If you know the meanings of laydig-gayer and flahgmat, you earn 50 Yiddishist points – unless you peeked at the translation. (It’s hard not to, when it’s in the title!)

A laydig-gayer is someone who has either retired or who simply has nothing to do except twiddle his thumbs forward and then backwards. A flahgmat, on the other hand, is someone dedicated to taking his (or her) good old time.

So what does being a laydig-gayer have to do with us Yidden? you may ask. After all, there are nochrim (non-Jews) who perceive us as rich aggressive folks. But the truth is that we do have laydig-gayers and flahgmats among Bnai Yisrael (the Jewish people) – and I can prove it!

With tax time fast approaching, here is a checklist – along with my comments – of the information and documents you need to collect.

Personal info: The legal names, dates of birth, and social security numbers of everyone in the family.

Status: Married couples have to file as “married.” Single people file as “single” or “head of household,” which is tax talk for single parent. Married people can file separately, but they usually lose more than they gain.

Comment: It might make sense to file separately if you have high medical or work expenses. Planning a wedding date carefully can provide great savings. Also, if a couple is going to separate, the timing can make a difference.

Last month I shared with you “how I met my tichel.” Soon I was to discover that there was another Tichel Lady out there. Here’s how I met her!

It was two years since I started my website, Rivka Malka.com, as a way to reach out and connect to Jews whom I wouldn’t otherwise meet. Thanks to the excellent advice of Yisroel Bethea, I started by making tichel-tying videos. At first, I really didn’t want to. I thought, “Most of the people I’m reaching out to don’t cover their hair or are not even married.

Yisroel disagreed: “What will come through is your authenticity. That’s what people want. They know you for your tichels; go show them tichels.” So that’s what I did.

To the Shadchan:

I have been involved in making shidduchim for a number of years. In the past few months, I have encountered situations that have upset me, and I would value your opinion on what to do. One example: I will redt (suggest) a shidduch to a guy, and he will check out the girl and say yes. The girl also says yes, but she will be away, and I can’t set up the date right away. I inform the guy, and he says he will wait. After the girl returns, however, he is busy dating someone else.

In another instance, I redt a shidduch to a guy and he says yes, and the girl says yes also. Unfortunately he is in the middle of exams, and can’t go out right away. She says she’ll wait. What happens? After the exams, I call the guy, and find out that another shadchan approached him with a “better idea” and he’s going out with her! Isn’t there any mentchlechkeit in shidduchim these days?

From the time our children were small up, until bar/bas mitzva age or so, we made it a point to develop Jewish themes for our family’s Purim costumes, where each of us had an essential role.  We felt that, while there is nothing wrong with a child dressing up as, say, Batman or a baseball player, Purim created an opportunity to have fun in a specifically Jewish way. Weeks in advance of Purim each year, we set to work on a Torah-related costume that called for the participation of everyone in our family of four (we, the parents, and our boy and girl twins).

As children, we envision ourselves becoming all sorts of things – when we “grow up.” Some kids want to be garbage collectors and ride a noisy, green truck. Others want to be teachers, imagining what fun it would be to boss everyone around. A few children, finding the pediatrician’s stethoscope “necklace” intriguing, dream of being doctors. And some children believe that driving a big rumbling bus is the ultimate in power!

Then we become adults and reality hits. Being a garbage collector, teacher, doctor, or bus driver no longer seems exciting or even practical, and the ways we find ways to support ourselves turn out to be very different from our childhood fantasies. Some of us become accountants, speech therapists, or mechanics, but others find unique ways to use their talents to support their families.

Although traditional Mom-and-Pop stores still exist, today’s small business people are more likely to use “in” words like “entrepreneur” and “niche” business to describe what they do. And technology has so revolutionized the nature of doing business that it is possible to work from anywhere in the world and to reach customers across the globe. Many contemporary businesses would not have been possible even 20 years ago, because the technology simply wasn’t there.

Ad meah ve’esrim – until 120! With this bracha, we wish each other long life. It’s amazing to think that in a lifetime of 120 years, the average heart would beat 4,541,184,000 times and transport about 315,500,000 liters of blood throughout the body.

The heart is amazingly dependable – if we take care of it. Unfortunately, the typical American diet and lifestyle are not always conducive to heart health. Consider these sobering statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Every year in the U.S., about 715,000 Americans have a heart attack and 600,000 people die from heart disease. Heart disease accounts for one in four deaths in the U.S., making it the leading cause of death among men and women.

My Zaidy, the youngest of nine children, was born in 1921 to R’ Yosef and Yenta Greenfield. That same year, the family left their home in Zolynia, Poland, and arrived in New York on erev Yom Kippur when Zaidy was only an infant. The Greenfield family lived in Brownsville, where R’ Yosef opened a small grocery store. This enabled the family to eke out a living while remaining shomer Shabbos. With only an icebox to cool the food, the perishables in the store would spoil after a long hot Shabbos day. R’ Yosef, who was a poor man, nevertheless kindly donated the milk, cheese, and butter to needy families every erev Shabbos in the summer. Tragically, Zaidy lost his mother when he was only seven years old, and his older sisters became his surrogate mothers.

Just before noon on September 1, 1989, I was driving through a seedy sec­tion of downtown Elizabeth, New Jersey, when I spotted a branch of my bank. I parked in the deserted lot behind the building, walked around to the front entrance, and then remembered that I had left my check in my car. I trotted back, unlocked the car door, and leaned inside while fumbling through an assortment of papers and bills that filled my coat pocket. Finally, I found the envelope with my precious monthly stipend – most of which I had already spent, having mailed out a slew of checks the day before to pay some long overdue bills – and laid my coat back over the seat. As I straightened up and turned to close the car door, I let out a gasp.

Reeking of alcohol, three men wearing tattered jeans and filthy T-shirts had formed a tight semicircle around me. The man on my left was clutching the skinny neck of an empty whiskey bottle. Aiming it upward, he looked as if he were about to hammer something – or someone. His dark, glassy eyes revealed a mean, desperate gaze. The scrawny guy on my right looked almost friendly, but a little scared and hungry. The one in the mid­dle, however, was Lerch, straight out of The Addams Family. His large, rectangular head loomed above me.

As I pen this article, just hours before the levaya of Dovid Hess, a”h, one of Baltimore’s biggest askanim, I can’t help but wonder what will become of our community as the proverbial torch is passed to the next generation. After some research, I was reassured to find that the next generation is continuing the mesora (heritage) that Mr. Hess and other exemplary community-minded members have established. Here is just a sampling of some of the acts of chesed our youth perform, 24/7.

WOW!

Batsheva Feldman, 22, is a graduate student at University of Maryland School of Social Work. Although she tutors and babysits on the side, she also makes the time to learn weekly with a young non-observant female at WOW’s learning program for young professionals. She learns halachos of Shabbos, modesty, and other philosophical topics, and answers questions about Judaism. In addition, she learns with two other college students, weekly, through Skype.