With reams of scientific data available online, and information available through the CDC, your personal physician, and other community forums, clearly you know all there is to know about vaccines, viruses, and epidemics...or do you?

With the recent measles outbreaks in Monsey, Brooklyn, and Lakewood, as well as in Europe and Israel, government leaders, school principals, and parents face difficult decisions – even though, as of  November 18, 2018, there is no known outbreak of the measles virus in Baltimore.

 Although vaccination has been proven to prevent and even eradicate many diseases – and although a majority of the population is vaccinated – a parallel movement has grown up of parents who believe that vaccination may harm their children and have refused to have them vaccinated. Feelings run high on both sides, as might be expected when issues of life-and-death, literally, are involved.

At an early summer political dinner, I had the chance to meet Congressman Dr. Andy Harris. I wondered whether, instead of the usual handshake and two-minute back-and-forth that’s usual with people of his stature, he would he allow me more time to delve into his unique life story with a sit-down discussion? Happily, Congressman Harris was eager to oblige!

I met the personable “Americanophile” in the Longworth Office Building in Washington, D.C., on a humid, cloud-covered summer afternoon. Dr. Harris was kind enough to grant me the opportunity to hear who he is and what he stands for. While only a few Where What When readers may be represented by Dr. Harris in Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, we will nevertheless find his life story, ideology, and personal beliefs interesting. Certainly, his views on the issues are relevant to all voters in the upcoming midterm elections.

What could make a group of Jewish professionals – with all the stresses and hassles their busy lives entail – go halfway across the world? If you answered a free 10-day vacation to an exotic location with gorgeous beaches, guess again! Could such a trip be a “bucket-list” item, perhaps? A once-in-a-lifetime African safari jaunt? No, that answer would be incorrect as well. This may have been a once-in-a-lifetime trip, but the payoff wasn’t sand, sun, and fun.

 We all know Jewish men and women, the world over, who will drop anything, at a moment’s notice, and travel to the farthest-flung country to help a Jew or non-Jew in distress, no matter observance level or political ideology. We have seen and continue to see all these wonderful people respond to chaos across the world, when people are at their most vulnerable after a terrible life event, even outside of Eretz Yisrael – places such as Houston, New Orleans, Long Island, New York, India, the Philippines, and many others.

It was a smell I had experienced once before on a similar weeklong volunteer mission to the New Orleans Jewish community, in 2005, after the destructive Hurricane Katrina had decimated the city. Acrid. Pungent. Harsh. It was the smell of a severely flooded house, one that had recieved over five feet of water, maybe more. A face mask can only stop so much of the smell, while your eyes will see the destructive force of water in its entirety.

Only six hours earlier, in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, it was “wheels up” from BWI to Houston’s Hobby Airport via St. Louis. I had seen photos from Houston and was eager to get down to help, knowing how bad it would be for those homeowners unlucky enough to be flooded. I was fortunate to join a great team of volunteers from Baltimore, assembled ad hoc via WhatsApp, primarily from two synagogues, Shomrei Emunah and Ohel Moshe. Led by Azi Rosenblum and Yair Reiner, we were blue-collar in our volunteerism but there were, among us, doctors, lawyers, financial professionals, and basketball coaches (you never know when a three-on-three game could break out!) – all there to help in whatever way they could.