It took me a while to connect all the dots. There was our two-hour wait in the rental car line, our new dining room table that was promised to arrive any day but got held up for months at port, the endless dealership invites to sell my 2017 vehicle for top dollar, the repeated delays of our early Friday morning Southwest flight (that finally got us home an hour before Shabbos), and the months-long wait for a dented refrigerator door replacement.

The list goes on and on – across the board and across the globe. Product lines, professional services, food establishments, educational institutions, and more, in every state, every country, and every continent. For months, we have all experienced the trickle-down effects of this unprecedented labor shortage in one way or another. I went behind the scenes of just a few of these workplaces to do some investigation.

Tamar Schulman first heard about vaping from her children when they were in middle school. “I found out that kids were vaping in the school bathroom or behind the school building,” says Tamar. “I didn’t know anything about it; I had to go online and research what vaping is.”

Since then, she was told by a frum therapist, “Mrs. Schulman, I am telling you, vaping is happening in every school in Baltimore. It doesn’t matter how big or small the school is. Don’t kid yourself!”

It seems that, along with all the other hardships of COVID, travel has become distinctly unpleasant. Reading horror stories of frum Jews being thrown off flights on such airlines as Delta, Frontier, Spirit, and JetBlue leaves one to wonder whether their deplaning was precipitated by legitimate safety infractions, COVID-induced hysteria, or anti-Semitism. While the possibility of anti-Semitism is distressing in the extreme, at this point, it is hard to tell. But whatever the situation, polite and considerate behavior while on board is always in place and can prevent trouble. Here, a few of Baltimore’s frequent fliers share their travel experiences, opinions, and common sense tips on etiquette.

Navigating the shidduch system was a cinch when the Baby Boomers dated. That’s because there was no system – and yet, singles did not suffer from the shidduch “crisis” referred to today. In addition to meeting at shul, school, and singles events, they met at Shabbos tables, Catskill hotels, libraries, and even Tashlich. Relatives, friends, classmates, students, workmates, and neighbors often proposed (no pun intended) ideas. Oh, and suggestions were also made by shadchanim.

There was no such thing as today’s mandatory shidduch profile (more commonly called by the misnomer “resume”), and guys (or their mothers) did not insist on seeing the girl’s photo prior to going out. An extensive preliminary FBI (Frum Bureau of Investigation) check of references did not exist. After hearing some details, you basically trusted the person who broached the idea and then relied on your own judgment.

Back in 1979, when I moved to Baltimore, Jack’s Grocery was the “in” place to shop. It was a cozy, quaint, heimishe mom-and-pop grocery store, where everything from the freshest produce and canned goods to appetizing and hot take-out food specialties, all within two aisles. The proprietors, Jack and Rose Boehm, a”h, were hardworking, ehrliche, goodhearted Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia who worked their way up in America, despite not knowing a word of English when they arrived.

My sister, Debbie Burnstein, a”h, passed away in December, at the age of 66. Debbie was developmentally challenged and lived in a group home just about her entire life. She was raised in a generation when people didn’t talk about children who had such challenges. They were “put in the closet,” so to speak. But my parents were not like that. Unfortunately, their family and friends did have that mindset, so my parents had it hard. Even our relatives, as wonderful as they were, never called and asked, “How’s Debbie?” or “Where are you putting her?” And my mother was too uncomfortable to tell them that they had to put her in a non-Jewish place.