It took me a while to connect all the dots. There was our two-hour wait in the rental car line, our new dining room table that was promised to arrive any day but got held up for months at port, the endless dealership invites to sell my 2017 vehicle for top dollar, the repeated delays of our early Friday morning Southwest flight (that finally got us home an hour before Shabbos), and the months-long wait for a dented refrigerator door replacement.

The list goes on and on – across the board and across the globe. Product lines, professional services, food establishments, educational institutions, and more, in every state, every country, and every continent. For months, we have all experienced the trickle-down effects of this unprecedented labor shortage in one way or another. I went behind the scenes of just a few of these workplaces to do some investigation.

“He said to them: Go and see which is the good way to which a man should cleave…Rabbi Eliezer says: One who considers the consequences [of his actions]…” (Avos 2:9)

We are about to embark on a grand experiment in our community. This experiment will not be a planned or controlled experiment, but a natural one born from the human tendency toward inertia. We are the guinea pigs, but we are also the ones running the experiment.

Peter Kurz has two foremost passions in life: Israel and baseball. As a ten-year-old from the Upper West Side in New York City, he traveled to Israel for the first time in 1967, and began his lifelong love of the Jewish state. Two years later, in 1969, the New York Mets won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles, which solidified his love of baseball.

Despite making aliyah in 1976, Kurz did not abandon his passion for the American national pastime. Yet Kurz’s penchant for baseball has often been a lonely experience for him in Israel, a country where basketball and soccer are substantially more popular. He has dedicated much of his professional life to changing the perception of baseball among Israelis. In 1998, he began coaching the sporadic local Israeli Little League team and worked his way up to secretary-general, president of the Israel Baseball Association, and now general manager of the national Israeli baseball team.

“President Biden told the world on Monday, August 16, that he doesn’t regret his decision to withdraw rapidly from Afghanistan, or even the chaotic, incompetent way the withdrawal has been executed. He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule.” So did a Wall Street Journal editorial of August 16, 2021 aptly sum up the situation.

With the Taliban’s victorious entry into Kabul in mid-August 2021, the American military intervention in Afghanistan has come full circle. Undertaken to destroy Al Qaeda following its deadly 9/11 attack on American soil, and to remove Afghanistan as a base for global terrorism, it has now, 20 years later, ended up where it began. Instead of building on the significant progress achieved, it is witnessing the triumphant return of those terrorists in a stronger position than ever. President Biden’s assertion that the U.S. “mission” had been accomplished is exposed as the boldface lie it is by the glaring reality of the shameful rout.

The benefits of regular exercise for our physical and mental well-being are well known. This was especially true during the height of the pandemic, and many of us took the opportunity to get out and walk around our neighborhoods, Quarry Lake, Meadowbrook Park and other local nature areas. Baltimoreans are also blessed to have beautiful walking/hiking/biking trails along local abandoned railroad lines. In addition to the exercise, these make for a wonderful family outing on Chol Hamoed Sukkos or anytime. Described below are some of the most accessible and popular.

The pandemic has helped us learn at least two vital messages very well. We all learned not to take anything in life for granted. Not family gatherings, events, our daily schedules, hugs – or even our own breath. We’ve learned to appreciate everything more as we now have seen that it can all be taken away – and quickly.

Another vital message we have learned is how important it is to strengthen our immune systems. When young people are given the chance to joyfully learn the skills needed to keep the immune system strong from a very early age, we are doing what is within our power to help them lead healthy, happy, and long lives.

With cell phone in pocket or purse, we are all photographers these days. It’s so easy. Film has gone the way of the typewriter, and everything is digital. No need to load the camera; no need to turn the film to the next frame. The pace of life is fast, and it can be captured at an equally fast pace in pictures that preserve our most precious memories.

There are cameras on our doors, too, and on our PCs and laptops, in the streets, and in all kinds of buildings. The cameras keep clicking, covertly capturing our activities, and we do not always get to smile.

It’s that glorious time of the year when the crape myrtle trees are in full bloom. I never saw these trees any place but Baltimore although they’re known to grow throughout the southeastern part of the country. Picture medium-sized trees laden with large tufts of blossoms in gorgeous colors. When we moved here, I was simply amazed when I first saw them. I’m used to seeing flowering trees in the springtime, long before their leaves first appear. Crape myrtle trees only start blooming in July but can continue into September. For a flower lover like me, they are truly a sight to behold.

TEVA TALK

 Finding ourselves in a similar spot to where we stood a year ago compels us to pause and take stock. After a full year of masking and quarantines, many people now find themselves repeating the mantra: “But we did this already.” If we shift our focus, however, to carefully examine events as they unfolded, we will discover moments of clarity, when we worked together within our community to make this year a little more manageable and a little less lonely. Taking an honest look at where we stand, we can clearly see that we are not merely “doing this again.” Rather, we have grown since Covid started and learned to stay safe, both physically and emotionally, during continued uncertainty.

There are moments in many of our lives when the unfathomable happens, and the first reaction is “Not me, not my family; this can’t be happening to us!”

At first, you walk around in an uncomprehending state of disbelief, shock, and utter dismay. After a while, when you realize that it’s not a bad dream or a temporary lapse of sanity but is really happening, you discover that you’ve got to accept it and deal.

Life is wonderful – we have so much to be grateful for – and then, bam, we get a blow that sends us reeling. It could be the sudden death of a loved one, a serious illness, a child who goes off the derech, a seemingly beautiful young couple who become incompatible and decide to get a divorce (often with young children in the crossfire), a family member who becomes unstable – and, sometimes, more often that not, a combination of these incomprehensible situations.

I’ve been living in Israel since 2002. Throughout this time, I have been renting in Jerusalem. Recently, with the awareness of the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S., I have had the thought of myriads of Americans making aliyah and gobbling up whatever apartments are available. But even without that, it is a fact that more and more people from abroad are buying apartments in Israel as “insurance,” “just in case” they need a roof over their heads one day.

It’s no joke. There are many empty apartments in Jerusalem owned by people from overseas who occasionally show up for a few days out of the year. And their demand for such properties is driving up prices.

Where What When: We are here today with financial planner Eitan Schuchman to talk about the lifecycle of investment from a young age all the way until old age and beyond. Thank you, Eitan, for joining us; we hope this will be an informative discussion. First of all, what exactly do you do and what is your background?

Eitan Schuchman: I was born and raised here in beautiful Baltimore. We are old-school “Bal’more Hon,” a long-time intergenerational TA and BY family. After marriage, my wife Ariella (from Philly, the “other Bohm” family) and I chose to further strengthen that legacy by sending our six children through the system.

Regarding my career, after my BS, I went to the University of Maryland to earn my MBA and started my career at the investment firm Bear Stearns in New York City. I am a certified financial planner and a chartered financial consultant. I help individuals, married couples, and companies achieve their financial dreams, or at least get them to the next level in realizing their dreams. We do that by planning. There are many aspects to it, and we bring the best experts in the field together to make sure that my clients are in the best shape moving forward.