This merciless and unrelenting pandemic has claimed the lives of so many: some unknown to us, some known, and some dear and beloved by us. Approximately one year ago, a special and irreplaceable individual was tragically taken by this pandemic, my dear rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Blumberg, zt”l. He was my 11^th grade rebbe at TA, but he wasn’t just a teacher of Gemara or halacha or parsha. He was the true definition of what a mechanech is and should be; he taught and led us by example through showing us his love for Torah and through displaying daily for us the lifestyle of a true ben Torah. I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to lead me in learning and through my seventeenth year on this earth than Rabbi Blumberg. He taught at TA for approximately forty years so, of course, he had many talmidim. And I’m certain they all have their own stories of what he meant to them and how he impacted them. With the recent passing of his first yahrtzeit, allow me to share with you what Rabbi Blumberg meant to me and how he impacted my life.

Noach, may he rest in peace, had every animal in his tayvah (ark). Let’s review some of them, starting with the lion, known as the king of the beasts. (Who gave him such a title? Probably other lions…) When he wished to be heard, the lion gave a loud roar, and every living chayeh (animal) froze fearfully in its tracks. So how did Noach calm them down? Possibly by telling them stories; maybe by tranquilizing them with various herbs. Lions love to see things move, so perhaps a stage show, with various chayes acting the parts, was presented to the lion, since he was proclaimed to be the king.

Parenting is one of the most important jobs in the world, yet it requires no training, degrees, or education. Having a child automatically crowns you as a parent! But will you be – are you – a good parent or a bad parent? This is a question that bothers many parents. According to Rabbi Yisroel Miller, in his book Guardian of Eden, “Most people will cheerfully admit it if they happen to be incompetent at mathematics or athletics or gardening or automobile repair. Why then are so many people embarrassed to admit it, if they happen to be no good as parents? It has been suggested that it is because parents intuitively sense the truth – that children don’t learn what you preach, they learn what you are. Like it or not, our every action broadcasts to our children our attitudes towards honesty, kindliness, hard work, respect for others, and every mitzva in the Torah.” 

You never truly know an organization until you are a recipient of its services. My husband and I arrived at the Johns Hopkins emergency room the Saturday night prior to Rosh Hashanah. After spending the night in the emergency room, we were escorted to a hospital room on one of the floors.

While the physicians were deciding how to care for my husband, I was scrutinizing the hospital menu. Hopkins offers its patients and their caregivers kosher food supplied by Accents, a real gift to the Jewish community.

To the Shadchan:

 I am married for the second time after being divorced for a relatively short period. My first marriage lasted almost 30 years. As newlyweds, we don’t host much, nor do we go out except to our children nearby. (Covid started just as we finished our shana rishona.) We do try to invite at least one single person for Yom Tov meals, as we know how difficult it is to celebrate these days alone.

Our guest on Rosh Hashanah was a woman who has been trying to find a shidduch for many years and whom we know well. We were enjoying the meal when she said, “You two are so lucky to have found each other,” which we confirmed. From that beginning, she started asking questions, such as how long we dated, did I know that my husband is picky about certain things, etc. Then she asked if we had “tested” each other. I asked her what she meant by testing, and she said that a friend of hers once got tickets for a date to the opera, and since there was a woman singing in it and the man didn’t refuse to go, she concluded that he didn’t care about kol isha and nixed the shidduch!

It took me a while to connect all the dots. There was our two-hour wait in the rental car line, our new dining room table that was promised to arrive any day but got held up for months at port, the endless dealership invites to sell my 2017 vehicle for top dollar, the repeated delays of our early Friday morning Southwest flight (that finally got us home an hour before Shabbos), and the months-long wait for a dented refrigerator door replacement.

The list goes on and on – across the board and across the globe. Product lines, professional services, food establishments, educational institutions, and more, in every state, every country, and every continent. For months, we have all experienced the trickle-down effects of this unprecedented labor shortage in one way or another. I went behind the scenes of just a few of these workplaces to do some investigation.

“He said to them: Go and see which is the good way to which a man should cleave…Rabbi Eliezer says: One who considers the consequences [of his actions]…” (Avos 2:9)

We are about to embark on a grand experiment in our community. This experiment will not be a planned or controlled experiment, but a natural one born from the human tendency toward inertia. We are the guinea pigs, but we are also the ones running the experiment.

Peter Kurz has two foremost passions in life: Israel and baseball. As a ten-year-old from the Upper West Side in New York City, he traveled to Israel for the first time in 1967, and began his lifelong love of the Jewish state. Two years later, in 1969, the New York Mets won the World Series, defeating the Baltimore Orioles, which solidified his love of baseball.

Despite making aliyah in 1976, Kurz did not abandon his passion for the American national pastime. Yet Kurz’s penchant for baseball has often been a lonely experience for him in Israel, a country where basketball and soccer are substantially more popular. He has dedicated much of his professional life to changing the perception of baseball among Israelis. In 1998, he began coaching the sporadic local Israeli Little League team and worked his way up to secretary-general, president of the Israel Baseball Association, and now general manager of the national Israeli baseball team.

“President Biden told the world on Monday, August 16, that he doesn’t regret his decision to withdraw rapidly from Afghanistan, or even the chaotic, incompetent way the withdrawal has been executed. He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule.” So did a Wall Street Journal editorial of August 16, 2021 aptly sum up the situation.

With the Taliban’s victorious entry into Kabul in mid-August 2021, the American military intervention in Afghanistan has come full circle. Undertaken to destroy Al Qaeda following its deadly 9/11 attack on American soil, and to remove Afghanistan as a base for global terrorism, it has now, 20 years later, ended up where it began. Instead of building on the significant progress achieved, it is witnessing the triumphant return of those terrorists in a stronger position than ever. President Biden’s assertion that the U.S. “mission” had been accomplished is exposed as the boldface lie it is by the glaring reality of the shameful rout.

According to the fifth chapter in Pirkei Avos, I am now between “a ripe old age” and “showing strength.” May G-d please continue to bestow His blessings upon me, my wife, our children, and grandchildren.

We live our lives in uncharted territory. Each stage brings new opportunities and challenges. The famous words from “Fiddler on the Roof” come to mind:

Sunrise, sunset…Swiftly go the years

One season following another, laden with happiness and tears

Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play?

I don’t remember growing older; when did they?”