According to the fifth chapter in Pirkei Avos, I am now between “a ripe old age” and “showing strength.” May G-d please continue to bestow His blessings upon me, my wife, our children, and grandchildren.

We live our lives in uncharted territory. Each stage brings new opportunities and challenges. The famous words from “Fiddler on the Roof” come to mind:

Sunrise, sunset…Swiftly go the years

One season following another, laden with happiness and tears

Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play?

I don’t remember growing older; when did they?”

?During my tenure as a congregational rabbi in South Africa I had the privilege of meeting many lovely Jews of varying levels of knowledge and observance. To address the needs of the greater community, my shul established a three-tier learning program for beginners, intermediate, and advanced students. Our local kollel (comprised of Anglo-Israelis on two-year rotations), which at the time met in my shul, serviced the intermediate and advanced students with input from myself and my rabbinic colleagues. Personally, I most enjoyed teaching the beginners. These were dedicated, mostly middle-aged individuals who never had an opportunity to properly study the basics of Judaism. While I worked to inspire them, they consistently inspired me!

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 has been an unreal year-and-a-half since our last trip to Eretz Yisrael. COVID ramifications took many forms for all of us, and no one was left untouched. Baruch Hashem, we felt very blessed. We were well, and family members who had gotten COVID, were also doing well, for the most part.

During these hot summer days, I visited three cemeteries in just a week’s time. First, my wife and I went to the cemetery in Woodbridge New Jersey, where her parents are buried, as we commemorated her mother’s yahrzeit. My mother-in-law was a Trenk, and the Trenk family plot is a very chashuv (prestigious) place. The Trenk patriarchs, Morris and Shea, brothers who ran the Morris Trenk Hosiery and Underwear store on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, are buried there. There also lie my in-laws (Morris’s daughter and husband), very special people; their cousins, the Schechters of Pioneer Country Club and the Granit Pesach hotel fame; and Reb Dovid Trenk, possibly one of the greatest mechanchim (educators) of this century; as well as his brother and other wonderful cousins.

I thought that, in this issue, rather than answer a question, I would tell you about an exciting initiative in the shidduch world with a catchy name. Perhaps you have heard of it. Nix the Pix is the brainchild (or should I say “heartchild”) of well-known shadchan, Lisa Elefant from New York, who also spearheads the “Adopt the Shadchan” shidduch organization.

Summer is coming to a close (how quickly the seasons change), and children will soon don their backpacks, filled with pristine notebooks and newly sharpened pencils, and head out the door. What are their thoughts and hopes – and what are those of their parents and teachers? If last year was a successful one, they anticipate more happy times. If last year was a disaster, they hope this year will be better. But all of them, all of us – parents, teachers, and kids – wonder what they can do to make this upcoming year a great one. Here are some insights and ideas from children, teachers, parents.

Summer is winding down, and vacation season is coming to a close. Taking a cue from the classic first-day-of-school essay that teachers tell children to write, I will ask, what did your family do this summer and, more importantly, was it a vacation for you?

“The kids had a great time, but it wasn’t a vacation for me,” said Yehuda, a father of seven after a family trip. When asked what would be a vacation for him, he said, “A vacation for me includes my own bed, food that I like, and cool air-conditioning. Obviously, to Yehuda, a real vacation is spent in his bedroom!

Taking a cue from the favorite Rosh Hashanah song of both little kids and their teachers, I have put together some apple-and-honey recipes that will make a big hit with the family.

Elul is here, and the King is in the field. These days approaching Rosh Hashanah are designated for teshuva – a time when the universe is ripe for personal growth, when we concentrate on our middos and our Yiddishkeit. But how do we use the power of Elul to be our best selves? To make even one small change?

For more than 20 years, Rabbi Aryeh Nivin has focused on this work and guided thousands of others on how to do the Elul avoda, using Torah sources such as the Arizal, Derech Hashem, and the Slonimer Rebbe.

In our neighborhood, there is a small wooded area that is home to wild animals, such as deer, foxes, squirrels, and feigelach (birds). The birds include finches, cardinals, robins, and a Yiddish-speaking bird named Raizeleh.