Warning! This article is about statistics. As a grants and systems specialist, I work with numbers and statistics all day long, but I have noticed that statistics causes many people’s eyes to glaze over. (Some of them even fall asleep.) Yet statistics are important to the understanding of complex social realities. It is only when we know the facts and the numbers that we can plan for the future and decide on policies that will be beneficial to the community. I hope in this article to present a fascinating glimpse into the Baltimore Jewish community by way of the numbers.

When you plant yummy vegetables in your backyard garden, there are any number of critters and pests that think your plants and vegetables are theirs for the taking. (“Thank you so much for keeping us in mind!”) I often imagine that there’s a Critter’s Craig’s List out there, cataloguing all the best gardens in the neighborhood. If that’s the case, I guess we should be proud that our gardens have made it into the big time!

I recently saw a clever ad, a spoof on a Merriam-Webster dictionary entry defining telehealth:

“The provision of healthcare remotely by means of telecommunications technology. Synonyms: convenient; virtual doctor; accessible care. Antonyms: long waits; copays; deductibles; impossible to do from your La-Z-Boy.”

During these COVID times, a lot of things have changed. We’ve had no choice but to work, learn, and shop from home. That list of home-based activities has also come to include getting medical care. Although telehealth – seeing your doctor on the computer screen – existed before the pandemic, it is now big business. According to GBMC’s Medical Director of Primary Care and Population Health, Dr. Robin Motter-Mast, GBMC’s telehealth project was put into place a year before COVID hit hard and was prepared to help patients. In February, GBMC charted 59 telehealth visits; by May, there were approximately 18,000.

It’s been almost five months, yet the Coronavirus still lurks among us. We’re getting used to living with a low level of anxiety. Will my family be safe and well? Will I have a job next week? We have no way of knowing, no sense of what tomorrow looks like. We all have a litany of negatives, especially masks and social distancing. Somehow, though, as we begin to emerge from certain restrictions, many of us are suddenly realizing the silver linings in the heavy COVID-19 clouds. Here are a few items on a list of lessons learned and aspects to be grateful for during this pandemic. Please share your own list with WWW readers for the next edition.

On Erev Taanis Esther, my husband and I were en route to Eretz Yisrael to our grandson’s bar mitzva. We boarded the plane with very mixed emotions. Not only is Purim time the busiest, most hectic time of the year for my husband’s grocery business (pre-Pesach) but the shadow of COVID was just beginning to have an impact both here and in Eretz Yisrael. For some unfathomable reason, I felt an urgency to get to Eretz Yisrael before Purim that I couldn’t explain, even though the bar mitzva wouldn’t take place until more than a full week later. Our mechutanim, Rabbi and Mrs. Nota and Leah Gelb, would actually be arriving in Israel after Purim, and we could have travelled on the same flight. But, as I said, I refused to change our plans.

According the FBI database, there are over two million first-time gun owners in the U.S. since the COVID pandemic started. This means that over two million people who never thought they would own a gun have had a change of heart and decided that now is the right time to buy one. Why is that? What is the process of obtaining a firearm in Maryland? What are some of the concerns people have about guns? And what is the state of firearms availability today? I hope to answer these questions.

It was almost two years ago that the horrific Pittsburgh synagogue massacre occurred, in October 2018. In 2019, anti-Semitic street crimes escalated in New York, fatal shootings were perpetrated in Poway (San Diego) and Jersey City. And in Monsey, five chasidim at a Chanukah party were hacked with a machete.

Although the COVID-19 crisis has eclipsed every other problem these days, anti-Semitism has not gone away and continues to fester in the background. Anti-Semitic hate crimes are not new. Ever since the FBI first compiled statistics in 1992, America’s Jews have been target number-one of religious-inspired attacks. The recent increasing violence, mayhem, and murder, including from domestic terrorists, signal us that we must escalate our hishtadlus (efforts) to protect ourselves.

Dear Rabbi Hochberg,

I am a mother of eight children. My husband has the privilege of being a mechanech in a yeshiva, and I work half a day to ease the burden of parnassa. We barely make it to the end of the month but, Baruch Hashem, we’re a happy and healthy family. The problem is that there are things we can’t afford, and my eldest son insists he needs them (because that’s what all his friends have). I feel compelled to give in so as not to make him feel deprived, but we can’t manage the expense. I’d like to know how to strike a healthy balance, where on the one hand, he understands that if we can’t afford it, we don’t get it, but on the other hand, he doesn’t feel deprived.

Wondering Mother

While most of our community has been busy reorganizing our lives the last number of months due to COVID-19, Baltimore City and Verizon have been partnering together and posting notices on utility poles and street lamps throughout our residential neighborhoods, giving notice for installation of Verizon’s 5G small cell antennas at those locations.

Rosh Hashanah is coming – it’s hard to believe, I know – and I wish you a happy and healthy year, filled with worthwhile experiences, and good news! We all have a lot on our plates right now, so one way I plan to make Yom Tov easier is to cook and freeze ahead. Here are a few tips about freezing:

Mrs. Esther Tendler, a”h, was a well-known personality in Baltimore, not because of any official position she held but rather because of who she was. The mother of a large family, Mrs. Tendler had a friendly disposition, a huge smile, and a down-to-earth, practical way of looking at things. She and her husband Rabbi Yosef Tendler lived on Yeshiva Lane across the hall from my parents, so I had the opportunity to see her in action. My parents and the Tendlers were friends for many years, beginning when they both learned in the Kollel in Lakewood, close to 70 years ago.

We set out for Lakewood a few months before Pesach, 2019, to visit our dear cousin Rabbi Dovid Trenk, zt”l, who was not well. To most of the world, Rabbi Trenk was a beloved long-time rebbe in Adelphia Yeshiva. More recently, he was the revered Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Moreshes Yehoshua. In his over-50-year career teaching Torah, he was an inspiration and mentor to thousands of talmidim. (The biography of this talmid chacham, Just Love Them, by Yisroel Besser, which came out recently, is the top Jewish bestseller of the season.) But for me, he was simply Reb Dovid, an extraordinary individual and a cherished friend and cousin.

Moving presents challenges at any age, but moving later in life – which includes reinventing oneself in a new community – is the hardest. Still, many older people are moving these days to be closer to their children. Among them is Sarah (Moses) Spero, one of our newest community members. Sarah and her husband, Dr. Abba Spero, moved to Baltimore four years ago after living in Cleveland for many decades. This is not the first time that this wife, mother, simcha creator, writer, and ultimate people-person, has reinvented herself. And Sarah – with her customary wit and charm – enthusiastically shared her story with me.  

I hope this finds you all well in these uncertain times. Someone from Baltimore asked me, about five weeks ago, to explain about President Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” Below is what I knew then, with a few words at the end about what we know now. I tried to provide my answer without badmouthing anybody. The truth is that Trump and Kushner and Friedman and Netanyahu all seem like fine people, although I’ve never had a Shabbos meal with any of them, that being my main way of meeting new people. They’re all welcome to join us for Shabbos and receive my Chevron tour (after Corona is over).

In the meantime, the Deal seems to have fallen out of the news in Israel, replaced almost entirely by a preoccupation with Israel’s returning Corona virus. Still, it could come back at any time, in the format I describe below, for better or worse, with Trump or with another president. After you read what I wrote, perhaps you will be able to formulate an opinion about whether or not you want it to return.

I was brought up in a home where even talking about guns was considered taboo. I was horrified when my own children played shooting games, and I discouraged even pretend guns. What a surprise to find out that my son-in-law was great at shooting guns and had actually received one as a birthday present when he was