne Stafford (JS), a leadership advisor, collaboration specialist, and a keynote speaker as well as the New York chapter president of the NSA (National Speakers Association).

* * *

YS: What can you tell us about collaboration and actually making it happen?

JS: You make it happen by realizing we’re not here to understand each other, at first. We’re here to understand ourselves, and we’re here to understand

what goals we have in common with the people we’re working with. The joy we receive by getting to understand and know people along the ride of achieving success together is greater than anything you could get at “hello.” What we learn by working together on a common goal is invaluable. That’s what true collaboration is. It’s trusting that our end game is the best thing to focus on together.

Is it really possible for one person to change another person?

It’s definitely the number one thing everybody wants to do. It’s top of mind for most people that I meet and work with. We energetically desire to change another

person. To get someone to do something. And I advise clients and audiences all the time that if you’d like to use your energy for that, go for it, but it is the worst use of your energy, talents, and ability to make things happen. The best focus of our energy is on ourselves, to become so knowledgeable about what it is we stand for, in a way that others are moved toward our goals. But putting our energy toward changing another person is a terrible use of our resources.

What is your suggestion when someone does need to work with someone else and there isn’t a meeting of the minds? How do you get them closer

to each other?

Always reframe every conversation to what you’re going to accomplish, in what timeframe you’re going to get it done, and who it is going to be done with. Repeat that over and over and over again.

When I start working with clients, they feel it’s very disingenuous to repeat something; to repeat a platform, a mantra, goals, over and over again. But it really helps to center people, opinions, agendas, and desires. If you’re leading something, it is the absolute best way to keep people on course. Messages need to be repeated to be understood. Every single person you meet with every single day has arrived at that space with a whole lot of things that went wrong and a few

radio

The

show

Prominent guests include John Sculley,

Jeanne Stafford

things that went right. So, their mind is scattered, and they need to be refocused in their time and energy. Our energy either helps us to shine and receive things, or it gives us an opportunity to block anything coming our way.

In 2022, what’s your take on what makes a leader impactful?

There are a lot of great leaders out there right now, who have risen to the occasion and will be the S.T.A.R.s of the future.

S.T.A.R. is the acronym I would use to describe them. “S” means they are setting parameters for every meeting they hold and every communication they have. “T” means they are taking time with the employees who are servicing the clients to find out where their strengths are being highlighted and how they can help them more. It’s not about micromanaging; it’s about saying to an employee, “What can I do to help you? What is it you need that I don’t know you need?” The “A” stands for “advocate.” Advocate for that employee, for their professional development going forward. There are a lot of things people working for us don’t know about their next step forward. The greatest leaders in 2022 are realizing that the exhaustive process of turnover is not worth it and the extra thoughtful steps we can all take to advocate for employees who are who are worth it is a much better use of our time. Finally, “R” stands for “reflect on that process.” Take it in. See where it works. There’s a lot of noise out there about what doesn’t work. But the most powerful people out there right now are reflecting on what does work, and they’re taking the time to develop that in themselves to become stronger and ready for the next great things coming their way.

What are the best leaders doing to advance their vision and effect change in society?

They’re learning that reinventing themselves isn’t just done on a special occasion. They’re learning that reinventing themselves is woven into the thread of their ascension in life, in work, and in the way they serve people. Reinvention happens routinely. Impactful leaders are breaking systems, starting things over, killing initiatives, breathing life to things that feed their passion, and help them to feel like they’re serving the world with all of their capacity. They’re also checking their capacity for conflict and their ability to work through it.

Reinvention is a broad scale concept that I work very deeply on with my clients now. We cannot make reinvention a special occasion. We have to have the mindset of it every single day. That’s what top leaders are doing now.

Is there any type of trick that would enable a leader to really self-evaluate their capacity in certain areas?

I have had a number of CEOs and general counsels for major corporations complain to me about the same thing over and over again. They have one too many urgent requests for their time throughout the day. What can they do so that they’re not spending 80% of their time putting

the body, the mind, and the heart we’ve been given that we don’t take enough time to learn about. Routinely structuring that into your day, to build what you’re for into the communication you have everywhere you go, is integral to your impact on this planet. The only person who can improve that is you. So, that’s what the Devotion Factor is about. It’s giving people a platform, a training, a focus to realize this can be done and here are the simple steps to get it done.

How does multitasking affect someone’s productivity?

Science has proven that we cannot multitask. We are not built for it. We are

selves, take a moment, take a breath, and be present for what they are in front of.

What are some of the secrets that you have in navigating chaos?

I talked about earlier how important it is for every leader to be able to reinvent themselves on a regular basis. We have learned in the past two years that chaos isn’t going anywhere. It’s here to stay. There’s no such thing as going back to the way we were. I won’t ever refer to it as normal. We are here to live with disruption and chaos. And what I’ve learned over 20 years in politics is that chaos is the presence of multiple orders. And when you are aware of your own strengths and your Devotion Factor, you can function, find the multiple orders, and move people forward with them to get things done. That is how you cross finish lines and be the visionary that the people who are working for you and with you need.

out fires and answering problems and miscommunication? That is really on the individual leader, to figure out who they’re going to enlist to take that journey with them to reinvent their time and to refocus their capacity for growth.

Every single one of us is underutilizing our capacity for sharing our vision. We’re all getting sucked into conflict. We’re getting sucked into inefficiency. And so, what I mean when I use the word “capacity” is that it’s on us to evaluate our own capacity for growth. It’s on us to take a close look at what we want our time to go to when we’re in that space. It’s all on us. That’s why “capacity” is a very exciting word for me. I’m very moved by it.

What is the Devotion Factor?

The Devotion Factor is the platform on which I am training individuals and running retreats now. It’s basically the concept that rather than simply living, we’re living for something. We are living in the world in the name of a principle, an idea, or a person. It’s being in the world and being of use and making this a mainframe for your existence. For a long time, we haven’t been focusing on what we’re for. It’s not enough to say, “This is what I’m for.” What you’re for needs to be serviced throughout your day. It’s beyond self-help. It’s self-discovery.

As we’ve discussed regarding the word “capacity,” there’s so much to learn about

built for more focus and reflection than ever we use. And our phones do not allow for a lot of reflection. Right now, my phone is on airplane mode and my computer has zero notifications on it. When my phone goes back on, it only has text notifications when I feel like it and then they’re off. All my clients are advised to do the exact same thing. And when my clients do it, their level of efficiency quadruples. It’s absolutely extraordinary.

I work with a lot of financial advisors, and they have all these dings and pings and updates and charts coming through their phones and their computers constantly. And to be present for a client is essential to their growth and paying attention to numbers is very important. So, I know firsthand that those clients in particular have learned that when they’re on with a customer, or when they’re looking at numbers that have to do with a particular client, they turn everything off and they take a moment. Our phones are taking away from our ability to reflect, be quiet, sit still, and take a few breaths.

I was the keynote speaker last month for Invesco, and I’ve coached a few clients from that event since. A couple of people have told me in those calls that they never thought of breathing as something they could do to reset their minds, to get themselves focused again, and to combat this idea of multitasking. To catch them-

Those who know how to grow through chaos are still here. Those who don’t know how to grow through chaos are not here. It would be highly unintelligent to think that you want to design a company that can move forward when things are good. It’s impossible to think that way and be productive now. We have to learn how to be uncomfortable and still move forward. We have to learn how to function within timeframes and things going wrong to get things done. This happens with nonprofit boards. It happens with corporate teams. There are a lot of opinions out there and agendas. People need to be directed toward what the common goals are. When people are directed toward what the common goals are, collaboration is inevitable.

“Our phones are taking away from our ability to reflect, be quiet, sit still, and take a few breaths.”

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

Antarctica (was my favorite) because I got to ski next to the penguins.

- Maddock Lipp, of Colorado, who at 8 years old holds the record for youngest person to ski on all 7 continents

[I] can’t believe [I’m] going to jail for an nft salesman.

- Tweet by a Trump supporter who was sentenced to prison for entering the Capitol on January 6th, in response to Trump selling online digital NFT trading cards

I can’t do this anymore.… He’s one of the best presidents in history. I gotta tell you. Whoever, what business partner and anybody on the comms team and anybody at Mar-a-Lago, and I love the folks down there, but we’re at war. They oughta be fired today.

- Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon reacting to Trump selling NFTs

Even the MyPillow guy was going, “I think Trump’s lost it.’”

— Jimmy Fallon

[Meghan Markle] is just a divorced American C-list actress now gleefully playing the role of her life, doubtless cheered on by many other woke young women in the U.S. who wish they’d snared themselves a handsome-prince lottery ticket too, and who will fully buy into her “It’s all been such a racist struggle” claptrap.

- Pierce Morgan, New York Post, excoriating Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for their expose on the Royal Family

And in the end, Meghan and Harry will lose because people who heartlessly ditch their families for commercial gain very rarely end up as anything but unloved losers.

– Ibid.

I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid.

- Pres. Joe Biden

And at least 50% a lie.

- One of many responses on Twitter

See that’s the whole joke, isn’t it? They say that whole thing was planned, and I’m like, are you kidding me? A bunch of conservatives, Second Amendment supporters, went in the Capitol without guns, and they think that we organized that? I don’t think so.

– Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), in a speech to the New York Young Republicans Club

January 6 happened, and next thing you know, I organized the whole thing, along with Steve Bannon here. And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.

- Ibid.

Now, let me just say if I saw Greene with a gun, I would definitely be scared, but I refuse to believe Steve Bannon knows how to use one. No one who layers polo shirts is good with a firearm. In a way, they’d make fun partners in a buddy cop movie.

— Seth Meyers

A new checkout trend is sweeping across America, making for an increasingly awkward experience: digital tip jars.

You order a coffee, an ice cream, a salad or a slice of pizza and pay with your credit card or phone. Then, an employee standing behind the counter spins around a touch screen and slides it in front of you. The screen has a few suggested tip amounts – usually 10%, 15% or 20%. There’s also often an option to leave a custom tip or no tip at all.

The worker is directly across from you. Other customers are standing behind, waiting impatiently and looking over your shoulder to see how much you tip. And you must make a decision in seconds. Oh lord, the stress.

From a CNN article, titled “Out of control: No one knows how much to tip”

That mask is the [crazy] Democrats’ MAGA hat. The fact that she thinks she needs to wear the hat… for sure that lady is boosted and tested and they’re working on a television show.

- Joe Rogan, upon seeing a TV host wearing a mask in front of a green screen

In Florida, if you’re still wearing a mask, we just assume you’re hideous.

- Rep. Matt Gaetz on Twitter

This brings upon us the lie that Republicans really are fiscally conservative. The Democrats aren’t. They will not pretend to be fiscally conservative. Not one of them up here gives a darn about the debt.

– Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) criticizing his fellow Republican senators for green-lighting the Democrats’ massive spending bill

If 41 one of us said, “No” and held our ground until there was a compromise, we could force Democrats to reduce spending. We have completely and totally abdicated the power of the purse. Republicans are emasculated. They have no power, and they are unwilling to gain that power back.

– Ibid.

After burying the Holocaust for years on its back pages and demonizing Israel for decades on its front pages, the New York Times now shamefully calls for undermining Israel’s elected incoming government.

- Prime Minister Netanyahu responding to the New York Times calling his government “radical”

While the NYT continues to delegitimize the one true democracy in the Middle East and America’s best ally in the region, I will continue to ignore its ill-founded advice and instead focus on building a stronger and more prosperous country, strengthening ties with America, expanding peace with our neighbors, and securing the future of the one and only Jewish state.

- Ibid.

Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee. This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.

- The first member of Generation Z to be elected to Congress and former Uber driver Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-FL), shortly after arriving in Washington, D.C., to get set up in advance of his Congressional term

It’s not that unusual.

- Dr. Anthony Fauci when asked on MSNBC how it is that even three years after Covid started we still do not know the origins of the virus

There is so much misinformation that we were experiencing the normalization of untruths.

- Ibid, who is accused by some of being a predominant figure in the area of misinformation

Political Crossfire

Who Are the GOP’s Future Leaders?

Let’s Start With Mike Gallagher

By Marc A. Thiessen

Many years ago, New York Times columnist Russell Baker conjured up an oracle called the Great Mentioner, who prophesied the rise of future political stars by mentioning their names. Baker passed on his secret source to one of my mentors in newspaper column writing, William Safire, who channeled the Great Mentioner throughout his career, predicting the rise of presidents, vice presidents, national security officials, and Cabinet secretaries.

Baker and Safire are no longer with us, but the Great Mentioner lives on. And with the Republican Party in flux and a presidential campaign set to begin, it’s a good time to see who appears in his crystal ball.

Who are the future leaders who can guide the Republican Party into the next era and shape conservative public policy, from national security to health to education to the economy? In a series of periodic interviews in the months ahead, I’ll carry on the tradition passed on by Baker and Safire and shine a light on some of the individuals I’d like to see take up that mantle of leadership.

And the oracle has revealed his first choice: Rep. Mike Gallagher (Wis.).

Gallagher is a rising conservative star who is making his mark in the national security field. Not long after this interview was conducted, he was named as the chairman of the next Congress’s House Select Committee on China. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee, where he’s the ranking Republican on the subcommittee for military personnel, as well as on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Before being elected to Congress, Gallagher served with the U.S. Marine Corps and completed two combat deployments in Iraq. He was also the lead Republican staffer for the Middle East and counter -

terrorism on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as a staffer. He has a bachelor’s degree from Princeton, a master’s degree in Security Studies from Georgetown University, a second master’s in Strategic Intelligence from the National Intelligence University, and a PhD in International Relations from Georgetown – all of which mean he’s deeply overqualified for any national security position.

Here are some of Gallagher’s most interesting answers to my questions.

want more discipline and less just reckless bomb-throwing.

And I think where you saw candidates that were disciplined, that were able to connect overall concerns, ephemeral concerns that we talk about here at the federal level, to just the day-to-day reality of people in the Midwest or wherever, they were successful, really in both parties.

Ukrainians and deliver a massive loss to the Russians…we have to do a better job of tying the threat posed by Russia to the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. And it’s really teasing out the fact that for at least a decade, if not longer, these countries, who at times have interests that diverged and at times were outright hostile, at least in the present day, have locked arms to wage a new Cold War against the West, and are aided in that by the Iranian regime as well. And this idea that, “Well, we can be tough on China, but we have to strike some grand bargain with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin in Europe because our resources are limited,” I just think that reflects a naive view of the way the world is working right now.

Did Covid-19 change U.S. attitudes toward China?

Thiessen: Where did the GOP go wrong in the midterms?

Gallagher: I think what the message the American people are sending…is that both parties are kind of on probation right now. They don’t want to hand either [party] the keys to the car, [and are] sort of forcing them to sit in the car and have it idle until they figure it out. But they want less crazy and more common sense. They

And I think they want a forward-looking approach. If we had a problem on our side, I think it was the idea that re-litigating the 2020 election was the most important issue in the 2022 midterm, when it clearly was not, right? They want more winning and less whining.

What’s the answer to calls to cut Ukraine aid?

I think it’s fair for people to say, “All right. If we’re spending this money on Ukraine, we want to know that it is well spent.” And I am fully committed to that effort in transparency. But for those of us who want to continue to support the

This is the one area where there is a lot of bipartisanship happening. There has yet to be a reckoning with the malfeasance of the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, whether you think it was a lab leak that caused the pandemic, which I subscribe to; I think the evidence favors that hypothesis. I’m not saying it was an intentional lab leak; I think the most likely explanation it was an accidental lab leak. Or whether you think it came from nature, from a wet market in Wuhan, you cannot deny the fact that the Chinese Communist Party covered it up. They did everything to block a [World Health Organization] investigation. It corrupted the WHO. And I think now what’s also becoming clear is that a lot of American taxpayer dollars were funding dangerous research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

So I think it has actually hardened a lot of views among Americans, particularly in the Midwest where I come from, with respect to China. And China, which may previously have seemed like a distant

threat or purely an economic threat, now seems more like a clear and present danger, something that we just can’t ignore.

What’s China’s strategy against the West?

They won’t say it as such, but to destroy of the capitalist system led by the United States and make way for the ultimate triumph of world socialism with, you know, Chinese characteristics. So part of it is getting us to destroy ourselves. And, so, think of it like this. Think of it like an assisted suicide. You supply the chemicals, fentanyl, coronavirus. You supply the economic downturn in the form of IP theft, pandemic shutdown, general economic warfare. And you supply the self-loathing in the form of ideological warfare that gets Americans to think that America is a neocolonial racist country.

And then you isolate us from all of our friends. And you do that by supporting a war in Europe and preparing to do another one that completely destroys our existing alliance structure in the Indo-Pacific. You get us to destroy ourselves. Again, I think we’ve got a long way to go toward translating that into something that the American people really understand. But I just fundamentally believe that we’re in

the early stages of a new Cold War. And it’s one that we are not winning, in part, because we just don’t feel like we deserve to win. We’re no longer convinced in bipartisan fashion that we’re the good guys.

Could the U.S. defend Taiwan today?

The short answer is no. But I believe we can get there within what’s called the Davidson window, which is basically the next five years. Former [U.S. Indo-Pacific Command] Commander Phil Davidson, when he left, said this could happen in the next six years at the time. It’s now five years.

So I think this: If we have a, let’s say, a president come 2025 with a more serious foreign policy, or one that gets the urgency surrounding Taiwan, who empowers a secretary of defense and says, defending Taiwan, maintaining deterrence makes defending Taiwan our most urgent national security priority, I think we absolutely could do it.

And by the way, I don’t think it would cost that much money.

So how do you do it? And if you recognize that even if we had a coherent naval strategy, because if you look at the Indo-Pacific, one thing strikes you. There’s

a lot of water there. So we need a bigger navy. Even in the best-case scenario, our fleet is not going to increase dramatically at the end of the decade. So what we need is a short-term hedging strategy.

You need more assistance directly to Taiwan itself, particularly long-range anti-ship missiles and smart minds…. That’s something we could fix in the next two years. That’s step one.

Think of sort of three concentric rings. The first ring is Taiwan itself, helping Taiwan defend itself, which also means increasing rotations of National Guard and active-duty service members that go to Taiwan. Because as the previous Taiwan Strait crises illustrate – and there have been three prior to this – the thing that gives you your best chance of deterrence is actually American hard power.

Point two is then you can start to get creative, particularly in southern Japan and northern Philippines, you can have small teams of Marines armed with longrange fires that are basically charged with targeting and sinking every [People’s Liberation Army] navy and amphibious vessel that tries to cross the strait. And we should also sink them in port before they cross the strait.

And then, finally, and here’s where

AUKUS [the partnership of Australia, Britain, and the United States] comes in, you can leverage AUKUS to co-develop with the Aussies a longer-range intermediate missile system that you could put in the northern territories of Australia as well as Alaska that could target China. And by the way, they’re doing that to us right now with their most advanced missile systems.

The big opportunity we have here now is we’re no longer bound by something called the INF Treaty. And with all due respect to [President Ronald] Reagan, we love Reagan, we got rid of that in the Trump administration. It opens up enormous possibilities to…basically do to the PLA, what they’ve done to us, what they’ve done to us is they built a rocket force….

The final thing I’ll say is that’s sort of the strategy for the military strategy for Taiwan itself and the Indo-Pacific. But we need to be competing globally. They’re competing for influence everywhere. They show up in all these different international forums – things that we just don’t prioritize. And so we need to be making them think twice every single day.

(c) 2022, Washington Post Writers Group

Political Crossfire

How the Algorithm Tipped the Balance in Ukraine

By David Ignatius

Kyiv, Ukraine - Two Ukrainian military officers peer at a laptop computer operated by a Ukrainian technician using software provided by the American technology company Palantir. On the screen are detailed digital maps of the battlefield at Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, overlaid with other targeting intelligence – most of it obtained from commercial satellites.

As we lean closer, we see can jagged trenches on the Bakhmut front, where Russian and Ukrainian forces are separated by a few hundred yards in one of the bloodiest battles of the war. A click of the computer mouse displays thermal images of Russian and Ukrainian artillery fire; another click shows a Russian tank marked with a “Z,” seen through a picket fence, an image uploaded by a Ukrainian spy on the ground.

If this were a working combat operations center, rather than a demonstration for a visiting journalist, the Ukrainian officers could use a targeting program to select a missile, artillery piece or armed drone to attack the Russian positions displayed on the screen. Then drones could confirm the strike, and a damage assessment would be fed back into the system.

This is the “wizard war” in the Ukraine conflict – a secret digital campaign that has never been reported before in detail – and it’s a big reason David is beating Goliath here. The Ukrainians are fusing their courageous fighting spirit with the most advanced intelligence and battle-management software ever seen in combat.

“Tenacity, will, and harnessing the latest technology give the Ukrainians a decisive advantage,” Gen. Mark A.

Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told me last week. “We are witnessing the ways wars will be fought, and won, for years to come.”

I think Milley is right about the transformational effect of technology on the Ukraine battlefield. And for me, here’s the bottom line: With these systems aiding brave Ukrainian troops, the Russians probably cannot win this war.

“The power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones,” explains Alex Karp, chief executive of Palantir, in an email message. “The general public tends to underestimate this. Our adversaries no longer do.”

“For us, it’s a matter of survival,” argues “Stepan,” the senior Ukrainian officer in the Kyiv demonstration, who before the war designed software for a

retail company. Now, he tells me bluntly, “Our goal is to maximize target acquisitions.” To protect his identity, he stripped his unit insignia and other markings from his camouflage uniform before he demonstrated the technology. (The names he and his colleague used were not their real ones; I agreed to their request of anonymity to protect their security.)

“Lesya,” the other officer, was also a computer specialist in peacetime. As she looks at the imagery of the Russian invaders, on a day when their drones are savaging civilian targets in Odessa on Ukraine’s southern coast, she mutters a wish for revenge – and a hope that Ukraine will emerge from the war as a tech power. Although the Ukrainians now depend on technology help from the United States, she says, “by the end of the war, we will be selling software to Palantir.”

A New Deterrent

Kyiv was cold and snowy when I arrived just over a week ago. The power was out in some places. But the capital was relatively calm. There was a traffic jam entering the city on Friday. On Saturday night, restaurants were so packed it was impossible to get a reservation at one upscale spot.

As Ukraine moves toward the new year, the spirit of resistance and resilience is visible everywhere. Roadblocks have mostly disappeared. Children play near captured Russian tanks in St. Michael’s Square. Couples take walks in the park above the Dnieper River.

I visited here at year’s end to explore what I believe is the overriding lesson of this fight – and indeed, of the past several decades of war: A motivated partner like Ukraine can win if provided with the West’s unique technology. The Afghanistan army cracked in a day because it lacked the motivation to fight. But Ukraine – and, before it, the Syrian Kurdish fighters who crushed the Islamic State with U.S. help – has succeeded because it has both the weapons and the will.

I met with a senior team from Palantir that was visiting its Kyiv office. With the approval of Karp, the CEO, they agreed to show me some of the company’s technology close to the firing line. The result is a detailed look at what may prove to be a revolution in warfare – in which a software platform allows U.S. allies to use the ubiquitous, unstoppable sensors that surround every potential battlefield to create a truly lethal “kill chain.”

Palantir, which began its corporate life working with the CIA on counterterrorism tools, has many critics. That’s partly because its biggest funder, from

Palantir CEO Alex Karp meeting with President Zelenskyy

the start, has been co-founder Peter Thiel, a successful tech investor who has also been a strong supporter of Donald Trump and other MAGA Republicans. Karp, by contrast, has supported many Democratic candidates and causes.

The critics have argued that Palantir’s powerful software has been misused by government agencies to violate privacy or serve questionable ends. For example, The Post wrote in 2019 that Palantir’s software was used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help track undocumented immigrants, which led to protests from some of the company’s employees. Tech community activists have asked whether Palantir is too close to the U.S. government and can “see too much” with its tools.

Karp responded to criticism of the company in an email to me last week: “Silicon Valley screaming at us for over a decade did not make the world any less dangerous. We built software products that made America and its allies stronger – and we are proud of that.”

And Ukraine has shifted the political landscape in Silicon Valley. For Karp and many other technology CEOs, this is “the good war” that has led many companies to use their tools aggressively. This public-private partnership is one of the keys to Ukraine’s success. But it obscures many important questions: How dependent should countries be on entrepreneurs whose policy views could change? We can applaud the use of these tools in “good” wars, but what about bad ones? And what about private tools being turned against the governments that helped create them?

We’ll be struggling with these questions about technology and warfare for the rest of this century. But after spending weeks investigating the new tools developed by Palantir and other companies, the immediate takeaway for me is about deterrence – and not just in Ukraine. Given this revolution in technology, adversaries face a much tougher challenge in attacking, say, Taiwan than they might imagine. The message for China in this emerging digital battle space is: Think twice.

Vast Data Battlefield

The “kill chain” that I saw demonstrated in Kyiv is replicated on a vast scale by Ukraine’s NATO partners from a command post outside the country. The system is built around the same software platform developed by Palantir that I saw in Kyiv, which can allow the

United States and its allies to share information from diverse sources – ranging from commercial satellite imagery to the West’s most secret intelligence tools.

This is algorithmic warfare, as Karp says. Using a digital model of the battlefield, commanders can penetrate the notorious “fog of war.” By applying artificial intelligence to analyze sensor data, NATO advisers outside Ukraine can quickly answer the essential questions of combat: Where are allied forces? Where is the enemy? Which weapons will be most effective against enemy positions? They can then deliver

ground. Armed with that information, the Ukrainians could take the offensive – moving, communicating, and adjusting quickly to Russian defensive maneuvers and counterattacks.

And when Ukrainian forces hit Russian command nodes or supply depots, it’s a near certainty that they have received enemy location data this way. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, told me that this electronic kill chain was “especially useful during the liberation of Kherson, Izium, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions.”

What makes this system truly revolutionary is that it aggregates data from

on the ground to facilitate this sharing of information.

A final essential link in this system is the mesh of broadband connectivity provided from overhead by Starlink’s array of roughly 2,500 satellites in low-earth orbit. The system, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, allows Ukrainian soldiers who want to upload intelligence or download targeting information to do so quickly.

In this wizard war, Ukraine has the upper hand. The Russians have tried to create their own electronic battlefield tools, too, but with little success. They have sought to use commercial satellite data, for example, and streaming videos from inexpensive Chinese drones. But they have had difficulty coordinating and sharing this data among units. And they lack the ability to connect with the Starlink array.

“The Russian army is not flexible,” Lesya, the Ukrainian officer, told me. She noted proudly that every Ukrainian battalion travels with its own software developer. Ukraine’s core advantage isn’t just the army’s will to fight but also its technical prowess.

precise enemy location information to Ukrainian commanders in the field. And after action, they can assess whether their intelligence was accurate and update the system.

Data powers this new engine of war – and the system is constantly updating. With each kinetic strike, the battle damage assessments are fed back into the digital network to strengthen the predictive models. It’s not an automated battlefield, and it still has layers and stovepipes. The system I saw in Kyiv uses a limited array of sensors and AI tools, some developed by Ukraine, partly because of classification limits. The bigger, outside system can process highly classified data securely, with cyber protections and restricted access, then feed enemy location data to Ukraine for action.

To envision how this works in practice, think about Ukraine’s recent success recapturing Kherson, on the Black Sea coast. The Ukrainians had precise intelligence about where the Russian were moving and the ability to strike with accurate long-range fire. This was possible because they had intelligence about the enemy’s location, processed by NATO from outside the country and then sent to commanders on the

commercial vendors. Using a Palantir tool called MetaConstellation, Ukraine and its allies can see what commercial data is currently available about a given battle space. The available data includes a surprisingly wide array, from traditional optical pictures to synthetic aperture radar that can see through clouds, to thermal images that can detect artillery or missile fire.

To check out the range of available data, just visit the internet. Companies selling optical and synthetic aperture radar imagery include Maxar, Airbus, ICEYE and Capella. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sells simple thermal imaging meant to detect fires but that can also register artillery explosions.

In our Kherson example, Palantir assesses that roughly 40 commercial satellites will pass over the area in a 24-hour period. Palantir normally uses fewer than a dozen commercial satellite vendors, but it can expand that range to draw imagery from a total of 306 commercial satellites that can focus to 3.3 meters. Soldiers in battle can use handheld tablets to request more coverage if they need it. According to a British official, Western military and intelligence services work closely with Ukrainians

Fedorov, Ukraine’s digital minister, listed some of the military tech systems that Ukraine has created on its own in a response to my written questions. These include a secure chat system, called “eVorog,” that has allowed civilians to provide 453,000 reports since the war started, a 200-strong “Army of Drones” purchased from commercial vendors for use in air reconnaissance, and a battlefield mapping system called Delta that “contains the actual data in real time, so the military can plan their actions accordingly.”

The “X factor” in this war, if you will, is this Ukrainian high-tech edge and the ability of its forces to adapt rapidly. “This is the most technologically advanced war in human history,” argues Fedorov. “It’s quite different from everything that has been seen before.”

And that’s the central fact of the extraordinary drama the world has been watching since Russia invaded so recklessly in February. This is a triumph of man and machine, together.

In the next article: How “algorithmic warfare” evolved over the past decade – and some very human worries.

The Ukrainians are fusing their courageous fighting spirit with the most advanced intelligence and battle-management software ever seen in combat.

Political Crossfire

The Border Crisis Has Never Been Worse

By Marc A. Thiessen

Last year, President Biden presided over a record crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico. This year, by every conceivable metric, that crisis got far worse.

In the 2021 fiscal year, we had more than 1.7 million encounters at the Southern border. That was a record…until this fiscal year, when it rose to almost 2.4 million. And the 2023 fiscal year, which began in October, has already seen more than 500,000 encounters – putting us on track to exceed this year’s record.

That’s not all. In 2021, there were nearly 390,000 known “gotaways” – migrants we know evaded U.S. Customs and Border Protection and slipped into the country; this year, the number of gotaways grew to more than 600,000. In 2021, there were 15 terrorism watch list arrests at the border; this year, that grew to 98 (and who knows how many violent criminals were among the gotaways). In 2021, more than 557 migrants are known to have died crossing the border illegally; this year, that rose to more than 800 migrants. That figure does not include a 22-year-old National Guard soldier, Sgt. Bishop E. Evans, who gave his life trying to save two drowning migrants crossing the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, and other agents killed in the line of duty.

As bad as that is, things are about to get worse when Title 42 – the Trumpera public health order that has allowed border officials to turn away hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants to prevent the spread of Covid-19 – expires on December 21. When migrants can no longer be expelled under this order, even more will try illegal crossings – and the floodgates will truly open. Yet the Biden administration is pushing for a cut in funding for detention beds in the omni-

bus spending bill from the current level of 34,000 to 25,000 just as the need for these beds will dramatically increase.

Ironically, Biden’s push to cut detention-bed funding comes at the same time his administration is arguing before the Supreme Court that it must have the dis-

Court they can’t follow the law because they don’t have enough resources to detain them, while simultaneously urging Congress to cut the number of detention beds. You can’t make this up. Biden has done everything in his power to remove deterrents to mass mi-

to apply for asylum in the first foreign country they crossed into. Biden’s administration also pushed for an end to Title 42 without a plan to deal with the influx of illegal migrants it will unleash. And on his watch, deportations have dropped to the lowest levels in Immigration and Customs Enforcement history as fentanyl continues to make its way across the border, killing record numbers of Americans.

Yet, despite these disasters, when asked why he was not visiting the border during a trip to Arizona, Biden said he had “more important things going on.” More important things? The message could not be clearer: The calamity unfolding on the Southern border is fine by him. Securing the border is not a priority for the commander-in-chief.

cretion to release migrants with criminal records, including aggravated felons, while their deportation cases are being adjudicated – despite the clear requirement under federal law that they “shall” be detained – because…wait for it… Congress has failed to adequately fund detention. They are telling the Supreme

gration. On taking office, he moved to get rid of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which had required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims were considered. He terminated the “safe third country” agreements Donald Trump negotiated with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, which required migrants

Biden says he wants Congress to pass immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for the “dreamers” – migrants who overstayed visas or were brought here as children. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) have put forward a deeply flawed proposal that could, under different circumstances, be the starting point for bipartisan discussions. Polls show that large, bipartisan majorities want to increase the number of border agents, secure the border, bring dreamers out of the shadows, increase skilled immigration, and overhaul our immigration system to make sure we are bringing in the right people with the talents and abilities we need for our economy.

But that will never happen so long as we have a president who seems not just uninterested in securing our border but intent on opening that border up to any and all comers.

When migrants can no longer be expelled under this order, even more will try illegal crossings – and the floodgates will truly open.

In the years following the Israeli War of Independence, the small Jewish nation had been quickly building up its military, but in 1956, they were in for a shock. Their adversary to the south, Egypt, signed a massive arms deal with Czechoslovakia. Two-hundred-thirty Soviet-built tanks, 200 front line fighter and bomber jets, 600 cannons, many guns, armored personnel carriers, ships, and various types of military equipment were headed to Egypt. The balance of power in the Middle East was about to shift to Egypt’s favor, and they showed their might by nationalizing the Suez Canal. Great Britain and France were about to get involved, and in a secret meeting in Paris it was decided to attack the Egyptians first.

Israeli fighter pilots were to be heavily engaged in enemy targets, but the plans did not include Squadron 119 and pilot Yoash Tzidon. However, intelligence reports came in and suddenly Tzidon was called on for a most secret and important mission that could possibly change the outcome of the upcoming war.

Yoash “Chatto” Tzidon was born in Romania in 1926 and made Aliyah in 1941. Two years later, he began his military career by joining the Haganah as a wireman. After taking several courses, he soon was in the Palmach’s naval unit, Palyam, as an officer and was sent to Europe at the end of the war to help Jewish refugees make their way to Eretz Yisrael. In 1946, he arrived in Cyprus to help at

Forgotten Her es Operation Rooster

By Avi Heiligman

the refugee camps and set up communications with the Palmach in Eretz Yisrael. During the Israeli War of Independence, Tzidon commanded a convoy to Jerusalem and later was assigned to the Harel Brigade.

The Israeli Air Force in 1948 needed pilots and to that end set up a training course. Tzidon joined the first course to be held entirely in Israel and operated transport planes for the rest of the war. In 1950, he became a fighter pilot after completing another course and was stationed at Ramat David. A year later, he became Israel’s first test pilot at the Tel Nof Air

the 1956 Suez conflict – and therefore were not part of the IAF’s plans. However, this changed when Israeli intelligence learned of a plane that was supposed to carry the Egyptian chief of staff that was going to be flying from Damascus to Cairo on October 28, 1956 before the war broke out.

Called Operation Rooster, Tzidon was ordered to shoot down the plane. As one of the few pilots trained in night operations, Tzidon understood the importance of the operation. Many top Egyptian officers would be on that Ilyushin Il-14, and this was a rare opportunity to deliver a

or headed toward the sea, it became apparent that its detachable tanks weren’t transferring fuel into the main tanks. This meant Tzidon had to drop the extra fuel into the sea. Then the call came on the two-way radio, “Contact! Contact! Contact!” The Meteor then relayed the information to base and began following the yet unidentified plane. The plane soon came into view, and the IAF commander wanted visual confirmation that it was indeed the plane they were chasing. The Israeli plane then approached the IL-14 and saw the Egyptian officers walking between the aisles. After confirming positive identification, Tzidon was given permission to shoot down the plane.

Base and was involved in repairing and salvaging airplanes from World War II.

In 1955, Tzidon transitioned to flying fighter jets and founded a night-fighter all-weather squadron. Squadron 119, also called the Bat Squadron, flew British-built Gloster Meteor two-seater fighter jets but only had three planes. Tzidon and Elyashiv “Shibi” Brosh were the only operational crew in the weeks leading up to Operation Kadesh – another name for

staggering blow to the enemy right before the fighting started. Tzidon rejected Colonel Shlomo Lahat’s plan to fly to Damascus and wait for the plane to take off. Instead, he chose to wait until radar had picked up the plane a half hour after it left the airport.

Soon after nightfall the call came that the IL-14 had left Damascus and was heading towards the Mediterranean. It was a moonless night, and as the Mete -

The Meteor was a jet plane and much faster than the radial piston engine IL14. In order not to overshoot his adversary, Tzidon lowered the Meteor’s landing flaps to get into a firing position. As Tzidon commenced firing, he became aware that the ammunition that was loaded into his guns used tracer bullets which hampered his vision temporarily. A blockage in the right cannon caused the Meteor to go into a spin. Tzidon steadied the plane and was relieved that they hadn’t lost the IL-14. He had hit the enemy plane in the first burst and now was ordered to finish it off at all costs. There was a close call as the Meteor almost rammed into the IL14 but Shibi shouted to Tzidon to correct course. This saved them from a crash, and they were now able to shoot again at the IL-14. The Egyptian plane burst into fire

The Meteor had wiped out sixteen top Egyptian officers in one shot.

and soon exploded.

The Meteor went into another spin, and Tzidon was able to pull out of it at just 150 meters from impact. He then confirmed that he saw the IL-14 crash, and the Meteor made its way back to Israeli airspace.

Low on fuel, Tzidon made his way towards the closest Israeli air base. Hatzoar Air Base had him on radar and directed him towards the airstrip. As they approached the runway, the fuel gauge read zero and the plane glided towards the runway. When the Meteor touched

down, the engines shut off due to all the fuel running out.

Headquarters was waiting for Tzidon and had some news to tell him. At the last moment, the Egyptian chief of staff decided not to fly on the IL-14, but the Meteor had wiped out sixteen top Egyptian officers in one shot. It wasn’t until 1989 that the Israeli public became aware of the operation – the Egyptians never reported the loss of their officers. They thought the plane crashed due to bad weather and weren’t aware that the Israelis targeted the plane.

The year 1956 turned into a military victory for Israel, Great Britain, and France but was a political disaster for the two European countries. Political pressure from the U.S. forced a withdrawal from the area, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned, and the French Prime Minister heavily damaged his reputation.

Other than the Egyptian chief of staff being absent on the plane, Operation Rooster was a success for the Israelis and Tzidon. He stayed in the IAF for a total of 41 years and fought in both the Six Day

War and the Yom Kippur War. The daring operation was another victory in a long line of Israeli secretive missions. Tzidon and Brosh weren’t given credit for the victory for decades, making them both Forgotten Heroes.

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.

Yoash Tzidon

An Israeli Air Force Meteor

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LAWRENCE

Exceptional turnkey Mediterranean Colonial style home and beautiful manicured corner property. This home features exquisite architectural details with six meticulously designed spacious bedrooms and four full baths, open layout that allows comfortable living and entertainment. Large dining room and living room with gas fireplace. Beautiful updated kitchen with stainless steel appliances attached to Butler’s pantry, huge closet space and storage throughout. Park like backyard, hardwood herringbone floors throughout. Water filtration system and ground well for sprinklers. A must see! P.O.R. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HOUSES FOR SALE

CAN’T AFFORD YOUR PROPERTY TAXES?

MORTGAGE?

Must sell for any reason? Call for FREE Consultation. Call now 212-470-3856 Cash buyers available!

WOODMERE

Beautifully maintained Split Level home in the heart of Woodmere. This home boasts 4 Bedrooms, 2.5 Baths, Eat-in Kitchen, Formal Dining Room, Living Room, a Finished Basement, and an office. Beautiful and spacious Backyard. Great location, SD#14. Close to all. Price Reduced $879k. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

CEDARHURST

Magnificent Bright & Sunny furnished 6 Bedroom, 5 Bath Home Prime location in Cedarhurst Features

Dream Kitchen With Granite Countertops, Two Sinks, Two Ovens, Two Microwaves, Formal Dining Room With Washing Station, Formal Living Room. Smart Home, Radiant Heat, Speaker System, Timers, Cameras Inside + Outside, Master Bedroom Suite With Jacuzzi Tub + Shower. Two Large Walk-in Closets, Central Air Conditioning, Gas Heat, Two Car Garage, Great Corner Property, Large Side + Backyard, Finished Basement, Close To All. A Must See. Close To Shopping And Houses Of Worship. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

NORTH WOODMERE JUST LISTED

Move Right Into This Beautifully Maintained and Updated Three Bedroom, 2.5 Baths Large Split Situated on an Oversized Park-like Lot Overlooking the Pond. Home Features naturally bright lit rooms with a Ground Level Den Leading to Patio, With Another Lower Level With Partially Finished Basement. Hardwood Floors Throughout Updated Kitchen With Granite Counters in School District 14 and Close to all Houses of Worship. $949k Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

New to the market move right in 8 bedrooms 3 full bathrooms on a lot size 57x112. prime location features eat in kitchen with 2 sinks, new stainless steel appliances, gas heat, hardwood floors, possible mother daughter with permits, close to the railroad, shopping and houses of worship. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

NORTH WOODMERE

This is a Spectacular Home Rebuilt From the Ground Up in 2010. Features Inground Heated Saltwater Pool. Unique Beyond, Very Artistic. Designed by a Well-known Interior Designer. The House Was Knocked Down & Rebuilt. It has Steel Columns, Exposed Vents & Duct Work. Custom Door - Super Thick, Entry Foyer is Laser Cut Acrylic Tile, Custom Closets Throughout. Steel Bolder Sep. the LR & DR. DR has a Custom China Closet, Bar has a Swarovski Sink, Custom Scavollini EIK, Very European the way the Drawers Open + Cabinets Open Upwards. Countertops are Caesar Stone & Appl. are a Wolf Oven w/6 Burners, 2 Miele Ovens, and Built-in Coffee Maker. 1 Miele Dishwasher + 2 Fisher Paykel Dishwashers. Thermador Refrigerator w/Ice Maker. Double Sinks Plus a Veg. Sink, Walls are Painted w/Venetian Plaster. Office w/High Ceilings & Terr. Overlooking the Pool. Magnificent yard, MBR Suite w/a Spa Bath & a Huge WIC. MBR has Missoni Tiles. All Pella Windows & Doors. Home has Cameras, Alarms, IGS and So Much More! Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

FAR ROCKAWAY

3 Bedroom Apartment for Rent Freshly Painted and Nice Condition. 1 Bathroom. Small LR/DR Area. New Haven Avenue (Darchei Area). 1st Floor of Multi-Family House W/D Hook-Up $1,850 (Not including Utilities). No Broker Fee Call/Text - (718) 691-3162. Email: Office@rockbeachgroup.com

CEDARHURST

Move Right In. Totally updated 2BR, 2 Bath, Apt. on the 1st Floor. Private Entrance, CAC, W/D in Unit, Kitchen with SS Appliances, Hardwood Floors, Recessed Lighting, Freshly Painted, Great Courtyard, Parking $95/Mo. Close to Railroad, Shopping, Restaurants, Cedarhurst Park + Houses of Worship. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-2988457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

LAWRENCE

Extra Large One Bedroom Renovated Apartment In Prime Lawrence. EIK With Granite Countertops Renovated Bathroom. Sunken LR, Dining Room, Close to All, Transportation, Shopping, Worship.$285k or rent $2,500 monthly Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@ bhhslaffey.com

HOUSE FOR RENT

WOODMERE

House for Rent, large 6 bedrooms/3 bathrooms, in prime “Tree Streets” location, available Feb 1  (maybe sooner) until Sept 1, perfect for someone doing a home renovation, call 917-750-6700

APT./CO-OP FOR RENT

WOODMERE

House rental Move right into this 4 bedroom colonial in the heart of Woodmere, with spacious rooms, hardwood floors, a finished basement, and a spacious yard. Close to railroad, shopping & houses of worship $4,500 monthly Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE/HEWLETT NECK

House Rental Magnificent 6 Bedroom Home. Formal Dining Room, New Gourmet Kitchen W/High End Appliances & Cabinets, Large Living Rm & Den, 3 Car Attached Garage, Hardwood Floors, Sd#14. 5 Bedrooms On One Level, Fabulous MBR Suite W/ New Bathroom. gas heat. central air conditioning, long driveway, parklaike property,& So Much More. Call for details Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

CEDARHURST

Amazing location.  Close to the park. Totally new 2 bedroom 1 bath with large basement and W/D hookup Parking included. Call or text  Sherri….Weissman Realty  516-297-7995

CEDARHURST

Move Right In. Totally Updated One Bedroom Townhouse Apartment on the First Floor. Featuring 1.5 Bathrooms, Central Air Conditioning, Washer/Dryer in the Unit, Kitchen With SS Appliances, Hardwood Floors, and Recessed Lighting. Freshly Painted. Super on Premises. Underground Parking is $95/month. This spacious rental is managed by a responsible landlord. Great Courtyard. Close to the Railroad, Shopping, Restaurants, Post Office, Cedarhurst Park + Houses of Worship. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODSBURGH

Magnificent 2K Sq. Ft. Co-Op. 3Br/2Bth, Eik, Lr, Dr, W/D In Unit, Gar, 2 Stor Units, Elev, Near All $775K 516-846-1032 No Brokers

Classifieds

classifieds@fivetownsjewishhome.com

APT./COOP/CONDO SALE APT./COOP/CONDO SALE APT./COOP/CONDO SALE APT./COOP/CONDO SALE

LAWRENCE

Spacious 2BR, 2 Full Bath Apt with an enclosed terrace in the heart of Lawrence. Well maintained & manicured building. New hardwood floors, updated Eat-in Kitchen with gas stove. warming draw, dishwasher & microwave. New windows on the enclosed terrace & one of the bedrooms. 3 New A/C Units & New Refrigerator. Close to shopping, transportation, library, schools, and houses of worship. $339K Mark Lipner

Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HEWLETT

Hewlett House 1 Bedroom Co-op. Unit Includes 1 Parking Spot + Storage Unit, W/D Outside of Unit. Close to Shopping, Schools, Houses of Worship, Restaurants + Parks. Prime Location in the Heart of Hewlett. $109k Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@ bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

1 bedroom apartment, elevator building, eat-in kitchen, full bath, hardwood floors, plenty of closet space. Ceiling fan in bedroom & kitchen, laundry room in the basement. Close to the railroad, shopping, and houses of worship $168k Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@ bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

Totally renovated bright and sunny 1 bedroom corner unit apartment with a washer/dryer. Features quartz countertops, ss appliances, recessed lighting, bathroom with chrome fixtures, close to the railroads, shopping and houses of worship. Call for details Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HEWLETT

Totally renovated 1 and 2 Bedroom, Apartments with washer/dryer, kitchen with quartz countertops, stainless steel appliances. Recessed lighting, hardwood floors, storage in basement. Close to RR, shopping, and houses of worship. Mark Lipner

Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

New to the market beautifully maintained bright and sunny 2 bedroom 1.5 bathroom co-op on the top floor in an elevator building with a private storage room. Renovated eat -in-kitchen with granite countertops, lots of cabinets, 2 renovated bathrooms. 2 spacious bedrooms with ceiling fans and air conditioners. hardwood floors, high ceilings , close to the railroad, shopping and houses of worship. Call for a private showing.$429K

Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HEWLETT

Hewlett 3 bedroom 2 bath co-op with central air conditioning, terrace, wash-er/dryer, hardwood floors, recessed lighting, magnificent kitchens, ss appliances, l/r, d/r, close to the railroad, shopping, and houses of worship. $300k Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

Beautiful & Spacious 2 Bedroom Apartment Across From The Golf Course. Elevator Building, Updated Kitchen, Gas Cooking, Granite Countertops, Washer/Dryer In Unit, High Ceilings, Great Closet Space, Storage in Basement, Close To RR, Shopping & Houses Of Worship.$349K

Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

CEDARHURST

1, 2 and 3 bedroom apartments, totally renovated private entrance , central air conditioning, hardwood floors, washer/dryer, garage parking, dishwasher, recessed lighting, private playground, close to railroad, park, shopping and houses of worship.

Call for more details Mark Lipner Associate Broker

Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457  mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

Move right in!! 2 Bedroom Apartment, Elevator Bldg in SD #14, Pre War Bldg, Pet Friendly, Laundry Room in Basement, Wood Floors, New Windows, Corner Apartment, Beautiful Renovated Kitchen w/SS Appliances, 3 A/C Units, Close to RR, Shopping & Houses of Worship. A must-see! $199k

CEDARHURST

1 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment, elevator building, eat-in kitchen, spacious rooms throughout, laundry room on-premises, garage parking, close to all Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE

CEDARHURST

Office space For Lease

– Rockaway Tpke location

2-3 offices available for lease with access to a conference room, and shared amenities. All Utilities and Internet included.  Can be leased individually or as a suite. Contact MJ at Weissman Realty Group for a private showing! MJ@weissmanrealty.com (631)839-3748 Follow @mjrealtor365

classifieds@fivetownsjewishhome.com • text 443-929-4003

HELP WANTED HELP WANTED HELP WANTED HELP WANTED

ASSISTANT TEACHER

CAHAL is seeking an afternoon secular studies Assistant Teacher in a girls’ Bais Yaakov in Far Rockaway. Send resume to shira@cahal.org or call 516-295-3666

SIACH YITZCHOK SEEKING

Additional assistant teachers for General Studies. Wonderful opportunity to observe great teachers, work one-on-one with students, and gain some classroom teaching experience. Send your resume to Email teachersearch11@gmail.com

5 TOWNS BOYS YESHIVA

SEEKING ELEM GEN ED TEACHERS

Excellent working environment and pay. Only lic/exp need apply. Email resume to yeshivalooking@gmail.com

JOB OFFERS

Bright Futures has openings for providers. Work one on one with children and earn great money doing what you love! Sports coaches, art teachers, childcare, etc. We pay $50/hr for providers with a Bachelor’s and $25/ hr for providers with a HS diploma. Email info@brightfuturesny.com or text/call 347-970-9531

SECULAR STUDIES TEACHER

Seeking a secular studies teacher for 4 afternoons a week in a girls class in

DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANT

A multi-tasker needed for general office work. The ideal candidate is someone who is detail-oriented, responsible, and can take ownership. Looking for someone who is eager to learn, and expand his/her skill set while possessing the ability to work independently and as part of a team. Experience with Excel required. Five Towns location. In-office position only, not remote. Please send resume to 5tpart.timecareer@gmail.com

MDS REGIONAL NURSE:

5 Towns area Nursing Home management office seeking a Regional/Corporate level MDS Nurse to work in our office. Must be an RN. Regional experience preferred. 2-3 years MDS experience with good computer skills required. Position is Full Time but Part Time can be considered. Great Shomer Shabbos environment with some remote options as well. Email: officejob2019@gmail.com

A YESHIVA IN QUEENS is looking for an experienced part/ full time secretary, 2-year-old morah, kindergarten morah, kindergarten morah assistant and Pre-1A English teacher for the 2022-2023 school year. Nice and timely pay. Please email

NEW YORK-BASED PUBLICATION

seeking associate editor. Strong editorial and organizational skills required as well as solid understanding of Orthodox Judaism. Editorial experience preferred.  Background in English, journalism or related field. On-site attendance/ Partially remote. Position entails copyediting, proofing, researching and writing skills. Email renee@ou.org

BOOKKEEPER

Excellent growth potential, Frum environment, Excellent salary & benefits. Email resume to: resumetfs1@gmail.com

LOOKING FOR A DRIVER

Business looking for someone that has a large van or sprinter that can work a full day on Wednesdays on a weekly basis throughout the year in Brooklyn. Please do not call if you do not have a large van or a sprinter 347.992.7411

NEWSPAPER LOOKING FOR

someone with a Minivan or SUV who can work late Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning on a weekly basis throughout the year, delivering newspapers in Brooklyn. Please email gabe@fivetownsjewishhome.com or call (917) 299-8082

OFFICE MANAGER

Receptionist. private dental office. Far Rockaway, Queens/Lawrence border. Exciting opportunity in a well established and growing practice. Seeking efficient, organized, ambitious, friendly, Peoples person to join our great team. Experience necessary. Great salary and benefits for the right person. Please email resumes Jonfriedmandds@gmail.com

SEEKING BABYSITTER

Seeking a religious Jewish woman as a babysitter.  Preferably full time. Please call Yosef at 718.928.5798.

There’s one person this year who shouldn’t be getting too many presents come holiday time. That’s crypto-whiz-kid Samuel Bankman-Fried, or SBF.

Odds are good that you had never heard of 30-year-old SBF before last month when Alameda Research (his “hedge” fund) and FTX Exchange (his crypto exchange) collapsed in what some have called the biggest financial fraud since Bernie Madoff. On Halloween, he was worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $16 billion, living and working in a sun-splashed $40 million Bahamas penthouse. Last week, he was as good as bankrupt, and even his parents have told friends that his legal bills will likely wipe them out financially. Today, he’s under arrest, and a year from now, he could be measuring sunshine in 15-minute increments in “the yard.” You’d think a guy with that sort of cloud over his future would be listening to lawyers telling him to just shut up. But no, he’s out giving interviews to everyone from random bloggers to the House Financial Services Committee.

A year ago, when crypto had swelled to a $3 trillion market, the IRS was working hard to make sure decentral -

Your Money A Lump of Coal

By Allan Rolnick, CPA

ization didn’t cost the Treasury billions. Now, the entire asset class has crashed. It’s worth less than Amazon, meaning the days of outsized gains may be over. Still, the IRS keeps working to educate taxpayers and enforce new rules:

Page One of Form 1040 will require taxpayers to answer under penalty of

Starting in 2023, crypto exchanges and brokerages will be required to report transactions directly to the IRS – as they do for stocks and other assets – so the income can be properly taxed.

The IRS is continuing to subpoena third-party custodians to ferret out income that traders have previously omit-

that he probably won’t have to worry about the IRS himself. We know he borrowed a tax-free billion from Alameda. But we have no clue how much taxable income he may have earned before his wings melted in the sun. And the IRS may never know how much he really owes. FTX’s new CEO John J. Ray III – the guy who buried the corpse of Enron – told a bankruptcy court: “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here.”

perjury whether they’ve traded, bought, or sold any “digital assets” in the last year. That’s a change from last year’s form, which asked about “digital currency.” The broader language covers non-fungible tokens, or NFTs – digital images of bored apes, toilet paper with flowers, and even the original source code for the world wide web. (NFT prices have crashed, too. This is my shocked face.)

ted from their returns.

Taxpayers who trusted FTX to hold their assets will be able to deduct their losses someday – but not until the bankruptcy court finishes its work. It’ll be like National Transportation Safety Board investigators combing through the charred remnants of a plane crash, except there won’t be a black box to explain what happened.

The good news, at least for SBF, is

November 11, when FTX filed for bankruptcy, will certainly mark a milestone. We just don’t know yet whether it will be the effective end of crypto as a mainstream asset class or the birth of a new phase with renewed legitimacy. Either way, we’ll be here to help you keep more of your gains or make the most of your losses!

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

Today, he’s under arrest, and a year from now, he could be measuring sunshine in 15-minute increments in “the yard.”

Iremember people who smoked used to say, “Light me up.” They needed a jumpstart. By the way, do they still say that? Not too many people around here who still smoke.

I recall people saying, she or he “lights up the room” expressing that someone creates a dynamic energy source, when they enter.

Do you notice that when people carry a heavy load, literally or emotionally, they say, “I just need things to be a little lighter”?

When people enter a dark place, they usually say, “We need light.”

When people have an epiphany, they often exclaim, “I see the light!”

And, when people feel love for another person, they share that “they light up my life.”

Isn’t it true that in darkness one tiny light is never missed? Yet, in broad daylight, we miss many!

On Chanukah, we light the Chanukah candles at the first sign of darkness…

This is good advice for our lives!

To try and do that right away.

Darkness comes in many forms – a struggle, a difficult person, a challenge (expected or unexpected) – yet, our go-

Life C ach Light Up the Days

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

to should be immediately to find or create a light to guide us .

It will give us that jumpstart that we need. That energy source to get through and see a path even in the darkness.

And even more so, it will help light our way through the difficulty!

But wait – how awesome is it when

lit-up people or blessings that may be overlooked because they are small compared to the bigger ones. For instance, registering the miracle that a light turns on, that the refrigerator works, that the house is standing when we wake up, because usually, the light of expectation overshadows it.

within our reach. However, whether we reach for it, and how much light we create with it, is up to us.

My bracha for each of us is that we turn on this electric force inside of us and use it with abandon. Of course, to access it during the challenging times when we really need it, but more importantly, to summon it during the bright times, too, so we can gain greater joy and more appreciation. To be able to tap into the flickers, and glows, and brilliance all around us.

Once we learn to make it more apparent, we are empowering ourselves to tap into a powerful electric source that can energize our lives and brighten our every day.

So, give yourself a jumpstart. And “light up the days!”

we are able to, or attempt to, stretch and notice unrecognized lights even during the daylight, you know, the bright times?! In other words, to become aware of the lights around us that are often overshadowed or missed because of the brightness of other lights.

And of course, I don’t just mean literally. I mean, for example, people who may be overshadowed by other more

What a power charge we may be able to get by seeing light in the lightness –not just in the darkness!

Chanukah focuses us on the miracle of light. How much we shine it into our whole year is up to us.

The best present we can take from Chanukah into the entire year is that we can add light to our lives. We always have that little shamash/lighter candle

Rivki Rosenwald is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist working with both couples and individuals and is a certified relationship counselor. Rivki is a co-founder and creator of an effective Parent Management of Adolescent Years Program. She can be contacted at 917-705-2004 or at rivkirosenwald@gmail.com.

What a power charge we may be able to get by seeing light in the lightness –not just in the darkness!