Five Towns Jewish Home 2.2.23

Dear Readers,

Iwas speaking with someone over the weekend who told me that I needed to try a recipe for an Oreo cake. “It’s amazing,” she enthused. “It only has four ingredients, and it’s delicious.”

Those four ingredients didn’t sound like they would yield such a delicious dessert. “How do you know it tastes so great?” I asked her.

“Because I saw it on Instagram, and they said it tastes great.”

If it has the Instagram seal of approval, it must be good, I guess. I, for one, am not on Instagram. But I am sure that some posted recipes are delicious and that some are really not so tasty. It’s not about the fact that it’s being posted on Instagram that makes it good. A good recipe will make for a great dish wherever it’s written.

But it’s hard for people nowadays to filter the good from the bad when they’re so used to being inundated and influenced on so many mediums. And the way that Instagram and other social media platforms work is that they bombard users with so much content that it’s hard for users to think for themselves. If the social media influencer tells them to buy a certain item because it’s amazing or to go to a certain place because it’s so awesome, then the person hearing the message feels as if they’ve been given an assurance that these things are really going to be good.

But caveat emptor! Influencers’ jobs are just that –to influence you. They’re not there to give you helpful, useful advice because they love you and care for you. They’re there to manipulate and increase their followers so their reach becomes even stronger and more prominent. They speak in superlatives and revel in hype because that’s what draws their followers in.

And the hype has seeped into our culture. We’ve become a society where so many of our conversations lead back to social media. You can tell who follows the influencers by how their yom tov table is set or how their kids are dressed. We’ve become a society that is focused on mimicking what we see others are doing. And we don’t even realize that we’re losing our own sense of selves when we try to be like everyone else.

Last week, someone told me that they wanted to

buy a certain painting of a gadol. I expressed surprise at their choice of art because it was depicting the gadol as “pop art,” with loud, garish colors.

“Is it possible that it’s not respectful to the gadol to portray him in that way?” I asked.

“Why? Everyone has it nowadays,” was his answer.

But does that make it right? Do we stop and check in with ourselves to see if the decisions we make are the result of sound judgement on our end? Or are we just following the crowd and blindly imitating those around us?

The art of being true to oneself is, unfortunately, slowly ebbing. In our fast-paced world, we don’t always take the time to pause and deliberately evaluate our decisions.

In that same vein, the art of being truly connected to others is also slipping through our grasps. We no longer take the time to genuinely connect with others when we sit with them. Instead, our minds are racing in many directions as we check our phones, scroll through our emails, and manage our schedules.

This week, our community experienced the loss of a person who was the epitome of someone who genuinely connected to all who knew him. Every time I met Alan Kutner, a”h, he would take the time to sincerely ask how I was doing. It was a genuine question, one that he asked with patience, showing me that he really, truly wanted to hear my answer. And it wasn’t enough for him to hear about me. He wanted to know about my husband, my children, my in-laws. He wasn’t in a rush or looking at his watch. He was completely focused on the person in front of him.

In a world where people don’t have time for others, Alan Kutner made time for everyone. He gave them his patience and respect, his sincere curiosity and love for all seeping into every interaction.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

Yitzy Halpern, PUBLISHER publisher@fivetownsjewishhome.com

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Friday, February 3

Parshas Beshalach

Candle Lighting: 4:57 pm

Shabbos Ends: 5:59 pm

Rabbeinu Tam: 6:29 pm

Shabbos Zemanim

Mostly Sunny Mostly Sunny Mostly Cloudy Mostly Cloudy

Dear Editor, R’ Zalman Sorotzkin, zt”l, writes in Aznayim L’Torah the pain of the metzora and why he is considered k’mes, like dead, is because of the loneliness. Because of his affliction, he is separated from everyone and even tells them to go away. Tzara’as is usually a punishment from Shamayim (Eruchin 16a)

Yet, there are others who have a similar level of loneliness through no fault of their own. Their pain is great as is their suffering. The ones in our midst who have the same nisayon as our Avos and Imahos. Infertility. No fault of their own, not a punishment from Shamayim, just a reality. And the feelings of loneliness.

What can we do? Daven for them, of course. But maybe we can do more.

This coming Sunday, February 5, our community will be strongly represented in joining hundreds of Lomdim for a vigorous day of learning and together we will finish the entire Shas in one day under one roof! Each lomeid has been preparing his 10 blatt for the past few months. We are represented this year by Team Far Rockaway. Many people on these teams are your neighbors, relatives, and friends.

The Shasathon was created by the organization called ATIME. This wonderful tzedakah helps these young couples with their struggle providing many services, many too delicate to mention. Couples who have gone through this nisayon have said that they could not have made it without ATIME. The founders of ATIME themselves suffered through infertility at a time when there was no one to talk to and help them. To learn more about this organization, check out their

website, https://www.atime.org.

You too can be a part of this amazing zechus! Go to the shasathon.org website and find who in your neighborhood is learning and sponsor him. When the couples who are suffering see how many people care enough to learn or support, they feel that we really care for them.

Thank you for your involvement and we forward to you the unspoken thanks of those couples who are surrounded by too-clean walls and too-quiet rooms every minute of their lives. The hope and dreams your support will enable is more potent than one can fathom. Help do t’chiyas hameisim!

Sincerely,

Rabbi Moshe Shonek Member, Team Far Rockaway

Dear Editor,

I thoroughly enjoy reading your dating column every week. It’s great to see how your panelists many times differ in the wise advice that they are dispensing.

The question this week is one that I think is so important to think about when you’re dating.

Many times, a person will meet the parents of the person they are dating and are taken aback. They’re frummer than me. They’re a bit weird. They seemed snotty and aloof. We all make assessments and judgments when we meet people for the first time. And because we’re thinking about our future, we put a lot more thought into who these people are than the random people we meet in the supermarket.

But we need to take a step back and remember that the person we are dating

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is not their parents. Yes, they grew up in their home; yes, in some way, they are influenced by them; yes, they will have a connection with them in the coming years. But you do not have to live with your in-laws. In fact, if you’d like, you can live very far away from them.

I don’t think that bashing your inlaws to your spouse is a smart thing to do, but if you feel that your relationship with your in-laws is damaging to the relationship with your spouse or to your home, then speak with your rav who can give you very wise advice on how to navigate the in-law relationship.

As for this particular girl who wrote in: hearing someone put down others and being negative in such a public way is not a good feeling. As you wrote, it makes you wonder what they will say when you leave the room. But if you can somehow

bring up the topic of sensitive speech to the boy you are dating, perhaps he’ll share with you that it bothers him as well that his father has a very coarse way of speaking.

Sincerely, Mrs.

H. Reuben

Dear Editor,

This week, in your “School of Thought” column, you wrote about schools giving homework assignments over vacation.

I, for one, don’t look at these assignments as things we have to do. I look at them as things we can do to fill the time when we’re “bored.” At the airport, on the plane, when we come home and have some down time.

If my kids do them, great! If they don’t do, who cares? It’s vacation. A few days off from their multiplication tables won’t harm them in the long run.

Chavi Sperka

Suicide Bomber Kills 100 in Pakistan

explosion, Nasarullah Khan, said he remembered seeing “a huge burst of flames” before becoming surrounded by a plume of black dust.

The mosque was all but destroyed from the blast. Rescuers frantically searched through the rubble for survivors. Worshippers had gathered on Monday for evening prayers before the blast.

“We are not expecting anyone alive to be found. Mostly dead bodies are being recovered,” Bilal Faizi, a rescue spokesperson, said Tuesday.

The bombing is the latest sign of the deteriorating security situation in Peshawar, capital of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan and the site of frequent attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP).

The TTP is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A suicide bomb that ripped through a mosque in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Monday took the lives of at least 100 people, making it one of the deadliest attacks in the country in years as it faces what one analyst described as “a national security crisis.”

A police official who survived the

Last year, the breakdown of an already shaky year-long ceasefire between the TTP and Pakistan’s government threatened not only escalating violence in that country but potentially an increase in cross-border tensions between the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

The TTP has denied any involvement in the blast.

A spokesman said, “According to our laws and general constitution, any action in mosques, madrasas, funerals grounds and other sacred places is an offense.”

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said, “The brutal killing of Muslims prostrating before Allah is against the teachings of the Quran,” Sharif said, adding that “targeting the House of Allah is proof that the attackers have nothing to do with Islam.”

Experts note that the TTP has been emboldened by the 2021 Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

The attack also comes at a fragile time for Pakistan, which has been grappling with a cost of living crisis as food and fuel shortages wreak havoc in the country of 220 million.

Sharif’s government has struggled to revive the country’s economy, further devastated by deadly floods last year that killed more than 1,500 people and submerged entire villages.

55 German Coup Plotters

Dozens of people had been part of a plot to plan a coup in Germany. This

week, authorities said 55 people were involved in the plot that was dismantled by security forces last December.

In that operation, the German police managed to capture a total of 25 suspects, although investigations have continued and raids have been completed not only in Germany, but also in Austria and Italy.

The authorities have so far seized more than 420,000 euros in cash, as well as precious metals. The German magazine Der Spiegel has also reported the existence of some 50 kilos of gold and other precious metals.

The detainees are linked to the group Reich Citizens (Reichsburger, in German), who do not recognize the German Federal Republic and its democratic structures. The German Public Prosecutor’s Office accuses 22 of the detainees of belonging to a terrorist organization that

wanted to overthrow the political system in the country.

With the exception of a Russian woman, all the suspects are German nationals. In fact, among the detainees is a former officer of a special unit of the German Armed Forces arrested in Italy and who is still trying to avoid extradition to Germany.

IMF More Optimistic

The IMF upgraded its economic growth projections for 2023 and 2024 in its closely watched World Economic Outlook report, pointing to resilient consumers and the reopening of China’s economy as among the reasons for a more optimistic outlook.

The fund warned, however, that the fight against inflation was not over and urged central banks to avoid the temptation to change course.

Global output is projected to slow to 2.9% in 2023, from 3.4% last year, before rebounding to 3.1% in 2024. Inflation is expected to decline to 6.6% this year from 8.8% in 2022 and then to fall to 4.3% next year.

After a succession of downgrades in recent years as the pandemic worsened and Russia’s war in Ukraine intensified, the IMF latest forecasts were rosier than those the fund released in October.

The International Monetary Fund said Monday that the global economy was expected to slow this year as central banks continued to raise interest rates to tame inflation, but it also suggested that growth would be more resilient than previously anticipated and that a global recession would probably be avoided.

Since then, China abruptly reversed its “zero-Covid” policy of lockdowns to contain the pandemic and embarked on a rapid reopening. The IMF also said that the energy crisis in Europe had been less severe than initially feared and that the weakening of the U.S. dollar was providing relief to emerging markets.

Still, global growth remains weak by historical standards and the war in

Ukraine continues to weigh on activity and sow uncertainty. The report also cautions that the global economy still faces risks, warning that “severe health outcomes in China could hold back the recovery, Russia’s war in Ukraine could escalate and tighter global financing costs could worsen debt distress.”

Growth in rich countries is expected to be particularly sluggish this year, with nine out of 10 advanced economies likely to have slower growth than they had in 2022.

The IMF projects growth in the United States to slow to 1.4% this year from 2% in 2022. In the euro area, growth is projected to slow 3.5% to 0.7%. China is projected to pick up the slack with output accelerating to 5.2% in 2023 from 3% in 2022. (© The New York Times)

Germany Pledges Millions for Amazon

This week, Germany pledged more than $200 million in contributions for environmental projects in Brazil as Chancellor Olaf Scholz visited the South American

giant reeling from Amazon destruction. The package includes a brand-new $33.6 million in aid for Brazilian states for rainforest protection, on top of another $38 million already announced for an Amazon protection fund to which Germany and Norway had halted payments under climate-skeptic former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Protection of the Amazon was high on the agenda for talks between Scholz and Brazil’s leftist new President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva that also aimed to “deepen the resumption of relations,” according to the Brazilian presidency.

Scholz was the first German chancellor to visit Brazil since 2015, and the first Western leader to meet Lula since he became president on January 1 after four years of frosty relations with Brazil under far-right Bolsonaro.

Shortly before Scholz’s arrival in

the capital Brasilia, German economic cooperation minister Svenja Schulze announced her country would make additional funds available for Amazon preservation after “difficult years.”

“Brazil is the lung of the world. If it has problems, we all have to help it,” Schulze said at a press conference in Brasilia with Lula’s new environment minister Marina Silva.

Average annual deforestation on Bolsonaro’s watch rose by 59.5 percent from the previous four years, and by 75.5 percent from the previous decade, according to government figures.

German funds for Brazil would also include $32 million for energy efficiency projects for small and medium companies, $9.7 million for “sustainable supply chain projects,” $5.7 million for renewable energy use in industry and transport, and $14.2 million for reforestation of degraded areas, according to a Germany embassy statement.

$87 million would go towards lowcost loans for farmers to “reforest their land.”

Lula had presided over a sharp drop in deforestation when he previously led Brazil from 2003 to 2010, and has vowed to reboot environmental protection.

He has said it was “urgent” for a deal

to be concluded but stressed on the campaign trail that further negotiation was needed to ensure Brazil can pursue “our interest in reindustrializing.”

German business is seeking new opportunities overseas following the economic shock caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and as concerns grow about reliance on China.

French Protest Over Pensions

scribed as a “citizens’ insurrection.”

The nationwide strikes and protests on Tuesday were a crucial test both for President Emmanuel Macron’s government and its opponents. The government says it is determined to push through Macron’s election pledge to reform France’s pension system. Labor unions and leftwing legislators fighting in parliament against Macron’s plans are counting on protesters to turn out massively to strengthen their efforts to kill the bill that that would raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.

Veteran left-wing leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon predicted “a historic day” of protests and defeat for Macron, as large crowds of protesters marched in cities and towns outside Paris — ahead of a major demonstration planned later Tuesday through the French capital.

“It’s not often that we see such a mass mobilization,” said Mélenchon, speaking in the southern city of Marseille. “It’s a form of citizens’ insurrection.”

tions expected around the country. The government mobilized 11,000 officers to police the protests.

On Monday, Macron described the reform as “essential.” His prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, insisted this past weekend that raising the retirement age to 64 is “no longer negotiable.”

But strikers and protesters intend to prove otherwise.

Strikes also hit some schools and other sectors. Radio station France Inter played music instead of its usual morning talk shows and apologized to its listeners because employees were striking.

Students Lost Too Much School

Demonstrators poured into France’s streets this week in the latest clash of wills with the government over its plans to push back the retirement age in the country. Labor unions aimed to mobilize more than 1 million demonstrators in what one veteran left-wing leader de -

A first round of strikes and protests brought out between 1 million and 2 million demonstrators earlier this month, including many tens of thousands in Paris. Labor leaders were aiming to at least match or even better those numbers on Tuesday, with around 250 demonstra-

Children experienced learning deficits during the Covid pandemic that

amounted to about one-third of a school year’s worth of knowledge and skills, according to a new global analysis, and had not recovered from those losses more than two years later.

Learning delays and regressions were most severe in developing countries and among students from low-income backgrounds, researchers said, worsening existing disparities and threatening to follow children into higher education and the workforce.

The analysis, published Monday in the journal Nature Human Behavior and drawing on data from 15 countries, provided the most comprehensive account to date of the academic hardships wrought by the pandemic. The findings suggest that the challenges of remote learning — coupled with other stressors that plagued children and families throughout the pandemic — were not rectified when school doors reopened.

“In order to recover what was lost, we have to be doing more than just getting back to normal,” said Bastian Betthäuser, a researcher at the Center for Research on Social Inequalities at Sciences Po in Paris, who was a co-author on the review. He urged officials worldwide to provide intensive summer programs and tutoring initiatives that target poorer students who fell furthest behind.

In the United States, one study showed that the average public elementary or middle school student lost the equivalent of a half-year of learning in math, and 6% of students were in districts that lost more than a full year. Standardized math test scores in 2022, when compared with those in 2019, showed the largest drop ever recorded in the three decades since the exam was first administered.

The findings challenge the perceptions of many parents, almost half of whom said in 2022 surveys that they did not believe their children had suffered any achievement loss during the pandemic, and only 9% of whom expressed concern about whether their children would catch up.

A separate review of test scores from 2.1 million students in the United States highlighted the impacts of economic disparity. Students at schools in communities with high poverty levels spent more of the 2020-21 school year learning remotely than those at schools in wealthier communities did, and students in poorer schools experienced steeper declines in performance when they were remote.

(© The New York Times)

Hungary Most Corrupt in EU

Hungary has replaced Bulgaria as the European Union member state perceived to be the most corrupt, according to Transparency International.

Hungary dropped four places to 77th in the watchdog’s global Corruption Perceptions Index, which was published on Tuesday. The nation led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban is five places below fellow EU member Bulgaria and tied with Burkina Faso, among others, in the 180-nation rankings.

The EU has been citing corruption and the rule of law among reasons for withholding $30 billion in aid from Hungary. The government, which last year set up an independent anti-graft authority to address the issues, dismissed the Transparency report as politically biased.

Hungary has plunged 24 places in the corruption index since Orban returned to power in 2010. The watchdog says the country is now in the “state capture” phase where authorities are generating graft instead of stopping it.

Yemen, Venezuela, South Sudan, Syria, and Somalia are the world’s most corrupt nations, according to the report.

British Columbia Decriminalizes Hard Drugs

One of the largest provinces in Canada is moving forward with a plan to become the first province in the country to decriminalize several hard drugs.

Starting on Tuesday, residents of British Columbia who are older than 18 are now allowed to carry up to 2.5 grams of drugs such as cocaine, heroin, fentanyl,

methamphetamine and morphine.

British Columbia was granted permission by the government to try out the plan for three years, when the drugs will still be illegal but those carrying less than 2.5 grams will not be arrested, charged, or have the drugs confiscated. Instead, residents carrying the drugs will be offered information on health and social services.

“Decriminalizing people who use drugs breaks down the fear and shame

associated with substance use and ensures they feel safer reaching out for life-saving supports,” Jennifer Whiteside, the British Columbia minister for mental health and addictions, said about the plan.

Carolyn Bennett, Canada’s federal minister of mental health and addictions, said the move is a “a monumental shift in drug policy that favors fostering trusting and supportive relationships in health and social services over further

criminalization.”

Advocates for the plan hope it will address a spike in overdose deaths which has left 10,000 people dead in British Columbia since 2016, when the country declared drug-related deaths a public health emergency.

But critics of the plan in Canada say that it does not go far enough and that 2.5 grams is too low of a threshold that will not make a difference for users who consume large amounts of drugs.

Chuck Doucette, president of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, said that “making drug use easier for them is kind of like palliative care.”

“It’s just condemning them to a slow death because of drugs, whereas if you get them off drugs, get them a life back, they can enjoy life,” Doucette said, adding that the plan is a “cop out” and that drug users should be provided help addressing the root causes “that led them to use drugs in the first place.”

Others have pointed out that a similar plan in Oregon enacted two years ago has not yielded significant results and that most overdose deaths in British Columbia take place in city centers where drugs have already effectively been decriminalized.

A Tragic Friday Night

The beautiful melodies of Friday night singing turned macabre last week when seven people were killed and at least three others were wounded in a terror attack near a shul in Neve Yaakov.

According to police, the terrorist, Alqam Khayri, 21, arrived by car at 8:13 p.m. in the Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem and opened fire at people outside the synagogue and other passersby.

He then fled the scene by car toward the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina — several hundred meters away — where, about five minutes later, he encountered officers who were called to the scene.

The terrorist was shot dead by police after he exited the car and proceeded to shoot at police officers while attempting to escape.

According to Channel 12 news, the terrorist first shot an elderly woman in the street, then encountered a motorcycle rider and shot him, before reach-

ing the Ateret Avraham synagogue and opening fire at people outside.

Eli and Natali Mizrahi were killed when they went out to help victims of the terror attack. Natali had worked in the hospital and wanted to care for those who were hurt.

“I cried out for them to not go down, but they didn’t respond. They heard gunfire and went out to help,” Eli’s father said at their funeral.

Rafael Ben Eliyahu, 56, had worked for the Israel Post. He had three children. One of his sons, Kobi, had a child hours after the attack.

“You and Mom were supposed to come to the bris, but ultimately you were not able to hold [your grandson],” Kobi Ben Eliyahu said during the funeral in Jerusalem on Sunday. “Instead, I’m bringing you to the cemetery. You left a giant hole in our hearts.”

Another one of Rafael’s sons was injured in the attack.

Fourteen-year-old Asher Natan was also killed by the terrorist. He had gone out to meet with friends. Just a few moments later, his parents heard the shots and knew instinctively that something had happened to the young boy, although it took over an hour before they definitively knew what happened to him.

“I always wanted so much for things to be good for you. Now you’re in a good place for eternity,” his father, Aharon Natan, said at the funeral.

“I’m sorry that sometimes I hurt you and didn’t see the good in you,” he told his late son.

Shaul Hai, 68, was also murdered on Friday night. He was a gabbai in a shul in the neighborhood, although it was not the shul in which the attack took place. He had been heading out to a shiur when he was killed.

Irina Korolova was a Ukrainian aide who was in Israel working as a caretaker.

Ilya Sosansky, 26, worked as a DJ and in a bar in Neve Yaakov. He was riding his motorcycle to work when he was killed.

Speaking to reporters from the scene, police commissioner Kobi Shabtai said the attack was one of the worst Israel had seen in years.

“The terrorist shot at everyone he encountered. He got out of the car and began a murderous rampage with a handgun,” Shabtai said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking after visiting the scene, called the attack “one of the most severe we have known in years.”

“Our hearts are with the families. I commend the police officers who took

action so quickly,” Netanyahu said. “We must act with determination and composure. I call on people not to take the law into their own hands.”

The police officer who shot the terrorist met with Netanyahu at the scene. “The vehicle stopped, the terrorist pulled out his weapon,” the officer said. “I kept moving fast in his direction and closed in on him while he was firing at us.

“We stopped the patrol car, pulled out our weapons, the terrorist crossed to the other side. We fired on him, and he fell. We moved in and saw that he was still moving and trying to turn around his weapon. We neutralized him,” the officer said.

After the attack, Palestinians celebrated in the Gaza Strip and in several cities in the West Bank.

Israel Attacked Iranian Facility

A drone attack on an Iranian military facility that resulted in a large explosion in the center of the city of Isfahan, Iran, on Saturday was the work of the Mossad, Israel’s premier intelligence agency, according to senior intelligence officials

who were familiar with the dialogue between Israel and the United States about the incident.

The facility’s purpose was not clear, and neither was how much damage the strike caused. But Isfahan is a major center of missile production, research, and development for Iran, including the assembly of many of its Shahab medium-range missiles, which can reach Israel and beyond.

Weeks ago, U.S. officials publicly identified Iran as the primary supplier of drones to Russia for use in the war in Ukraine, and they said they believed Russia was also trying to obtain Iranian missiles to use in the conflict. But U.S. officials said they believed this strike was prompted by Israel’s concerns about its own security, not the potential for missile exports to Russia.

The strike came just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was beginning a visit to Israel, his first since Benjamin Netanyahu returned to office as prime minister. CIA Director William Burns visited Israel last week, although it is not clear anything about the operation in Isfahan was discussed.

U.S. officials quickly sent out word Sunday morning that the United States was not responsible for the attack. One official confirmed that it had been conducted by Israel but did not have details about the target. Sometimes Israel gives the United States advance warning of an attack or informs U.S. officials as an operation is being launched. It is unclear what happened in this case.

Isfahan is the site of four small nuclear research facilities, all supplied by China many years ago. But the facility that was struck Saturday was in the middle of the city and did not appear to be nuclear-related.

Iran made no effort to hide the fact that an attack had happened but said it had done little damage. In statements, senior Iranian officials contended that the drones had all been shot down.

Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reported Sunday that the drones had targeted an ammunition manufacturing

plant, and that they had been shot down by a surface-to-air defense system.

This is Israel’s first known attack inside Iran since Netanyahu reassumed office. (© The New York Times)

Coalition: Bring Back Deri

Benjamin Netanyahu to reappoint Deri, after the court on January 18 ruled that he must fire Deri due to the “extreme unreasonableness” of his appointment despite three criminal convictions.

Groups of MKs may propose bills together. Although the text, which was leaked to the press on Monday, was composed by a team of lawyers headed by Shas MK Moshe Arbel, the coalition on Monday began to gather signatures in order to make the bill a joint proposal of every member of the coalition, other than MKs who are ministers or deputy ministers, the source said.

The coalition hopes that this indication of wide consensus will sway the High Court from blocking the law, should it be appealed.

This week, all of the members of the coalition signed on as co-authors of a new law proposal that will enable Shas chairman MK Aryeh Deri to return to his position as Interior and Health Minister against the wishes of the High Court.

The bill, an amendment to Basic Law: The Government, proposes to block the High Court of Justice’s ability to intervene in the prime minister’s prerogative to appoint ministers.

This would enable Prime Minister

The High Court has never blocked amendments to Basic Laws but has said in previous rulings that it had the power to do so if the Knesset abused its power as the body responsible for drafting Israel’s constitution.

The bill’s text reads: “There will not be judicial review by any level of court about any matter connected to, or resulting from, the appointing a minister and removing him from his position, save for the appointment meeting the conditions of eligibility set out in section 6a and 6c alone.”

6a requires the minister to be a resident and citizen of the State of Israel. 6c says that a person who committed a crime that includes moral turpitude must wait seven years to serve as a minister. The coalition already amended this law in December so that it does not apply to Deri, which allowed Netanyahu to appoint him in the first place.

The proposed amendment will thus be the second amendment to a Basic Law intended to enable Deri to serve as a minister.

The accompanying text that explains the law argues that the appointment and removal of ministers is at the “heart of democratic activity,” and therefore should not be put up for judicial review. High Court rulings over the years added new qualifications to the explicit list laid out in the law, and this led to “uncertainty regarding the fulfillment of the voter’s wishes, and sometimes even bending the voter’s will to that of the government.”

The law therefore proposes to block the court from examining the “reasonableness” or any other aspect of a minister’s appointment, except for the qualifications written explicitly in the law.

Abbas to Blinken: Israel to Blame

In a meeting on Tuesday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ramallah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asserted that Israel is to blame for the escalation of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian leader also accused Israel of undermining the two-state solution and violating agreements with the Palestinians.

A senior Palestinian official said after the meeting, “We didn’t hear new ideas or proposals. We also didn’t hear anything new about our demand that the U.S. administration fulfill its promises to the Palestinians.”

Supposedly Abbas was upset that the United States and other countries are not pressuring Israel to “dismantle the occupation and end settlements.”

Abbas said the continued opposition by the U.S. and other parties to the Palestinians’ diplomatic offensive against Israel in international forums and courts encourages Israel “to commit more crimes and violate international law.”

Abbas took the international community to task for turning a blind eye to Israel’s “unilateral measures, including settlements, the de facto annexation of lands, settler terrorism, invasions of Palestinian areas, killings, house demolitions, displacing the Palestinians, altering the identity of Jerusalem, violating the historical status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque compound (Temple Mount), seizing Palestinian tax funds, as well as ethnic cleansing and apartheid.”

Referring to the recent decision to end security coordination with Israel, Abbas said: “We have taken a number of decisions, which we began to implement in order to protect the interests of our people, after we exhausted all means with Israel to stop its violations.”

The PA president demanded that Israel completely halt its unilateral actions to pave the way “for restoring the political horizon and ending the occupation and achieving peace, stability and security for all.”

According to Abbas, the Palestinians have always “shown commitment to renouncing violence and terrorism and honoring the agreements” with Israel.

“We are now ready to work with the American administration and the international community to restore political dialogue in order to end the Israeli occupation of the land of the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital,” Abbas added. “Our people won’t accept the continuation of the oc-

cupation forever.”

Prior to the meeting with Blinken, Abbas held talks in Ramallah with the heads of the Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence agencies, Abbas Kamel and Ahmed Husni.

Kamel and Husni relayed the support of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah for Abbas and the Palestinian people, the PA’s official news agency Wafa reported.

Palestinian sources said the two Arab

intelligence chiefs have been working towards de-escalating tensions between the Palestinians and Israel.

the policy to be applied to the home of the 13-year-old Palestinian who shot and seriously wounded two people in Jerusalem on Saturday.

Combatting Terrorism

The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday adopted a proposal to seal the homes of terrorists who commit non-lethal attacks, with

Muhammad Aliyat, of the capital’s Silwan/Shiloach neighborhood, shot a father and son near the entrance to the City of David National Park in Jerusalem on Saturday morning, a day after a deadly shooting rampage at a synagogue in the city’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood. Aliyat was shot and killed by police during the attack.

“A terrorist is a terrorist, even if he has not succeeded in carrying out his vile plans. Glad that the Cabinet accepted my proposal, and we will continue to fight terrorism by all means,” said Israeli National Security Minister Itamar BenGvir.

He added that he would soon propose a bill to institute the death penalty for terrorists.

During a meeting of the Security Cabinet on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for new measures to combat terrorism, including expanding the number of civilian gun permits and revoking the identity cards and residency status of terrorists’ families.

“This morning, we sealed the home of the terrorist who carried out the reprehensible attack in Jerusalem [on Friday evening]; his home will be demolished,” the prime minister said, adding that the government had also decided to pull national medical insurance rights from families that support terrorism.

Seven people were killed and several others were wounded on Friday night when a terrorist opened fire outside a synagogue in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood.

“The Security Cabinet approved a series of steps in the fight against terrorism,” said Netanyahu. “Today, the government will discuss two additional steps: Revoking Israeli identity cards and residency of families of terrorists that support terrorism. We will also expand and expedite the issuing of weapons permits to thousands of Israeli civilians, including those in the rescue services,” he added.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gal-

lant vowed on Sunday to hold all Palestinian terrorists to account.

“Every terrorist will be brought to court or to the cemetery,” he said.

While Israel wants calm restored, he continued, it is nevertheless determined to quash terrorism.

“We will undertake offensive actions against those who try to hurt our children,” said Gallant. “We will fight forcefully and decisively against terrorists and their enablers – including, if needed, the demolition of the homes of terrorists or revoking the rights of the families of terrorists.

“We will not allow blood to be spilled. We will do what is necessary to bring them to justice,” said the defense minister. (JNS)

Life in Prison for Ori’s Murderer

tyr.” According to the report, Irfaiya said he did not plan much of the attack in advance, aside from purchasing a kippa so that he could slip into Israel undetected.

On the day of the killing, Ori, who was a volunteer at a youth center in the capital, went for a walk in the woodland of Ein Yael on the southern edge of Jerusalem, encountering Irfaiya by chance.

“He came across Ansbacher and decided to kill her because she was Jewish,” the charge sheet stated. “He attacked Ori with violent cruelty, and though she tried to fight him off, he overpowered her. He stabbed her with a knife multiple times throughout her body, causing her death.”

The case generated shock and outrage across the country and prompted the government to approve the implementation of a law under which Israel would deduct from tax revenues it collects on behalf of Palestinians the amount that the Palestinian Authority pays out every month to Palestinian attackers and their families.

declined immediately after lockdowns began.” They instead found a small “baby bump” among U.S.-born mothers.

The total U.S. fertility rate – about 1.7 births for every woman – was below “replacement” in 2021, as it generally has been for decades, according to the CDC report. That means there aren’t enough births for a generation to replace itself as people die.

Nearly 3.7 million births were registered in the U.S. in 2021, according to the report. Births increased among White and Hispanic women, but they fell among Black, Asian and American Indian women, according to the CDC report.

Additionally, mothers are having children later in the life. The new report found that the average age of a firsttime mother reached a record high of 27.3 years in 2021. Birth rates increased among women ages 25 to 44, while the teen birth rate reached a record low.

Covid Emergency to End

care, Medicaid and private insurance plans have been able to obtain Covid-19 tests and vaccines at no cost during the pandemic. Those covered by Medicare and private insurance have been able to get up to eight at-home tests per month from retailers at no charge. Medicaid also picks up the cost of at-home tests, though coverage can vary by state.

Once the emergency ends, Medicare beneficiaries generally will face out-ofpocket costs for at-home testing and all treatment. However, vaccines will continue to be covered at no cost, as will testing ordered by a health care provider.

The public health emergency has also meant additional funds for hospitals, which have been receiving a 20% increase in Medicare’s payment rate for treating Covid-19 patients.

Food stamp recipients had been receiving a boost during the public health emergency. Congress increased food stamp benefits to the maximum for their family size in a 2020 pandemic relief package.

7,600 Fake Nursing Diplomas

On Sunday, Arafat Irfaiya was sentenced to life imprisonment plus an additional 20 years for the assault and murder of Israeli teenager Ori Ansbacher in February 2019 in a Jerusalem forest.

Irfaiya had pleaded guilty at the Jerusalem District Court in June 2020 to the charges. Ori, from the settlement of Tekoa, was 19 years old when she was assaulted and murdered by the terrorist.

Judge Rafi Carmel also ruled that Irfaiya pay NIS 250,000 (approximately $72,000) to Ansbacher’s family, and an additional NIS 75,000 ($22,000) to each of her parents and siblings.

“[Irfaiya’s] actions brought destruction to her family. This is an evil that has no place in our world. The poem of Ori’s life ended with a scream,” Carmel said, referring of the teen’s love of poetry.

“[Ori] only did good to others, in comparison to the defendant, who took her life in a cruel way,” Carmel said, according to the Ynet news site.

The indictment against Irfaiya said he had entered Israel from the West Bank illegally armed with a knife.

According to a Channel 12 news report in 2019, Irfaiya told interrogators that he entered Israel and looked for a Jewish victim because he wanted to be a “mar-

Baby Boom

May 11 is the day – the day that President Joe Biden has set to end the Covid-19 national and public health emergencies. On that day, many Americans will have to begin paying out of pocket for Covid-19 testing and treatment.

For the past few years – since 2008 –the number of babies born in the United States each year has been steadily dropping. But this year brings good news. According to a new report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 50,000 more babies were born in the U.S. in 2021 than in 2020, marking the first major reversal of the downward trend.

Still, this small uptick still leaves the U.S. birth rate far below pre-pandemic levels. Registered births have dropped 1% or 2% nearly every year over the past decade and a half, according to the CDC data. They fell 4% in 2020 alone.

Interestingly, the drop-off from the pandemic may actually have had to do more with travel than with disease. Researchers found that “childbearing in the U.S. among foreign-born mothers

The White House, in a statement of administration policy announcing opposition to two House Republican measures to end the emergencies, said the national emergency and public health emergency authorities declared three years ago would each be extended one final time through mid-May.

“This wind down would align with the Administration’s previous commitments to give at least 60 days’ notice prior to termination of the (public health emergency),” the statement said.

The public health emergency has enabled the government to provide many Americans with Covid-19 tests, treatments, and vaccines at no charge, as well as offer enhanced social safety net benefits, to help the nation cope with the pandemic and minimize its impact.

Most Americans covered by Medi-

More than two dozen people have been charged in connection with a scheme in which fake nursing diplomas were sold to buyers who then used the credentials to obtain nursing licenses and jobs in health care settings across the country, federal prosecutors said.

The scheme involved the sale of more than 7,600 fake diplomas issued by three South Florida nursing schools, which have since closed: Siena College and Sacred Heart International Institute, both in Broward County, and Palm Beach School of Nursing in Palm Beach County, prosecutors said.

The 25 people charged this week include administrators of the Florida schools and administrators and affiliates of a series of nursing test prep academies in other states that recruited candidates to buy the fake diplomas, said Omar Pérez Aybar, special agent in charge for the Miami region of the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health

and Human Services.

Many of the people who paid for the fraudulent credentials already had experience working in health care — for example, as certified nursing assistants — and were hoping to qualify as registered nurses or licensed practical nurses without having to complete the required courses and clinical work, Pérez Aybar said Thursday.

Buyers paid between $10,000 and $15,000 to obtain bogus diplomas and

transcripts indicating that they had earned legitimate degrees, like the associate degree in nursing, Pérez Aybar said. That degree can take two years to complete.

The diplomas and transcripts then allowed the buyers to qualify for the national nursing board exam, prosecutors said. About 37% of those who bought the fake documents — or about 2,800 people — passed the exam, Pérez Aybar said.

Among that group, a “significant

number” then received nursing licenses and secured jobs in hospitals and other health care settings, Pérez Aybar said.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of Florida said the fraud scheme had “created an illegal licensing and employment shortcut for aspiring nurses.”

Each defendant faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted on charges that include wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, the U.S. attorney’s office

said.

None of the buyers of the fake diplomas were charged in connection with the scheme, although Pérez Aybar said that they knew that they were paying for fake credentials. (© The New York Times)

20 Years Since the Columbia Tragedy

NASA marked the 20th anniversary of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy with somber ceremonies and remembrances during its annual tribute to fallen astronauts on Thursday.

More than 100 people gathered at Kennedy Space Center to remember not only Columbia’s crew of seven, but also the 18 other astronauts killed in the line of duty. NASA’s two shuttle accidents account for more than half of the names carved into the black granite of the Space Mirror Memorial; plane crashes are to blame for the rest.

None of the Columbia astronaut family members attended the morning ceremony. Rabbi Zvi Konikov, a local rabbi, recalled how Israel’s first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, asked him before the flight how to observe the Sabbath during two weeks in orbit with multiple sunsets a day.

“Ilan taught us a powerful message. No matter how fast we’re going, no matter how important our work, we must pause and think about why we’re here on Earth, and that’s what we’re doing today. We pause to recall the memory of all those courageous souls,” said Konikov.

Columbia was destroyed during reentry on February 1, 2003, after a piece of fuel-tank foam came off and punctured the left wing during liftoff 16 days earlier. The shuttle broke apart over Texas, just 16 minutes from its planned Florida touchdown.

NASA managers dismissed the impact during the flight despite the concerns of others. That same kind of cultural blunder led to the loss of shuttle Challenger during liftoff on January 28, 1986, killing all seven aboard, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe.

GOING ON VACATION?

Hopefully your house will stay the way you left it, but if it doesn’t…

The Apollo 1 launch pad fire claimed three astronauts’ lives on January 27, 1967.

Because of the clustering of these three dates, NASA sets aside the last Thursday of every January to commemorate its fallen astronauts. At space centers across the country, flags were lowered to half-staff, with ceremonies held along with spaceflight safety discussions.

Besides Ramon, Columbia’s last crew included commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, and Laurel Clark.

EPA Blocks Alaska Mine

shed since 2001. The project would have mined about 1.4 billion tons of ore over 20 years, according to the U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers. If approved, the project would generate tens of millions in tax dollars for the state of Alaska.

The mine developers have called it the “world’s largest undeveloped” resource of copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and rhenium.

Bristol Bay boasts incredible wild salmon runs, when fish migrate back to freshwater from the ocean. The pristine watershed produces the largest run in the world of Sockeye salmon, according to analysts with the McKinley Research Group.

The surface mine would have operated for 20 years and then required about 20 years of work to close it, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which separately denied the mine developers a permit in 2021.

Dissolved metals, and in particular copper, can be dangerous for salmon.

the Hell’s Kitchen hotel and stayed there well into Monday morning.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams addressed the situation and promised that the migrant facility would have all the amenities required by the illegal immigrants and that they would still receive government support.

“This weekend, we began the process of moving single adult men from the Watson Hotel to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, as we transition the hotel to meet the large number of asylum-seeking families with children,” Adams said.

“More than 42,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since last spring, and we continue to surpass our moral obligations as we provide asylum seekers with shelter, food, health care, education, and a host of other services,” he added.

is not working as well as it could be,” the report’s lead author, Munira Gunja, senior researcher for The Commonwealth Fund’s International Program in Health Policy and Practice Innovation, said. “To catch up with other high-income countries, the administration and Congress would have to expand access to health care, act aggressively to control costs, and invest in health equity and social services we know can lead to a healthier population.”

People in the U.S. see doctors less often than those in most other countries, which is probably related to the U.S. having a below-average number of practicing physicians, according to the report.

The U.S. is the only country among those studied that doesn’t have universal health coverage. In 2021 alone, 8.6% of the U.S. population was uninsured.

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency moved to block the Pebble Mine in Alaska, preventing mining waste discharges into the Bristol Bay watershed.

The agency says its veto will preserve the thriving ecosystem and safeguard Alaska’s Sockeye salmon fishery, which produces about half of the world’s harvest of the species. Sockeye is the most valuable Alaska salmon fishery.

“The Bristol Bay watershed is a vital economic driver, providing jobs, sustenance and significant ecological and cultural value to the region,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.

The decision could put an end to a heated, years-long debate over the massive mining project as government agencies vacillated over the watershed’s future and political winds changed. It could also have had profound consequences for Alaska’s economy, which is reliant on both salmon and mining.

The decision also delivers on a campaign promise: President Joe Biden during his election run said that Bristol Bay’s headwaters were “no place for a mine.”

The veto this week is another major setback for mining developers that have been exploring the development of a gold, copper, and molybdenum mine at the headwaters of the Bristol Bay water-

The Pebble Mine Partnership, which has been developing the mining plan, has criticized the EPA after past decision points, accusing it of exceeding its authority under the Clean Water Act, saying that it is harming Alaska’s economy and missing an opportunity to mine copper that will be critical for the energy transition.

Illegal Immigrants Don’t Want to Leave Hotels

Some immigrants who initially went to the relief center returned to the hotel and argued that the new center lacked heating and bathroom space, according to the report.

“The facilities at Brooklyn Cruise Terminal will provide the same services as every other humanitarian relief center in the city, and the scheduled relocations to Brooklyn Cruise Terminal this weekend took place as planned,” the city said in a statement. “We remain in serious need of support from both our state and federal governments.”

U.S. Spends Most on Healthcare

The researchers examined how the United States measured against Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. They also compared the U.S. with the OECD average for 38 high-income countries.

The data showed that in 2021 alone, the U.S. spent nearly twice as much as the average OECD country on health care – and health spending in the U.S. was three to four times higher than in South Korea, New Zealand, and Japan.

The U.S. has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic health conditions, the data showed, and the highest obesity rate among the countries studied.

Life expectancy at birth in the U.S. in 2020 was 77 years – three years less than the OECD average – and early data suggests that U.S. life expectancy dropped even further in 2021.

On the bright side, the United States does better than other countries at cancer prevention and treating cancer early. The U.S. exceeded the OECD average when it came to screening rates for colorectal cancer.

Illegal immigrants staying in free New York City hotel rooms are sleeping in the street to protest their resettlement in a Brooklyn migrant shelter.

The immigrants, who entered the United States illegally across the southern border, were first placed in Midtown Manhattan’s Watson Hotel, according to a report.

When they were told earlier this week that they were slated to be relocated to a Brooklyn Cruise Terminal migrant relief center, many broke out in protest.

Along with migrant activists, the illegal immigrants spent the night outside

The United States spends more on health care than any other high-income country but still has the lowest life expectancy at birth and the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.

The report, released on Tuesday, also says that compared with peer nations, the U.S. has the highest rates of deaths from avoidable or treatable causes and the highest maternal and infant death rates.

“Americans are living shorter, less healthy lives because our health system

A separate paper published in mid-January said that the U.S. cancer death rate has fallen 33% since 1991, which corresponds to an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted.

Holidays Cost Southwest $1 Billion

Southwest Airlines said on Thursday that its holiday meltdown last month would cost it more than $1 billion, including lost revenue from the canceled

flights and refunds and reimbursements to passengers. The debacle also led some customers to cancel trips.

The breakdown over the December holidays, which affected an estimated 2 million passengers, contributed to a $220 million loss in the final three months of last year despite the generally strong demand for air travel, Southwest said. The airline reported record fourth-quarter revenue of $6.2 billion and record revenue for the year. It reported an annual profit of $539 million.

oversight or elected officials.” On Thursday, the airline said it had returned all lost bags to customers, processed nearly all refunds, and gone through more than 80% of the requests that customers submitted to be reimbursed for alternative travel plans.

The airline’s unions blamed a failure by management to update crew scheduling systems and software. Southwest said that it spent about $1 billion annually on technology and that its systems had functioned as designed but had been overwhelmed by the number of last-minute changes that had to be made quickly because crews were far from where they needed to be.

The company asked the software maker, GE Digital, to modify that system and said that an update was weeks away.

(© The New York Times)

The mass flight cancellations cost Southwest about $800 million in the fourth quarter and is expected to dent revenue through March by as much as $350 million, the airline said. The company’s stock was down about 3% at the close of trading Thursday.

Still, Southwest’s executives said they were optimistic for March and beyond because demand for tickets remained strong. The company expects revenue in the first three months of this year to rise between 20% and 24% from a year ago. The airline also said it hadn’t changed its plans to add flights this year.

The company released its quarterly financial results a day after the Department of Transportation said it had started a “rigorous and comprehensive” investigation of Southwest.

Southwest said in a statement on Wednesday that it would cooperate with “any inquiry or request from government

Protests After Tyre Nichols’ Death

point, he was being beaten even while his hands were restrained behind his back.

The officers involved were all black.

It took 23 minutes for emergency workers with a stretcher to come to the scene. Nichols was eventually hospitalized and died three days later.

“All of these officers failed their oath,” Nichols’ family attorney Ben Crump said on Sunday. “They failed their oath to protect and serve. Look at that video: Was anybody trying to protect and serve Tyre Nichols?”

Demonstrators marched through New York City, Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Portland, among other cities across the nation on Saturday, raising signs bearing Nichols’ name and calling for an end to abuses of authority.

Since Nichols’ death, the backlash has been relatively swift. The five Memphis officers involved in the beating were fired and charged with murder and kidnapping in Nichols’ death. The unit they were part of was disbanded, and state lawmakers representing the Memphis area began planning police reform bills.

The five former Memphis police officers involved in the arrest have been charged with second-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, among other charges, according to the Shelby County district attorney.

Protesters once again took to the streets over the weekend to decry police brutality after the release of video depicting the violent Memphis police beating of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols.

On January 7, police officers pulled Nichols over for a traffic stop. In the video released of the incident, officers can be seen beating the black man with batons, punching him, and kicking him. At one

A Really Long Family Trip

All five officers were members of the now-scrapped SCORPION unit. The unit, launched in 2021, put officers into areas where police were tracking upticks in violent crime.

Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ initial care were relieved of duty, pending the outcome of an internal investigation. And two deputies with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office have been put on leave pending an investigation.

If you thought yeshiva week was long, consider spending more than a year flying around the world with your family in a tiny single-engine aircraft – or maybe don’t.

The Porters, a family of five from Canada, are currently around halfway through a 14-month circumnavigation of the world.

Ian Porter, who has been a private pilot for around four decades, his wife Michelle, daughters Samantha, 21, and Sydney, 18, who also happen to be qualified pilots, and son Christopher, 15, set off from Vancouver on June 15, 2022 and have “been basically traveling every day since.”

They are taking a “low and slow” approach to the trip and have already visited around 20 countries, including the United States, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras. So far, they have flown over 25,000 nautical miles.

For Ian, traveling the world with his family was always a dream. A few years ago, he decided to take time off from his

position as a real estate developer. Samantha was able to take time off from university; Sydney was about to graduate high school; Christopher had been homeschooled during the pandemic; and Michelle had been a homemaker for a number of years.

The family found the perfect plane for their voyage for a steal – $500,000. They nicknamed the aircraft “Moose.”

“You can load it up with stuff,” Ian says. “The one thing it doesn’t do is go very fast. So it fits well with our whole modus operandi of ‘low and slow.’ It’s the perfect plane for this mission.”

Currently in Belize, the Porters say they’ll likely head to Guatemala next, before flying on to Mexico. Next, they plan to fly to Eastern Canada, before crossing the North Atlantic through Greenland, Iceland, and then across Europe.

From there, they’ll likely fly across Egypt, the Middle East, India, and Japan, although they say the exact route “will always evolve.”

“We obviously face our challenges,” says Samantha. “But honestly, I’m going to look back on these experiences and miss spending all these days with my family.”

Family time on the fly.

Rat Race

Pat may just be the world’s oldest mouse.

The resident of San Diego Zoo is now in the running with Guinness World Records for official recognition for being the oldest Pacific pocket mouse in the world.

Pat is 9 years and 5 months old.

The rodent was born at the zoo on July 12, 2013. The wildlife alliance said it will hold a special event on February 8 to celebrate the mouse’s longevity and

attempt to secure the Guinness World Records title of oldest living mouse in human care.

The Pacific pocket mouse is the smallest species of mouse in North America.

The zoo established a breeding and reintroduction program for the species in 2012 to help offset population declines.

FinanceBuzz said it is searching for an “IKEA DIY Duo” who would be given $1,000 in IKEA store credit to purchase a bedroom set.

The couple would then be asked to assemble the furniture together and document the experience.

“FinanceBuzz is looking for a couple willing to put their relationship to the test this … season by building an entire IKEA bedroom set together and documenting the experience,” the financial site said. “Just you and your significant other, a wordless instruction manual, and a hex key.”

The winning couple will be awarded $1,000 for completing the task.

One-thousand dollars or not, we say that building IKEA furniture together is not the way to build a strong marriage.

usually unavailable, to cultivate demand, a task crucial for the industry’s survival.

Major supermarket chains have largely stayed away from whale meat to avoid protests by anti-whaling groups and remain cautious even though harassment from activists has subsided.

“As a result, many consumers who want to eat it cannot find or buy whale meat. We launched vending machines at unmanned stores for those people,” Kubo said.

Oh, whale-y?

Lost at Sea

In this rat race, Pat may just be in the lead. The oldest mouse ever recorded by Guinness World Records was named Fritzy and died in 1985 at the age of 7 years and 7 months.

Here’s to crowning the big cheese.

The Couple That Builds Together

Whale Meat On The Go

Last week, the Colombian navy rescued a man from Dominica who says he survived 24 days adrift in the Caribbean on a sailboat by eating ketchup, garlic powder and seasoning cubes.

Elvis Francois, 47, had scrawled the word “help” in English on the boat’s hull, which officials said was key to his rescue.

A lot of situations may contribute to stress in a marriage, but in order to truly know how strong you are as a couple, consider building IKEA furniture together with your spouse.

Aside from the classic chips and soda sold at vending machines, there are many other items one can purchase on the go. In Asia, you can buy Hello Kitty items along with live crabs from vending machines. In Japan, you can buy bananas and beer. And in the United States, you can purchase bait.

Now, those itching to consume whale meat don’t need to head to a store in Japan. Instead, they can purchase the delicacy at The Kujira (Whale) Store in Yokohama, which is home to three vending machines with whale sashimi, whale bacon, whale skin and whale steak, as well as canned whale meat. Prices range from 1,000 yen ($7.70) to 3,000 yen ($23).

Whale meat has long been a source of controversy in the country, but sales in the new vending machines have quietly gotten off to a good start, the operator says.

Kyodo Senpaku hopes to set up vending machines at 100 locations nationwide in five years, company spokesperson Konomu Kubo said. A fourth is to open in Osaka next month.

The idea is to open vending machines near supermarkets, where whale meat is

The sailboat was spotted from the air, and Francois was taken to the port city of Cartagena by a passing container ship, the Colombian navy said.

Francois’s ordeal began in December when currents swept the sailboat out to sea while he was making repairs off the island of St. Martin in the Netherlands Antilles, where he lives.

“I called my friends, they tried to contact me, but I lost the signal. There was nothing else to do but sit and wait,” he said.

For more than three weeks, Francois managed to survive by eating ketchup, garlic powder, and soup cubes. He had collected rainwater with a cloth to drink.

The sailor had to constantly remove water from the boat to prevent it from sinking. He also tried to light a fire to send a distress signal without success.

Finally, a plane passed by, and he signaled with a mirror.

“At some point I lost hope and thought about my family, but I thank the coast guard. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be telling the story,” Francois said.

He would have missed the boat…

Around the Community

The children and morot at Shulamith ECC were so excited to host grandparents as special guest readers at Shulamith’s Grandparents Storytime Circle

Rav Dovid Frischman’s seventh grade talmidim at Yeshiva Darchei Torah, who collectively learned three sedarim of Mishnayos, were treated to a special trip to Brooklyn which included precious time spent with Hagaon Rav Hillel David, shlit”a, Rav of Khal Yeshiva Shaarei Torah.

DRS Father-Son Yom Iyun

On January 2, fathers and students at DRS were inspired at the school’s Annual Father-Son Yom Iyun, entitled “Mind, Body and Soul: Health from a Torah Perspective “

“The purpose of the Yom Iyun is to give the parents and children an opportunity to learn together in a meaningful way,” said Judaic Studies Principal Rabbi Elly Storch. “For everybody to learn together about holiness is a great way to receive inspiration,” he added.

The day commenced with Shacharit, followed by a scrumptious breakfast. Rabbi Storch and Rabbi Kaminetsky

delivered opening remarks, following which students and fathers chose to hear shiurim from various DRS rebbeim on topics related to health. Some of the topics presented were, “The Torah Perspective on Exercise,” “Mental Health and OCD in Halacha,” “The Importance of Eating Healthy from a Jewish Perspective,” and “Kidney Donation in Halacha.” Following the first session, fathers and sons heard shiurim from their own “home-room” rebbeim.

The shiurim were interesting, informative, inspirational, and enjoyable for all.

Sports Senior Night at SKA A Grand Bechina

Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Schultz’s 3rd grade CAHAL class has been busy studying for the Yeshiva Darchei Torah Grand Bechina. This will be a 100-question test on the entire Sefer Bereishis. The boys have been going through review questions on each

parsha, reviewing the basic points of the parsha as well as key Rashis. Each day, they review a new parsha and also review the ones that they have already done. Baruch Hashem, the boys remember so much of what they have learned! They are masmidim already!

SKAthetics held their annual Senior Night on motzei Shabbat, January 7, where they recognized the graduating seniors of the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls at the last regular season game on home court.

The SKA Varsity A Basketball Team beat Central 73-40, completing the season undefeated with a record of 12-0! Congratulations to coaches Batsheva Aaron and Tess Blaustein.

A Memorable Dedication for the IDF

In a memorable and emotional ceremony last month, dozens of soldiers and guests gathered at the Rehavam Base, headquarters of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Homefront Command’s Search and Rescue Unit, in the city of Ramla, for the commemoration of a new synagogue. A gift from Florence Wolf of Lawrence, NY, and her family in honor of the late Cyrus Wolf, z”l, the synagogue will ensure the soldiers are mentally and spiritually nurtured and connected, and have a place to relax and unwind throughout their service.

Col. Edri, Commander of the Search & Rescue Brigade, helped cut the ribbon on the new building and he addressed the crowd along with Friends of the IDF (FIDF) National Chairman Fred Gluckman and Dr. Ed Wolf, a representative of the Wolf family. The Chief Cantor of the IDF, Lt. Col Shai Abramson, recit-

ed a Yizkor prayer in memory of Cyrus Wolf and another for the safety of Israel and its soldiers. Also in attendance with Rabbi and Rebbetzin Lipsak of Bal Harbour, Florida.

Cyrus Wolf was a dynamic and respected leader in the Five Towns community, a generous benefactor and someone who thrived on bringing Jews together. To Cyrus, the synagogue was a place where he and his family united and connected with their Jewish community, and this gift presented on his behalf, was the perfect way to honor his memory. The construction of the synagogue, and ceremony, were facilitated by FIDF.

“We are deeply grateful to the Wolf family for their incredible contribution to the Homefront Command Base,” said Fred Gluckman. “It is a privilege to partner with such generous and mis -

sion-driven philanthropists to provide a synagogue as a community gathering place for the soldiers. We echo their intention to provide those who defend the homeland with a place to form a stronger community through reflection and prayer.”

The IDF Homefront Command is responsible for preparing and assisting the civilian population in times of crisis, as well as post-crisis reconstruction. The Search and Rescue Brigade is a highly skilled force under its command that operates search and rescue missions in Israel and around the world, aiding in rescue and recovery from incidents such as terror attacks, floods, and other natural disasters.

“I’m honored and proud of our parents for their extraordinary leadership and passionate commitment to ensuring a better future for the brave men and

women of the Israel Defense Forces,” said Trudy Stern, Cyrus’s daughter. “I know I speak for the entire Jewish community in expressing my thanks to FIDF for the incredible work that they do and the opportunities they provide.”

FIDF’s construction projects give the young men and women of the IDF a taste of “home away from home” while they are in service. FIDF aims to create environments in which soldiers can relax, connect with each other, stay in shape, commemorate and celebrate special days, and simply feel like themselves again outside of uniform. Projects range from individual structures to comprehensive well-being complexes, and include recreation and sports centers, cultural and educational facilities, synagogues, memorial rooms, auditoriums, and soldiers’ homes.

HAFTR Students Raise Money for Chai Lifeline in Miami Marathon

On Sunday, January 29, a group of HAFTR Middle School boys spent their last day of yeshiva week in Miami, Florida. However, they didn’t go just to enjoy the sunshine and beaches. Instead, they ran for Chai Lifeline in the Miami Marathon with their Rebbe, Rav Chaim Siff. The group ran as part of Team Jacob, in honor of Jacob Hersko, 7th grader and talmid of Rav Chaim.

Five HAFTR students in addition to Jacob Hersko ran this year. Five more students who didn’t run in the marathon also worked hard behind the scenes to help the

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team reach their fundraising goals. This year, Team Jacob raised over $90,000 through the marathon. The marathon is an important fundraiser for Chai Lifeline. The money raised goes towards supporting the incredible work that Chai Lifeline does to help children with serious illnesses and their families.

Participating in the marathon allowed HAFTR students to practice teamwork and perseverance while working towards a collective goal for an amazing cause. It was a wonderful chessed experience that brought the HAFTR family together.

Australia has over 10,000 beaches.

Photo credit: Ori Shemesh, Courtesy of FIDF

“Out of the Box” Play at Gan Chamesh

Inspired by the upcoming holiday of Tu B’Shevat and the idea of taking care of Hashem’s beautiful world by recycling, Gan Chamesh embarked on an innovative unit, Box Week. The children’s imaginations soared as they played and experimented with all different kinds of boxes. There was much creativity and exploration. The possibilities were endless as children replaced toys in the classroom with boxes.

Vacation Memories

Children in the HALB Lev Chana four-year-old nursery classes share what they did on their winter break! Parents and children had the opportunity to highlight activities they did, food they ate, and books they read. It’s always fun to share home experiences with our friends at school!

Masterpieces at HANC

An Enlightening Experience

At Shulamith, students are provided with opportunities for growth in many areas, including education and interpersonal relationships. Recently, Shulamith first graders enjoyed learning about electricity from the sec-

ond graders when they visited the “Electri-city” in the STEM lab with Mrs. Beth Ruck. The girls absorbed the scientific principles while bonding with girls from another grade.

Reception for Yeshiva Bais Abraham-Slonim

Areception to benefit Yeshiva Bais Abraham – Slonim welcoming its Rosh Hayeshiva Hagon Harav Moshe Berozovsky, son of Slonimer Rebba, shlita, will take place on Sunday, February 5 at 8:00 P.M. at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Aron Kopelowitz, 1223 Beach 9th Street in Far Rockaway, NY.

The Slonim Yeshiva is entering its seventy-sixth year since its founding by the Harav Shalom Noach Berozovsky, the

Lechu V’Nelcha

Lechu V’Nelcha in Far Rockaway and the Five Towns continues to inspire! Sunday night, January 22, though cold and rainy, brought out a crowd to hear from Mrs. Ariella Flegmann, who inspired all with a stimulating, thought-provoking speech about the emunah we learn from the parshiyos of Yetzias Mitrayim.

Nesivos Shalom, zt”l. Each year the yeshiva produces a large group of talmidei chachomim who take on leadership positions in Torah communities throughout Israel and abroad . They provide a strong combination of high level Torah learning and refinement of middos blended with the warmth of chassidus. Come and show your support for this magnificent torah institution.

After a week break for vacation, LVN is back this week. LVN this week will take place on Motzei Shabbos, Feb 4, 8:15 PM, at the Agudah of the Five Towns, and we look forward to hearing from Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein, on the topic of “Truly Great… Jewish Women Then & Now.” Looking forward to greeting you!

The yeladim at HANC ECC returned from vacation rested and eager to continue learning. In

honor of the letter M, our talented yeladim in Morah Shani’s Nursery Aleph class painted beautiful masterpieces.

YOSS Visits Aish Kodesh Understanding History

YOSS talmidim in Rabbi Goodman’s shiur were privileged to a special audience with Rabbi Moshe Weinberger, Mora D’Asra of Aish Kodesh. He spoke to the students about chavivas ha’mitzvos. Rabbi Weinberger showed them the tefillin his father mirac-

ulously held onto throughout his time in Mauthausen during the Holocaust. Rabbi Weinberger’s father put on the tefillin every day and was able to allow hundreds of others to keep this special mitzvah!

The boys left inspired, saying, “We can’t wait to put on our own tefillin!”

History allows us to create a better understanding of the world. You can’t build a framework on which to base your life without understanding how things work in the world, or at least used to work in the world.

Mrs. Zajac’s fourth grade class at Yeshiva of South Shore used their biography reports to gain an understanding of history. Reading firsthand about a person’s life experience allow students to gain a greater understanding about what was going on during that time period. Each boy chose a book they felt they could connect to. Students were encouraged to examine the person’s life and try to

make connections by asking themselves: How is this person similar to me? How are they different? By making text to self-connections students felt more connected to the person they were reporting on, as well as the time period they were reading about. The students in Mrs. Zajac’s fourth grade class walked away with wisdom gleaned from other’s life experiences and behaviors.

We know that the boys in Mrs. Zajac’s class will remember the life of the person they researched for many years to come and hopefully it will inspire them to accomplish great things.

Mercaz Academy First Graders Celebrate Chag HaSiddur

Mercaz Academy in Plainview was blessed with a great deal to celebrate as Kitah Aleph received their first siddurim at their Chag HaSiddur. Kitah Aleph has been learning all about tefillah (prayer) with Morah Shani Kaufman in preparation for the day they would begin using the siddur. To display their knowledge, they designed and created a tefillah bulletin board in their room, working hard to think of ways to symbolize the process of prayer and drawing, cutting, and hanging their ideas up for all to see. Kitah Aleph students decided that a ladder would be an excellent way to show the process of reaching up to Hashem, symbolized with a crown. They added a heart to the board because prayer is avodat halev, work of the heart.

Of course, the culmination of their

studies took place at the Chag HaSiddur, where they recited the lessons they have learned about tefillah and sang songs about prayer for an appreciative audience of parents, grandparents, friends, and teachers.

Kitah Aleph agreed with Mercaz principal Rabbi Kalman Fogel that getting their first siddur was very special. Rabbi Fogel said that there were many times that he wanted to reach out to Hashem and asked Kitah Aleph how he should do that. They immediately suggested that he use a siddur. Rabbi Fogel reminded them that from the moment we open a siddur to daven, we are talking to Hashem. Rabbi Fogel expressed the hope and blessing that they would always open their siddurim with the same eagerness and excitement they felt at the moment each first grader received their very own

siddur.

Guests and students then enjoyed the refreshments supplied by parents and the PTA, including a beautifully decorat-

ed cake that was a delicious reward for a job well done by all the students. Congratulations to Kitah Aleph and Morah Shani on reaching this milestone!

Names, Not Numbers at HANC

At the Melava Malka for the 35th Yahrtzeit of Reb Shmuel Abba Katz z”l in the Katz Shul in Far Rockaway, NY

The eighth grade at HANC Middle School had an amazing experience shortly before yeshiva break. The grade was divided into groups and had the opportunity to interview Holocaust survivors. The students prepared extensively for these interviews. They studied their survivor’s bio and used it to prepare questions which would discuss the survivor’s memories from before, during, and after the war.

The experience was one the students will never forget. As each survivor entered the building or came on the screen via Zoom, he/she was greeted by our students. The interactions were wonderful. One of the highlights of the program was the intergenerational component. Seeing the faces of the survivors light up and

seeing the students’ faces respond in kind was nothing short of magical. The survivor was escorted to the Beit Medrash, which was turned into a real set complete with video, sound, and light equipment. Each student took turns in the roles of interviewer, sound, video, and observer. The students were trained and directed by the Names, Not Numbers© production crew. We thank Michael Puro for all of his hard work with the project. Special hakarat hatov to Mr. Dov Rosenberg and Mrs. Tova Rosenberg for all of their help in making this week so special for the students.

The interviews themselves were most memorable. There were so many poignant moments.

Photos by Ira Thomas

HALB Students brought home tefillah and mitzvah charts over winter break and won classroom prizes for completing them! These fifth grade girls are very excited to cash in their homework and quiz passes!

Parshat Beshalach is coming to life at HANC ECC. The yeladim in Morah Shani’s Nursery Aleph class crafted a beautiful project recreating the splitting of the Yam Suf.

Midwinter Seder

The Yeshiva Darchei Torah Middle School held a special, optional night seder during the midwinter break. The vibrant learning at the

Agudah of Long Island was followed by a magic show and a walk to Sh’or Yoshuv, where the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Naftoli Jaeger, inspired the boys.

MK Rothman Visits the Five Towns

This past week, One Israel Fund partnered with Rabbi Duvid Katz of the Israel Heritage Foundation and Rabbi Pesach Lerner of Eretz Hakodesh in bringing leaders from the New

York area to meet MK Simcha Rothman of the Religious Zionist Party at a dinner at Prime Bistro in Lawrence, NY. MK Rothman lives in Pnei Kedem and has been laser focused on the issue of judicial

Ulpanat Lachish at Central

In early January, a group of twelve Central students traveled to Israel for a month to live and learn in Ulpanat Lachish, in the south of Israel, as a part of Central’s Ba’aretz program. While there, these students will have the opportunity to fully immerse themselves in Israeli culture. Those traveling include sophomores Amy Morris, Reema Gampel, and Serah Tolchin, as well as juniors Aviva Kessock, Tiferet Tuchman, Debra Burger, Keira Kahn, Gitty Kahn, Leora Strass, Meira Schuck, Talia Frankel, and Abby Keehn. They were be hosted by Israeli families, attended school with Israeli students, and had unforgettable travel experiences – including a glimpse into the inner workings of political life in Israel.

“My favorite part of the trip was our trip to the Knesset,” said sophomore Serah Tolchin. “We learned so much about the Israeli government and even got to talk to a member of the Knesset, Ohad Tal. We were given a tour and a chance to observe beautiful art and the Plenum Hall, the room where the Knesset votes.

It was so interesting and informative.” Journeys have also included trips to significant cultural sites. Sophomore Reema Gampel described her experience visiting the Old City of Jerusalem: “My most meaningful experience so far was seeing the walls of the Old City,” she said. “This is my first time in Israel, and actually seeing the same walls that protected our Jewish ancestors was very emotional and inspiring.”

Junior Gitty Kahn described the experience of learning more about the special community hosting Central, Lachish: “We have had the incredible opportunity to learn about the history of Lachish through the Museum of Gush Katif in Nitzan,” she said. “Lachish is a newer development that was built up after the expulsion of Gush Katif. In 2005, the Knesset voted to evict the Jewish residents of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip as a way to promote peace with the surrounding Arabs. Lachish is full of families originally from Gush Katif, and so many of our new Israeli friends are the result of this expulsion. Learning this

reform, which is currently being promoted by Minister of Justice Yariv Levin. MK Rothman discussed the myriad of ways that this issue, if left alone, is negatively impacting all aspects of Israeli life.

background behind Lachish has helped us understand our friends and their lives here, while also allowing us to appreciate their hospitality when they were not always treated with that same respect and care.”

Thanks to the administration and students at Ulpanat Lachish for welcoming Central’s travelers with open arms,

as well as to the Central administration, which made this year’s Ba’aretz program possible. Special thanks, as well, to the student madricha in Israel, Revaya Aronoff, and the special student host in Israel, Chanie Loew. Central looks forward to hosting four Ulpanat Lachish students here in mid-February!

Leading the dinner delegation from One Israel Fund were Scott M. Feltman, Executive Vice President; David Shapiro, Trustee; and Board Members Dr. Emma Laskin and Martin Cohen.

Makkos Mania at YOSS ECC SKA Alumnae In Israel

While learning Parshas Vayera and Bo, YOSS ECC explored the Makkos in a hands-on and not-so-scary way. Special editions this year was a new frog jumping sensory path and large “arbeh” grasshoppers found hanging off the rock climbing wall.

Three graduates of the Stella K. Abraham Class of ‘22 enjoyed a visit from their Israel Guidance Advisor Mrs. Debra Green over Yeshiva Week.

Sarah Masri, Michali Moskowit,z

and Aliza Toplan, now in Tiferet Seminary in Israel, appreciated the opportunity to share their experiences with Mrs. Green who took part of her vacation in Israel to meet with alumnae in various seminaries.

DA Donnelly Visits the Five Towns

Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly met with local rabbinic and lay leaders of the community to discuss building relation-

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ships with the district attorney’s office including ways they can help one another to ensure the safety and security of our community.

There’s a city named Rome on every continent in the world except for in Antarctica.

Forever a Talmid

The Chinuch Legacy of Rabbi Chanina Herzberg – Infusing the essence of Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld into the next generation

By Rabbi Yitzchok Herzberg

Forever a Talmid tells the story of mesorah reverently handed down generation to generation. The story of the timeless rebbi-talmid bond. The story of greatness in the yeshivah, the classroom, and the home – and the story of the power of one man’s warmth, determination, and belief in every Jew.

Charlie Herzberg was a regular American boy. Fantastic third baseman, popular with his classmates, not a top student. But there were Torah scholars and leaders who saw a spark of greatness in young Charlie, who believed in him, and helped him believe in himself. And so he grew up to become Rabbi Chanina Herzberg, the master mechanech who always believed in his talmidim and who always, always, remained a talmid of his own rebbi, Rav Shlomo Freifeld.

A talmid muvhak of Rav Freifeld, Rabbi Herzberg was the recipient of a glorious mesorah – from the Alter of Slabodka to Rav Yitzchok Hutner to Rav Freifeld, whom he consulted on a daily regular basis. He brought that mesorah of gadlus ha’adam, the greatness of man, into every aspect of his life. As menahel of Yeshiva Toras Chaim at South Shore for decades, Rabbi Herzberg had a vision of what a yeshivah should be: A place where every child “connects to the Ribono Shel Olam, and learns to be a mensch.” He took care of everyone – rebbeim, moros, teachers, parents and, of course, talmidim – bringing out the best in them, because he truly saw what was best in them.

In Forever a Talmid, we will read story after story about Rabbi Herzberg, Rav Freifeld, and the others who were so central to his life. We will learn how much work it takes to be a true talmid, and the enormous, uncountable benefits. And how a few words spoken at the right time can change a person’s life. And how if we believe in a child or talmid – indeed, in any person – he will learn to believe in himself.

And, yes, we will learn how to believe in ourselves as well.

The following are several choice anecdotes from this uplifting book.

Where Will These Sneakers Take Me?

One day during dismissal at Yeshiva Toras Chaim, a bunch of boys were standing together when Yechiel*, a boy from a well-to-do family who was beginning to display bullying tendencies, noticed that Shaya*, who came from a poor family, was wearing cheap sneakers. In front of the crowd, Yechiel shouted disparagingly, “Hey, look at the sneakers you’re wearing, from Payless! I’m wearing Nikes!”

Shaya was broken and didn’t know what to respond. Little did he know that his savior was in earshot. At that moment, R’ Chanina happened to be passing by and heard the comment.

“Everyone here shops at Payless!” he belted out.

R’ Chanina proceeded to give an impromptu mussar shmuess.

“Boys, you’re going to learn in time that the sneakers you wear make no difference. It’s where you will walk and talk in those sneakers that will make a difference. It’s about what’s on the inside that counts. It’s not about the money you have, it’s about what you do with it. As you grow older, you’re going to ask yourselves: Where did these sneakers take me?”

Just warming up, R’ Chanina gave Yechiel an assignment. “Tomorrow, come back and tell me what you are going to achieve in life with these sneakers. What great things are you going to accomplish with everything you have?”

Yoni* witnessed the scene and related that at that moment R’ Chanina was successful on two fronts: lifting Shaya’s spirits and overturning Yechiel’s attitude regarding what’s important in life.

The Purpose of the Farher

As a talmid in Yeshiva Toras Chaim, Charlie was farhered several times by R’ Nissen Telushkin. Many years later, he recollected, “When I was a talmid in Yeshiva Toras Chaim, there were two types of farhers. One was given by a certain talmid chacham, who farhered the class to show each boy how much they should have known. After those farhers, I walked out feeling terrible, as I never did well. Then there was the ‘R’ Telushkin farher.’ He farhered to show you how much you knew. When I walked out of the ‘R’ Telushkin farher,’ I felt like a

million dollars.

“When I farher a class,” R’ Chanina concluded, “I give the ‘R’ Telushkin farher.’”

R’ Scharhon related that when R’ Chanina would come to give his class a farher, he and R’ Chanina had a secret code: “R’ Telushkin.” If R’ Scharhon noticed that a particular talmid, who generally didn’t know the material that well was able to answer a specific question that R’ Chanina had just posed, R’ Scharhon would interject, “‘R’ Telushkin,’ you didn’t call on this boy yet,” or “‘R’ Telushkin,’ I think this boy has an answer to this question.” After hearing the code, R’ Chanina would call on the boy and praise him to the sky when he got the answer right. And if there was still a boy who hadn’t done well on the farher, R’ Chanina would ask R’ Scharhon to send the boy to R’ Chanina’s office, so the talmid could say a piece of Gemara that he knew well and receive his share of praise.

As R’ Chanina saw it, the purpose of a bechinah is to show the talmid how much he knows and how good he is, to demonstrate to him what he can be and what he can do. It is not for the rebbi to see how much the talmid knows; he should already know how his talmidim are faring without the bechinah.

The sefer Maaseh Ish (Vol. 7, p. 61) describes a farher given by the Chazon Ish. “We received many farhers from the Chazon Ish,” recalled a talmid who grew up in Bnei Brak, “and each time we were certain that he did everything he could to make each boy feel good about how he did on the bechinah, that the boy would experience seva ratzon and walk away with a renewed cheishek to continue learning.”

That was the purpose of the Chazon Ish’s farher.

And R’ Telushkin’s.

And R’ Chanina’s.

Sharing a Yarmulke…and Yiddishkeit

Ruvy* grew up in a frum home and attended yeshiva. Unfortunately, as a teenager, he strayed from the proper path. One Shabbos, Ruvy, now a young adult, stayed with a friend. Though it had been some time since he had last attended shul, he went with his friend to R’ Chanina’s shul. However, he didn’t

bother wearing a yarmulke.

As Ruvy entered the shul during Mussaf, R’ Chanina took note of the newcomer and motioned to him to sit next to him at the front of the shul. R’ Chanina, who was wearing a hat, removed his yarmulke from under his hat, gave it to Ruvy, and placed his arm around him. R’ Chanina remained at Ruvy’s side during the Kiddush, as well, making him feel welcome and comfortable. No lengthy conversation, just wise eyes and true love for another Jew.

That was a turning point in Ruvy’s return to Torah observance. R’ Chanina’s warm and selfless act touched his neshamah, helping catalyze a complete turnaround. He began to wear a yarmulke more often, always the yarmulke R’ Chanina had given him, which he so cherished.

Today, Ruvy is a fully-observant Jew. Soldiering On

It wasn’t always easy to keep building up the boys, to keep up the positive atmosphere, especially at the end of his life. Yet to R’ Chanina, this was a number-one priority. While undergoing treatment for cancer, R’ Chanina’s hair started to fall out, and he was told that within several weeks he would lose his beard.

R’ Chanina was distraught. Though he wanted so badly to be in yeshiva, to him, being around talmidim without a beard wasn’t an option, for two reasons: First, he was concerned that since most of the children weren’t capable of understanding the circumstances, they would be scared and uncomfortable. Second, his life’s mission was to build up talmidim, to create a ruach in the yeshiva of positivity and warmth. Being there without a beard would create a negative, unsettling atmosphere and would constitute a contradiction to what he was trying to accomplish. If he couldn’t do what he was supposed to do, it would be better for him not to be there at all.

Knowing how much this meant to her husband, Mrs. Herzberg researched fake beards used in professional plays and theaters and ordered them. Every morning, she would paste a beard on her husband’s face using a special glue and each evening she would take it off. Besides being a very time-consuming process, a few

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hours each day, it was also a very painful one. At times, R’ Chanina would cry out in pain from the tugging and plucking and stickiness on his delicate skin.

But R’ and Mrs. Herzberg soldiered on. The two of them would awaken every morning at around 4:00 a.m. and begin the process, so R’ Chanina could be ready to go to yeshiva by 7:00. There was nothing R’ Chanina and his extraordinarily dedicated wife wouldn’t do or go through for his talmidim.

Show, Not Tell

“The foundation of good chinuch,” stated R’ Chanina, “is the personal example parents set for their children. This idea is repeated over and over in the sefarim of ‘big Jews,’ and I have personally witnessed this myself. You want your children to be baalei chesed and sensitive Jews, you need to be the paradigm of gemilus chasadim. You want them to have middos tovos, you need to have middos tovos. If a father and mother are committed to developing their own character traits, then the children, by osmosis, absorb their behavior into their own personalities.

“Numerous times over the last 40

years, I have seen children of ‘regular, simple Jews’ who became the heads of beautiful families, vibrant members of communities, and fine, outstanding ambassadors of our nation. It was not because their parents forced them to learn or daven. Rather, it was their own humble approach to avodas Hashem, and their constant, subliminal message that they provided for their children. A message of middos, chesed, ahavas Yisrael, ahavas Torah, and concern for what was important. We must set good examples for our children. If we do, we stand a very good chance of having doros yesharim mevorach, blessed generations following the straightforward way of the Torah.”

Though R’ Chanina believed in this method of chinuch habanim from the moment he had his first child, it took time until he managed to master the methodology and make it a part of him. And it was R’ Shlomo who helped him get there, all but knocking it into him.

One Shabbos morning, soon after R’ Chanina had been hired as menahel of Yeshiva Toras Chaim, he was davening in Yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv with his eldest son. He was trying to coerce his son, all of 9

years old, to daven Shacharis. After all, how would it look if the menahel’s own son is not davening?

After davening, R’ Shlomo summoned R’ Chanina for a quick “conference.”

“R’ Chanina, what were you doing to your son during davening?”

Slightly flustered, R’ Chanina replied, “I was trying to get him to daven.”

“No!” R’ Shlomo asserted. “Do not preach. Let him see that you take it seriously, that it’s real to you. Then he will daven.

“And one more thing,” R’ Shlomo added with his usual dose of humor, “if I ever see you poking your son again, trying to get him to daven, I’ll hit you over the head with a stick!”

That one incident helped formulate a path in chinuch that has impacted thousands of children. It was the catalyst to mastering the method of practicing, not preaching. For close to 40 years, R’ Chanina related this story to young parents who came to him for advice; it became his refrain: “Rabbosai, I’m telling you, if you want your children to do something, then make sure you are doing

it yourself!” Those few words of advice helped numerous parents lay the proper framework for excellence in chinuch habanim.

R’ Chanina would often say, “Children learn more from looks than from books.” In many ways, parents and teachers teach more through action, by what the children see them doing, than through book-teaching.

In Me M ory Alan Kutner A”H A “Once in A Generation” Friend

Reflections by Yitzy Halpern

If you are lucky enough in life, you will get to meet lots of unique people, but if you are really lucky, you will meet a “once in a lifetime” type of person. If you are even luckier, you will be close friends with that person and see him as a mentor or an uncle figure. To me, Alan Kutner was that and more.

For the many people who call themselves friends of Alan, a”h, this week was a painful end of an era. Alan’s love for his family and extended family was a beautiful sight to see. Nobody was too old for a loving hug and kiss, and no child was too young for his full attention and coddling. He treated his friends – or “buddies,” as he called us – like family. When in his presence, we felt his love, care, connection, and total embrace; it never got old. We looked forward to it every time. People often say, “You don’t realize what you had until you lose it.” Well, actually, we did know what we had with Alan Kutner, and we were really scared for this day because there is no double.

While it seems like an impossible task to describe a man this great in just one article, I will do my best to give you a glimpse into the concept called Alan Kutner.

Born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Alan fused Southern charm with a fierce devotion to Torah and Yiddishkeit. This made conversations with Uncle Alan beyond interesting and often hilariously funny. He could sit for hours and talk about his Rebbe muvhak, Rav Nota Greenblatt, zt”l. In the same conversation, he could chuckle and remember the time as a kid when the wellknown local Shabbos goy in the close-knit neighborhood gave him a ride on the back of his motorcycle and said, “Kid, I’m gonna be a big star someday!” (that guy was a young man named Elvis); how his neighbor Fred Smith

started FedEx; or, when the “supposed” stones that Yoshkeh walked on were found in the Mississippi River (not sure how they concocted that one??) and Reb Nota paskened that instead of breaking it into pieces and selling keychains to local Baptists they had to smash it into pieces and throw it back into the river. To Alan, it was all just another piece of the Memphis mosaic.

While Memphis may not be on the radar for most people, those of us who were zocheh to spend time there were introduced to a fascinating group of people with a rich history. There was Alan’s father, Reb Shea Kutner, a”h, who built a substantial portion of suburban Memphis and was an ehrlicheh talmid chacham who sounded like a

she approached the locked entrance of the shul, she saw a young man sitting on the stoop waiting for it to open. He welcomed her and promised to show her how to daven. She was so inspired that she became fully shomer Shabbos and ended up marrying and spending the next 70 years with this man building a magnificent, Torahdikeh, geshmak and truly Southern family.

The extended Memphis family is all part of the Kutner story, too. You had Reb Nota Greenblatt, zt”l, Reb Moshe Feinstein zt”l’s prized talmid, who sat alone in Memphis and learned the entire Torah practically by heart. Reb Nota spent all week on the road handling gittin, kashrus, pidyon shevuyim, and more for the entire South. In so many of these endeavors, Alan and his boys were at Reb Nota’s and his son's sides as trusted and dedicated partners. One of many examples that comes to mind: together they spent over ten years trying to get a framed Jewish man off of death row. Alan spent endless time and his own money without a cheshbon on this endeavor. Eventually, they succeeded, and the man was pardoned by the governor of Tennessee.

Rosh Yeshiva when he said a vort. And Bubby Shifra who tragically died so young but to this very day, almost 50 years later, is still a name that comes up in everyday conversations. There was Zeidy Katz, Barbara Kutner’s dad, who was humble and kind and lived by every word of the Shulchan Aruch. How about Bubby Dottie Katz, who, as a young girl, decided on her own that she wanted to become more religious and took a cab to the local Orthodox shul one Saturday morning. In those days there were only a handful of shomer Shabbos families in Memphis. As

There are too many examples to describe how over the years Alan gave his whole self to help people in every way – whether with financial support, emotional support for people seeking treatment in Memphis’s world-renowned children’s hospital, or just being the best friend to lonely locals. And if you know anything about the Kutners, you would know that every single step of the way, his tzadeikes of a wife, Barabara, was right there as his partner. At times, she was caring for her over-ninety-year-old father and father-in-law as well as her husband, who, unfortunately, was not well for quite a few years.

Whoever knows Memphis knows about the Kaplan fam-

Alan fused Southern charm with a fierce devotion to Torah and Yiddishkeit.

Alan with his wife, Barbara, and their children, Ephraim, Yoni, Shifra, and Eli

With his wife Barbara in their younger years

ily, the Thomas family, and, of course, the Golds. Some of the most legendary members of the Five Towns community originated in Memphis, Unfortunately, it is now all history, but anyone who saw the way the people in Memphis treated each other, and especially the way they respected Reb Nota, saw a piece of old European level emunas chachomim. Alan and his boys would sit in Reb Nota’s presence until his last days and listen and ask and probe and laugh and cry – a sight to be seen.

Throughout the years, there was some change in Memphis – restaurants opened and closed (mostly closed); Elvis died; the blues were almost replaced by hip hop; the ducks at the Peabody got sick of the daily march; Graceland almost ran out of burial plots, but in the frum community, Yiddishkeit remained strong. While most of the second generation set up roots in other frum cities, Alan and Barbara would not leave their aging parents and Reb Nota, zt”l. Even for these doting parents who love their children and grandchildren more than anyone could imagine, they did not make the move to Lawrence (where all of their children and grandchildren live) until about a year ago, when the previous generation all passed on. As difficult as it was for them to remain back in Memphis, away from their growing family, the message to the family and extended family was clear: dedication, dedication, and more dedication.

Before finally moving to New York, Alan and Barbara utilized the phone more than anyone I know. At any Kutner event, Alan was usually on the phone line checking in or being part of the conversation from afar. Facetime was fully utilized. The phone would be passed around, and Alan and Barbra would be on the other end of the line participating and enjoying being in everyone’s “virtual presence.” No matter how loud it would be in the room, it was always fun when a grandkid would put the phone in front of your face so Alan could see you and you can scream into the phone for a quick schmooze with Alan. “Hey, Yeeetz! Boy, I wish I was there in person, I’m tellin’ you! … Whatchya eatin’ Yeetz? Boy, that looks good!”

We all learned so much from Alan and will continue to channel him in our hearts. After experiencing his deep ahavas Yisroel and genuine care for every Yid, it will undoubtedly affect the way we treat people. You see, Alan didn’t say, “Hello, how are you?” It went something like this: “Yeeeeeetz!!! Gimme a hug! How you doin’, buuuuuddy? How’s Nechama? How about your daaaad? And your mom? How about Naaat? And your kids? Can you please send them all maaah love and tell them I can wait to see them soon? How’s beeeeeziness, Yeeetz? Man, it is so good to see you!! What else, buuuuddy?”

And that was just the hello. Then came the seudah or BBQ and, of course, the great stories.

There were so many facets to Alan’s personality and so many life lessons to be learned from him. At the levaya, his oldest child, Ephraim, noted how when his dad was practically not communicative at all, he managed to say the word “tzitzis.” He wanted to put on tzitzis when he couldn’t move a limb. His daughter Shifra noted how everyone felt like they were his favorite child, grandchild, or preferred buddy. I know that I felt like one of his favorites.

Yoni pointed out another aspect of his dad when he described the emotional experience of leaving Memphis as a 13-year-old because his father wanted his boys to have a top yeshiva education. When Yoni expressed to his parents how difficult it was for him to leave, Alan’s response was, “I

Throughout the years, there was some change in Memphis – restaurants opened and closed (mostly closed); Elvis died; the blues were almost replaced by hip hop; the ducks at the Peabody got sick of the daily march; Graceland almost ran out of burial plots, but in the frum community, Yiddishkeit remained strong.

know, Yoni; believe me, it’s even harder for me.” And Yoni knew that was true.

Eli mentioned the famous exchange in the Gemara when the chachomim wanted to know who had the most sechar, and it was revealed that it was two jesters that had the biggest piece of Olam Haba because they made people laugh. Alan made people laugh. His joy and humor were so contagious that most of us can think back to many of Alan’s punch lines, even though we no longer remember the beginning of the joke. The reason is that once Alan said the punchline and let out his side-splitting laughter, that’s all you needed to remember. It is hard to explain how five to six versions of the same five or six jokes could be so funny that they would warrant a trip to Memphis.

His oldest granddaughter Shira talked about her deep relationship with her grandfather and how he always made her feel so special for making him a granddad. She shared how she would “confide in Zeidy, and Zeidy a confided in her.” She described how he was literally her best friend and confidante in a deep way.

How one man can have that relationship with so many people from two years old to 100 years old is truly legendary.

While inevitably the previous generation moves on, some too soon, the lessons learned and the uniqueness of Alan lives on in his children and entire family. If most of what is written here sounds familiar, it is probably because you know one or all of Alan’s kids. You may have been a recipient of their kindness or spent five hours enjoying simchas Purim in their tent. Or you may be lucky enough to daven in a shul with one of them, and you are familiar with the teddy bear embrace and over-thetop greeting. Or you may have been within 500 feet of one of them when they heard a good joke and you are familiar with the laugh. The Kutner concept is well known by many, and our lives are infinitely more valuable and meaningful because of them. You may have wondered where did these people come from? Well, now you know the rest of the story. This was not borne out of thin air. There is a rich history and a backstory about where this all originated.

It is hard to end these reflections because there is so much more to share. As much as the focus here was about Alan’s personality and gadlus, his dear wife Barbara stands just as tall in dedication, motherly love, nurturing nature, and so much more. Volumes can be written about her selfless devotion to the previous generation, her husband, and her family. May Hashem give her the strength to continue strong until 120 years.

To my friend Alan I say: Rest in peace with your mother who you’ve missed every day, with your father who you were so close to, with your rebbe who you revered. While we will miss you so much here in this temporary world, we will never forget you and we will always reminisce and laugh and chazer over your stories and jokes. Most of all, we will continue to emulate your warmth and embrace and treat others with love and kindness because that is what you taught us.

While the void you leave in your family and friends is painful, you suffered greatly over the last bunch of years and we are all comforted knowing that you are not in pain anymore and that you are reaping the benefits of a life dedicated to Hashem, family, and mitzvos. We look forward to the day very soon when we are all reunited with the coming of Moshiach.

In Memphis with Reb Nota Greenblatt, zt"l, and his father, Reb Shea, z"l

With his father, Reb Shea, z"l Alan with Reb Nota Greenblatt zt"l and ybl"ch his son Eli

You Gotta Be Kidding Me!

Boss: How good are you are PowerPoint?

Me: I Excel at it.

Boss: Was that a Microsoft Office pun?

Me: Word.

Riddle me This

I have many keys, but no locks.

I have space, but no rooms. You may enter, but you may not go outside. What am I?

Riddle Me This

John wanted to get into a members-only club so he hid and watched the guard at the door of the clubhouse. The guard said a number to each member as they approached, and the member would respond with a number of their own. If the member responded with the correct number, they were let in. If they responded incorrectly, they were thrown out.

One member came up to the door, the guard said twelve, and the member responded with six and was let in. Another member came to the door, the guard said six, and the member responded with three and was let in. Believing he had heard enough, John went up to the guard. The guard said ten, and Joh said five but was not let in. What should John have said?

Answer: A keyboard.

Answer: He should have said three, the number of letters in the number the guard said.

Job Tips

In these trying economic times, take the Centerfold Commissioner’s advice, and your job will always be secure:

Never walk without a document – People with documents look like hardworking employees headed to important meetings. People with nothing in their hands look like they’re headed for the cafeteria. Above all, make sure you carry loads of stuff home with you at night, thus generating the false impression that you work longer hours than you really do.

Use computers to look busy – Any time you use a computer, it looks like “work” to the casual observer. You can send and receive personal e-mail, chat, and have a blast without doing anything remotely related to work. When you get caught by your boss – and you will get caught – your best defense is to claim you’re teaching yourself to use new software, thus saving valuable training dollars. 

Messy desk – Only top management can get away with a clean desk. For the rest of us, it looks like we’re not working hard enough. Build huge piles of documents around your workspace. To the observer, last year’s work looks the same as today’s work; it’s volume that counts. Pile them high and wide. If you know somebody is coming to your cubicle, bury the document you’ll need halfway down in an existing stack and rummage for it when he/she arrives.

Voicemail – Never answer your phone if you have voicemail. People don’t call you just because they want to give you something for nothing – they call because they want YOU to do work for THEM. That’s no way to live. Screen all your calls through voicemail. If somebody leaves a message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour when you know they’re not there – it looks like you’re hardworking and conscientious.

Look impatient and annoyed – One should also always try to look impatient and annoyed to give off the impression that you’re always busy.



Leave the office late – Always leave the office late, especially when the boss is still around. You could read magazines and storybooks that you always wanted to read. Make sure you walk past the boss’s room on your way out. Send important e-mails at unearthly hours (i.e., 1:37 a.m., 4:05 a.m., etc.) and during public holidays.



Shmooze before leaving – After you shut down your office, talk to your colleagues about nothing for a few minutes before leaving. This way, they will think that you actually like them and have a true interest in talking to them. After all, you are all ready to go home after a long day, but you still are standing around shmoozing with them! But of course build this into worktime – so if you plan on leaving at 7:00 p.m., shut down your workstation at 6:40 p.m. and then find that office hanger who loves to sit around until midnight and shmooze with him for a few minutes. Also, end the conversation very casually like, “All right, maybe I’ll get going… Okay, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” Only once you are out of his sight should you start running for the train. 



Creative sighing for effect – Sigh loudly when there are many people around, giving the impression that you are under extreme pressure. 

Stacking strategy – It is not enough to pile lots of documents on the table. Put lots of books on the floor, etc. (thick computer manuals are the best).

Parshas B’Shalach

By Rabbi Berel Wein

There is a great difference in the perception of a momentous historic event between the generation that actually experienced it, was witness to, and perhaps even participated in it and later generations who know of the event through tradition and history. The facts regarding events can be transmitted from one generation to the next, even for thousands of years, but the emotional quality, the pervading actual mood and atmo -

sphere present at the time, never survives the passage of time and distance from the event itself.

Perhaps nowhere is this truism more strikingly evident than in the drama of the salvation of the Jewish people at the shores of Yam Suf. At the moment of Divine deliverance, Moshe and Miriam and the people of Israel burst into exalted song, registering their relief and triumph over the destruction of their hated oppressors.

This song of triumph is so powerful that it forms part of the daily prayer service of Israel for millennia. And although the words have survived and been sanctified by all generations of Jews from Moshe till the present, the original fervor, intensity and aura of that moment is no longer present with us.

The Pesach Haggadah bids us to relive the Exodus from Egypt as though we actually were present then and experienced it. But it is beyond the ability of later generations to do so fully and completely. We

ger of disappearing from the conscious thoughts and behavior of many Jews.

In light of this, it is truly phenomenal that the deliverance of Israel at Yam Suf is so distinctly marked and remembered, treasured, and revered in the Jewish memory bank. The reason for this exceptional survival of historic memory is that it was made part of Jewish religious ritual, incorporated in the Torah itself, and commemorated on a special Shabbat named for the event. It thus did not have to rely on historic truth and memory

can recall and relive the event intellectually and positively in an historic vein, but the emotional grandeur of the moment has evaporated over time.

We are witness as to how the events of only a century ago – the two great World Wars, the Holocaust, the birth of the State of Israel, etc. – have begun to fade away from the knowledge, memory, and recall of millions of Jews today, a scant few generations after these cataclysmic events took place. In this case, it is not only the emotion that has been lost but even the actual facts and their significance – social, religious, and national – are in dan-

alone to preserve it for posterity.

Religious ritual remains the surest way of preserving historical memory, far stronger than May Day parades and twenty-one gun salutes and salvos. Ritual alone may be unable to capture the emotion and atmosphere of the actual event, but it is able to communicate the essential facts and import of the event to those who never witnessed or experienced it. The song of Moshe, Miriam and Israel still reverberates in the synagogues of the Jewish people and, more importantly, in their minds and hearts as well. Shabbat shalom.

We can recall and relive the event intellectually and positively in an historic vein, but the emotional grandeur of the moment has evaporated over time.

Parshas B’Shalach Waiting Till the Time is Ripe

By Rav Moshe Weinberger

Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

In Shiras HaYam, the Song at the Sea, the pasuk says (Shmos 15:17), “Bring them and plant them in the mountain of their inheritance.” According to the Ibn Ezra on the pasuk, this is a tefillah, a prayer, that when the Jewish people come to Eretz Yisroel, that they be “planted” there permanently and not be exiled. He also says that this pasuk is along the same lines as the pasuk in Yechezkel (17:23), “I will plant it on a high mountain, the height of Yisroel, and it will bear branches and produce fruit and become a great cedar.” This is not only a prayer for the time of geulah, redemption. It is also our prayer today that our children should be firmly planted, strong, and bear fruit for our people.

We also daven that our children will attain that which it talks about in the pasuk (Tehilim 92:13-14), “A tzaddik will bloom like a date palm, he will be strong like a Cedar of the Levanon, they shall be planted in the house of Hashem, in the courtyards of our G-d

they will blossom.” We all daven that our children will attain closeness with Hashem and be firmly planted in Hashem’s house forever.

It is almost Tu B’Shvat. When the Torah gives the mitzva of orlah and netah rivei, the mitzvah not to eat the first three years of fruit of a fruit tree, and the mitzvah to bring the fruit from the fourth year to Yerushalayim, the pasuk says (Vayikra 19:23), “When you come to the land, you shall plant every kind of fruit tree, you shall surely block its fruit [from use]; it shall be blocked from you [from use] for three years, not to be eaten.” Therefore, the Torah says that the very first thing the Jewish people must do when they come to Eretz Yisroel is to plant fruit trees. Even before they build yeshivos, shuls, or a mikvah, they must plant fruit trees.

We know from the story of the Meraglim, the spies, and the fact that the land is described as “Eretz zavas chalav u’devash, flowing with milk and

honey,” that Eretz Yisroel already had delicious fruit. Why then did Hashem command them to plant fruit trees as soon as they arrived in Eretz Yisroel? This mitzvah becomes even more mysterious when we consider the fact that even though they were commanded to plant fruit trees immediately, they were told that when the trees bear fruit, the fruit is forbidden for the first three years! Why were they told to plant the trees immediately, only to be commanded that the fruit from those trees is forbidden for the first three years?

When Hashem created the world, He also planted fruit trees before anything else (Bereishis 2:8), “And Hashem planted a garden in Eden.” Adam and Chava were also told that they had to wait until Shabbos before they could eat from the Eitz Ha’daas Tov v’Rav, The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Had they done so, things would have turned out differently. But they were impatient and could not wait until

the proper time because of their desires (Bereishis 3:6), “And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat and was enticing to the eyes.”

Perhaps the mitzvah of orlah , the mitzvah not to eat the first three years of fruit from a fruit tree, is a tikun, a rectification, for the sin of Adam Harishon. Because he couldn’t wait for the proper time to eat from the tree, his children would have to wait to eat from the fruit of the trees of Eretz Yisroel to rectify Adam’s mistake. The Medrash, quoted by the Ramban, supports this idea when it says that because Adam could not wait for one hour to eat from The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. , his children would, among other things, have to wait for three years to eat the fruit of the trees of Eretz Yisroel.

Adam and Chava didn’t realize that there is something better than “ tov ha’etz , good fruit,” and that is “as for me, closeness with Hashem is what is good for me” (Tehilim 93:28). By recti-

fying the sin of Adam and Chava, who did not wait for the fruit in its proper time, the Jewish people learn what it means to grow up. It means that everything has its proper time and things will be truly good if we wait for them in their proper time.

Everything in nature goes downward. The force of gravity pulls everything down. But there is one thing in nature that goes against the downward pull and instead grows upward. And that is the tree. It pushes through the hard ground of the winter and grows higher and higher toward the sky. As the pasuk in Devarim 20:19 says, “Man is a tree of the field.” Man is compared to a tree in order to show us that we are unique in that we can look at the world from the perspective of spirituality rather than physicality and thereby transcend the physical and also grow upward toward Hashem.

Just like a tree, a person should wait to bring forth fruit at the proper time, as it says in the pasuk (Tehillim 1:3), “And you shall be like a tree planted by streams of water which will give fruit in its time.”

By waiting until the proper time, the Jewish people can rectify the sin

of Adam and Chava. By planting fruit trees, but abstaining from eating the fruit for the first three years, thus removing the orlah, the blockage of physicality, they planted themselves in the house of Hashem. Orlah , blockage, has the same letters as ra’al , poison,

enth of Shvat, the yahrtzeit of Rav Dovid Lelover. While he was there, he was accustomed to eating some dried fruit for Tu B’shvat. One year, the snow was so heavy that the merchants were not able to import any fruit for Tu B’Shvat. Reb Alter was so anxious that a few days be -

back and gave it to Rav Alter, the Rav was happy but also worried. He had assumed that if anyone found fruit, it would be someone younger, but this man looked like he was about sixty years old. He therefore spent the whole day deep in prayer at Reb Dovid Leleover’s kever asking that Hashem have mercy on this man. Sure enough, the following Tu B’Shvat, this man was blessed with a son. The man told Rav Moshe Mordechai that he was that child and that is why he was a Tu B’Shvat fruit.

We often feel the harsh reality of life and its challenges that are like the snow of winter holding us back. We can fight this and grow higher and higher. We must be confident and patient, knowing that the spring isn’t that far away.

because a life ruled by impatience and desire is poison.

One Shabbos afternoon around Tu B’Shvat, Rav Moshe Mordechai Lelover was in the Beis Medrash when a man came over to him and said, “I am a Tu B’Shvat fruit.” Rav Moshe Mordcha smiled and asked him what he meant.

The man said that Rav Moshe Mordechai’s uncle, Rav Alter Sosnivtzer, used to travel to Lelov every year for the sev-

fore Tu B’Shvat, he announced that he would bless anyone with peiros, fruit (children), if they could bring him some fruit for Tu B’Shvat. There was one older man who had never been able to have children who saw this as his opportunity to finally have his tefillos answered. He somehow braved many dangers and traveled through the snow and was able to obtain some fruit for the Rebbe for Tu B’Shvat. When he brought it

May we all merit to bring forth our fruit in its right time and dwell in the house of Hashem in Yerushalayim Ir Hakodesh.

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.

Things will be truly good if we wait for them in their proper time.

Think. Feel.Grow.

Why Strive for Greatness?

By Rabbi Shmuel Reichman

Imagine you wake up one morning with $86,400 in your bank account. You can’t invest or save this money, and whatever is left over at the end of the day disappears. What would you do with your $86,400? Would you leave a single penny unspent? Of course not!

Well, each and every day, we are given 86,400 seconds. It’s deposited into our bank account called “life.” And every day, whatever we don’t spend is lost forever. Nobody would throw away money. So how can we possibly do that with our time? Time is infinitely more valuable than money! You can’t borrow time or trade for someone else’s. The time you’re given is exactly what you’ll have. Time management is your decision of how to spend your time, your 86,400 precious seconds.

Striving for Greatness

In essence, this is another inspiring call for us to “achieve greatness,” something we have heard all too many times before. Across all disciplines of thought, we are told that we should strive for greatness, making it seem as if the goal of life is to become great. Yet, very few people actually

articulate or explain why we should strive for greatness. How many times have we questioned this premise, asking ourselves “why” we should become great?

Psychologists have often claimed that the secret to happiness is largely found in achievement and personal fulfillment. However, this obsession with achieving happiness reveals the assumption of popular psychology — that the goal and purpose of life is to be happy.

Is this true? What is the Jewish perspective on the goal of life? Do we limit ourselves to our own individual happiness, or should we be striving for something even deeper and greater? Furthermore, some people might claim that they’re perfectly happy not striving for perfection. If greatness is merely a means to attaining happiness, then if we can achieve happiness without achieving greatness, there would be nothing wrong with that. This begs the question: is there a deeper purpose to achieving greatness and striving for perfection? What is the Jewish perspective on achieving our own potential, our own greatness?

In order to gain perspective on these

questions, let us go back to the very root, to the creation of the world. Hashem created an imperfect world full of imperfect human beings, giving us the mission to achieve perfection. There are a number of questions we must ask on this: First of all, how can a perfect G-d create an imperfect world and imperfect beings? Does that not contradict the very nature of being perfect? Wouldn’t a perfect G-d create a perfect world? And if our mission and purpose in life is to reach our own perfection, why is the world so full of obstacles and challenges that often seem to prevent us from reaching that perfection?

Two Fundamental Prerequisites

Before we begin discussing the fundamental principles of this world and the nature of Man’s existence, we must first establish the following two qualifications: First, whenever we speak of Hashem, we are referring to our relationship with Him and how He appears to us, not the infinite, objective, and unknowable truth of His reality. As the Rambam, Maharal, Ramchal, and other baalei machshavah explain, we can never know Hashem Himself; we can

only know how He relates to and appears to us.

If this seems abstract and elusive, think about this: You can never truly know your friend or loved one. You can’t see their thoughts, their mind, their consciousness, or even their emotions. All you can ever see is how they express themselves through their physical body — their actions, words, facial expressions, and body language. Through this, we can come to know someone more and more. Similarly, we can never know Hashem Himself; He’s infinite and completely beyond our comprehension. However, we can know Hashem by understanding the way He reveals Himself to us — through His creations, through the physical world, and through His Torah — which is a revelation of His will and thought. Thus, when we speak about why Hashem created the world, we are only discussing it based on our understanding of Hashem.

The second prerequisite is to understand that Hashem did not need to create the world. The Rambam and Ramchal explain that Hashem chose to create the world. Unlike Aristotle, who claimed that

G-d was forced to create the world (that, by definition, G-d [the prime mover] must have created the world, and therefore, the world must have always existed), we believe that Hashem chose to create the world of His own free will – without any external stimulus or reason.

The Maharal, Ramchal, and other key Jewish thinkers explain a fundamental reason for why Hashem created the world.

Hashem is absolute and ultimate goodness. However, there are two aspects of goodness. Hashem is good, but He also has the ability to do good unto others. Before Hashem created the world, there was only Hashem Himself. Therefore, Hashem was internally good, but He was not actively expressing this goodness by giving or doing good unto others. Hashem chose to express His capacity for doing good unto others by creating Man, upon whom Hashem would bestow the ultimate goodness.

If Hashem’s goal in creating the world was to bestow the ultimate goodness unto Man, we must then ask, what is the ultimate goodness that Hashem can give? If Hashem Himself is the ultimate goodness, then the ultimate goodness Hashem can give is the ability to enjoy Hashem Himself, to enjoy G-dliness, to enjoy the ultimate connection with Hashem. This is the

experience of being all-knowing, all-kind, all-loving, all-powerful, of having complete self-control (inasmuch as is possible for one who is “other” than Hashem Himself). These are truly G-dly experiences, experiences of Olam Haba

Marriage with Hashem

To add an additional layer to this explanation, when Hashem created Man, He did so to create a “marriage relationship” with him. Marriage is when two people

serving as the chuppah (marriage canopy). Shir Hashirim is a sefer that Chazal interpret as a description of the love-relationship between Hashem and the Jewish People. This is the original connection that Hashem intended to forge with Man when He created him. Hashem therefore created us in this world to earn our share in Olam Haba, the place where each of us can enjoy this existential connection and oneness with Hashem. However, there is an obvious problem with this.

in this world?

In our next article, we will attempt to answer this question and continue exploring this extraordinarily important topic.

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.

connect in such a deep way that they fuse existentially into one. As we have previously explained, this is why Adam and Chava were originally created as one being; it was to show them, and us, that the goal of marriage is to become one, to recreate the original oneness that they once shared. This is also why the relationship between Klal Yisrael and Hashem is referred to as a marriage. At Har Sinai, the Jewish People married Hashem — with the mountain

If Hashem’s goal was to give us the ultimate goodness, defined as connection with Him, and Olam Haba is the place of this ultimate connection, then what is the purpose of this world? Why did Hashem create us in this world where we have to earn our share in the World to Come? If Hashem really wanted to give us the ultimate good, then why not give it to us to begin with for free? Why do we have to go through the difficult process of earning it

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: Shmuel Reichman.com.

Hashem is absolute and ultimate goodness.

Delving into the Daf How Now Brown Cow?

By Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

Tardar Sauce (2012-2019), better known by her nickname “Grumpy Cat,” was a cat and celebrity known for her grumpy facial expression. Her owner, Tabatha Bundesen, said that her permanently grumpy-looking face was due to an underbite and feline dwarfism. Grumpy Cat was featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on May 30, 2013 and on the cover of New York Magazine on October 7, 2013.

Perhaps Grumpy Cat can help us understand the daf. Grumpy Cat was not really grumpy at all. However, if she was ascribed with human emotions, her facial expression would be a grumpy one.

The Mishna discusses a situation where a man said (Nazir 10a), “This cow said I am a nazir if I stand.” Beis Shammai is of the opinion that the man who said that statement is obligated to observe a period of nazirus. He must refrain from drinking wine, cutting his hair, and coming in contact with corpses for 30 days. The Gemara, though, wonders why we should even take this man seriously. His statement is obviously nonsensical since – holy cow! – cows don’t talk! The Gemara says that the man didn’t actually mean that the cow spoke. However, when the man sees the

beefy cow lying down, he thinks to himself, “Wow! This cow is probably thinking to itself I’ll be a nazir if I could get up by myself without assistance.” (See the Rosh.) Still, one should wonder if the cow was actually thinking anything of the sort. It’s not a sacred cow. Even according to this interpretation, the man’s statement is still udder nonsense.

Tosfos explain that the cow did not actually want to be a nazir. Rather, the man staring at the cow had a moment of bovine inspiration. If he were a cow faced with the daunting task of getting up, he would say, “I’ll be a nazir if I could get up without assistance.” The man then takes his own thoughts and projects them onto the cow. (Similar to what the American populace does with Grumpy Cat.) Tosfos say we have a precedent for this in Tanach. A literal translation of pasuk 1:4 in Yonah is: “And the boat thought it would break.” The boat didn’t actually think it would break. The verse is just attributing what everyone thought about the boat to the boat.

Even after we understand the man’s black-and-white projection, it is hard to understand why he should have to be a nazir. After all, he is just saying what he would say if he was a cow. But he isn’t

a cow! Still, after hearing his statement, we would ask him, “How now brown cow? Why are you telling us your thoughts on cows? Are you somehow trying to milk it for some jokes?”

“No,” he would answer, “the ‘steaks’ are higher.”

He is telling us that he wants to be a nazir. Granted, his phraseology is as awkward as a cow on a crutch, but we are able to see his intentions. He just had a funny way of declaring his nazirus vow. In any case, he can’t be faulted for his poor choice of words as he probably attended some cow college.

As an interesting aside, the Gemara in Succah (28a) tells us that Rebbe Yochanon Ben Zakai understood the speech of trees. Rashi comments that he doesn’t know what this refers to. The Rashbam in Bava Basra says it refers to what people say about tress. Rebbe Yochanon Ben Zakai was an arborist and knew how to cure diseases that affect trees. He also knew what are the ideal growing conditions for various types of trees. Rabbeinu Gershom explained that Rebbe Yochanon Ben Zakai knew spiritual incantations to utter that would affect the trees.

However, the Rashba seems to un -

derstand the Gemara literally. Rebbe Yochanon Ben Zakai understood what the trees were saying when they swayed in the wind. The Ritva also similarly understands it literally, but says the trick is to understand what the trees are saying when the wind isn’t blowing. Still, even the Rashba and Ritva, who seem to understand that trees and maybe cows are somehow capable of intelligent speech or thought, say it wouldn’t be anything that anyone but Rebbe Yochanon Ben Zakai could comprehend. The Gemara then in Nazir still has a valid point that cows don’t talk.

Back to the person discussed in the Mishna, the man is a nazir according to Beis Shammai. However, he didn’t specify a time period for his nazirus. The halacha is that without specifying otherwise, a person is a nazir for 30 days and not until the cows come home.

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.

seeing eye To eye

Meet the Israeli Doctor Helping Thousands In Ethiopia Receive Eye Care

By Andrew Jose

When Israeli ophthalmologist Morris Hartstein visited Gondar in 2014 for a family volunteering trip, he did not know he would start an initiative that would help more than 8,000 Ethiopians receive eye care.

Today, he is the founding director of Operation Ethiopia, a non-profit incorporated in 2022 and dedicated to providing Ethiopians in Gondar with high-quality eye care clinics, cataract diagnosis and treatment campaigns and eye surgeries, and training programs for local physicians.

In addition, the non-profit delivers humanitarian aid to Jewish communities in the country. Humanitarian aid organized by Operation Ethiopia includes a feeding program for malnourished children and nursing moms in Gondar, established in partnership with the Struggle to Save Ethiopian Jewry to prevent the stunting of children for lack of proper food.

The idea for Operation Ethiopia was born when the Hartsteins were helping the Mother Teresa orphanage in Addis Ababa and the Jewish community in Gondar as part of their 2014 volunteering trip, which exposed them to the country’s high levels of poverty.

On their last day in Gondar, the family’s tour guide asked Hartstein if he could examine a child’s eye. Soon, several people flocked to the doctor to have their eyes examined.

Despite lacking the necessary equipment, Hart stein obliged.

The unexpected experience left a lasting impression on him, he said. On the one hand, he “felt accomplished” helping so many people, but on the other hand, he felt disappointed that he “did not have much to offer them,” Hartstein told JNS.

“Many of the people lived in mud huts with corrugated tin roofs, having no water, no toilets, and many people suffering from malnutrition,” he added. “When you see such conditions up close on a large scale, it sticks with you.”

He found returning to his routine in Israel difficult; he kept thinking about his experiences in Ethiopia.

The Firs T CliniC

What was a one-week visit became regular annual trips.

In the summer of 2015, Hartstein and his family returned to Gondar with 12 duffel bags full of medical equipment, eye medication and eyeglasses. With these resources, they established their first mobile eye clinic in Gondar city’s Jewish compound and treated hundreds of people.

The volunteers’ project soon drew the attention and appreciation of the Gondar Municipality, which asked that Hartstein also help non-Jews in areas near the Jewish compound. His team began sending their mobile eye clinics to nearby villages. The initiative grew to include cataract treatment campaigns and surgeries for those with severe vision problems.

“Blindness from cataracts is one of the leading causes of blindness in Ethiopia,” Hartstein said, adding that there “are fewer than 300 ophthalmologists for a population of 120 million people, most of whom live in urban areas.”

And where there are doctors, many people cannot afford treatment, he said. As a result, “not only there are cataracts but there are advanced cataracts – we don’t see much of this in the West.”

Operation Ethiopia aims to make treatment for cataracts and other eye problems accessible to people far from urban areas. Hartstein also launched an exchange program for local medical students and physicians in partnership with the University of Gondar.

As part of the program, select students and physicians from Ethiopia travel to Israel to work with Hartstein and gain hands-on experience.

“The training was very important because we were able to observe and do different surgeries that we never used to do in Ethiopia,” said Alemnew Demissie Kassahun, one of the 18 doctors trained through the exchange program. “We had a life-changing experience in Israel.”

Kassahun first met Hartstein while he was an ophthalmology resident at the University of Gondar in 2014. He now helps with Operation Ethiopia as a volunteer ophthalmologist and oculoplastic surgeon.

“Operation Ethiopia brings many medical professionals during each visit who provide lifesaving basic life support training for doctors and other health care professionals. This training is very important in improving the quality of medical care that we provide for our patients,” Kassahun told JNS.

The first few trips to Gondar that Hartstein organized were mainly a “family affair” with some volunteers tagging along, he explained. He added that his children would invite some friends to help. Hartstein formalized the initiative as an Israeli non-profit only eight months ago.

Since being incorporated as a non-profit, Operation Ethiopia has started to attract volunteers from all walks of life, both medical and non-medical professionals, according to Hartstein.

s miles on Their Fa C es

“We often take our eyesight for granted,” said Debby Ziering, one of the volunteers who worked with Hartstein during Operation Ethiopia’s 2022 mission in Ethiopia. She helped Hartstein and his team test patients for near- and far-sightedness, handle food and water distribution, and manage inventory.

Ziering told JNS that seeing the smiles on people’s faces after they could see following cataract surgery made her thankful for the “gifts we have in our lives.”

“Seeing a mother, who could see clearly after being given glasses, say she was happy to be able to do so not for herself but so she could help her children with homework was the most touching experience of all my time with the program,” said Yitzy Weiss, an EMT who volunteered in 2022.

“Working for Operation Ethiopia helped with my professional development. The specialized type of medicine Dr. Hartstein practices is complex. I had only learned about it in theory,” Weiss told JNS, adding that working for the initiative gave him a close-up view of ophthalmology.

Hartstein plans to expand Operation Ethiopia to include four trips to the country each year.

For a populaT ion oF

s

“We would like to do more cataract surgeries. Our goal this year is to do 2,000 surgeries,” he said. Additionally, Hartstein plans to bring more doctors in his specialty to Ethiopia. He also hopes to train more local doctors in the near future, he told JNS.

Hartstein has spoken at three Knesset committee meetings about the humanitarian situation in Ethiopia. In 2020, he accompanied then-Israeli Minister of Immigrant Absorption Pnina Tamano-Shata to Ethiopia on a diplomatic mission to the country. He flew back home with several olim on Operation Tzur Yisrael’s first aliyah flight.

Hartstein was invited to join the delegation accompanying then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin during his 2018 visit to Ethiopia.

In August, the American Academy of Ophthalmology awarded Hartstein its 2022 Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award for his role in establishing Operation Ethiopia and its successful eye care outreach model. Hartstein also received the 2022 Nefesh B’Nefesh Bonei Zion Prize for Global Impact . (JNS)

Checking a patient’s eyes before cataract surgery

“are Fe W er T han

300 oph T halmologisT

120 million people.”

Volunteers testing patients for shortand near-sightedness

PHOTO BY El ISA H ARTSTEIN

Jerusalem Stones

By Barbara Deutsch

From the time that our daughter Rachel and Josh and their young family moved to Israel about 20 years ago, we have spent winter break and a month in the summer in Israel.

We began by staying with her and her family; as they grew in number and the kids got older, we rented all kinds of crazy – but always with a story – places near them in Jerusalem. We went from dumps that flooded every time we showered to nice-ish apartments. For the past few years, we have rented an affordable, pleasant, and well-situated apartment owned by a family friend.

Now that we are contemplating making Jerusalem our forever home, we are figuring out how to make everything work for us long-term. We need to find a place to live in a neighborhood that is not too far from our children that will accommodate my creaky knees.

Anyone who has seen me navigate stairs will understand, and as we get along in years, we need to stay close. It’s daunting and doable.

In the early years of their aliyah, we would make every second of our visit count, booking child-friendly tours to historic sites and holy places. Sometimes, we would go out on our own or just with longtime friends who now live here.

One memorable one was the kever tour where we prayed at the resting places of our holy rabbis; we actually went across the country visiting graves. At every stop, we found crying and praying people, mostly women. The Tehillim books that they prayed from were marked up with dedications long lists of names inscribed by previous worshipers.

Most of the inscriptions were filled with poignant sadness; worshippers asking for health, parnassa, a good marriage, successful children, and heartbreakingly, a shidduch and the ability to have children.

Oftentimes, the pages of those Tehillim books were wrinkled and soaked with tears; the memories from the kever tour still haunt me.

Now, we mostly come for eating, walking, and best of all, spending time

with our Israeli family. Actually, we try to do anything to be included in their daily lives; eating meals, shopping or annoyingly sitting in their apartment as they do their own thing. As the park-going-touring little kids they once were are now teens and young adults, the kids all have very busy schedules. We try to fit ourselves in between the cracks of their very busy intense lives.

Our time is spent living in Jerusalem; we rarely leave its walls. Everyone and everything we care about is right here. For us, there is nothing more interesting or enjoyable than walking up and down the streets, the hills, while people watching people walk the streets.

For our older selves, it is not as simple as it once was to navigate the tiny alleys and maneuver the slippery smooth stones that pave the streets. It’s worth every second of the time and effort spent.

Only in Jerusalem can you find yourself walking on the crowded sidewalk as a car parks in front of you; hopefully, you spot it on time before it stops you in your tracks. Jerusalem has become so popular with tourists and Israelis alike that the streets are packed with people and cars leaving little room to park.

The traffic is intense and sometimes the sidewalk is the only space you can find to put your car.

Another newish phenomenon is that after many years of warnings of avoidance, many Jews now use the path

through the Arab Shuck to get to the Kotel; walk down the hilly, smooth steps and you get there in no time.

This is not a simple walk, but we have been taking this shortcut for the past couple of years. This time, as we walked away from the Kotel and up the stairs, a truck, using the same path as the pedestrians, kept slipping its way backward and forward.

To avoid getting crushed and with little to no room on either side of us, we jumped into the stalls that line the road to avoid being hit. These stalls are owned by Arab merchants. It is recommended that you try to avoid these kinds of interactions. But it does make for an unanticipated adventure, when you have nowhere to go for safety and it is the safer of the options.

In Jerusalem, we are never bored; every day, we pick two things to do: a new direction to explore and to find an interesting place to eat.

The highlights of this trip, apart from the kiddush for a beautiful baby girl accompanied by my son-in-law’s heartfelt and magical davening: a magnificent bat mitzvah where the guest of honor was a mature and welcoming hostess, the awesome mitzvah dancing of the charedi, woman and girls only, guests, a siyum filled with food and singing, and the glimpse I got of my daughter’s work at a gown gemach where she volunteers.

Rachel has shared many wonderful

stories (for another time) about her adventures lending gowns on consignment to women across the financial and observant spectrum. She finally gave me permission to visit the gemach during her working hours. The gemach is in an alcove down a winding street and around the corner from Natan’s (best coffee in Jerusalem that opens when he can and closes at 5:00 pm, every day but Friday).

With pictures on my phone and verbal encouragement, I found it. You open the door to a crowded room filled with every stripe and size of women picking through packed racks of gowns in every modest style and color. From the moment I walked in and introduced myself as Rachel’s mom everyone wanted to meet me and tell me about her; it was like one long Parent/Teacher Conference. This time, it was filled with glowing reports of her work product and humor and upbeat personality.

Who would have thought that volunteering in a gown gemach would bring her so much fun, joy, and contentment? The experience of seeing a child doing what’s right for them gives a parent peace and pride in their successes wherever they find them.

I often wonder about what happened to the people whose names, page after page, memorialized in the tear-soaked Tehillim books lodged in the alcoves of the kevarim that we visited. Hopefully, their tefillot were answered, and they went on to find their bashert, raise children, get healthy and financially successful.

I pray that the people are happy with the lives that they were given. In Jerusalem, there is always hope to be found along the shiny, slippery cobblestones.

Year after year, and even after all these years, we are always happy to be back inside these walls.

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

Israel Today Netanyahu Government Must Stop Coddling Qatar

By Martin Oliner

The new government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been described by American media as right-wing extremist, hard-line, ultra-hawkish, and the most far Right in Israel’s history.

Nevertheless, last Thursday, on a night when Israeli citizens were forced to spend the night in bomb shelters due to indiscriminate rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, Israel’s neophyte Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, who is learning on the job, issued unconscionable praise for Qatar.

Cohen thanked the Qataris for enabling members of Israel’s national beach volleyball team to participate in a tournament in Doha, after previously threatening to prevent them from receiving visas and keep them out of the country.

“In sports and on the playing fields, there is no place for boycotts and exclusion,” Cohen wrote. “I hope this is another step toward bringing our nations closer together.”

The word in Hebrew for volleyball is Kadur-af, which also means flying bullet. There is important symbolism in the double-meaning of the word.

The Qatari regime supports the Hamas terrorist organization that rules Gaza and facilitates its terrorism against Israeli civilians. Qatar still pumps money into terrorist hands with Israel’s knowledge and bewildering acquiescence.

The Netanyahu government turns a blind eye to the shipments of dollars from Doha to Hamas in Gaza. The time has come for Netanyahu to stop the arrival of these suitcases full of protection money supporting terror.

The same Qatari regime helps fund the Boycott Divestment and Sanction (BDS) efforts against Israel around the world and professorships for anti-Israel lecturers at top American and British universities teaching the future leaders of the United States and United Kingdom.

Thankfully, Saudi Arabia has stopped

similar behavior in recent years. But Israel and the rest of the world continues to turn a blind eye to Qatar, even allowing the regime to host the World Cup, which was used as a propaganda event for the Palestinians. Israeli journalists, who also required the help of their Foreign Ministry

After all, top American universities, including Northwestern, Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon, have large campuses in Qatar that receive massive funding from Doha. There are also Qatari branches of top universities in London, Paris, Munich and Calgary.

quo at what he called “the Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount” following a visit to the site by National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir did enough damage already.

There is no better time for Netanyahu to deflect such harmful and unnecessary pressure on America’s top ally in the Middle East by highlighting the havoc caused by Qatar around the world.

Netanyahu should insist that the U.S. start following the anti-Israel money from Doha to Gaza and to campuses, influencing academia throughout the United States and causing tremendous, incalculable damage.

When Cohen meets with his American counterpart, instead of praising Qatar again, he must raise the question of why no one is looking into Qatari money and insisting on transparency. He should ask why America relies on fickle regimes like Doha and Ankara that end up backstabbing the U.S. time and time again.

Only if the Israeli and American governments and the leaders of the international community stop coddling Qatar can the Abraham Accords move forward again in a serious manner. Standing up to Qatar will create an atmosphere that would enable more Arab and Muslim countries to gain legitimacy for normalizing relations with Israel.

That, in turn, would make the world realize that Netanyahu’s government is striving to achieve Middle East peace and is not so hawkish, hard-line, and extremist after all.

to enter Qatar, were shamefully mistreated at the tournament.

The world needs to start asking: If Qatar has so much disposable money to put on a lavish show for the World Cup, for international diplomatic warfare against Israel, and to spend on American and British campuses, why does Doha not build a university for Palestinians in Gaza?

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to arrive in Jerusalem on Tuesday for talks with Netanyahu. He is expected to warn Israel against steps to strengthen its legal system, initiate needed construction for residents in Judea and Samaria, and facilitate Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest site, Har Habayit (the Temple Mount).

Blinken’s tweet about preserving the status

Martin Oliner is co-president of the Religious Zionists of America, chairman of the Center for Righteousness and Integrity, and a committee member of the Jewish Agency. He was appointed by former U.S. President Donald Trump as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. Martin Oliner is the former mayor of the Village of Lawrence. The views expressed here are his own.

Only if the Israeli and American governments and the leaders of the international community stop coddling Qatar can the Abraham Accords move forward again in a serious manner.

What Would You Do If…

Dear Navidaters,

I really enjoy your column in the TJH. Can you please feature advice on the following?

I know a wonderful person who’s been dating for a few years. Each of his dates are no more than one or two dates. The suggested dates were researched beforehand, and most were within the right “ballpark.” I know we need to be patient when it comes to dating and G-d is ultimately in charge, however, it’s hard to believe that every time both parties on the date know so quickly it’s a “no.” Isn’t dating a few people for multiple dates a necessary path for finding the right one?

The Panel

The Rebbetzin

Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S.

Dating that doesn’t get beyond one or two dates ever, no matter the other person, is usually a sign that the dater needs some feedback and coaching in

dating skills. It’s an indicator that improvement in communication, opening up, and creativity in planning the dates may be in order. Creating an environment where the other person feels heard, safe, and comfortable is another skillset. Carefully encouraging the individual to look in the mirror and seek help is in order.

The Shadchan

Michelle Mond

Thank you so much for your kind words about our column. Your friend’s predicament is a difficult, albeit a common one. In my career setting thousands of singles

on dates, I have come to notice patterns. I cannot say for sure if these patterns are accurate in diagnosing the problem, but I can definitely say that changes in these patterns have led to successful dating after decades of disappointment.

I will share what I have seen, and you can do what you want with it. The most

Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

common reason for quick rejections the way you describe can be explained using the analogy of basketball. This person is shooting the basketball into the wrong basket. Perhaps the basket is too high, perhaps the ball is bigger than the basket, but the ball keeps dropping. He needs to be in the position to throw the ball into a basket that’s on the right height and size level for who he is. He has to look in the mirror and ask himself: am I the type of guy that will realistically get the type of girl I’m aiming for al pi teva (according to the laws of nature)?

For example’s sake: Boy comes from a certain “type” of family and is looking for a family on an equal plane. The boy’s family too perhaps limits his suggestions to young ladies in that category, thereby leaving out a huge chunk of potential suitors. These young women might really appreciate and connect with him but are never given the chance to meet him due to being in the rejection bucket. For some reason, although the families are of the same caliber, the boy himself is not being appreciated by these young ladies he is dating. A chunk of suitors are kept in the rejection pile based on different family type or external factors. Man keeps dating the same type of women who don’t appreciate the special qualities he has.

Another example is a man who is

looking for a specific type of woman aesthetically; however, he himself is nowhere within that realm himself. He may get many dates, but he will encounter many rejections.

So what is the solution?

He must sit down and reassess who he is saying yes to. He must open some doors he had previously kept shut thereby shutting out certain candidates. Often, years will go by without considering a certain type of girl or family. By the time he feels the pain and is searching for a solution, he feels burnt out from the system altogether, feeling hopeless. He must realize that Hakadosh Baruch Hu has his bashert waiting for him, and this bashert will choose him just as much as he chooses her. However, he must make sure that he is shooting in the right basket. If he is not put together or doesn’t focus on his own aesthetics and he is looking for a very put-together girl, that is another example of shooting in the wrong basket. Either he must explore different types of suitors or up his game in the aesthetics department.

Hire a dating coach, work on social skills, and work on dating skills until the type he is looking for is realistic. These are all just examples, but he can use his knowledge of his personal situation to fill in the blanks. Remember, ultimately Hash-

Pulling It All Together

em is in charge, but we must always do our hishtadlus to the best of our ability.

The Single

Tzipora Grodko

Firstly, please, please make sure that your judgement and doubt is not verbalized to the dater. It’s insulting, disrespectful, and extremely hurtful to feel like someone doubts your judgment in this most important area of your life.

Here’s my advice to you: DON’T. WORRY. ABOUT. THEM. Spend this time worrying about yourself. Every person has different needs and (hopefully) strong intuition when it comes to meeting a potential partner. Some people need to spend more time with a date, some people need less. There’s no holy grail “right or wrong way.” Everyone needs something different. You want to be helpful? Daven for them. Support them. Instill hope when they can’t seem to find it. Let go of the Jewish cultural expectations you were taught and trust that G-d is guiding them towards the right decision.

The Zaidy

Dr. Jeffrey Galler

If your “friend” has trouble getting past the first or second date, then it might simply mean that he has not yet met his intended soulmate.

But it is more likely that he needs some dating advice. He might benefit from meeting with a dating coach, who can school

him on the “dos and don’ts” of successful dating.

Meanwhile, you might wish to offer your “friend” the Ten Commandments of Dating:

Do not arrive late for a date.

Do not act rudely to the waiters, coat check attendants, or Uber drivers. It reflects poorly upon you.

Do not drink wine or alcohol on a date. No one wants to take a chance on someone who might become an alcoholic.

Do not discuss previous dating experiences.

Do not come on too strongly. Talking about how you envision your future with her, on your very first date, is a no-no.

Do not look at your cell phone.

Do give your date your undivided attention.

Do make sure that you and your car are immaculately clean.

Do try to have a stimulating conversation. It might help to think of some interesting topics ahead of time. But don’t chatter endlessly, and avoid getting too political.

Do dress nicely, but appropriately. If you’re meeting for coffee, you don’t want to look like you’re ready for a night at the opera, or for an afternoon at the beach.

Have confidence in yourself and don’t be discouraged!

Thank you for writing into the panel! There are a few competing truths that relate to your query. The first truth is that everyone has a different path, and there is no one right way to date. The second truth is that your “wonderful person” may indeed be struggling in the dating department in some way, shape or

form. And a third truth is that some people will be open to your feedback and oth- ers will not.

Here is what I suggest to clients. Unless someone is verbally abusive to you or a waiter (obnoxious, rude, crass, bullyish) or the very sight of him/her makes

you nauseous, or your intuition is going wild screaming “This is not for me!” go out a second time. I like to view the first date as consisting of Parts A and B: date number one and date number two. People can be very nervous on the first date and simply cannot put their best foot forward.

Your friend may be in need of a dating coach, or simply in need of Hashem revealing his wife to him which hasn’t happened yet. If this is a good friend of yours, and

you have a strong relationship, there may be a kind and loving way to share your concern. Keep in mind that this is highly sensitive and personal terrain. As concerned as you are for this wonderful person, and whatever conclusion you draw about this topic, also keep in mind that your friend may not share your ideas with you.

Sincerely,

Jennifer

He must sit down and reassess who he is saying yes to.

School of Thought

By Etti Siegel

Q:Dear Etti, My 11-year-old daughter is always bringing stuff to school –stickers, nosh, and even extra paper and pens. I think this is her way of buying friends. But why should she need to buy friends? Is this normal?

-Confused About Daughter Making Friends

A:Dear Confused, It is curious that your daughter seems to be so invested in giving. She might have a very giving nature and just like to be everyone’s hero.

True friendship requires reciprocity, though. Have you noticed your daughter getting together with friends? Does she get phone calls from classmates? How does she spend Shabbos afternoons and time off from school? Have you spoken to her teachers? What is she like, socially?

Since she is 11 years old, you should have some idea what her social life is like. Your letter doesn’t provide me with much information, so I will take the opportunity to talk about meaningful friendships. While not all friends have all the traits below, to be a good friend is to have as many of the following attributes as possible.

• Self confidence is key. This does not mean ego or arrogance. This means a person who knows what she is good at and what her talents are. A person with a healthy self confidence is okay making mistakes and forgives others for making mistakes. He/she is proud of personal accomplishments. He/she listens to others and is proud when others achieve what they set out to do. People are attracted to others with self confidence as it makes everyone around feel better about themselves, too!

• Positivity is another friend magnet. People like being with positive people. Positivity is contagious. A positive person is fun-loving and enjoys life. They are better at handling challenges and don’t over-dramatize negative experiences. They see humor instead of darkness and despair.

• Friends can empathize with us. They are non-judgmental and listen to us. They are supportive of us in good times and bad. Especially the good times. It is easy to be there when things go wrong, but a good friend is there when things go right. Like I mentioned above, under self-confidence, they are happy for our success and don’t resent our accomplishments.

• Trust is key. If someone tells us something, it is wrong to tell it to someone else. Bartering other people’s secrets can actually backfire and cause others to label you unworthy of friendship. Trust means dependability, loyalty, and honesty.

So now we go back to the question. Why would an 11-year-old be bringing stuff to school, stickers, nosh, and even extra paper and pens?

As mentioned above, she might have a very giving nature and just like to be everyone’s hero. The worry is if she is actually trying to make friends by giving stuff to others. A person who sends a message that the only value they have is for the things they offer is not creating lasting friendships.

The other issue might be that she is trying too hard with the girls who are unattainable. Some children set eyes on the most popular members of the class, and nothing less than friendship with those girls will do. The nice, sweet, but less popular girls are often better choices, better friends, and more available, and your

daughter might need to be encouraged to take a second look at those classmates. The ironic part is, once she is not running after the more popular girls, she might develop the self-esteem that was missing before and kept her from being attractive to those very girls she was running after!

If you notice that your child doesn’t seem to know how to make friends, try coaching your child at home. Role play, practice social scripts (if someone says ___ to you, you say ___ to them), and find out from the teachers in school what they are seeing so you have more information to work with. The teachers might have insight into what is going on and can suggest who might be a good choice to encourage friendships with. Social skills don’t come naturally to every child, and that is okay!

Some schools have a school social worker. This highly trained individual could give you some customized tips to help your daughter with her specific struggles. She could observe your daughter from the sidelines and let you know what she sees.

Not everyone needs a lot of friends. Some people just need one or two. Your daughter might think she needs a multitude of friends when, really, she needs one or two close ones. She is at the age where she is figuring out who she is and what she needs.

There are a lot of resources to help your daughter if she requires them.

Remember, she might just have a very giving nature, or she might be pleading for help.

Now go figure it out!

Hatzlacha, -Etti

People like being with positive people.

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.

Meaningful Vacation Goals

By Sara Rayvych, MSEd

Winter break, yeshiva week, or whatever you call it has come and gone. Many hours were spent preparing trips and activities to appeal to every member of the family. While our plans may vary, our end goal was all the same: to enjoy time with our precious children.

Every year, almost without fail, I hear from parents about the stress and pain they experience come vacation periods. They are feeling an intense pressure to match or beat what their child’s classmates are doing. It seems we’ve just about reached the point that every child feels the need to have a passport before their school break begins.

Sadly, many parents have been left feeling guilty when they’ve been unable to afford the more extravagant destinations. Parents should never feel guilty providing for their offspring within their financial means.

When we were younger, vacation was just a time off from school. We hung out with friends and maybe we went out for pizza or sightseeing. There may have been a few who went to Florida to visit a grandparent, but they were so few among us that it barely registered nor did we feel jealous. We had a great time just relaxing

and enjoying the slower-paced schedule. Sleeping in was a total bonus for us teens.

Since having my children, it seems the community at-large came to the expectation of skiing or snowtubing, which soon turned into the expectation of locations that required flights, such as Florida. The gators must have become boring, because we’ve progressed to more exotic locations with the expectations spiraling further.

I’m not here to criticize any particular trip destination nor any family’s personal needs. I know of families where the whole crew boarded planes because they were off to see family or attend a simcha. It’s a beautiful thing when families can take advantage of vacation periods to visit grandparents or other relatives.

It’s not our place to judge any other family nor how they spend their money, time, or resources. It’s very much against my nature to bring up the topic, but I can’t ignore the many parents I’ve spoken with. Therefore, I simply want to bring up a brief discussion of some relevant issues.

What They Really Want

Your child says they want to go to Mexico, Florida, or Puerto Rico. They say it, scream it, and cry over it and they very well may think they mean it – but

they don’t. They believe they want that new toy, game, or popular item, but what they really want is you. Yes, they need food, shelter, and air to breathe, but they also need the love, affection, and caring of their parents.

Children need their parents more than we realize. We set the stage for their emotional and social development. We help build their feelings of self-worth, confidence, and ability to love themselves. We teach them the world is overall a safe place and that we’re someone they can trust when they don’t know what to do. We show them how to communicate, express themselves, and appreciate who they are. We have a big job.

We do so much for our children. and, truthfully, they have many needs. But, we can’t forget their need for our attention and emotional love. It doesn’t matter where we go on vacation or staycation; the important part is that we make spending time with our child and connecting to them a priority.

Children want (and need) real attention from us and quality time. A seasoned educator was sharing with me how she quickly can tell which of her students spend quality time with their parents and which don’t. Simply traveling in the

same car, plane, or boat isn’t the same as one-on-one time where we’re focused on them, talking to them, and sharing their sweet personality. This bonding isn’t exclusive to the school break period; it should be a part of our weekly – if not daily – life. Vacation is simply an opportunity to connect in a more relaxed atmosphere, away from the usual pressures.

Increased Pressures

A tremendous amount of planning and stress goes into many vacation plans. It would be counterproductive to plan a family excursion that brings so much tension before and during the trip. Tense parents are not a good formula for healthy, relaxing bonding. Keeping it simpler can allow parents the menuchas ha’nefesh necessary to focus on their child.

I don’t ever recall hearing people describe the frum lifestyle as “cheap.” Our meaningful lifestyle – along with an appreciation for larger families and the brachos that children bring – create a higher cost of living. Currently, prices everywhere are continuously rising, and once-comfortable families are having trouble with regular expenses. As the cost of eggs rose, I felt frustrated that a

once inexpensive source of protein was now going further out of reach for these families.

We can’t ignore the increased financial pressures that families face having to keep up with their child’s classmates’ trip schedule. When half the class boasts of where they’re flying to, it’s hard for the other children to say “museum,” “aquarium,” or “driving to Grandma’s.” Those parents now feel the crunch to extend beyond their means.

Going Forward

I’d like to focus on some suggestions of what we can do as we look towards the future. Connecting to our children is a continuous goal that should always be foremost in our minds. It’s that deep bond that is the foundation of our parenting. Each of us needs to decide how we can best meet the needs of each member of our family.

Let’s try to make meaningful time for our children. This will look different for each family but can be special any way it’s done. Sunday can be used for day trips or bringing your child for errands. After school time is busy, but some parents can grab a little time with their child then. Even ten minutes of board games,

coloring, or any shared activity can be a great means to spend time together. For those unable to carve out even that time, try to include your child in what you’re already doing. They can be your assistant as you prepare dinner or your helper in the evenings.

Naturally, shared mealtimes are won-

are already busy planning for those days off from school.

As we start looking ahead and preparing for our next vacation period, we can prioritize wholesome trips that will encourage focused time together. Museums, hikes, crafts, and parks are among the many options available. A little re -

a day reserved for relaxed time together at home.

Taking plenty of photos of our smiling children is an excellent way to keep the memories fresh. Kids smile the most when their parents are in the photo, too, so feel free to join in. There’s no need to send pictures out on social media but feel free to share with grandparents or other relatives that will get nachas. Making a photo album afterwards is an excellent way to ensure your child will treasure that trip again and again. There are many inexpensive sites available online to create priceless albums.

derful and a means for the entire family to reconnect. We need to make time for our children as individuals, but it’s important to have shared time as a family unit, too.

We should make this deep connecting time a routine part of our schedule. It also can be foremost in our minds as we plan our next vacation or holiday break. Pesach is closer than we think, and summer is just around the corner. Parents

search can quickly yield an activity that will interest adults and children alike. Many parents may find it refreshing to take a trip that requires no more packing than just snacks and water.

It’s often understated how much enjoyment a family can have just being home. There is so much we can do with just a little creativity. Many parents and children may appreciate not having to go somewhere each day. Feel free to keep

It is important to remember that it’s not anyone’s place to tell another family what to do nor to judge their plans. Each one of us has the opportunity to turn each day – during the week or vacation – into another one that is meaningful and keeps our children connected as we enjoy time with those special people Hashem has given to us.

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 Rayvych Homeschool@gmail.com.

The important part is that we make spending time with our children and connecting to them a priority.

Cakes, cookies, snack bags, and deli meats are probably what comes to mind when you hear the words “processed foods.” While those certainly all are, the term “processed foods” means that the food product was changed from its “natural state.” Washing, freezing, baking, and adding ingredients are all considered processing. There are some benefits of processing foods such as preservation and the ability to eat healthier products. For example, vacuum-packed meat prevents spoilage, and canned or frozen fruits or vegetables help the products stay fresh for longer. Another benefit of frozen fruits and vegetables is that they are usually frozen at their peak and will help maintain their nutritional quality. Additionally, bagged lettuce and greens make them easier to be eaten as opposed to doing all the preparation yourself.

Canned tuna, salmon, packaged cottage cheese, and yogurts are considered minimally processed and can

The Truth About Processed Foods

By Tehila Soskel, RDN, CDN

all be part of a well-balanced diet. The foods we want to try to limit or avoid are heavily processed foods like pizza, cold cuts, and desserts. These items and many others are filled with added ingredients that will cause more harm than good to your bodies. Some of the added ingredients include salt, sugar, artificial colorings, and many preservatives. These food additives are composed to keep you wanting more and more of the food item. According to one study, about 60% of the calories in the American diet come from ultra-processed foods.

Salt

The American Heart Association recommends consuming no more than 2,300 milligrams of sodium (salt) per day. Shockingly, 70 percent of sodium consumed by Americans doesn’t come from the saltshaker but comes from packaged processed foods.

It’s crucial to look at the nutrition facts label and be aware of how much salt you’re consuming. Some hidden

names for salt include monosodium glutamate (MSG), sodium nitrate and sodium citrate.

While salt is the most commonly used spice, there are other alternatives to try. Garlic, lemon juice/zest, dill, smoked paprika, and onion powder can be great alternatives to add flavor to your dish without all the extra sodium.

Sugar

The average amount of sugar consumed per day by American adults is 77 grams, which is more than three times the recommended amount. If you thought that is a lot, the average amount of sugar consumed by kids is 81 grams per day. Most of that sugar comes from fruit drinks and soft drinks. Try to avoid drinking your calories and consuming all the added sugars.

When you are looking at the nutrition fact label, always look for the added sugars. The added sugar is any sweetener that was added during processing or preparation. A study showed that al-

most 90% of added sugar in Americans’ diet comes from highly processed foods.

Trans-fat

The worst type of fat to eat is transfat. This fat lowers your good cholesterol and will raise your bad cholesterol, which may increase the risk of diabetes and heart attacks. Trans-fat is found in foods like margarine, microwave popcorn, frozen pizza, fried foods, and salty snacks. An easy way to eat less fat is by choosing leaner meats and eating your chicken without the skin. Monounsaturated fats are found in olive oil and avocados and are good choices of healthy fats.

Although minimally processed foods can be included in a balanced diet, heavily processed foods should be limited or avoided. The ultra-processed foods pose many health risks including higher risks for cancers. The heavily added sugar, sodium, and fat may lead to obesity, high blood pressure, and other serious health issues. The sneakiest

thing about processed foods is that they are composed to make our brain release dopamine, causing us to crave the food item even more.

Tips to eat less processed foods

As I mentioned above, read the food labels. Next time you are about to buy something, read the label first. Look out for the ingredients, as you should be able to recognize or pronounce most of them. The less ingredients, the better. An item labeled low-fat or less sugar does not automatically make it healthy.

Shop smartly. Fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables cost more than snack bags like chips or pretzels, but that shouldn’t stop you. Try shopping in stores that sell in bulk, as they are often cheaper. If you think buying larg-

you to have full control of what goes into your food. You are the chef in your own kitchen. You can’t always be in control of what you’re eating while you’re away, but as long as you’re home, you can.

If you’re someone who goes out to eat often, there are a few things you can do to eat cleaner. First off, hold off on the fried options and the bread served on the table. More so, instead of eating the French fries that are submerged in oil, opt for a baked potato or roasted potatoes. Ask what is in the dish. If the dish contains margarine or butter, ask that it be made without. Many soups and sauces in the dishes include heavy cream and flour. The creamier the soup, or the more sauce on the dish, will mean it will probably contain either flour or heavy cream. Ordering that crispy, lettuce salad sounds delicious but watch

er quantities of fruits and vegetables may go to waste, then buy them frozen, which will prevent spoilage.

Snack better. Choose your calories wisely. If you are looking for a snack to hold you over, opt for the more wholesome option. A fresh, juicy apple will keep you more satiated than a fruit leather that you can finish in a matter of seconds. It may sound obvious, but fruits and vegetables make a great snack.

To keep you more satisfied and your blood sugar balanced, pairing carbs with protein is the way to go. Add a string cheese or some nuts with your fruit for more protein and fiber. Get creative and try making your own veggie chips. Roast any vegetable you like in the oven until crispy. Nuts are also a great option instead of a packaged bar. Understandably, there are times when a to-go bar is your best option than nothing at all, so look for the one with less sugar and more protein and fiber. Remember, the more wholesome foods will be more filling than highly processed foods.

Be your own chef. Preparing and cooking more meals at home allows

out for the dressing. Ask for the dressing on the side so you’re aware of how much goes in.

People often plan for all the things they are going to stop doing or stop eating, but let’s try something else. Instead of focusing on all the things you’re going to take away from your diet, focus on what you can add to your diet. Try to aim for at least 2-3 servings of fresh fruits and vegetables daily. Make sure you are drinking at least eight cups of water and get in some exercise. The recommended amount of physical activity for adults is 150 minutes of moderate-intensity per week.

Shifting your mindset to all the positive things you can add to your diet will be more doable and enjoyable. What matters most is your overall diet. Stay balanced and consistent.

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.

According to one study, about 60% of the calories in the American diet come from ultra-processed foods.

A Wake-Up Call

By Miriam Liebermann, MSW

Imeet the loveliest young women, all devoted to their families and communities. Many are working, helping with family finances. They’re hosting for Shabbos. Involved in their local schools and community functions. Attending shiurim, seeking to grow! Kol hakavod!

I’m invested in this community. I have nachas from these lovely young families. When I attend school functions and see ka”h the multitude of students participating so beautifully in their school programs, I am just enthralled! When I see young families walking together on Shabbos, it warms my heart. This is my home, my extended family, and I feel so connected.

So please allow me to share an observation that demands our attention.

A while back, I attended a community simcha. It was joyous, b’kavodik, and beautiful. Pekelach were thrown, mazal tovs exchanged, and then I had to leave with my two young grandchildren. We exited the ladies’ shul and proceeded down the carpeted steps right outside. To my shock, we found the steps totally littered with candy wrappers from the pekelach that had been thrown just minutes earlier. There were even unwrapped candies, jellies and taffies that were just sitting on the steps waiting to be “smushed” into the carpet. I expressed my horror to my two little ones and asked them to help me clean up. They did so. Six-year-old Malka and fouryear-old Moshe helped me clean up. We deposited the garbage into the proper receptacle and continued downstairs. Imagine my dismay when we exited the shul building and found the same scene on the stairs leading out of the building. Again, the stairs were totally littered with candy wrappers. Additionally, there were scooters haphazardly dropped right in front of the steps, creating a hazard for anyone leaving the shul. Once again, Malka and Moshe helped me clean up. A gentleman, passing by, also lent us a hand.

How can this be? How can there be so little disregard for the public arena, for the sanctity of our shuls, that our children conduct themselves so? I’ve been trying to

understand and am having a tough time. Do these children have responsibilities at home? Do they clean up after themselves? Or do they leave their wet towels and dirty laundry on the floor for the maid to pick up? Do they make their beds? Set the table? Clear the table? Or do they eat and leave their mess for someone else to tend to? Are they learning to extend them-

– appropriate to their age. Remember our cleanup charts in camp? Even in our homes, even if we have full-time help, our children should still have mandated chores. Growing up feeling entitled is not healthy for future relationships.

We’ve been taught that preparation for marriage begins when they’re very young. Teach them now that they must contribute

Life is about sharing and interacting with others. We need to role model for them. Share with them your own acts of chessed with individuals and within the community. Let them see that giving and caring for the welfare of others is a major part of our lives.

Rav Dishon would say, the only “me” I want to hear is “mi k’amcha Yisrael!” Let’s teach our children to contemplate the wellbeing of others.

Rav Yaakov Feitman of Cedarhurst has written an absolutely beautiful sefer, “Blueprints – Torah Views of the World and Events Around Us.” In the chapter entitled, “How do you do? But enough about you,” he quotes his rebbi, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt”l, “We should sing a ‘dudala’ –the song of ‘du’ (you), not an ‘ichala,’ the song of ‘ich.’” As we learn to be mindful of our own actions, so we must teach our children and grandchildren as well.

Let’s be proactive. If we have the good fortune to be attending a simcha and we anticipate that there will be pekelech, let’s ask our child/grandchild beforehand, “What will you do with the wrappers?” Brainstorm with him. What are the options? Boys can place them in their pockets or hold onto the wrappers and place them in the garbage in the restroom or in the hallway. Or they can bring the wrappers back to you!

If you see the scooters scattered in front of the stairs, ask your children, “Is this a good spot for the scooters? Why or why not?” Let’s teach them to think!

selves to others, or do their lives revolve around only themselves? Perhaps we have to work harder at this aspect. Let’s point out to them that scooters lying around are hazardous and can be dangerous, especially for the seniors among us. Garbage left on the steps is unsightly and not in keeping with the sanctity of our shuls.

We all invest effort in maintaining our homes and shuls, keeping them clean and safe. What role are our children playing? At home, every child, even the little ones, should have some task to complete

to the greater whole. Don’t be a taker. Be a giver whenever possible. A doer. Please allow me to paraphrase JFK: Ask not what your parents/teachers can do for you. Ask what you can do for them!

I would turn this into a game with our children when they were young. I would ask them, “Tell me, please, something nice you did for someone else today.” This would be followed by, “Now share with me, please, something nice that someone else did for you!” I do this often these days with our grandchildren.

Developing concern and caring for others will surely prove helpful and beneficial to our children as they eventually mature and enter the adult world. Maintaining cleanliness and order within our homes and our shuls will always be considered a virtue.

Start now. It’s never too early! It’s never too late!

When Two Cultures Collide for a Good Cause

By Nati BurNside

On Wednesday, February 8, the West Side Institutional Synagogue in Manhattan will host an amazing culinary combination of cuisines to benefit Masbia, the non-profit soup kitchen network and food pantry. The fourth iteration of their annual Chop Hunger series will be a high-end event bringing two great food personalities together for an even greater cause.

Alexander Rappaport’s non-profit organization has been doing unbelievable work to fight food insecurity in the Jewish community since 2005, when they opened their first soup kitchen. But Rappaport didn’t stop at serving hot meals to those who kept kosher. Masbia designed their soup kitchens as “restaurants without cash registers,” so that those in need could be treated with respect and dignity.

Masbia now has three restaurants, but their food pantry operation that distributes groceries to those in need actually feeds many more people. An estimated 7,500 families per week are on the receiving end of Rappaport’s charitable endeavors.

And yet, that wasn’t quite enough for Rappaport.

More recently, Masbia has added programs where they help with relief of natural disasters, as well as famously providing help to asylum seekers that arrive in New York City from the southern border of the United States. Rappaport’s work has gained the public acknowledgment of Eric Addams, the mayor of New York City.

Far from “The Big Apple,” a deadly tornado ripped through Mayfield, Kentucky, a city of just over ten thousand

residents, on December 10, 2021. Local restaurant owner and businessman Micah Seavers decided to do whatever he could to help his community. From his kitchen at Southern Red’s BBQ, he started preparing meals for emergency workers starting at 2:30 in the morning, right after the destruction.

What was a Western Kentucky barbeque fixture quickly turned into the center of a relief effort. With 70 lives lost, power outages blanketing the area, and untold amounts of property damage, Seavers was pumping out tens of thousands of meals to whoever needed them. But while his restaurant was usually busy, it wasn’t that busy. His equipment couldn’t keep up with the quantity he was trying to produce in such short order. Luckily, he received a phone call from Rappaport.

Masbia had been looking to utilize the many supplies that they had ob -

tained during the pandemic to expand their relief effort work around the country. Some of the items that they had in stock would come in handy in situations that often arose in the aftermath of natural disasters. For example, disinfectant wipes are very useful for those who don’t have running water and can also help a great deal with the clean-up that comes along with the aftermath of one of these tragedies.

Rappaport had been inspired to build a small branch of Masbia devoted to relief after he personally saw the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. Since then, Masbia had, on occasion, sent supplies to the front lines where they were needed, but Rappaport had never actually gone to the site himself. That was about to change.

After talking to local reporters and asking who he should contact if he wanted to assist with the effort on the

Alexander Rapaport and Micah Seavers loading supplies into the garage during Kentucky tornado relief

ground, Rappaport got a list of names and phone numbers. Even though he was offering to help, he wasn’t really having any luck until Seavers picked up the call. Rappaport approached the situation by asking the same question he usually asked. But it was one that caught Seavers off guard because he had been on the other end of that same question ever since the tornado had left its mark…

“What do you need?”

After analyzing his surroundings, Seavers told Rappaport that he needed equipment and supplies to help keep their operation running. Luckily, Rappaport had stock of personal protective equipment (PPE) due to the work Masbia was doing in New York City during the pandemic.

That settled it. Masbia was going on the road.

Rappaport called around and got even more supplies together. Cleaning supplies, food, the equipment Seavers needed, and more. Enough to fill a few trucks, in fact. And while Rappaport could’ve loaded the trucks, sent them on their way, and Seavers would have been thrilled, that wouldn’t have conveyed the personal touch that Masbia was built on.

“It was important to me that we make a presence there, that we show up, men with peyot and yarmulkes and women in sheitels,” Rapaport explained. “I wanted it to be visible who was sending this because more than the supplies and food themselves, there is a solidarity that comes from being there. It’s the spirit and the hope that people from far away care and believe we deserve support. It was important for us to go there, to work in the trenches, to deliver meals to people, and to put these friendships together.”

So he got a team together including himself, his staff, a rabbi from the Orthodox Union, and noted kosher food personality Naomi Nachman (who brought her daughter along), and they flew to Nashville. From there, they rented pick-up trucks and bought whatever they could at area restaurant depot locations before driving around two and a half hours to meet Seavers.

Rappaport and Seavers instantly formed a bond. Both men have very similar personalities, even if their two worlds are worlds apart. Seavers couldn’t believe how much help they were providing. Bringing the replacement equipment allowed Masbia’s team to do the cooking themselves from a

kashrus perspective.

“We’ve never lived anywhere with a large Jewish population. Alex was our first ever meeting with an Orthodox Jew, and it was pretty neat,” said Seavers about his introduction to the Masbia group. “It was great to show that it doesn’t matter what religion you are or what culture you come from… Helping is helping. That barrier is gone when it comes to helping folks.”

Once he got over the barrier of being able to ask for help, Seavers really started to embrace Rappaport’s spirit. In fact, Seavers decided to expand his horizons when it came to relief efforts.

“If Alex can go around everywhere helping people, so can I,” said Seavers with determination.

Seven and a half months later, Seavers and Rappaport would help each other again as flooding destroyed homes and businesses in Eastern Kentucky. The waters caused losses in power just before a scorching heat wave arrived in an area where many didn’t even have running water restored yet.

Though the area was on the other side of the state (about a six-hour drive), Seavers remembered how Rappaport had traveled much farther in order to help those in need. The two men coordinated their efforts to help those communities as Seavers helped Rappaport with contacts in the area.

As anybody who has ever gotten involved with Masbia will tell you, if you offer to contribute something, Rappaport will take you up on it. It’s that idea that led him to put together Chop Hunger IV.

Previous versions of the event had been centered around an actual competition between famous chefs. However,

with Masbia volunteering by having connected with Rappaport through Melinda Strauss, a digital content creator who has a passion for both food in general and Masbia. Ross recently published a cookbook , The Giving Table, and included in its pages a spread about the organization and all the great work they do. Her book revolves around the ways that food relates to the concept of giving and she decided on her own to feature Masbia in her book as a way to proliferate their message.

Rappaport loved the idea of having these two chefs on stage in front of a crowd to best represent the inclusionary message of his organization.

“I talked to them after they met Alex,” Seavers said of a group of women in Eastern Kentucky who were helping coordinate the relief effort. “They were a little more awestruck than we were. I’ve lived everywhere and been around people of every walk of life. Having Orthodox Jews come to them was interesting. They were so appreciative of the help.”

That was twice that Rappaport had gone to Kentucky, and Seavers was looking to return the favor.

“I told Alex, ‘When the chance arrives where you can use us to help you, I want to do it,’” said Seavers with his signature enthusiasm.

Rappaport felt like it was time to take the event in another direction. His idea was to bring Seavers to New York City and have his down-home style on display to contrast with another chef that was thoroughly committed to Masbia, Naomi Ross.

Ross is a cooking instructor who has transitioned into being a cookbook author recently. She has participated in a bunch of Masbia food rescues (where food is donated that for whatever reason is in danger of being thrown out) in the last few years and is excited to be featured alongside Seavers in this event. She had originally gotten involved

“Instead of inviting chefs that have nothing to do with Masbia, why not invite chefs who we’ve worked with? We have people that are very invested and really care about Masbia,” said Rappaport in admiration of both chefs. “To bring people like that on stage to contrast different cooking is going to be a lot more fun and meaningful than just having random chefs out there.”

“You can’t get much farther apart than my cooking and the down-home, Kentucky, non-Jewish, Southern world of cooking,” said Ross about their upcoming collaboration.

“I’ve been to New York one other time, and you could tell I didn’t fit in,” Seavers said about his previous trip. “But I have a strong back, and I can cook. I know they keep kosher, but I can scoop food into a bowl.”

“It was important to me that we make a presence there, that we show up, men with peyot and yarmulkes and women in sheitels.”

Micah Seavers tending the large smoker at Southern Reds BBQ & Catering

And that’s the main feature of this event. One elegantly plates, one scoops food into a bowl, but they’ll both be trying to raise money to support Masbia.

“I think (Rappaport) wanted to create an event that will have people not just entertained but feel like it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from,” Ross said about the goal of the event. “We are all coming together for a singular purpose. Even if you’re coming from two different worlds, we’re all coming together to try to do the same thing, which is to feed people that need food.”

Obviously, Seavers has to adjust some of his recipes (and abandon others). While he may have been cooking in restaurant kitchens since he was 12 years old, he’s never cooked in a kosher kitchen. Ross will be featuring some of her top shelf recipes, most of which are from The Giving Table.

Seavers will have quite the challenge as many of his recipes would usually feature non-kosher animals, a mixture of meat and dairy, or both. Not only that, but even some of the things that he might be fine to use in theory, he won’t be able to bring with him from his own kitchen and will have to find suitable substitutes for in New York. These

factors have led to him communicating with Ross for advice on his menu.

Keeping with the theme of those involved having been part of the Masbia family before, the event will be hosted by Strauss.

“It’s such an honor to host this event and to be able to meet Micah Seavers,” Strauss said. “Masbia always does such a great job with all of their events and with getting their name out there so people know that they exist. Their work is incredible because it allows people who are hungry to have somewhere to go and eat while still keeping to their values as a Jewish person who keeps kosher.”

Ross and Seavers will each present six of their favorite dishes along a somewhat parallel line. For instance, both will serve ribs as their main course. As you might imagine, Seavers will be making some Southern barbeque style ribs, whereas Ross will be making her recipe for braised short ribs in a pomegranate and port reduction. The courses will be paired with selected wines, and the chefs will be speaking about each course and even doing some live demonstrations of some of the techniques involved.

For those who might not be able to attend the dinner itself, Masbia will be making some selections from the menus available to the public via a limited number of “lunch” and “dinner” boxes. People will be able to pick-up the boxes from the West Side Institutional Synagogue from 11am to 5pm on the day of the event, or have their meal delivered anywhere in Manhattan.

A foodie fantasy, this event will al-

low those in the community to attend a true culinary spectacle which may be unparalleled for a kosher keeping audience. Whether you’re more big city fancy (like the five-spice duck breast salad), or more small-town casual (like the marinated chicken breast salad), there’s going to be something that works for you. But even as the two cultures collide, try to think of it more as them coming together for a good cause.

Naomi Ross with her cookbook, The Giving Table

The Fruits of Tu B’Shvat

Citrus Supreme: Winter is the perfect time to eat more citrus. When immunity runs low during cold season, turn to citrus: a vitamin C, flavonoid, and antioxidant powerhouse known to boost the immune system and reduce the risk of heart attack, high cholesterol, and some cancers.

The best way to enjoy citrus is by “supreming” the fruit — removing the segments from the bitter peel, pith, and tough membranes, leaving only the perfect, edible fruit. It may take a bit of practice to master, but your dishes will look and taste that much better for your efforts. If done right, you should be left with the empty membranes to discard!

Winter Citrus Fruit Salad

Wonderfully refreshing and beautiful to the eye, this is an impressive upgrade from a sectioned grapefruit as an appetizer. It’s also delicious served over Greek or coconut yogurt for a healthful breakfast or brunch!

iNgRedieNts

◊ 2 ruby red grapefruits

◊ 3 large navel oranges

◊ 1⁄2 cup pomegranate seeds (about 1⁄3 pomegranate)

◊ 2 Tablespoons flaked coconut

◊ 1⁄2 teaspoon grated lime zest (from about 1⁄2 lime)

◊ juice of 1 lime

◊ juice of 1⁄2 lemon

◊ 3-4 teaspoons honey, or more to taste (depending on the sweetness of the fruit)

◊ 1⁄8-1⁄4 teaspoon cinnamon

◊ 2 teaspoons triple sec or orange-flavored liqueur

◊ 1-2 Tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger

PRePaR atioN

1. Peel: Cut off the polar ends of the grapefruits with a sharp serrated knife. Following the curvature of the fruit, slice the peel off, being careful not to cut away too much fruit. Trim away the white pith.

By Naomi Ross

2. Supreme: With a gentle sawing motion, make incisions along each membrane, only going as far as the center of the fruit. Working over a large bowl, gently release the grapefruit sections into the bowl. (You will be left with the empty membranes in your hand; discard.)

3. Repeat: Repeat the same process with the oranges, adding the orange segments to the bowl.

4. Add the pomegranate seeds and coconut.

5. Dress: In a small bowl, combine lime zest, lime and lemon juices, honey, cinnamon, and liqueur. Whisk until well blended. Pour this mixture over the segments; mix to blend. Set aside to marinate for 10–15 minutes. Spoon into dessert cups and top with a little sprinkling of chopped crystallized ginger. Serve and enjoy!

seRviNg tiPs:

◊ This salad has gorgeous color contrasts. For an even bolder look, replace some navel orange with blood orange.

◊ Serve in a dessert bowl or hollow out half of an orange and fill.

◊ This salad is simple enough to put together on Shabbos, but make sure to prepare the dressing in advance, to avoid squeezing and grating on Shabbos.

Wheat Berry Salad with Grapes and Hazelnuts

This whole-grain salad can also be made with farro or freekeh – each has their own unique earthy flavor which complements the aromatic hazelnuts.

iNgRedieNts

◊ 4 ounces whole hazelnuts

◊ 1 cup wheat berries

◊ 3½ cups water, or to cover

◊ ¼ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

◊ 1½ cups halved red grapes

◊ 2-3 scallions, thinly sliced

◊ 3 Tablespoons minced fresh mint

◊ 2 Tablespoons minced fresh parsley freshly ground black pepper, to taste

◊ ¹⁄₃-½ cup crumbled feta or blue cheese (optional)

Dressing

◊ 2 Tablespoons white wine vinegar

◊ 2 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (from 1 lemon)

◊ 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

◊ 1½ Tablespoons minced shallot (from about ½ small shallot)

◊ 2 teaspoons honey

◊ ¾ teaspoon kosher salt, or more to taste freshly ground black pepper, to taste

◊ ½ cup olive or grapeseed oil (scant)

PRePaR atioN

1. Toast nuts: Preheat oven to 325°F. Prepare a sheet pan lined with aluminum foil; spread hazelnuts in an even layer on sheet pan. Bake for 12–15 minutes — skins should appear flaking and cracked. Remove from oven, cool, and rub nuts with fingertips or dish towel to remove skins. Coarsely chop and set aside.

2. Cook wheat berries: Place wheat berries in a large dry saucepan over medium heat. Toast briefly for about 2–3 minutes. Add water to cover and ¼ teaspoon salt. Bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 45–55 minutes or until tender. Wheat berries should be tender with a bite, but not

mushy. Drain; set aside. (Alternatively, wheat berries can be prepared in an electric pressure cooker on high pressure for 20–22 minutes.)

3. Prepare dressing: Combine vinegar, lemon juice, mustard, shallot, honey, salt, and pepper in a mixing bowl. Whisk to blend. Slowly drizzle in oil while continuously whisking to blend until emulsified. Season to taste with salt and pepper as needed.

4. Dress: Pour dressing over warm wheat berries, tossing to coat. Add remaining ingredients and mix to blend. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Fold in reserved chopped hazelnuts. Serve at room temperature.

Cooks tiPs: Toasting nuts refreshes the natural oils in the nuts, making them more aromatic and improving their crunch. Toasted pecans can also be used if hazelnuts are not available.

In The K tchen

Tu B’Shvat Salad

By Naomi Nachman

Ingredients

◦ 6 cups arugula

◦ 1 blood orange, cut into segments

◦ ½ cup honey glazed almonds

◦ ½ cup pomegranate

◦ 1 cup pitted Medjool dates

◦ 1 starfruit, sliced

Dressing

◦ ¼ cup balsamic vinegar

◦ 1 clove garlic, crushed

◦ ¼ cup silan

◦ ½ cup olive oil

◦ 1 teaspoon salt

◦ Black pepper, to taste

Place vegetables and fruit in a large bowl. Toss with dressing before serving.

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.

With Tu B’Shvat falling out on a Sunday night this year, I am sharing a great salad recipe that you can make for Shabbat in anticipation for the day. You really can add any fruits or nuts to your family’s taste.

My girls love starfruit, and it looks to pretty sitting as garnish right on top of the salad.

Notable Quotes

“Say What?!”

Byron and I have been together for 23+ years, and the most racist attacks we experience are always from the left. They can’t accept that a free-thinking black man achieves success on his own merits, and they sure as heck can’t stand that he’s married to me! Cry harder, haters.

- Erika Donalds, wife of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla), responding to Democrat attacks on her husband as being a “prop” for “white supremacists” since he is a black conservative in Congress

It’s embarrassing for us to win with this scoreline; it’s a bad look. We didn’t come to humiliate Pardes Katz… They’re a team of youngsters, and they just wanted to continue playing the match with mutual respect.

– An official from Israeli soccer team Hapoel Zafririm Holon, after his team embarrassed its opponent Maccabi Pardes Katz by defeating them 31-0

Order, tranquility, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity, and staying away from toxic people.

I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.

- Marie Kondo, author of bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing , a self-help book that took audiences by storm, disclosing to the Washington Post that her home is not as tidy as she suggests homes should be

One should expect that if you are brazen enough to enter into someone’s residence and it is not yours, with intent to commit an unlawful act, there may be repercussions. We live in Florida, and more so, we live in Polk County, and most people are armed.

He sort of threatened me at one point and said, “Boris, I don’t want to hurt you, but with a missile, it would only take a minute,” or something like that.

We have a student who came to America with “Coyote,” which is a group that helps people. This group gives you a time frame to make a payment of $5,000 to those, who bring them to the states. Our student needs our urgent support to raise another $2,000 to meet his goal of $5,000 by February 1st, 2023

- From an email by Assistant Principal Stefani of Harvey Mount Pleasant High School in Rhode Island referring to Coyotes as a group that helps people when they are in fact notorious gangsters that take advantage of immigrants trying to make it to America

- María Branyas Morera, 115, of Spain, who was recently certified by Guinness World Records as the oldest person in the world, talking about what led to her longevity

- Haines City Police Chief Gregory Goreck in a press conference, after his police department saved the life of an intruder who was shot by the homeowner

- Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson disclosing to the BBC that President Vladimir Putin threatened to personally target him with a missile attack just before ordering Russian forces into Ukraine

You know, I can always count on CNN to act as a professional PR team to excuse Antifa violence, because time and time again they’ll say, “Oh, Antifa is just an idea. It’s just an ideology. It’s not real.” And then when they get caught and you see Antifa on the street, “It wasn’t that violent.” Or sometimes they even say, “They’re the good guys.” They want to destroy America.

As these shootings happen, we go through these this ritual where we wait for them to announce the race of the shooter. We’re waiting for the Oscar nominations because that’s, you know, somehow to a lot of people, the most important thing. And I just thought it was very interesting that this week, Asians were killed by Asians. Two Asian men who were, you know, 66 and 72.

And then this week, we just got this video of the Memphis Five. A Black man is brutally beaten in Memphis by five cops. They’re all Black.

I guess what I’m asking is America’s culture of violence. It does go deeper than race. Right? And I think this mono-focus we have on race is short-circuiting us trying to fix some of the realer problems.

It seems like the government will not be happy unless they have us all eating kale, drinking carrot juice, and smoking weed.

Jews do not have a monopoly on persecution and atrocities.

- From an op-ed on National Holocaust Remembrance Day in the Courier-Journal , a newspaper distributed in Kentucky which is owned by USA Today

For one group, for one person, to claim that the hate and violence towards them is more important than another’s, only encourages more acts of violence against others.

- Ibid.

After a two-year suspension, Meta is reinstating former President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Trump hasn’t been on Facebook for two years, so, pretty much just like the rest of us.

- Former Antifa member Gabriel Nadales on “Jesse Watters Primetime” talking about how the media is downplaying the Antifa attacks in Atlanta

- Bill Maher, HBO

- Joe Gelormino on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” responding to New York State legislation that would place a new 95% tax on cigars

— Jimmy Fallon

Tell me what Article V of the Constitution does?

– Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) to Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s proceedings last week to determine whether she is qualified to serve as a federal judge

Article V is not coming to mind at the moment.

- Bjelkengren’s response

How about Article II?

– Sen. Kennedy

Neither is Article II.

- Bjelkengren in response

I saw that [Gov. Ron DeSantis] he’s actively preparing for a possible presidential run, and he hasn’t landed on an official slogan yet, but he’s trying a few out. First, there’s “DeSantis 2024: Diet Trump.” Next, there’s “DeSantis 2024: DeAmerica DeTruly DeDeServes DeDeSantis.” And finally, “DeSantis 2024: Make America Florida Again.”

— Jimmy Fallon

He is so dangerous in every way. Truly an authoritarian personality.

- MSNBC columnist and NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat commenting on Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) suggesting that school boards should require kids to put their phones in the lockers during class so that they are not distracted during class by their phones

The U.S. and Israel Remind Us That the Iran Threat Still Looms

By David Ignatius

With little public fanfare, the United States and Israel last week staged a massive military exercise in the Mediterranean clearly meant to simulate a strike against Iran. It was a reminder that no matter what else is happening in the world, the poisonous kettle of the Iranian nuclear program keeps bubbling.

“Juniper Oak 23,” as it was dubbed, was the largest joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise ever, according to Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. What caught my attention was that it involved all the weapons systems that would be needed for a U.S.-Israeli assault against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The simulated operations included “electronic attack, suppression of enemy air defenses, strike coordination and reconnaissance, and air interdiction,” which are “exactly what the United States and Israel would need to conduct a successful kinetic attack on Iran’s nuclear program,” wrote Bradley Bowman and Ryan Brobst, two analysts with the pro-Israel Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They noted that the exercise included “three successive waves of attacks” by B-52 bombers.

The Biden administration would doubtless rather focus publicly on other military issues, starting with the war in Ukraine and the “pacing threat” posed by an increasingly powerful China. But Iran is a problem that doesn’t go away, even as three successive American presidents have tried to reduce U.S. military involvement in the Middle East.

The joint show of force is a boon for Benjamin Netanyahu, newly elected again as Israeli prime minister. Israeli media

showed him Wednesday intently watching video transmissions of the exercises, sitting next to Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli chief of staff.

Netanyahu’s new government is fragile, and his proposals to reduce the power of the Israeli judiciary have drawn fierce criticism, including massive street demonstrations in Tel Aviv and other cities. At such a delicate moment, the Biden administration probably wouldn’t want to do Netanyahu any favors. But last week’s exercise shows that U.S.-Israeli military cooperation is largely impervious to internal politics in either country.

According to the U.S. Central Command, which oversees American operations in the region, the exercise involved roughly 6,400 U.S. troops, 12 ships, and more than 140 American aircraft. The Israelis contributed more than 1,500

troops, a Centcom statement said. Over four days, U.S. and Israeli forces dropped more than 180,000 pounds of live munitions.

In addition to the B-52 strategic bombers, the American arsenal on display this week included F-35 deep-penetration fighters, the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier strike group, HIMARS rockets, armed Reaper drones and KC-46 tankers that could help Israeli or U.S. planes refuel on a mission over Iran.

Juniper Oak was a show of 21st-century combat power, involving “all aspects of warfighting – some of which are seen and some of which are not,” said Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the Centcom commander. Kurilla said in a statement on Thursday that the exercise had included simulated operations in space and cyberspace.

U.S. and Israeli military officials

would not confirm officially that Juniper Oak was planned with Iran as a potential target. But that has been an open secret ever since the two countries began organizing the exercise in November.

The show of force comes as the Biden administration’s efforts to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have stalled. The administration hasn’t formally withdrawn from its diplomatic efforts. But State Department spokesman Ned Price said this month that “a return to compliance with the [Iran nuclear deal] isn’t on the agenda…because the Iranians turned their back on it.”

Iran has pressed ahead with its nuclear enrichment program, ever since President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018, and now has breakout capability, according to Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “They have amassed enough nuclear material for several nuclear weapons, not one, at this point,” Grossi said this week.

In the nuclear realm, deterrence is the essence of good strategy. And that’s the baseline for assessing this week’s rehearsal for a military attack on Iran. President Biden has said the United States will never allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon and that he would use force as a “last resort” to stop Tehran from going nuclear.

Last week’s exercises make that U.S. threat a little more credible – and, if the logic of deterrence holds, reduces the likelihood of an actual conflict. That’s the theory, at least. What Juniper Oak suggested was that a military action, if it ever came, would likely be massive.

Nazi Soldiers Buried a Treasure. Nearly 80 Years Later, the Search Goes On

By Claire Moses

In spring 1945, a couple of weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands from its Nazi occupiers, five German soldiers buried four ammunition boxes filled with gold, jewels and watches in a woodsy part of a sleepy Dutch village.

Nazi soldiers had snatched the valuables, which could be worth millions, off the street after they were blown out of a bank vault during an explosion in the city of Arnhem in late summer 1944, documents show.

What the men who buried the loot probably did not know was that one of their fellow soldiers, a man named Helmut Sonder, was lying in the bushes with a war injury, observing the scene and committing it to memory. Afterward, Sonder drew a meticulous map that showed exactly where (by three poplar trees) and how deep (about 1.7 to

2.3 feet) the treasure had been buried.

Not much is known about the fate of the man who drew the map, but the document ended up in the Dutch National Archives in The Hague. This month, it was released as part of the archives’ annual “publicity day,” along with thousands of documents that are no longer classified.

The map’s release has spurred a renewed hunt for the boxes of gold and jewels and has elevated the profile of the tiny village of Ommeren — population 751 — as one of the few places in the world where a known Nazi treasure could be hiding.

“We’re on the map,” said Klaas Tammes, a former mayor of the municipality that includes Ommeren. “That has been nice.”

Others share his excitement but express a sense of frustration about the

people coming from all over the country to dig up the village, which is about an hour’s drive southeast of Amsterdam.

Dozens of people have descended with shovels and metal detectors, and one man even brought a divining rod, according to Tammes, who lives on the estate where the treasure might be buried. One photograph circulating among residents shows another man standing waist-deep in the ground at the side of a regional road.

The mystery has captivated local residents and received widespread attention in the Dutch and international news media, but its main question remains unanswered: Is the loot still there?

“I have my doubts,” said Joke Honders, a local historian who works for the regional museum in Ommeren and lives in the next town over. But, she

added, after consulting a historical atlas as well as the hand-drawn map, she believes she knows where the treasure could be — a place where nobody has searched yet, as far as she is aware.

Asked for more precise details, she said, “I’m not going to tell you!”

It is not entirely clear what would happen to the treasure if someone were to find it.

Honders said she had no interest in keeping the contents of the boxes if she were to find them. “It’s not about the treasure itself,” she said. “It’s all stolen; there’s too much negativity attached to that.”

Searching for the treasure in the area could be a dangerous pursuit, said Sebastiaan Hoogenberg, an amateur metal detectorist who runs a YouTube channel where he talks about the items he finds around the Netherlands. There

are unexploded World War II-era bombs in the ground.

On its website, Ommeren’s municipality urged fortune seekers to stay away because digging for the treasure is not really allowed. After the release of the map, the municipality received a lot of messages from people claiming to know the exact location and offering to disclose it for money, said Birgit van Aken-Quint, a spokesperson for the municipality. Since then, the situation has calmed down, she said, and about five people have applied for formal permission to look for the treasure.

Rumors about the treasure first started among Dutch soldiers stationed in Germany in 1946, according to documents at the National Archives. A postwar government institution in charge of finding and managing stolen assets learned about it in December 1946 and ordered official searches of the area.

The first search, in January 1947, was a failure because the ground was frozen. The second attempt a few weeks later amounted to nothing because of a faulty metal detector, documents show. For its third search, in summer 1947, the agency brought Sonder, the former soldier who drew the map, back to the

Netherlands from Germany to point out the exact location, documents show.

They found nothing.

After a fourth and final try, in August 1947, officials concluded that the treasure probably was not there anymore, documents show.

Ommeren residents said that they had never heard about the treasure.

“This was a total surprise,” Tammes said. “This story was unknown here.”

“We came across this map coincidentally,” said Annet Waalkens, a researcher at the National Archives, which has hundreds of thousands of maps in its collection. “When we saw this, we had found our own treasure already.”

She added, “It’s beautiful that a yel-

lowing piece of paper can evoke such emotions.”

It is possible that Sonder made the whole thing up, but Dutch officials in charge of the search thought this was unlikely, documents indicate. Another theory is that one or multiple of the government searchers had secretly found it. And yet another — and what some people consider to be the most likely — scenario is that one of the Nazi soldiers who hid the treasure went back and quietly unearthed it himself.

No scenario has been proved, and it is unclear whether Sonder is still alive.

It is not the first time that the village, which is especially quiet in the winter without the cyclists and campers who flock to the area in the summer, has been the site of archaeological buzz. In 2016, three searchers found a trove of 31 golden Roman coins.

Not everyone has joined the excitement about the possible Nazi treasure.

“I think it’ll blow over,” said Dicky Briene, 76, who has lived in the same house in Ommeren for 54 years and said she had not seen any visitors with shovels or metal detectors. “And there’ll

Israel’s Paratroopers

By Avi Heiligman

Military parachutists, known as paratroopers, are trained to jump into a combat situation. Once on the ground, they can begin to engage the enemy and are usually highly trained infantry soldiers. Israeli paratroopers can trace their beginnings to the end of the Israeli War of Independence and have fought in several important battles and operations. They are highly regarded as some of the best paratroopers since the end of World War II with several notable names serving in their ranks.

British paratrooper Tom Derek Bowden, known as David Appel, wrote the first manuscript for Israeli paratroopers when he was serving as a Machal soldier in 1949. The non-Jewish officer had served in Eretz Yisrael during the British Mandate in the 1930s under General Orde Wingate as a member of the Royal Scots Greys. He led a cavalry charge during World War II in the Middle East and was wounded. Bowden spent time in Tel Aviv before joining the British Parachute Regiment. He fought in Sicily and Normandy, and parachuted into Arnhem where

he was captured by the Germans. Letters found in his belongings from a friend in Tel Aviv were all the Nazis needed to send him to Bergen Belsen. After surviving the concentration camp and a POW camp, Bowden stayed in mainland Europe to train Yugoslavian paratroopers.

school. He used the parachutes that he brought from England and wrote a training manual for paratroopers that was translated by his secretary.

A group of thirty-six Jewish volunteers from the Yishuv parachuted into Nazi-held Europe in 1944. Yoel Palgi

first paratrooper unit in the IDF by Prime Minister David Ben Gurion. By the end of the war, he had 250 trained officers and soldiers under his command.

One of the more celebrated moments for the paratroopers was their capture of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount during the Six Day War in June 1967.

In 1948, Bowden made his way through Cyprus and into Israel to join the 7 th Brigade. Along with his regular luggage he brought British Army surplus parachutes into Israel. As a Machal soldier, he fought at Latrun to keep the road to Jerusalem open alongside Holocaust survivors who only spoke Yiddish. In 1949, Israeli chief of staff Chaim Laskov asked Bowden to establish a paratroop

was dropped into Yugoslavia and made his way into Hungary in an attempt to rescue Jews from the Holocaust. He was captured, survived brutal interrogations by the Gestapo, and managed to escape while being transferred. Palgi continued his efforts to try and save Jews from the Nazis and returned to Eretz Yisrael after the war. During the Israeli War of Independence, he was tasked to set up the

The commander of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade – the unit which was first to the Wall – was Mordechai “Motta” Gur who started his military career with the Palmach. Gur became company commander under the overall command of Ariel Sharon. He was wounded in 1955 while leading a counter-terror raid deep into Egyptian territory. In the 1960s, he commanded the Golani Brigade for two years and held other command posts before being appointed as commander of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade (Reserve) in 1966.

The United Nations, which conveniently came to Israel’s “aid” just when they had turned the tide and were winning the war, had brokered a ceasefire between the two sides. Time was running out if they were to capture the Old City.

The battle for Jerusalem and the Old City was bloody and brutal for both sides.

Finally, on June 7, Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan gave the green light to the paratroopers to recapture the Old City and the Kosel. The battle for Jerusalem and the Old City was brutal and bloody for both sides. The paratroopers had taken heavy casualties when took a wrong turn and fell into a Jordanian ambush. In all, 98 paratroopers were among the 182 Israeli soldiers killed in the battle as they faced the veteran Jordanian Legion.

Lieutenant Colonel Gur led the assault on the Temple Mount and began the final charge by telling his unit and

tankers, “Storm the Old City!” He was in a half-track and kept telling his driver, Bentzion, “Go, Bentzur, go!” The halftrack passed several tanks and was soon ahead of the column. They broke through the Lion’s Gate, made their way through the narrow streets, and soon were on the Temple Mount. Gur exclaimed, “Har HaBayit b’yadeinu!” (“The Temple Mount is in our hands!”) over the radio. This radio call was soon heard by Jews all over the world as the Kotel was finally under Israeli control.

After the war, Gur became chief of

staff and was involved in the planning of Operation Thunderbolt, the Israeli rescue of airplane hostages held in Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

In their storied history, Israeli paratroopers have had only one parachute drop and that occurred during the 1956 Suez Crisis. Today, Israel’s paratroopers are involved in a wide array of missions that range from counter-terrorism to humanitarian aid. During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, they were responsible for locating enemy tunnels. Fighting mainly in the Khan Yunis area, the para-

troopers killed 141 enemy combatants during the operation.

The paratroopers remain an integral part of the IDF strategy. Their stories –from their humble beginnings to their combat missions – are history to be remembered.

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.

General Motta Gur

Paratroopers at Temple Mount during the Six Day War

With Rabbi Shimon Goren in 1967

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HEWLETT

Luxurious Exquisite 6 bedrooms, 6.5 bath home situated on approximate 1.8 acre property in prestigious Hewlett Bay Park. Formal Living room and dining room, library, chefs Eat-in Kitchen, extraordinary great room leads out to veranda. large Gunite built-in pool + pool house with full bath, large slate patio, impressive sprawling property, school district #14 Hewlett-Woodmere. Close to all. P.O.R. Mark Lipner Associate

Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

Great Home on a Cul-De-Sac, SD #15, Features 4 Bedrooms, 3 New Full Bathrooms, Gas Heat, Central Air

Conditioning, Renovated Gourmet

EIK w/2 Sinks, Granite Countertops, New Stainless Steel Appliances

Leading out to a New Deck, Elegant

Formal Dining Room, New Flooring, Moldings, and New Wood Bannister

Leading to the Bedrooms, Spacious Master Bedroom Suite w/Jacuzzi Tub, Sep Stall Shower, and a Large Walk-In Closet. Generously Sized Den Leading Out to a Magnificent Backyard With a New Pergola, Great Home for Entertaining, High Hats Throughout, New Front Walkway Leading to a Nice Front Porch, New Front Windows

Close to RR, Shopping, Houses of Worship. P.O.R. Mark Lipner Associate

Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HEWLETT BAY PARK

Six bedroom home in highly desirable Hewlett Bay Park on 3/4 of an acre with an inground gunite pool and tennis court, en-Suite bathrooms and bedrooms on both floors, 1st floor Master Suite with steam shower and Jacuzzi tub, Eat-in Kitchen, with SS appliances, 2 sinks, 2 dishwashers, double oven, formal living room, formal dining room, den with fireplace. Close to railroad, shopping, and houses of worship. SD#14. Great house for entertaining. Park-like Property. P.O.R. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE

Spacious 5 bedroom 4 bathroom split level in Saddle Ridge Estates Well maintained home home , renovated eat –in-kitchen , formal living room and dining room, den, central air conditioning, hardwood floors, high hats, master bedroom with a custom bathroom and Jacuzzi tub, close to all $995k Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE: NEW TO THE MARKET Well maintained 4 bedroom home on a cul-de-sac in Old Woodmere SD#14. Features central air conditioning, gas heat, eat -in -kitchen with stainless steel appliances, very spacious den, 2 car garage, hardwood floors, high hats, magnificent yard with an in-ground saltwater pool, close to the railroad, shopping and houses of worship. Call for a private showing. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

HEWLETT BAY PARK

Prestigious Center-Hall Colonial in Hewlett Bay Park, Set Back on Private Property. This Stately Home Features a Grand Entry Foyer, Formal Living Room, Formal Dining Room, Chef’s Kitchen, Large Den, Master Bedroom suite with Sitting Room + 2 Baths (His & Hers) and Loft and Additional 3 Bedrooms + Bonus Rooms. Exquisitely Manicured Park-like property. Award Winning School District #14. Too Many Features To List. Will Not Last! P.O.R. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.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

WOODMERE

Spectacular 5 bedroom, 5 bath renovated home in SD#14 with in-ground pool & pool house, lot size 111 x 107. Formal living room & dining room, magnificent kitchen with SS appli-ances, tremendous den with fireplace and 4 skylights, vaulted ceiling, LED lighting, master suite, new CAC, new roof. Outside totally redone with Stone and Stucco. Backyard with new pavers, park-like property, sandbox, great home for entertaining. Close to all. $1,489,000

OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY FEBRUARY 5

11:30-1:30PM Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-298-8457 mlipner@ bhhslaffey.com

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

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

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!

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

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. OPEN HOUSE SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 12:00-1:30PM

8 WOODMERE BLVD.

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

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

Move Right In. Renovated 8 Bedroom

Colonial, Prime Location in SD#14 - Old Woodmere. Smart Home, Camera System, New CAC System, AG Pool, Large Eat-in Kitchen with Pantry. Finished Basement. Mark Lipner Associate Broker Berkshire Hathaway Laffey International 516-2988457 mlipner@bhhslaffey.com

WOODMERE HOUSE RENTAL

Lovely Split Level on Quiet Residential Tree Lined Street. Huge Park-like Property. Four Bedrooms, Two Full Baths, deck & playroom. Close to all. 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

APT. FOR RENT

LOOKING FOR A FEMALE ROOMATE

Two Bedroom furnished apartment First floor, private bathroom, washer &dryer, AC. In prime Cedarhurst location Walking distance to shopping and transportation. $1200. All utilities included Please call Ora at 347-465-6400

FOR RENT

For Rent: Double car garage for rent, located in Inwood remote opener. Ideal for a business looking for extra storage space. 675 $ per month   Text Menachem at 347-946-5406 to view

APT./COOP/CONDO SALE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

APT./COOP/CONDO SALE APT./COOP/CONDO SALE

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

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

HELP WANTED 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

BOOKKEEPER

Excellent growth potential, Frum environment, Excellent salary & benefits. Email resume to: resumetfs1@gmail.com

HELP WANTED HELP WANTED HELP WANTED HELP WANTED

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

YESHIVA KETANA OF LONG ISLAND

Seeks caring 3rd Grade Rebbe whose teaching is focused on skill building with an emphasis on Shorashim. And whose teaching is enhanced by his warmth, crea-tivity, positivity and relationship with his Talmidim. Great work environment & benefits package. Experience preferred but not necessary.

E-mail Resume with Refs: office@ykli.org

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 resume to mshelt613@gmail.com or call/text 718-971-9799.

GENERAL STUDIES TEACHERS

5th Grade Master’s in Education or currently enrolled in Master’s Program preferable. Excellent opportunity for students pursuing a degree in education. Afternoon teaching hours. Warm, collaborative environment.

Excellent Pay

Email resume: cliebhard@darchei.org

IMMEDIATE OPENING

ELA teaching position for Gr. 5. Mon.-Thurs., afternoon hours. Far Rockaway/5T area. Competitive salary, warm supportive environment. 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

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

YESHIVA OF SOUTH SHORE

Looking for assistants and a long term elementary permanent substitute teacher. Afternoon hours, excellent working conditions,, competitive pay.

Please send a resume to monika@yoss.org.

SALE OF TAX LIENS ON REAL ESTATE

Notice is hereby given that commencing on February 21st, 2023, will sell at public on-line auction the tax liens on certain real estate, unless the owner, mortgagee, occupant of or any other party in interest in such real estate shall have paid to the County Treasurer by February 16th, 2023 the total amount of such unpaid taxes or assessments with the interest, penalties and other expenses and charges against the property.

Such tax liens will be sold at the lowest rate of interest, not exceeding 10 percent per six-month period, for which any person or persons shall offer to take the total amount of such unpaid taxes as defined in Section 5-37.0 of the Nassau County Administrative Code.

Effective with the February 2019 lien sale Ordinance No. 175-2015 requires a $175.00 per day registration fee for each person who intends to bid at the tax lien sale. Ordinance No. 175-2015 also requires that upon the issuance of the Lien Certificate there is due from the lien buyer a Tax Certificate Issue Fee of $20.00 per lien purchased. Pursuant to the provisions of the Nassau County Administrative Code at the discretion of the Nassau County Treasurer the auction will be conducted online. Further information concerning the procedures for the auction is available at the website of the Nassau County Treasurer at: https://www.nassaucountyny.gov/526/County-Treasurer

Should the Treasurer determine that an in-person auction shall be held, same will commence on the 21st day of February 2023 at the Office of The County Treasurer 1 West Street, Mineola or at some other location to be determined by the Treasurer.

A list of all real estate in Nassau County on which tax liens are to be sold is available at the website of the Nassau County Treasurer at: https://www.nassaucountyny.gov/527/Annual-Tax-Lien-Sale

A list of local properties upon which tax liens are to be sold will be advertised in this publication on or before February 08th, 2023 Nassau County does not discriminate on the basis of disability in admission to or access to, or treatment or employment in, its services, programs, or activities. Upon request, accommodations such as those required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) will be provided to enable individuals with disabilities to participate in all services, programs, activities and public hearings and events conducted by the Treasurer’s Office. Upon request, information can be made available in Braille, large print, audio-tape or other alternative formats. For additional information, please call (516) 571-2090 ext. 1-3715.

Dated: January 25, 2023

TERMS OF SALE

Such tax liens shall be sold subject to any and all superior tax liens of sovereignties and other municipalities and to all claims of record which the County may have thereon and subject to the provisions of the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts.

However, such tax liens shall have priority over the County’s Differential Interest Lien, representing the excess, if any, of the interest and penalty borne at the maximum rate over the interest and penalty borne at the rate at which the lien is purchased.

The Purchaser acknowledges that the tax lien(s) sold pursuant to these Terms of Sale may be subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or may become subject to such proceedings which may be commenced during the period in which a tax lien is held by a successful bidder or the assignee of same, which may modify a Purchaser’s rights with respect to the lien(s) and the property securing same. Such bankruptcy proceedings shall not affect the validity of the tax lien. In addition to being subject to pending bankruptcy proceedings and/or the Federal and State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Acts, said purchaser’s right of foreclosure may be affected by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act(FIRREA),12 U.S.C. ss 1811 et.seq., with regard to real property under Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation(FDIC) receivership.

The County Treasurer reserves the right, without further notice and at any time, to withdraw from sale any of the parcels of land or premises herein listed. The Nassau County Treasurer reserves the right to intervene in any bankruptcy case/litigation where the property affected by the tax liens sold by the Treasurer is part of the bankruptcy estate. However, it is the sole responsibility of all tax lien purchasers to protect their legal interests in any bankruptcy case affecting their purchased tax lien, including but not limited to the filing of a proof of claim on their behalf, covering their investment in said tax lien. The Nassau County Treasurer and Nassau County and its agencies, assumes no responsibility for any legal representation of any tax lien purchaser in any legal proceeding including but not limited to a bankruptcy case where the purchased tax lien is at risk.

The rate of interest and penalty at which any person purchases the tax lien shall be established by his bid. Each purchaser, immediately after the sale thereof, shall pay to the County Treasurer ten per cent of the amount for which the tax liens have been sold and the remaining ninety per cent within thirty days after such sale. If the purchaser at the tax sale shall fail to pay the remaining ninety per cent within ten days after he has been notified by the County Treasurer that the certificates of sale are ready for delivery, then all amounts deposited with the County Treasurer including but not limited to the ten per cent theretofore paid by him shall, without further notice or demand, be irrevocably forfeited by the purchaser and shall be retained by the County Treasurer as liquidated damages and the agreement to purchase shall be of no further effect. Time is of the essence in this sale. This sale is held pursuant to the Nassau County Administrative Code and interested parties are referred to such Code for additional information as to terms of the sale, rights of purchasers, maximum rates of interest and other legal incidents of the sale.

Furthermore, as to the bidding,

1. The bidder(s) agree that they will not work with any other bidder(s) to increase, maintain or stabilize interest rates or collaborate with any other bidder(s) to gain an unfair competitive advantage in the random number generator in the event of a tie bid(s) on a tax certificate. Bidder(s) further agree not to employ any bidding strategy designed to create an unfair competitive advantage in the tiebreaking process in the upcoming tax sale nor work with any other bidder(s) to engage in any bidding strategy that will result in a rotational award of tax certificates

2. The tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) bid, will be arrived at independently and without direct or indirect consultation, communication or agreement with any other bidder and that the tax certificate(s) the Bidder will bid upon, and the interest rate(s) to be bid, have not been disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder, and will not be disclosed, directly or indirectly, to any other bidder prior to the close of bidding. No attempt has been made or will be made to, directly or indirectly, induce any other bidder to refrain from bidding on any tax certificate, to submit complementary bids, or to submit bids at specific interest rates.

3. The bids to be placed by the Bidder will be made in good faith and not pursuant to any direct or indirect, agreement or discussion with, or inducement from, any other bidder to submit a complementary or other noncompetitive bid.

4. If it is determined that the bidder(s) have violated any of these bid requirements then their bid shall be voided and if they were the successful bidder the lien and any deposits made in connection with said bid shall be forfeited.

Dated: January 25, 2023

Turn the dial on the Wayback Machine to the fourteenth century. Intrepid knights from across England are saddling up their trustiest steeds to journey east on what came to be known as the Crusades. Those knights needed someone to take care of their lands and families while they were gone. So they invented the “trust,” a form of ownership where one party holds the title to a property for the benefit of someone else. They quickly discovered they could use trusts to avoid property taxes at death. Thus, in 1682, Lord Nottingham instituted the “Rule Against Perpetuities,” now the bane of first-year law students everywhere.

Today, we use trusts mostly to avoid probate and taxes. Clever planners have spawned a whole alphabet soup of different variations for different goals: CLATs and CLUTs, CRATs and CRUTs, GRATs and GRUTs, NINGs, and DINGs, and QPRTs, QTIPs, and BLARTs. (I just made up that last one.) Most people would rather have dental surgery than learn what any of them mean. But now, there’s a brand-new flavor that raises tax questions we may not answer for hundreds of years.

Back when those original Crusaders

Your Money Dead on Arrival?

By Allan Rolnick, CPA

set off to secure Jerusalem from the Muslims, life expectancy hovered around 30 years. (Bubonic Plague plays for keeps.) Dying meant dying. Today, scientists are working to push lifespans past 100. But that’s not good enough for a hardy band of pioneers determined to cheat death entirely. So they’re spending up to $200,000 to freeze their bodies (or sometimes just their heads) in liquid nitrogen,

200 patients in suspended animation, has established the Alcor Patient Care Trust to cover those costs. (Can you even imagine how creepy their lab must be?)

But who wants to wake up in 1,000 years with no money? That’s where the Personal Revival Trust comes in. The PRT is a specialized dynasty trust that lets you leave money to your future unfrozen self. The PRT raises even more tricky legal

taxes? Doctors can’t start freezing you until you’re legally dead, which triggers taxes on transfers to yourself – but what about transfers to your future self? And trust assets can compound to staggering amounts in the decades or centuries it takes for science to catch up with your dreams of immortality. A single dollar, invested for 200 years at eight percent, turns into 4,848,950 $ before tax. You can be sure the IRS will want a slice of that boondoggle. And what will your tax status be when you’re reanimated? Will you even be the same person for tax purposes?

typically at -320 degrees Fahrenheit, until they can be thawed and brought back to life. When will that be? 100 years from today? 1,000? (Will we finally have flying cars and personal jet packs?)

Freezing yourself for posterity raises some obvious financial questions. For starters, who’s going to keep the refrigerators running while you’re resting in icy peace? The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which currently maintains nearly

headaches. Does a frozen head qualify as an “ascertainable beneficiary”? How do you protect your future nest egg from angry relatives who were expecting to inherit your fortune? Will you have to pay back your life insurance benefits?

Finally, what will the IRS have to say about all of this? Will they (or the United States or our basic legal system) even exist when we’re reanimating frozen heads? Will PRT contributions escape estate

Now we’ve reached the point of the story where we usually say, “Call us with your questions.” But not today – we’ll admit we’re stumped. At this point, it sounds a lot easier to just upload your consciousness to the cloud. But sooner or later, the IRS will want a piece of that action, too. It never ends, does it?

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.

Pondering the Pre-Planning

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., LMFT, CLC, SDS

That’s Judaism for you. You’re not even done with Purim – wait, I take that back, I mean – winter vacation….

It’s actually still January – and already the parsha is bringing up matzah, marror, and the holiday of Pesach.

You know how kids are home from camp for like two minutes and already you’re receiving messages to apply for the next summer ?! Seriously, don’t we get to breathe? Maybe relax for a day or two?

Well, that’s similar to how we feel the

Right from the minute the last decoration gets taken down from the sukkah hut, the next big family holiday starts consuming us.

Of course, this is broken up by the integral and pressing decision of which Sunday to make your Chanukah party! And what to serve? Latkes or laffas? Doughnuts or cronuts? Chinese or cheese? Barbecue or bagels?

And let’s not forget the drama that pops up immediately around which married family members will be coming for

Seriously, don’t we get to breathe? Maybe relax for a day or two?

pressure, immediately at the end of Sukkos, of trying to decide where to go and what to do to for Pesach! Do you stay home, go to a hotel on a program (which needs to be signed up for yesterday or you are closed out), or go off to Israel? Maybe you want to rent a villa somewhere exotic. But that means you have to decide if you want to cook or if you need a cook – and you have to decide real fast.

Pesach. Will they join us, or will they be going to them? Are they coming to whole holiday or just for a part? How many kids will be saying the Mah Nishtana? And what about afikomen presents? Decisions!

So, who needs the parsha bringing up right now, in January, the shopping list and other requirements for April? Are we going out shopping for this stuff

tomorrow?!

But, like I said, that’s Judaism for you! There may be a rhyme and reason for it, but we’re not always privy to it easily.

You can certainly opt to spend time figuring it out; you can just add that into

the other stuff you’re busy with.

Or you can trust that there’s a good reason to start us thinking way ahead about what’s important to us.

The message may be that planning ahead is always important! After all, no one ever likes to be passed over!