For the last three years, I have been running the Jewish Used Book Collection. People donate Jewish books that they have finished reading, and I sell them from a corner of the Savings Center, which kindly donates the space for this project. All the money collected is given to the Chananya Backer Memorial Institute (CBMI). The book collection is an amazing project, because it has absolutely no expenses, except for the dot stickers I use to price the books. One of the perks of running the collection is that all kinds of interesting books and tapes appear on my front porch, and I have the opportunity to read them first, before I take them to the Savings Center. I never know what treasures I will find. While sorting through some new arrivals recently, I came across a book and a tape on the same subject that I thought would be interesting to explore. They were both about sibling rivalry. Although both the book and the tape are from more than 20 years ago, the subject is timeless.

Whenever I drive down Greenspring Avenue, past the Sinai ER, on the way to the zoo, I glance to the left to see the old Bais Yaakov high school building, and say to my grandchildren, “Look, that is where I went to school!” The old mansion that housed our high school, built at the time of the Civil War, is still standing, though hard to recognize because the surrounding area has changed so much. The driveway that led to the school is no longer there, and the elementary building has been knocked down to make room for a housing development.

Since my daughter is finishing Bais Yaakov this year, and we are immersed in the rituals of graduation, I started reminiscing about the school I attended more than 40 years ago. Bais Yaakov has been established in the community for so long that some of its graduates have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren attending the same school they did. Sometimes they even have the same teachers. I spoke to women who attended Bais Yaakov High School in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s to hear about their memories of high school life.

I stumbled on the idea for this article while talking to a shadchan about a young man. The first question the shadchan asked me was, “Is he modern?” I was taken aback, because although I had described this young man in some detail, I had never thought to give him a label. Was he modern? Did modern mean a certain hashkafa and approach to Judaism? Or did it mean lackadaisical observance? I really did not know how to answer the shadchan, which is what brought me to explore the whole topic.

I started my interviews while exercising in the JCC. “What

When we bench Rosh Chodesh each month, we ask G-d to grant us a long healthy life, peace, wealth, honor, and fear of G-d. Wealth and income are included among the most important things for which we all pray, and Judaism does not consider it beneath us to petition Him for something so mundane. I thought it would be interesting to explore how families deal with their money situation on both ends of the wealth spectrum – because both groups have their challenges. On the one hand, how do you teach your children to be thrifty if you have plenty of money? On the other hand, how do you teach your children to be happy with what they have if you don’t have very much? Is your family proud of managing on a tight budget, or is it proud of spending liberally on houses, vacations, and cars?

We all know the Purim story. Year after year, we encounter its familiar cast of characters: the foolish King Achashverosh, the wicked Queen Vashti, the villain Haman, and, of course, the heroes: the beautiful Queen Esther and Mordechai the Tzadik. But, as Rabbi Dovid Fohrman explains in his book, The Queen You Thought You Knew: Unmasking Esther’s Hidden Story, the story is not as simple as it seemed to us when we were children. In his eye-opening account, he explores many questions that are obvious once he points them out but that never occurred to us. We have heard the story so many times that we have become blind to the nuances that give depth to the story. I can’t rewrite the book in this review, but I will bring up some of the questions. If they intrigue you, you can follow up by reading from the source.

A story is told about a father who wanted to name his son Pinchas. Both his father and his wife’s father were named Pinchas. His father was a bank robber and his wife’s was a horse thief. The couple went to the Rav and asked, “Since both of our fathers have the same name, how will we know whom he is named after?” The Rav, said, “Don’t worry, when you see how he turns out, then you will know!”