I’ve gotten out of the habit of swimming. I was in the pool for the first time in many months, but Baruch Hashem, once I was in, it felt like I never left. Well, almost. Before my long hiatus from the pool, I could swim 12 laps in 30 minutes without an issue. Yesterday, I was wiped out after pushing myself to finish 10. But I’m determined to get back into the groove again. It’s been too long, and I’ve run out of excuses.

I was so proud of myself after I came out of the pool, and it felt good to be exhausted when I went to bed last night. Swimming does that to me, but it would be better if I reminded myself of that fact more often, to help me stay on track.

In the summer of 2019, my wife and I visited the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris and had the opportunity to see a remarkable exhibition about Adolfo Kaminsky, a man credited with saving the lives of at least 10,000 Jews in France during World War II. 

The Early Years

Adolfo Kaminsky’s parents were Russian Jews who met and married in Paris.  His mother had fled to Paris from the pogroms in Russia, and his father, a journalist for a Jewish Marxist newspaper in Russia, was forced to leave. Because of his father’s alleged ties to the Jewish Labor Bund, Adolfo’s parents were expelled from France and spent time in Turkey and in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Adolfo was born in 1925. They later returned to France, eventually settling in the town of Vire, in Normandy, in 1932.

The family was poor, and young Adolfo soon found work as a clothes dyer and dry cleaner, where he learned the magic of colors and how to use various chemicals. Kaminsky also worked on a dairy farm, where he performed chemical tests to verify milk quality and discovered that lactic acid could be used to remove supposedly indelible black ink from paper. These skills would serve him well in his work for the French Resistance during World War II.

Dear Dr. Kidorf,

I started cleaning for Pesach this week and took the opportunity to clean my eighth-grade son’s room while he was in school. I was going to surprise him with a clean and orderly room. It occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t go into his drawers, but I had to put things away, and I figured he is still young, so he probably wouldn’t object. Anyway, I found some things that are concerning. I wasn’t sure what they were, but my friend confirmed that the small colorful tubes and other paraphernalia are used for vaping. I am quite upset. I realize that young teens experiment with smoking, but I didn’t think my son would do it. Although he is not the most popular kid in the class, he has friends, and he is a fairly good student. He was never a troublesome kid and basically gets along at home and in school. I have two questions: Is this dangerous for a child his age? More importantly, what is the right approach now that I have made this discovery? Should I just ignore it and pretend I didn’t see, or should I confront him. If so, how?

Forty minutes into cleaning my room– dresser open and bare, clothing haphazardly piled onto the floor – and I needed a coffee break.

The kitchen was blessedly quiet and, blessedly, unpesachdik. I sat down to enjoy my drink, two sugars and a big splash of whole milk, when Sim busted in.

I guess it wasn’t going to be the peaceful break I thought it would be.

She sauntered over to me, silver beaded earrings jangling.”Coffee?” she asked.

As parents, it is our job to teach our children many different things. These could include a simple please/thank you, being respectful of other people’s needs, treating guests properly, or basic table manners. Sometimes parents will consult their rav or the child’s teacher for some added insight or ideas on how to best instruct their children. However, for the most part, children seem to learn by instruction and by example – until they don’t.

Over my years of teaching, many teacher stories have been shared with me. Some have been instructive, some less so. But the one about Horowitz is one that I like to remind myself of.

A teacher walks into class on the first day of the school year. The students get quiet as they anticipate the start of a new lesson and a new school year. The teacher asks, “Which one of you is Horowitz?” One boy raises his hand. The teacher declares, “Get out!”

The boy asks, “But why? I didn’t do anything.” 

The teacher says, “I heard about you. Do you think I’m going to wait until you do something?”

Every year, we are asked numerous questions about how to deal with our orthodontic appliances in preparation for Pesach. This seems like a very reasonable concern. After all, what could be more critical to clean for Pesach than something that is placed in the mouth? It would be a shame to go through all the trouble of replacing garbage cans and boiling doorknobs and then insert a retainer filled with challah in your mouth during the Pesach Seder.  

Throughout the generations and in all places of our exile, Pesach has been beloved by the Jewish people. Aside from its deeper meanings, there is no holiday where the rules about food are stricter or more numerous. Here in America, we take it for granted that all our Pesach food needs will be amply available. But even in times and places where it wasn’t, Pesachdik food – and especially matzah – has played a singular role in Jewish life.

She called herself “the last of the Mohicans”; with her wry sense of humor, my mother knew she was an icon of a long-gone time, a time when life was harder, both physically and materially, yet infinitesimally less complex than the world we inhabit today.

Chana Golda Lesser was the beloved youngest child born to her illustrious parents, Rabbi Dovid Nosson and Tzvetta Lesser, of Krakow, Poland. While her three older siblings were born in Europe, young Goldy, as she was affectionately called, was the “baby,” born to her aging parents in Brownsville, New York, more commonly known today as East New York.

Isaaco was almost four when his parents fled Italy in 1939. His parents had moved from Poland to Milan 15 years earlier when his father was given a coveted post as cantor of the Sefardic synagogue. The family’s years in Milan had been idyllic, but then Mussolini came to power, and everything changed.

Isaaco was the youngest of three children, and he was close with his sister Hinda and his brother David. They came to America by boat with no friends and no knowledge of English. There was no use complaining; they were happy to get out of Europe alive.