Memories tend to fade as time goes on. Chazal tell us that the remembrance of one who has passed away diminishes after 12 months. Even great people who become legends fade into historical personalities of yesteryear, and memories of them are only as strong as their tangible contributions, such as writings and institutions. There are a rare few whose remembrance becomes stronger with the passage of time, whose legend becomes larger than life. 

HaRav Zvi Dov Slanger, zt”l, whose first yahrzeit will be on the 21st of Shvat, is in this latter category. He left behind a magnificent Yeshiva that he custom-tailored to his unique vision. Yet there is an additional aspect of his legacy that will only be felt in the years to come. HaRav Slanger was a one-of-a-kind mechanech (educator), a master at cultivating bona fide bnei Torah, and his pupils will be among the greatest of tomorrow.

A few months ago, I wrote an article about how families are coping with the burden of tuition for their children’s Torah education. Next, I wrote about dealing with phone calls from school about misbehaving children. In this third in the series on school-related topics, I will explore the perspective of parents who are part of the Orthodox Jewish community but are educating their children in schools outside the community.

In a sense, this phenomenon is a sign of the success of the Jewish day school movement. In previous generations it was very common for children to attend public schools or non-Jewish private schools. My mother, who grew up in a small town outside London, attended non-Jewish schools, beginning with elementary school and going all the way through teachers training college. In fact, she and her brother were the only Jewish students among hundreds of non-Jews. She grew up in a very religious home and was taught to read Hebrew by her grandmother but had very little Jewish book learning. She always felt a little ashamed when she could not help us with our Chumash homework. My father told me that in his non-Jewish school, also in England, the Jewish students were excused from singing Christmas carols and instead were allowed to decorate the Christmas tree!

On a recent visit to my son and daughter-in-law, I noticed that their walls were painted different colors. Rooms that were near each other were painted different shades of the same color, blending together seamlessly.

“How did you decide what colors to paint your walls?” I asked in astonishment. Most of the walls in my house are either white or off-white, or the color the painter had in stock.

They let me in on their secret. They had hired an interior designer, who had suggested which colors to paint the different rooms to make the rooms look warm, cozy, and unique.

This conversation

There are many ways to make money in real estate. There are also many ways to lose money in real estate. This article will focus on buying residential properties, either to do what is referred to as a “fix and flip” or to keep as a rental property. I will try to present a quick overview of the process with some do’s, some don’ts, and some nevers.

Investing in real estate is like following a recipe to make a cake. Find the ingredients, follow instructions, and pray that it comes out good. Just as with making a cake, if you use

This is the second in a series of articles presented by Chayeinu, a new Baltimore organization dedicated to providing education and guidance to our community to address many facets of substance use disorder. We want to alert readers of WWW that as part of this objective, we have invited Dr. David Pelcovitz to speak to our community about substance use on January 9, 2019, at the Park Heights JCC. Dr. Pelcovitz is the Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Chair in Psychology and Jewish Education at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration at Yeshiva University. We hope you can make it.

Predicting which of our children will develop substance use disorder requires some understanding about risk factors that often precede problematic use of alcohol or drugs. Risk factors increase the likelihood that a child will develop a substance use disorder. Before getting into the details, it is important not to panic. Most children with one risk factor never have a problem, and many children who ultimately develop an addiction do not possess traditional risk factors. However, what seems clear is that as the number of risk factors begins to accumulate, so does the likelihood of problematic substance use. This article will focus on vulnerabilities that lie within the child as the most critical risk factors for addiction.

Spending a few hours with 92-year-old Baltimorean Morty Esterson in his home office, I gazed at the many plaques, trophies, proclamations, commendations, and citations adorning the walls of his office. Here is a man who has had a huge impact on the Jewish community as well as on the greater Baltimore community during his long and illustrious career. A master educator in Baltimore City Schools as well as Hebrew schools, he was also a pioneer of special education services, and has held many positions of leadership in Jewish education and community institutions and initiatives. Morty Esterson is simply a exceptional person to all who know and have worked with him. It is people like him who laid the foundation for frumkeit and chesed in Baltimore. Morty Esterson is totally genuine, a sincere and “ehrlich” mensch with an unassuming and delightfully upbeat personality.

To the Shadchan:

I’ve gone out with a girl several times, and I really like her. She is very empathetic, kind, and loving, among other wonderful attributes. Although we met casually, and not through a shadchan, we seem to have the same religious hashkafos. We are both graduates of similar day schools, but our homes are somewhat different. I come from an upper-middle class background – the kind of home that is described as “balabatish,” with all the positives and negatives that that term connotes. Her family is more freewheeling. For instance, her siblings are all shomer Shabbos but of various types.

On our last date, we got on the topic of children, and she said she would not want to send her children to one of the long-established day schools, which we both attended. I already knew we were not on the same page politically. I am a lawyer and a political conservative. And I see that she mostly agrees with what I consider extreme liberal views. She looks at things from a very personal point of view – like how people feel. While I admire her good middos and compassion, I don’t think important policy decisions should be made on the basis of emotion.

There it is – the monster that lives in all of our shadows, the scaled dragon lurking behind us with its bated breath of negativity. It is the parallel universe, the one where we didn’t make the mistakes and the decisions that we did. You know – that world – where, instead of going right, you went left. And sometimes you wonder…you wonder what your life would have been like had you not said or done that.

You see, human beings are made up of contradictions. We are reflexively more comfortable with what we can see, and yet we still believe that there is a hidden, parallel universe where we might be happier, smarter, stronger, or fitter. We put our faith in that parallel universe, and in return, we get to believe that our life as we know it did not necessarily have to come out this way.

But think about it. What benefit does belief in that parallel universe really give you? The ability to bully yourself? To make you dwell on the past, the same past that helped you become who you are today and who you will be tomorrow? Does it give you the ability to analyze and reanalyze every situation inside and out so that you come out with two new best friends: regret and self-loathing? Call me crazy, but those kinds of friends don’t sound very helpful to me.

Here is the funny thing: When disappointing events happen in life, we think that something went wrong. Sure, we know, theoretically, that life isn’t perfect – that there are ups and downs. But when the downs actually occur, we think there must have been some mistake that changed the course of events that were supposed to occur. You were supposed to get the highest grade in the class or get married at twenty or get that job promotion. But you think that you made certain decisions that somehow altered the event that was supposed to happen.

The truth is, the outcome that you wanted, the one you thought was written in some parallel universe – was never meant to happen. If it were, then it would have occurred. Sure, we all have free will. But I once had a teacher who told me that whatever decision we make is the right one. And if you ask me, those decisions got you here – here, where you were meant to be.

It’s 3 a.m., the night after Chanukah, and I’m sitting at the computer trying to recapture its spirit. Dreidels lie deep in my coat pocket, Chanukah paper plates float around the kitchen, and chocolate gelt glitters on tabletops, tempting me to savor just one more. A tall silver menorah, rescued from the Holocaust, still sits in the window. My husband lit it for the first four nights, then we were off to see children and grandchildren for the fifth, sixth, and seventh nights in Far Rockaway and the eighth in Lakewood. There were gelt and gifts for the children, a party with laughter and latkes, and memories to cherish. But, for me, what was special about this Chanukah began in Baltimore before the first candle was lit and kept inspiring and challenging me even when I thought it was over.

When I was growing up, if we wanted to eat a candy bar, packaged cupcake, or ice cream cone, all we did was read the product label to deterWhen mine that it did not contain lard or other obviously non-kosher ingredients, and we considered it kosher. There were few hechsherim then on processed food, and ingredients were simpler, too. That’s why I marvel at how sophisticated the kosher industry has become, a feeling that is magnified tremendously when I attend Kosherfest, the world's largest business-to-business kosher food and beverage event. Unlike us Baby Boomers, today’s kosher consumers are spared the guesswork, needing only a glance at the label to find a reliable kosher certification logo.

This year, I was among more than 6,000 people from 21 countries who attended the 30-year-old annual event, held at the Meadowlands Convention Center in Secaucus, New Jersey, November 13-14. With only about four hours to enjoy the largest kosher smorg in the world, to carefully choose which milchigs to eat before seeking fleishigs – oh yes, and to interview participants for this article – I decided to focus on two aspects of the tradeshow: unique products and foreign booths.