Chana Wilson grew up in a small town in South Carolina. She and her identical twin sister were born to religious parents who had strong family bonds in Christianity. When Chana was five years old, her parents experienced a profound spiritual awakening, which caused them to move away from the faith of their fathers and to begin studying the Bible from the Jewish perspective.

I am most grateful for living in America and enjoying the freedoms its democracy provides. It’s an emotion under attack these days. But that doesn’t change the warm feeling I have whenever the red-white-and-blue is displayed on patriotic holidays like the Fourth of July, and whenever I stand respectfully for “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the start of a concert or ballgame. I felt that same heartwarming emotion this past February when I toured The National Navy UDT-SEAL Museum (aka “The Navy SEAL Museum”), just outside Fort Pierce, Florida. 

Thirty years ago, I started teaching at Bais Yaakov of Baltimore, and 30 years ago, Miriam Stark Zakon wrote the short story, “Reb Aharon in Search of a Miracle,” published in Sarah Shapiro’s Our Lives Vol. 1 and Artscroll’s Jerusalem Gems. And for most of these past 30 years, I have read this magical story to my students on the last day of school before Pesach vacation. It has become a tradition. Younger sisters hear about it from their older sisters. The Bais Yaakov experience is not complete without it.

The school year is finally over and it’s been a wild ride. The typical school graduation – on a stage, in caps and gowns – is no more. In the upside-down world we are now experiencing, some of our local schools nevertheless managed to make graduations and end-of-the-year parties special for their students. I was blown away by the creativity, love, and enthusiasm that the teachers and staff put into making sure that no one would feel they were missing something. In reality, it may have been more fun than in a regular year!

Kids love to cook, and cooking is a great activity for this summer. One of my best “pro” tips in doing food projects with kids is to decide, going in, that they don’t have to do it your way. They can do it their own way. The goal of the project is to have fun. Will there be a mess at the end? Likely – but if you expect it, it’s easier to take. It helps to cover the table with a plastic tablecloth, to be thrown out at the end, which makes clean-up a bit easier.

WWW: What exactly do you do as a city councilperson? What is your actual role and how do you assist members of the 5^th district?

Schleifer: I deal with all day-to-day city/life issues. From police, fire, trash-pickup, the roads – really, any service the local jurisdiction is responsible for.

WWW: If someone has an issue, how would he or she know when to call you for assistance?

Schleifer: Most people don’t know, but I find that they reach out anyway. Because a city councilperson is visible and accessible, people reach out with all sorts of city, state, and federal issues. When it is out-of-city jurisdiction, I connect them with the appropriate agency or party.

What celebration can beat the exuberance and excitement of a wedding festivity? Well, I was soon to find out. During my engagement to my Teimani (Yemenite) chatan, Eliyahu, it was proposed to throw the traditional Yemenite, women-only, pre-wedding ceremonial party, called the Henna. I was warned that it might be more enjoyable than the actual wedding, and in hindsight, I must agree that it was. I really did not know what to expect as I was too busy with wedding preparations to check into what happens at a Henna. I did know what my sister-in-law-to-be told me, which is that the letters of henna, in Hebrew, stand for the three special mitzvot of a woman: challa, niddah, and hadlakat neirot.

In part three of my series on how to plant your very own vegetable garden, I’d like to answer some questions I often get from beginning (as well as more experienced) gardeners:

Question: Recently, my wife was very badly hurt in a car accident. Hatzalah was called, and she was rushed to the hospital. It was very scary to see here lying there helpless and bleeding. She was in Shock Trauma for about a week. I was not able to be with her because of the virus situation, although I was in touch over the phone. 

Ironically, my wife is much better, but I find that I am not feeling so well myself. I have trouble sleeping at night, meaning I fall asleep, but I wake up in the middle of the night feeling very stressed out and can’t fall back asleep. I am also much more sensitive during the day, and my tears are very close to the surface. I think I am suffering from the trauma that I experienced through my wife’s accident. I don’t want to go to a therapist. Can you suggest any techniques I could use to help myself recover from this ordeal? 

The great American writer, Mark Twain, once remarked that, in New England, the weather changes so frequently that you can study all the different types of weather by simply standing outside for the day and waiting for the weather to march by. Twain must have written this before visiting Baltimore because people here need only stand in front of their houses for a few hours to experience the full gamut of weather conditions.

Over the past few months, our lives have been turned upside-down in so many ways that we are desperate for a return to routine. Yet there is so much we still don’t know: what our children’s education will look like in September, when the economy will recover, and when we can go to shul and weddings again. Ironically, it is the unpredictability of Baltimore’s weather that is the one thing people can count on with certainty these days.

So, with the kids at home and climatic conditions right outside our windows, it’s an ideal time to learn about the fascinating phenomenon we call “the weather.”

The Jewish levaya, or funeral, is the final kavod and honor that family and friends perform when a loved one passes away. Death under any circumstance is a very difficult and painful experience. The family relies on their rabbi, the funeral home, friends, and a chevra kadisha to help them carry out their duty with the proper love, dignity, and respect for the deceased.

Sol Levinson has been Baltimore’s Jewish funeral home since 1892, and is still run by the family today. Ira Levinson and his son Matt continue the outstanding and compassionate management that their forebears taught them so well. When I interviewed them recently, Ira told me their simple motto, handed down from generation to generation: “We do everything possible to do the right thing. We do whatever we can to address the family’s needs and issues in this time of extreme sorrow and grief.”

I often work with the Levinson family as an Ahavas Yisrael trustee, and I can say that we are fortunate to have such a special organization as Levinson’s performing the burials of our loved ones. I know that the rabbanim of our community feel the same way. The professional staff makes all Jews feel comfortable with Levinson’s compassionate services. This excellence manifests itself in everything they take on: from their comprehensive, educational website to their commitment to personalizing funerals for each family’s needs.