It has been over 10 months since my organization, Maryland Smart Meter Awareness (MSMA), began a concerted effort to educate the Jewish community in Baltimore about the problems with smart meters. Since that time, a great deal has happened. Most significantly, the Maryland Public Service Commission (PSC) issued its final decision allowing Maryland ratepayers to opt out of receiving a smart meter and to instead keep their analog electric meters. This was a major victory, as initially the PSC was opposed to allowing opt-outs regardless of the adverse health impacts and privacy violations. It took a concerted effort by MSMA and some of our legislators (most notably Senator Delores Kelley of Baltimore County and Delegate Glen Glass of Harford County) to address smart meter problems and give these issues the attention they deserved. In response, over 40,000 Maryland residents requested a deferral from a smart meter. All these efforts help convince the PSC that this was a serious issue.

I am writing these words in my home, Kiryat Arba-Hebron, Israel. Forty-seven years ago this week, Israel liberated all of Judea and Samaria, Israel’s biblical heartland, in six days. On 28 Iyar (June 7th that year), they liberated the Temple Mount, where the Temple will one day be rebuilt, and the next day they liberated Hebron, where the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish People are buried. Ever since that year, many Jews in Israel have commemorated 28 Iyar each year, thanking G-d for the miracles of those times.

A new scam is floating around, sprung from the ever-fertile minds of crooks, swindlers, and scam artists. The IRS itself is warning the public about this one, so you know it’s serious – and clever. I was going to write on a different topic this month, but when I heard that the married son of a friend of mine fell for this scam and lost $5,000 in one phone call, I thought I had better cover it.

Dear Rabbi Lowenbraun and Family,

It was 1984 and we had just moved to Baltimore from Madison, Wisconsin. Avrum was standing in a bank line a few days before Rosh Hashanah, and before he knew it, he was in conversation with the man in front of him, who happened to be an amiable rabbi named Lowenbraun. In hindsight, it is no great surprise that the conversation led, on the spot, to an invitation to a Yontif meal. I do not remember a lot about that evening, but I do recall feeling warmly welcomed amidst a slew of kids, our three boys included, and a table that seemed to sparkle with china and steaming hot and delicious food. There was an exuberance of energy in the air, much chatter in every room, and a little uncertainty as to how this evening would unfold. I can now say that, for us, it opened a door into a world that I desired but was unaccustomed to: a world of history and family, of traditions that dated back centuries, a personal clarity about who you were and what your life purpose was, a richness of spirit and wisdom, and melodies that were captivating and haunting. The life force that set everything into motion, that created connections and initiated dialogues, the life force that pulled it all together, the life force that stepped back rather than taking center stage – that life force was, without a doubt, Miriam Lowenbraun.

Happiness in a relationship is much more than luck; it takes a daily conscious effort to put into practice healthy relational habits. Let’s learn about some of the things that happy couples avoid and see how you can bring more joy into your own relationship.*  *  *

1) They don’t complain about their spouse to their friends or family: Happy couples know that it’s best not to involve others in their relationship. They talk directly to their spouse if they have an issue instead of consulting others, who often provide negative feedback that could hurt the relationship. There is nothing wrong with healthy “girl” or “guy” time, but don’t use it as an opportunity to complain about your spouse.

Primary elections are Tuesday, June 24, and Torah-observant Jews are flourishing in local Republican politics. Ruth Goetz and Rudy Stoler join Ari Winokur to represent Northwest Baltimore’s Jewish communities and our neighbors on the Republican State Central Committee. We work tirelessly in shuls, neighborhoods, and businesses to promote conservative policies and to bring our community’s interests to the attention of our government officials.

During the 2012 election, our sign-waving and leafleting nearly flipped the nationwide Jewish presidential vote, delivering over 60 percent for Romney-Paul at Pikesville High School! We spend our free time registering voters, waving signs, attending festivals and rallies, and representing Jewish interests to local conservative clubs and politicians. Our districts extend from Reisterstown out to Ruxton-Riderwood, and south as far as Pikesville, and even Cheswolde and Mount Washington in the City.

I’m a born collector. You name it, I’ve probably collected it at one time or another. This lifelong activity started when I was about five years old. I have vivid recollections of digging mica from the dirt surrounding the towering maple tree in our front yard. That experience, no doubt, led to my avocation of collecting gemstones. Around the same time, I started collecting seashells. I couldn’t (and still can’t!) tear myself away from the ocean – most probably because I was spoiled by weekly Sunday family trips to nearby Long Island Sound, where I’d comb the beach for Hashem’s fascinating marine creations. After that, there were collections of butterflies, stamps, coins, autographs, baseball and football cards, record albums, charms, and soda bottle caps, to name just a few. And I can still feel those highly polished chestnuts, abundant each autumn, that I gathered in a large brown paper bag in the nearby park.

What I like most about strawberries – aside from their terrific taste, high nutrient content, and culinary versatility – is their year-round availability. You can always find strawberries, either fresh in the produce section or frozen, whole or sliced, in the frozen foods aisle.

An interesting trend reported on strawberrynutritionnews.com is that the fresh fruit is now the top snack consumed by boys and girls ages two through 12. A study by a New York-based marketing organization called the NDP Group found that “cookies are crumbling out of favor as the top snack for children” and that fresh strawberries are among the most kid-friendly fruits.

Parenting is a learning experience – and the people we most often learn from are our children. Some of the main areas of educational instruction we receive from our children fall under the broad umbrella of economics, capitalism, and a free market economy. First let me state that this education is not free, it is not voluntary, and it is certainly not painless.

It all begins with the widely-accepted notion that sharing is good. Now, I’m not saying that sharing isn’t good, I’m just saying you need to be careful. Sharing instruction begins when children are approximately two years old. If you think back to when you first began parenting toddlers, you may recall that sharing is clearly not on their priority list. They prefer the grab-and-run method. It’s only with parental nurturing – also known as interference – that sharing becomes part of a toddler’s frame of reference. At this point the toddler has to make a decision: He must either learn to run faster or bite the bullet (not the other child’s arm!) and come to terms with the fact that sharing is here to stay.

A child comes home from school in tears, telling his parents he was bullied in school. What should the parents do? The father’s response is often, “Hit him back!” while the mother counsels the child to “tell the teacher.” Sound familiar? These parents’ differing reactions to this common scenario graphically demonstrate the confusion that exists, even among the experts, about the best way to deal with bullying.

Election Day June 24 is upon us, and with it the endemic problem in the frum community: How do you get people to go to the polls and vote? In theory, and indeed in reality, voting is a duty, and intelligent voting is a matter of self-interest. Such is precisely the theory of democracy, and such is precisely how the Founding Fathers designed our American political system. The voters are responsible for seeing to their interests. If they are dumb enough to hand their fates over to unelected powerbrokers, well then they deserve what they get, which means, in the words of Will Rogers, “We get the best government money can buy.” Intelligent self-interest on the part of voters who vote lies at the heart of our American form of government.