Diego Rivera,* the owner of a popular 7-11 was having a regular long spring day when, all of a sudden, the doors to his convenience store were flung open, warm air rushing behind. It was a young man who seemed agitated while trying to appear calm, cool, and collected. Decked out in a suit, white shirt, shined shoes, and tie, the young man came running in asking for assistance.

by Malka Katz

 My rabbi was always talking about how important it is for families to celebrate Pesach together at home, so it was hard to believe when he told us, “Get away for Pesach.” I knew why. For several years, my husband had been on a heavy regimen of chemotherapy and radiation, and we needed a rest. Although feeling guilty for leaving family, I booked a modest hotel in Miami run by dear friends and looked forward to a relaxing week. By the end of Pesach, we had gained more than that.

I got up in the middle of the night and noticed it was 3:30 a.m. For those of you who don’t know, this getting up at night business is a middle-aged thing. I went back to bed and couldn’t fall back to sleep – also not uncommon in my stage of life. It didn’t matter how tired I was or that I tried my usual mind-clearing, deep-breathing and muscle-relaxing techniques. Nothing seemed to work as 3:30 turned into 4:30 then 5:00. Once I realized that sleep wasn’t in the cards, I allowed my mind to wander and thought about my plans for when the sun finally came up. But until it did, I didn’t want to get up and wasn’t in the mood to start the laundry or put up a pot of chicken soup.

My first professional position in Jewish communal work was as the Youth and Education director in an “out-of-town” community, Wilmington Delaware. My wife Arleeta and I arrived with our one-year-old son Doniel in July of 1969. We were excited to take up a new and exciting challenge. Wilmington had a very small Jewish community, and we barely had a minyan of shomer Shabbos Jews.

A few days after we moved into our lovely apartment, the elderly chazan of the one and only OINO (Orthodox-in-name-only) shul asked if I’d join him in the shul’s kitchen for tea. The chazan was an ehrliche Yid from “de heim.” He had made it to the U.S. before the war and found work in Wilmington as a shochet and cantor. He was an old-school Jew who preferred Yiddish to English.

Kiryat Sefer, Modi’in Illit

I entirely identify myself as part of the Israeli chareidi community. I am also an immigrant from the U.S. and am identified as such as well. I first came here to learn in yeshiva only after getting a college degree.

My rebbe told me in the name of Rav Hutner, zt”l, that all immigrants to Eretz Yisrael are a “transition generation.” We decided to go through a transition from the way we grew up into a different kind of life that we now wish to lead. This is not to say that we grew up with anything inherently “bad”; we just want something else for our children. We want them to be sheltered from what we were exposed to in the “old country.” We want to give them the opportunity to grow to greater spiritual heights than we were able to obtain.

Many of you reading this article know me. After all, I grew up in Baltimore and spent my whole life here. Some of you know me as a businessman, with a 40-year career in specialty foods. Others know me from my articles in the Where What When or as a trustee of Baltimore’s wonderful Ahavas Yisrael Charity Fund. What many of you may not know is my profound attachment to music and especially to my guitar. Let me tell you the story.

Tzivia stepped back and examined her work. Perfect. A big picture of the Chazon Ish was now hanging in her living room – her living room! Wouldn’t Moishy Herman be impressed. She picked up Mom’s abstract painting, “Desert Winds,” now sitting forlornly on the side and gently placed it behind the couch.

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.