This past Sukkos, our family had a rare opportunity to spend Sukkos together in Yerushalayim. Our sons Akiva and Meir are learning there in beis medrash, and our son Dovid and his wife Arielle, in their shana rishona, are part of the Toras Moshe kollel. I looked around and found inexpensive tickets on Aeroflot for ourselves and our two girls, Tamar and Shalva. We would be staying in Yerushalayim, where one of the many wonderful women I have met over my years with the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project, now called Momentum, invited us to use her beautiful home in Yemin Moshe.

These past few months, I have been writing a series of articles about substance abuse as a part of Chayeinu organization’s efforts to provide education and guidance to our community regarding substance use disorder. While we might wish it were otherwise, substance abuse is not a stranger to our community. The unfortunate fact is that there is a strong probability that our children will drink or use drugs before graduating high school. The numbers in the United States are persuasive and alarming. Before completing high school, 60 percent of teenagers report drinking alcohol, 40 percent report vaping nicotine, 40 percent report smoking marijuana, and 20 percent report smoking traditional cigarettes. About 15 percent report using illicit drugs other than marijuana. And these are only the kids who choose to talk about their substance use!

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I turned into the Seven Mile Market parking lot, how a semi-retired Hopkins nephrologist morphed into an environmental ecologist. Dr. Devorah Rivka Gelfand is not only passionate about her newest life calling; she has inspired others to jump on the bandwagon. The goal of “Cherish the Earth-Bal Tashchis” (www.cherishtheearth-baltashchis), the non-profit organization she founded, is education about and promotion of Torah-based environmental conservation to the Baltimore Jewish community.

When I arrived at the “Cherish the Earth” Environmental Expo booth outside Seven Mile Market on November 3, I was greeted by Jonathan Libber and Dr. Gelfand’s husband Shlomo. It was one of three such booths around town. The others were in front of Market Maven and Shoppers.

“Let’s go to Grandma’s house!” Although it sounds like a quote from “Little Red Riding Hood,” it’s a call voiced by kids everywhere yearning for the tenderness of a doting bubby who is always ready to stuff you with her homemade goodies. Oh, how my mouth still waters for some of Grandma’s marvelous apple pie with just the right amount of jelly oozing out at the edge of the crust. And what a treat it was to be there when her yummy honey cookies came out of the oven. Who didn’t have a grandmother who made the best gefilte fish, not to mention challah every Friday. My late mother followed Grandma’s challah recipe, and said, each time, “It’s not like Grandma’s.”

But her loving kindness and palatable delights were only a few of the reasons I loved visiting my grandmother Eva Friedman, a”h.

The desire for friends is universal. From babies through adults, we thrive on our connection to others. Anyone who observes an infant wriggling with delight upon seeing her mother – or watches a depressed elderly person suddenly become animated when receiving a visitor – understands this reality. But sometimes a child does not seem to develop relationships. This is the child who complains (or, even worse, does not complain) that he is always chosen last on the team. This is the child who does not get any play dates and is teased and bullied by others.

Every American schoolchild knows the history of Thanksgiving. Our children are taught that Thanksgiving is a holiday that began in 1621 at Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, when, after surviving their first brutal winter amidst disease and starvation, the Pilgrims expressed thanks to G-d for a bountiful harvest. The local Indians, who taught them how to grow corn, hunt turkey, and avoid poisonous plants in their new world, were invited to join the Pilgrims in their feast.

Although feasts to offer thanks were held throughout the 1600s and 1700s, it was not until 1863 that President Lincoln formally established the holiday at the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale, a prominent speaker and editor, who became known as the “Mother of Thanksgiving.” Since that time, Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a national holiday on the last Thursday of November.

When you look in the mirror what do you see? You see someone who has figured out that you need eight hours of sleep to function, someone who knows to avoid Great Aunt Gertrude at family simchas so as not to be irritable for a week, someone who has learned to refuse a coworker’s request even though you might want to scream. In short, you are a person who knows how to manage anger, frustration, and hurt better than you used to.

Now look at a child. Children also feel anger, frustration, and boredom, but they haven’t yet had the chance to learn the tools to deal with these big emotions. To top it off, they are surrounded by people who think that they should already know them.

After a super-long summer, winter hit with a bang. (Arctic winds are no joke.) What to do about dinner, when all you want to do is curl up under a blanket after coming in from the cold? (Okay, okay, so we don’t feel like cooking in the summer, either.) Plan easy meals, that’s what! The obvious answer is to shlep out the crock pot during the week. It’s good for more than cholent. Just throw some frozen cutlets into it in the morning – don’t forget to plug it in! – and come home to the aroma of a delicious chicken dinner when you and the kids walk through the door in the afternoon! Plus, there’s another quick-and-easy dinner technique that I just learned about, called sheet pan cooking. Read on!

Anxiety seems to be much more prevalent in modern times than it was in previous generations. Some argue that one of the factors causing this is the number of choices we have on a daily basis. Living in a shtetl with few people, few stores, and few outlets can feel comfortable. It means our lives are simpler and require less decision making. There is less to worry about. In addition, we basically knew ahead of time how our lives would play out, at least regarding those aspects over which we had control. We knew where we would live, what occupation we would follow, how we would eat, where we would go to shul, and where our children would go to school. Today, our choices about all these aspects of life are much broader. Unfortunately, when a person is inundated with options and, thus, decisions, it can trigger anxiety. This can be true even regarding small decisions.

Have you ever heard of a tune entitled “Que Sera Sera”? It was popularized by a singer named Doris Day. The refrain goes like this: