“Anything Can Happen” is my favorite song in the play, Mary Poppins. The first line of that song is “Anything can happen if you let it.” Something happened when Meira Berendt (Levi) decided she wanted to do a production with women. With the help of Hashem, after eight months of hard work, supported by her musical directors, choreographers, cast, and crew, it happened: the women’s play Mary Poppins. The result was a spectacular production that could have been on Broadway.  

As a teacher, I always loved the character of Mary Poppins. For many years in Atlanta, I dressed up on Purim as Miriam Poppins (a Jewish Mary Poppins) and visited Morah Dena Friedman’s kindergarten class at Torah Day School, bringing joy to the children (and myself) as I marched around with my bird head umbrella and sang “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” So when my daughter was practicing for the play, I bought tickets for both nights’ performances, December 22 and 23, at the Panther Theater. I sat at the edge of my seat during this all-woman professional performance. After the play, I went to sleep singing the songs and got up singing them. The acting, singing, dancing, scenery, costumes, special effects, and more were beyond what I expected. It was so enjoyable that I wish I could watch it again!

As soon as I got my driver’s license at 18, I drove to my friend Ruthie’s house to celebrate. But as I was parallel parking, a skill I had just learned to pass my driver’s test, I hit a car. “I’m not getting back in there,” I told my friend’s mother.

“Oh, yes you are,” she said, and the owner of the car I hit agreed. Through their kindness, I got back into the car, and, b”H, I’ve been driving ever since, even teaching my children how to drive when they were teenagers. Still, through the years, I’ve avoided parallel parking and mostly park my 2012 Camry at the curb in front of our house or between the white lines in parking lots. Now that I’m a senior (not a high school one, of course) my new problem is maneuvering my car between the white lines in those parking spaces.

 Every time I walk into a voting booth and pull the curtain, my heart races with the responsibility of making the best decisions. Unfortunately in the past decades, I missed a few primary elections, but I’m more careful today. Although I prefer the excitement of voting on Election Day, sometimes I vote early. It’s easy to say, “My one vote doesn’t really count,” but that’s not true. Whether I cast my ballot early or on Election Day, I am aware that my vote does count among all the others in our Jewish community.

A good voter turnout impresses leaders in government, and that makes a difference for our community’s needs being met. This is why some people are concerned about a low voter turnout in the presidential primary this past May. Sandy Rosenbluth, Chief of Staff for Dalya Attar and member of the Maryland Democratic State Central Committee, along with her husband, Ronnie Rosenbluth, a former member of the State Central Committee, are upset that very few people in our district voted. “Poor voter turnout gives us less influence with elected officials,” says Mrs. Rosenbluth.

In the late 1960s, when I was a senior at Towson University, then called Towson State College, I was appointed as a student representative to a faculty curriculum committee meeting, where I experienced the only antisemitic slur in my four years at Towson. Because I was very young, I didn’t know what to say when a faculty member who was against bringing a business curriculum to Towson suggested that it would attract more Jews. A few minutes later, I walked out of that meeting and never came back. At that time, the Jewish Students Association, a worthy school club, existed, but it wasn’t a place to report antisemitism.

Today, Jewish students at Towson and other Maryland colleges gain support through Chabad and Hillel on campus. After the massacre by terrorists in Israel on Simchas Torah, that support is needed more than ever.

After breakfast on a Sunday morning, visiting in Lakewood, I spotted our teenage grandson working at a table in the corner of the kitchen. He was picking up tiny brown pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to complete the ground leading up to a nighttime picture of a country store. He started solving jigsaw puzzles at twelve years old. When I saw him easily find and connect a piece, I asked,“How do you do that?”

“It’s not so hard,” he said. “Try it.”

On Sunday, April 23, I attended the reunion of Public School #59 at Beth Tfiloh, catered by Milk & Honey. It’s unusual to hold a reunion for a public elementary school and even more unusual to make it kosher! Public school is free and in the ’50s, it was the choice of most Jewish families in the Lower Park Heights neighborhood. But when I became frum, I knew that the best choice for my children was Jewish day schools, regardless of the cost.

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