My connection to Tehillim began when I was 12 years old and part of a bas mitzva celebration with six other girls on a Sunday morning at Congregation Agudas Achim Anshe Sphard, in Lower Park Heights. In the faded green play folder I saved from the 50s is a cantata on “The Seven Days of Creation,” written by Rabbi Harry Bolensky. In the cantata, Rabbi Bolensky wrote “King David looked up and sang Hashamayim misaprim kvod Kel, uma’aseh yadav yagid harake’ah, the Heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and the sky testifies to the work of His hands.” Because I only had a Sunday School education, I needed the transliterated words. My Hebrew wasn’t good yet, but the message was clear: King David in this psalm said, Look up to G-d and appreciate the beauty He created. That was my first contact with Tehillim.

“It’s a safe place to share what’s going on in our minds,” says Sara Brejt about Jewish Women of Wisdom (JWOW!), a new international organization she helped found for women in their 50s and 60s. After engaging audiences in Lakewood, Monsey, Brooklyn, and the Five Towns, JWOW! is bringing the conversation to Maryland.

Several years ago, Mrs. Brejt, a lawyer, career coach, and teacher at Women’s Institute of Torah (WIT), was listening to an interview about women’s midlife issues on Chazaq Radio. She recognized the speakers, whom she had met at conventions: Miriam Liebermann, author and inspirational speaker, and Faigie Horowitz, Rebbetzin of Agudas Achim in Lawrence, activist, and prolific writer for Jewish publications. Mrs. Brejt contacted them. Around the same age, the three frequently spoke about their challenges and opportunities as midlifers and empty nesters.

I was shopping at Seven Mile Market when I bumped into Shlomo Tzvi Baden, who over 20 years ago, when he was a student at Georgia Tech, boarded in my home in Atlanta. He asked me if I would be interested in hosting singles for a Shabbos meal once a month. After filling out a form answering questions on preferences, etc., for his project, Singles on the First (SotF), my husband and I had the privilege of hosting two young women for Shabbos lunch. When recently I asked to host singles again, Mr. Baden said, “I need more people, both singles and hosts, in your neighborhood and others.”

SotF is one of the latest efforts by Baltimore individuals and organizations to focus on singles. Mr. Baden started this project a little over a year ago after reading an article by a divorced woman. She felt frustrated and neglected and asked others to please reach out to to her. Mr. Baden felt that he “had to step up and do something” for all singles. First he contacted several rabbis to ask if anyone was setting up singles for Shabbos meals. Rabbi Daniel Rose, of Congregation B’nai Jacob Shaarei Zion, told him that Steve Schwarz had recently asked him a similar question. Soon, Mr. Baden and Mr. Schwarz started SotF. Although they confer with each other, Mr. Schwarz mainly arranges formal meals several times a year for 10 or more singles, while Mr. Baden sets up singles once a month for Shabbos meals.

SotF’s purpose may be for singles to have a place to eat on Shabbos, but it has a side benefit: When singles meet more people in the community, and their hosts get to know them, magical things might happen, like dating suggestions.

When I was a very young child on Loyola Southway in Lower Park Heights, every night, my father held me in his arms and slowly danced around our living room singing “La La Lee.” One day, he went to visit his parents in Atlantic City, where they owned a boarding house. That night, I wouldn’t go to sleep. “I want ‘La La Lee,’” I cried over and over again. The next morning, my mother packed our bags, and we boarded a bus to join my father. Eventually, I outgrew “La La Lee,” grew up, married, and moved to Atlanta, Georgia. But I still feel the warmth of my father’s arms as he danced and sang to me.

Both my beloved parents died in Cheshvan, four years apart: my mother in 1986 and my father in 1990. Since my mother was nifteres first, I observed her yahrtzeit by hosting a group of women in my home to speak of her virtues. Sometimes, I sponsored a class in her memory as part of Bena, the women’s division of the Atlanta Scholars Kollel (ASK). But what to do for my father?

What do people do once their grown children are on their own and they’ve retired from their jobs? Travel, of course. Seniors have always been well represented in foreign and domestic travel. Now, Jewish seniors can also take advantage of an ever-expanding array of farflung – even exotic – travel experiences.

“In the good old days, seniors packed a peckalah, got in their car, and took off for the day. Now seniors can travel anywhere,” say Dave Broth of Caves Travel. He and his wife Nancy have been booking trips for clients and themselves for over 27 years.

During these years, the Broths occupied the familiar Caves Travel office on Reisterstown Road. At the end of 2017, they sold the property and moved the agency to their home on Shelburne Road. There, they continue to book trips by phone, email, and  fax.

Last Spring, I was mesmerized by my first Waterfalls, a Chinese auction sponsored by Kollel Avodas Levi of Yeshiva Ner Israel. For several years, I had studied the Waterfalls catalog and purchased tickets from 700 miles away. I hoped I would win and wished that I could attend in person. Now, back in Baltimore, that wish came true – at least part of it. I didn’t win a prize – not the exciting ones displayed around the perimeter of the room. But something positive happened when I attended my first Waterfalls and gave tzedaka to a Jewish institution that I love.

My connection with Ner Israel began before my sons learned there. Growing up in Baltimore, I attended seventh grade at Garrison Junior High. One winter day, there was a fierce snowstorm that came down so heavily that we were let out of school early. Trudging through the snow on Garrison Boulevard in hopes of catching a ride home to Shirley Avenue, I remember walking by a huge mansion that was the Yeshiva’s first building. For a fleeting moment, I wondered what was going on inside.