Purim themes have gained a reputation for coordinating family costumes with accompanying shalach manos almost too cute to eat. It seems that every year the bar is raised, with the ideas more original and the effort more involved. You may be on “team-theme” and enjoy working out all the details. Or you may be on team-theme because that’s the team your sister is on, but you would rather just let the kids dress up how they want and buy most of your shalach manos contents at Costco.

Editor’s Note:

A shortened version of this article appeared in the Where What When print edition. Here is the complete article.

 I would like to thank the WWW for printing an article about infant tongue ties in the last issue. It was refreshing to see an article presenting the matter as a real issue and not a fad. As a mother who has personal experience with this, I feel that it is important for the readers, and the community as a whole, to know that, unfortunately, in many cases of infant tongue tie, parents go through a lot before getting the proper diagnosis and treatment for their babies. 

Your home – the space between four walls where you build a life, the rooms that are filled with messes, meals, and memories – tells the story of you and your family. It certainly needs to be functional, but we all dream of a house that also represents our personal style and aesthetic. Realistically speaking, home renovations may not be top priority when planning a budget, but we still want to enjoy the space we live in. Luckily, it doesn't take a full home remodel to love your house. We researched various options to spruce up your space while holding on to your spare change. 

I love nature and I’m also attracted to ruchniyus (spirituality). It was only natural that I made Eretz Yisrael my home, being the place where ruchniyus is natural and where nature is ruchniyus.

Part 1

Despite knowing that you may be at risk (family history, a bit overweight, too much of the wrong foods, etc.) and despite knowing what the symptoms of a heart attack are (foremost among them being chest pain) – when the heart attack appears at your doorstep, it’s still, well, unexpected. Stepping out of the shower Sunday night, December 4 (it was about 9:00 p.m.), I experienced chest pain across my chest; not incapacitating, but significant. My first thought was, “Really – could this actually be a heart attack?” I dried off carefully, got dressed, and then sat quietly in my studio chair waiting to see … well, you know, “maybe it will go away.” I know, I know, this is not the right thing to do if you’re having these symptoms … but I confess, I did it anyway. I popped eight baby aspirin (in lieu of two regular ones, which I couldn’t find), remembering that aspirin (not acetaminophen) thins the blood if the heart is in trouble.

When your Child Can’t Breathe

by Hatzalah of Baltimore

“It was 2 a.m. I woke up to a barking noise and ran to my child’s room, where I found my three-year-old awake and having trouble breathing. She had had a cold for a few days, but this was new. I took her into the bathroom and ran the hot water from the shower to make steam. That seemed to help a little. I was hesitant to call Hatzalah in the middle of the night, but I was really worried and decided to go ahead. Two guys arrived within minutes and started treatment.”

There is a truism in Israeli politics. It relates in particular to the past 40 years since the rightwing Likud party came into power during the great upheaval of 1977 that ended the Socialist Labor party’s hegemony: “Israeli voters vote Right and receive Left.”

As truisms go, there has been a lot of truth to this one. As the country has been growing more religious and more rightwing, its politicians have remained middle of the road. The Israeli voter always wants more religion and more fearless, principled politics than its politicians are willing to provide.

The roots of this story are grounded in the backyard of my childhood home – literally. I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, in the region called the Mid-South, known for its slow-paced living and temperate climate. Life seemed more leisurely then, less pressured than today. Maybe it’s just the difference between an adult’s and a child’s perspective, but it seemed that people had time to work and time to relax and recharge. The relaxation component is something that’s touted today as essential to our well-being. It even has a name – work-life balance – and nowadays, people actually have to schedule downtime to make sure that it happens.

When I was in college, we were required to read the literary classic 1984, by George Orwell. If you are not familiar with Orwell’s stunning work, here’s a summary: A country called Oceania is governed by the all-controlling Party, which has brainwashed the population into unthinking obedience to its leader, Big Brother. The Party has created a propagandistic language known as Newspeak, which is designed to limit free thought while promoting Party doctrine. The Party maintains control through the Thought Police and is continuously snooping on its citizens. People who dare to think differently are carefully monitored and eventually arrested on bogus charges, and then sent to special “rehabilitation” facilities, until they submit to corrected thought. 

When Sara (Gerstenfeld) Strobel, founder of the girls’ performance program Ratzon, was growing up, large groups of unaffiliated Jews often experienced Shabbos for the first time at the Gerstenfeld home. Sara describes her musically talented family to be “an under the radar family of creative and giving parents.” She adds, “Growing up in my parents’ home showed me that there is something in everyone I can appreciate and that created a larger openness in me to all kinds of people.” It was this home that inspired Sara to identify community needs and attend to them, leading to her latest endeavor, Elevate, a new organization for women.