Five Towns Jewish Home - 2-14-19

February 14, 2019

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The Amazing Return of the Yabloner Rebbe

See page 7

Around the

Community

Young Israel of Jamaica Estates Celebrates 40 Years Together

Hundreds Enjoy JEP/Nageela Networking Event

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HOW ONE MAN MANAGED TO COME BACK TO HIS PEOPLE AFTER FACING DEVASTATING LOSS A Wedding for the Ages

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Assemblywoman Pheffer Amato Greets TAG Students in Albany

Parshas Tetzaveh 10 Adar I 5778 Candle Lighting Time 5:11 pm Sponsored by

See page 34

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Rav Moshe Weinberger: Leaders and the Little People pg

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Passover Vacation Section Starts on page 117

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Dear Readers,

I

read the saga of the Yabloner Rebbe months ago. I forwarded the article to my mother, who grew up in Los Angeles and who I thought would connect with some of the information about the Rebbe’s later life.

On Sukkos, she retold the story of the Yabloner Rebbe to my aunt and uncle as we shared a meal, and they traded Los Angeles Jewish geography facts over dessert.

The article, which was written by Rabbi Pini Dunner, is long but well worth your time.

When reading through the piece, though, it’s important to keep in mind that the Yabloner Rebbe lived at a different time. His story is a microcosmic version of so many others’ stories who lived during World War II. It was a time of both personal and communal turmoil for our nation, when Jews were uprooted and displaced, slaughtered and murdered. So many survivors of the Holocaust describe the guilt they have for being survivors – they remember those who they left behind or who were killed before their eyes. If only…if only… is the constant refrain that fills their minds. The Yabloner Rebbe experienced these same feelings of guilt.

But his story is very different than other Holocaust stories because, although it took place at the same time, it is, in fact, not a story of the Holocaust. The Rebbe was already in Israel when the Nazis swept to power, and he never encountered the horror of seeing his children being ripped from his arms or smelling the acrid odor of burning flesh. But it’s the story of his own, personal holocaust and of how he emerged from the ruins.

When the Rebbe heard of what trans-

pired in Europe and of his followers who were doomed to their fate, he became a broken man.

He lost all faith in himself. In his mind, he thought that he had sent his followers to the gas chambers when he dissuaded them from coming with him to Israel.

Due to the devastating losses he suffered in his life, and due to the guilt of losing his followers, the Rebbe lost his belief in his abilities.

He gave up on himself and on his dreams. And then, because of his deep depression and his visceral sense of loss, he lost faith in his Creator. It is only later, when it was proved to him that his actions were not destructive and were actually life-saving, his faith in himself was restored. And then, once he began to believe in himself, he was able to restore his faith in the One Above.

It is often said that when we lose our belief in ourselves, when we experience yei’ush, depression, the yetzer hara is able to swoop in and pull us down to the abyss. When we lose our faith in our ability to succeed, we lose our ability to believe in the One Who has given us all our abilities. We are stuck, mired in our losses, unable to begin to climb out of the hole into which we have sunk.

Having faith in oneself is not just a modern-day inspirational TED talk. It’s essential to Yiddishkeit and to strengthening our emunah.

The story of the Yabloner Rebbe is an illustration of this concept, as his life came full-circle when his faith in himself was restored.

Wishing you a wonderful week, Shoshana

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Contents LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

8

COMMUNITY Readers’ Poll Community Happenings

8 42

NEWS

32

Global

12

National

26

Odd-but-True Stories

40

ISRAEL Israel News

22

A Wedding for the Ages by Rafi Sackville

90

PARSHA Rabbi Wein

80

Leaders and the Little People by Rav Moshe Weinberger

82

Parsha in Four by Eytan Kobre

84

From Loneliness to Oneness by Shmuel Reichman

88

PEOPLE The Pogrom of Poskurov by Larry Domnitch

94

The Amazing Return of the Yabloner Rebbe by Rabbi Pini Dunner

96

Captain Levy Harby by Avi Heiligman

132

HEALTH & FITNESS The Secret to Not Putting Kids in the Middle by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn 112 Eating Clear: Acne and Your Diet by Aliza Beer, MS RD

114

You’ve Got to Hand it to Your Kids by Dr. Hylton I. Lightman

116

FOOD & LEISURE The Aussie Gourmet: Jerk Rub London Broil

120

LIFESTYLES Dating Dialogue, Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW 108

Dear Editor, I would like to respond to Moshe Gladstone’s letter (February 7, 2019 edition) criticizing the religious observance of Sheldon Adelson and Robert Kraft. When approached, Hillel answered that the whole Torah can be summarized in the mitzvah of “Love your neighbor as thyself.” I don’t think that the neighbor had to be wearing a yamulka and tzitzit. To my knowledge, Sheldon Adelson and Robert Kraft, not only are tremendous baalei tzedakah, but also exemplify the mitzvah “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as they have taught others the beauty of our religion whether it by giving a moment of silence in their stadium when a Jew is murdered by a terrorist or by creating medical research programs, and many other mitzvot.

When we start to respect and love one another and see in each other Hashem’s Shechina that we each possess, maybe Mashiach will arrive sooner and we can finally be one family. “I am sure that a lot of people agree with me.”

Shaindy Klein Dear Editor, We all know someone struggling with infertility, and we all want to do something about it. Is there a greater zechus than limud Torah? Can you imagine the merit of learning the entire Shas?

This coming Sunday, February 17, our community will be strongly represented in joining 291 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 by two teams: Team Far Rockaway and Team Woodmere. 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.

Sincerely, Moshe Shonek Member, Team Far Rockaway Continued on page 10

The Social Security Fantasy by Robert J. Samuelson 130

116

Your Money

140

Can You Share the Formula? by Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., CLC, SDS 142 HUMOR

Centerfold 78 POLITICAL CROSSFIRE Notable Quotes

122

Great Nations Don’t Quit Wars Before They Prevail

by Marc A. Thiessen

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CLASSIFIEDS

135

Would you rather have a rewind button or a pause button in your life?

68 32 %

Past

%

Pause

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

A Continuing C Torah Partnership

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Continued from page 8

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Dear Editor, Hawaii is doing the right thing!

In your February 7 edition, you write that the state of Hawaii is hoping to ban cigarette sales from those under 100 years of age by the year 2024 by incrementally raising the legal age to buy cigarettes. I am so grateful that there are smart people out there who understand the dangers of smoking.

Contrast this with those in our nation who are calling for the legalization of marijuana. Studies show that marijuana users are likely to end up taking harder drugs, leading to addictions and overdoses. How am I supposed to explain to a teenager that marijuana use is detrimental and dangerous if politicians – whom we elected to help us lead better lives – are advocating for its use? Do we need our whole nation to be bombed-out druggies for someone to realize that this is not something we want flooding our country?

Sincerely, S. Hammer Dear Editor, Great articles on silencing your phone when in shul! Even if people do not download the proper apps to automatically silence their phone when they enter shul, the awareness of turning their phones off is admirable.

Shaul Lechter Dear Editor, Kudos to Noam Fixler for a wonderful article in your magazine this week. He is certainly right – while our role models for our children are our gedolim, our children are exposed to other figures as well. And, as you know, we can learn something from everyone. I know that when I spoke with my children about Tom Brady’s determination to succeed and his constant efforts at improving his skills, they were impressed. Perhaps a bit of what they heard will sink in when

they study for midterms and finals.

Yes, it’s hard, but successful people are only successful because they work hard at it.

Keep up the good work!

Avi Schwartz Dear Editor, I love reading your “Dating Dialogue” column every week. I like to read the questions and enjoy the different panelists’ answers – each with their own flavor and personality.

I’d like to address the question this week about an Ashkenaz girl going out with a Sephardic boy. In my dating experience, I have felt like I have connected better with those who come from a similar background than I. For example, because I am a girl from Brooklyn whose parents both work, I have found that I have connected better with someone from “in-town” whose parents are in the working world. That’s not to say that I won’t marry someone from “out-oftown” or whose father is learning but it’s easier to find a connection with someone who sort of “knows” where I’m coming from. For that reason, I feel that it would be very difficult for someone who is Ashkenaz to marry into a Sephardic family. There are nuances to every person’s culture. Your new husband may not understand the importance of eating matzah balls on Pesach and you may not understand while his family’s weddings are so late. Sure, you can get past it, but it’s easier to make a connection when you are similar in certain ways.

That being said, there are many singles out there. If you see that this boy is a stellar boy and is exactly what you’re looking for who happens to have family that originated from Syria or Egypt or Morocco, I say go for it! You never know and, as long as you keep an open mind, he may be the best thing for you.

Much hatzlacha!

A Reader

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

The Week In News

Surge of Anti-Semitic Acts in France

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After a slew of anti-Semitic acts over the weekend, the French government vowed to crack down on those responsible for the graffiti and vandalism.

Government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux urged police to pursue the culprits while suggesting the spate of attacks could be blamed on far-left and far-right activists who have infiltrated weekly “yellow vest” protests. Demonstrators have gathered every Saturday in Paris since November to denounce the government of President Emmanuel Macron.

“We’re not talking about the protesters who are struggling to make ends meet,” Griveaux told France 2 television. “But those who are committing violent acts, openly anti-Semitic or racist acts, they must be charged and severely punished,” he said.

The rise of anti-Semitic acts in France began way before the “yellow vest” movement.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner revealed on Monday that the number of anti-Jewish offenses reported to the police surged 74 percent last year, to 541 from 311 in 2017. In a statement on Tuesday, Castaner said 183 involved assaults and at least one murder, while 358 were anti-Semitic threats or insults.

“Anti-Semitism is spreading like poison,” Castaner noted while visiting a memorial site outside Paris for a young Jewish man who was tortured to death in 2006. A tree planted at the site where 23-year-old Ilan Halimi’s body was found had been

chopped down, and a second tree was partly sawed through.

Recently, the word “Juden” (German for Jew) was scrawled on the window of a bagel bakery in Paris, and swastikas were drawn on Paris postal boxes decorated with a portrait of former government minister and Holocaust survivor Simone Veil.

Last weekend, an anti-discrimination advocate revealed graffiti saying, “Macron Jews’ [expletive],” in English, on a garage door in the center of Paris and the phrase “Jewish pig” scrawled on a wall in the city’s northern 18th district.

President Macron was also targeted in graffiti discovered Monday at the headquarters of French daily Le Monde, using anti-Semitic tropes to refer to his former job as a Rothschild investment banker.

France is home to the largest Jewish population in Europe, and the community has been targeted by jihadists in recent years. In 2011, an Islamist gunman fatally shot a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse. In 2015 a terrorist claiming allegiance to the Islamic State terror group killed four people at a kosher supermarket in Paris.

Maduro’s Plan B?

Who is willing to take in a despotic dictator who is responsible for the deaths of thousands of his own people?

That’s what Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro wants to know. After almost a month of massive protests against his rule, and with leaders all over the world calling on him to step down, Maduro remains obstinate and has said that he will stay on as president of the South American country until 2021.

Yet Bloomberg reports that Maduro’s aides are quietly reaching out to a number of countries to see who would be willing to take in the embattled leader. Among the countries being mentioned are Cuba and Russia, which are willing to take in Maduro due to his strong communist

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

ideology. Turkey has also reportedly expressed interest in welcoming Maduro, as Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan is known to be friends with the Venezuelan.

Maduro has also reached out to Mexico, which recently elected the radically socialist President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in January.

Obrador has been a strong supporter of Maduro and has been one of the only Latin American nations that has not yet called on Maduro to step aside.

The talks with foreign leaders have accelerated over this past week.

The Bloomberg report notes that despite Maduro’s belligerent stance, he has been examining escape options due to pressure from his wife and daughters to find a Plan B. Meanwhile, senior U.S. officials welcome any development that would remove Maduro from power.

“I think it is better for the transition to democracy in Venezuela that he be outside the country,” Elliott Abrams noted.

Abrams, who serves as U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s special representative for Venezuela, estimated that “there are a number of countries that I think would be willing to accept him” such as “friends in

places like Cuba and Russia.”

Abrams added that other nations “have come to us privately and said they’d be willing to take members of the current illegitimate regime if it would help the transition.”

Maduro has been attempting to weather massive street protests engineered by his rival, interim president Juan Guaido. The latter accuses Maduro of being an illegitimate leader and has been backed by hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans enraged by the rampant poverty, corruption, and starvation plaguing the socialist nation.

“Inappropriate” for Princess to be PM Although Thailand’s Electoral Commission said this week that the “monarchy must remain above politics,” officials have disqualified Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya from running for prime minister in next month’s general election after her brother, King Maha Vajiralongkorn, said her nomination would be “inappropriate.”

The 67-year-old princess made her shocking announcement on Friday, stating that she would stand as the prime ministerial candidate for the Thai Raksa Chart Party (Thai Save The Nation, or TSN) aligned with populist former leader Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by the military in a 2006 coup.

The candidacy of a close member of the royal family is unprecedented in Thailand since the era of absolute monarchy ended 86 years ago.

In a televised statement on Friday, hours after TSM announced Ubolratana would run for prime minister, King Vajiralongkorn said: “To involve a high-level member of the royal family in politics, directly or indirectly, is against royal traditions, norms and the national culture,” adding that “it is deemed extremely inappropriate.”

Later, TSN said it accepted the monarch’s directive, “with our loyalty to the King and all royal family members,” and would comply with the “Electoral Commission’s regulations, election laws, constitution and to royal traditions with respect.”

Thai law stipulates that once a name is submitted, it cannot be withdrawn, though the Electoral Commission has the power to decide the legitimacy of candidates.

The March 24 election is widely considered to be a vote between a form of democracy and legitimized authoritarian rule, following a military coup in 2014.

Coup leader turned Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha announced his own candidacy on Friday. The commission revealed on Monday that Prayut was among 45 candidates it said was eligible to run.

Princess Ubolratana gave up her royal status when she married American Peter Jensen in 1972, but returned to Thailand in 2001 following her divorce and continues to be active in royal life.

Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932 and the royal family is highly revered in the country. Criticizing or insulting the monarchy – which officially applies to the King, the regent, or heir apparent –

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

is punishable with prison sentences of up to 15 years under the nation’s strict lese majese law.

King Vajiralongkorn’s statement deemed the princess part of the royal family despite her having relinquished her royal title and said that royal family members are constitutionally above politics.

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“I am ashamed of what I did,” he said in court. “I am not a terrorist; I am not an Islamophobe.”

Survivors of the attack decried the sentence, which they said was insufficiently harsh for letting the shooter be eligible for parole in four decades. Survivors told the media that they were “shocked and angered” to hear that Bissonnette could return to society after only 40 years behind bars and not serve life in prison as they had demanded.

“Today is a sad day. We are committing 17 orphans to 40 years of suffering, at the end of which they will have to show up again to keep this assassin behind bars,” said Saïd El-Amari. “That suffering starts today and will last 40 years.”

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Alexandre Bissonnette, a farright Canadian radical who shot and killed six people at a Quebec mosque last year, has been sentenced to life in prison.

Upon announcing the sentence, Superior Court Judge Francois Huot said that Bissonnette can only apply for parole in 40 years, an unusually long period of time. Huot explained he slapped the 29-year-old extremist with a reduced shot at parole instead of denying him parole entirely as the prosecution requested.

Huot noted that Bissonnette had caused an “unspeakable tragedy” that “tore apart our social fabric” when he shot six Muslims at prayer back in January 29, 2017. The judge decried Bissonnette’s actions as “premeditated, gratuitous and abject” and said that the shooting exposed the killer’s “visceral hatred of Muslim immigrants.”

Wielding a .223-calibre rifle along with a Glock pistol, Bissonnette pumped 108 bullets into an Islamic center during prayers. Bissonnette waited until the Muslims bowed during the end of the prayer in order to kill as many as possible.

The shooting took the lives of Ibrahima Barry, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Abdelkrim Hassane, Aboubaker Thabti, and Azzeddine Soufiane. Another five were seriously wounded.

In March, Bissonnette pleaded guilty to six counts of attempted murder, along with another count for the people who were in the Islamic center but had not been killed during his shooting spree.

Edinburgh’s Tourist Tax

Welcome to the “tourist tax.”

If the Scottish capital of Edinburgh gets its way, tourists will now be charged a surcharge when visiting popular sites in the city. The city hopes that taxing tourists will reduce the number of tourists at various attractions, something it says is key for the upkeep of such sites, and will give the government a new source of income.

The measure was passed by Edinburgh councilors last week by a 43-15 margin, as lawmakers brushed aside concerns that the tax could scare away Scotland’s 4 million annual visitors. The legislation mandates a £2 a day tax ($2.60) on all tourists that stay overnight and would apply on all types of accommodations, including hotels, Airbnb, and hostels.

The law cannot take effect, however, until the Scottish Parliament passes legislation enabling such a move to move forward, something it is not expected to do until 2020. Estimates say that the tax would raise between £11.6M and £14.6M annually.

Scotland’s Chamber of Commerce said it supports the measure despite

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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its detractors in parliament predicting that it would cause the annual number of tourists to drop. “After consulting our members, we found broad support for the principle of a transient visitor levy (TVL), support which increases further if funds were ring-fenced and re-invested entirely in the city’s infrastructure,” said CEO Liz McAreavey. “What we require now is some more detailed information from City of Edinburgh Council as to exactly what they propose to do with the funds raised via a TVL.” If the tax becomes law then Edinburgh would join a growing list of cities in Europe that have passed similar legislation in recent years.

In 2018, the Italian city of Venice instituted a tax on tourists who do not spend the night there and already charges visitors an $11 admission fee.

Indonesia’s Bali also passed a law in January that mandates a new tax on tourists to pay for the cities’ sanitation expenses.

Visiting Edinburgh? Head there fast before the tax goes into effect.

And don’t forget to check out these popular sites: Edinburgh Castle, Blair Street Underground Vaults, National Museum of Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, and the Palace

of Holyroodhouse, where the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh stay towards the end of June.

Polish Amb.: Poland Has No Nat’l Complicity

While acknowledging that some Poles had “individual complicity” for atrocities during the Holocaust, Polish Ambassador to Israel Marek Magierowski insisted that his country was not culpable for the death of its 3 million Jews.

Magierowski’s comments came during an interview with the Times of Israel. The diplomat reiterated Poland’s claims of late that those responsible for the extermination of its Jewish citizens during World

War II lay with Nazi Germany and not his people.

During the sit-down, Magierowsky took affront with those who use the term “Polish complicity” when talking about the Holocaust, claiming that there was no organized and systematic effort by the Polish people to assist the German killing machine.

“It insinuates that Poland was consciously and willingly collaborating with Germany in the extermination of the European Jewry. No, it was not,” he said, adding that such claims detract from the carnage Poland suffered in the Second World War. “Poland was devastated,” he said.

“This is the not-so-unimportant context that is too frequently missing from the spectacular headlines about the alleged ‘Polish complicity.’

“And yes, some of my fellow countrymen committed abominable crimes against their Jewish brethren – before, during and after the war,” admitted Magierowski. “I have no reservations in saying that they were Poles. Not ‘bandits,’ not ‘criminals,’ not ‘non-Jewish neighbors.’

No need to conceal their nationality.

They were Polish, they spoke Polish,

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they were born in Poland.”

Poland has passed a series of controversial laws in recent years that observers charge is an attempt to whitewash the nation’s activities during the Holocaust. In a move that outraged both Israel and countries all around the world, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda signed legislation into law last year that criminalizes the mention of Poland’s role in the Holocaust. The penalty for referring to “Polish death camps,” for example, includes a three-year jail sentence along with a hefty fine. The bill was later softened amid rising backlash from Jews internationally.

When pressed on the subject, Magierowski claimed the law aims to prevent Poland from accusations that it assisted in the widescale genocide of the Jewish people.

“Every Polish government, regardless of its political leanings, has the duty to combat stereotypes and plain lies about Poland’s role in World War II. It is really puzzling how little is known worldwide about what really occurred in German-occupied Poland during the Holocaust,” said the ambassador.

“The infamous term ‘Polish death camps’ is just the tip of the iceberg.

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Let me give you an example of another blatant semantic distortion.

‘Germans’ are no longer ‘Germans.’

They are ‘Nazis.’ Unless you read a story about, say, a ‘German woman who rescued a Jewish family,’ alleged Magierowski. “Whereas when you read about Poles who collaborated with the German occupiers and denounced Jews, they are invariably ‘Poles.’ Unless you read a story about a Pole who rescued a Jewish family.

Then this Pole, quite mysteriously, becomes…‘a non-Jewish neighbor.’

It’s a gross manipulation.”

How Effective is Xofluza?

A widely prescribed drug that claims to cure the flu within 24 hours may not be all its advertised to be.

Called Xofluza, the pill was brought to market last year by Osaka-based Shionogi & Co and has since become Japan’s most prescribed drug. Xofluza is also sold in the United States by Roche Holding AG’s Genentech unit.

According to the Wall Street Journal, however, Japanese researchers say the drug actually works far less than advertised. In a recent report, Tokyo’s National Institute of Infectious Diseases said that six different kinds of flu are resistant to Xofluza, something it alleged had already been proven in tests before the drug was even brought to market.

The institute said that following months of intensive study, it found that Xofluza had no effect on almost 25% of children who suffered from the flu. The study was commissioned after doctors complained that the drug had no effect on some patients and said that they had stopped prescribing it entirely.

Shionogi has refrained from commenting on the study and said that all questions should be issued

to Genentech. A Genentech spokeswoman acknowledged to the Wall Street Journal that while some flu strains may indeed have “reduced susceptibility” to Xofluza, the drug still had some effect on patients.

Genentech also said that it was commissioning further studies to examine how effective Xofluza actually is.

“There is the possibility that Xofluza will not be effective in the next flu season if it is widely used now, as this will cause drug-resistant viruses to spread quickly,” spokesperson Naoto Hosokawa acknowledged.

Finnish SS Volunteers Killed Thousands of Jews

More than 70 years after the Holocaust has ended, Finland has revealed that Finnish volunteers in the Nazi SS participated in the murder of over 10,000 Jews and Russian prisoners of war.

The disclosure came in a report released by Finland’s National Archives. The revelations came after Simon Wiesenthal Center Nazi Hunter Dr. Ephraim Zuroff asked Finland’s President Sauli Niinisto in 2018 to open a probe into Finland’s complicity in the death of 6 million Jews.

The report found that 1,408 Finnish citizens served in the Nazi’s Fifth SS Panzer Division between 1941 and 1943 and were active participants in a slew of massacres in Ukraine and other locations in eastern Europe. The killings occurred in places such as Hrymailiv, Ozerna, Skalat, Tarnopol, Zboriv, Zolochiv, and Krivichi and took place mainly in July and August of 1941.

“The sub-units and men of SS-Division Wiking engaged during the march into the Soviet Union and the drive through Ukraine and the Caucasus were involved in numerous atrocities,” wrote the report.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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“The diaries and recollections by the Finnish volunteers show that practically everyone among them must, from the very beginning, have been aware of the atrocities and massacres.”

The report was based on diaries kept by the Finnish Nazi volunteers in the Nazi SS and archives in other European countries. The report found that while it is impossible to set an exact number of Jews killed by the Finns, it likely topped 10,000.

The report found, however, that many Finnish volunteers were unaware of the scope of the genocide and did not know that the Nazis were systematically wiping out Jews all across Europe. “They were not able to grasp the full picture of the extermination,” stated the report.

Researchers said that a perusal of the 76 memoirs written by Finnish SS volunteers showed that they experienced “emotional confusion” and “psychological rupture” resulting from their role in the murders but did not refuse orders due to the “the loyalty they felt for their German commanders.”

The dissonance between what the soldiers felt about their actions and their lack of opposition “dis-

turbed and complicated their reactions” and led to “active efforts” by Finland to repress the culpability of its citizens in the Holocaust.

“Active efforts were made to project that the Finnish SS soldiers were mainly on the frontline, unaware of the bigger picture,” said National Archives Director General Jussi Nuorteva.

Horror in the Holy Land Undercover Israeli special forces have arrested the terrorist responsible for the brutal murder of 19-yearold Ori Ansbacher.29-year-old Hevron resident Arafat Irfaiya was nabbed in the mosque he was hiding in near Ramallah on Saturday. The Shin Bet security service said that he has already confessed to the crime after being interrogated and then reconstructed the murder on Sunday.

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According to authorities, Irfaiya set out from his home on Thursday armed with a knife. After chancing upon Ansbacher in Jerusalem’s Ein Yael Forest near the Biblical Zoo, he attacked her and brutally murdered her. Police officers who found her body later related that it was the most brutal crime scene they had ever witnessed.

“I entered Israel with a knife because I wanted to become a martyr and murder a Jew,” Irfaiya reportedly said. “I met the girl by chance.”

Ansbacher hailed from the Gush Etzion of Tekoa and was volunteering with troubled teens as part of her national service. She had walked to the picturesque El Yael for some alone time after an argument with a friend, where she met her grisly fate.

The 19-year-old was buried on Friday in her hometown of Tekoa before thousands of Israelis. Her moth-

er asked the crowd to perform good deeds and “light up the world” in memory of her murdered daughter.

“I ask from those who are listening to us, and for whom our words are entering their hearts, to do one small thing to add light to the world – one act of kindness and maybe we will preserve Ori’s [soul] in the world and maybe we will have some comfort by adding light to the world,” Na’ah Ansbacher implored.

“It’s important for us that the world know who Ori was,” added the distraught mother. “Ori was a child of light, adding so much light in the world. She cured broken hearts wherever she went, be it with her girlfriends, the boys and girls she worked with in her national [volunteer] service, even people she did not know.”

Israeli Airports Block 3M Attempts a Day The offices in the airports in the Holy Land are busy blocking attempts by infiltrators to breach airport sys-

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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tems every day. At least 3 million attempts are prevented daily, mostly by bots, according to Roee Laufer, head of cyber and information security at Israeli’s Airports Authority.

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Speaking on the sidelines of a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv last month, Laufer said these “external threats” try to breach the “virtual fence” of cybersecurity protections the airports authority has built to protect the workings of the airports and border crossings it operates.

The Airports Authority set up a cybersecurity division four years ago, and, after that, a security operation center (SOC) at the country’s main airport, Ben Gurion international airport, which handles cybersecurity threats 24/7/365, he said.

The center “detects and responds to potential cyber events,” he added.

The SOC makes Ben Gurion Airport possibly one of the only major international airports in the world that has such a center on its premises. The authority is in charge of the airports and the border crossings, but not of securing the airlines themselves, which remains their own responsibility.

The Airports Council International, an umbrella organization of airport authorities, predicts that by 2040 there will be 20.9 billion global passengers, up from 8.2 billion in 2017. Thus, airports must digitalize their processes to be able to handle this huge amount of traffic, said Laufer, from the check-in process to how airports interact with aircraft and how they vet passengers as they board.

“IT is at the core of the airport business,” he noted. But this, in turn, increases the “attack surface” for cyber incidents at airports.

As the world undergoes digitalization and more institutions and objects become connected to the internet, the risks of a cyberattack surge.

The global cybersecurity market is expected to grow from $153 billion in 2018 to $248 billion by 2023, data research firm MarketsandMarkets reveals in a report. Israel punches

above its weight in the cybersecurity field, with the nation receiving 20% of the global share of private cybersecurity investments, second only to the U.S. The airline industry is one of the most vulnerable and unprotected markets today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv in January.

“Our airlines can be attacked one hundred ways,” he said. “They can be attacked by ground control interference, they can be attacked by the systems within the plane and the communications. It is in many ways right now the most vulnerable system that we have, but as you know everything today is vulnerable and everything is under attack. Civil aviation is the one area that requires the most immediate cyber defense solution but it is one of hundreds.”

Vulnerabilities at airports affect cities all over the world. In September, Bristol airport staff in the UK had to go back to working with whiteboards after all of its flight information screens were blacked out over a weekend in a ransomware attack. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, one of the busiest in the world, shut off its internal Wi-Fi network as a security measure in March last year, as the city of Atlanta’s government network underwent a ransomware attack.

The airline sector is also unique because there are a variety of parties involved in the business – airports, airlines and aviation industry suppliers – all of whom need to work very closely with one another to make the industry tick. “It is a very interconnected sector,” Laufer said.

In November, a group of Israeli cybersecurity firms, along with the Economy and Industry Ministry, set up a new cyber consortium to offer comprehensive, endto-end cybersecurity solutions for the commercial aviation industry — airports, airlines and aircraft.

The consortium includes Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), CyberArk, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., El Al’s Cockpit Innovation hub, Karamba Security and ClearSky – a combination of veteran cybersecurity and aerospace firms that already offer “a broad range of aviation, security, intelligence and cyber solutions for the global market” alongside “young startups with cutting edge cyber products and technologies,” the consortium said in a statement at the time.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein Passes Away

Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein, a world-famous philanthropic pioneer, passed away suddenly on February 6 after suffering a heart attack. He was 67.

Eckstein was buried in Bet Shemesh’s cemetery before a crowd of hundreds that included dignitaries such as US Ambassador David Friedman. Eckstein had lived in Israel since 2002 and left behind three daughters from his first wife.

Born in New York, Eckstein received rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University before working for various organizations in the Jewish non-profit industry, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish

Agency. Eckstein is known, however, for founding the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), a charity fund that assisted Jews all over the world.

Eckstein had started the IFCJ in 1983 as an attempt to foster cooperation between Christians and Jews.

By 2002, it had become the second largest philanthropic organization in Israel and played a major role in solidifying evangelical support for the Jewish State.

Eckstein’s majority-Christian donor base has poured more than $1.4 billion into the IFCJ since its founding, including $50 million in the last year alone. The group uses the funds for a wide range of programs, including assisting IDF soldiers, promoting Jewish immigration to Israel, child care, and assistance programs for elderly Holocaust survivors.

According to estimates, the IFCJ directly enabled 17,000 Jews to move to Israel from all over the world. However, Eckstein’s activities were controversial among some Jews, with claims that the charitable funds he received from Christians was given with the ulterior motive of missionizing.

In 2009, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, zt”l, ruled that it was forbid-

den to accept money from the organization, as it was akin to “idol worship” due to the religious nature of the donations. Senior Religious Zionist rabbis made similar rulings as well, with former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Avraham Shapira calling IFCJ donations “missionary money.”

Eckstein rebutted throughout his career allegations that the funds he raised came with strings attached.

“The majority of evangelicals are passionately pro-Israel because it is part of their theology to love and support the Jewish people,” Eckstein said in 2002.

“I could not accept the conditional love of those who expect a payback on behalf of my people,” he added. “I could not embark on a relationship that would compromise my personal integrity and ideals or that of the Jewish community I represent. But having been the first – and most often the only – Jew to build bridges with the right-wing Christian community, I have a view and understanding of their pro-Israel fervor that most people ‘on the outside’ lack.”

Despite the aforementioned controversy, accolades poured in from politicians and spiritual leaders all over the world after Eckstein’s pass-

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ing.

“The Jewish People have lost Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, a leader who worked tirelessly on their behalf,” said Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog. “I worked with Rabbi Eckstein on social welfare, diaspora and aliyah.

My deep condolences to his family and the entire International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.”

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu said that Eckstein “worked very hard to benefit the citizens of Israel and to strengthen the connection between the Christian communities and Israel.

May his memory be a blessing.”

Social Media Soars Among Israelis

With 9 million residents, Israeli many be a tiny country but when it

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

ur irls of o g d n a en a All wom y are invited ary for in m e it S l n commu n Basya Rache ho to Mac

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comes to social media usage, it plays with the giants.

A new study has found that Israelis use more social media than any other country in the world. With 77% of adults owning either a twitter or Facebook account, Israel came out on top of South Korea, which was close behind with 76%.

The Pew Research Center survey also found that Israel is second in the world in smartphone ownership, with 88% of its citizenry owning one, behind South Korea’s 95%.

The poll was conducted last May and surveyed 30,133 respondents in 27 countries.

Interestingly, cellphone usage in Israel has exploded in recent years among the elderly, as 80% of seniors now own a smartphone, up from 50% in 2015.

Longest Serving U.S. Congressman Dies

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office last Thursday. “He will be remembered for his decades of public service to the people of Southeast Michigan, his razor-sharp wit, and a lifetime of dedication to improving the lives of all who walk this earth.”

Known as “The Truck” for his intense legislating style, Dingell had served in Congress for over 60 years, making him the longest serving representative in U.S. history. Dingell was first elected in 1959 – replacing his father who had retired – and served a total of 29-terms before retiring in 2015.

Dingell distinguished himself for his work heading the House Energy Committee and his efforts to pass comprehensive health care reform.

Among the bills he worked on were Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts, and the Endangered Species Act. After his retirement, he distinguished himself for the often-witty commentary he expressed on twitter to his 250,000 followers.

The politico was eulogized by a slew of public figures and lawmakers, who described him as “an American icon” for his accomplishments in Congress. Dingell was also a veteran of World War II. He was supposed to take part in the first wave of a planned invasion into Japan in November 1945. Dingell used to say that President Truman’s decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki – effectively ending the war – saved his life.

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Former U.S. Congressman John David Dingell, Jr., the longest-serving representative in U.S. history, passed away at the age of 92 last week.

Dingell passed away in a hospice in his hometown of Dearborn, Michigan. Dingell had suffered from a variety of health problems in recent years, including prostate cancer and pneumonia. He died with his longtime wife Debbie at his side, who had also replaced him in Congress following his retirement.

“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of John David Dingell, Jr., former Michigan congressman and longest-serving member of the United States Congress,” announced Debbie Dingell’s

When queried as to what improves the immune system, most doctors would recommend exercise, refraining from fatty foods, and avoiding alcohol. Thinking positive thoughts is not likely to make the list.

Yet that’s precisely what a new study recommends. Researchers say that new evidence conclusively proves that thinking happy and optimistic thoughts can go a long way in assisting the human body to ward off diseases and keep itself healthy.

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The study was done by researchers at Oxford University and Exter University in Britain. As part of the experiment, 135 healthy adults were put in five separate groups and listened to different instructions.

During the experiment, the volunteers had their vital signs closely monitored, as well as their mental state of mind.

Throughout the study, participants were asked how they felt, if they liked themselves, and if they had positive feelings about themselves.

After the experiment concluded, the data showed that those listening to messages of high positivity and optimistic thoughts had a bodily reaction associated with relaxation and wellbeing.

Meanwhile, other groups who did not view themselves positively showed signs of sweating and stress, including an increased heartbeat.

The results were hailed by University of Exeter researcher Dr. Anke Karl, who had coordinated the study, as conclusive proof that positive thoughts can play a role on shaping our physiological response.

“Previous research has found that self-compassion was related to higher levels of wellbeing and better mental health, but we didn’t know why,”

Karl said. “Our study is helping us understand the mechanism of how being kind to yourself when things go wrong could be beneficial in psychological treatments.

“By switching off our threat response, we boost our immune systems and give ourselves the best chance of healing,” added Dr. Karl.

“We hope future research can use our method to investigate this in people with mental health problems such as recurrent depression.”

Election Day Trumps Columbus Day in Sandusky

The small Ohio city of Sandusky has swapped Columbus Day with

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Election Day as a paid holiday, drawing accusations from Republicans that the Democrat-held city council is attempting to boost its electoral fortunes via increased voter turnout.

“We were acting locally for local reasons but certainly we were inspired by the conversations happening at a statewide or national basis, and those two things really synced up well together,” Sandusky City Manager Eric Wobser said in an interview with CNN. The change grants citizens paid vacation on Election Day while turning Columbus Day into a regular workday and will take effect this year. Columbus Day is on the second Monday of October while Election Day usually falls out in the first week of November.

Another 13 states recognize Election Day as a paid holiday but none have made the change in exchange for Columbus Day. The switch comes amid a push by Congressional Democrats to make Election Day a paid vacation day all over the United States. Sandusky denied that the move was related and called it “dumb luck as to the timing of the national conversation.”

The “For the People Act,” which was introduced last week in Congress, would make Election Day a national holiday, and will force the president to release his tax returns and obligate super PACs to reveal donors who give more than $10,000.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has blasted the bill as a “power grab” and has alleged that what he called the “Democratic Politician Protection Act” rewrites “the rules of Americans politics for the exclusive benefit of the Democratic Party.”

He noted, “Their bill would make Election Day a new paid holiday for government workers and create an additional brand new paid leave benefit for up to six days for any federal bureaucrat who decides they’d like to hang out at the polls during an election,” said McConnell.

Was Foxconn Scamming Wisconsin?

Hopes had soared in Wisconsin in 2017 when Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn announce that

it would build a massive factory in the heart of cheese country.

In exchange for a mammoth $4.5 billion in tax breaks, Foxconn agreed to create 13,000 new jobs. The pinnacle of the deal was a 22-million square-foot campus to make TV screens that would turn Mount Pleasant from a bedroom community into a massive manufacturing industry.

“This is the Eighth Wonder of the World,” declared President Trump at the opening ceremony last June.

That was then.

Now, new evidence says that Foxconn and Wisconsin’s relationship has turned ugly. Instead of the promised high-tech manufacturing hub, the project is hemorrhaging cash and has not even come close to the 13,000 new jobs the behemoth said it would create.

As of December, the factory had only employed 178 people, far behind the target of 1,040 jobs Foxconn had set for itself by the end of its first year. Now, Foxconn says that it wants to shift away from manufacturing in Wisconsin, enraging officials who had given the corporation what politicians called “unheard of tax breaks.”

Foxconn CEO Terry Gou changed his plans after a tense call with President Donald Trump. “Foxconn is continuing its Wisconsin project,” the company retracted in a statement. “The company remains committed to its long-term investment and creating 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin.”

Yet the questions continue to pile up. With unemployment all across Wisconsin at an all time low of 3%, Foxconn is struggling to attract top tier talent from across the U.S. With higher salaries available in the West and East Coasts, engineers and other highly skilled workers are loathe to relocate to sleepy Mount Pleasant.

Reporter Austin Carr chronicled Foxconn’s woes in a wide-ranging piece for Bloomberg. Carr alleges that what increasingly looks like a scam is standard operating procedure for Terry Gou, who has a long history of deceiving local communi-

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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signed, it’s gone through a steady, snowballing evolution between what was initially committed to by Foxconn versus what they probably promised,” Carr added. “There’s been a lot of will-they-won’t-they tension, if anything, about this deal.

Our sources indicate that, for much of the last year, there’s been this ever-changing plan and not really clarity around what the vision is for their larger ambitions within the U.S. and within Wisconsin.”

A Case of Cold Convicts The Justice Department (DOJ) recently announced that it would investigate a Brooklyn jail that reportedly locked inmates in freezing jail cells without heat during a cold spell last month.

The DOJ said in a statement that it had tasked the Office of the Inspector General to “undertake a review” and

The Inspector General “will also conduct a thorough investigation of the infrastructure at the facility and review the emergency response and contingency planning for this type of incident,” said the Department of Justice.

The probe came following a request by Representative Jerald Nadler (D-New York) following an outcry over the conditions at the Brooklyn penitentiary. According to the New York Times, inmates at Metropolitan Detention Center were forced to stay in their cells for 23 hours a day during freezing temperatures.

The arrangement, which Nadler said was “inhumane,” was instituted as a security measure after a fire caused a power outage in January that lasted for days. Despite the subzero temperatures, protestors demonstrated outside the jail following the report and called for its 1,700 inmates to be treated better.

The nonprofit group Federal Defenders of New York also sued the Bureau of Prisons for its role in the “humanitarian crisis taking place” at the penitentiary.

Following a hearing on the matter, Judge Analisa Torres of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York visited the prison to see the conditions for herself. Inmates recounted how they were refused basic medical care, despite suffering a wide variety ailments that caused one inmate to “spit blood.”

Nadler tweeted that he would closely follow “what the Bureau of Prisons is doing about the inhuman conditions inside the facility. Zero heat and no electricity is simply unacceptable and must be addressed immediately.”

Astronaut Goes into Politics This week, retired astronaut Mark Kelly announced that he is running to finish the late Sen. John

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McCain’s last term representing Arizona, which ends in 2022.

Kelly is the husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived being shot in the head in a 2011 mass shooting that left six dead and 12 others injured in Tucson, Arizona. Since that attack, Giffords and Kelly have been prominent advocates for gun control.

The election to finish McCain’s last term will be held in 2020. The seat is currently held by Republican Sen. Martha McSally. McSally, who formerly served in the House and was appointed to the seat by Gov. Doug Ducey after she narrowly lost her campaign for Arizona’s other U.S. Senate seat to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in the 2018 midterm election.

Kelly announced his run on Tues-

day in a four-minute video featuring cinematic views of the desert and video of him with his wife. In the video, Kelly recounts his flights to space, his childhood, and his service in the U.S. Navy as a combat pilot and engineer. He recalls seeing his wife for the first time after the shooting and helping advocate for her in the years that followed. He said he learned from her how policy can be used to improve people’s lives.

“Arizonans are facing incredibly challenging issues here in the years to come: access to affordable health care, the stagnation of wages, job growth, the economy, as the climate warms, we’re going to have more drought here in the desert,” Kelly says in the video.

“Solving some of the hardest problems requires one thing, and that’s teamwork…. Partisanship and polarization and gerrymandering and corporate money have ruined our politics and it’s divided us. I care about people. I care about the state of Arizona. I care about this nation.

So because of that, I’ve decided that I’m going to campaign for the United States Senate.”

A “Silver Tsunami” in Maine

In Maine, officials are hardpressed for ideas on how to stem the state’s falling birthrate and deal with its increasingly-aging population.

Demographers call it the “Silver Tsunami.” As baby boomers retire, younger people are moving to greener pastures, in part due to the lack of well-paying jobs in the region. The phenomenon has turned Maine into the only state other than West Virginia where deaths outnumber births, something demographers warn can devastate the state if not corrected.

Maine already has more seniors than citizens under the age of 18, and the statistics are not encouraging. In

seven years, the number of citizens over the age of 65 will jump by 37%.

In the meantime, record low fertility rates and dropping life expectancy are causing the population to slowly wither away.

“I don’t think there will be a leveling-off point soon,” University of New Hampshire demographer Ken Johnson told the Boston Globe.

With a large elderly population exiting the workforce, and without anyone to replace them, the economic effects in the state have been dire.

Maine suffers from a chronic shortage of firefighters, policemen, and other public sector jobs, and local municipalities are raising taxes to pay for senior care programs.

Faced with both a shrinking labor pool and a booming economy, municipalities are growing desperate as public-sector jobs remain unfilled.

The state’s capital of Augusta is offering to pay garbage truck operators to get a truck-driving license and drive snowplows during the winter after years of help wanted ads went unanswered.

To cope with the problem, Augusta has paid the city’s informational technology administrator $75,000 to drive the snowplow. “We just can’t

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recruit seasonal drivers,” said Assistant City Manager Raphael St. Pierre.

“We’re definitely under the gun,” admitted Jessica Maurer, executive director of the Maine Council on Aging. “It’s a mixed bag, because there’s obviously really good news in that we’re living longer than ever. But we haven’t done a good job of planning for what’s next.”

Maine is not the only state suffering from a falling birthrate. A recent report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) concluded that American parents aren’t having enough children. Twenty-eight states averaged below 1,800 live births per 1,000 women, something demographers say doesn’t bode well for the U.S. “The U.S. isn’t in any danger yet, but if the country is unable to turn its total fertility rate around, it could begin to have an effect in a couple of generations,” noted Dr. Philip Cohen, a demographer at the Maryland Population Research Center.

TN Clinic Bilks U.S. Military Out of $65M

A recent USA Today investigation details how an obscure Tennessee clinic coordinated a wide-scale fraud that bilked the U.S. military out of more than $65 million.

The scam was led by a team of doctors who got rich by prescribing scar cream to U.S. Marines who didn’t need it. While the cream commonly sells for $14 in major pharmacies, Choice MD clinic in Tennessee charged the U.S. Defense Department’s health insurance company Tricare $500 a bottle in conjunction with a corrupt pharmacy in Utah.

The soldiers who ordered the cream got a kickback of the profits.

The swindle was able to last as long as it did due to the fact that the cream was classified by Tricare as a compound medication, a medicine that isn’t controlled by a doctor but is covered by Tricare. Compounding is when a pharmacist creates a cocktail of several different drugs

in order to tailor it for a specific patient. Since no two cocktails are the same, compounded medicines are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and can often go for exorbitant prices.

The scam was uncovered by a curious private investigator who tipped off the U.S. government after hearing of the scheme. Candace Michelle Craven, a Choice MD nurse, pleaded guilty to a slew of fraud counts while doctors Susan Vergot and Carl Lindblad pleaded guilty in April for conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Prosecutors said that the fraud was one of the most sophisticated cons they had come across. “It was just a setup to pay cash to patients and then turn around and prescribe them this expensive cream,” former U.S. attorney Jerry Martin explained.

Martin, a nationally recognized expert in health care fraud, called the conspiracy “extraordinarily brazen.”

“If these allegations are true, that is just a criminal enterprise,” Martin said. “There is just nothing legitimate about it.”

The U.S. Department of Defense has launched multiple investigations across the United States in the wake of the findings of the case amid suspicions that others are perpetuating similar scams. Authorities say that they are probing allegations of Tricare fraud in California, Tennessee, and Mississippi.

Congresswoman Had to be “Educated” about Anti-Semitism

Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was forced to apologize after her tweets regarding Israel were outed as being anti-Semitic.

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The freshman congresswoman had caused a storm of controversy by tweeting, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” in response to an article criticizing her anti-Israel stance, seemingly implying that Jews pay U.S. politicians to support Israel.

In a separate tweet, Omar suggested that it was “AIPAC” that was paying U.S. politicians to take pro-Israel positions, referring to the pro-Israel lobbying group – the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.

The congresswoman’s tweets caused bipartisan condemnation, with both Republican and Democrat lawmakers calling for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to boot her from the House Foreign Relations Committee as punishment.

Omar’s resulting apology came amid steadily building backlash on Monday.

“Anti-Semitism is real, and I am grateful for Jewish colleagues and allies who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes,” said Omar in a statement.

“My intentions were never to offend my constituents or the Jewish people are a whole.”

Omar added, “We have to always

be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity.”

Following her remarks, multiple Democratic lawmakers gathered signatures calling for Omar to be repremanded. “As Jewish Members of Congress, we are deeply alarmed by recent rhetoric from certain members within our Caucus, including just last night, that has disparaged us and called into question our loyalty to our nation,” read the missive, which was penned by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (NJ) and Elaine Luria (VA).

“We urge you to join us in calling on each member of our Caucus to unite against anti-Semitism and hateful tropes and stereotypes.”

Apple’s “Black Site” It’s a tale of two Apples.

Working at Apple isn’t always what it seems. While Apple is considered by many to be one of the most popular and glamorous corporations

today, a new report sheds light on the poor working conditions and lack of job security for contractors who work for the tech giant.

Apple’s gleaming new headquarters in Cupertino, California, sports a four floor café, perks such as dry cleaning, and a mammoth fitness center. Yet only ten miles way, there are thousands of contractors toiling away on various projects Apple pays them to develop.

For these contractors, their experience is very different from their coworkers who are employed directly

by Apple. While the latter enjoy perks such as a sumptuous lunch spread and high compensation, many contractors simply pray that they’ll have a job after their project is completed.

“It was made pretty plain to us

that we were at-will employees and they would fire us at any time,” one employee told Bloomberg. “Most workers at the office signed up for 1215 month work contracts, but many didn’t make it that long.”

The employees call such work hubs “black sites” after the special operations facilities the CIA utilizes that officially do not exist. Multiple employees said that Apple is doing everything to shield their company affiliation with the aforementioned contractors, including banning them from mentioning their work for the tech behemoth on their resumes and forcing them to walk several blocks before hailing a cab home.

One such site is on Hammerwood Avenue, a nondescript office building in Sunnyvale, California, which houses contractors working on Apple Maps. There, employees decried what they said is the substandard conditions they suffer from, a working environment drastically different from what regular Apple personnel enjoy.

“Inside the building, say former workers, they came to expect the vending machines to be understocked and to have to wait in line to use the men’s bathrooms,” wrote the

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report. “Architectural surprise and delight wasn’t a priority here; after all, the contract workers at Hammerwood almost all leave after their assignments of 12 to 15 months are up.

“It’s not uncommon for workers not to make it that long. According to 14 current and former contractors employed by Apex Systems, a firm that staffs the building as well as other Apple mapping offices, they operated under the constant threat of termination.”

Apple contractors are not alone.

As tech companies increase in size, many have turned to outsourcing projects in order to cut down on salaries and affiliated costs, such as healthcare. Yet no major tech company uses contractors to the extent that Apple does. For Apple Maps alone, Apple pays workers in locations that are scattered all over the globe, from Silicon Valley to Texas, London, the Czech Republic, and India.

Calling it “standard industry practice,” Apple representatives defend the substandard conditions their contractors experience.

“Like we do with other suppliers, we will work with Apex to review their management systems, including recruiting and termination protocols, to ensure the terms and conditions of employment are transparent and clearly communicated to workers in advance,” an Apple spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Stopping the Rise of Kratom

The drug kratom is increasingly becoming a bedrock of Indonesia’s economy.

Part of the coffee family, kratom has been popular in Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea for hundreds of years due to its painkilling properties and the stimulating effect the drug brings users. With the plant native to Indonesia, the country has ramped up exports in recent years,

turning the plant into a major cash crop.

In locations such as Kapuas Hulu, West Kalimantan, production of Kratom has become so lucrative that local farmers have stopped planting traditional crops such as rubber and palm oil.

“Around 90 percent of our shipments from West Kalimantan province are kratom that’s been sold to the United States,” said post office head Zaenal Hamid.

Yet as kratom becomes popular in the United States, safety experts worry that the lack of regulation and standards make the leaf a ticking timebomb. With the United States suffering from an opioid epidemic, the Food and Drug Administration says that lax controls of kratom can lead it to be easily abused, causing addiction.

While kratom is legal in 43 states, the FDA has already slapped the drug with an import alert and says that it will soon start confiscating shipments. The FDA said last week that it is “concerned that kratom appears to have properties that expose users to the risks of addiction, abuse, and dependence.”

Experts recommend that kratom be closely monitored until more research is done on its effects. “It has great potential as a remedy for pain and opioid addiction given its pharmacology and its potential accessibility,” Michael White said.

White, who is head of the department of pharmacy practice at the University of Connecticut, added that while the drug is “promising,” the lack of data means that the full effects are “not proven.” Yet as regulators debate the issue, more and more Americans are turning to kratom as a painkiller.

According to the American Kratom Association, 5 million Americans take kratom regularly, with the number expanding every year. Indonesians told the AFP that the rapidly-growing usage of kratom will stop the United States from performing a regulatory crackdown that can eliminate their profits.

“The kratom market has been very good over the past decade and it still has potential in the years ahead,” said kratom farmer Prabu.

“People will see its usefulness, sooner or later.”

Regulators need to work fast to get ahead of this potential problem before it turns into an epidemic.

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More and More Americans Feeling Lonely

Feeling lonely? You’re not alone.

More and more Americans report feeling alone, friendless, or just alienated from their surroundings.

According to a recent study, almost 50% of Americans admit that they sometimes or always feel alone, while 20% say that they never feel close with anyone.

In addition, the research found that feelings of loneliness can persist throughout one’s lifetime. Rates are irregularly high for those still in their 20s, mid-50s and late-80s.

The study was not an aberration.

In early January, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, found that feelings of loneliness in Americans are skyrocketing, with 75% reporting that they feel like nobody cares about them. Both men and women were equally lonely. The high number of lonely Americans had jumped from previous findings which found that the percentage of lonely people fluctuated from 17% to 57%.

Feelings of loneliness can be damaging for a host of reasons that go way beyond the psychological. A 2017 study by insurance behemoth Cigna concluded that feelings of loneliness can have as adverse an impact on one’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes daily.

“The increased mortality associated with loneliness is equal to the increased mortality we see with smoking 15 cigarettes a day,” said Dr. Vivek Murthy, a former surgeon general. “It’s in fact greater than the mortality associated with obesity.”

The increasing rates of loneliness are surprising to researchers, especially as modern technological advances such as social media makes reaching friends and loved ones easier than ever before. Dr. Brian Primack at the University of Pittsburgh heads the Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health and

says that the data shows overwhelmingly that “the more social media we use, the lonelier we are likely to be.

“One is this idea of social comparison,” said Primack. “People are able to take 300, 400 pictures of themselves and post that one that makes them look like they are that much more thin or that much more attractive or that much more successful. The impression from the outside can easily be on social media, ‘Wow, I can’t measure up with my very normal life.’”

Dr. Murthy agrees. “It’s all about the quality of your connections with people,” said CBS. “It’s not just how many friends you have. It’s about, do those friends know you authentically?”

In other words, put down your phone and meet your friend for coffee. There’s nothing like a good, ol’ fashioned, face-to-face conversation.

Boston is Traffic King

Dread heading onto the Van Wyck during rush hour? Be happy you don’t live in Boston. According to a new report by INRIX, Boston drivers face the most traffic in the nation. On average, they lost 164 hours each year sitting in traffic – that’s almost seven full days.

Other cities in the nation weren’t as bad as Boston, but still, traffic can have commuters cringing.

In Washington, D.C., drivers lose about 155 hours a year; 138 hours are spent in traffic in Chicago and Seattle; New Yorkers waste 133 hours in traffic each year; and drivers in Los Angeles face 128 hours of traffic yearly.

“There’s no doubt that congestion is an issue right here in Boston,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh acknowledged in response to the ranking. “Our road network is one of the oldest and densest in the country, we’re one of the only cities with a major international airport right by downtown, both our economy

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

and population have been growing at a steady clip – and now rideshare companies and delivery-on-demand services have added a whole new layer of vehicles.”

The mayor outlined a number of improvements that are underway in the city to combat the issue which include adaptive traffic signals, better accessibility for bike riders and MBTA buses, and intersection improvements.

Putting a dollar amount on the amount of time lost sitting in traffic during the year, Bostonians were out almost $2,300. For that price, they could have hired a chauffeur.

Island for Sale

A gorgeous island is for sale in the United Arab Emirates, but before you reach for your wallet understand that it’s out of your budget – way out.

The private 660-acre island is being offered for sale for a whopping £360 million. In defense of the astronomical price, the land boasts private beaches, five-star hotels, and stunning views of the Arabian Gulf.

Al Marjan Island, which has gone on the market, is a collection of four man-made expanses in the northernmost of the United Arab Emirates, Ras Al Khaimah. Five-million square feet of land is full of clubs, hotels, and beachside resorts.

The four islands – Dream Island, Breeze Island, Treasure Island and View Island – provide “breathtaking views” and a “naturally luxurious environment,” according to the property’s online listing. Foreign buyers who are attracted to the no income tax or foreign exchange controls are expected to snatch up the land.

The islands, shaped in circles and corals, extend some 2.8 miles

into the sea.

The property listing boasts, “Set against the picturesque backdrop of the Arabian Peninsula, and enclosed by the Yanis and Jais Mountains, Al Marjan Island is truly a luxury destination.

“With sun, sand and sea all year round, Al Marjan welcomes residents and visitors from all over the world; and welcomes them to a landscape not only rich in luxury but luxurious in all things natural.

“A collection of four pristine manmade islands, each island features luxurious hospitality and residential living throughout. The island offers complete leisure and entertainment opportunities that ensure children, adults, residents and tourists enjoy quality family time.”

The listing boasts, “With waterfront homes, quality hotels and resorts, marinas, private beaches for residents, leisure, retail and recreational facilities, Al Marjan Island is a unique investment opportunity with high returns…. Simply, Al Marjan Island is a much sought-after destination for residents, tourists and investors. A place that will soon become a destination of choice for all.”

Just wonder why they’re selling it if it’s paradise on earth.

Drinkable Chips

into smaller pieces so consumers can “drink” their chips straight from the bag. The bag has a small opening at the top so you can chug your chips.

Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal notes that the idea for the chips and the special packaging came from helping customers eat the potato chip crumbs that crumble to the bottom of the bag. Whatever.

In any case, One Hand Chips sounds a bit like the potato stix I’ve been forced to eat on Pesach since I was a child. And I didn’t grow up with an iPhone.

Drinkable Ices?

Looking to drink your Creamsicle? Coca-Cola is here to help.

The beverage company will be launching a new flavor of Coke which will grace refrigerators around the nation on February 25. Orange Vanilla Coke, the company is hoping, will win customers’ hearts and taste buds as they sip the sweet drink.

Why Orange Vanilla? Well, according to Kate Carpenter, brand director at Coca-Cola, “We wanted to bring back positive memories of carefree summer days. That’s why we leaned into the orange-vanilla flavor combination – which is reminiscent of the creamy orange popsicles we grew up loving, but in a classically Coke way.”

I guess we’re glad they haven’t come out with hot dog-flavored Coke, although that combo may not be so bad. Pass the mustard, please.

by Flora Pop, was decked out with Dunkin’-themed decorations and an Elvis officiant who invoked many coffee and doughnut references throughout the ceremony.

“This ceremony we don’t say, ‘I do,’ we say, ‘I dough,’” the faux Elvis explained to a couple that was renewing their vows.

The first hundred couples that enjoyed the sweet ceremony were given a bouquet made entirely out of doughnuts. The sugary bouquets took about a week to develop and at least five people were needed to create them.

“What better way to say I love you than with a bouquet of doughnuts? We’re really excited to be here to help our fans … and many couples to get married or renew their vows,” Dunkin’ spokesman Justin Drake said.

Josh and Penny James love the round confections. They were both wearing doughnut-themed outfits as they renewed their vows. This was the 18th time they were renewing their vows, and according to Josh, they plan on renewing their vows “around 130” times over the next few years.

Well, if there’s doughnuts involved, that makes it, oh, so much sweeter.

Tree Thief This is a problem that’s been plaguing multitudes for, oh, I would say maybe a year or two.

Ever try eating potato chips while looking through your Instagram feed? Well, your phone becomes greasy and oily. Thankfully, a snack maker in Japan has come up with a wonderful solution to the snack and scroll problem: drinkable chips.

Koike-ya has developed One Hand Chips, a snack that comes in a variety of flavors that is splintered

Saying I Do with a Donut Well, we talked about chips and then we talked about soda, so now it’s time to get to the main course: doughnuts.

Last week, Dunkin’ took over a wedding chapel in Las Vegas and offered couples a chance to get hitched alongside their favorite treats.

Sure Thing, a wedding chapel

A tree-loving thief stole seven tiny bonsai trees worth at least $118,00 from a garden in Saitama prefecture near Tokyo. One of the trees stolen was a rare 400-year-old

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

shimpaku tree, a star in the bonsai world, which was supposed to be entered into a Japanese competition this month. The prize shimpaku alone was worth over 10 million yen ($90,000), according to Fuyumi Iimura, wife of the bonsai master who crafted the trees.

“We treated these miniature trees like our children,” she said.

“There are no words to describe how we feel. It’s like having your limbs lopped off.”

Iimura added that those responsible for the thefts, committed over a series of nights last month, were likely professionals, as they had identified the “most valuable trees” from the couple’s roughly 5,000 hectare park, which had many varieties of bonsai.

Also abducted were three miniature pine trees, called goyomatsus, and a trio of less-valuable shimpaku, a juniper tree which is now rare in the wild.

Fuyumi Iimura’s husband, Seiji Iimura, is a fifth-generation bonsai master whose family practice dates back to the Edo period (1603-1868).

Originating from the Chinese ancient art of “penjing,” or miniature landscaping, bonsai was introduced to Japan in the 6th century by a group of Japanese Zen Buddhism students returning from their overseas travels. They dubbed it “bonsai,” which literally means “planted in a container,” and – at its most elementary level – the art is simply growing a wild tree inside a small vessel.

While some bonsai grow from seeds, creating the shimpaku is a laborious process, not least because the original trees are dangerous to collect, growing on precarious cliffsides.

Iimura said that the 400-yearold stolen tree had been taken from a mountain centuries ago. Through an in-depth knowledge of plant physiology, Iimura’s family had gradually shrunk the tree to its miniature form. It measured one meter (3.2 feet) tall and around 70 centimeters (2.3 feet) wide when stolen.

“It’s not something that can be done overnight,” said Iimura.

Stolen bonsais can fetch a small fortune on the black market, and have been known to be shipped abroad to Europe. Some artisans have spotted their bonsai on social media sites, she added, but few have been able to reclaim their tiny trees.

“It’s hard to regain ownership of your tree once it’s switched hands,” she noted.

Ideally, the couple want their bonsais to be returned, but failing that, they appealed to the thief to take good care of their miniatures.

“I want whoever took the bonsais to make sure they are watered.

The shimpaku lived for 400 years. It needs care and can’t survive a week without water,” said Iimura.

“They can live forever – even after we’re gone, if they receive the proper care.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here – and not to be barking up the wrong tree – but I don’t think that these bonsais are ever going to be returned.

Basement Bargain

‫בס”ד‬

An Italian sports car that has been stuck in a basement for 35 years was sold at a government auction last week to the tune of $650,000.

Alfa Romeo, the company that produced the 1962 Giulietta SZ, is a luxury car manufacturer that has been involved in car racing since 1911.

This specific car was discovered among the belongings of a mechanic in Turin who died in November, according to the Alfa Romeo Giulia & 105-Series Facebook page. Apparently, the elevator he used to lower the vehicle underground had broken down and was never fixed. And so, the car sat there, unused for many years. Since the man died without any will or heirs, the car was claimed by the Italian government, who removed the antique with a crane and sold it at auction.

Fewer than 200 of this type of car have ever been made – most of them were used for racing. The $650,000 price tag for last week’s auction is one of the highest prices ever paid for the model.

This summer climb higher, push your limits and reach heights you never imagined possible. You can acheive more than you ever dreamed!

A thrilling summer that you’ll never forget filled with non stop action Encounter the sights, sounds, and extraordinary Torah personalities of Eretz Yisrael

Connect with amazing staff, Rebbeim, friends, and with yourself

r. Dovid goldstein Ms ed Director r. elly Merenstein Head Counselor r. yehoshua strajcher Learning Director r. Nani eisenman Program Director For Mesivta boys ages 14-17 For more information email machanayimboysyaale@gmail.com to set up an interview call 516-321-0964

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the

Community

Assemblywoman Pheffer Amato Hosts TAG Students in Albany

L

ast week, Assemblywoman Stacey Pheffer Amato (D-Far Rockaway) hosted the Torah Academy for Girls (TAG) in Albany for their eighth grade annual trip. The students visited the NYS Assembly floor and toured the capitol. When in the Assembly chambers, Assemblywoman Pheffer Amato spoke about the importance of giving back to the community, which is emphasized in the well-regarded programs at TAG and to her own experience serving by giving back.Â

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the Community

Young Israel of Jamaica Estates Celebrates 40 Years Together

Sam Herskowitz, Jerry King, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Hochberg, and Helene Mishkoff and family

Jerry King, Sam Herskowitz, Linda Brukner, Assemblyman David Weprin, and Rabbi and Rebbetzin Hochberg

“B

est shul dinner ever!”

That was the reaction of many of the nearly 300 attendees to the 40th Young Israel of Jamaica Estates anniversary dinner which took place this past Saturday evening at Old Westbury Hebrew Congregation. Organized by dinner chairman Jerry King, this was an evening no one will ever forget. Over 90 minutes of incredible footage and photos from the past 40 years of community and synagogue life were shown on large screens around the hall. The modern orthodox synagogue located in the heart of Queens New York showed the leadership and immense community ties it has established over four decades. From a small single home with a few founding members, the synagogue is now the largest in the Jamaica Estates/Holliswood/ Fresh Meadows area.

The theme of the dinner was “40 Years Together.”

The Young Israel of Jamai-

ca Estates is well-known throughout New York and the greater Jewish community for its friendly, family atmosphere and highlighted by its outstanding chessed, youth and community programming. Led for almost 30 years by Rabbi Shlomo Hochberg and his wife Karen, the dinner was an opportunity to reflect on the past and the future as the rabbi and his wife will be retiring this year.

It was also an opportu-

nity to celebrate the work of Linda Brukner who has served for 27 years as the office manager of the Young Israel. She was presented with a special Hakarat Hatov award. A modest and humble woman, Linda was surprised by the enormous outpouring of appreciation that was highlighted by a 10 minute professionally produced film involving dozens of synagogue members. The outrageously funny production was the brainchild of

Jerry King, Linda Brukner, Harry Brukner, Rabbi Hochberg, and Sam Herskowitz

Spirited dancing at the event

the synagogue’s own: Yeeshai Gross, who is a professional director and producer and is well-known in various film and theater circles.

To see the film, go to www. yije.org.

The synagogue also took the opportunity to remember the second anniversary of the passing of its beloved member and longtime gabbai, Meir Mishkoff, z”l.

Meir’s three sons and wife were all on hand to present the first Meir Mishkoff

Rabbi Hochberg addressing the packed crowd

Community Service Award to Rabbi & Mrs. Hochberg.

There was not a single dry eye in the audience when a film about Meir was shown.

To see this short film, go to www.yije.org.

The Young Israel of Jamaica Estates is located at 83-10 188th Street Jamaica Estates, NY 11423. For more information call (718) 4797500 or via email at president@yije.org. You can also find them at www.yije.org or on Facebook.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

MACHON SARAH HIGH SCHOOL Torah Academy for Girls

CONCERT Proudly Presents Our Biennial

A Musical Journey Through the Generations

‫”דור‬ ‫לדור‬

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Motzaei Shabbos, February 23rd, 2019 @ 8 PM Sunday Matinee, February 24th, 2019 @ 12:30 PM Sunday Evening, February 24th, 2019 @ 7:30 PM To purchase tickets go to tagconcert.showclix.com

To place an ad in our Playbill, email us at tagconcert2019@gmail.com

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the Community

Remember, Forever

H

olocaust survivors, parents and grandparents attended Yeshiva Darchei Torah’s 8th grade Adopt-A-Survivor event

last week. Talmidim did extensive research on “their” survivor, usually interviewing him or her in person.

The boys are committed to retelling

What Does it Mean to be Disabled?

By: Yael Szlafrock, Grade 8

O

n Rosh Chodesh Adar Aleph, students at Shulamith had the privilege of listening to a speech by Mrs. Michal Horowitz who told us how special our ability to listen and hear on a day-to-day basis is and that we should never take it for granted. Mrs. Horowitz grew up as a “normal” kid, got good grades, and had nice friends. That changed when she was in high school in Israel and started getting dizzy spells.

Her doctor told her it was just stress from the Gulf War and informed her that it was harmless, so she ignored her symptoms. She then attended college and majored in audiology.

While taking these classes, Mrs. Horowitz’s hearing began to deteri-

orate rapidly, and she began to worry once again. She told a professor about her dilemma, and she was given hearing aids. Today, she cannot hear without them.

After she told us this story, she announced to us in a loud and confident voice that she was disabled and that she had nothing to be ashamed of. She taught us to be sensitive and never to be embarrassed of who we are or of our flaws. She encouraged us to develop empathy for others, to have confidence in ourselves, and to always believe in Hashem and live with hope.

May we all be zocheh to build ourselves and each other up, and have the confidence to speak out like Mrs. Horowitz about everything in our lives.

their stories in the decades to come, keeping the memories alive. The multimedia projects included PowerPoint presentations, videos, and

painstakingly-constructed mas and tri-boards.

diora-

An Uplifting Reunion

O

n Wednesday evening, January 23, Shevach High School alumnae who are currently learning in the various seminaries in Eretz Yisrael got together for a special reunion in Bais Yaakov Machon Raaya. Excitement filled the room as 25 girls from various Bais Yaakov seminaries came together to share their experiences with their friends.

Shevach Principal Rebbetzin Rochelle Hirtz, with the help of some of her graduates, spearheaded this uplifting event.

As the Shevach alumnae arrived, they were treated to pizza and drinks and enjoyed reconnecting with their high school friends. sharing a beautiful idea about using mitzvos to develop a person as a “mehudar Jew” from the pasuk in Shiras HaYam, “Zeh Keli v’anvahu,” Rebbetzin Hirtz spoke to the girls about the importance of using their learning and shemiras ha’mitzvos to bolster themselves and their hanhagos. The seminary year is replete with opportunities for the girls to develop their potentials as bnos Yisroel, however it is not just about the action itself but about using the mitzvah as a means to improve and advance their relationships with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, family, and friends.

Rebbitzen Hirtz, joined by Mrs. Gitty Lipsius, a Shevach limudei kodesh faculty member, then went around the room and asked each girl to reflect on what they accomplished

in the past five months and what goals they still would like to achieve.

Everyone present was pleasantly surprised by many of the answers and insights. Some of the discerning remarks were: “I appreciate the sensitivities one needs when interacting with new friends and different families.” “There is so much Torah in Eretz Yisroel and we reap the benefits from our rebbeim and teachers.”

“This year builds a sense of independence and the ability to make decisions.” “I gained a true appreciation of what I have by observing that here in E”Y families live with so much less.” “One gains an appreciation for all of the different types of people that comprise Klal Yisroel.”

The girls were thrilled for the opportunity to get together and spend time with one another and with their former principal and teacher. The room was filled with positive energy and enthusiasm for growth in ruchniyus. Everyone left feeling uplifted and energized for continued advancement in their avodas Hashem.

In addition to the reunion, Rebbetzin Hirtz visited the individual seminaries and met with the Shevach girls in their respective seminaries.

Needless to say, the girls exhibited pride in their seminaries and the principals provided glowing reports regarding the girls’ preparedness for the year and the girls’ current progress. Shevach can be very proud of its representation in Eretz Yisrael.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the Community

Hundreds of Real Estate Professionals Join JEP/Nageela at 26 Bridge 4th Annual Fundraiser

By Jennifer S. Zwiebel

O

ver 300 professionals from all different aspects of the real estate industry filled 26 Bridge: The Brooklyn Venue last Tuesday night to support JEP/Nageela at its 4th annual Real Estate Networking event, “Building a Bridge from Generation to Generation.”

“I’m really having a good time,” said David Shteierman, RA of DJ Associates Architect, PC, one of the event sponsors, who remarked that this was the most diverse audience he’s seen since he’s attended JEP/ Nageela’s previous Real Estate Networking events.

The evening began with a lively panel discussion moderated by Meyer Mintz, JEP REN event co-chair and tax partner at Berdon LLP, who kept the conversation flowing about how to evaluate and capitalize on different real estate opportunities in the market. This was the first year for the panel, as presented by The Riverside

Experience with panelists Michal Baum, associate at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP and formerly from Somerset Development; Jeffrey Garibaldi, president of The Garibaldi Group, LLC; and David Schechtman, senior executive managing director of Meridian Investment Sales, discussed “Capitalizing on Opportunities in Every Deal.”

“It’s incredible to have a collection of owners, brokers, and lenders who dispense with the puffery and focus on brass tacks,” said Schectman.

“This market isn’t linear. Seichel and moxie will rule the day. New York is not a market for the faint of heart.

And only JEP/Nageela puts together such hard-hitting deal closing real estate professionals.”

Event attendees enjoyed delicacies of Catering by Michael Schick which included a diverse array of foods paired with a specific matching Kedem wine. Food ranging from a sushi station to a chicken and waffles, pulled meat station, a gnocchi

PHOTOS BY GABE SOLOMON

L-R: JEP REN 2019’s Segway raffle prize winner Jeffrey Edelman, Esq. with Riverside’s Yoel Zagelbaum and JEP Nageela’s Rabbi Yitzchok Wurem

bar, and a charcuterie display were part of the impressive spread.

“It’s always gratifying to look

around and watch clusters of people introducing friends and colleagues to each other, and listen to the enthusiasm when discussing the latest deal or project,” said Mintz. “Now in its 4th year, the event has almost tripled since its first year – a credit to the organization and the committee, and having food by Michael Schick probably doesn’t hurt! The money raised goes a long way to provide a summer experience to kids interested in understanding more about Judaism and the overall programing of JEP throughout the year.”

Sam Berry, a new JEP REN event co-chair this year and associate broker at Douglas Elliman, remarked, “Working with the JEP family has been a true honor. The selfless dedication of Rabbi Shenker and his staff to every Jewish soul is remarkable.”

“It’s an investment of a lifetime,” said JEP REN event co-chair Michael Ryback, vice president at Meridian Capital Group about why he’s involved in the organization. “JEP helps ensure that our Jewish legacy continues.”

On behalf of the hundreds of children helped each year, we thank all those who participated and look forward to next year. For more information about JEP REN and to get involved, visit jepren.org or call 516374-1528, ext. 240.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the Community

Village of Lawrence to Distribute IVDU Hosts Valley Stream Fire Safety Education Reflective Safety Belts

Mayor Alex Edelman with Naomi Berger holding the reflective safety belts that will be distributed to residents

I

n a continuing effort to ensure the safety of its residents, Village of Lawrence Mayor Alex H. Edelman has announced the distribution of reflective safety belts to be worn at night by those walking to and from religious services, as well as joggers, dog walkers, walkers and others.

According to Mayor Edelman, the reflective safety belts, a public ser-

vice originally suggested by resident, Mrs. Naomi Berger, will be made available at Village Hall, the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club, and all places of worship within the Village of Lawrence.

Anyone requesting a belt or additional information should contact Lawrence Village Hall at (516) 2394600 ext. 1015 or ext. 1010.

T

he students at IVDU Long Island were privileged to meet Former Chief Ron Garofalo and Hon. Chief Rick Skellington of the Valley Stream Fire Department, who graciously gave of their time to teach the students about fire safety. An animated and child-friendly video was shown to the children, and the firemen explained vital fire safety rules, such as the importance of crawling low in case of a fire. The firemen also showed the students a smoke alarm and taught about the importance of replacing the batteries in smoke alarms when necessary.

Then, one of the firemen geared up with his jacket, helmet, mask and all to demonstrate how some of their gear and equipment works. They even demonstrated the use of an oxygen mask. Did you know that firemen often carry over 150 pounds of gear with them at one time?

The students were engaged

throughout the presentation and asked insightful questions of the firemen. At the end of the visit, the firemen presented the children with their very own firefighter helmets, as well as activity books teaching about fire safety.

IVDU LI thanks former Chief Garofalo and Hon. Chief Skellington of the Valley Stream Fire Department for generously giving of their time to educate our students on the importance of fire safety in a handson and interactive presentation that captured the attention of all. Handson learning is a key component to all learning at IVDU Long Island, which provides a warm and stimulating K-5 special education option in the Five Towns. For more information about IVDU, a division of YACHAD, please call Mrs. Miriam Reifer, school administrator, at 718-758-2999 ext. 3, or email reiferm@ou.org.

Abraham Lincoln was born 210 years ago Centerfold, page 78 Rabbi Zalman Wolowik visited the Brandeis School in the Five Towns this week and taught the eighth grade boys about the mitzvah of tefillin

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the Community

Empowering Parents in Today’s Digital World

O

n Tuesday evening, February 5, the parents of Midreshet Shalhevet students gathered at the school for an informative event about the use of digital technology in today’s world. The program opened with welcoming remarks by Menahelet Esther Eisenman discussing the topic of Eved Ivri, a Jew sold into slavery, who lost sight of the goals and the message of Sinai. “To be a slave means to worship the wrong master,” she started. “The message of this evening is that we must all keep perspective; technology must not become our master.”

“I found the program extremely informative!” Estee Licher, mother of freshman Naomi and 2013 graduate Tamar. “It was compelling to see how cellphones affect everyone, not just kids. The program really gave clear and powerful things to be watchful of for our children, as well as ourselves.

I was encouraged to learn how being watchful can be helpful to us in integrating this technology, that’s here for

good, so we can be in control of the cellphones and not have them be in control of us.”

We recognize that today’s technology presents opportunity, yet can also negatively impact our children in a myriad of ways. Confident that our goals as educators align with the goals of our parent body, MSH set out to create a parent educational program

to address the critical importance of helping parents navigate their children’s use of technology. This program works hand-in-hand with an initiative MSH implemented this year in conjunction with The Digital Citizenship Project to educate and guide our students on their safe use of technology.

The MSH social-emotional team, headed by Menahelet Esther Eisenman, researched and collected data regarding the effects digital technology can have on students and created a program to share these observations with the MSH parent body. Assistant Principal Shaindy Lisker, coordinator of student services Elisheva Cartman, and the social work team worked closely to create a program that would educate and promote dialogue with the parent body on the challenges we are all facing.

Mrs. Eisenman continued that educators have been observing how social media has become the dominant force in popular culture. It shapes and it spreads ideas and attitudes faster than any other form of mass communication. “We see the effect it’s having on our students and we take note of trends like the one in Silicon Valley, where major tech moguls refuse to give their kids the technology devices that they themselves have created.”

Many of today’s parents struggle to find balance between giving their teens access to technology, and implementing rules and restrictions which are regularly upheld. The goals of the program were to educate parents, encourage dialogue, and empower safe and productive use of technology.

After the introductory remarks,

parents were shown Screenagers, physician and filmmaker Delaney Ruston’s acclaimed documentary about the impact of technology on teenagers. The film is eye-opening as well as informative, revealing how tech time impacts on development and suggests ways to empower our children to best navigate the digital world and find the right balance. She explores the friction that often occurs in homes and schools around negotiating screen time and offers positive solutions.

Following the film, Mrs. Eisenman addressed the parent body to process the information presented in a way that would be most applicable to our community. She presented research and data collected by the school on the students’ views about technology and the amount of time they are spending on it. “Mrs. Eisenman’s research was fascinating! What they are using the technology for are how they perceive each other’s cellphone use...” said Lichter.

Mrs. Eisenman introduced Adiel Lejbovitz, lead technician of Smart Connections, a non-profit organization in the Five Towns, to offer parents options of apps and filters that can monitor, filter, and limit internet use.

Yitz Elman, father of senior Rivkie and 2013 graduate Dani, expressed, “Every aspect of the program was well executed: the content, the timing. It was clear this was well thought out in order to be the most effective way of giving over this information. I really appreciated that everything was carefully considered and made that much more impact on the parents, who stayed around for almost an hour afterward discussing what they heard and learned because it did make such a large impact.”

Lichter concluded, “The program gave me insight into understanding challenges that kids face and how to deal with my children effectively. I learned that taking a device away as a punishment is not necessarily the right move, but instead, working together to figure out a plan that works for both of us.”

The goal that the MSH administration set out to achieve – to teach talmidot and parents to achieve balance in all that they do and use the tools of today in positive ways – were widely well received.

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MTA Freshman Shiur Celebrates Siyum

By Mordechai Fox (‘22)

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n Sunday, February 3, Rabbi Pearl’s Freshman Shiur made a siyum to celebrate the completion of the second, third, and fourth perakim of Maseches Megillah. The talmidim began their busy morning by chazering two dapim of Gemara, in order to complete all 15 dapim, spanning the second through fourth perakim. Throughout the previous week, the talmidim had

devoted much of their time preparing for a farher on the completed perakim, given by Rabbi Tanchum Cohen. Rabbi Cohen asked several riveting questions requiring the talmidim to think beyond the plain understanding of the Gemara.

“The bechina covered approximately half the masechta – a sizable amount – and their command and comprehension were quite impressive,” said Rabbi Cohen. “Their excellent performance was a tribute to Rabbi Pearl’s extraordinary

skill and dedication and to their commitment, hasmada, and ahavas haTorah.”

After the farher, the much-anticipated siyum began. The siyum included a Kahoot competition, which reinforced the knowledge of the Mesechta that the talmidim had mastered, as well as delicious food from Golan.

The talmidim truly enjoyed celebrating this incredible milestone together with their rebbe.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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Rabbi Dr. Lander, zt”l, Commemorated at Special Yahrtzeit Gathering

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throng of people filled Yeshivas Ohr Hachaim on Wednesday, February 7 to remember and pay tribute to Rabbi Dr. Bernard Lander, zt”l, the outstanding visionary, educator and talmid chacham who founded the Touro College and University System. For decades, Touro has educated multitudes of Jewish men and women, enabling them to support their families with dignity.

Rabbi Doniel Lander, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Ohr Hachaim, began the ceremony by acknowledging the presence of Dr. Alan Kadish, president of Touro, who he said is carrying on the legacy of his father “in the most exemplary and devoted fashion.” Rabbi Lander spoke eloquently and

Rabbi Doniel Lander speaking at the event

lovingly about his father’s work – his impact on not only his family and community, but also upon the world of education. “Every talmid of this yeshiva, every member of this community, and large segments of Klal Yisroel throughout the world have benefitted from my

father’s leadership and dedication to Klal Yisroel,” said Rabbi Lander. In the tradition of his family, Rabbi Lander then introduced his own son, Moshe Yehoshua Lander, who made a siyum to commemorate his illustrious grandfather.

The special guest speak-

er was Rabbi Shlomo Noach Mandel, Executive Director of The Jewish Education Program (JEP) in Toronto.

Rabbi Mandel, who flew in especially for the occasion, shared memories of how Rabbi Dr. Lander worked closely with him to bring education and Jewish values to students everywhere, including to young women in Moscow who would otherwise have had no such opportunities.

“The hundreds of baalei teshuvah in Moscow are the [spiritual] children of Dr. Lander,” said Rabbi Mandel. “It was exactly a year before his petirah when Dr. Lander told the girls of Bnos Batya in Moscow, ‘Torah is the source of our life. Torah gives us happiness. Torah gives our life meaning. We at Touro can make this kind

of life possible for you. We will spare no expense for you – to make you secure and to be happy. You can have an excellent college degree without any cost. We are very happy to sustain you because our desire is to make you wonderful bnos Yisroel, daughters of Israel, daughters of the greatest people in the world, a people that was created and lives and is pulsating only because of the observance of Torah. Without Torah, there is no future. Without Torah, there is no meaning to Jewish life.’”

You can watch the entire Yahrzeit commemoration on TorahAnytime by visiting https://www. torahany time.com/#/lectures?v=75939.

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HONORING

BNOS BAIS YA AKOV

25th Annual Dinner

MR. AND MRS.

Richie and Ariella Sinnreich GUESTS OF HONOR

0 ‫ט‬3‫ש ע ״‬.‫ ת‬1 ‫ב ׳‬7 ‫ד ר‬. ‫ א‬1‫ י ׳‬9 ‫׳‬

T he Sands Atlantic Beach Dinner Co-Chairmen:

AKIVA BERGMAN • DOVID SOLOMON

Journal Co-Chairmen: STEVE STEIN • YEHUDA ZACHTER

Reservations:

718.337.6000 EXT. 450 EMAIL: DINNER@BBYSCHOOL.ORG WEB: WWW.BBYDINNER.ORG

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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Around the Community

Woodmere Fire Department and Hatzalah Speak at Cub Scout Pack 1818 Meeting

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ub Scout Pack 1818, the only shomer Shabbos and shomer kosher Cub Scout Pack in the Long Island area, chartered by the Marion and Aaron Gural JCC, had the opportunity to hear from our real-life heroes when representatives from the Woodmere Fire Department and Hatzalah volunteers gave presentations to our scouts about safety at their Pack meeting.

First, everyone got an emergency contact sheet to fill out and to hang up at home. they listed important phone numbers including their parents’ cell phone number, 911, Hatzalah and Poison Control, so that they can quickly find them in case it’s ever needed. The Scouts were introduced to firefighters Dovid Simon and Darren Moritz who went over what to do in case of a fire: have an escape plan, keep low to the floor to avoid smoke, and to never hide from a fire by going into a closet. It was scary, but the boys learned how important it is to be prepared. The firefighters also demonstrated how they get into their gear so quickly when they get a call – there’s no time to lose during an emergency!

Next, Hatzalah members Eli Langer, and Yaakov Kitay showed the group a stretcher, how it’s used to

transport patients, and the gear that is used on the scene to help people before they get to a hospital.

After the presentations, everyone went outside and had a chance to see a firetruck and an ambulance that are used to help people every day. In fact, we were warned to be prepared, that the vehicles may need to leave

at a moment’s notice if there was an emergency. The kids were excited to get to go inside the trucks and to look around.

“The fire truck has a lot of hoses,” Wolf Den member Avraham Levine, was surprised to see. Thank you to parent volunteer Aliza Stern for working so hard to put this excit-

ing and educational day together for Cub Scout Pack 1818 and thank you to Chesky Mandel of Hatzalah for arranging his team to be a part of it.

For information about upcoming events and joining​this Shomer Shabbos, ​K​osher Pack please contact Bruce Wernick at either 646-271-2969 or packmaster1818@gmail.com. ​

Beth Din of America to Host Presidents Day Weekend Seminar in YI of Lawrence-Cedarhurst

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he Beth Din of America, widely regarded as one of the leading Jewish religious courts in North America, will host a community outreach seminar, with leading religious and legal scholars addressing some of the most critical legal issues affecting the Jewish community today, including: when and how to come to the court to adjudicate commercial disputes; the role of lawyers in Beth Din dispute resolution; and halachic prenuptial agreements.

The seminar will take place on Sunday, February 17, at the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, located at 8 Spruce Street in Cedarhurst. The sessions are slated to start at 9 a.m. and run through 1 p.m. It will also stream live on YUTorah.org.

CLE credits are available free of charge to legal professionals from California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania through the National Academy of Continuing Legal Education. To register for CLE credits, please visit www. bethdin.org/register.

Co-sponsors for the program include Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Union.

Scheduled speakers include Yeshiva University Rosh Yeshiva and Beth Din of America Sgan Av Beth Din, Rabbi Mordechai Willig; Pepperdine School of Law’s Associate Dean for Faculty & Research, Prof. Michael Avi Helfand, Esq.; Beth Din of Amer-

ica Administrative Attorney, Jordana Mondrow, Esq.; Chicago Rabbinical Council Av Beth and Chaver of Beth Din of America, Rabbi Yona Reiss, Esq.; and Beth Din of America Director, Rabbi Shlomo Weissman, Esq. “Through events like these, we hope to further educate members of our community on the methods and work of the Beth Din and its role as a center for resolution of all types of disputes,” said Rabbi Weissmann.

“The Beth Din is a place where Jews should feel comfortable to bring their cases. The Beth Din of America handles a wide array of cases, resolved by judges with impressive credentials in Jewish and secular law. They come from leading schools and law firms and with varied business experience

and expertise. There is no place better designed to arbitrate and mediate issues that arise within our community than the Beth Din.” Founded in 1960, the Beth Din of America is dedicated to serving North America’s Jewish community as the pre-eminent religious arbitration forum. The organization provides a professional, user-friendly setting for dispute resolution within the Jewish community. Its handles commercial, communal and family disputes utilizing its deep expertise in Jewish commercial law, combined with a sophisticated understanding of the role of secular law and marketplace norms in dispute resolution under Jewish law.

For more information, please visit: https://bethdin.org.

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Chessed at HANC

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he students at HANC’s Samuel and Elizabeth Bass Golding’s Elementary School in West Hempstead have been working hard to raise money for a great cause. During Chanukah, the student council ran a Chinese auction where children were given the opportunity to “bid” on a variety of prizes. The children managed to raise over $3,000 to be donated to the Israeli organization, Tzalash.

In order for the children to further understand the impact of their donation, Rabbi Yaron Levy came to address the fifth and sixth graders.

Tzalash organizes programs to enable the soldiers to join together and deepen their knowledge of Torah, Gemara and Mishna. They sponsor a special program called “Simchat Yom Rishon” (Joyous Sunday) where soldiers from all over join together in large group Torah learning. After a shiur that often includes 200 soldiers, each person is presented with

treats to give them strength as they begin their difficult week. In addition to these large group lessons, the organization provides the soldiers with small books designed to fit in their uniform pockets so that they can continue their learning wher-

ever they are positioned. Over the past six years, 40,000 soldiers have benefitted from this program and they are hoping to expand in order to reach other parts of the country in the future.

HANC is very proud of this tre-

mendous contribution and hopes that it will enrich the religious lives of the soldiers who benefit from the Torah study. Kol hakavod to the entire student council on a job well done.

25

HONORING

BNOS BAIS YA AKOV

25th Annual Dinner

MR. AND MRS.

Misha and Estee Rapaport KESSER SHEM TOV

0 ‫ט‬3‫ש ע ״‬.‫ ת‬1 ‫ב ׳‬7 ‫ד ר‬. ‫ א‬1‫ י ׳‬9 ‫׳‬

T he Sands Atlantic Beach Dinner Co-Chairmen:

AKIVA BERGMAN • DOVID SOLOMON

Journal Co-Chairmen: STEVE STEIN • YEHUDA ZACHTER

Reservations:

718.337.6000 EXT. 450 EMAIL: DINNER@BBYSCHOOL.ORG WEB: WWW.BBYDINNER.ORG

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

S E L Y T S F O S D N A T HOUS E Z I S R U O Y N I L L A

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( 5 1 6)

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PLACE YOUR PESACH ORDERS TODAY

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Mothers and Daughters Lobby in Albany

T

each NYS, a project of the Orthodox Union and New York’s leading nonprofit focused on equitable funding for the state’s nonpublic schools, led its first Women and STEM Lobbying Day on February 7. Mothers and daughters from New York’s nonpublic schools met with their state legislators and urged them to provide full funding to support STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education for all nonpublic schools in the state.

More than 40 mother-daughter teams from Magen David Yeshivah; Barkai Yeshivah; Yeshivat Shaarei Torah; Yeshivat Darche Eres; and Yeshivah of Flatbush participated in the event. They met with Assemblymembers Peter J. Abbate, Jr. (D-Borough Park, Bath Beach, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst); Rodneyse Bichotte (D-Flatbush, Ditmas Park); Simcha Eichenstein (D-Borough Park); Mathylde Frontus (D-Coney Island); a staff members for Assemblymember Helene Weinstein (D-Flatlands, Sheepshead

Bay, East Flatbush), and City Councilmember Justin Brannan (D-Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights).

Teach NYS, through a sustained advocacy campaign, succeeded in 2017 in securing the first-ever funding from the New York State Legislature for STEM education in nonpublic schools.

Only $15 million is allocated for the current school year.

“STEM is an integral part of our children’s education and this additional funding will provide the opportunity for our schools to increase their STEM offering without forwarding the additional cost onto parents,” said Teach NYS Grassroots Engagement Director Annie Watman. “We are asking New York State to provide enough funding to reimburse STEM instruction at all nonpublic schools in New York State.

“Nonpublic students in New York must have full access to STEM programs in order to succeed in the future and compete on a global level,” added Watman. “New York can and must do more for its nonpublic students, par-

Assemblywoman Mathyde Frontus with mothers and daughters from Magen David Yeshiva

ticularly girls and young women – a group that has been left behind in this critical realm of education and future innovation.”

According to a recent report by Microsoft, “Despite the high priority placed on (STEM) and computer science education across the United States, the fact remains that only a fraction of girls and women are likely to pursue STEM degrees and careers. Failing to bring the minds and perspectives of half the population to

STEM and computer science fields stifles innovation and makes it less likely that we can solve today’s social challenges at scale.”

Teach NYS will be hosting its annual Albany Mission on March 12 when nearly a thousand parents, students and educators will lobby state politicians for their support of New York’s day schools and yeshivas on key issues like security and STEM. For more information or to register, visit: http://teachnys.org/albanymission.

25

HONORING

BNOS BAIS YA AKOV

25th Annual Dinner

MR. AND MRS.

Avi and Esti Feldman PARENTS OF THE YEAR

0 ‫ט‬3‫ש ע ״‬.‫ ת‬1 ‫ב ׳‬7 ‫ד ר‬. ‫ א‬1‫ י ׳‬9 ‫׳‬

T he Sands Atlantic Beach Dinner Co-Chairmen:

AKIVA BERGMAN • DOVID SOLOMON

Journal Co-Chairmen: STEVE STEIN • YEHUDA ZACHTER

Reservations:

718.337.6000 EXT. 450 EMAIL: DINNER@BBYSCHOOL.ORG WEB: WWW.BBYDINNER.ORG

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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BREATHTAKING? ORDER YOURS TODAY!

Rav Moshe Bender, associate dean of Yeshiva Darchei Torah, delivering a chaburah to the afternoon shiur of Rav Avrohom Wachsman at Mesivta Chaim Shlomo

Color War at SKA

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he Rosh Chodesh Adar Aleph breakfast at the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls turned into a real “Vanehefoch Hu” on Tuesday, February 5, when color war broke out!

The appropriate theme this year was Purim; each grade received a special color and different name relating to the chag. The freshmen, otherwise known as the “Green Team,” had “Orah V’Simcha”; the sophomores, or “Team Red,” turned things around with “Vanehefoch Hu”; the purple juniors were “Kimu V’kablu Hayehudim”; and the “Team Blue” seniors received “Leit Hazat Higat LeMalchus.” The generals and captains of each grade convened to discuss strategy and committees, and Tuesday evening was devoted to intense planning of songs, banners, and decorations.

The school was awash in color on Wednesday morning as each team’s hues vied for attention in the hallways and SKA bowling alley. The teams were split into various squads to play Musical Chairs, Hula Hoops, Panoply, Crazy Races, Bingo, Project

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Runway and partake in a Brachos Bee. After team practice and lunch, it was time for the most exciting part of color war – presentations!

The SKA judges had really difficult decisions to make as the four grades showed their amazing talents.

In the end, though, the seniors won!

Although the other three grades did not win, they were all proud of what they accomplished in just a day and a half and how much bonding each grade did.

SKA’s color war ended with spirited dancing, unbeatable ruach, and incredible achdus between the grades!

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Building a Place for Hashem at Gesher

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he children at Gesher have been learning about the special relationship between Hashem and Bnei Yisroel. That message is reiterated many times in Sefer Shemos. It begins with the special hashgacha of Yetzias Mitzrayim and follows with the bond at Matan To-

rah. The building of the Mishkan is the reinforcement, where Klal Yisroel’s efforts bring Hashem’s divine presence into their lives.

The children enjoyed recreating that process using their classroom building materials and getting ready to greet Hashem.

Rambam Shiur Shabbaton in Pennsylvania

By Dovid Edelkopf and Rabbi Yaacov Weisenberg

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his past Shabbos, students from both the 11A shiur and the Model Bais Din team of Rambam Mesivta went on a Shabbaton in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The boys were led by Rambam Rebbe, Rabbi Yaacov Weisenberg. They were graciously received by Rabbi Isaac Yagod and his family.

Rabbi Yagod, who is a mashgiach for the OU and other kashrus agencies, facilitates Torah learning and Jewish growth in the Bethlehem community. Since coming there in 2003, he has established a Halachah Hotline, a lending library for Jewish texts, and serves as the rabbi of Congregation Beth Avraham.

Over the course of Shabbos, students enjoyed unique learning ex-

periences with Rabbi Yagod on a diverse set of topics; everything from kashrut to the keilim of the Bait HaMikdash was discussed.

A major part of the Shabbaton was being able to complete a minyan for the Jewish community of Bethlehem, which, unfortunately does not have one on a consistent basis. The community was inspired by the presence of the boys, causing one of the community members to remark that seeing the boys “warmed my Jewish heart.”

Motzei Shabbos saw a Model Bais Din practice with Rabbi Weisenberg and the team, and was followed by a late night bowling trip and a midnight Melavah Malka. The boys were sent off Sunday morning after davening, a lavish breakfast, and words of thanks and chizuk.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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Around the Community

Simcha Abounds at Shulamith

By: Aliza Zilberberg, Grade 8

A group of boys from Rabbi Stein’s 5th grade class last year at Siach Yitzchok that reviewed the entire Perek Hakones multiple times during the summer recently celebrated their accomplishments at Carlos & Gabby’s

I

n honor of Rosh Chodesh Adar, the students of the Shulamith Middle Division enjoyed a high energy activity led by Faigy Wasserman, of Fun ‘n’ Fit Workouts. The

girls had a blast moving to the music and bouncing on giant, vibrantly colored yoga balls. Every girl danced and sang with her big or little sister.

This was a fun and joyous way for everyone to bond and to experience the simcha of Chodesh Adar.

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Around the Community

Shulamith EC Enjoyed “Juggler Jim” in honor of Rosh Chodesh Adar Alef

YCQ Hosts Annual Yachad Shabbaton

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n February 1 and 2, Shabbat Parsha Mishpatim, students, staff and alumni from Yeshiva of Central Queens hosted guests from Yachad, the flagship program of the Orthodox Union’s National Jewish Council for Disabilities. Hosting this Shabbaton allows for the members of Yachad to have the opportunity to feel included in Shabbat and teaches the students of YCQ tolerance, acceptance and compassion.

The students, staff, and Yachad members were housed at homes in the Kew Gardens Hills community.

This event affords the opportunity for grade 8 students to get to know Yachad members and to enjoy a spiritual Shabbat with them during meals, learning through shared davening and d’var Torah, and socializing through a variety of activities and songs run by the Yachad staff.

Yitzchak Inoyatov, a YCQ student, in attendance said, “It was so amazing spending time with the Yachad kids. I realized they are just like us, not so different, they just want to be happy, and I liked making them happy. I also loved going

on stage with my new friend and singing with him.”

With the eighth graders preparing for high school, a program like this gives them the tools needed for them to be well-rounded students. This experience teaches the students tolerance and understanding and creates a quality within each student where they accept and believe that everyone belongs. Yosef Shedlo, grade 8, said, “I realized at the Shabbaton that kids with even the slightest disabilities are still so totally cool.”

It is Yachad’s mission to educate

the community while addressing the needs of all Jewish individuals with disabilities and ensuring their inclusion in every aspect of Jewish life. The YCQ Yachad Shabbaton aids them in this mission by ensuring members with diverse abilities their rightful place within the Jewish community, and the YCQ community. These qualities gained by YCQ students will instill in them what it takes to be leaders and community advocates for Klal Yisroel, as they continue their journey towards the future.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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Around the Community

Get Ready, Get Set, Geula!

By Hinda Sheva Lieberman January 24, 2019 3:53 p.m.

“It’s crazy.” “Are you for real?!?!”

“Wow, wow, wow this is mindblowing!” “Yupppp, insane.”

The day before: January 23, 2019 10:51 p.m.

With urgency in her “WhatsApp texting voice,” the current conversation halted. Liz Schwartz typed, “I need to share something incredible.”

It was a Rivka Malka Perlman video. “My friend was just diagnosed with cancer. My other friend recently lost her child. You know anybody like that? I feel like we all do…. A lot of our great people have passed away recently…and it just feels like there’s some kind of time bomb ticking, ticking, ticking; there’s some kind of crisis. What should I do? My friend said to me… We know why this is happening. We were told way back when, a long time ago, that the Bais Hamikdash was destroyed because we weren’t unified. And if we can get the women unified…then I’m sure we can make a huge difference…. This is going to overturn these terrible decrees….

“On February 26 at the Liberty Jewish Center (in Baltimore), we are going to make an explosion of unity…. We don’t want 300 women to come. We want 700 women to come. We want to make such an eruption of unity… Because we can do something. So I’m asking you, my dear friend, my dear sister…I know that you know someone who is suffering now…. Bring your heart, bring your willingness, and we’ll cry out to Hashem together…”

Baruch Hashem, I’m on a Torah WhatsApp group with a group of incredible women. The idea caught like wildfire. “Is anyone going to Baltimore?” LR asked. “We are being asked to pull this off in the Five Towns,” was Liz’s response. Within moments, 45 women had ideas flying about how to do this, where, and what would it look like. “It reminds me of the worldwide Shabbos Project!” said HL. What a foreshadowing.

Zahava Farbman posted a video from Israel, where women had just recently held a tefilla l’geula this past year in Jerusalem on Har Hazeitim.

It was a most beautiful and moving

gathering outside, traversing the Yerushalayim sunset, for one purpose only – for tefilla to bring the geula. Esti, a woman driven by pain and valor, organized it, after her son Dovid was killed by friendly fire in the Israeli army. With guest speaker Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi and singer Shlomo Katz, women poured out their hearts as only women can do. That was to be our model. Zahava posted, “If we could do this on an international level, wow, Hashem would have no choice but to bring the geula.” More foreshadowing of what was to come.

Jan 23, 2019 3:41 p.m.

We received another video from Rivka Malka Perlman. “…SEVEN years ago I put out a video calling for an Ahavas Yisrael event. It was a promotional video, and somehow, someone got a hold of it from YouTube, and downloaded it on WhatsApp a few days ago. Everyone started to get excited. People were saying, ‘We are in January now!

February 26!? I can’t believe it, when is it happening?!’ And I’m thinking, don’t I look a bit older? It’s seven years later! But in fact, it was Hashem’s way of telling us, ‘It’s time to do it again.’”

After the video For those of us involved, it’s been a frenzy of activity, exciting, exhilarating, ascending a spiral staircase to new heights of spiritual preparation every day. How do you organize thirty locations around the world, including Five Towns/Far Rockaway, Brooklyn, Denver, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Montreal, Eretz Yisrael, and South Africa? The answer: WhatsApp groups! A “Main Geula Chat” and then a separate chat for each location hosting an event.

Our Five Towns organizers are dong an incredible job. While most of us were still throwing ideas around, Zahava Farbman and Liz Schwartz sprang into action and began formulating a plan. Our program is simple.

Zahava says, “Tefilla l’geula.” That’s the basis. Toward that end, a beautiful laminated compilation of tefillos are being put together for each woman. We will have a female lead singer and musical accompaniment. The highlight of every group location will

be a pre-recorded very special film presentation with internationally known and loved Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi speaking to and inspiring us, as well as our beloved unifier and facilitator at the helm of our entire project, Rivka Malka Perlman. Shlomo Katz will be making a special appearance on the video as well. The film will also include a montage of clips from both well-known speakers and women who are not well-known but, like each and every one of us, are stars in Hashem’s eyes. Each will speak about what the geula means to them. Baruch Hashem even our young daughters are sharing their thoughts!

The Five Towns/Far Rockaway evening event will be held at Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, N.Y., with the haskama and bracha of Mora D’Asra Rav Moshe Weinberger, on February 26, 2019 at 8 p.m. With deep appreciation and simcha we are humbled to be gifted with Rav Weinberger’s guidance for all our events internationally. A general haska-

ma was given to all our geula events

by HaRav Reuven Feinstein and a very special bracha from Rebbetzin Kolodetsky, daughter of Rav Chaim Kanievsky in Eretz Yisrael.

May they all be granted long life.

The “Geula Now” event in the Five Towns is an all-day event beginning at The “Ohel Sara” Amen Group at 10 a.m. Please visit our local webpage https://geulagatheringny.wixsite. com/event for more event information. For information about events taking place in your community, please visit geulagathering.com.

We welcome the participation of the following organizations: TorahAnytime.com, Shabbat.com, Chazaq, Ner Echad, RivkaMalka.com, and more! Anyone who wishes to join the Five Towns/Far Rockaway Geula WhatsApp group and get more involved, please send a text message to 732-404-7909 and type in three words only: “5T Geula Group.” All seventy of us look forward to seeing you there!

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If your vehicle is involved in an accident, bring it to us FIRST to ensure that we negotiate fairly on your behalf and don’t repair a vehicle that should not be repaired.

Don’t gamble with your safety or risk your investment in your vehicle.

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Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center Receives NYS Grant For New Advanced Care Unit for Medically Complex Patients

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urwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center is pleased to announce it is the recipient of a New York State grant to help fully fund its new, 12bed Advanced Care Unit for patients with complex medical needs. A ribbon cutting ceremony was recently held to commemorate the unit’s opening.

Gurwin’s Advanced Care Unit was conceived to improve patient outcomes as well as to address government mandates to reduce unnecessary hospitalization. The specialized unit provides a higher level of care for fragile, clinically complex patients, which at one time was only available in the hospital setting. Gurwin is one of the few skilled nursing facilities on Long Island to offer care for res-

time Gurwin board member Rosalyn C. Gordon and her family, including her daughter, Lisa Gordon-Loozis (also a board member), and her son, Robert Gordon, and their families.

Stuart B. Almer, president & CEO, Gurwin Family of Healthcare Services, cuts the ribbon for the new Advanced Care Unit with Suffolk County Legislator Susan Berland and Assemblyman Andrew Raia

idents with serious, multiple co-morbidities in a dedicated unit.

“The new Advanced Care

Unit is an exciting addition to our growing list of specialty services,” said Stuart B. Almer, president and CEO of Gurwin. “In addition to enabling our team to address the many challenges that are inherent to residents with complex medical needs, the state-of-the-art unit will further strengthen our relationship with area hospitals, who can be confident that they have a trusted partner caring for their patients.”

Residents in Gurwin’s Advanced Care Unit will benefit from wi-fi-enabled telemetry moni-toring of

patient vital signs, a dedicated physician, an increased RN-to-patient ratio, and an on-site pharmacy where IV and other medications are dispensed.

Mobile technology will enable higher acuity residents access to other specialty areas in the 460-bed complex, such as the on-site clinic and dialysis center, as well as the rehabilitation gyms, when appro-priate. The unit will also feature telemedicine consultation to a network of area hospitals.

Gurwin’s Advanced Care Unit was dedicated by long-

The Gurwin Jewish Nursing & Rehabilitation Center is a 5-star, 460-bed nursing care facility located in Commack, Long Island, and is part of the Gurwin Family of Healthcare Services, a renowned health-care provider offering a full continuum of healthcare services for the frail and elderly.

The award-winning center provides skilled nursing care, rehabilitation therapy, advanced care, ventilator and respiratory care, onsite dialysis and infusion therapy, memory care, and palliative and hospice care, as well as both medical and social Adult Day Programs, and home care programs.

The 34-acre campus is also home to Gurwin Jewish Fay J. Lindner Residences assisted living community, and a proposed independent living community, Fountaingate Gardens. For more information, visit www. gurwin.org, Follow Gurwin on Facebook (bit.ly/GurwinNursingRehab) and on Twitter (@GurwinJewish).

Women Find Inspiration at Machon Basya Rochel

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n special days of the year, the doors at Machon Basya Rochel Seminary, dedicated in memory of Mrs. Rose Edelman, mother of Mr. Alex Edelman, open for the women of the community.

The staff of MBR highlights the time period of the year and creates a Yom Iyun with stimulating courses in the warm atmosphere of the seminary.

The Thanksgiving Day Chanukah Yom Iyun was packed from wall to wall with women and was inspiring to all who attended.

This President’s Day, February 18, the seminary will be hosting an exciting Purim Yom Iyun. Alongside Rebbetzin Feiner, the seminary menaheles, the seminary is thrilled to host Rabbi Fishel Schachter and B.Z. Weiss as guest speakers.

The morning will begin at 9:30a.m. with Rebbitzen Feiner.

She will be giving a shiur on “Are We Still at the Party of Achachvierosh?” At 10:30 a.m., B.Z. Weiss, an attorney who is a seminary parent, will be speaking. He delivers shi-

urim with a humorous and dynamic presentation. Although he resides in Brooklyn, he is famous in our neighborhood for being a performer previously for the Agudas Yisroel of Long Island’s Purim Shpiel. The shiur is called “V’nahapoch Hu.” Rabbi Fischel Schachter, famous lecturer, story teller, and author will be speaking at 11:30 a.m. His witty and charming style will round off this this Yom Iyun of remarkable speakers. His shiur is called “Behind the Mask – Who Is the Real Us.”

The cost for the morning is $10 per shiur and $25 for all three.

Sponsorships are available. Please contact the seminary at mbrseminary@gmail.com or 516-362-5000 for more information.

Machon Basya Rochel Seminary, going into its 10th year, is a full-service women’s learning center with adult courses and a seminary program for girls’ right out of high school. It is located at 137 Lawrence Avenue across from the Lawrence Long Island Railroad Station.

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BYAM Parsha Chidon

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YAM is in middle of an exciting and innovative Parsha Chidon for Grades 3-6.

Instead of girls competing against each other, every class is working as a team to raise points together.

There are questions in Hebrew and English and questions labeled easy, average and challenging to cater to all levels of learning. Each question gets a different amount of points, but the girls don’t know who answered which questions. When the points are all added up, there will be different trips awarded for the winning and the runner-up class. In addition, each girl who participates will receive a treat.

This non-competitive style chidon has gotten the girls excited to learn and be a part of great teamwork. As there is no risk of being embarrassed from a wrong answer,

the girls are all getting involved and studying, as opposed to only the top few girls in each class participating.

The no-pressure atmosphere has led to a tremendous growth in learning.

Ulpana Exchange Students Arrive at Central

SHS Meet & Greet with Incoming Principals

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ncoming Shulamith High School Principal Mrs. Sara Munk and incoming Assistant Principal Mrs. Danyel Goldberg had an opportunity to speak with current Shulamith eighth graders, current SHS students, current SHS faculty, parents, and prospective parents.

Mrs. Munk’s upbeat attitude was immediately clear, as was the chemistry between her and Mrs. Goldberg. “I really liked the vibe,” one eighth grade student remarked.

One parable shared by Mrs. Munk involved furniture, a curious beginning to what turned out to be a relatable and interesting lesson. “Think about what it’s like when you buy a piece of furniture and you build it yourself. You follow the wayward directions, you put in the different screws…. When we build something for ourselves, we tend to value it more.

As Shulamith High School is set to embark on this next chapter, let’s build together, value the product, and change ourselves in the process.”

Students and parents had an opportunity to ask questions, and Mrs. Munk was thoughtful and articulate in her responses. “No decision is unilateral,” she said. “A lot of time and consideration of all the people involved are going into every decision.”

Mrs. Munk is eager to connect with students and parents and plans to have an open door policy. “It is a privilege to be entrusted by Shulamith parents and students, and we are so excited for next year,” Mrs. Goldberg added.

Mrs. Munk and Mrs. Goldberg both stressed their enthusiasm in educating, inspiring, and encouraging Shulamith girls to prosper academically and spiritually.

MTA Varsity Basketball Lions are Victorious on Senior Night

By Ikey Gutlove (‘20)

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ebruary 2nd was a night to remember for the MTA Varsity Lions basketball team and their

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ast week, four exchange students from Israel – Hodaya, Moriah,Nava, and Tzofia – arrived at Central for the month. They are from Ulpanat Zvia in Ma’ale Adumim, where sixteen Central sophomores just spent the month of January. These sophomores were so excited to greet their long-lost peers at the airport and introduce them

to the school. The Israeli students will be staying at the homes of their peers and, while they attend classes throughout the day at school, they will also help to infuse a little extra Israeli spirit and Hebrew language into the Central community. They have already begun to spread their enthusiasm.

fans.

As the final home game for both the seniors and Coach Wiesel, the night began with a ceremony honoring the seniors for their devotion to their coaches and teammates over the past two seasons, followed by a well-deserved thank you to Coach Wiesel, who has coached the Varsity Lions for the past 14 seasons. The Lions did not disappoint in their last regular season home game and displayed

both their skills and their desire to win against the YDE Thunder.

Right off the jump ball, the Lions were ready to win, but it started out with a small lead over the Thunder.

The Lions continued to dominate in the second quarter, led by star senior Eitan Warburg’s 23 first half points.

At half-time, the Lions were up 2517. In the second half, the Lions continued to dominate and eventually achieved a 20-point lead. Over the course of the game, every Lions team member had the opportunity to showcase their abilities, which led to their 71-51 victory. The Lions are looking toward the upcoming playoffs!

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My Encounter with Courage his past summer, I attended a charity event in which Elon Gold was going to perform live in Teaneck, NJ. I was excited to see the nationally recognized comedian and called my brother who lived in Teaneck to plan a fun night out, but my knowledge about the sponsoring organization, Kids of Courage, was limited. I figured that I could not go wrong seeing the show and making a donation that night.

Prior to the start of the performance, a short, high-quality video was presented. The music was lively and well-timed. Scenes of

with Las Vegas, Orlando and Vermont as the backdrop. Although I admit that I easily tear up at even a well-made yeshiva dinner video, I knew that in those few minutes, I was experiencing something so beautiful, something so real that I could not just ignore. I decided right then and there that I wanted to know everything I could about Kids of Courage and for me and my family to get involved and make an impact.

This past weekend, my family had the opportunity to travel with the Kids of Courage campers, counselors and support staff for their Winter Ski Adventure.

Over four days, I experienced a new level of unimaginable

smiling children interacting with loving caretakers were shown. But this video had a profound effect on me. The camera did not focus on the many different types of disabilities and limitations that the children had. Instead, images appeared of children smiling and laughing, interacting with equally cheerful counselors in theme parks and ski trails, dancing at concerts, riding in jet skis

love and unconditional dedication.

The Couragers, ranging from as young as eight to those in their early twenties, arrived to meet the busses early Thursday morning.

Although most were from the tristate area, a handful of campers and counselors came from all across the United States. One van packed with 15 campers and counselors arrived from

By Dr. Aaron Weinreb

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Newlyweds: Getting Married at Age 80 Page 90

Baltimore, having started their day at 3:30 AM. Later I would meet two counselors who flew in from Israel. They told me that they left their yeshiva to come home for four days because they knew their camper best, having cared for him on the summer trip and they wanted to make sure that he would be able to come on the trip and be well cared for.

We spent the first half of Thursday in NYC at the popular attractions. As the busses pulled up in Times Square, counselors and support staff carried many of the children off the bus. Walkers and wheelchairs were quickly unloaded. For some, ventilators and oxygen tanks were lugged off and reset in place.

The level of excitement was high as the kids loved the activities and the opportunity to reconnect with their counselors and fellow campers.

In the afternoon, we drove to Albany where we would spend the next two days at the extremely elegant Hilton Albany Hotel which was located one block away from the state capital.

Friday was filled with fun activities at Crossgates mall including Build-a-Bear, Escape the Room, and Dave and Busters. To anyone that I expressed my enthusiasm, the answer was always the same: “just wait until Shabbos.” True to their words, Shabbos was full of ruchniyus but with a unique twist of dedication and commitment.

The counselors never left their campers side. Friday night, after a beautiful seudah and oneg, the ballroom was filled with people playing board games and cards. I admired how they all sat in a circle playing; all engaged together as one. I listened in on how the older campers spoke so openly with one another about their own challenges and supported each other in a unique empathetic fashion

PHOTO CREDIT: BENJAMIN KORN PHOTOGRAPHY

of camaraderie and brotherhood.

Shabbos ended with an inspirational havdalah that seemed to last forever. Then everyone donned their Kids of Courage gear; sweatshirts, t-shirts and hats. Most read “Ski Madness 2019” while others noted previous years and other great trips had.

Many of the counselors dressed in full costumes.

While Lipa Schmeltzer and Yoni Z sang, the crowd danced, counselor and camper, hand in hand. I saw one young counselor spoon-feeding his camper ices on the sidelines. I offered to watch his camper for a few minutes to give him the opportunity to dance, but as I expected, he turned me down.

On each day, there were those special moments that brought tears to my eyes.

Ski Madness Sunday was no different. As the buses arrived at Mount Snow, the ballroom was filled with over 50 individuals from a nonprofit group called Adaptive Sports who came from all over to volunteer their time to ski with the Couragers. As each camper exited the bus and entered the ballroom, some wheeled in, some walking proudly, the volunteers formed two lines and applauded loudly for each one.

Watching the campers ski was overly inspirational in

itself. Some campers were on snowboards and skis, being supported by the volunteers.

Others skied with different adaptive equipment. For each camper’s unique situation, they had the perfect solution. One child wore a bright orange tag that read “Blind Skier.” After two hours of fun, they begged her to come in to warm up.

As the busses pulled away from Mount Snow, the drivers made their final checks and were pulling closed the doors of the luggage compartments. I glanced under and noted how it was full of wheelchairs, walkers and other adaptive equipment. I remarked to myself the glaring contradiction of what one would expect on a bus pulling out of a ski resort. But at the conclusion of this weekend, I’ve come to know that there are no contradictions and no limitations for the campers at Kids of Courage.

Kids of Courage is a volunteer-based, 501c3 non-profit organization whose mission is to improve the lives of children with serious illnesses through year-round programming and bi-annual adventure trips. For more information or to make a much-needed donation visit kidsoc.org/donate.

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Around the Community

BYQ Learns about Our Government

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ais Yaakov of Queens’ third grade is learning all about the three branches of the United States government. Their social studies unit of study began with the girls learning about the establishment of the United States starting with the Revolutionary War. After learning why it was important to the colonists to be independent from Great Britain, the girls could understand why and how three branches of government differs from the British model.

As a hands-on activity, the girls created three triaramas. On each triarama the students displayed what they learned about each branch of government. Collaborating with their classmates, they recorded the facts they decided were the most important to

know. For fun, and to add another dimension to the project, the teachers provided printed figures represent-

Mrs. Herzberg’s Art Workshops

ing the members of each branch of government and the buildings where those members work. The girls past-

Shabbaton in West Hempstead

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rs. Naomi N. Herzberg is proud to announce that studio art workshops are now forming. Building on the previous success of her art academy, Naomi is once again at the forefront of cultivating creative talents in the Five Towns/Far Rockaway area.

Studio art workshops are now forming for 8-week sessions starting the week of February 24. Separate boys, girls, women, mother/daughter workshops are in formation. Please go to nachasart.com for more de-

tailed information.

Mrs. Herzberg has over 40 years of experience as an art instructor and working in other sectors of the art fields. She earned multiple degrees in art and design, including an M.A. in Adult Learning specializing in art education.

She is currently the art instructor for TAG high school and teaches senior citizens in various forums.

When not teaching, she can be found painting in her studio at home.

ed the figures and buildings onto the project, which created a beautiful visual review of the unit.

he juniors at Central kicked off second semester with their grade-wide Shabbaton in West Hempstead last Shabbat.

The theme of the Shabbaton was freedom, and, in multiple learning sessions with faculty over Shabbat, the juniors discussed how to navigate freedom in their lives. They also enjoyed a lovely Friday night meal together at the Young Israel of West Hempstead, with an oneg led by Ms.

Leah Moskovich and a d’var Torah given by Linoy Plashteav. Shayna Orlow ran a fun game, ending the night on a high. On Shabbat, the students had the special opportunity to split up and enjoy Shabbat lunch at the homes of local teachers. Shabbat was peppered with beautiful singing and words of Torah by Mrs. Karen Lavner, Junior Grade Dean, and student Jessica Friedman. It was a wonderful opportunity for grade bonding!

Aliza Beer’s Guide to Clearer Skin Page 114

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Introducing Bourbon and Schmaltz

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lex Idov grew up in a family with a passion for good food.

His father owned and operated the most notable kosher bakery in the city of Atlanta for close to two decades. His Bubbie was renowned among family and friends for her cooking prowess, especially for her classic Eastern-European/Ashkenazi and traditional Southern dishes. So, it was almost inevitable that this passion would rub off on Idov, who was raised by his father and grandmother and spent much of his childhood at their apron strings.

Idov’s interest in the field of food eventually led him to pursue an exciting education in Culinary Sustainability and Hospitality from Kennesaw State University, from which he was graduated with a bachelor of science degree in 2016. He also created and maintained the award-winning kosher food website, Kosherology, from 2014-2018. He is now excited to announce the launch of his new website, bourbonandschmaltz. com, on which he shares a rich tradition of classic Jewish and Southern recipes, as well as innovative modern hybrid dishes inspired from both cuisines. (And for Jewish history buffs, there’s even a whole page dedicated to American Jewish food history.)

“While I enjoyed growing as a food media/content writer and recipe developer through my first website, Kosherolgy, I felt it was best to re-brand my website to highlight the cuisines of my heritages, as that’s where my true passion lies” says Idov. A fourth generation Atlanta native, Idov feels a deep connection to both his Jewish and Southern roots. While his Jewish identity unquestionably comes first, he also appreciates his family’s

ties and history in the Deep South.

His great-grandmother was born in Atlanta in 1888 and claimed to be one of the first babies to be born in the city to parents of Jewish-Russian lineage. And on his maternal side, Idov’s mother and her father, before her, both grew up in a small town 60 miles south of Atlanta, where their family was one of only three Jewish families. A classic old-American Jewish small-town story.

“I’ve got relatives buried in all the major cemeteries in the city, including Oakland, a historic Atlanta cemetery. That just goes to show how deeply-rooted my family is here,” jokes Idov. But more importantly, Idov says, “I grew up surrounded by a lot of kinfolk with heavy Southern drawls enjoying life and telling tales of the old Jewish South and serving up lots of good Jewish and Southern foods. Slow-cooked collard greens, black-eyed peas, and cornbread were staple dishes along with the roasted chicken, brisket, and tzimmes at the Shabbos table. And a traditional drink of ice-cold Coca-Cola packed with salted roasted peanuts to quench your thirst is a family favorite. If you haven’t tried it before, you really ought to sometime.”

Bourbon and Schmaltz launches in time for Purim with awesome new Southern-inspired hamantaschen including buttermilk biscuit breakfast hamantaschen, benne wafer hamantaschen, and Cheddar cheese wafer and red pepper jelly hamantaschen.

For these awesome recipes, plus more kosher Jewish and Southern recipes, visit bourbonandschmaltz. com and connect with Alex on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

The girls of Midreshet Shalhevet had a unique day to kick off their spring semester: snowtubing in 60-degree weather! The sky and snow came together for a perfect day on the slopes and hopefully an equally perfect semester of learning and fun

Connecting to Tefillah: SKA TTYL Workshops

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n a departure from the activities of the previous day’s color war, students of the Stella K. Abraham High School for Girls were able to learn and connect to tefillah outside of the formal liturgy on Thursday, February 7. SKA’s student-directed TTYL Committee (Turning Tefillah into Your Life) designed a tefillah workshop program, giving girls the chance to choose from ten different workshops ranging from meditation and mindfulness to indepth understanding of what we say during davening. The goal of the workshops: making time to focus on how we can make tefillah more meaningful every day.

In addition to the stellar roster of SKA faculty members – Mrs. Penina Bernstein, Mrs. Avital Braun, Mrs. Rochel Chafetz, Rabbi Daniel Eisenbach, Mrs. Esti Engel, Mrs. Rikki Fishbein, Ms. Shalva Goldshein, Mrs. Penina Kranzler, Mrs. Shira Manne, Mrs. Paghit Ralbag, Mrs. Leanne Taylor and Rabbi Yosef Zakutinsky – Dr. Hillel Broder, principal of general studies at DRS, and Rabbi Manu Hass, day school coordinator of NSCY Long Island, also delivered powerful workshops to the SKA students.

“The workshop I attended,” one student noted, “was titled, ‘You are Invited to a Date with Hakadosh Baruch Hu’ and really helped us un-

derstand how to connect with Hashem.” Another student who took part in “Letter to Hashem,” shared that the workshop helped her reflect on what is important to daven for and how.

Many students expressed how motivating all the workshops were and what a difference they are making to their daily tefillah.

Our thanks go to Mrs. Leanne Taylor, SKA’s Chesed Coordinator, and her hard-working committee members – Abby Aaron, Daniella Botnick, Tzvia Deutch, Esther Dykman, Leora Fenster, Eleora Fine, Ely Goldstein, Zehava Graff, Tamar Herschberg, Eliana Kramer, Leah Kramer, Adina Lev, Shoshana Lunzer, Anna Ostrow, Shoshana Schwartz, Celia Shaoul, Adina Shwerd and Aliza Strauss – who organized this amazing program. Thanks also go to our very inspirational speakers who made this event so relevant to our lives.

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Siyumim at Homes of HaGaonim HaRav Gershon Edelstein, Shlita, HaRav Shalom Cohen, Shlita, and the Sanzer Rebbe, Shlita as Dirshu Marches Towards Next Year’s World Siyum

By Chaim Gold

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he simple home of HaGaon HaRav Gershon Edelstein, shlita, venerated senior Rosh Yeshiva of Ponovezh, is not usually a venue for public celebrations.

The Rosh Yeshiva is well known for the privacy he maintains and for eschewing the public spotlight.

Nevertheless, for every rule there is an exception. Recently, with the completion of hilchos Shabbos in the Dirshu Daf HaYomi B’Halacha cycle, Rav Gershon not only agreed to host a siyum in his apartment but he went out of his way to address the siyum and give guidance to the wider community on the importance of learning practical halacha on a regular basis.

Rav Gershon: Learning Mishnah Berurah Daily is mamesh spiritual hatzalos nefashos!

The siyum at the home of Rav Gershon was attended by numerous gedolei Torah and rabbonim including HaGaon HaRav Chaim Feinstein, shlita, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Ateres Shlomo, HaGaon HaRav Boruch Dov Diskin, shlita, Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva Orchos Torah, and numerous other roshei yeshiva.

Without a doubt, the highlight of the event were the words of the nonagenarian senior Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Gershon.

“There is no need to give divrei bracha at such an event, because the bracha has already been promised by Chazal, who teach, ‘He who

Discussing the upcoming Dirshu World Siyum with the Sanzer Rebbe

learns halacha every day is assured a place in Olam Habaah, [Niddah 76].’ Thus, the bracha is assured.”

The Rosh Yeshiva continued, “With regard, however, to halacha, it is important for everyone to know that learning halacha every day is an obligation. It is a tremendous obligation to specifically learn practical halacha. The volume of Orach Chaim in Shulchan Aruch is the volume that one must know and utilize every day. The laws of brachos, how to get dressed, even what a person should think…

“That is why it is so important to learn Mishnah Berurah every day.

Learning Mishnah Berurah is mamesh spiritual hatzalos nefashos! It enables a person to fulfill the obligations that he is supposed to fulfill and not transgress the prohibitions that he is mandated to refrain from.”

Sanzer Rebbe: First and Foremost, A Yid Must Conduct Himself Like a Yid! The home of the Sanzer Rebbe is no stranger to Dirshu. The Rebbe has been an enthusiastic supporter of Dirshu from its inception and sees it as a fitting tribute to his father, the previous Sanzer-Klausenberger Rebbe, who established Mifal Hashas, a learning and testing regiment to promote and encourage the learning and knowledge of all of Shas.

Aside from the Sanzer Rebbe, shlita, the event was attended by HaGaon HaRav Yigal Rozen, shlita, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Ohr Yisrael of Petach Tikva, HaGaon HaRav Mordechai Mintzburg, shlita, Rav of the K’hal Adas Yerushalayim Masmidim community, Rav Dovid Hofstedter, Nasi of Dirshu, and numerous others.

In his remarks, the Sanzer Rebbe quoted the Shulchan Aruch Harav in Hilchos Talmud Torah that says, “‘A person who is not able to learn all day, should learn the halachos that are relevant for him to know in the course of his daily life.’ A Yid must know halacha, if not, he cannot conduct himself as a Yid,” the Rebbe said. “That is what the Shulchan Aruch Harav is telling us. First and foremost, you must conduct yourself like a Yid and therefore, the absolute first thing you need to learn is halacha l’maaseh. The minimum is learning Kitzur Shulchan Aruch but certainly, learning Mishnah Berurah is better.”

Rav Yigal Rozen said, “For those who learn all day, their main learning is Gemara. Nevertheless, the shaar, the entranceway to the bais medrash of Gemara, Rashi and Tosafos is learning and knowing halacha.”

Rav Dovid Hofstedter said that before Yaakov Avinu went down to

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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Around the Community Egypt with his family he sent his son Yehuda ahead of him. Why? The Midrash states that Yehuda went first in order to open a Beit Talmud – a Yeshiva, from where Torah rulings would come forth. The Midrash is telling us two things: there is a Yeshiva, but there is also the additional component of a place from where Torah rulings will emanate. Any new place to where Jews come, our sages are telling us, must first have both a yeshiva and a place where one can receive halachic rulings and halachic guidance from our sages.

“Why,” Rav Hofstedter asked, “did Yaakov Avinu specifically send Yehuda? If he wanted to build a yeshiva he should have perhaps sent an architect and a developer? The answer,” he posited, “is that Yehuda is the power of malchus, the power of a king. Whenever there is something good happening, the satan, the yetzer hara tries to get in the way. Yehuda has the power of malchus, a power that can counter the yetzer hara’s diabolical plans.

“This too is why we feel so fortunate to be here at the home of the Sanzer Rebbe, shlita, and why Dirshu is fortunate to have the blessing and constant support of other leading Gedolei Yisrael. With their backing, their merit and their tefillos we will certainly overcome any hurdles that the yetzer hara places in the way.”

Learning HOW to Understand the Halacha There was also a siyum at the home of HaGaon Hacham Shalom Cohen, shita, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Porat Yosef. “Some might say that the Mishnah Berurah is a sefer written for Ashkenazim, not for Sephardim. After all, we rule in accordance with Maran, the Bet Yosef, and they rule in accordance with the Ramah. What then,” Rav Shalom asked, “would be the point of learning the Mishnah Berurah when its laws are not written in accordance with the Sephardic halachic rulings?”

He answered, “When one learns the Mishnah Berurah, one can truly understand the underlying premise of the halachah. I always tell my talmidim that although we Sephardim do not rule like the Mishnah Berurah, they should first learn the Mishnah Berurah and then learn the final outcome of the Sephardic poskim. After all, the Mishnah Berurah teaches you how to understand the halacha, not just what the halacha is.”

“The Bracha is Min Hashomayim!”

At the siyum on Chelek Gimmel held at the Dirshu Convention in Stamford, Connecticut, a few weeks ago Rav Gershon Edelstein delivered an unexpected video message to the thousands of participants, expressing his joy over the fact that they were celebrating the completion of Chelek Gimel and beginning Chelek Daled of Mishnah Berurah.

When Rav Gershon was told about the multitudes of lomdei Dir-

shu who will be completing Shas next year with bechinos and that Dirshu would celebrate their accomplishments with massive siyumim in Eretz Yisroel, England, France and South Africa, culminating in an enormous siyum at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ, in mid-February, 2020, the Rosh Yeshiva expressed his great joy. He pointed out that when a large, public siyum is made, it encourages more people to learn. He brought proof to this concept from a pasuk in Mishlei [1:20], “Wisdom sings out in the streets; it gives forth its voice in public.” Rav Edelstein explained, “When wisdom is being praised in the street it gives forth a voice in public that influences others.”

When asked to give a bracha in honor of next year’s Siyum HaShas, the Rosh Yeshiva answered, “The bracha is min hashomayim! Hashem blesses those who learn Torah.

My bracha is that you should have siyatta d’shmaya in everything that you do!”

FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

TJH

Centerfold

Presidential Facts John Adams (1797-1801) was the first president to live in the White House.

Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809) had a fear of public speaking and only delivered two speeches during his presidency, although he often delivered letters in lieu of speeches.

James Madison (1809-1817) was the smallest president. He was 5’4” and weighed under 100 lbs.

A former tailor, Andrew Jackson (1829-1837), tailored his own suits while president.

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) was the first president born an American citizen.

John Tyler (1841-1845) had 15 children.

James Buchanan (1857-1861) never got married.

Warren Harding (1921-1923) once gambled away a set of White House china.

Riddle me this?

?? ?

Name 5 U.S. presidents whose last names only have 4 letters.

See answer below

William Henry Harrison (1841) was inaugurated on a cold and wet day. He wore neither an overcoat nor hat, rode on horseback to the ceremony rather than in the closed carriage that had been offered him, and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history, speaking for nearly two hours. Unfortunately, he contracted pneumonia and died 31 days after taking office.

Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865) was the first president to ever be photographed at his inauguration. In the photo, he is standing near John Wilkes Booth, his future assassin.

Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881) was the first president to have a phone in the White House.

His telephone number was “1.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909) was the youngest person to ever become president, at age 42, when he succeeded William McKinley, who was assassinated.

William Taft (19091913) weighed over 330 pounds and often got stuck in the White House bathtub.

His advisors would have to pull him out.

George Herbert Walker Bush (1989-1993) is the only president with four names.

Answer to Riddle Me This: William H. Taft, James Polk, Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush.

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019 The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015

Honest Abe Trivia

b. He was a senator c. He was a general in the Confederate army d. He ran a gun range 3. After shooting Lincoln, Booth jumped from the Presidential Box onto the stage and shouted something. What was it? a. “The war shall continue!” b. “Sic semper tyrannis!” c. “Revenge of the South!” d. “The devil has departed!”

4. Which of the following is true about Lincoln? a. He was the first president with a beard. b. Lincoln invented a device to free steamboats that ran aground and patented it, making him the only president to

b. He was the official White House entertainment advisor c. He was married to Lincoln’s cousin d. He gave drama lessons to the Lincoln children 6. What federal agency did Lincoln establish on April 14, 1865, the day he was shot? a. Internal Revenue Service b. The Secret Service c. Environmental Protection Agency d. Department of Energy 7. How many elections did Lincoln lose before becoming president? a. 1 b. 2 c. 3 d. 4 e. 5

1) A

a. He was an actor

a. He saved the president’s son, Robert, from falling off of a moving train one year before Lincoln was assassinated

2) A- Booth was a well-known actor. In fact, Lincoln watched Booth perform in numerous plays, including one called “The Marble Heart” at Ford’s Theater on November 9, 1863. According to the book, Lincoln’s Sanctuary: Abraham Lincoln and the Soldiers’ Home, Lincoln enjoyed Booth’s performance so much he sent a note backstage inviting him to the White House so they could meet. Booth, a rebel sympathizer and Confederate spy, evaded the president’s invitation.

2. What did Lincoln’s killer, John Wilkes Booth, do for a living?

5. John Wilkes Booth’s brother, Edwin, was also a famous actor. What interaction did he have with the Lincoln family before his brother killed the president?

3) B- Although it was initially unclear what he said, the consensus is that he shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” This is a Latin phrase that means “thus always to tyrants.” He is also said to have shouted, “The South is avenged!” in English. Booth managed to make his way to an alley in back of the theater where a horse was waiting for him and made his escape.

d. To draw raffle tickets when children came to visit him in the White House

e. All of the above

4) E

c. To stand on when he gave campaign speeches

d. He battled depression for much of his life.

5) A- Edwin Booth saved the life of Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, one year before Lincoln’s assassination.

It happened when Robert and Edwin Booth happened to board a train at the same station and Robert lost his footing once the train started moving. According to Robert Lincoln, Edwin Booth grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back to his feet. Robert Todd Lincoln recognized the famous actor and thanked him for his efforts. He also wrote and spoke about the incident on several occasions before his father’s assassination.

b. To roast marshmallows

c. He kept important documents in his hat.

6) B- Although it sounds ridiculously ironic that the Lincoln created the Secret Service on the day he was assassinated, the truth is that at that time the Secret Service’s mission was solely to investigate crimes related to the Treasury, such as counterfeiting. Shortly after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for protection of the president.

a. To store letters and papers in it

 Answers

have a patent.

7) E-Lincoln lost his first race for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832. He had gone on to lose a race for the U.S. Congress, two races for the U.S. Senate, and one campaign for a vice-presidential nomination.

1. Aside for wearing it on his head, what else did President Lincoln often use his stovetop hat for?

 Wisdom Key 5-7 correct: Four score and seven years from now they will still be talking about your immense knowledge of Lincoln.

3-4 correct: You are right in the middle - you probably would have stayed out of the Civil War. 0-2 correct: Who do you consider to have been the 16th president? Jefferson Davis? (Never mind, that probably went right over your head...go back to your video games. You know, if Lincoln’s log cabin only had PlayStation maybe he would have made something of his life.

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3

Torah Thought

Parshas Tetzaveh

By Rabbi Berel Wein

T

he concept of an eternal light in a place of worship is an ancient one derived from the opening section of this week’s reading of the Torah. The eternal light represents the unquenchable spirit and resilience of the eternal soul that the L-rd has implanted within human beings. Human life can be taken

away but the spirit of life, which is so unique to human beings, seems never to disappear.

In this week’s reading of the Torah, we learn that the eternal light must be attended to and nurtured. It requires preparation of the fuel and the kindling of that eternal light by human beings, in this case, the de‫בס״ד‬

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There was an eternal flame that existed on the altar in the Tabernacle and in the holy Temple. That flame existed and was kept alive permanently by a miracle of G-d. It existed during the entire time of the first Temple but was one of the miracles that no longer reappeared in the times of the Second Temple and thereafter. But the eternal light that was to be lit and maintained on the great candelabra in the building of the Temple was not to be miraculously so endowed. This light required constant human attention and participation.

From this we may derive that

spiritual or familial in nature, we rely heavily on miracles that will sustain us and allow us to escape from our difficulties. Regarding our personal lives, our profession, and our politics, we feel that these areas of human life are totally within our ability and purview to control and shape. However, the Torah teaches us that both forms of eternal light, the miraculous and the one that requires human effort and attention, are with us always.

That is why in the Tabernacle, and later in the first Temple itself, the eternal light was represented at one and the same time and in the same place. Miracles do happen, and

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The old adage that G-d helps those who help themselves is also valid and true.

there are two forms of eternity in human affairs and history. One is of purely divine origin, miraculous and wondrous, which operates completely independent from human efforts, ordinary laws and rules of nature. The other path of eternity, represented by the likes of the candelabra, is wholly dependent on human participation, care and attention.

Human beings often confuse these two types of eternal light. When it comes to certain matters, mainly

the guiding Hand of the Eternal One is evident throughout the history of the Jews. But the old adage that G-d helps those who help themselves is also valid and true. The eternal flame is to be lit by human beings who prepare the fuel and kindle a light through human effort and care.

It is this combination of the forces of eternity that unite and guarantee that the light of Israel will never be extinguished.

Shabbat shalom.

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From the Fire Image by Yehuda Boltshauser

Parshas Tetzaveh Leaders and the Little People

By Rav Moshe Weinberger Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf

T

he Torah says the garments of the kohein gadol must be “for honor and glory” (Shmos 28:2).

It also mandates that two of the eight garments must be attached to one another with rings and ropes. The Torah (ibid. at 28:28) says, “And the choshen shall not loosen from the ephod.”

The Ramban, Rashi, and Onkolus give various explanations which indicate that “loosen” means that the choshen may not become loose, detached, or disconnected from the ephod. The Rambam (Sefer Hamitzvos, Negative Commandment 87) counts this rule that the choshen may not be separated from the ephod as one of the 613 mitzvos. He further clarifies (Hilchos Klei Hamikdah 9:10) that “anyone who allows the choshen to become loose from upon the ephod and anyone who separates them destructively [not for the purpose of repairing them] receives lashes.”

This is remarkable. The Rambam counts all of the many details and halachos of the garments of the kohanim as one mitzvah “to wear the kohein garments for the service” (introduction to Hilchos Klei Hamikdash). Yet for some reason, the Torah singles out just one of those many details of the garments of the kohanim, the requirement that the choshen and ephod be attached tightly to one another, as a completely separate mitzvah. What is so unique about this one

detail that the Torah singles it out as an independent mitzvah?

The Sefer Hachinuch (Negative Commandment 100) explains that this mitzvah is part of the general rule that the garments of the kohein gadol must be “for honor and glory.”

Because his garments must be in perfect order, he writes that “the choshen may not move and sway on the tablet of [the kohein gadol’s] heart.” Yet his explanation is not entirely satisfying. We still do not understand why the Torah singled out this one detail of the hundreds of halachos relating to the garments of the kohanim as a separate mitzvah. Even the Sefer Hachinch is not satisfied with his own answer, as we see when he says, in very unusual form, “And until we hear a better explanation, we shall cling to this one.”

Connecting with the Smallest of the Small Reb Chanan Porat, z”l, quotes other seforim which shed light on this mysterious mitzvah. He points out that it teaches us a fundamental principle of Jewish leadership and demonstrates one of the key qualifications of a true leader.

There were twelve precious stones on the choshen, each one containing the name of one of the tribes of the Jewish people. The stones were therefore called (Shmos 28:12) “stones of

remembrance” because they recall the names of each of the tribes. While there are several explanations of the mechanics, the kohein gadol used the letters of the names of the Jewish people on the choshen to give them guidance in their personal and national decisions.

The Gemara (Yuma 73b) explains that the names of the tribes contain all of the letters of the Aleph Beis except for tzaddik, ches, kuf, and tes. The Gemara therefore explains that the choshen also contained the phrases “Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov” and “Shivtei Yeshurun, Tribes of Yeshurun” in order to make up the missing letters. It is also remarkable as there were 72 total letters in the names of the tribes and these two phrases, the same number of letters as in Hashem’s “full” name (Rashi on Sukkah 45a).

The pasuk (Shmos 28:29) says that “Aharon shall carry the names of the Jewish people on the choshen of judgment on his heart when he comes into the Holy as a remembrance before Hashem always.” The Torah says that kohein gadol must wear the choshen, which represents the Jewish people, close to his heart during his service in the Beis Hamikdash. The choshen must remain tightly in place so that the kohein gadol keeps the Jewish people close to his heart at all times.

Normally, there is a tendency for any-

one in a position of power or authority to detach himself from his “subjects” and become aloof. Whether one is the ruler of an entire nation, a parent of children, a rebbe or morah, or anyone in between, this is a danger endemic to any position of power or authority.

The Rambam (Hilchos Melachim 2:6) teaches the proper attitude of a leader as follows: “Just like the pasuk apportioned him [the king] great honor and everyone is obligated to honor him, so too it commanded that his heart must be low and empty within him…and he may not conduct himself in an overly haughty manner with the Jewish people, as the pasuk (Devarim 17:20) says, ‘Lest his heart become haughty over his brothers.’ And he must be kind and merciful with the small and the great. And he should go and come for their desires and for their benefit. And he should concern himself with the honor of the smallest of the small among them.”

The ephod represents kingship (Ramban on Shmos 28:2) and authority. Very often, once a person becomes accustomed to a position of power, he begins to feel detached from the concerns of “regular people” and feels that he is different from and better than them. In order to counteract this, the kohein gadol must ensure that the ephod, which represents authority and power, remain closely connected to the choshen, which rep-

TheJewish JewishHome Home| |FEBRUARY OCTOBER 29, 2015 The 14, 2019

resents every single Jew. He must concern himself with even “the smallest of the small among them.”

It is no coincidence that Aharon was the first kohein gadol to wear the choshen and ephod. He exemplified the leader who was exceedingly humble, always thinking of others before himself. The Mishna (Avos 1:12) says regarding Aharon that he “loves peace, pursues peace, loves other people and draws them close to Torah.” And the Midrash (Shmos Raba 3:17) says, “The heart that rejoiced in the greatness of his brother will wear the Urim V’tumim [contained within the choshen].” Aharon led the Jewish people throughout their bitter slog through the slave pits of Egypt for many years. It would have been understandable if he felt some jealousy when Moshe swooped in at the end of the slave experience, becoming the leader immediately. Yet Aharon was such a great leader that he never thought of himself. He only thought of others. That is why he was rewarded with the Urim V’Tumim and choshen.

His heart was engraved with the life of each and every Jew. The kohein gadol’s leadership with Hashem’s guidance through the choshen was not meant to serve as a source of legal or halachic authority. In fact, this is prohibited because “the Torah is not in Heaven” (Devarim 30:12; Bava Metzia 59b).

Halachic leadership is the function of the Sanhedrin, poskim, and talmidei chachamim. Rather, the kohein gadol uses the Urim V’Tumim and choshen to guide the Jewish people with major decisions on an individual and national level, as the pasuk (Bamidbar 27:21) says, “And he shall stand before Elazar Hakohein and seek [advice from] him through the judgment of the Urim before Hashem.

By his word shall they go and by his word they shall come, he and all of the Jewish people with him and the entire congregation.” The “Judgment of the Urim” means that a leader of the nation must guide his people based on a judgment of who they are and their own individual nature.

A Jewish Ideal For this type of personal leadership, in order to connect to the unique nature of each individual with whom

he is charged, it is not enough for a leader to have a great intellect. He must have “the heart of Aharon.” He must carry every Jew’s name on his heart at all times. He must be a person who never lets his connection to even “the smallest of the small among them” waver or weaken in any way.

This contrasts sharply with the

talmid passed away, leaving behind a large family, Rav Nosson Tzvi called his widow and promised her that he was now her children’s “father.” He told the children that any time they had anything to discuss, they should write to him, and he would write back.

His heart was engraved with the life of each and every Jew.

concept of leadership outside the Jewish world. I remember once, in the early 1960s, I went with several friends to a Yankees game. One of my friends in particular was an autograph collector so we waited with him after the game to see the players as they left the stadium. It seems the players were involved in various water and wine libations because we waited for over an hour and a half before they emerged. One of the popular players at that time was Joe Pepitone, and my friend very much wanted his autograph. He prepared a paper and pen for the big moment. When Joe finally left the stadium, there were only three or four people waiting for him – very little pressure or fanfare. Yet when my friend extended his paper and pen to obtain Joe’s autograph, he hurled an expletive at my friend and walked right past, leaving him completely deflated. While not every leader in the world at large is like our friend Joe, it suffices to say that the aspirations of leaders in the world at large are very far from the Jewish ideal.

One leader of our people who represents the ideal of a Jewish leader who never allowed “the choshen to loosen from upon the ephod” was Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, zt”l. I would like to share one small story that illustrates this beautifully from his ArtScroll biography, Rav Nosson Tzvi: Rav Nosson Tzvi didn’t suffice with empathizing with orphans and widows. When a Mirrer

Sure enough, the children wrote letters to the Rosh Yeshiva, and he wrote back to them in longhand.

After a few of the boys in the family received his letters, Rav

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Nosson Tzvi received a complaint from a 6-year-old girl in the family, who felt left out at not having received a letter. Rav Nosson Tzvi took a piece of paper and wrote her a short note, adding a picture of a heart to show that his heart was with the family. This girl, who is now married with a family of her own, still cherishes the note that carried her through so many a difficult moment.

May Hashem grant us more leaders who we so sorely need like Aharon Hakohein and Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, who concern themselves with even the smallest of the small and not only the issues and people deemed “big” or “important.” With such leaders, may we soon see the arrival of Moshiach and the ultimate redemption soon in our days.

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

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

Parsha

in 4

Parshas Tetzaveh

By Eytan Kobre

Weekly Aggada And you should bring near to you Aharon, your brother, and his sons with him from among the Jewish people to serve Me; Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, Elazar and Isamar, Aharon’s sons (Shemos 28:1) Why did G-d choose to elevate Aharon?

When Moshe descended from Sinai and saw the Jewish people sinning with the Golden Calf, he glanced at Aharon and saw that he was banging

with his hammer. Moshe assumed that Aharon had joined with the Jewish people in sinning with the Golden Calf.

“Moshe!” G-d said to him. “I know of Aharon’s intentions, that they are for the good.”

This is comparable to a prince who went mad and grabbed an iron peg to tunnel under, and thus undermine, his father’s castle. “Don’t tire yourself out,” said the prince’s tutor to the prince.

“Give me the iron peg, and I will tunnel for you.”

Just then, the king peered out of a window. “I know of your intentions (to prevent my son from tunneling under

the castle),” he said to the tutor. “By your life, I will place no man in charge of my castle but you!”

So it was with Aharon. When the Jewish people told him to “get up and make for us a god” (Shemos 32:1), he told them to bring the rings of their wives and children (Shemos 32:2).

“Since I am a priest,” he convinced them, “I will make [the Golden Calf] and I will offer sacrifices before it.” But he did so only to delay the Jewish people until Moshe’s return.

G-d said to him, “Aharon, I know your intentions. By your life, I will place no man in charge of the sacrifices but you” (Shemos Rabba 37:2).

Weekly Mussar In the Tent of Meeting, outside the Veil that is before the Testimony, Aharon and his sons shall set it from evening to morning before G-d – a statute throughout your generations on behalf of the Jewish people (Shemos 27:21) One of the menorah’s lamps, the Western Light, was especially unusual. Though it received no more oil than the other lamps, the Western Light would burn through to the morning (even after the longest winter nights), at which time the kohanim rekindled the other lamps using the Western Light.

Now, the Western Light certainly was not needed for its light; rather, it attested to the entire world that G-d’s Divine Presence rested in the Mishkan (Shabbos 22b).

It is easy to understand how the miracle of the Western Light was a testament to the kohanim that G-d’s Divine Presence rested in the Mishkan.

But non-kohanim were not permitted in the Holy section of the Mishkan,

and non-Jews certainly were not allowed entry there. How, then, could the miracle of the Western Light influence the world at-large?

Rav Yitzchak Hutner posed that question in response to the suggestion that, for fundraising purposes, his yeshiva, Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin, offer seminars to the public at-large. He rejected the suggestion by explaining how the Western Light influenced the world.

The Western Light did not impact the world at first, at least not directly.

But it did reinforce to the kohanim, who witnessed its miracles every day, that the Divine Presence rested in the Mishkan. Influenced by the Western Light, the kohanim acted in such an elevated manner as to influence, in turn, the rest of the Jewish people.

Influenced by the kohanim, the Jewish people acted in such an elevated manner as to influence, in turn, the rest of the world.

That is how the Western Light attested to the entire world that G-d’s Divine Presence rested in the Mishkan.

If we want to influence others, we must influence ourselves first. When we do so, we influence those in our inner circle, and, ultimately, we can influence even the world at-large.

Weekly Anecdote And for Aharon’s sons you shall make tunics, and you shall make girdles for them, and headdresses you shall make for them, for splendor and for glory (Shemos 28:40) Each of the Kohen Gadol’s eight garments atoned for a different sin, with the girdle atoning for sinful thoughts (Arachin 16a).

A man once complained to the Maggid of Mezritch that his mind was

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constantly being invaded by sinful thoughts. “I can understand when G-d commands our actions and our speech, for those are things within man’s control. But thoughts? They come and go, and man cannot necessarily control them.” The Maggid gave him no advice but instructed him to seek out the assistance of R’ Zev of Zhitomir.

So the man set out for the long trek to Zhitomir, where R’ Zev owned an inn. By the time the man reached Zhitomir and R’ Zev’s inn, however, it was late at night. The inn was locked.

He banged and banged and banged on the door, but to no avail. The harsh Ukrainian winter night began to take its toll on the man, and he banged and banged and banged some more. Still no answer. He cried out in despair, “What sort of people are you, not to have pity on a fellow Jew who is freezing?” Silence still.

At sunrise, the inn doors swung open for business as usual. The man, frozen to the bone, made his way inside, where he warmed up, staying

over for several days. He just could not understand: Why would the sage Maggid of Mezritch send me all this way to a strange inn, with R’ Zev saying nothing to me?

As he prepared to leave, the man’s curiosity got the better of him and he presented himself before R’ Zev. “Our rebbe, the Maggid, sent me here to you,” the man said, “but I cannot figure out why. You were supposed to teach me to keep sinful thoughts out of my head. But you’ve hardly said anything at all.”

“The purpose of your coming here was realized the night you arrived,” explained R’ Zev. “Our rebbe wanted you to learn from me that each man is the master of his house: whoever he does not wish to admit inside, he simply does not admit inside.”

Weekly Halacha And it will be on Aharon’s forehead, and Aharon will bear the evil com-

mitted in the holy things, which the Jewish people will make holy, even in all their holy gifts; and it shall be upon his forehead always, so that they may be accepted before G-d (Shemos 28:38) Inasmuch as the Torah insists that the tzitz be upon the forehead of the Kohen Gadol “always,” we learn that the Kohen Gadol may not divert his attention from tzitz (Yoma 7b; Menachos 36b). This is the source of the rule that one may not divert his attention from tefillin while wearing them: after all, if the Kohen Gadol could not divert his attention from the tzitz, which bore only one occurrence of G-d’s name, certainly one may not divert his attention away from tefillin, which bears 26 occurrences of G-d’s name (Menachos 36b).

A diversion of attention, in the context of wearing tefillin, is understood by most authorities to mean engaging in frivolity or levity – not merely the absence of active concentration on

the tefillin (Aruch HaShulchan, Orach Chaim 44:2; Mishna Berura 44:3; but see Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 10:16 and 10:23). Still, it is preferable to try to avoid any interruption in concentration whatsoever – except during Shemoneh Esrei and while learning Torah (Mishna Berura 44:3; Biur Halacha 44; Be’er Heitiv 44:1 [Arizal]; Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 10:16).

Practically, to avoid diverting attention from the tefillin, one should periodically touch his tefillin (Mishna Berura 44:3), the tefillin shel yad first and then the tefillin shel rosh (Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 10:17).

The Weekly Halacha is not meant for practical purposes and is for discussion purposes only. Please consult your own rav for guidance.

Eytan Kobre is a writer, speaker, and attorney living in Kew Gardens Hills. Questions? Comments? Suggestions? E-mail eakobre@outlook.com.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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Think, Feel, Grow

From Loneliness to Oneness The Endless Expansion of Self

By Shmuel Reichman

T

here is a plague that haunts the human condition.

Many people live their lives in a state of ego, a state of mind where you think you are an isolated being inside your own body, your own world, alone. This means that you experience yourself as separate from everyone else, disconnected, secluded. The consequences of this state of mind are obvious: you feel independent and separate from Hashem; since everyone else in the world is different and separate from you, you will feel the need to compete with them, to beat them, in order to gain self-worth, in order to convince yourself that you’re good enough. This often means pushing others down just to feel like you’re better than them. You might hate certain people or even hurt them, since they don’t make you feel good or perhaps because they challenge your own self-worth. But most of all, this state of consciousness leaves you lonely, abandoned, empty. However, there is another option.

You can choose to live in a state of soul, a state of oneness. This means living with the understanding that, while we are all unique individuals, at our spiritual and existential root we are all one.

People often mistake the concept of oneness as a lack intellectual integrity or referring those who ignore reality. However, those who live by

this principle are the select few who are deeply in touch with reality. They are those who understand the underlying truths of the universe and live on a plane where the spiritual and physical meet and melt into a oneness. These people understand that, at root, we are all one – an interconnected self and single consciousness and soul. This is the concept of Klal Yisrael, a single self, a single people.

The Rambam states that someone who disconnects himself from the Jewish people has no portion in the World to Come. This should be intuitive, though. Klal Yisrael is one entity, a single body. If a leaf falls from a tree, it withers; if a finger is detached from its body, it dies. If you remove yourself from your source of existence, you cease to exist.

Most people do not experience this state of oneness. We do not automatically perceive ourselves as part of a cosmic self. In fact, the starting point of every child is ego and selfishness. Research has shown that every child sees themselves as the center of the universe. They believe that they are all that exists. It is only with time that they come to realize that they are one of but billions of people existing in this world, each with their unique life experience and inner world. However, many people stop their existential and experiential growth at that point. They don’t expand further, breaking down the

boundaries of consciousness, realizing that they aren’t an isolated being but rather a part of a bigger whole.

They live the rest of their lives as an ego, alone, hollow inside.

How do we break down the walls of our limited ego to expand our sense of self outwards? The key to this deep principle lies in this week’s parsha.

The Purpose of Gifts?

Normally we read Parshas Shekalim before Rosh Chodesh Adar, however, since it is a leap year we will wait until Adar Beis to read it. Even so, it is still important to note a stark contrast between the concept of machatzis ha’shekel and the gifts given in last week’s parsha, Parshas Terumah.

Parshas Terumah is defined by the voluntary gifts that the Jewish people donated to Hashem towards the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. The emphasis in this was its voluntary nature – Hashem did not specify a certain amount that the Jewish people were required to donate, rather they had to give of their own accord. Why is this so?

Why not specify a required amount like by machatzis ha’shekel? Furthermore, why were these gifts specifically given towards the Mishkan?

Parshas Tetzaveh is a continuation of Parshas Terumah, whereby we continue discussing the Mishkan

and the avodah, the divine service.

Is there any link between the concept of giving gifts and the Mishkan, the place to where these gifts were given?

To answer this question, let’s look more deeply at the nature of giving.

Rav Dessler explains in Michtav Mei’Elyahu, Kuntros Hachessed, that, naturally, we only love ourselves. This makes sense, as each of us only experiences life from our own perspective – we can only know what we want, what we need, what we feel. It takes a lifetime of work to understand another person on this level and to be as committed to their needs as you are to your own.

True love, however, is when someone else becomes an extension of your consciousness, when you feel their needs and hopes and dreams as strongly as you do your own.

The “love” that most people experience does not compare to this ideal. Just think of the way we throw the word love around. Someone might say, “I love chicken,” but then also say, “I love my wife.” Can these two experiences really be compared?

When a person says they love chicken, do they really mean that they love chicken? Of course not! If they loved chicken, it wouldn’t be dead on their plate. What they actually mean is that they love the way chicken makes them feel. It’s themselves that they love! The problem, though,

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019 The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015

is that too often when people speak of love, they are referring to this same kind of love. More often than not, when we say we love someone, we really mean that we love how they make us feel. If this is true, then what is true love, and how do we create it?

True love is absolute oneness.

It’s when individual pieces connect in such a way that they create something transcendent, greater than the sum of the parts. The ideal is for man and wife to experience this oneness. This was modeled in the very creation of humanity. As the midrash explains, Adam and Chava were originally created as one androgynous being, a physical manifestation of a deeper existential oneness. They were then broken apart and forced to rebuild that original oneness.

Each one of us is meant to become one with our own life’s partner. As the Gemara in Yevamos says: before a man and wife are born, they exist as a single neshama. Only once they are born into the world do they split apart and exist as two distinct beings. The goal is to then wander the world in search of their soul mate, choose each other, and then recreate that oneness. Adam and Chava were created as one before being split apart to model the oneness that we are striving towards as husband and wife.

How to Create Oneness Rav Dessler explains in Michtav Mei’Eliyahu that the mechanism for creating love and oneness is giving.

The logic is as follows: we love ourselves. We also find, though, that parents love their children. Why is this? It’s because children are an extension of their parents. We love anything that has a piece of ourselves in it, as we personally identify with it. This is why we find ourselves loving our ideas, our pets, and all the creative projects that we’ve spent countless hours working on. When we invest ourselves into something, we see a part of ourselves manifest within it, which naturally fosters our love for that thing.

It’s interesting to observe that parents always love their children more than children love their

parents. However, based on Rav Dessler’s explanation of love and giving, this makes perfect sense.

Parents give so much of themselves to their children. Beyond just giving over their physical DNA, they give over endless time, energy, money, and care. This is also why the Hebrew word for love is “ahava.” The

tion, to choose to donate their possessions to Hashem. This is because love and oneness can only be created and manifest through genuine giving. Hashem gave the Jewish people the opportunity to create a bond of oneness and love with Him. Only by giving themselves to Hashem, and recognizing Him as the source

When we invest ourselves into something, we see a part of ourselves manifest within it which naturally fosters our love for that thing.

root of this word is “hav,” which means to give. Because only when you give can you experience true love, true oneness.

The theme of oneness is noticeably prevalent throughout Parshas Terumah.

Rashi (Terumah 25:31) quotes the Medrash saying that the menorah wasn’t created by connecting many separate pieces of gold, but rather from a single block of gold.

This idea appears in many other parts of the Mishkan as well. The Mishkan (and Beis Hamikdash) is where the physical world connects to and fuses with the spiritual world. It is the focal point of where Hashem connects with and becomes manifest in the world. It is the place where all of Klal Yisrael comes together to become one, first as a nation, and then with Hashem.

The menorah was created as a single block of gold, reflective of a much deeper pattern. Just as the menorah begins as a single block of gold before becoming manifest as branches and pieces, the Jewish people are a single soul at root expressed as a multitude of individuals.

The donation process which appears at the opening of Parshas Teruma represents the process of creating oneness and love. The Jewish people had to give of their own voli-

of their existence, could the Jewish People truly create this bond of love and oneness. It is therefore no coincidence that these donations were

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directed towards the building of the Mishkan, the very center of oneness and the place where the Jewish people would connect directly to Hashem.

Think about your own life. Are you walled in? Are you afraid of being loved? Of loving others? Are you living as an ego or as a soul? Are you expanding outwards, giving yourself to others, or are you isolating yourself, living empty and alone? Let us be inspired to give ourselves to those whom we care about, to build genuine love, and to endlessly expand beyond our limited sense of self into true oneness.

Shmuel Reichman is an inspirational speaker who has spoken internationally at shuls, conferences, and in Jewish communities. You can find more inspirational shiurim, videos, and articles from Shmuel on Facebook and Yutorah.org.

For all questions, thoughts, or bookings, please email shmuelreichman678@ gmail.com.

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

Israel Today

A Wedding for the Ages

By Rafi Sackville

Y

ehuda Rosenberg was born in Yerushalayim into an Orthodox family. Life was wonderful until the outbreak of the War of Independence. After four days of living in a bomb shelter, a ceasefire was called.

It didn’t last long when suddenly the shelling began again. His mother decided to take Yehuda to visit her sister. While stopping to shmooze with a neighbor, a shell fell next to them.

Yehuda’s mother was killed while holding his hand.

Yehuda was injured from the shelling in his back and head. After being released from hospital, he went home to sit shiva. A month later, the family packed up and left for Haifa for three years. His father found an old Arab ruin with one room intact in which to live. The family fell apart soon after.

Yehuda moved from family member to another.

They eventually returned to Yerushalayim. Yehuda’s grandmother, who had been living in Brooklyn at the time, made aliyah to be close to the family. She arrived erev Rosh Hashana, but passed away six months later, on erev Pesach.

While with them she convinced

family members back in New York to bring Yehuda to the States. He took the 17-day ship journey and enrolled in Torah Vodaath. In 1956, he got a call up from the Israeli army. He returned to Israel and served as a tank driver.

In 1963, Yehuda moved to Canada, where he spent the next 53 years.

He returned home to Israel four years ago, moving to Ma’alot, where his sister lives.

Yehuda is full of vigor and always on the move. He can be found in the company of Reb Nissim, who is well into his nineties. Yehuda transports him to and from shul daily. When he’s not driving, he goes walking at a brisk pace. He is active in the community; he attends the evening daf yomi and is a member of the local retirees’ club.

When we recently made a siyum, it fell on his birthday. We danced around the Beit midrash for ages. Rav Noam Admoni carried Yehuda on his shoulders with a spirit of happiness that was infectious.

It was a siyum to remember. It’s not every day that we can dance with a man, who can not only keep pace with

those 50 years younger than him but who has also just turned 80 years of age.

Early one Tuesday morning Keren and I were drinking coffee at the local mall when Yehuda took a seat at our table.

“The day after Chanukah. Keep it open,” he said.

“What’s happening?” we asked him.

“I’m getting married,” he replied with a smile and a glint in his eyes.

I looked at him closely for a moment or two and realized he wasn’t joking.

“My to-be wife had her doubts at first, because she’s from Nahariya, and she wasn’t sure about the English speakers here in Ma’alot. So, I brought her up for a visit to the club. Just like me, everyone fell in love with her. She’s a spring chicken. She’s nine years younger than me.”

matching hat. She introduced us to one of her sons, who had flown in from Boston for the occasion.

Kayla made aliyah to Nahariya five years ago with her late husband. Ten months later, she fell sick with cancer, and the following year her husband died. She has been through multiple surgeries. Only weeks after the wedding, she again underwent surgery.

She has not lost any of her vibrance or joy for life.

When the officiating rabbi asked Yehuda whom he’d like to be his groomsmen, whose sole responsibility would be to usher him to the chuppah, he pointed to my neighbor Dovi and myself. What an honor.

Under the chuppah emotions caught up with Yehuda. A tear or two abseiled down his flushed cheeks. He quickly regained his composure, and the ceremony began.

The wedding was a small affair, approximately eighty people. It was held in a small hall in a building appropriately called Beit Hakashish (Center for the Elderly).

His wife, Kayla, looked resplendent in a light pink dress with a

Even though it was no different from any other wedding ceremony, there was an atmosphere quite unlike anything we’d experienced before. Yehuda and Kayla exuded such optimism and hope that it was not only palpable – I could sense it rubbing off on

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With tremendous gratitude to Hashem Yisborach

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Program Begins 10:45 AM

Light refreshments will be served

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

others. (Since the wedding two couples their age have decided to tie the knot.)

Why shouldn’t two elderly people find comfort in company of a partner? Who ever said there was expiration date to getting married?

It was after the chuppah, after hugs and kisses from family and friends, that the real action began. In all my years I cannot recall dancing with such fervor and spirit. Rav Noam hoisted Yehuda on his shoulders again, turning circles. I looked across at Keren. She was beaming with such beauty and happiness that I quickened my pace on the dance floor. She joined a circle of women dancing and had trouble keeping up with a sprightly 74-year-old friend of the newlyweds.

The catering was modest but filling. There were pastas, a full salmon, and an assortment of salads.

At one point the young couple announced they wanted to have a dance alone. It was a poignant moment.

I looked at them gliding across the floor and thought of all elderly

couples I know who complain about getting old, about their aches and pains, and the impending end to their cycle of life. It’s not that Yehuda and Kayla have defied the odds and done something that is so extraordinary.

young hearts and spirit?! It’s not that they were making a statement about societal norms. No, what they were doing was embracing the life they had been granted and doing so with the knowledge that we – all of us – are

She joined a circle of women dancing and had trouble keeping up with a sprightly 74-year-old friend of the newlyweds.

Rather, they have taken conventional wisdom about the elderly and turned it on its head. Who says we cannot marry?! Who says we can’t seek and enjoy company?! Who says we cannot continue to age gracefully, but share

only as old as we feel.

The chuppah had begun on time at 1:30pm. By the time we were reciting birkat hamazon, it was a little after 3:00pm. The afternoon had begun on a high note and ended even higher. I

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cannot recall seeing a group of people so thrilled to have been at a wedding.

I asked Yehuda if he’d be in shul the following day. Maybe we wouldn’t have to say tachanun. He told me they were driving to Jerusalem with Kayla’s son to “show him around.” He assured me that he had already made arrangements for Reb Nissim, who would be taken to and from shul by a number of people over the coming days.

Keren and I hope and pray we’ll be able to celebrate many more smachot with Yehuda and Kayla. They are an inspiration to us all. Hopefully a little bit of the spirit they have generated will flow out of this story and the accompanying pictures and infect you, the reader.

May we all live long and fruitful lives, making do with what we’ve got, and giving our most to every minute of the time we have in this world.

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

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Jewish History

The Pogrom of Proskurov One Century Ago

By Larry Domnitch

Jews wounded during the pogrom

O

ne century ago this week, a catastrophe struck Jewry.

On the Sabbath day, February 15, 1919, horror came to the Jewish community of the Ukrainian town of Proskurov. The Proskurov pogrom would come

to signify the tragedy that befell the Jews of Ukraine during the Ukrainian-Soviet War (1918-1920).

Following the withdrawal of German troops after World War I from Ukraine, Communist Bolshevik troops sought control, as

with

Mrs. Naomi Herzberg

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did Ukrainian nationalists. Also involved were the White Russians, who wanted to restore Czarist rule.

Proskurov had no historical record of ever experiencing a pogrom despite its location in a terror-plagued region that had suffered many violent attacks for hundreds of years. No pogrom since that of Kishinev in 1904 had made such an impact upon Jewry. The Proskoruv pogrom caused great fear and panic which spread throughout towns in Ukraine in early 1919 and alarmed world Jewry to the dire emergency Ukrainian Jewry was facing.

In early 1919, Ukrainian nationalists unleashed their fury against the Jews. Massacres were perpetrated in Yekaterinoslav, Zhitomir, and other cities in the Ukraine.

Proskurov Jewry, which numbered about 25,000, was soon in great danger. The local Haidamak (Cossack) leader Ataman Semosenko, of the third regiment, who had assumed command just days earlier, targeted the Jews. At a dinner celebrating his new command, he delivered a speech in which he accused the Jews of being the enemy of Ukraine and the Cossacks. Semosenko called for the elimination of the Jews in order to “save the Ukraine.”

He also evoked the common canard that the Jews were Bolshevik revolutionaries and thus adversaries of Ukrainian independence. The vast majority of Jews, however, were

not Bolsheviks, and there were also some Jews who were supporters of Ukrainian independence. Furthermore, other ethnic groups also had members of the Bolshevik party.

The vast majority of the Jews of Proskurov, as shtetel Jews at the time, were not involved in political affairs.

Three days before the massacre, haidamaks paraded throughout the city on horses with rifles in hand.

The Cossacks wanted to intimidate the Jews.

The day before the massacre was Friday, the fourteenth day of the month of Adar Rishon. The Jews of Proskurov were preparing for the Sabbath.

That Shabbat was a sunny day in Proskurov. The Jews observed the enjoyed their Shabbos meal but there was a foreboding sense of fear.

The pogrom soon began. Hordes of Cossacks split into smaller groups and began attacks against Jews in the streets and in their homes. The savagery had begun.

Knives, swords and bayonets were most often used but there were also reports of hand grenades exploding as well as Jews rushed to cellars and attics to escape.

There are accounts of the slaughter.

According to one survivor, “They (the Cossacks) were divided into groups of five to fifteen men and swarmed into the streets which were inhabited by Jews. Entering the homes, they drew their swords

The 14, 2015 2019 TheJewish JewishHome Home||FEBRUARY OCTOBER 29,

and began to cut down the inhabitants without regard to sex or age….

Jews were dragged out of cellars and lofts and murdered.”

Entire families were slain.

One survivor, Haia Greenberg, a nurse, later testified to the horrors, “The young girls were repeatedly stabbed; the two-month-old baby with hand lacerations. The fiveyear-old who had been pieced by spears. The elderly man who had been thrown out of a window by his beard. The 13-year-old who became deaf because of his wounds.

His brother, who received eleven wounds to his stomach and left for dead next to his slain mother, the paralyzed son of a rabbi who was murdered in his bed; the two young children who were cast alive into a fire. “ Greenberg added, “I will never forget the reddened snow sleds filled with the hacked bodies going to a common pit in the cemetery.”

Some of the victims were forced

to dig their own graves. The cries and screams of those who were tortured and whose body parts were mutilated rose to the heavens. Many children became crippled from severed limbs.

who were murdered as they attempted to stop the pogrom.

The massacre was carried out from two to five in the afternoon.

There was no Shabbos menucha that day.

“I will never forget the reddened snow sleds filled with the hacked bodies going to a common pit in the cemetery.”

Some saved Jews at great risk.

Dr. S.N. Polozov helped many wounded Jewish children he found in the street. He hid more than twenty Jews in his own home.

There are reports of a few priests

While estimates place the number of deaths at 1,600, there are also estimates that place the casualty list as higher than that. These figures do not include those who sustained severe injury and were

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crippled for life. The pogrom only ended in Poskurov after Cossacks received a telegraphed letter telling them to cease the killing. This, after thousands were attacked by the bloodthirsty soldiers.

The Jewish hospital and makeshift medical stations were full of the wounded. Victims were brought to the Jewish cemetery by peasants.

Most were buried in mass graves.

The following day, the horrors continued. Haidamaks attacked the nearby town of Felstin, perpetrating another massacre where an estimated six hundred Jews were murdered.

One century later, the massacre on that Shabbat in Proskurov, which had become a symbol of that tragic era, is remembered. May the memories of the many martyrs of that era be for a blessing.

Larry Domnitch is an educator and author who lives in Efrat.

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The Amazing Return of the

Yabloner Rebbe How one man managed to come back to his people after a devastating loss

By Rabbi Pini Dunner

It

was a hot, balmy day in June 1975, and the sun beat mercilessly down on the Cal-State campus in Northridge, California, as crowds of parents, grandparents, siblings and friends arrived to celebrate the graduation of their loved ones. Once inside the graduation hall, families eagerly looked for their graduate among the hundreds of graduates, who were seated in the front few rows. Proud mothers waved at their sons and daughters and blew them kisses, and the graduates, in their caps and gowns, sheepishly grinned back.

A little old man, shuffling slowly into the hall, did not seem to belong to any family group. Dressed in a black gown and cap, he was actually one of the graduates. At almost 80 years old, he was senior to the second-oldest graduate by a margin of many decades. Seemingly oblivious to the noise around him, he slowly made his way forward, nodding almost imperceptibly at the few people who made eye contact. As he reached halfway toward the front of the hall, a man in his mid-30s suddenly stepped into the aisle in front of him.

“Hello, uncle!”

The old man looked up. His face crinkled into a broad smile, and his sad brown eyes twinkled with pleasure.

“Ehud, wow, I really was not expecting you. That is so nice of you.

Thank you so much for coming. You know it wasn’t necessary …”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ehud replied, “how could I have missed your graduation?”

The old man grinned broadly and shook Ehud’s hand. An usher urged him to find his seat, and he slowly walked towards the graduates’ section, where the nondescript octogenarian was nothing more than a slightly out-of-place curiosity. Those who knew him called him George, or Mr. Nagel.

T

hat was his name – George T. Nagel, an elderly Jewish man with a foreign accent, who lived in a room in the dorm building and more often than not could be found reading in the library.

In the five years he had been at CSUN, although he lived in the dorm building, George had made no real friends among the young students. No one knew exactly how old he was, nor why he was so keen to graduate with a degree in psychology. But truthfully,

nobody cared enough to ask.

George Nagel was a loner. Although he was unfailingly polite in his interactions, interactions were limited to mealtimes, and he clearly had no interest in socializing. He was unobtrusive and studious, a phantom who had been living under the name George T. Nagel for over 40 years. His real name was Yechezkel Taub, and he was the scion of one of Poland’s most illustrious Chassidic dynasties, having inherited his father’s title at the age of 24, along with a thriving Chassidic “court” and a sect numbering thousands of loyal followers.

In fact, although no one at CSUN on that hot day in 1975 knew it, George T. Nagel was none other than the once-acclaimed “Yabloner Rebbe,” the founder of a unique village called Kfar Chassidim near Haifa in what is now the State of Israel, to which he led hundreds of his loyal followers from Poland before the Holocaust.

What not even Taub realized on the day of his anonymous graduation was that a process had started that would see the Yabloner Rebbe reunited with his past and reconnected with the unique project from which he had desperately tried to escape, but with which he would forever and unavoidably be identified.

Y

echezkel Taub was born on October 7, 1895, in Nowe Miasto (Neishtot in Yiddish), a small town in Poland just east of Płońsk, north of Warsaw. His father, Rabbi Yaakov Taub, was Rebbe of Jabłonna (Yablona), a small rural town close to Warsaw that was home to a vibrant Orthodox Jewish community.

Revered across Poland as a mystical Chassidic leader, Rabbi Yaakov was a great-grandson of the original Yechezkel Taub – after whom he named his newborn son – the illustrious Rebbe of Kuzmir (Kazimierz Dolny), progenitor of several Chassidic dynasties, most famously the Modzitzer sect, renowned for their love of music and for their numerous beautiful musical compositions sung at Sabbath and festival gatherings.

Rabbi Yaakov’s father, Rabbi Yosef Moshe Taub (d.1866), had moved to Jabłonna from Nowe-Miasto, where his father Rabbi David Tzvi Hirsch Taub had founded a branch of the Kuzmir sect. Pious and devout, Rabbi Yosef Moshe was married to a descendant of Rabbi Yisrael Hopstein, the legendary Maggid of Kozhnitz, and he set up his own branch of the Kuzmir dynasty in Jabłonna, becoming known as the Yabloner Rebbe.

Tragically he died young, leaving his

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The former Yabloner Rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Taub, Rabbi Yechezkel’s father

The Yabloner Rebbe, Palestine, 1925

At center, the Yabloner Rebbe appears in a Yiddish poster issued by JNF, late 1920s

6-year-old son, Yaakov, to be raised by his grandfather.

In 1882, Rabbi Yaakov married Beila Gurman, and in the years that followed they had five children, Yechezkel and four daughters. Unusually, it was Rabbi Yaakov’s son-in-law, Chaim Yosef Halevi Vanchotzker, married to his oldest daughter, Michal Rachel, who was groomed to be the successor, rather than his son, Yechezkel.

When Chaim Yosef unexpectedly died at a young age, the burden of expectation suddenly fell upon Yechezkel.

Nevertheless, this unpredicted turn of events was not of great concern. At the time of Chaim Yosef’s death, Rabbi Yaakov was still in his 50s, and it would surely be many years before Yechezkel would inherit the Rebbe’s title and responsibilities.

But Rabbi Yaakov was not in good health. Soon after World War I began, he moved from Jabłonna to Warsaw to be closer to Poland’s best medical doctors and facilities. Sadly, it was to no avail. In the summer of 1920, at the age of 60, Rabbi Yaakov passed away, and Yechezkel, not quite 25 years old and barely prepared for the position, suddenly found himself at the head of one of Poland’s prestigious Chassidic sects.

With the help of his wife, Pearl, a Kozhnitz descendent whom he had married in 1915, and his widowed elder sister, Michal Rachel, Yechezkel threw himself into the task of leading and inspiring his followers, intent on living up to the legacy of his father and

the Kuzmir Chassidic heritage. Genuinely concerned for the welfare of his followers, he was very warm and personable, in addition to being learned and highly intelligent. He became involved in every aspect of his followers’ lives, making sure that the rich helped

lowers numbered in the tens of thousands and were spread across Poland.

Tragically, Rabbi Elimelech’s eldest three sons had predeceased him, so he remarried in his 60s and had two more sons, the first of whom, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman of Piaseczno,

“We don’t have any money, and we are drowning in difficulties but we have come this far, and we are not giving up now.” the poor and that the less well-off devoted time to community affairs so that they wouldn’t feel like takers.

The chassidim adored him and flocked to his weekly Friday night tisch gatherings, where he sang with them and regaled them with Torah discourses. The new Yabloner Rebbe was considered a rising star among the Chassidic Rebbes of Poland and a future leader of Polish Jewry.

Yet everything changed in 1924, with the visit to Jabłonna by a distant relative of the young Rebbe, the charismatic Rabbi Yeshaya Shapira, a crown prince of the Polish Chassidic world. Rabbi Yeshaya’s late father, R’ Elimelech Shapira, had been the revered Rebbe of Grodzisk, whose fol-

would later become immortalized as Rebbe of the Holocaust-era Warsaw Ghetto, whose inspiring sermons to demoralized ghetto inhabitants, recorded on scraps of paper, were recovered from the rubble of the ghetto after the war and published in a book titled Esh Kodesh (“Sacred Fire”).

Rabbi Yeshaya Shapira was Rabbi Elimelech’s youngest child. Within a year of his birth, R’ Elimelech died, and his widow moved back to her parents’ home, where the two boys were brought up and educated by her father, Rabbi Chaim Shmuel Horowitz-Szterenfeld of Chantshin, a descendent of the “Seer” of Lublin and one of the most unusual chassidic Rebbes in Poland at that time. Incredibly

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studious and with a gifted intellect, he was renowned for completing the entire Talmud and Shulchan Aruch each year and also known for his very ostentatious “court.” But most of all, he was famous for his eager support of the proto-Zionist movement, Chovevei Zion, and for advocating settlement of the Holy Land.

It was this aspect of his outlook that would capture the heart of his grandson, Rabbi Yeshaya. Rejecting attempts to get him to lead his own Chassidic sect, Rabbi Yeshaya became consumed by the idea of Jews resettling the Land of Israel. In 1914, he visited Ottoman-controlled Palestine, where he was overcome by the headway made by the Zionist pioneers who had settled there. Despite his elevated Chassidic pedigree, he became an active member of the Zionist movement, which was then dominated by secular Jews openly hostile to religious observance.

With the outbreak of World War I, Rabbi Yeshaya was expelled from Palestine by the Turks and returned to Poland, where he founded the Polish branch of Mizrachi and enthusiastically promoted the immigration of Torah-observant settlers to Palestine.

In 1920 he managed to return to Palestine with the intention of moving there, even though his wife initially refused to join him. In 1922, he presided over the founding of Hapoel HaMizrachi, an organization devoted to setting up agricultural settlements in Palestine for religious Zionists. His

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The early days of Kfar Hasidim

At center, the Yabloner Rebbe with Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, Palestine, 1925.

To the right of Rabbi Kook is the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of British Mandate Palestine, Rabbi Yaakov Meir

ultimate dream was the relocation of an entire chassidic sect from Poland to a new home in Palestine, together with their Rebbe, so that the stigma attached to Zionist immigration would be offset by the success of a mature chassidic community who had immigrated en masse without any depletion of their Torah observance or chassidic identity. With this in mind, he set out on a mission back to Poland in 1924 and came upon the Yabloner Rebbe and his community.

The impact of Rabbi Yeshaya’s visit to Jabłonna was electric. He regaled his hosts with vivid descriptions of the Holy Land and told them about the opportunities available to those who bought land and created agricultural settlements. The Ottoman Turks were gone, and the British were now in control. In 1917, Great Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur J. Balfour, had dispatched a letter to Lord Rothschild in London, a letter that would later become known as the Balfour Declaration, which formally declared that the British government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine

of a national home for the Jewish people,” and would “use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

Not since the days of Cyrus the Great had a gentile power urged Jews to return to their homeland, said Rabbi Yeshaya. The declaration by Cyrus in ancient Persia had resulted in the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and the reestablishment of Jewish supremacy in the Jews’ ancestral territory. Now, thousands of years later, that same opportunity had arisen once again. How was it possible that religious Jews, who had so tenaciously clung to their heritage over millennia, would cede this opportunity to reprobate Jews who had discarded Torah and Judaism? This was a chance for a religious renewal of biblical proportions, said Rabbi Yeshaya, and what greater way was there to embrace this chance than by moving from Poland as a complete community, old and young, rich and poor, and to relocate to the heaven-on-earth that was the Land of Israel.

Rabbi Yeshaya’s passionate pre-

A shul in Kfar Hasidim, 1925

sentation and infectious enthusiasm had a profound effect on the Yabloner Rebbe and on many of his chassidim.

The Rebbe immediately called together a gathering of all his followers, during which he forcefully advocated for the Yabloner sect to immediately begin preparing to move to Palestine.

Initially, he suggested, the less welloff members of the sect would go together with him and lay the necessary groundwork. The purchase of the land and all the initial expenses would be funded by the wealthier members of the community, who would ultimately join the new settlement once everything was set up.

The response to this vision in Jabłonna was jubilant and euphoric. It was as if the Messianic era had arrived. Those who were planning to travel with the Rebbe to Palestine began to prepare for the trip, while the Rebbe himself feverishly fundraised among his followers and from anyone who had an affiliation to the Kuzmir chassidic groups. He also sought the blessing of senior chassidic leaders, to boost the concept of large-scale chas-

sidic immigration to Palestine and to reassure his own followers that they were doing the right thing.

But the Yabloner Rebbe encountered unexpected disapproval at a meeting with the esteemed leader of the Gur chassidic sect, Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter. Known as the Gerrer Rebbe, Rabbi Alter presided over tens of thousands of chassidim in Poland – many of whom were themselves in prominent leadership positions – and he was widely acknowledged as one of the principal leaders of European Orthodoxy. Although the predominant view among the chassidic leadership was strongly anti-Zionist, Rabbi Alter was less hostile towards the new realities in Palestine and was even supportive of Orthodox immigration, in marked contrast to many of the chassidic rabbis at the time who considered any action by Orthodox Jews which might be interpreted as tacit support for Zionist ideals as catastrophic. But the meeting did not go as planned. After probing the Yabloner on every aspect of the proposed project, the Gerrer Rebbe dismissed it as

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The shul in Kfar Hasidim, 1934-1939

a terrible idea.

“Don’t take any money or help from the secular Zionists,” he warned ominously. “They do not have your interests at heart and any financial dependence on them will be an utter disaster.”

Surprised by the harsh advice, the Yabloner Rebbe was still determined to carry out his plans. Within months he was on a boat to Haifa with a couple of hundred Yabloner chassidim, armed with cash from hundreds more who wanted to own some holy land and to participate in this unique endeavor.

Traveling with him on the boat was Rabbi Yisrael Eliezer Hopstein, who was en route to Palestine with a group of Kozhnitz followers. The two rabbis decided to join forces and build a chassidic settlement together.

They arrived in Palestine, where they were feted by Zionist officials.

Although they were offered land near Tel Aviv, the Yabloner Rebbe preferred the mountains overlooking the Jezreel Valley close to Haifa and asked the Jewish Agency and JNF to help him purchase land in this area.

The principal landowners in the Jezreel Valley were the Sursuks of Beirut, one of the most prominent Christian families in Lebanon. At one time they had planned to build a railway line across the valley, and the legendary British diplomat and Christian philosemite, Sir Laurence Oliphant, had worked hard to find investors to

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The Yabloner Rebbe’s declaration of intention, 1942

fund the construction but the plans were never realized. The land had been in the Sursuk family for generations, tenanted by Arab farmers who paid for the right to work the land. But these farmers had no legal rights to the land, and the British authorities confirmed that the Sursuks could sell land to JNF without giving notice to Arab residents, who could be summarily evicted without compensation.

With the help of JNF and the legendary Zionist land purchaser, Yehoshua Hankin, several thousand acres were purchased, encompassing the Arab villages of Sheikh Abreik, El Harbaj and El Harchieh. The Arab residents were given compensation to vacate the land, and the two chassidic groups began building homes on a hill overlooking the Jezreel Valley and the Kishon River.

The Yabloner Rebbe had decided to call his section of the village Nachalat Yaakov, after his late father, while the Kozhnitz neighborhood was called Avodat Yisrael (“Labor of Israel”), a reference to the founder of the Kozhnitz dynasty, R’ Yisrael Hopstein, the Maggid of Kozienice, whose published work was also called Avodat Yisrael.

The Rebbe reached a financial arrangement with JNF, who agreed to treat the down payment for the land as a loan, to be repaid to the 90 families after two years, once the settlement was up and running and on condition that the families remained.

The deposit amounted to a quarter of all the monies the group had brought with them from Poland, but both JNF and the Rebbe were confident that sufficient funds remained to set up the settlement, which they agreed would be a dairy farm.

High-profile visitors flocked to the new settlement to see the remarkable phenomenon of chassidic Zionist farmers for themselves. Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook, Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Palestine, visited the settlement together with his Sephardic counterpart, R’ Yaakov Meir, and a large delegation of Jerusalem rabbis.

Zionist philosopher, Achad Ha’am, was another notable visitor during his last visit to Palestine. He was joined by the celebrated Zionist writers Yehoshua Ravnitzky and Chaim Bialik.

The future president of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, even visited with Lord Balfour, whose 1917 declaration had been the catalyst which led to the British control of Palestine along with the new wave of immigrants after World War I. Weizmann, in his role as head of the Jewish Agency, had been particularly critical of Polish immigrants who refused to work the land and particularly the Orthodox, who set themselves up in new urban enclaves, such as Bnei Brak. His visit to the Yabloner Rebbe’s village and farm was deliberately promoted and widely publicized to highlight the chassidic pioneer’s dedication

to the Zionist ideal so that it might act as an example to others.

N

ot everyone was happy with all the attention the Yabloner Rebbe was getting. The secular Zionist movement had been running intensive training programs for pioneer settlers for years and were horrified that the Zionist leadership was tripping over itself to accommodate untrained – and in their eyes, untrainable – chassidic immigrants. David Ben-Gurion, who headed the powerful Histadrut trade union umbrella organization, scathingly attacked those who were promoting the chassidic farming community. “How dare these chassidim from Jabłonna and Kozhnitz be allowed to immigrate to Eretz Yisrael and waste precious land,” he railed during his keynote speech to the Zionist Congress in Vienna in 1925, adding, “if they must come, let them settle in Tel Aviv and leave the real work to people who know what they are doing.”

Ben-Gurion had a point. The 90 families who had joined the Rebbe in Palestine were comprised of all ages, including elderly grandparents, nursing mothers, and little children, and none of the adult men had any training in construction or dairy farming.

Rose-tinted idealism would only carry them so far; ultimately the community would need to become self-supporting if it was to become the beacon of Orthodox agricultural immigration that

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its promoters hoped.

Conscious of the animosity the project was generating, in 1926 JNF published a gushing pamphlet, “Chassidim Alu El Ha’aretz” (The Chassidim Have Gone up to the Land). The short pamphlet described the ethereal atmosphere of spending Shabbat in the pioneer chassidic village. Singing, dancing, spirituality—all in the setting of a utopian agrarian community devoted to turning the barren landscape of the Holy Land into a “land flowing with milk and honey.” The Yabloner Rebbe featured prominently in the pamphlet and was described as the engine of the enterprise, working from the early morning until late at night, focused on the minutest details, and available for every single one of his devoted followers, young and old, as they struggled to turn the dream into a reality.

Tragically, however, whatever could have gone wrong went wrong.

The former Arab tenant farmers refused to leave their land and villages, despite the compensation they had received. There was heavy rain and the Kishon River overflowed, flooding the valley and turning it into an unmanageable swamp. The chassidim made a vain attempt to drain the swamp, but to no avail. Soon the water-sodden land was infested with mosquitoes; malaria broke out among the settlers; and some of them succumbed to the sickness and died.

The bridge they had built over the Kishon River was wrecked by Bedouins who were camping locally. The heavy rain continued, and the swamp grew. Meanwhile, the Arabs killed one of the cows and threw it into the well, contaminating the fresh water supply.

Venomous snakes hidden among the ubiquitous thorns bit farm workers, killing more than one. Bedouin marauders murdered some of the newcomers. Money was scarce, and the dairy farm seemed unable to make ends meet. Despite the initial enthusiastic moral and financial support from Yabloner chassidim in Poland that continued after they arrived, funding from abroad slowly dwindled and then dried up completely, and soon the chassidim were literally starving.

In 1928, the Rebbe went to the United States, where he visited various communities to raise money for the

The Yabloner Rebbe with his followers and Israeli author Achad Ha’am and other visitors

settlement. Although he was warmly welcomed wherever he went, he had limited success finding philanthropic support and returned emptyhanded.

In desperation, the Yabloner Rebbe turned to the Zionist organizations for help but soon discovered that they were going through their own challenges. Palestine was experiencing a serious recession, and financial support from Zionist philanthropists in Europe and the United States had decreased. Nevertheless, the Rebbe was unrelenting and would not let the mounting challenges destroy his dream, nor would he let the difficulties devastate the lives of all those who had joined him to realize it.

“We don’t have any money, and we are drowning in difficulties,” the Rebbe told Zionist officials when they met, “but we have come this far, and we are not giving up now.”

The JNF and Jewish Agency administrators sat there stony-faced.

This enterprise was no longer the propaganda vehicle of 1925, and they were in no mood to waste time or money on a project that was by all measures an unmitigated disaster.

But the Yabloner Rebbe had a plan up his sleeve. He would arrange for a skilled group of Hapoel HaMizrachi religious Zionist farmworkers to be brought in, he told them, to train and work alongside the Polish chassidim.

Each of the new farmworkers would be given their own plot of land to build a home, free of charge, in addition to some land that they could farm for themselves. The mountaintop village would move down into the valley, which would give farmers easier

access to the farms, and the Rebbe would trade excess land with JNF and the Jewish Agency for food and other supplies.

“We may not have any money to give you,” he told the Zionist officials, “but we have plenty of land – far more than we need to make our community successful. We can give JNF land in exchange for whatever is needed to turn our project into a success.”

Suddenly the Yabloner Rebbe became emotional, as he explained what was at stake. “Please don’t abandon us to our fate,” he pleaded. “My chassidim are dying, and I need to save them!”

Ultimately the two sides reached an agreement. The Zionist administrators insisted that the elderly and infirm would have to return to Poland until everything was sorted out, as they were a drain on resources. Secondly, the dairy farm would need to close and make way for orchards and crops. Thirdly, the land would have to be signed over to JNF ownership, pending future developments. The Yabloner Rebbe reluctantly agreed to all of these conditions.

In exchange, the Jewish Agency provided the settlers with a stipend, while JNF took care of accumulated debts. The two chassidic branches of the settlement were combined into a single entity called Kfar Chassidim (Village of Chassidim), and they were also joined by a third group, religious Zionists from Germany and Holland who had trained at Hachshara camps in Europe, recruited to change the farming community’s fortunes for the better.

In May 1930 work was finished on

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a paved road connecting Kfar Chassidim to the Haifa-Nazareth highway.

The Rebbe immediately arranged for those chassidim who were not working on the farms to obtain jobs in Haifa, and a commuter bus was organized to pick them up and drop them back each day – a remarkable innovation for the time.

Sadly, although matters had improved for residents of Kfar Chassidim, the Yabloner Rebbe soon found himself in the midst of a financial scandal. With the situation for Jews in Poland rapidly deteriorating, especially after 1935, chassidim from Jabłonna began turning up in Palestine, expecting to take possession of the plots of land they had paid for over a decade earlier. Since the Yabloner Rebbe was unable to give them any land nor refund their money, they accused him of being a thief. He begged them to understand that their land had been used to help the settlement survive, but in their eyes the Rebbe had taken their money and not given them what he promised in return.

After the outbreak of the Arab Revolt in 1936, and the increasing violence against Jews in Palestine, longtime residents of Kfar Chassidim also demanded money from the Rebbe so that they could go back to their families in Poland. But he had no money for them either. Kfar Chassidim was just beginning to pay for itself; there was no money to spare. With outstanding debts to JNF and the Jewish Agency and the threat that they would repossess land and homes in Kfar Chassidim, while at the same time battling accusations of theft from his own followers, the Yabloner Rebbe traveled to the United States in 1938 to see if he could interest some wealthy Zionist Jews to offer him financial support.

He would not return to Kfar Chassidim for over 40 years.

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he rebbe arrived in New York, and moved in with his niece, Arella Mezrich, daughter of his sister Rivka Grafstein, who had tragically died in 1931 after being bitten by a snake. Arella was raised in Kfar Chassidim, but some years earlier had decided to leave for the United States.

In 1935 she arrived in New York, and soon afterwards married Mordechai Mezrich, an immigrant from Russia.

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The Mezrich family had a bag-manufacturing business based on the East Coast and were moderately prosperous. The Yabloner Rebbe used the Mezrich home as his base and began visiting Orthodox communities sympathetic to the Zionist cause to generate support for the expansion of Kfar Chassidim. To broaden his appeal, he partnered with the Federation of Polish Jews in America, an organization founded in 1908 to assist Polish Jews who had settled there but which more recently had started to provide relief for Polish Jews in distress. By the late 1930s anti-Semitism in Poland had reached a new peak, fully enabled by the Polish government via legislation and also by a deliberate policy of refusing to rein in anti-Jewish violence.

This situation motivated the federation to offer their full support for the Rebbe’s plans to bring Polish Jews to Palestine.

In July 1939, the New York Daily News reported the purchase of 400 acres of land in Palestine by the federation for the settlement of 500 Jewish families from Poland. The report declared that the “colonists” who would move to Palestine from Poland would be “extended credit for building houses and other necessities” and added that the project was “under the direction of Rabbi Ezekiel Taub of Palestine,” assisted by a special committee of the federation.

Tragically, the ambitious plans never had the chance to materialize.

Two months later, the German army marched into Poland, and the Yabloner Rebbe found himself stuck in the United States as a war refugee. He immediately abandoned his fundraising campaign and attempted to volunteer for the war effort. At first he attempted to join the army and the navy, but they were not particularly interested in the idea of conscripting a Polish chassidic Jew in his mid-40s. Undaunted by this rejection, the Rebbe began to look for construction work in the military-supplies industry that was quickly gathering pace during the early months of the war thanks to the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized the transfer of arms and defense materials to “the government of any country whose defense the President deem[ed] vital to the defense of the United States.”

As the war in Europe escalated,

the Yabloner Rebbe moved out west, where he found work in California shipyards. In 1942, The Jewish Floridian reported that the Rebbe was working as a riveter at a shipyard in San Francisco. A few months later the same newspaper reported that he had moved to Los Angeles, where he had found work as a designing engineer in another shipyard. “The Rebbe solves the problem of observing the Sabbaths without losing hours,” the paper reported, “by working overtime on weekdays.”

In June 1942, the BBC broadcast a report claiming that over 700,000 Polish Jews had been deliberately and systematically exterminated by the Nazis. By November American newspapers had confirmed the slaughter but revealed that the BBC had underestimated the true magnitude of the genocide. Millions of European Jews had been murdered by the Nazis, they reported, and the grisly rumors that had been emerging from the European continent for over a year were all true.

who had family in Nazi-controlled countries, or in countries with ties to Nazi Germany, were panic stricken, and across the world they desperately lobbied the Allied leadership to attempt something – anything! – that would bring the relentless killing to a halt. But besides empty declarations, and meaningless platitudes, nothing was done and the slaughter continued.

In January 1944, under pressure from his Jewish-born secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, President Roosevelt withdrew the State Department from any role relating to the Nazi murder of Jews and instead he created the War Refugee Board, under his personal authority, to address the issue. In November 1944, the board published a one-page announcement that confirmed both the existence of the sprawling operational death facility at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the extermination of the vast majority of European Jewry.

For Polish-born Jews, the board report was a devastating bombshell.

“Please don’t abandon us to our fate,” he pleaded. “My chassidim are dying, and I need to save them!”

These emerging details of the Holocaust had been reliably relayed to the press via Gerhart Riegner, the World Jewish Congress representative in Switzerland, who sent a series of communications to Rabbi Stephen Wise through the U.S. State Department.

Initially the State Department tried to suppress the information, which officials considered exaggerated and sensationalist, but after conducting their own independent investigation the information was finally released to the public and the full horror of the Holocaust was confirmed.

Jewish communities in Allied countries across the world held rallies, prayer days and vigils. Wednesday, December 2, 1942 was declared an international day of mourning. Jews

It substantiated once and for all what they had most feared, namely that all the Jews of Poland were dead – gassed, shot, burned – murdered like animals in death camps and killing fields. Before the war Poland had been home to the most vibrant and most populous Jewish community in the world. Now that community was gone, wiped out.

For the Yabloner Rebbe, erstwhile rabbi of Jabłonna near Warsaw, the emerging news of the Holocaust came as a double blow. Besides the fact that the entire Jabłonna community had been obliterated along with the rest of Polish Jewry, there were those – including the extended families of many of the Kfar Chassidim pioneers – whom he had sent back from Palestine to Poland because they served no

useful purpose in the farming settlement and were a pointless drain on its resources. This had been a non-negotiable condition for the continued involvement of JNF and the Jewish Agency with the chassidic settlement, and however reluctant the Rebbe may have been to go along with it, he had allowed it to happen. In his own mind the Rebbe began to believe that the deaths of those who had gone back to Poland were his fault.

The pain was overwhelming. So many people’s lives had been lost or devastated – and he, Yechezkel Taub, had been the agent of their destruction. His entire chassidic sect had been wiped out, and those who remained alive in Kfar Chassidim despised him for his role in wrecking their lives.

In late 1944, as the full weight of his distressing predicament became clear and his questions for the Almighty grew and kept on growing, the Yabloner Rebbe decided on a drastic course of action. Without chassidim, he decided to himself, he was no longer a Rebbe – a Rebbe has to have chassidim, and his chassidim were gone.

Meanwhile, his Kfar Chassidim project in Palestine was an utter failure – whoever remained there certainly didn’t need him, and it was more than likely that they didn’t want him either.

The best thing for him to do, he concluded, would be to disappear into oblivion in the United States of America, like millions of other faceless immigrants who had done the same.

And just like that, one day, Rabbi Yechezkel Taub – the revered Yabloner Rebbe, scion of the Kuzmir chassidic dynasty, at one time leader of thousands of devoted followers, and trailblazing Orthodox Zionist settler – cut off his sidelocks, shaved off his beard, quietly changed his name, and filed immigration papers to become a naturalized citizen of the United States.

On August 1, 1945, two non-Jewish acquaintances, Margaret Depew, a hotel manageress, and Albert Crapo, a rigger, both vouched that they had known “Chaskiel Taub” since December 1944 as a “man of good moral character” and then witnessed him take the oath of allegiance, after which he was confirmed as a U.S. citizen. His naturalization papers referred to him as “George Ezekiel Taub Nagel.” He avoided all contact with the Jewish

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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George Nagel

community of Los Angeles, and severed all contact with Kfar Chassidim, except for secretive communications with his family, who referred to him by the codename “Uncle Dod,” combining the English and Hebrew words for uncle. For all intents and purposes, the Yabloner Rebbe was no more, replaced by an urbane Polish immigrant with slicked-back hair and a sad, faraway look in his eyes.

W

ith World War II over, the shipyard no longer needed George Nagel, but his many years working in construction and engineering would not go to waste. Southern California was in the midst of a massive construction boom, particularly in the San Fernando Valley adjacent to Los Angeles. The small suburban communities which had previously dotted the valley landscape suddenly blossomed and bloomed, rapidly overtaking the citrus orchards and farms that had dominated the area during the early decades of the 20th century.

Between the ever-expanding defense, space, and aircraft industries located in Southern California, there was a constant supply of new job opportunities, and these industries in turn attracted electronics companies, the atomic energy industry, and of course companies specializing in research and development. Add to all these the requirement for services catering to the new residents and their families with all the associated jobs, and

the need for new housing was urgent.

Meeting that need could be extremely profitable.

George Nagel immediately seized his opportunity. He borrowed money to buy plots of land, on which he constructed the type of modest homes

land and had lost their entire families in the Holocaust. Some of the survivors, like the Kornwassers, knew who George really was, but at his request they kept his identity a closely guarded secret.

Another one of George’s friends in

In his own mind the Rebbe began to believe that the deaths of those who had gone back to Poland were his fault. that were becoming ubiquitous across the valley. His knowledge of construction had its origins in the difficult, hands-on work he had supervised during the early years at Kfar Chassidim, and this experience ensured that his development projects were all successful, quickly making him a wealthy man with an ever-expanding empire of development projects.

Occasionally he would partner on a project with one or more of the enterprising group of Orthodox Jewish Holocaust survivors who had landed in the Fairfax area of Los Angeles, particularly the Kornwasser brothers, Mottel and Yankel. The Kornwassers were originally from Sosnowiec in Po-

the strictly Orthodox community was Yidel Rottenberg, son of the Kossonye Rebbe of Kleinwardein, Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Rottenberg, who immigrated to the United States from Hungary in the early 1930s and moved to Los Angeles in 1937 to take advantage of the mild climate, which alleviated the symptoms of his chronic asthma.

Yidel was a shochet and a charming conversationalist. His brother, Rabbi Ephraim Asher Rottenberg, presided over a tiny chassidic synagogue in Fairfax, but Yidel frequented Rabbi Yitzchak Pinchas Ginsburg’s synagogue, which was close by. He encouraged George to join him there, and on rare occasions George relented and

came to the shul – but only on condition that no one would be told who he really was.

Truthfully, no one gave him a second glance. He was just another lost soul of European origin who had somehow landed in Los Angeles, no longer religious but yearning for an occasional connection with the traditional Jewish life of their youth. There were dozens of such visitors at the tiny Fairfax synagogues all the time, and no one pried into their backgrounds or their current situations; after all, everyone had plenty of their own baggage to be concerned with.

When the Sadiger-Przemyśl Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Sholom Yosef Friedman, visited Los Angeles in the 1950s, he presided over a gathering of local Los Angeles chassidim one Saturday night at Rabbi Ginsburg’s synagogue, and Yidel Rottenberg persuaded George to attend. At the time, Rabbi Friedman was one of the foremost chassidic rabbinic personalities in the world, a prestigious leader from a prestigious dynasty, and a visit from someone of his caliber was extremely unusual.

There was quite a crowd at Rabbi Ginsburg’s synagogue to share in the Rebbe’s post-Shabbat meal – considered a special privilege in Chassidic circles – but there were not hundreds of people, as there would certainly have been in New York, or in Europe before the war, where there might even have been thousands. Los Angeles had

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019 The TheJewish JewishHome Home| OCTOBER | OCTOBER29, 29,2015 2015

At his graduation at 80 years of age

one when I was a child. Now, that was a real tisch, with proper singing, and a real spiritual atmosphere that uplifted everyone there. Not like this one.” And with that he got up and left.

Little did the man know that directly across the table from where he had been sitting, listening to every word, was the Yabloner Rebbe himself – the very man who had inspired him and hundreds of others all those years ago – now a nondescript, cleanshaven, nonobservant Jew, who built cheap homes in the valley. But George said nothing, and neither did Yidel Rottenberg.

T The LA Times, November 13, 1972

no real chassidim, just a small handful of Holocaust survivors who had been brought up chassidic and who were nostalgic for a taste of their youth.

The Sadiger-Przemyśl Rebbe went through the motions for them, but some of those who came were very disappointed.

“You call this a tisch?” one of them said to his friend, within earshot of George and Yidel.

“This is a joke. A shadow of what a real tisch should look like,” he continued. “I remember the tisch of the Yabloner Rebbe – my father took me to

he California economy took a nosedive in the late 1960s, and unemployment began to climb.

Bank deregulation had changed the dynamics for savings-and-loan institutions. East Coast and Midwest money, which had previously flowed generously in California’s direction as a result of higher interest rates for savings in California, now stayed at home, as the interest rates in New York and Chicago began to match those in California. Bank loans were consequently less readily available for real estate speculators. The housing boom was slowing down.

A couple of years earlier, George had decided to invest in an apartment complex development project, which was quite an upgrade from his previous focus on subdividing small lots to build cheap single-family homes.

As the economy deteriorated, George discovered he was in over his head.

Substandard contractors did not meet deadlines, and when the apartments were finally ready, they looked terrible and didn’t sell. Eventually the banks foreclosed and took possession of the apartments. George was almost completely wiped out financially. Suddenly, without any warning, George was taken ill and rushed to hospital. It took weeks for him to be properly diagnosed and treated. In his 70s, and acutely aware that both his father and paternal grandfather had died young, he did not believe he would ever make it out of the hospital alive.

As he lay sick in hospital, George was regularly visited by his great-nephew, Ehud Yonay. Ehud was the grandson of his older sister, Michal Rachel, whose daughter Erella had married Ehud’s father, Mordechai, the rebellious son of an ultra-Orthodox Russian Jewish pioneer who had joined the Kfar Chassidim settlement soon after it was founded. The very secular Mordechai was considered scandalous by the devout chassidim of Kfar Chassidim. His son Ehud, who was also not observant, had moved to California after his army service to become a journalist for California Magazine. It was in California that Ehud met his great-uncle for the first time. They spent a lot of time together, becoming very close. As soon as Ehud heard that George was in hospital, he rushed over to see him. As the weeks

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went by, Ehud dropped in regularly to spend time with George in an effort to cheer him up.

“Why don’t you come back to Israel?” he asked George. “What are you still doing here in America by yourself, with no family?”

“I can’t go back,” George replied.

“I messed up their lives, and they all think I stole their money. There’s no way I could ever go back. Forget it.

That part of my life is done.”

“How about you just come back for a visit?” Ehud suggested.

George looked at his nephew. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

But Ehud wouldn’t relent. The topic kept coming up. No one cared about the past, Ehud maintained; life had moved on. But George wasn’t convinced. After decades of self-imposed exile, he just could not see himself returning to Kfar Chassidim, the source of so much painful anguish and trauma.

“So what are you going to do if you get better and get out of the hospital?” asked Ehud.

“I’m not getting better so fast,” said George, “and maybe I’ll never get out – except in a box.”

“Don’t be so morbid! Don’t be silly!

What if you do get better? Will you go back into business?”

“Never!” said George emphatically.

“Then what?” The journalist in Ehud could not leave a question unanswered.

“I think I want to go to college and study psychology.”

Ehud laughed. “Are you kidding?

College? Psychology? Why don’t you just come home to Israel?”

George sighed. “All my life I’ve been interested in studying psychology. I’ve got just about enough money to live, so if I don’t die in hospital I’m going to apply to university and study psychology. That’s what I want to do.”

George looked across at Ehud, his face resolute and determined. Ehud shrugged his shoulders. The idea seemed utterly preposterous. But as soon as George was discharged from hospital he applied to San Fernando Valley State College, did his admissions interviews, and enrolled as a psychology undergraduate. Rather than rent an apartment in Northridge, near the college campus, he opted to live in the dorms with all the students.

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George was in his element; it was as if he had been reborn. His sole interest was learning, and he spent most of his time in the library, reading, writing, researching. He still retained a few investment properties, through which he was able to modestly support himself, but he refused to get involved in any business-related activities – that part of his life was over. He had come to the realization that every day he had left was precious, and he wasn’t going to waste any of his remaining time trying to make money, which he realized he didn’t need and would never use.

Before long George had become a minor celebrity at the college, which in 1972 was renamed California State University Northridge (CSUN).

Newspapers reported on the veteran student dorming alongside anti-war protesting students, many of whom adopted him as a surrogate grandfather. George was a good listener, and always happy to offer advice, and countless students beat a path to his door. But none of them knew who George really was. He had stripped his backstory to the most basic information so that no questions were asked.

He told everyone that he had arrived in the United States via Palestine just before World War II – a poor refugee with no wife or children, and no money or prospects. He was the embodiment of the American Dream – he had become a successful businessman and now wanted to spend the remainder of his life studying, catching up on all the time he had lost in his younger years, educating himself in subjects that had

always interested him but for which he had never had the time.

George was joined at CSUN by his young “relative,” Joseph Chudy, nephew by marriage of his niece Arella Mezrich. The Chudy family lived in California, having moved there in the 1940s, and they treated George like family. Joseph was particularly close to George, but he, too, knew nothing about the old man’s true background.

The only person who knew anything about the unique history of the Yabloner Rebbe and his alter ego, George Nagel, was his great-nephew, Ehud.

In 1975, George T. Nagel graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology. It was a landmark event, and Ehud believed that with the education bug out of his system George would finally agree to come back to Kfar Chassidim. Immediately after the graduation, Ehud brought up the subject again. It was time to visit Israel. Unexpectedly, George was more open to the idea than ever before, and he promised Ehud that he would visit Kfar Chassidim at some point very soon.

But he was still anxious. “What will I do if they all still hate me? If they treat me with contempt? If they still think I’m a thief?” he asked Ehud.

“What’s the big deal?” Ehud replied. “If you’re not comfortable in Kfar Chassidim, you’ll take a taxi to Haifa, stay in a hotel, and take the next flight back to L.A.” George shook his head. He still wasn’t sure.

“I’m not moving back – you know that,” he said.

Ehud smiled. “We’ll see.”

G

eorge was not quite ready yet. He had decided to go for a master’s degree, but rather than attend classes and take exams, he contributed volunteer hours at a drug-rehabilitation facility, where he counseled recovering drug addicts from the margins of society. He carefully documented each case, offering his candid account of his encounters and his reflections. The final result was a book, Paradise Cove – They Escaped the Cuckoo’s Nest, a reference to the multiple Academy Award-winning movie of 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In the movie, a group of patients at a mental health facility are confined there by fear and intimidation. In George’s dissertation, he eases people out of their mental jails and introduces them back into society.

George had come full circle. Suddenly he was back in his role as a chassidic Rebbe, even if he did not realize it himself. He was helping people to improve their lives by healing them, teaching them, and bringing the best out in them. In this guise he was no longer George Nagel, the immigrant businessman escaping from his miserable past; instead he was the Yabloner Rebbe, giving people with no hope a better vision of the future.

It was 1978, and he was ready to return to Kfar Chassidim. He told Ehud that he had booked a roundtrip ticket to Israel and the dates. Quietly, without letting George know, Ehud informed his mother that her uncle was coming back.

The day arrived, and George landed at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.

A car was waiting to pick him up for the one-and-a-half-hour ride to Kfar Chassidim. The car drove through the entrance of the village and stopped at the nondescript house on Rechov Hameyasdim where George’s niece Erella lived with her husband, Mordechai. He hadn’t seen her for 40 years.

Erella ran over to George and hugged him. “Welcome home, Uncle!” she bubbled, “we have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise?” He wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of a surprise.

“Yes,” she replied, “but we need to drive up the road to the social hall.

There are a few people there who are waiting to meet you.”

They arrived at the hall, which was packed with hundreds of people who had gathered to meet the man who had put Kfar Chassidim on the map.

Old and young, religious and secular –everyone connected to the village was there. A seat at the front was left empty for George. As a hush descended, he slowly made his way toward his seat and sat down under the large welcome sign that adorned the front wall.

An elderly man stood up and turned towards George.

“Rebbe, do you remember me?” he asked.

George looked at him, trying to figure out who he was.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Are you Chaimke? Chaimke Geldfarb?”

Chaimke smiled. “Yes, Rebbe, it’s me.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “On behalf of all the residents of our Kfar, I want to welcome you back home. You were probably nervous to

The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015 The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

come here. You probably think we are angry with you. You probably think that because you brought us here from Poland, away from our homes, away from our families, to build your dream, not ours. And then it all went wrong, so you think we are angry that it all went wrong. But Rebbe, if that’s what you think, you’re mistaken. Because Rebbe, you saved our lives – if it were not for you, we would all have been killed by the Nazis.”

“Look over there …” Chaimke pointed toward a group of people in the middle of the hall. “That’s my son with his wife and children, and next to him my two daughters with their husbands and children. My parents, uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, and their children – all murdered by the Nazis. But we came with you, Rebbe.

We built this place. We founded this village. We survived. And you were the one who saved our lives. And for that we thank you. Thank you for our lives and for the lives of our children and grandchildren. We can never thank you enough.”

Chaimke sat down, and an old woman rose to speak.

“Rebbe, do you remember me?”

George looked carefully at her.

“Sheindel, is that you?”

“Sheindel, yes, but now they call me Shoshana.”

Sheindel had a lump in her throat as she spoke, and she struggled to get the words out. “Rebbe, Rebbe, where have you been for so many years? We missed you! We needed you! Without you we would all be dead, and we would not have had our beautiful lives in our beautiful Israel. Why did you leave? Everything turned out OK in the end. Look at us, look at how lucky we are. We escaped from the murderers and built our own homes in G-d’s promised land. You said we could do it, and we did it.”

Sheindel began weeping. Tears flowed down her cheeks, as her daughter next to her put an arm around her shoulder.

“Rebbe, come home,” Sheindel sobbed. “You’ve been gone for far too long. It’s time to come home.”

There was dead silence, besides Sheindel’s muffled sobs. George looked around the hall. Everyone was looking at him. He looked down at his hands, and then at the floor. Slowly he

got to his feet.

“My friends, my dear, dear friends,” he began, “I am so moved by this warm welcome. I don’t have very much to say. I have missed this place and all of you so much for all these years. I never understood how much this place meant to me, and how much I meant to you – until now. I never thought about what you just said. I never thought about the fact that I saved your lives, only about all the lives that were lost. I never thought about what I gave you, only about what I took away from you. But now

After more than 40 years away, he was finally back living in Kfar Chassidim, loved and valued. It was at this point that George Nagel returned to his roots, changing his name back to Yechezkel Taub. Moreover, he became the revered Yabloner Rebbe once again. He grew back his beard and sidelocks, his yarmulke returned, and so did his religious observance. The Rebbe was given a seat at the front of the Kfar Chassidim synagogue, where he prayed regularly, and several times a week groups of eager youngsters would gather on a patch of land

“Rebbe, come home,” Sheindel sobbed. “You’ve been gone for far too long. It’s time to come home.” it’s all become clear.”

He paused for a few seconds. You could have heard a pin drop. Then George whispered, slowly, deliberately, “It’s time. I’m ready. I’m coming home. I’m ready. I’m coming home,” and he sat down.

There was a moment of silence, and suddenly the hall erupted in applause. Everyone rose to their feet and applauded. It went on and on, as George made his way through the hall and shook everyone’s hand, smiling broadly. The Yabloner Rebbe had returned to Kfar Chassidim, and now he was going to move back.

G

eorge flew back to Los Angeles to wrap up his affairs and prepare for the move to Israel. But sorting everything out took him longer than expected. Although he had wanted to finish his master’s at CSUN, he soon realized that this was not going to happen and that he would have to make the move to Israel before he became too old. Over the next couple of years George visited Israel for extended periods, until, in November 1981, he gave away his last few possessions and flew off to Israel to settle there for good. He had just turned 86.

outside the house in which the Rebbe lived, and he taught them Torah and told them stories of their heritage in the chassidic tradition.

Very few people knew about his return to Israel, and truthfully, few would have cared. The pioneering challenges of Palestine in the 1920s and ’30s were a distant memory, replaced by the flourishing and vibrant State of Israel. The Yabloner Rebbe was a relic of the difficult past best left forgotten, of interest to no one outside his own family and the residents of Kfar Chassidim.

Even Kfar Chassidim had changed substantially since those early days, with the addition of a new ultra-Orthodox neighborhood – Kfar Chassidim Bet – home to an internationally renowned yeshiva, ironically of the non-chassidic Lithuanian persuasion.

But the lack of interest in his return to Israel didn’t bother the Rebbe at all.

He was not interested in attracting attention to himself. After more than four decades living under a pseudonym in Los Angeles, any publicity would only have dredged up unnecessary attention and potentially unpleasant stories and dormant resentments.

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In early 1986, the Rebbe began to weaken and decline, and he passed away peacefully on May 22. He was 90 years old. The funeral was modest, attended by the residents of Kfar Chassidim, with a low-key service.

The Rebbe was buried in the heart of the cemetery, among the graves of all those who had followed him from Europe to create a chassidic settlement in Eretz Yisrael over 60 years earlier.

Although things had not turned out quite as planned, together they had dared to dream and to persevere.

Kfar Chassidim had endured despite the many hardships and challenges, and despite the absence of its foremost activist and leader for so many years. But he had ended his life in their midst, closing the circle that had begun in 1924.

The Rebbe’s headstone was installed within a month of his burial, as is the custom in Israel. The inscription focused on the Rebbe’s distinguished lineage and his single greatest achievement: Here lies Grand Rabbi Yechezkel Taub, the “Rebbe of Yablona,” son of Grand Rabbi Yaakov Taub.

Last scion of the dynasty that began with Grand Rabbi Yechezkel of Kuzmir, disciple of the Seer of Lublin … in 5685 he led his chassidim up to Eretz Yisrael where he redeemed the lands of Harbaj, Harchieh and Sheikh Abreik.

Founder of Nachalat Yaakov, later known as Kfar Chassidim.

His remarkable trajectory from revered Polish Chassidic leader, to Zionist pioneer, to reviled failure, to war refugee, to shipyard worker, to successful real estate developer, to bankruptcy, to geriatric college student, and back to his roots as a revered chassidic Rebbe is surely one of the most astonishing Jewish stories of the modern era.

This story originally appeared in Tablet Magazine, at tabletmag.com, and is reprinted with permission.

Rabbi Pini Dunner is the rabbi at the Beverly Hills Synagogue. His first book, Mavericks, Mystics & False Messiahs: Episodes From the Margins of Jewish History, published by The Toby Press, is now available on Amazon and in Jewish bookstores.

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Dating Dialogue

What Would You Do If… Moderated by Jennifer Mann, LCSW of The Navidaters

Dear Navidaters,

I’ve been dating Cynthia for the past few months. We’re together a lot, and I’m seeing her in various situations. What I’ve noticed, which is really disturbing to me, is that she talks one way to her parents and siblings and talks completely differently to me and her friends. I didn’t notice this at first, but I think once she got comfortable with me, I was able to see her true essence.

In other words, let’s say we are out on a date and her mother calls, she’ll pick up the phone with an almost exasperated tone and she’ll say something like, “What is it?” with a frustrated, “you’re annoying me” type of edge to her voice.

Five minutes later, a friend of hers might call and she’ll pick up the phone sounding completely different, all perky and excited to hear from her. It’s almost like two different people are answering the phone.

By the way, so that none of the panelists get distracted over this part of it, Cynthia didn’t keep her phone on when we first started dating. But at this point, after we’ve been dating for a while, we’re together a lot and she does answer the phone, which I think is fine and hardly the issue.

I mentioned this to my mother, because I found it very confusing, and my mother took it as a red flag. Her opinion is that if I marry Cynthia, someday I can expect her to use the same tone with me that she uses with all her family members. And that now, since I’m not yet a family member, she’s on her best behavior and puts on her “friend voice.” Does this make any sense? Is this a red flag?

I come from a family of respectful individuals, where people talk just as politely to family members as they do to friends and strangers and that’s the way I expect my married life to be. Should I assume that Cynthia doesn’t value respect in the same way that I do and move on, despite the fact that we do share many interests and goals and usually have a great time together?

Disclaimer: This column is not intended to diagnose or otherwise conclude resolutions to any questions.

Our intention is not to offer any definitive

conclusions to any particular question, rather offer areas of exploration for the author and reader. Due to the nature of the column receiving only a short snapshot of an issue, without the benefit of an actual discussion, the panel’s role is to offer a range of possibilities. We hope to open up meaningful dialogue and individual exploration.

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The Panel The Rebbetzin Rebbetzin Faigie Horowitz, M.S. agree with Mom. Communicating politely to friends and a dating partner and not very pleasantly to family and strangers is a red flag. It indicates lack of respect and bad middos.

One of the important reasons people date for a long time is to discover different layers of the person and how they deal with daily and occasional stresses and problems. It’s easy to be on your best behavior and focus on the other person you are trying to impress when you go out together one on one.

That’s why being in different social, group and dating situations (casual, formal, outdoors, indoors, etc.) where you encounter all kinds of people and

I

waits, accidents, and challenges together is very helpful. Unpredictable settings and contexts allow a person’s values, behaviors and coping strategies to emerge.

I am confused, however, by your confusion. Discussing it with your mother was helpful but I think you need to sort yourself out with some help. Becoming comfortable with someone during the course of dating and sharing interests and goals can be pleasant. But you need to look beyond that to see if you not only share aspirations and hobbies but can give each other respect and emotional support.

You need to explore your own weaknesses as well and see if your potential spouse has the attributes you need to help you when you are facing issues and challenges.

In other words, in the other person’s

character there needs to be both subjective qualities that relate to you as an individual and also universal qualities that you value. You have to figure those out with some help.

Meanwhile, say goodbye to Cynthia politely without telling her that she has bad middos. You can do it.

The Mother Sarah Schwartz Schreiber, P.A. ed flag? Siren is more like it.

Get this straight. Yours is not a question of phone etiquette. It smacks of glaring chutzpah. The reason your mother (and all the moms sitting on the sidelines) find Cynthia’s behavior cringe-worthy is that she is guilty of

R

Unpredictable settings and contexts allow a person’s values, behaviors and coping strategies to emerge. wonton disrespect – a violation of kibbud aim, hakoras hatov, kavod habriyos and simple menschlichkeit.

I, as a card-carrying member of MABB (Mothers-Against-Bratty-Behavior), have zero tolerance for impertinent, chutzpah-dik behavior by children towards the parents who funded

WITH AN EMPHASIS ON

SHABBOS, YOMIM TOVIM AND SIMCHOS DIET PLANS GROUP SUPPORT RECIPES

EAT BETTER.FEEL BETTER.

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their orthodontia and yeshiva tuition; the dedicated mothers and fathers who forfeited sleep and acquired gray hair doting on their offspring.

Seems Cynthia has two faces. One, the adorable, fun-loving face she puts on when she’s out with you. The other, the spiteful daughter she seamlessly turns into at the sound of her mother’s voice. Which face will Cynthia wear when she marries? Impossible to know. If you’re the gambling type, you may ask her to join you for a heart-toheart. Tell her you’ve caught a glimpse of the other Cynthia and are disappointed and a tad apprehensive. “You see,” you’ll say, in your most somber tone of voice, “the marriage I envision is based on respect, appreciation, trust and yes, love. If you’re callous and rude towards the person-who-loves you-themost (aka, your mother), what are my chances?”

And boy, would I love to hear what she has to say.

The Shadchan Michelle Mond our intuition is correct: as far as red flags go, this one is definitely not one to ignore. As they say, “If someone shows you who they really are, believe them.” The pleasant tone and attitude she uses while speaking to her friends is more happy-go-lucky because it stems from the constant need to feel accepted and liked by her friends in order to continue their relationship.

When she picks up the phone to talk to her parents and siblings, however, the tone you hear reflects that she takes their presence in her life for granted.

It is also likely the tone you will hear in five years from now, when she takes your relationship for granted.

However, as with any red flag, do not pull out of a relationship until you are fairly certain that it is a pervasive pattern. Spend a Shabbos meal with Cynthia’s family as the relationship

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Pulling It All Together The Navidaters Dating and Relationship Coaches and Therapists

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If you marry Cynthia, there is a very good chance that you will become her replacement punchbag. Red flag? Absolutely. She may be a rude and disrespectful family member because her family has treated her unfairly or unkindly. Or she may be a brat, and her family doesn’t deserve this treatment.

Whatever the case, this is how Cynthia interacts with family. It is Cynthia’s decision to treat them this way. Cynthia doesn’t even have the self-awareness that something may be wrong with her behavior because she does it in front of you. Does she ever express embarrassment or remorse? Does she seem ashamed of herself or apologize after you’ve witnessed the interaction? Has she taken the time after an intense

phone c onver sation with a family member to offer you information about the relationship? Has she apologized for making you feel uncomfortable during these phone calls? From what you’ve described in your email, it seems as though Cynthia likes Cynthia’s behavior. She’s OK with it.

Could Cynthia change? Yes, if Cynthia thinks she has a problem and wants to deal with it. This kind of change is not simple. It often is the work of a lifetime. The choice is yours.

Marrying Cynthia is a gamble, and the stakes are high. I am glad that you have a very sensible mother whose guidance

progresses, so you can see their dynamic up close and personal. Are they relaxed, open and loving, or perhaps strained, artificial and on edge? The more time you spend with them as a family, the more insight you will glean into how comfortable you are with the person she becomes when she is around people she is close with. After you are able to clarify this issue you will have better clarity to decide whether you wish to marry her.

The Single Tova Wein here are two styles of behavior when it comes to how a person treats their family, beginning with parents, siblings, and eventually their spouse and children. Some people show tremendous respect toward family members – in fact, maybe even more respect than they do toward strangers or friends because they understand that family is the most important people in their life and they deserve the same level of kindness, if not more, than anyone else.

They would never take them for granted, act dismissively, name-call, shame or engage in any other hurtful behaviors. It sounds as

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you sought.

I am using your letter and my response as an opportunity to plead with people to slow down when they are dating. You cannot know someone after two handfuls of dates.

Take your time. See them in different settings. Pay attention to the way they interact with others, as this wonderful writer did. In my experience as a therapist and a person in the world, bad behaviors usually intensify (though not always) once married. Things that people were positive would go away once married typically become greater.

If you really don’t like a trait in the person you are dating, you better be 100% sure that you can live with it for the rest of your life. Because the odds are, it ain’t goin’ anywhere.

All the best, Jennifer

As they say, “If someone shows you who they really are, believe them.” though this is the type of family that you come from and, subsequently, the type of family-life you hope to someday create for yourself.

There are other families who believe that they don’t have to watch their “p’s and q’s” around family members – assuming that they are here to say and therefore they don’t have to impress them or get too hung up on respect, probably because they believe that no one is going anywhere. Friends, on the other hand, require much better treatment because no one is holding them in the relationship and they are free to bolt if they are not treated well.

It looks to me like it should be very clear to you whether or not Cynthia is the type of person who understands the world you come from and is capable of acting accordingly. Obviously, because you have such a great time together, it was easy for you to go into denial mode, ignoring the obvious red flag. But a part of you knows better, which is why you checked in with your mother. And, certainly in this case, mother knows best!

P.S. I love that you and your mom were able to have such an open and honest conversation and that you then took the time to write into this column for more answers. You’re a pretty amazing guy. And you deserve a pretty amazing woman…like your mom.

Esther Mann, LCSW and Jennifer Mann, LCSW are licensed psychotherapists and dating and relationship coaches working with individuals, couples and families in private practice in Hewlett, NY. To set up a consultation or to ask questions, please call 516.224.7779. Press 1 for Esther, 2 for Jennifer. Visit www.thenavidaters.com for more information. If you would like to submit a dating or relationship question to the panel anonymously, please email thenavidaters@gmail.com. You can follow The Navidaters on FB and Instagram for dating and relationship advice.

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

Dr. Deb

The Secret to Not Putting Kids in the Middle

By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.

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ot long ago, Dr. Hylton Lightman wrote an excellent article about not putting kids in the middle should a divorce be going on.

I wanted to build on that to help parents who feel terribly stuck, terribly hurt, and terribly angry to be armed with some tools to be able to follow Dr. Lightman’s wise advice and not put kids in the middle when the parents are being roughed up by one another in court.

Step 1: Take care of yourself.

Now, you might have thought I got mixed up. No, I really mean “take care of yourself!” The reason why you may be inadvertently taking it out on your children or speaking about your ex to your children for support is precisely because you don’t feel like you have support.

On the one hand, you’re in a bad mood because it was not enough that the marriage ended in tatters and years of hopes and dreams went down the tubes, but in addition, you’re dealing with a yucky court process that never ends.

The court process is yucky whether you initiated it or not, whether you have an aggressive personality or are the mildest person on Earth. The court process is yucky because it never gets you what you really want.

What you really ever wanted was for your emotional needs to be met and that did not happen in your marriage. Now that you are in the divorce process, it will never happen, at least not through this person, your ex. The

divorce guarantees that that door has been shut closed. Slammed shut.

So it feels yucky. I don’t think there’s a better word to describe that.

Therefore, it is perfectly natural and normal for you to be in a rotten mood. Of course, you’re going to yell at the kids! Who wouldn’t? Divorce is one of the most stressful experiences a person can have.

And it is also a little less natural and normal – but a big temptation – to use the children you love and are close to as confidants. They’ve been through

homework. They’ve lost the fun in life, the laughs, the jokes. And even if life was strained in the intact family that you are no longer in, and even if the children themselves thought divorce was the smartest option, it’s still a terrible loss for them, a loss of what was meant to be, a loss of what should have been.

Besides that, they lack the life experience to be able to say to themselves, “I’ll get through this; piece of cake.”

They haven’t been there before; they don’t know what’s up ahead. And, in

Be sure they know, deep down, that it is not their fault and that both their parents love them.

the misery themselves, so who would be in a better position to understand what you’re going through than those kids?

But both are wrong. They’re destructive to the children you love and are fighting for.

They themselves have suffered a terrible loss. They’ve lost the intact family that life started out to be.

They’ve lost that sense of stability that means something simple like where your own bedroom is or who you can get the best help from for your math

fact, statistics show that children of divorce are more likely to delay marriage, more likely to end up in prison, more likely to drop out of college, and more likely to divorce themselves than their peers from intact families. One study found that 33% of such children believed their father did not love them.

For all these reasons, it is imperative that the children not be the recipients of either your bad mood or you leaning emotionally on what appear (incorrectly) to be strong shoulders.

And that’s why it is beyond any-

thing else a priority for you to take care of yourself so that you don’t accidentally put your kids in the middle. How? • Take a yoga class or do some other exercise every single day. Without fail.

Exercise boosts energy, boosts endorphins (the feel-good hormones), and, in turn, boosts in you a can-do feeling.

Even walking around your house is a start. Create a 5- or 10-minute routine in the house for bad weather or tight schedules. No excuses.

• Be sure to get a restful sleep every night. This means you can take an hour to write down all your worries, grievances, and things to do, but after that, when it’s bedtime, you must force your mind to stop obsessing on the details of the miserable situation you’re in. If you’re afraid you’ll forget a point, keep the journal near your bed and write down only new items if they should occur to you. Do body relaxation and breathing in bed to de-stress and get your mind on your breathing to stop thinking.

• Eat properly. Don’t indulge because you’re under stress. On the contrary, enjoy what you’re eating. Focus on the deliciousness of the food and let that be an opportunity to give yourself the gift of pleasure.

• Enjoy your shower or bath. Make it a nice ritual, not a rush-rush.

• Have someone to talk to – but not about your misery. Talk about things other than your divorce with friends or family. Join a club if you don’t have friends or go online to join many healthy groups that will engage your mind and heart and provide social

outlets. There are groups, for example, on Facebook on knitting, football, gardening, literature, movies – you name it. Research shows that people who have someone to talk to live longer, happier lives.

• Read healthy books such as Brene Brown and other thought leaders in self-help.

• Pray. If you are angry at G-d, perhaps that has to be a topic of discussion with Him. Voice your concerns. He has created a puzzling world, but there always is something to be thankful for and if you don’t see it then it’s on you to figure it out.

arise that a parent literally abandoned the family, it does not mean they didn’t love the children. It simply means they did not have the tools to show and express their love. They may be so lacking that they don’t know themselves what they feel or how to express it. Never, ever let a child think that the other parent doesn’t love him. Or that you don’t.

Use together time for quiet, pleasant activities or chats. Be the person your child can come to even though you, yourself, are mixed up and confused. If that is too difficult, even with the list of self-care above, then seek out therapy.

Step 2: Keep the Lines of Communication Open

Step 3: Stick to Boundaries Your big heart may be overflowing with compassion for the child that is caught between two people tearing themselves apart. Don’t let that be a reason for the child to make demands or for you to indulge them materially.

You will hurt your child far more that way than the divorce itself.

The reasons are simple.

I’ve heard many stories that are quite painful because people actually grew up believing they were the cause of their parents’ divorce. Many.

Don’t let that happen to your kids.

Be sure they know, deep down, that it is not their fault and that both their parents love them. Should the case

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When you indulge in material goods to make up for emotional pain, the child takes away a false lesson: the way to heal emotions is with materialism.

You know that is not the way the world actually works and your child shouldn’t come to learn that either. There are emotional solutions to emotional problems. Sometimes, just listening to your child is good enough; sometimes telling young children stories or borrowing library books that paint a positive future is good enough. Sometimes just reassuring your children that you do love them is what they need.

strict tone. Does that make sense?

There are many ways to say, “Judy, put the toys away,” and the wrong one is the one that is unnecessarily harsh.

The wrong one is also one that gives a message (through your tone) that you don’t actually mean it. Play around with this until you find the exact right tone and words that convey both the fact that you mean it and that you love Judy, too.

If all these steps are too difficult, then treat yourself to the best self-care there is: talk to a professional who can support you in your journey.

Step 4 (The Most Difficult of All): Combine Love with Boundaries

Dr. Deb is a Marriage & Family Therapist.

Book a consultation with her to get clarity on the issues in your marriage and learn about her innovative program at: https:// drdeb.com/book. To book a call with Dr. Deb, go to her scheduler, https://drdeb. com/book, but if you want more information about her new program, please first watch the Masterclass on “Getting The Marriage You Want” at http://drdeb.com/ myw-masterclass.

There is never a time where discipline should prevail over love. They must go together. They must co-exist.

You’re the parent; you make the rules.

The rules matter, but you also are not a stranger; you’re the parent that loves that child. So all discipline must be given through loving words, even if in a

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FEBRUARY29, 14,2015 2019| |The TheJewish JewishHome Home OCTOBER

Health & F tness

Eating Clear: Acne and Diet

By Aliza Beer MS, RD

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e’re all guilty of splurging on some over-priced facial treatment claiming miraculous results to find the only thing that’s cleared up is our bank account.

Fresh, glowing, and acne-free skin has perhaps become the most sought-after beauty trait. Most, if not all, models boast incredibly airbrushed (albeit quite photoshopped) skin with not a blemish nor acne scar in sight. A recent study showed that the average woman will spend about $300,000 on beauty and skincare products in her lifetime.

Although a rose and goji berry face polish packaged with a gleaming gold lid may seem like a really pretty answer to one’s skin woes, the key to clear skin runs much deeper than, well, skin.

Providing us with a barrier against the harsh world’s environment, our skin receives wear and tear from a combination of outside and inside forces. Despite being super-strong, skin is semi-permeable – in other words, very absorbent.

Pores and sweat glands act as tiny openings, providing the body with a myriad of functions. The oil your

body produces, also called sebum, mixes with dead skin cells and can clog your pores, resulting in lovely morning breakouts. Excess sebum production can result from poor diet. When dead skin cells and sebum mix, acne can form. Additionally, inflammation inside the body can spur such reactions or even facilitate them. Another acne-causing culprit is your hormones. Hormones

routine, you may want to try a diet change-up.

Here are some pimple preventative diet tips to keep your sebum production down, lower inflammation, and balance hormone levels: • Ditch the High GI - The detriments of eating foods with a high-glycemic index cannot be stressed enough. Examples include breakfast cereals, pasta, white sug-

The key to clear skin runs much deeper than, well, skin.

can cause excess oil production.

Acne is common during puberty because the body is on a hormone overdrive.

At the root of all this lies a very important causal factor: your diet. If applying concealer like Rembrandt over your pimples is your morning

ar, cookies, muffins, and refined grains, which will all spike your blood sugar. There are no redeeming factors to these foods, and many studies support a low-glycemic diet to combat acne. When your blood sugar spikes, you produce a hormone called insulin. Excess produc-

tion of insulin may be causing your acne. Growth hormones released in puberty, which have similar properties to Insulin, are the main cause of acne in young adults.

Substitute pasta for a legume-based variety or quinoa to keep your insulin-inducing sebum levels down. Other low-glycemic carbs include non-starchy fruits and veggies like broccoli, zucchini, and grapefruits.

• The Good Type of Oil - A diet that includes regular doses of omega-3 fatty acids may help with acne. Contrary to popular belief, oily foods do not directly cause acne.

Regular consumption of healthy fats like salmon, avocados, and nuts have shown to reduce symptoms of acne. Most Americans get way too much saturated fat in their diets so swapping some out for better fat sources is a good choice for an overall healthier lifestyle and better skin.

• Avoid Processed Foods Inflammation in our bodies likes to express itself on our faces. A popular cause of inflammation is junk food. Overly-processed foods like French fries, deli meat, and candy

The 14, 2015 2019 TheJewish JewishHome Home||FEBRUARY OCTOBER 29,

can cause inflammation. As I mentioned before, greasy foods will not directly show up on your skin – only sebum will – but the inflammation caused by that night of deep-fried Oreos plus all that insulin production might. So if you want to reduce redness, limit the processed stuff.

• Clean Eating, Clean Face Clean eating and plant-based foods will help reduce inflammation by injecting a dose of skin-healing vitamins and minerals. Foods rich in vitamin C (found in oranges) and vitamin E (found in olive oil) will aid in cell protection and help prevent scars and skin breakdown.

Retinoids derived from vitamin A (found in carrots) will prevent dry skin which can cause excess oil production. The combination of these foods with provide a good barrier and act well together.

• Dairy Dos and Do Nots Humans are the only species that eat milk from another animal. The hormones in milk are very specific to the growth of a calf. If you struggle with breakouts, it may be beneficial to avoid dairy. Cheeses, milks, and other dairy products can increase hormone levels in your body and also affect inflammation, two of the main acne drivers. For all you morning Greek yogurt lovers, don’t fret!

No negative effects were seen with consumption of probiotic-rich dairy so you can still enjoy your Greek yogurt happily. As for milk for your high fiber cereal, try unsweetened almond milk instead. Fermented foods, in general, like sauerkraut are a great source of probiotics.

• Spice it up - Spices like cinnamon, garlic, and turmeric can reduce inflammation especially in the gut. The anti-inflammatory properties of spices deserve a spot as an acne fighter.

Spices have a long history in Chinese medicine as gut-health saviors.

The gut houses a lot of the body’s bacteria and is important in maintaining balance. When the gut is compromised and there is a higher level of toxins in the body, the skin is one of the organs that can help eliminate these toxins, resulting in acne, eczema, or psoriasis. Restoring your gut health may be the key to clearing up stubborn acne.

Try dusting cinnamon over antioxidant-rich blueberries or sipping a turmeric tea.

• Selenium - You may have never heard of it, but selenium is a skin-savior. Selenium acts as a powerful antioxidant and can prevent flare ups. Selenium-rich foods include brazil nuts – they’re delicious but don’t eat too many of them because they’re high in calories – fish and whole grains. Selenium will nourish your skin and keep the redness at bay.

• Skin Drink - Treat your skin to a tall glass of water. Hydration is a key component to clear skin. The result of not drinking water is twofold when it comes to skin health. Dehydration causes skin dryness and as a result leads to excess dead skin cells. Additionally, your skin will go into oil production “hyperdrive” to make up for the missing moisture.

The dead skin cells and bacterial build up will mix with the excess oil, and the combination will result in acne. Scrubbing and washing your face will not fix the problem and will likely dry out and irritate the skin further. The key is proper hydration throughout the day, a minimum of 64 ounces. I recommend investing in an insulated water-bottle like the S’well bottle so you can keep your water cold or your tea hot if you’re on the go.

Eating a wholesome diet can help get your skin on the right track.

Even if you don’t have cystic acne or daily breakouts, the above tips can help you maintain healthy, blemish-free skin. Beauty through food is

natural and sustainable and results in an overall happier lifestyle.

All of our systems are intrinsically connected so applying a cream to pimples may help for the moment but you will be avoiding a root issue. Start pinpointing any foods mentioned you think may be causing your breakouts and toss them.

Restock your diet with inflammation-fighting and hormone-balanc-

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ing foods instead. Your skin is mirroring what is happening inside your body. Of course, keep your skin clean and speak to your dermatologist about using topical ointments/ treatments which may certainly help the situation. But getting your gut into good health is the best way to combat skin problems and many other systemic issues.

If your diet is clean and well-balanced, that will reflect in your gut and the rest of your body, skin included. Always speak with your physician and registered dietitian before making any dietary changes because what you eat affects your health and some foods interact with certain medications.

Aliza Beer is a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in nutrition. She has a private practice in Cedarhurst, NY. Patients’ success has been featured on the Dr. Oz show. Aliza can be reached at alizabeer@gmail.com, and you can follow her on Instagram at @alizabeer.

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

Health & F tness

You’ve Got to “Hand” it to Your Kids

By Hylton I. Lightman, MD, DCH (SA), FAAP

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ou’ve read the title and must be thinking, “What is Dr. Lightman writing about?” Hands?

Is this about our handing over the reins of leadership from one generation to the next?

Eventually, yes. But that’s not what this is about. I am bringing to your attention something basic and fundamental that is necessary for that to eventually happen.

It is making sure that your child’s hands develop normally and optimally.

Normal hand development is crucial to optimal development and is interlocked into other pieces of development. Every pediatric practice has children who are diagnosed with hypotonia. Hypotonia is low muscle tone and, depending on the underlying causes of the condition, there may or may not be a cure for it. Hypotonia can be caused by conditions that affect the brain, central nervous system or muscles. In most cases, even if you cannot cure hypotonia, you can help reduce its effects on your child’s life through physical and occupational therapy.

How do you know if your child’s hands need strengthening?

During well visits, pediatricians look for developmental milestones.

For our purposes now, and based on the Peabody Developmental Motor Scales-2nd edition, your baby should have a reflexive grasp at birth and, at about 1 month of age, should be able to tightly grasp objects placed in his hands.

At about 2 months, he can briefly

hold toys placed in his hands.

At about 3 months, while looking at an object, he will attempt to reach for that object (referred to as “visually directed reaching”). Some call this “global ineffective reach for objects.” There are also voluntary grasps at about this stage as well as the two-handed palmar grasp reflex – when an object is placed in the infant’s hand and the child’s palm is stroked, the fingers will close reflexively.

At about 4-5 months, the baby touches his fingers together and begins reaching with both hands at the same time. Also, he touches or bangs an object on a table or hard surface.

This banging is music to the ears of a pediatrician. Seriously. It means your baby is developing normally.

The one-handed palmar grasp occurs at about 5 months, and then there is controlled reach at about 6 months.

At about 7-8 months, your baby begins to transfer a small object from one hand to the other hand. He will use the “interior pincer grasp,” the pads of the thumb and index finger to pick up small objects like Cheerios.

And so on.

These milestones are important to meet as each milestone is its own foundation upon which the next level of development is built. That next level becomes the new foundation.

What can you, Mommy and Daddy, do to optimize development during the first year of life?

It’s important that babies get as

much tummy time as possible. Tummy time is not just a position on the floor. When babies and kids are on their tummies, they push up on their hands to observe the world around them. They shift their weight from hand to hand as they reach out to grab a toy or object. This is Hand Strengthening Level 1.

After graduating from tummy time, babies move into crawling time.

Until they are standing, cruising and walking, crawling time is their equivalent to Christopher Columbus seeing the world. All that crawling time is Hand Strengthening 2.

As you are aware, the vice of increased screen time has negative consequences, not the least of which is less outdoor, active play. The time spent outdoors in active activities like climbing ladders on the playground, climbing trees, crawling through tunnels, and swinging from monkey bars is Hand Strengthening Level 3.

Hand Strengthening Level 4 is fine motor arts-and-crafts activities.

What a lovely way for a family to pass time, especially when Shabbos is finished earlier rather than later.

It is family bonding time. Children get significant strengthening and fine motor benefits from activities as simple as playing with play dough or snipping paper with Abba.

Afterwards, have your child clean the sponge that was used for painting.

Squeezing hard strengthens hands.

And squeezing sponges can be done during bath time.

These activities can be messy and not fun to clean up. So let’s segue to

another way of hand strengthening.

This way, too, is messy and a pain to clean up. But there are so many benefits to it.

Encourage your baby to play with food. Seriously.

Secure your baby in his hi-chair and place cooked noodles and other foods with different textures on the table. Let him choose which to hold, crumble and play with in his hands and then put in his mouth. I guarantee you a good portion of it will end up on the floor. So what? If it’s not a Persian carpet, then why worry?

Playing with food is another way for your child to explore and expand his world. Let him run with it as long as possible without cleaning him up; washing his hands and face all the time will instill in him the belief that he is “dirty” and playing is a “yucky” thing. Don’t short-circuit the process.

And don’t be so fast to clean him up.

Let him get good and dirty. If he’s cleaned up every several minutes, he will begin to associate food with “yicky.” This could negatively impact his eating and you do not want to go anywhere near there.

If you believe your baby is not developing the way he should in this area, commence a discussion with your pediatrician. He will guide your next steps (which means the baby’s next steps).

A word (or several paragraphs) about school-age kids. These are years which are chockfull of development on every front in a child’s life. Strong hands are essential. Think about how

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The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015

much time during the day a child uses his hands. It is a lot of time – cutting with scissors, zipping up a zipper, getting paraphernalia in and out of a backpack, writing, and opening a combination lock on a locker. These are but a few examples. For a child with weak hands, it can be a long, frustrating day in school.

There are “red” flags you can observe to ascertain if your child’s hands may be weak.

Red Flag #1: Clothing Issues • Difficulty holding shoes open to push a foot inside • Unable to grasp and pull elastic of socks open to get the foot inside • Unable to grasp and pull the waistband of pants up and down over the hips (potential bathroom accident issue) • Difficulty with maintaining grasp on button to pull it through the buttonhole • Zippers disconnecting mid-zip because the two sides are not held tightly to engage • Shoelaces tied correctly but coming undone continually because they are not tied tightly • Inability to snap/unsnap pants (another potential bathroom accident issue) • Inability to pull with enough force to fasten or loosen a belt buckle

Red Flag #2: In-the-Home Kinds of Activities • Struggling to open lids of Tupperware-style containers • Difficulty tearing open food packages and containers • Difficulty opening screw-top containers, i.e., water bottles • Dropping eating utensils or finger food items • Struggling with opening toothpaste and other toiletry kinds of containers • Difficulty with pushing the pump of a soap container or hand sanitizer • Inability to turn on a faucet to wash hands

Red Flag #3: The Pencil Grasp and Poor Handwriting • Using both hands on the writ-

ing utensil at the same time • Switching hands frequently between grasp patterns when writing, drawing or coloring • Switching hands frequently during writing, drawing, and coloring tasks during fatigue • Using the whole hand to grasp the writing utensil instead of the fingers • Messy handwriting • Difficulty controlling writing utensils • Using light pressure on writing utensils so that marks are not dark enough to read

Red Flag #4: Scissors • Scissors appear to “fall off” the fingers instead of being firmly held in the hand • Scissors “get stuck” in the paper, including unable to continuously cut across a paper with repeated open/close motion • Attempting to hold scissors with both hands simultaneously • Frequently changing hands during scissors tasks as hands tire

Red Flag #5: Miscellaneous • Decreased or no interest in fine motor games and toys • Frequently dropping small objects or manipulatives • Decreased interest and attention – and even frustration – for crafts and art activities • Decreased interest and engag-

ing with climbing and other playground equipment In this era of ubiquitous technology, whether it be the phone tablet, iPad or whatever, please do not lose sight that the pencil grip is important.

Color with your children. Give them pencils to connect the dots in those books (I hope those books are not dinosaurs). Notice your child’s pencil grip starting in kindergarten. If he is not holding the pen correctly, his hands will tire quickly when writing.

He will have difficulty with forming letters and notetaking.

There is plenty to be done for these children.

There are school-based occupational therapists whose sole focus is to enhance a child’s functioning in school and in all activities. Speak to your child’s teacher and/or principal(s) to begin evaluating your child and get them help.

Even if your child does not qualify for services, there is plenty Imma and Daddy can do to help. It requires a little bit of creativity.

First, draw with chalk a large tictac-toe on the driveway or sidewalk.

Instead of writing “X” and “O,” use objects such as gourds, bags of flour (wrapped in plastic) or stuffed bears and stuffed ducks.

Paper crumbling is another way to strengthen hands. Have your child crumple up sheets of newspaper or scrap paper in the smallest, tightest

49

ball possible that he can manage to accomplish. As his hand strength increases, the ball will get tighter. You can make it harder by asking your child to crumple the paper with one hand only. Afterwards, make sure your child cleans his hands thoroughly as newspaper ink can be harmful.

Do you have plants that need watering? Fill a water bottle and let your child spray away. He can also play outdoors with his spray bottle.

Be sure to specify what objects are OK to spray.

Help make your child the “World’s Tallest Child” by having him walk with plastic plates on their heads.

This requires posture and balancing.

As he becomes stronger, graduate from plastic plates to bean bags or dominoes.

Making challah from scratch?

Your child can help to knead the dough. Make sure he washes his hands first. And afterwards. You can say “Amen” to each other’s bracha for hafrashas challah.

Make a graffiti wall in your home by covering a wall with butcher’s paper and contractors tape. Get out the art supplies and let your child paint away. Try sponge painting. When the weather is nice, he can make mud pies outside from mud and rocks. So what if he’s messy? He will have fun and will become stronger. This refers back to Hand Strengthening Level 4.

I wish to emphasize that not all children “follow ONE handbook” for development. Each child has his own path. Part of your development, my dear fellow parents, is to accept and embrace your child as the individual person for who is. Accepting your child for the individual for who he is does not mean you have blinders on to his needs, though. The One Up Above has gifted you with him. Embrace the gift. Love him and work with him accordingly, even when he pushes (intentionally and unintentionally) your buttons. This requires time, effort, and patience.

As always, daven.

Dr. Hylton I. Lightman is a pediatrician and Medical Director of Total Family Care of the 5 Towns and Rockaway PC. He can be reached at drlightman@totalfamilycaremd.com, on Instagram at Dr.Lightman_ or visit him on Facebook.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

In The K

tchen

Jerk Rub London Broil

By Naomi Nachman

I always love a nice steak but have a hard time going to a restaurant to order one since I know that I can easily make it at home using a good quality piece of meat. Here is a great recipe for a steak dinner with a tasty salsa that you can pair it with.

The spice rub can be used on fish and chicken, too, and we love it with meat and the salsa. I serve this warm at a barbecue or at room temperature on Shabbat day.

Ingredients 2 TBS oil 1 (2-3-pound) flat London broil

Jerk Spice Blend ½ tsp cinnamon ½ tsp thyme 1 tsp onion powder 1 tsp garlic powder 1 TBS brown sugar ½ tsp ground ginger ½ tsp allspice 1 tsp kosher salt

Mango Pineapple Salsa 2 cups fresh pineapple, cubed 1 mango, sliced ½ jalapeño ¼ cup cilantro 1 tsp kosher salt 1 TBS olive oil Juice of 2 limes ½ tsp ancho chili powder

Preparation Prepare the spice blend: Place all spice blend ingredients in a jar or container. Stir to combine. Store in an airtight container until ready to use.

Prepare the London broil: Combine 2 tablespoons of spice blend with oil; mix to form a paste. Spread all over both sides of the meat.

Marinate meat in a Ziplock bag in the fridge for 2-4 hours, up to overnight.

Heat grill pan or grill to medium-high heat. Grill for 3-5 minutes per side, until steak has reached your desired level of doneness. I like to serve this medium rare, which has an internal temp of 125°F. Prepare the Mango Pineapple Salsa: In the bowl of a food processor, pulse pineapple, jalapeño, mango, and cilantro into fine pieces, but not pureed. Place mixture into a bowl; add remaining salsa ingredients. Stir to combine.

Serve over Jerk Rub London Broil.

Cook’s Tip: Remove the seeds from the jalapeño if you prefer less heat.

Recipe from Perfect Flavors by Naomi Nachman shared with permission from ArtScroll Mesorah Publications. Photo by Miriam Pascal.

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.

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Notable Quotes “Say What?!”

El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States of America – safe not because of walls, but in spite of walls.

- Presidential hopeful Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke (D-TX), at an anti-wall rally in El Paso

Walls do not save lives; walls end lives.

- Ibid.

I don’t think there’ll be a report. I will be shocked if anything regarding the president is made public, other than “we’re done.”

- Former Trump lawyer John Dowd, in an ABC podcast about the Mueller probe

I think it has something to do with what Donald Trump has unleashed.

- Princeton professor Eddie Glaude Jr. on NBC, blaming President Trump for Virginia Governor Ralph Northam posing in blackface 34 years ago

I know exactly what [Mueller] has. I know exactly what every witness said, what every document said. I know exactly what he asked. And I know what the conclusion or the result is. There’s no basis. There’s no exposure. It’s been a terrible waste of time.

- Ibid.

Men turn out to be a problem. There’s a lot of male bad behavior.

Maybe we should have only women leading our states.

- New York Times columnist David Brooks on PBS’s “NewsHour,” during a discussion about the Virginia governor’s blackface scandal and the Virginia lieutenant governor’s (both Democrats) harassment of women scandal

Blackface is bad. Orangeface is worse.

- From an op-ed in USA Today arguing that Virginia Governor Ralph Northam should not resign because it may result in Republicans gaining power which would help President Trump

Today Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to by me as Pocahontas, joined the race for President. Will she run as our first Native American presidential candidate, or has she decided that after 32 years, this is not playing so well anymore? See you on the campaign TRAIL, Liz! - Tweet by President Trump, referencing the Trail of Tears, after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) declared that she is running for president

It’s been an absolute honor and a pleasure and honor – and I mean that – to represent Joaquin Guzman.

- Defense attorney Jeffrey Lichtman after notorious drug king-pin El Chapo Guzman was found guilty in federal court on all charges

The special counsel’s team I’m sure has so much more information. Everybody should take a step back and breathe and not make any conclusions about whether or not there was a criminal conspiracy… I am confident [Mueller] has had access to a lot more than the Senate or the House Intelligence Committees.

- Former CIA Director and Trump critic John Brennan on MSNBC trying to calm down his fellow Trump haters after it was widely reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee has found no direct evidence of Trump/Russia collusion

Heaven has a wall, a gate and a strict immigration policy. [The other thing] has open borders. Let that sink in.

- The message posted on an Arkansas grocery store chain Mac’s Fresh Market’s weekly circular in the top corner, where every week an inspirational quote is written

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27

We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.

- Verbatim from the FAQ section of Rep. Alexandria OcasioCortez’s (Dem/Socialist- NY) Green New Deal which calls for the end of cows and airports in order to save the environment

Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.

- Ibid., explaining the reason behind the economic policies of the Green New Deal

Upgrade or replace every building in U.S. for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.

- One of the proposals of the Green New Deal

It sounds like a high school term paper that got a low mark…. It would shut down a little thing called air travel. How do you take a train to Europe?

- President Trump commenting on Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal

It does. It does. Yeah, I have no problem saying that. Why? Because we have tried their approach for 40 years.

- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (Dem/Socialist- NY) when asked on NPR if her Green New Deal would necessitate “massive government intervention”

There is a couple things. One is that I think one way that the right does try to mischaracterize what we’re doing is as though it is like some kind of massive government takeover. Well, obviously what we’re trying to do, obviously it’s not that because what we’re trying to do is release the investments from the federal government to mobilize those resources across the country.

To see this at the UN was a fight every day. This CANNOT be tolerated in our own Congress by anyone of either party. In a time of increased anti-Semitism, we all must be held to account. No excuses.

- Tweet by Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley condemning Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her anti-Semitic twitter tirade over the weekend in which she claimed that AIPAC pays off members of Congress to be pro-Israel

Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress. I think she should either resign from Congress or she should certainly resign from the foreign affairs committee.

- President Trump condemning Rep. Omar’s Jew-hating statements

The Westminster Dog Show is going on now and the winner will be declared tomorrow night – as long as nobody finds old tweets.

– Seth Myers

- Ibid., several hours later on MSNBC

I think it is very important for the Democrats to press forward with their Green New Deal.

It would be great for the so-called “Carbon Footprint” to permanently eliminate all Planes, Cars, Cows, Oil, Gas & the Military – even if no other country would do the same. Brilliant!

- Tweet by President Trump

Hey @CoryBooker I support PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals. @BeefUSA#WyomingBeefCountry.

– Tweet by Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) in response to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) saying that the Earth “can’t sustain” people eating meat

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125

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Henry A. Jaume, Sr., age 65, passed away on Sunday, February 3, 2019, at 1:00 PM determined not to watch Super Bowl LIII. - Obituary published in the New Orleans Advocate about a lifelong Saints fan, who, like other Saints fans, was angry about the blown call that kept the Saints out of the Super Bowl this year

Israeli police said Saturday they arrested a Palestinian suspect in the killing of an Israeli teenager, as thousands of people in Gaza buried two Palestinian teenagers killed by Israeli fire a day earlier in protests along the perimeter fence.

– Opening sentence of an AP article about the arrest of the terrorist who brutally murdered Ori Ansbacher

I think that it gives a lot of people joy and we need more joy.

- Presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) when asked during a radio interview if she is in favor of legalizing marijuana, in an answer which highlights how many are ignorant of the distinction between joy and self-destructive indulgence

We never know if the government will resume the death penalty, but we want to hire two hangmen to fill vacancies and be ready if the government wants to execute drug traffickers.

- A spokesman for the Philippines prison service explaining to Reuters why the government recently placed employment ads in local newspapers looking for executioners with “excellent moral character” and “mental strength”

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home

Political Crossfire

Great Nations Don’t Quit Wars Before They Prevail

By Marc A. Thiessen

“G

reat nations do not fight endless wars,” President Trump declared in his State of the Union address. It was a line that could have been delivered

by President Barack Obama, who in 2015 memorably said, “I do not support the idea of endless war.”

Just a few days before Trump’s address, his own party delivered the president a stinging rebuke when Senate Republicans passed a resolution opposing his Syrian and Afghan withdrawals by an overwhelming bipartisan 68-to-23 vote. Trump’s defenders say: That’s just the foreign policy establishment advocating “forever war.” When, they ask, will these wars end? When will we be able to declare victory and go home?

These are fair questions, and they deserve serious answers.

In traditional wars, defining victory is easy. Victory comes when the enemy surrenders and lays down its arms. But this is not traditional war.

We are not fighting nation-states with defined borders and armies, navies and air forces. We are fighting radical Islamist terrorists who are engaged in what Osama bin Laden called “a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam.” There will be no signing ceremony on the deck of the U.S.S. Missouri. They will never lay down their arms. In this war, victory for the United States is every day that passes without a terrorist attack on American soil. And that daily victo-

ry is made possible because the men and women of the U.S. military are hunting the enemy in faraway lands.

America’s enemies have a very clear definition of victory. For them, victory comes when we give up the fight before they do. We know this because they have told us so. The 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told his CIA interrogator,

fighting doesn’t mean that they have.

Here is the hard truth: we don’t get to choose when the war ends, but we do get to choose where it is fought. It can either be fought over there, in the deserts of Syria and the mountains of Afghanistan, or it can be fought over here – on American streets and in American cities, as it was on Sept. 11, 2001. It’s up to us.

In this war, victory for the United Stated is every day that passes without a terrorist attack on American soil.

“Americans don’t realize we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.” That is how the terrorists see Obama’s withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and Trump’s planned withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan: America defeating itself by quitting.

It is understandable that, after 18 years, Americans want the war to end. But what we want is irrelevant.

We don’t get to decide unilaterally that the war is over. The enemy gets a vote. Just because we have tired of

Trump deserves enormous credit for taking the gloves off in the fight against the terrorists. He was absolutely correct when he declared in the State of the Union address, “When I took office, ISIS controlled more than 20,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria. Today, we have liberated virtually all of that territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty monsters.” But the Islamic State is not defeated. It still has tens of thousands of fighters under arms and, according to one estimate by the Institute for the Study of War, as much as $400 million it

smuggled out of Iraq, money that can be used to sustain its movement and plan attacks across the world.

In Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence estimates there are about 20 terrorist groups – including al-Qaeda and the Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State Khorasan, or IS-K – who would immediately gain an uncontested sanctuary from which to plan new attacks if America withdraws. On January 28, the New York Times reported that a 2017 intelligence assessment, renewed last year, “says a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan would lead to an attack on the United States within two years.”

Right now, the U.S. military has its boot on the terrorists’ necks.

They are focused on survival, not on launching faraway attacks. Take that boot away, though, and the terrorists will get up, dust themselves off, regroup, rebuild and go back to trying to kill Americans in the United States.

In his address, Trump praised the heroism of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. “They did not know if they would survive the hour,” he said. “They did not know if they would grow old. But they knew that America had to prevail.”

The same is true today. Great nations do not quit before they prevail. (c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

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Your

Money

The Social Security Fantasy

By Robert J. Samuelson

O

ne of the great challenges of our time is to prevent Social Security and other programs for the elderly from taking over the national government. It may already be too late. Recently, the Congressional Budget Office reported that federal spending on the 65-

plus population now amounts to 40 percent of non-interest outlays, up from 35 percent in 2005. By 2029, the CBO projects it to be 50 percent.

Here is how the CBO describes the outlook: “Over the next decade, as members of the baby-boom generation

age and life expectancy increases, the number of people age 65 or older is expected to continue to rise – by about one-third, from 16 percent of the population in 2018 to 20 percent in 2029. ... Federal spending for older people is anticipated to … [take] up a greater share of federal resources.”

By the CBO’s math, two-thirds of the projected growth in federal spending over the next decade, after adjustment for inflation, will stem from programs for the elderly – mostly Social Security and Medicare, but also long-term nursing home care under Medicaid and civ-

(3) a larger minimum benefit for the poor; and (4) tax cuts (Social Security benefits are taxed if non-Social Security income exceeds $25,000 for singles and $32,000 for couples; these thresholds would be raised to $50,000 and $100,000.).

Rep. John B. Larson, D-Conn, a main sponsor of the bill, believes the U.S. faces a retirement crisis.

Actually, we don’t, as recent testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee by Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute makes clear. (Biggs was deputy commissioner of the Social Security

Expanding Social Security is mostly a political bribe that comes at the expense of other programs.

il-service retirement.

Against that backdrop, raising Social Security benefits would seem a non-starter. Guess again.

Congressional Democrats have proposed legislation to increase spending. There are four main provisions: (1) an across-the-board benefit increase of about 2 percent; (2) a cost-of-living adjustment that would raise future benefits faster;

Administration in 2007 and 2008.)

The most convincing evidence is what retirees say about themselves, Biggs notes. According to Gallup, more than three-quarters of retirees (78 percent) say they “have enough money to live comfortably.” The Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances finds that 75 percent of Americans 65 and over have “at least enough to maintain [their] standard

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019 The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015

of living.” That is up from 61 percent in 1992.

The polling organization NORC at the University of Chicago regularly asks respondents about their financial situation. “In all recent years,” says NORC, “those 65-plus have shown the least financial dissatisfaction.”

In 2014, 45 percent of 65-plus respondents were “satisfied” with their finances and 37 percent were “more or less satisfied.” Only 18 percent were “not at all satisfied.” By contrast, only 21 percent of the 35-to49 group were satisfied, 50 percent were “more or less satisfied” and 30 percent were “not at all satisfied.”

True, most people’s incomes drop when they retire. But their expenses also typically drop. The stereotype of most old people tumbling into poverty is wrong, in part because their incomes are significantly underreported. An important recent paper by economists Adam Bee of the Census Bureau and Joshua Mitchell of Welch Consulting estimated that, after correcting for the missing money, the median income of elderly households in 2012 jumped almost a third, from $33,800 to $44,400. The poverty rate among the elderly, already much lower than in the general population, also fell by a quarter.

The main sources of underreporting involve income from IRAs, 401(k) plans and traditional pensions.

There are roughly 50 million Americans 65 and over. In a population so large, there are bound to be some Americans who are in dire straits because they don’t have retirement savings or have retirement plans that are tragically underfunded. There may be targeted remedies that can help them. But the notion that there is pervasive poverty among older Americans is a political fantasy that is used to justify spending that, as a society, we cannot afford.

One way that the Democrats would pay for their new benefit is by imposing payroll taxes on wages above $400,000. Another way is to increase gradually the payroll tax on all workers. By 2050, the added taxes would equal an estimated 4.9 percent of current law payroll. Budget deficits might, it seems, be con-

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tained. Isn’t that responsible? Well, no. Under existing policies, the CBO projects deficits of nearly $12 trillion over a decade. Higher taxes are needed to trim these deficits. That will be harder if they’re committed to paying more for Social Security.

It is conventional wisdom in Washington that the Republican addiction to tax cuts is mainly responsible for the huge budget deficits. This is, at best, a half-truth.

Democrats are equally responsible, because they refuse to come to grips

with the massive spending on retirement and health care. Expanding Social Security is mostly a political bribe that comes at the expense of other programs and workers, who must pay the resulting taxes. (c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

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Forgotten Her es

Captain Levi Harby A Jewish Sailor who Fought with Courage and Conviction

By Avi Heiligman

T

he United States is one of the few countries in the world to have an all-volunteer force.

Many join the military for adventure. There are incidents from the 19th century in which some as young

as eleven years old joined the armed forces. Even those who were drafted, for example, during the Civil War, both World Wars and Vietnam, may have made their career by staying in the military. One of these

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flogging and for buying Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello. Harby was an officer on the Saucy Jack when she fought in several naval battles. In the first year of the war, the Americans took the British ship Providence as a prize. Harby was placed on the Providence but it was soon taken back by the British. The nineteen-year-old was taken prisoner and sent to a jail in Dartmoor, England. Presumably both Levi Harby and Uriah Levy shared the

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young men was a Sephardic Jewish boy from South Carolina who voluntarily joined the navy at the age of fourteen and remained a sailor for decades. By the time his career was over, he had served in several wars and retired with the rank of captain.

Levi Charles Meyers Harby was born in Georgetown, South Carolina, in 1793. (Some records have it incorrectly that his birth town was in Charleston, which was home to a very large Jewish community.)

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The Civil War saw many good officers resign from the Union as their states seceded to form the Confederacy.

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Fourteen-year-old Levi (sometimes spelled Levy) entered the navy in 1807 as a midshipman. By the War of 1812, he was on the privateer Saucy Jack.

Another Jewish sailor by the name of Levy was only a year older than Harby and both shared the same fate of being captured by the British. Uriah Phillips Levy eventually became a commodore and is best remembered for banning

same cell for some time. Every day a Jewish baker passed by the jail selling bread and secretly told Harby of the American victory at the Battle of New Orleans. After eighteen months in prison, he escaped back to the U.S. via France.

Back in America, Harby rejoined the navy and was placed as a captain of a ship in the fleet with Commodore Stephen Decatur who was on his way to the Barbary Coast. The

American crushed the pirates in the second of the Barbary Wars. There are varying accounts as to the timeline of when Harby left and rejoined the navy, although he definitely was involved in certain battles and wars.

Harby was also an officer in the Cutter Service. Some of the engagements that he took part in included the Seminole Indian War of Florida in 1828, the Texas War of Independence in 1835, and the Bolivian War of Independence from Peru.

The Bolivian War cost Harby his American citizenship since there were strict laws stating that one could not bear arms for a foreign country. He regained his citizenship in the Texas War of Independence.

This time he was on the schooner Brutus defending the port city of Galveston when Texas broke away from Mexico. Texas soon became part of the U.S., and this allowed him to become an American citizen again.

Until the Civil War, Harby remained with the Revenue Cutter Service and the U.S. Navy. He married the daughter of a prominent Jewish judge from Savannah in 1842 and lived there until 1857. At that point, he went back to Galveston to take command of a ship stationed at the port. The Harbys were very active in the Jewish community, and Leonora, his wife, started the first Jewish Sunday school in Texas.

The Civil War saw many good officers resign from the Union as their states seceded to form the Confederacy. Harby’s native South Carolina left the Union and so he joined the South as an artillery officer on a steamer. The 68-year-old was soon recognized for his naval experience and was given the command of the warship Neptune. During the Battle of Galveston Harbor on October 4, 1862, the Neptune and Bayou City were used to board a Union steamer. Ultimately, the Union was victorious in the battle, and the Neptune was sunk. Eight men directly under Harby’s command were killed; Harby was the last off the sinking ship.

There was fierce fighting both on land and sea a few months later in Galveston, and the Jewish captain was given a lot of credit for that Confederate victory.

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019 The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015

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Captain Harby finished the Civil War as the commander of Galveston Harbor as the city remained in Southern hands for much of the remainder of the war. His two sons and son-inlaw were among the thousands of Jews who served in the Confederate

military during the Civil War. Harby passed away in 1870 and is buried in Galveston in a Jewish cemetery that he founded many years earlier. Levi Harby was decorated for his leadership and dedication to multiple causes during his

very lengthy naval career.

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.

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

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Classifieds classifieds@fivetownsjewishhome.com • text 443-929-4003

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Classifieds HOUSES FOR SALE

COMMERCIAL RE

COMMERCIAL RE

APT FOR RENT

MONSEY HOUSE FOR SALE Updated Bi-Level house, 31 Pennington Way, 4bdr, 2.5bath, hardwood floors, TREX deck, new windows and central air, kosher kitchen with granite countertops.

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Orthoptists, Podiatrists, Chiropractors, Physical Therapists, Dentists, or Obstetrician/Gynecologists. Spaces Available in Cedarhurst, Hewlett, Lynbrook, Rockville Centre, Valley Stream area. For Lease... Call for More Details Broker (516) 792-6698

ROCKVILLE CENTRE Light Warehousing/Flex office space 8150 S/F - Built in Offices with Large Windows - 11' Ceiling clearance Indoor Loading Dock. Ideal Location / Walk To LIRR & Bus - Bank, Shopping, City Center. 917-822-0499

BAYSWATER FOR RENT 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, Kosher kitchen, DR/LR, Closets, driveway, Close to all www.AllGoingRealty.Com GoingRealty@gmail.com

ROCKVILLE CENTRE Flex Office Space / Light Warehousing 3650 S/F - Ready for move in.

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COMMERCIAL RE CEDARHURST 500-3,500 +/- SF Beautiful, newly renovated space for rent. Ideal for Retail or Executive offices. Prime location. Convenient Parking.

Sam @516-612-2433 or 718-747-8080 INWOOD OFFICE SPACE LOWEST PRICES IN TOWN! 500-7000 Square feet gorgeous office space with WATERVIEW in Inwood!

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Resumes to: ulubetski@halb.org ASSISTANTS NEEDED FOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, AFTERNOON SESSION. Email: fivetownseducators@gmail.com

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

137

Classifieds HELP WANTED

HELP WANTED

Seeking a motivated and energetic

JOB DESCRIPTION: • FIELD SERVICE TECHNICIAN FOR A GREEN COMPANY - ALL PRODUCTS ARE SAFE AND NON-TOXIC. • All training provided.

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• Work for a professional ‎company in a structured and progressive work environment.

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male to work with a fun, charming 13 year old boy with Down syndrome in Far Rockaway.

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Please call Special Care 718-325-3365 ex: 102 or e-mail: renay@specialcarefor.com BUSINESS IN FARMINGDALE NY IS LOOKING FOR AN EXPERIENCED SECRETARY to perform clerical work, be responsible for payroll and financial records. Full time position, flexible hours and ideal for a motivated, and capable person working without supervision.

Maintain general company record systems to uphold accurate files Compose letters, memos and emails Perform administrative tasks Experience in bookkeeping, accounting and data processing Knowledge of QuickBooks, Word and

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avraham@amluxuryvan.com MILLER COMMERCIAL 680CENTRAL 5X3.qxp_2018 11/26/18+972 3:32 PM(0)54 Page 1421 1211

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home

Classifieds HELP WANTED

HELP WANTED

Great Job Available SALESMAN/WOMAN WANTED to join the sales force at the VUES Both salary & commission available based on experience. Full time & part time jobs available. For more information please call 718-377-8016

LOWER MANHATTAN ORTHODOX NONPROFIT SEEKS ACCOUNTING DIRECTOR Some public accounting experience a preferred, 5-7 years of experience, nonprofit experience a plus.

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CAHAL is seeking AM Limudei Kodesh Assistant Teachers for Special Ed classes in girls' Far Rockaway yeshivas.

Immediate hire.

Send resume to shira@cahal.org, or call 516-295-3666 for information Seeking full time PHYSICAL THERAPIST for Special Education school located in Brooklyn. Experienced preferred.

Competitive salary. Room for growth. resumes@yadyisroelschool.org SHOMER SHABBOS WOODMERE OFFICE LOOKING FOR A MATURE FULL-TIME SECRETARY. Computer knowledge (Word Perfect, Excel, QuickBooks, etc...) and communication skills a must Please email resume to info@ UHCofNY.org

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YESHIVA DARCHEI TORAH MIDDLE SCHOOL is hiring secular studies teachers for the Fall semester in all secular subjects; excellent working environment and salary; Monday-Thursday, 2:30-5:30 PM. Interviews being held now.

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The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14, 2019 | The Jewish Home The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015

Your

15

Money

Kondomania

By Allan Rolnick, CPA

A

merica’s economy has morphed throughout our history, starting from agricultural to manufacturing to service to technology. Now it seems we’re moving towards a celebrity-based economy.

The world is full of D-list celebrities competing for attention: third-rate rappers hoping to break through their own noise, random Kardashian cousins, and people vying for a chance to wow judges with their voices.

(If you’re ever invited to compete on Dancing With the Stars, you’d better hope you were nice to people on your way up, because you’re about to see if they’ll be nice to you on your way down.)

America’s unlikeliest new celebrity is a Japanese woman named Marie Kondo, who created a mini-empire around The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. She’s spun the concept into a line of bestselling books, including a graphic novel and an eight-episode series on Netflix. (No doubt there’s a line of designer-branded plastic storage bins headed to a Target near you soon.)

Now, you’re probably thinking you’ve got to squint pretty hard to find a connection between tidying up and taxes. (And you’re right…cut us some

slack, it’s not always easy to come up with topics every week!) But once that connection jumps out, you’ll wonder why you missed it all these years.

The KonMari method starts with holding a physical object and asking yourself a simple question: does it spark joy? If so, find the right place for it and enjoy what it adds to your life. If not, respectfully let it go. She

really do spark joy. A family vacation, a kitchen renovation, or even a night out on the town all bring a smile to your face and make you feel good about yourself and your choices. Even big-ticket bills like your children’s college tuition spark joy as you watch them prepare to succeed in life.

But if you’re like most of our clients, your biggest single expense is

There are plenty of expenses that really do spark joy.

suggests you start with clothing, because it’s easiest to discard, then move on to books, papers, “komono” (miscellaneous “stuff”), and finish up with sentimental items. Kondo even prescribes how to fold the clothes you keep – nearly a million people have watched a video of her folding socks.

Now, try this with your money – take a look at where it goes.

There are plenty of expenses that

taxes. Does writing those checks (or seeing them deducted from your paycheck) spark joy? Maybe at the local level. Plenty of people vote “yes” on local levies, then gratefully enjoy their schools, parks, and libraries.

But very few people find joy in sending up to 40.8% of their income to Washington and watching the people in charge of spending it shut down the government for five weeks because

they’re more interested in scoring points than solving problems.

Now, the world is full of tax professionals who are happy to take those W2s and 1099s that are starting to clutter up your desk right now and assemble them into a tax return.

They’ll tell you how much you owe, which is what you need. But very few of them will tell you how to pay less, which is what you want. To continue the Marie Kondo analogy, they’ll help you inventory your closet. And that’s important, because you’ll need to know where that ugly holiday sweater is when next year’s party rolls around.

But they won’t help you clean it out.

Because, really, ugly sweater?

So, ready to clean up your tax bill?

We’ll work through your business, your retirement, and your investment portfolio. We’ll fold it all into easy-topack little balls. You’ll love the feeling of zen, and you might even see your blood pressure drop. So call us when you’re ready and see just how tidy we can help you get!

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.

The Jewish Home | FEBRUARY 14, 2019

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FEBRUARY 14,2015 2019||The TheJewish JewishHome Home OCTOBER 29,

Life C ach

Can You Share the Formula?

By Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., MFT, CLC

T

here they are, sitting completely erect, clothing perfectly aligned, looking regal and composed. So much so, that when someone asks, did you drop these glasses, they have no clue they are speaking to someone with their eyes closed. This is that rare traveler who has no difficulty getting their sleep.

Then there is the rest of the universe.

Some are totally prepared and only somewhat challenged.

First, they take out their trusty pillow. You know the one everyone else bought last time and left at home or didn’t bother buying even though they passed 700 varieties of them on the way to the gate? They place it around their neck, pop two of what they know works for them, and go off into a peaceful slumber.

Of course, there is the other extreme of that. The person who puts on the eye-covering, sticks in the ear plugs, throws a blanket over their head, downs their Ambien, and curls up into some form of a ball almost disappearing from sight and finds some interesting way to attain their shuteye.

These people, too, have some form of travel formula down. Then, of course, there are most other people.

When you look around a plane you are amazed at the hundreds of different ways people struggle for that needed sleep. Some have the good fortune to get a window seat and

their own personal access to the coveted wall of the plane. Though, they still must struggle to find a way not to be aware that their feet are still in a standing position or a way to keep their plane pillow from slipping down the glossy surface. Yet, they do have a little more comfort then their fellow travelers. That is, until they need to use the facilities. Then the awkwardness begins. Do they wake everyone in the row, uncomfortably refrain till the flight ends or the row mates

ally little sustenance.

I’m not saying there are no flights anymore with those yummy, triple-fortified dinners, but you’ve got to be traveling pretty far to earn them. Most flights these days simply distribute microscopic pretzels and a drink. Therefore, in the baggage that they want you to keep shrinking in size and stowing away, you’ve got to find a way to add in your desired food choices. And make sure it’s not tuna! After all, if they are serving the

And what about the people in the last row who must add to their dozing challenges the chatter around the restrooms and the earpopping flushing as they try to sleep?

hopefully get up, or climb over from armrest to armrest? All uncomfortable options!

What about those who use the pulldown trays as a headrest? Do they get their meal placed right on their snoozing heads? Oh wait, do they even still give meals anymore on planes? That’s right – these days, added to the little sleep you get is usu-

meal, they can make it as smelly as they want. But if you’re bringing it on, your fellow squashed-like-a-sardinecan neighbor is not going to appreciate the wafting aromas.

I keep returning to the vision of the couple with the baby trying to find any way to get some shuteye and the poor guys in the row behind them trying not to strangle them. I

keep envisioning the guy with the long legs in the aisle seat who tries to sleep through the cart rolling back and forth over his toes. And what about the people in the last row who must add to their dozing challenges the chatter around the restrooms and the ear-popping flushing as they try to sleep?

The way to sleep best, we all know, is at home in your comfortable bed with your favorite blankie. And even there, many struggle. Some people have work or worries on their mind. Others aren’t even sure what’s throwing off their rest. But sleep is the stuff the next day’s energy is made of. Therefore, finding the way to get some – whether traveling or at home – is certainly a perpetually valid pursuit.

If you sleep well wherever you are, count that among your blessings. If you struggle, for what it’s worth, remember you are not alone.

And for all of us, when we see another person just not behaving the way we wish they would let’s try and give them some leeway. Perhaps we can think that they are going on too little sleep – most of us know how head rolling-ly challenging that can be.

Rivki Rosenwald is a certified relationship counselor, and career and life coach. She can be contacted at 917-705-2004 or rivki@rosenwalds.com.

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