Several months ago, our daughter Shani called and suggested we visit my sister Elsie Blum. Shani had learned that my 93-year-old only surviving sibling had gone through a difficult medical situation and was now recovered. Elsie lives in a retirement community in Fort Worth, Texas. Shani made all the arrangements and insisted on covering all the costs. She drove up from her home in Richmond, Virginia, and we flew out of BWI on a Sunday and returned Monday. It was a wonderful opportunity to visit our Fort Worth family and to spend quality time with my sister. Shani got especially close to her family as she attended LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for a semester and visited the Blums. Elsie has always been close to us and came to all our family simchas.

Shabbos was over, and I went around the house putting everything away. I folded the tablecloth, put the dining room table pads away, cleaned the Shabbos leichter, and then started the dishwasher. I glanced over at the fridge and couldn’t help but notice the readout lights on the front panel, a glaring reminder that the Shabbos mode was indeed broken. It was fun having a light in my fridge for the short time that the Shabbos mode was working, but what can you do? It was just plain broken. The bells and whistles are officially gone, and it isn’t worth the time or money to bring them back. Broken. Now my fridge will always remain in the dark.  

My thoughts turn to other dark and broken things. Like broken engagements or broken women who would like to remarry. I watch the process of my single women friends who so want to remarry but aren’t finding it to be an easy process. A shadchan calls them with an idea. They go out on a date or talk on Zoom. Oh, how they want it to work out and how they try making different personalities and lifestyles fit together. So often, they are unsuccessful.

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Among the many Baltimoreans who made dramatic changes in their lives when they began to keep the mitzvos are two women who rejected the drama – literally. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Sheina Ettel Menda and Lindsay Feldman, both of whom were immersed in theater and headed for careers in that exciting field.

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Sheina Ettel Menda

Last winter, our many women participated in putting on a spectacular performance of Mary Poppins. One of the main actresses and singers was Sheina Ettel Menda, who gave up gave up a career in singing and acting to become a frum Jew.

Sheina Ettel comes from a very musical family. Her father played in a band, and her mother played the piano. Living in an upstate New York town called Schuylerville, she was part of the Child Community Theater and acted and sang in several musicals. She started voice lessons when she was eight and was always singing and acting from a very young age. In fact, she was in 50 musicals from age six to 21 and was the star in half of them.

(Based on a True Story in Zichronos Harav Maza)

 He was my grandfather’s father. His name was R’ Yeshaye ben R’ Moshe. His father, R’ Moshe, had been the av beis din of Bober, in the province of Mogilev, near Kropki. The son, R’Yeshaye, was a very distinguished man, famous for his wealth, his scholarship, and his yiras Shamayim (fear of heaven).

Yes, this R’ Yeshaye was the famous Jew who hefkered his chometz. Yes, he gave it all away because of the Poritz’s meshugas. Of course, all the Poritzim were crazy. It’s not surprising; remember, each Poritz in the Ukraine was an absolute dictator of all the peasants and Jews (there were no others) who lived on his lands; he literally had the power of life and death over his subjects. But this Poritz was particularly crazy, or eccentric, if you prefer that term. He derived particular pleasure from devising new and original ways of embittering the lives of his Jews.

It is as if a massive tsunami had hit the U.S., its shock waves quickly spreading across the world! The reference here is not to the geographic phenomenon but to its political equivalent: “Trump-in-action” or, for lack of a better term, “Trumpism.” The rapid-fire, multi-sphere initiatives, pronouncements, and moves of the initial weeks of his second term, along with their vast scope, have been as unprecedented as they are unconventional. To say “unconventional” is actually an understatement; President Trump has given new meaning to the term.

It could probably be said without too much exaggeration that few, if any – from the proverbial man-in-the-street to the experts to government officials – understand what, and why, the President is doing what he is doing. Confusion reigns. And it is the aggregate of all the still ongoing stream of far-reaching, even radical, moves – not any individual component – that has everyone snowed under and taken by surprise and that has kept the targets of the President’s activities off-balance.

Most people are self-proclaimed frog experts. After all, we all learned about the stages of the frog’s life cycle in elementary school and are aware of the reactions they get when they’re stuck in swimming pools. And that’s all there really is to know, right?

Frogs are possibly the most famous when they are taken apart. Dissecting frogs is a “highlight” of most middle school science classes. Personally examining how perfectly each individual organ fits with the others is truly incredible. Hashem’s wisdom in design is so clear when you remove and identify each essential, internal body part – magnified tremendously when you consider the complexity of the human body.

After successfully dissecting a frog (or getting your lab partner to do it while you keep your eyes shut), it’s time to expand our understanding by putting some pieces together. Firstly, it helps to recognize that frogs come in a wide variety of types and sizes, ranging from a third of an inch to over a foot long! A group of frogs is called an “army,” and some of them are extremely lethal; there is enough poison found in the skin of just one Golden Poison Dart frog to kill 10 people!

We have good news to report on the vaping front! Across the United States, rates of teenage nicotine vaping have taken a genuine nosedive. Currently, about 20% of high school seniors report any nicotine vaping over the past year. This is far less than what we observed pre-pandemic, when about 35% of high school seniors reported vaping. The results from 10^th and 8^th graders bring similar good news that vaping nicotine is on the decline.

These results align well with a recent personal experience speaking to a group of high school students. Most of these kids already recognized that vaping was essentially no healthier than smoking traditional cigarettes. In fact, use of alcohol, cannabis, and other drugs have also trended downward in high school students, making this generation about as mischievous as the teenagers on Happy Days. As the legendary British band, “The Who,” sang many years ago, “The kids are alright!”

Of course, we are not ready to quit our day jobs here at Johns Hopkins (though we might get fired by President Trump). We do not know how these national statistics translate to our unique community. Many teenagers and adults continue to struggle with vaping and other substance use. And as parents, the job of providing correct substance use education is never completely over because curiosity, sensation seeking, and peer pressure are all part of normal adolescence.  

As Pesach approaches, I often think about my Great Aunt Cele and the Seders she held for my family in the 1950s on Cylburn Avenue. Aunt Cele was never married, but she was the matriarch of our family. She treated her nieces and nephews like they were her own children. And her great nieces and nephews were a special joy for her.

With great passion, Aunt Cele held on to the tradition of her parents, who came from Kovna Geberna in Russia. I don’t know what Seders were like for her growing up, but for me they were the highlight of every year. At the Seder, adorned in my favorite dress and shiny, black Mary Jane shoes, I sat on one side of Aunt Cele, while my brother Julian, in his brown suit-like attire, sat on her other side. Across from us were my mother and father, and at the head of the table sat my Uncle Nate, Aunt Cele’s brother, who led the Seder in his lyrical Hebrew.

Each of us had our own kiddush cup. My brother’s and mine were tiny glass ones. Each cup sat on a white plate with a painted flower design in the middle. I believe those plates had belonged to Aunt Cele’s parents, my great-grandparents. Also, we each had our own Haggadah. For Julian and me, they were small booklets with colorful pictures to make the story come alive.

A friend called a month or so ago to share an idea with me. I’d like to say she’s a good friend, even though we rarely speak to one another. Our conversations flow naturally and easily as if we’ve known each other for many years when, in fact, it’s been far shorter than that. The topics vary, and who knows what they are about. But one thing I can say for certain is there is a common theme threading through each one of them.

My friend and I are roughly the same age and from the same generation. I can’t speak for her, but like most of my friends, I had a stay-at-home mother and a father who worked hard building a business. We children grew up, got married and raised a family. The women I know worked hard, too. Many of my friends are baalei teshuva, and as we parented our children and worked in our chosen fields, we began a journey the likes we had never traveled before.

Then our children were married off, one by one, and as we faced retirement – or when we suddenly realized the nest was officially empty – we weren’t quite sure where we were going. Still, many of us were fired up and excited, all the while curious as to where we were headed.