Treading on ancient cobblestone roads, one enters the imposing Sha’ar Yafo, Jaffa Gate, into Jerusalem of Old. The sun shimmers off the stone walls, enveloping you in gold: the fabled Yerushalayim shel Zahav, Jerusalem of Gold. Within these magnificent walls live thousands of Jews, Muslims, and Christians. For the past few years, I have been privileged to know one special family, originally from America, who requested to remain anonymous. I will call them Family L.

Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, are battery-operated smoking devices. These devices work by applying heat to a liquid-filled cartridge. The liquid, which is converted to an aerosol by the heat, contains nicotine. Inhalation of the aerosol is often called vaping. E-liquids come in a variety of flavors that turn out to be quite appealing to teenagers, like watermelon, cappuccino, and mango. While there are many different brands of e-cigarettes, the JUUL brand is by far the most popular, and the term “juuling” is now pretty much synonymous with vaping. E-cigarettes come in many sleek and user-friendly designs, most often resembling cigarettes, pens, or USB flash drives. An important aspect of these devices is that they mask unwanted tastes and smells commonly associated with smoking.

As many of you may have noticed, there has been a significant reduction in the number of people who are illegally parking their vehicles. Many people, once informed that wrong-way parking was unlawful and potentially dangerous, were thankful to have been so informed and simply modified their parking habits.

Her eyes shining, her face glowing with a pure smile, she looked at me: “Tomorrow’s erev Shabbos!” she exclaimed. 

From that very first day of camp, I realized I would learn a lot. But I never could have fathomed how much I would really learn. 

If your travels to Israel between the 1970s and the early 2000s included a visit to the Kotel, chances are you saw – or at least heard of – the legendary Rabbi Meir Schuster, z”l. He was the tall, lanky, black-hatted bearded fellow in the dark suit, who dedicated himself to frequenting the Kotel, day in and day out, no matter what. A man on a mission, he loved his fellow Jews so much that he wanted to share his enthusiasm for Judaism with them, out of pure compassion. Indeed, he received no monetary compensation for his work.

It’s a tale of twos, a story of firsts and of seconds. This Shabbos, two days ago, was the first of two Shabbosim during the Nine Days, during which we mourn the loss of the two Temples. Shabbos morning, in Daf Yomi, Temura 15, we learned about the Jews who came up to the Land of Israel with Ezra the Scribe following 70 years of exile. Some of those men were old enough to recall the idolatry the led to that exile, and the gemarIt’s a says they wept over it.

If those men could weep over the idolatry they witnessed in their childhood, idolatry that led to their 70-year exile, I can weep over the political missteps taken 27 years ago during the 1992 Israeli elections, political missteps in which I took a modest part.

About six or seven years ago, on a weekday Mincha, I noted a visitor. A man in his early 40s, he looked like he had stepped out of an Italian fashion magazine. His clothing was not loud – and very neat – but in modern styles and colors (a different combination each day). Even the shoes matched. I really liked this; it was such a refreshing statement coming from a man whose heart stayed firmly on the path. We soon became friends; I even followed suit (literally) and bumped up my own appearance.

The advent of a wedding creates a whirlwind of excitement. After months of careful planning and preparation, not to mention stress and anxiety, the wedding flies by in the blink of an eye. A flurry of friends and relatives celebrate with the happy couple for hours on end. As the final dance winds down and tables are cleared, the chassan and kallah bid their guests adieu. The young couple, flying high on the stream of good wishes, feels ready to face the world. Having already discussed their hashkofos, chosen their future home, and settled on where they will spend their first Yom Tov, they feel like they are ahead of the game. They don’t realize that their first real-life dilemma is less than 24 hours away.

The circumstances that eventually brought my Syrian grandfather to the U.S. in the 1920s go back to the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. This great technological feat that tremendously expedited trade all over the world was the beginning of the end of Syria’s status as the trading crossroads of the world. Suddenly, commerce shifted to boats instead of passing through the famed Damascus and Aleppo trading centers. 

A bunch of children were playing tag outside on a long summer Shabbos afternoon. Suddenly, one of the boys started yelling, “No girls allowed.” Other boys joined the battle cry, and the girls stopped in their tracks, not sure whether to go on with the game. Some of them were close to tears. One boy called out loudly, “Why can’t the girls play?! He stopped the whole “revolution” in its tracks, and the game proceeded until dusk.

A high school girl made a nasty comment about her teacher’s clothing to her friend. She was trying to rile up the class to join her in making fun of the teacher. To her surprise, her friend refused to be horrified and instead said, “So what?” catching the instigator off guard. That comment stopped the joke and saved the teacher from an embarrassing situation.

Wouldn’t we all like to be able to claim these children as our own? Don’t we want to raise a child who is strong enough to do the right thing even when overruled by the majority? How can we teach ourselves and our children to be firm in their beliefs? To be kind when everyone else is being mean? This article will not answer these questions definitively but will give us food for thought.

As usual I started exploring this topic by asking friends, family, and acquaintances what they thought about peer pressure.