TEVA TALK

 Finding ourselves in a similar spot to where we stood a year ago compels us to pause and take stock. After a full year of masking and quarantines, many people now find themselves repeating the mantra: “But we did this already.” If we shift our focus, however, to carefully examine events as they unfolded, we will discover moments of clarity, when we worked together within our community to make this year a little more manageable and a little less lonely. Taking an honest look at where we stand, we can clearly see that we are not merely “doing this again.” Rather, we have grown since Covid started and learned to stay safe, both physically and emotionally, during continued uncertainty.

There are moments in many of our lives when the unfathomable happens, and the first reaction is “Not me, not my family; this can’t be happening to us!”

At first, you walk around in an uncomprehending state of disbelief, shock, and utter dismay. After a while, when you realize that it’s not a bad dream or a temporary lapse of sanity but is really happening, you discover that you’ve got to accept it and deal.

Life is wonderful – we have so much to be grateful for – and then, bam, we get a blow that sends us reeling. It could be the sudden death of a loved one, a serious illness, a child who goes off the derech, a seemingly beautiful young couple who become incompatible and decide to get a divorce (often with young children in the crossfire), a family member who becomes unstable – and, sometimes, more often that not, a combination of these incomprehensible situations.

I’ve been living in Israel since 2002. Throughout this time, I have been renting in Jerusalem. Recently, with the awareness of the rise of anti-Semitism in the U.S., I have had the thought of myriads of Americans making aliyah and gobbling up whatever apartments are available. But even without that, it is a fact that more and more people from abroad are buying apartments in Israel as “insurance,” “just in case” they need a roof over their heads one day.

It’s no joke. There are many empty apartments in Jerusalem owned by people from overseas who occasionally show up for a few days out of the year. And their demand for such properties is driving up prices.

Where What When: We are here today with financial planner Eitan Schuchman to talk about the lifecycle of investment from a young age all the way until old age and beyond. Thank you, Eitan, for joining us; we hope this will be an informative discussion. First of all, what exactly do you do and what is your background?

Eitan Schuchman: I was born and raised here in beautiful Baltimore. We are old-school “Bal’more Hon,” a long-time intergenerational TA and BY family. After marriage, my wife Ariella (from Philly, the “other Bohm” family) and I chose to further strengthen that legacy by sending our six children through the system.

Regarding my career, after my BS, I went to the University of Maryland to earn my MBA and started my career at the investment firm Bear Stearns in New York City. I am a certified financial planner and a chartered financial consultant. I help individuals, married couples, and companies achieve their financial dreams, or at least get them to the next level in realizing their dreams. We do that by planning. There are many aspects to it, and we bring the best experts in the field together to make sure that my clients are in the best shape moving forward.

This year more than in any year prior, Rosh Hashana is upon us and I feel unprepared to show up with the proper mindset for this holy day. With the first night of Rosh Hashana falling out on Labor Day this year, I find my thoughts are still in summer / getting-the-kids-ready-for-school-mode, while my inner me is struggling to focus on and connect with the real themes of our New Ye

?During my tenure as a congregational rabbi in South Africa I had the privilege of meeting many lovely Jews of varying levels of knowledge and observance. To address the needs of the greater community, my shul established a three-tier learning program for beginners, intermediate, and advanced students. Our local kollel (comprised of Anglo-Israelis on two-year rotations), which at the time met in my shul, serviced the intermediate and advanced students with input from myself and my rabbinic colleagues. Personally, I most enjoyed teaching the beginners. These were dedicated, mostly middle-aged individuals who never had an opportunity to properly study the basics of Judaism. While I worked to inspire them, they consistently inspired me!

Tamar Schulman first heard about vaping from her children when they were in middle school. “I found out that kids were vaping in the school bathroom or behind the school building,” says Tamar. “I didn’t know anything about it; I had to go online and research what vaping is.”

Since then, she was told by a frum therapist, “Mrs. Schulman, I am telling you, vaping is happening in every school in Baltimore. It doesn’t matter how big or small the school is. Don’t kid yourself!”

It has been an unreal year-and-a-half since our last trip to Eretz Yisrael. COVID ramifications took many forms for all of us, and no one was left untouched. Baruch Hashem, we felt very blessed. We were well, and family members who had gotten COVID, were also doing well, for the most part.

During these hot summer days, I visited three cemeteries in just a week’s time. First, my wife and I went to the cemetery in Woodbridge New Jersey, where her parents are buried, as we commemorated her mother’s yahrzeit. My mother-in-law was a Trenk, and the Trenk family plot is a very chashuv (prestigious) place. The Trenk patriarchs, Morris and Shea, brothers who ran the Morris Trenk Hosiery and Underwear store on Orchard Street on the Lower East Side, are buried there. There also lie my in-laws (Morris’s daughter and husband), very special people; their cousins, the Schechters of Pioneer Country Club and the Granit Pesach hotel fame; and Reb Dovid Trenk, possibly one of the greatest mechanchim (educators) of this century; as well as his brother and other wonderful cousins.

Klal Yisrael lost a very special and beloved individual just a few weeks ago, on the 25^th of Tammuz: Rabbi David Sykes, Rav Dovid Kalman ben Moshe Yehudah.

Rabbi Sykes grew up in the city of Baltimore, where he absorbed the great love for Torah and learning that surrounded him. He grew up in a traditional home, steeped in Jewish scholarship, kindness and concern for others, and pride in Jewish identity. He had the good fortune of being taught by R’ Meir Steinharter, as he prepared for his bar mitzva. A deep bond was forged, and he was drawn like a magnet to R’ Steinharter’s tremendous love of Torah and chesed.