Pesach is passed, and we are left with more than beautiful memories. For many of us, thoughts turn to losing the pounds we gained over the holiday, and even the pounds we started it with. The answer for many is to go on a “diet.” Dieting is a near-obsession in our culture even though we know it does not work very well for most people. When their motivation to continue on the path of deprivation flags, people tend to gain back the weight they lost. Often, they gain even more. Here, two experts in our community express their thoughts on dieting.

For some women, the most painful aspect of motherhood is not becoming a mother. When personal, familial, and social expectations of maternity are unfulfilled, the psychological fallout is often immense. Infertility and pregnancy loss are at odds with the biological, emotional, and spiritual drives that motivate a Jewish woman to birth and nurture her children. Those painful experiences are seldom discussed openly, but they are an aspect of maternity nonetheless.

The last 13 months, encompassing Corona and a third and fourth Israeli election, have been just plain creepy. Even the weather has been weird, with the coldest post-Pesach week I can remember in 35 years.

Well, thanks to the efforts of our excellent prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, we seem to have tackled Corona. Through his efforts at badgering the CEO of Pfizer, who received phone calls from Netanyahu 30 times, most Israelis have been vaccinated already, and our numbers have fallen from 70,000 actively sick Corona patients on February 10, to 3,300 as of yesterday (April 12). Most of the actively ill are people who refused the vaccination.

My husband and I recently visited the village of Peki’in, 40 minutes from our home in the Galil. It was incredibly moving to meet Margalit Zinati, the 86-year-old lone surviving Jew of Peki’in, and to visit the cave where some speculate Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai hid from his Roman oppressors. I love that every single corner of Israel not only has such a wealth of geopolitical and religious history but that we feel a genuine spiritual connection and link to the Land we now call home.

We usually do a lot of hiking on Chol Hamoed. My darling wife Chana is an avid fitness enthusiast, while I try to play the good husband and tag along and try to enjoy myself (or at least pretend to enjoy myself) as much as possible. Well, I guess my acting isn’t as good as I thought, and after several years of this itinerary, she told me that I needn’t shlep along anymore, and we could find other activities to enjoy together.

Have you ever blushed? Have you ever experienced “butterflies” in your stomach? Have you ever felt your heart racing out of excitement or fear?

These common occurrences are undeniably physical phenomena. Yet their underlying causes are not physical but emotional. Might there be other physical phenomena, even illnesses, whose true, underlying causes also reside in the world of our emotions?

Many of us would, understandably, reject such a possibility. Our mindset is a Western one. What is observable by the senses and empirically verifiable is legitimate. What isn’t isn’t. Moreover, the mind and the body are two separate entities. Emotions may be responsible for emotional illnesses. My back pain, however, is caused by a structural abnormality, my irritable bowel by inflammation, my chronic fatigue by….well, nobody really knows but certainly not by my inner world of feelings.

The month between Purim and Pesach abounds with excitement and anticipation as families prepare for Seder night. By rosh chodesh Nisan, mothers in our community are readying their homes at an impressive speed for a meaningful and joyous chag. And this year’s calendar means many will be turning the corner full-throttle into Shabbos Hagadol. It’s that auspicious time when spring thaw and erev-Pesach buzz are in the air, but it can be difficult to savor the moment with family while checklists grow and time dwindles. Instead of bringing in Yom Tov for a smooth landing, it is easy to find ourselves out of gas and struggling.

The following is a stream of thoughts and impressions on the loss of our Rav Sheftel, zt”l, which is still so fresh and real. Harav Sheftel Meir ben Harav Naftali Halevy Neuberger was a Legend of a man, a Lion for all of klal Yisrael, and a Leader for his yeshiva, Yeshivas Ner Yisroel of world renown. I was privileged to call myself a talmid of his for close to 24 years, during which time he made an indelible and everlasting impression on me along with thousands upon thousands of talmidim around the world.

If I have learned anything from teaching middle school for the last 12 years here in Dallas, it is that we live in an age of superlatives. Nothing is just nice, it is “amazing.” If it’s unpleasant, it is “tragic.” With all the emoting and words that are causally tossed around, I am left to wonder what word might describe what Texas went through the week of Parshas Teruma. “Devastating” is a contender, as are “traumatizing” and “crippling.” Perhaps I will land on the all-time favorite term used by my students, “epic.”

 Well, here we go. I’ve started making my Pesach lists as I sit here eating Purim chocolates, which I should have given away or thrown out but of course didn’t. Has a year gone by already? This has been the fastest year yet. I’d like to blame it on COVID which kept us constantly moving from one thing to the next. Maybe I’m just getting old because I’ve always heard older people talk this way about how time flies. Nah, I’ll just blame it on COVID.