I took two books out of the RYS library on the same day. They happened to be about the same topic – children who escaped from Germany right before the war – although one is fiction and one is non-fiction. I found them both riveting. 

The topic is especially interesting to me, because both my parents came from Germany and managed to escape before World War II. My parents left with their parents and siblings, but they could have easily been the main characters in these books, who were alone.

Recently I read another book from the RYS library. This book deals with a completely different topic, a yeshiva bachur with mental illness, but it has a similar theme.

Visiting the homebound, raising money, cooking and delivering food, running Chinese auctions and plays, providing money to the underprivileged, helping the childless, providing support for the physically and mentally ill, and a myriad other tasks are done by workers who are never paid for their time, energy, and devotion. I’m talking about volunteers, of course, and we all know people who devote hours and hours, days and nights, to helping others. What motivates them? Why do they do what they do?

PetALS and Thorns (Tfutza Publications, 2019) is a collection of essays written by Esther Klein, a woman in Israel who suffers from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). The book is fascinating because it gives the reader insight into the thoughts of a woman who cannot talk or move but whose mind is working perfectly. She was able to type these articles with great effort using the one finger that was still working. In the preface of the book, her children write that she is no longer able to use that one finger so they had to write the preface for her.

Esther speaks about her hashkafos in life and her great love for her family. She is able to express her feelings in an honest and refreshing way. Somehow when the words come from the heart of a woman who is suffering so much, they are meaningful and believable.

We who live in the United States can’t help but associate the month of December with gift giving. From brochures that come in the mail to internet ads, billboards, and radio jingles – we are constantly reminded to buy gifts.

We Jews also give gifts on Chanukah. Is this a reflection of what we see around us? Are we caught up in the “spirit of the season” and just copying the goyim?

No. Giving Chanuaka gelt (money) and, by extension, gifts is a very old tradition, not related to the month of December.

The desire for friends is universal. From babies through adults, we thrive on our connection to others. Anyone who observes an infant wriggling with delight upon seeing her mother – or watches a depressed elderly person suddenly become animated when receiving a visitor – understands this reality. But sometimes a child does not seem to develop relationships. This is the child who complains (or, even worse, does not complain) that he is always chosen last on the team. This is the child who does not get any play dates and is teased and bullied by others.

Every American schoolchild knows the history of Thanksgiving. Our children are taught that Thanksgiving is a holiday that began in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, when, after surviving their first brutal winter amidst disease and starvation, the Pilgrims expressed thanks to G-d for a bountiful harvest. The local Indians, who taught them how to grow corn, hunt turkey, and avoid poisonous plants in their new world, were invited to join the Pilgrims in their feast.

Although feasts to offer thanks were held throughout the 1600s and 1700s, it was not until 1863 that President Lincoln formally established the holiday at the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent speaker and editor, who became known as the “Mother of Thanksgiving.” Since that time, Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a national holiday on the last Thursday of November.