Dear Dr. Kidorf

Our 14-year-old son, from the time he was small, has always been interested in the latest and greatest toys and attractions. Unfortunately, as he grows, the attractions have moved from cool footballs to hoverboards and electric scooters to, most recently, vaping. We have made our thoughts and feelings about vaping clear. We have watched graphic videos about the dangers of vaping-related illnesses and injuries. We have warned him about the consequences if we should ever find him with a vape. And then we found out he was vaping (purchased from another boy at a local shul). We took the vapes away, followed through with the consequences that had been threatened, and reviewed the dangers. He doesn’t seem remorseful and, if he ever gets angry about something, threatens to buy more vapes. 

We all tend to feel at home and safe in our own neighborhoods. Even when we hear about crimes committed, we feel safe walking on our streets, going to our shuls, and letting our children play outside. After all, crimes happen, but they happen to others, not to us!

Last year, three days after Lag B’Omer, our illusion of safety was shattered. A crime happened in our neighborhood, on our streets, to a visitor in our community! Efraim Gordon, was murdered in front of the home of his aunt, Mrs. Reyder, right on Fords Lane, across the street from Etz Chaim. He was a visitor from Eretz Yisrael, a baal teshuva of two years, and was here for a wedding of a cousin. He was driving his cousin’s car and coming home from sheva brachos when he was murdered on the steps of the Reyders’ house.

How refreshing it is to jump into a pool in the hot weather.  How much nicer it is when you know how to swim and can really enjoy the water! 

In the classic book, Cheaper by the Dozen, Ernestine Gilbreth describes how her father insisted on throwing his young babies into the bathtub, sure that they would instinctively know how to swim because they had already been swimming for nine months. Ernestine’s mother was not so happy with this experiment, and I am not sure if this theory worked, but it was certainly amusing to read about. Despite Mr. Gilbreth’s theory, however, the best time to start teaching children is not when they are newborn but when they are four or five years old, according to Judy Mellman, a WSI-certified swimming teacher in Baltimore.

The recent passing of Rabbi Pinchos Stolper, z”l, the first full-time national director of NCSY, the youth arm of the Orthodox Union, brought back memories of a bygone era in my life. I remember lying awake in bed many years ago, while I was a student at the Israeli yeshiva Kerem B’Yavne, wondering, “How in the world did I get here?” This article will answer that question and discuss how and why NCSY awakened opportunities for me that I never imagined existed.

The clever title of this article is not original to me. It is the name of a book written in 1973 by humorist Sam Levenson about his own youth in the 1920s and ’30s. Just as he marveled at the changes in society, I too, though born in a different place and time, have, baruch Hashem, lived to see a very changed Jewish world than the one I grew up in.

As Jews, we lead our lives accompanied by G-d’s hand, with meaning and connection, through the good times and the bitter times. Unfortunately, there are a number of families among the readership of the Where What When that are going through the bitterness of illness, cancer in particular. A lack of knowledge and opportunity can heighten the difficulties of these life troubles, whereas the right information can help bring hope and more meaning to them.

Let me share a true story that exemplifies this: Mr. L was going through a bitter time back in early 2016, and I personally witnessed how his dire situation gained a large measure of hope four months later in June of that year. At that time, I emailed the following note to my National Institutes of Health (NIH) Bnos Yisroel Bridge Program interns:

Twenty minutes had probably passed since I sat down with a heaping portion of today’s hot lunch, mac n’cheese, which was now, actually, cold lunch. To my right sat Chani Jacoby, and to my left sat Rikki Berns, and across the lunchroom sat Shira Lesman. Words were flying around the large room, inflections of high-pitched voices, stern commands from lunch lady Mrs. Cohn, laughs, gasps, and chewing sounds. But despite all that, I could not hear a thing.

When I came to learn at a yeshiva in Yerushalayim in 1982, it was only for a year. At that time, the Land was still quite foreign to me as I was used to life back in Canada. I was just more comfortable living on the other side of the ocean.

That quickly changed over the course of the year, and I came to love being in Eretz Yisrael, becoming more connected to the Land and feeling so much closer to Hashem. It was

It’s summertime grilling season. Here are some winners that will make your next family get-together or backyard barbecue a huge success. Enjoy!

Shwarma Chicken

Before we get to the barbecues, here is a one-pan effortless dish that is perfect for Shabbos. Your house will smell amazing as it is baking.

1 pkg. family-size chicken thighs or 1 whole chicken

4 T. Pereg shwarma seasoning

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. paprika

1 lemon, thinly sliced, seeds removed

1 jar green olives, drained, or one can Israeli olives

1 T. vegetable oil to grease pan

Dear Dr. Kidorf

I have two young teenage sons as well as younger children. On Shabbos, they go to shul with their father. On the way home, my husband stops at a few different homes to shmooze and make a lechaim. The boys just talk to their friends, if any of them are around, and wait until he’s ready to go home. My husband never gets drunk, just a little “happy,” and we proceed with kiddush, where everyone in the family gets wine.

 One night last week, I went out and came back earlier than expected. I walked into the living room and saw my two boys having a little lechaim. I was rather shocked and asked them what they were doing. They answered, “Nothing, we’re just trying it.”

I was 14 years old, a Bais Yaakov of Baltimore student, when I opened up the Where What When for the first time – back when Chinese slippers, Steve Madden platforms, and messy buns were “in,” and “tamagachis” were all the rage. Memories come to mind of sitting around with my then-best friend Emily on Shabbos afternoons passing the time. The two of us would sit by the bay window in her house on Fallstaff Road and talk about “all the things” – from homework to teachers to friends to who’s walking by at the moment to what we were going to do on motzaei Shabbos – and then, in what started as a one-time thing and turned into a tradition, we opened up the Where What When. During those long Shabbos afternoons, we flipped through page after page of articles. Scouring the magazine for something interesting, we came across articles with titles like, “Ten Ways to Promote your Gut Health!”  (What even is a gut?!), “To Refinance or Not To Refinance” (Is this from that Shakespeare play Mrs. Toso just read?), “How to Keep Kids Occupied on Long Trips” (Why do they even need an article about this; duh, just get us the latest thing!), and “Amazing Flax Seed Muffin Recipes” (Does it come in chocolate chip?). As teens, we quickly gave up our search and settled down with the shidduch column. At least that was nice and juicy!