I recently had the privilege of sharing a ride with Mrs. Zahava List, the founder and director of Chazkeinu. Started in Baltimore, Chazkeinu is a mental health peer support network for Jewish woman who are struggling with mental illness, including providing help for the female family members.

I knew a little bit about Chazkeinu as I had attended an event during the winter and was somewhat surprised to see the lightness of the evening and the fun involved! Turning our impressions upside down on the stigma of mental health is one of the missions of Chazkeinu. Its primary mission is to offer support and encouragement and to provide the safe space that is so crucial when one is dealing with mental illness. The group’s most recent initiative, Chill House, is what piqued my curiosity about this far-reaching organization, and when Zahava told me the list of services they provide, I was in awe.

As Elul moves closer, we start to prepare for our kids traveling to Israel to learn in yeshiva or seminary or to engage in other programs. At 18 or 19 years old, our kids are in late adolescence, a developmental period often marked by desires to explore new interests, take chances, challenge established values, and become more independent. For some kids, it is also a prime time for substance use.

We often think about risks for substance use increasing during times of transition, like moving from middle school to high school, or high school to college. Advancing from high school to full-time learning in Israel might also be considered a significant transition for some kids.

When our children get married, our family expands. Not only do we welcome our children’s new spouses, we also become connected to their families. Even though Josh Levin and his wife Cheryl live only a five-minute walk from our house, I did not know them or any of their daughters until my son Nechemia married Rivka, in 2006. We got to know a wonderful couple, and now, many years later, I asked Mr. Levin if I could interview him.

Not so long ago, there was a scourge upon the land. More American men were having heart attacks at a rate not previously recorded. It was the late 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was good and food plentiful. So why was heart disease on the rise?

Scientists looked all over for a cause and solution. (The notion that the rising rates of cigarette smoking may have been a contributing factor was discounted as the tobacco companies claimed that cigarettes were harmless.)

 Geshmak is a well known Yiddish word. It means fun. It means enjoyable. It means exciting. It means…geshmak! And that is how I would describe my third-grade rebbi, Rabbi Peretz Dinovitz, zt”l.

He was kind, warm, positive, energetic, and always upbeat. When I think back to my year in his class over 25 years ago, what I remember most is how he made each class so much fun and exciting!

As a top notch karate expert (at least that was our impression), he would walk the halls between class and recess, and to our absolute amazement – quick background: there were two sets of lockers, a lower level and an upper level, and the upper level lockers we could hardly reach – he’d do high karate kicks to close any high lockers that were left open. We watched our rebbi walking the halls with his nifty karate kicks and punches in the air. How cool is that!

There is an old Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times.” This is not necessarily a blessing, because interesting can be positive or negative. But no matter, our life experiences can teach lessons, and we can all learn to appreciate what another has experienced and thereby gain wisdom.

Menashe Shabtai is a well known and popular figure in our Baltimore community. Since I often daven at Beth Abraham-Herzberg’s, where he is the all-around “go-to guy,” the gabbai, chef, whatever-is-needed person, I decided to ask him about growing up in Israel. With the approach of the 56^th anniversary of the Six Day War, I was especially interested in his memories of that seminal event.

Over 100 years ago, in 1919, something seemingly impossible happened: The World Series was “fixed.” The Chicago White Sox were playing the Cincinnati Reds. Chicago was heavily favored to win until professional gamblers approached eight White Sox players and offered them bribes. Those players helped Cincinnati to win the Series. The Cincinnati win meant a lot of money for the gambling syndicate. Eventually, the story of the fix leaked out, and a grand jury was convened. The eight players were banned from baseball for life. Among the many tragic details was that Joe Jackson (known as Shoeless Joe) was, at that time, the greatest player ever. He had grown up in grinding poverty, was illiterate, and worked in a mill from the age of six. Had his career not been cut short, he may have become more well known and celebrated than Babe Ruth. Joe admitted the fix to the grand jury. After testifying, Shoeless Joe was leaving the courthouse when a little kid, with tears in his eyes, yelled out, “Say it ain’t so!” Tragically, it was so!

“He is such an INTJ!” or “She is such an E!” or, perhaps, “I don’t get along with Ps.”

Ever meet one of those Myers-Briggs fans, spewing the jargon? We’ll take a deep dive into this popular personality testing system, and you can decide for yourself if you love it or hate it. Perhaps you’ll even join the bandwagon.

That Suffocating Little Box

Many people approach personality systems with hesitation. It seems judgmental. It can feel suffocating when someone proclaims with a sweep of the hand that they’ve “got you,” down to all the intricacies and inner workings of your personality. As one test taker said before clicking to get his results, “I was nervous.”

Do you know any Bais Yaakov girls today who would marry a boxer? How about a soldier? And do you know any young man who is worried that his perspective date is not really shomer Shabbos? All these scenarios are very unlikely! But it wasn’t always that way. In previous generations, it was sometimes hard to find a religious person to marry.

In the book, Lieutenant Birnbaum (ArtScroll), the author, Meyer Birnbaum, describes the marriage of his parents. His mother had come from Europe in the early 1900s and was very religious. She had a hard time finding a frum man to marry. She was already 30 when she met his father. Here is how their first meeting was described in the book:

Walking into a middle school classroom, there is an expectation of a calm and decorum – quiet students, a teacher speaking in the front of the room.

And then there’s robotics – where brains charge, arms fall off, girls scream for 15 seconds, and people keep shouting, “Keep it simple, genius.”

In one corner, a group is huddled together drawing diagrams on the white board. A few girls are racing around the room searching for just the right piece (not a 2x4 – a 6x4!). There are those who are building. Those who are coding.

Meet the VEX robotics classes at Bais Yaakov of Baltimore.