As a writer, one of the perks of being on numerous WhatsApp and email groups is the opportunity to poll fellow members, as I did recently when I requested menorah stories and photos of “creatively made, makeshift, and otherwise unique and special Chanukah menorahs.” It turned into a trip down Menorah memory lane for many. Others shared amazing stories of keeping the flickering flame of Chanukah alive during oppressive times. Some noted interesting menorahs they have seen – constructed of everything from surf boards to skis to Legos to candy, pipes, bottle caps, shot-glasses, baby food jars, sculpted ice, Smores, and donuts.

In keeping with WWW’s Chanukah theme, it was a true miracle that I was able to gather so much interesting material in so short a time!

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I turned into the Seven Mile Market parking lot, how a semi-retired Hopkins nephrologist morphed into an environmental ecologist. Dr. Devorah Rivka Gelfand is not only passionate about her newest life calling; she has inspired others to jump on the bandwagon. The goal of “Cherish the Earth-Bal Tashchis” (www.cherishtheearth-baltashchis), the non-profit organization she founded, is education about and promotion of Torah-based environmental conservation to the Baltimore Jewish community.

When I arrived at the “Cherish the Earth” Environmental Expo booth outside Seven Mile Market on November 3, I was greeted by Jonathan Libber and Dr. Gelfand’s husband Shlomo. It was one of three such booths around town. The others were in front of Market Maven and Shoppers.

Jewish comedy can be traced back much further than the Catskills’ Borsht Belt, where many prominent comedians began their careers between the 1920s to the 1970s. In fact, comedy is actually mentioned in the Torah. The Gemara [Ta’anis 22a] refers to two professional jesters who were – they earned the World to Come through comedy. When they saw people who were depressed, they cheered them up, and when they saw two people quarrelling, they tried to make peace between them. Yet rarely do we come across people, especially in our greater Orthodox community, who have made comedy their profession. Luckily for me, however, I happen to know a few of them.

David Rosen’s family room seemed typical. Actually, I discovered, it is a treasure trove containing 47 years of research into Torah sources, research from which he gleans amazing anecdotes and extraordinarily obscure historical facts. As interesting as David’s ongoing endeavor is, it is even more astonishing considering that he has suffered from severe chronic pain, 24/7, for the last 25 years.

David Rosen’s passion for Jewish history began when he was a 16-year-old tenth grader in 1972. It bothered him that he did not know anything about Jewish history – including the churban (destruction) of the first and second Temples, the Rishonim and Achronim, the Geonim, the miracles of Chanukah and Purim, and the kingdoms of Beis Yehuda and Beis Yisrael.

Last February, Malka read a book her mother bought, called Shidduch Secrets. One chapter was about a girl who, turned off by a shadchan’s harsh words, decided to focus on doing chesed and started visiting a nursing home. Malka was inspired by this true story, in which the girl ended up marrying the grandson of a nursing home resident. She pushed herself to make the three-mile roundtrip walk, alone, to Tudor Heights Senior Living, one Shabbos shortly after Pesach, since no friend was available to go with her.

Who doesn’t tremble on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when the chazan chants the somber and fearsome Unesanu Tokef? This year, as we recall the unprecedented number of water tragedies that have occurred this summer, we will surely shudder even more when he comes to the part, “Mi vamayim – Who shall perish by water.”

The swimming season had barely gotten underway, in June, when three children drowned in Israel, leaving them in serious and critical condition; later that month, a man in his 50s fatally drowned in a pool in Tzefas. Closer to home, we are still traumatized by the drowning of Rabbi Reuven Bauman, z”l, who heroically jumped into the ocean to save a student and whose body was found off the coast of North Carolina by a boat of Misaskim of Maryland volunteers from Baltimore.