When Dovid Mandel volunteered during the busy pre-Pesach sheimos season, little did he realize that he’d soon be in charge of burying our community’s sheimos on a more permanent basis.

Sheimos – literally, “names” (referring to the name of G-d) – consist of printed Torah materials as well as objects that have innate holiness and thus require a respectful burial. Aside from organizing and arranging for either the burial or selling of the sefarim (Torah books) brought to the shul, the one- to two-hour weekly job includes making sure that the sefarim collected conform to the Agudah’s values.

When longtime sheimos head Bill Lerner “retired” from this voluntary position, after 25 years, many people tried to assume his role but found it overwhelming. “I wasn’t planning to continue after Pesach,” admits Mr. Mandel, who is a Ner Israel Kollel Fellow in addition to being an expert dealer of antique sefarim, “but I tried it and it was fun. The place looked absolutely terrible, and I saw that nobody wanted to do it.” Mr. Mandel, who was asked by Agudah president Michael Fulda to take on the job, mostly worked alone until recently, when two teenaged volunteers, Moshe Cohen and Yaakov Weiskopf, began helping him. Yaakov’s father, Rabbi Mordechai Weiskopf, has managed the actual burial in years past.

Sheimos Logistics

Thousands of bags of sheimos are dropped off annually in the small alcove outside Harav Moshe Heinemann’s office. Since it is impossible to store them there, these bags are pushed through a laundry chute-like opening in the floor to be stored in a sizable room on a lower floor. When the room fills up, which has been every two years, it is time to bury the material in the Agudath Israel Cemetery. Selling and giving away the sheimos has alleviated the need to bury the tightly-packed room more frequently than that.

Despite the plethora of day schools and yeshivos in the Baltimore-Greater Washington area, not every Jewish elementary, middle, and high school student is fortunate enough to attend a school where he or she can connect with other Jewish students and learn about our heritage. But, thanks to a handful of organizations that are successfully reaching out to these students, many Jewish children are now able to appreciate the beauty of Yiddishkeit in a fun way while forming lasting, meaningful friendships.

Hep JEP

JEP Girls of Maryland, a branch of the national Jewish Education Program, is one of these outreach organizations. Started in 2010 with just four participants, over 450 school-aged Jewish girls, as well as volunteers, have participated in JEP to date. They come from over 40 schools, mostly Baltimore County but also from all across Maryland and even Pennsylvania,

Rabbi Nachman Seltzer’s recent rare U.S. speaking tour, including numerous appearances in Baltimore, presented me with the opportunity to meet one of the most accomplished writers and inspirational speakers in the Torah world today. Rabbi Seltzer has impressively authored 28 books in the past 17 years, in addition to other important pursuits. It was a pleasure to chat with a kindred spirit in this exclusive Where What When interview

Where are you from originally and where do you live now?

I’m originally from Brooklyn. My parents made aliya when I was 14. Presently, my wife and I and our four kids, ka”h – two girls and two boys, aged 16, 15, 12, and 9 – live in Ramat Beit Shemesh.

I understand that you had no formal training in writing. When did you start writing and what was your career path?

I wrote in elementary school, but at age 23 – not having gone to high school or studied writing – I decided to write my first book. One motzei Shabbos, in Har Nof, I said to my mother-in-law, ‘I want to write a book.’ She said, “Here’s a pad of paper and a pen,” and I started writing my first book, The Edge. It was based on a story that a friend told me while I was in kollel about a friend of his. I wrote four pages a day, by hand, for the next three or four months, and then I had a book.

 “I grew up in the ’60s, a time when everyone was finding their way,” reminisces Rabbi Sholom Weingot. “Because I was always very individualistic, even as a yeshiva bachur, I learned to also look at other people as unique individuals and try to understand their needs.”

This statement revealed to me where Rabbi Weingot was coming from. The director of Bnainu, a Baltimore-based organization that provides chinuch (Jewish education) services for children and families, Rabbi Weingot held an intimate meeting this July for a core group of women. He hopes to spread his simple yet revolutionary grassroots movement as widely as possible. Its purpose? To reach deeper levels of communications and promote listening on a higher level.

The festivities at Arugas Habosem were planned for March 20, 2018 (4 Nissan). That was the day that Rabbi Shaya Taub’s congregation on Clark’s Lane would pour the boros (pools) for its new mikveh. Unfortunately, the celebration was cut short when the sad news arrived that the Rebbetzin’s mother, Rebbetzin Chava Israel, a”h, was nifteres.

Rebbetzin Israel, mother of Rebbetzin Malka Faiga Taub, was a well-known figure in Williamsburg, where she was cofounder, along with Satmar Rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Alta Feige Teitelbaum, a”h, of the renowned Bikur Cholim D’Satmar, in 1957. In fact, decades ago, in recognition of her exemplary Bikur Cholim volunteerism, Rebbetzin Israel was asked to rise at a dinner held in the Waldorf Astoria, where she received a thunderous ovation from over 2,000 attendees, which included 99 Bikur Cholim volunteers.

Here, Rebbetzin Taub graciously shares a glimpse of her powerhouse parents and her childhood.

The blaring Israeli music with the distinct “workout beat” piqued my curiosity. I peered inside the room off the lobby of the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Stamford, Connecticut, last month, and saw women of all ages doing something I had never seen before: “kangoo dancing.” Wearing elevated jump shoes on springs that allowed them to “pogo” to the wild beat, they seemed to be having the time of their life as they danced in pairs and solo. You would never guess that the circumstance that brought them together was the tragic loss of their husbands.

The Shabbaton was a joint project of Samchainu, a support organization for widows founded over 11 years ago by Breindy Halberstam and Shani Stefansky Waldman, and Nagilla, a Lakewood-based support group for widows. In Hebrew, samchainu means “our joy,” and while watching the women dance, smiling ear to ear, it struck me how apropos the name is.