Principal:

(Walks to the front. Smiles briefly. Speaks firmly.)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome all - veteran staff and new teachers. Before we begin – yes, I really mean this – I’ll be walking around to collect your cell phones. 

(Walks around holding a basket and waits for each teacher to drop in their cell phone.)

Please hold them up now. Thank you. Drop them right here in this basket. It’s not that I don’t trust you – it’s just that it can be so tempting to check your phone or send a quick text, and for the next little while, I need your full attention.

Thank you. Now, instead of the usual welcoming, we’re going to do a little role playing. Just relax. The stage will be all too familiar very quickly. You are seated in the classroom – but not in the front row. You are looking at your new teacher. For the past months, you were in camp or at the beach. You stayed up late and got up late, hung out with friends, and never opened a book. Now, you are gazing, a bit bleary eyed, at the teacher and wondering what this class will be like.

Summer is over, but the memories are still fresh. As a grandmother of several campers, I have a sort of panoramic view of the contemporary camp landscape – a landscape that has changed quite a bit since we, or even our children, went to camp in the 1960s through the early 2000s. Some of my grandchildren ran their own camps, some worked with special needs children, some were regular campers, and one traveled to an exotic location. I will use pseudonyms so as not to embarrass my grandchildren. After all, it is quite a burden to have a grandmother who thinks every experience of theirs is an idea for an article!

Waitressing

Sora spent her summer in Migdal, a camp for special needs children. I remember from my teenage years that it was considered a privilege to go to a camp like that and work directly with children who are sick or who have special needs. I was curious what the draw is to be spending your summer doing this special work.

The clock reads 2:58 a.m. I guess this is what you could almost call an “all-nighter.” That’s what my friends used to do back in college the night before a term paper was due. It was called “pulling an all-nighter.” It was a status symbol of sorts but something I never did – well, except for one time. There I was with my Olivetti typewriter plinking away into the night. I didn’t manage very well, and my eyes kept closing of their own accord. To add insult to injury, I kept forgetting which cartridge was for black and which one was for white.

I bet many of you don’t even know what I’m talking about, so for once, I’m going to explain to the younger generation something about hi-tech in the ’80s. You see, when I was a little girl, my parents had what was called a manual typewriter. I couldn’t even use it. Each key had to be pressed down very hard, unlike the electric typewriter that I learned to type on. Well, my parents’ version had these ribbons of ink on rolls that had to be put into the typewriter in a certain way. By the time I was typing, those old-fashioned ribbons were obsolete, and cartridges had come into fashion. These devices were inserted into the side of the typewriter: one with the black ink tape and one with the white eraser tape. If you wanted to remove a mistaken letter or word you had typed, you would align the typewriter just so and then retype the error over the white tape, and it would erase it. Oh, we thought we were so fancy.

We’ve all heard about the recent initiative from our rabbanim aimed at addressing the imbalance in the number of boys and girls seeking shidduchim. The suggestion is for boys to begin dating earlier, while girls would wait until a year after returning from seminary to start dating.

As with many things, Baltimore may be a bit “late to the party” – or perhaps we’re simply not looking for an invitation at all. For now, no such initiative has been enacted by our local rabbanim. Still, if it eventually becomes a psak or if enough people adopt it, it will certainly affect our children in Baltimore.

With that in mind, we reached out to a cross-section of our community – shadchanim, parents who have been through the process, parents just starting out, and singles themselves. We asked them:

Dear Parent, 

As we head back to school for another year – with both excitement and worry – I would like to share the excitement and suggest some tips to alleviate the worries for both you and your child. Whether your child is entering school for the first time or you are an experienced parent in the school system, it’s always good to jumpstart a new year into a positive learning experience. 

If you are a newbie, I wish you a mazal tov! This is a very special milestone for your child to learn Hashem’s Torah and about His world. For you as a parent, V’shinantam l’vanecha – you shall teach them to your children – is a concept that comes alive, an awesome opportunity. It should not be taken for granted that we can learn Torah freely in today’s day and age! If you are already inducted into the school system, I wish you a fresh start to another year of growth and self-development, especially if it hasn’t been that way in the past.

I truly wish that I had had more opportunity to learn from and spend time with Rav Dovid zt”l, the legendary mashgiach in Ner Yisrael, but these were not Hashem’s plans.

When I entered shiur beis, officially the second year or level in Ner Yisrael, then given by Rav Kulefsky, zt”l, Rav Dovid gave shiur gimel, the shiur above Rav Kulefsky’s, which I should have entered the next year. Unfortunately, on the 11^th of Teiveis, which was on Shabbos that year, Rav Dovid had a massive coronary attack and passed away within a few hours. So, although I heard his powerful musar shmussen (discourses) both during the Yomim Nora’im season and every Shabbos, and had occasion to ask him shailos in halacha, I was unable to benefit from attending his daily blatt shiur, his weekly iyun chaburos (in-depth analyses of the Gemara topic we were studying in yeshiva), or the relationship I would have been able to develop had the Ribono shel Olam granted him more than 64 years on this earth. For this reason, my own memories are supplemented by both Ner Yisrael traditions and Rav Dovid’s written works to provide a full picture of who Rav Dovid was and what he taught and embodied.

Growing up in the frum chinuch system, we have all heard many times about the importance of having a rebbe to go to for guidance. Those of us who went to yeshiva will remember the great reverence in which we held our rebbeim and how hard we tried to build and develop a connection with them. But as life goes on and we get married and leave yeshiva, many of us find ourselves without a true rebbe figure in our lives. Furthermore, a significant percentage of people, even during the yeshiva years, only had a “rebbe” in the sense of hearing a shiur from him, but they did not have a true relationship with that rebbe, nor did they feel comfortable turning to him for guidance. Some individuals may have even felt uncomfortable with the advice they received when they finally mustered up the courage to ask the rebbe a question – so they didn’t continue to pursue the relationship.

In this article, I would like to explore some of the qualifications for a true rebbe. I hope that through defining what type of person to look for, it will become easier to discover that individual.

When G-d created man, “…He blew into his nostrils the soul of life; and man became a living being.” (Bereishis 2:7) Targum Onkelos defines the last two words as “a speaking spirit,” meaning that man is elevated over animals by virtue of his power of intelligent speech. This article deals with a particular aspect of speech, namely, public speaking.

A very common phenomenon associated with public speaking is glossophobia, or fear of speaking in public, which manifests in an array of emotional, mental, or physical symptoms. I wish to share a very personal perspective on this topic and then offer approaches to subdue this fear. Please accompany me down memory lane for a glimpse of my encounters with the dreaded microphone over the years.

As we all know, there has certainly been an uptick in antisemitism all over the world. I’d like to share my perspective on this phenomenon. I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I am not sure I have any. All I can do is give my view from the outside looking in and from being on the actual inside of the storm.

Israel is not a place to escape to. It is not a second choice. It is the home of the Jewish people. Escape, if you want, to Florida or Paris – well, hold-off on Paris since they no longer allow El Al pilots security clearance! If you are a Jew in France, the clock is frighteningly close to midnight. I can’t comment on the situation outside of Israel except to say, who is a wise man? He who sees the future. I am not a historian, and if that is your interest I suggest Rabbi Katz’s podcasts and Saturday night classes. I do think that whenever Jew hatred is released into the public sphere, it rarely ever slips back inside the quiet margins and just passes.

Before I continue, let me share with you specific aspects of daily life as I experience it that you may not have considered. I am not talking about the war that continues to disrupt life here for those who have husbands, wives, siblings, and parents still doing tours in Gaza and Lebanon. Just daily life.

With the unprecedented heat wave Israel has been experiencing – the plague of wild dogs in my town, supposedly escapees from Gaza, as well as a single, loud donkey parked behind my house by some teenage boys – it has been difficult to sleep for weeks. Add to that the defeatist political protests against the war and constant political bickering, with every political disagreement within the coalition and army being trumpeted in the most unflattering way possible, I almost did not write this article. Finally, Canada, Great Britain, France, and Australia announced they were recognizing a “Palestinian” state, and the whole world started to look black. Wanting to write only positive things, I felt as though I had nothing to say.

But then I sat under our air conditioner for five minutes, and the world looked brighter. Refreshed, I will share with you two positive developments, reactions to that perfidious state recognition.