Despite the heavy toll Covid took on us, many people found opportunity in the midst of a difficult situation. At the risk of minimizing the hardships and losses we faced during this time – especially of those who suffered horrendous tragedies – I polled members of our greater community to see what their personal silver lining was. After all, isn’t the legendary resiliency of the Jewish nation in the face of tragedy partly due to our seeking out any possible good?

It was November of 2001, shortly after the savage attacks of 9/11, and America was gripped with fear of illness and death from the anthrax envelopes sent to government officials. The U.S. government was concerned about a much larger biological attack against Americans with a more potent infectious agent – smallpox virus. Smallpox vaccinations had ended in 1972 after smallpox was eradicated in the U.S.A. Millions of Americans thus lacked immunity to the virus. To prepare for a possible smallpox attack, the University of Maryland School of Medicine opened a clinical trial. Because there was a limited supply of the smallpox vaccinia vaccine, the question was whether a reduced dose of the vaccine could generate a sufficient immune response to protect the population.

Dear Dr. Kidorf,

I just came home from Israel. I was in a good yeshiva, and it was a great two years. I learned a lot, saw the country – it was great. One thing I learned in Israel was how to drink on Shabbos. Most guys did, so I tried it. And I liked it. But I only drink on Shabbos; never during the week.

Before my first Shabbos home, I asked my mother if she would buy some beer. (I can’t buy it myself as I am only 20.) She agreed. On Friday night, I was trying all the wines on the table. My parents always put out a lot of bottles of wine, all different kinds – not that anybody drinks a lot. But they enjoy wine.

“Children are investments. Grandchildren are pure interest” goes an old saying. Everyone knows that the relationship between grandchildren and their grandparents is special. The question is why? What do grandparents actually do? How do their grandchildren feel about it? And is it always an idyllic relationship? 

Growing up, I did not know my grandparents well because they lived in England. Many of my classmates did not have grandparents living in the same city as themselves either. Some of them were children of Holocaust survivors, and their grandparents had been killed. Others were children of immigrants,

Ambassador David Friedman has long stepped down from his duties as the 20^th U.S. Ambassador to Israel following President Biden’s defeat of President Donald Trump in November 2020. However, Ambassador Friedman leaves an incredible legacy as one of the most consequential U.S. ambassadors to Israel.

This year, Ambassador Friedman published a memoir titled Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, which documents his experience as Ambassador to Israel under President Trump and is quite a fascinating read. A remarkable 10,000-plus copies were sold in its first week of publication. According to Eric Nelson, Vice-President and Editorial Director of Broadside Books, the publisher of Friedman’s memoir, “It was the biggest first week of sales in Bookscan for a book about Israel in nearly 10 years.”

My family does not have a Holocaust story. As far as I know, all four sets of grandparents arrived here from Lithuania and Russia by 1910 to 1912. We were safe and had no knowledge of those left behind. The erroneous belief that we were secure allowed me to grow up in the 1950s seeing numbers on the arms of older neighbors and thinking that they belonged to a faraway time and place. It enabled me to watch documentaries of emaciated human beings being liberated and understand nothing about what had happened to them. It freed me to ride my bike, to roam and play on sandlots and railway tracks with nary a care of anyone targeting me. As a teen, I was much more of an “American Jewish Princess” than a young woman growing up with a sense of identity tied to a historical legacy, a legacy I now realize is impossible and callous to deny. Not only do I have to acknowledge my connecting cord to this central Jewish trauma, but I’ve come to realize that my insides reverberate deeply to the experience that others have shouldered for so long in their muscles, bones, and nerve fibers.

Adapted from The Original Second Temple: An Illustrated Guide to the Layout and Design of the Pre-Herodian Beis Hamikdash (Feldheim, 2021)

Nearly 2,000 years ago our nation witnessed the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, a gleaming edifice of marble and gold described by the Gemara as the most magnificent building in the world. To this day we cherish the memory of that structure along with the ever-present hope that it will soon be rebuilt.

What would happen if the money in your bank account bought less this year than last? Would you change your spending habits? Would you spend more time thinking about how to get a better deal or look for sale prices on items that you frequently buy? Would you stop buying certain items or change your outlook on what is a “need” and what is a “want”?

The cost of everyday goods just keep going up. The average price of gas in Baltimore, at the time of writing this article, is $4.84 per gallon. Eggs have jumped in price from $1.67 per dozen in 2021 to about $2.74 in 2022. And a gallon of milk will set you back about $4.33. Overall, inflation in May hit 8.3%, but the year-over-year increase specifically for food items rose 9.4%. Chicken is up 16.4%. Eggs are up 22.6%. Margarine is up 23.5%. Why is this happening? Why would your money be worth less this year than last year? You would need to understand inflation in order to answer this question.

What would make you jump into a tank of hungry sharks? Would you do it to retrieve your engagement ring? Your wallet? How about your child? I think we would all jump into a shark tank to save our child – instinctively – without a thought for our own safety or survival.

Fortunately, this is not a likely scenario, but it makes sense that parents who would jump into a shark tank should also do everything they can to keep their children from falling in in the first place. Our first responsibility is to make our children shark-proof, so to speak, and give them tools to stay safe. There are so many things, large and small, that we can teach our children and do for them that can help them avoid becoming victims.

Seventeen years ago, in late May of 2005, I was invited to join a rabbinic mission to Germany. The invitation was extended by Zentralrat Der Juden (Central Council of Jews) and was paid for by the German government. The stated purpose of the visit was to see the positive growth of the Jewish communities in Germany 50 years after World War II. My dad, who had fought with the first American infantry units to enter Germany in March of 1945 was still alive and well then. When I told him that I was planning to go to Germany, his reaction was less than positive. For my dad, and for many of his generation, anything associated with Germany was extremely distasteful. I explained that I was going on behalf of the Jews. Nevertheless, he had difficulty with any type of contact with Germany.