Essays by Larry Gordon
Larry (Arye Leib) Gordon was born and raised in Crown Heights. He is a veteran journalist writing stories on Jewish life and issues for thirty years. As a broadcast journalist he pioneered the concept of Jewish radio with the founding of a daily Jewish music and news program on WFMU in New Jersey. The program continues to be broadcast today. Larry's current talk programs and interviews can be heard at www.mesorahradio.com. He is the son of well known and long time journalist, Nison Gordon, of blessed memory. Larry is the publisher and editor of the 5 Towns Jewish Time a widely distributed and critically accalimed weekly newspaper.
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The Debate Goes On
While newspapers and other media outlets are forums for discussion and debate, one would like to think that these forums could possibly, as time goes by, effectuate some change and improvement.
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Protecting Our Children
The episodes are as notorious as they are unconscionable. They are complex real-life events that are even more difficult to commit to paper without offending the sensibilities of the reader. Having spoken with and listened to professionals in the field of medicine, psychology, and social work over the last few days, I have come away shaken and even frightened by stories of depravity that have been perpetrated on children. I’m talking about frum children, kids who go to yeshiva with smiles on their faces, children just like yours and mine......click here for more |
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Race For President
I believe that the race or the gender of candidates for President of the United States will stop being an issue when we are no longer reminded daily that Hillary Clinton is female and that Barack Obama is mostly African American. So long as even our leading liberal media outlets can’t stop talking about this and other issues dealing with race, these very references will continue to be the obstacles to finally overcoming this barrier.
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Talmudic Peace
It’s a curious repetitiousness. If someone says that he’s not going to benefit from his friend, or his neighbor, or his wife, the implications of his exact words—what he says and how he says it—are discussed again and again. The current daily daf of Tractate Nedarim (”Vows”) seems, on the surface, to drone on about nearly the same things day after day, with a few very fascinating digressions every now and then......click here for more |
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Philanthropic Priorities
It was the Super Bowl that instigated the discussion. On the recent Super Bowl Sunday, a rabbi friend in the community expressed chagrin and astonishment that people who live in our communities had actually made use of or leased private planes as well as conventional modes of transportation to fly to Arizona to attend the Super Bowl. “Within just a few blocks of their homes people are unable to put food on the table for their children or themselves,” he said. And he added, “The money spent by our people on the Super Bowl could have solved a lot of urgent problems.”.....click here for more |
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A Creative Peace
France’s President, Nicolas Sarkozy, met in Paris last Monday with Israel’s Prime Minister Olmert and urged him to “be creative” when it comes to making peace with the Palestinians. I agree with Mr. Sarkozy. If Mr. Olmert, who is presently the subject of at least three criminal investigations in Israel, is only half as creative with the peace process as he has been in business, then maybe, just maybe, we will be able to make some progress. .....click here for more |
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HEARD IN THE BAGEL STORE: Rabbi Leibel Baumgarten is just a loveable guy
AN EAST END SHABBOS
Rabbi Leibel Baumgarten is just a loveable guy.
That’s the comment you hear from people you encounter at both Friday night and Shabbos services in East Hampton, New York where Leibel serves as a shliach---an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. As those familiar with the concept can well understand----there are challenging as well as satisfying and fulfilling aspects of the enterprise known as Shlichus that promulgates the observance of Torah and Mitzvos to Jews around the globe......click here for more |
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Heard In The Bagel Store
WALKING THE WALK
It's a July Shabbos in New England. It's not too far from home but at the same time it is indeed worlds away. At first sight it's appears peaceful and pleasing to the eyes. It is a quaint New England town, cars passing not so quickly down not so busy main streets and so on. The American flag still flies from the front porch and front windows of many homes on these tree-lined blocks in the continued afterglow of Independence Day on July 4th. It's a beautiful piece of every day America . .....click here for more |
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PASS THE STRAWBERRIES
Our sages advised us not to judge which of the mitzvos are great and which are minor ones and the same for the opposite actions. That said, there’s a great deal going on in all our communities here in the 5 Towns and around the world that keeps things both vibrant and interesting. Sometimes, however, an innocuous item becomes the source of deep hashkafic debate from which we can learn a great deal.
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Becoming Jewish
I had heard and read about Natan Gamadze but now he was sitting on the other side of my desk talking about his life in a cool and reflective fashion. He is wearing what I would call a conventional Yeshiva outfit, a white shirt, a black suit and a rather large black fedora. He’s 42-years-old, married and the father of two small children. For a while after his arrival in Israel he lived in Tzfat and then only during the past year moved to Jerusalem where he studies and present shiurim in Talmud at a local Yeshiva.
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Inexact Precision
In Jerusalem last Sunday on a narrow long winding street tucked somewhere inside the sloping hills of Jerusalem I met a man who told me that he has a friend whose wife has a baby every year just so she can stay for a week at the Bais Ezra home for women who just give birth and who usually have large families and just need that week to get away from it all. This is her only opportunity for any kind of vacation. She already has seventeen children. .....click here for more |
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Crossing Problems
I like the new feature on Route 878 that cuts through the lower portion of Lawrence. Now when you cross this rather Queens Boulevard type street there is a large electronically illuminated numeric sign that counts down how long you have until the light changes again and traffic starts to flow in your direction. The truth is that for basketball fans the new crossing feature kind of gives you this minute scoring opportunity feeling as you make your was along the six lanes of traffic......click here for more |
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The London Bombings
So long as there is the smallest rationale that legitimizes terror and the infliction of terror on people, the global war against terror will not be a success. For as long as it has existed terror has continued to strengthen and even spread because countries involved with fighting terror have for political and other reasons refused to do what needs to be done to eliminate it and those who merchandise in it.
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Nison’s Bar Mitzvah
I’ve waited patiently for thirteen years to be able to write this article so please bear with me as I lay it out before and we will both together see if it comes out as imagined all this time.
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Illusive Unity
For quite a few moments last Tuesday night I thought that we had made big progress and that we were almost there. Orthodox Jewry seemed to be out in force with an overwhelming display of togetherness that seemed unparalleled in recent history. It was the conclusion and the beginning of our never ending attachment to Torah through the study of Shass. There was an exuberance and even magic in the air outside and even inside Madison Square Garden in New York. But then, the next morning, the e mails started to fly mostly about how a unique opportunity to present real and comprehensive unity had really been missed and not really taken place at all. .....click here for more |
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A Pragmatic Withdrawal
We are indeed the sum total of our experiences. As a result there is very little that Jews as a people---or for that matter individually---can do without there being deep sociological and psychological reasons for indulging in whatever we do. And so it is too with Ariel Sharon’s determined objective to uproot Jewish communities in Gaza and part of the West Bank. It’s not about Sharon going politically soft or, as I’ve suggested in the past, his lack of faith combined with his advancing age without a spiritual compass to guide him.
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Burial For Peace
Last Motzei Shabbos after Havdalah I clicked on to my favorite news spots when one story in particular grabbed my attention. As you know there has been a plethora of stories both confirming and contradicting the state of the health of Palestinian terrorist leader and organizer, Yasser Arafat. It could very well be that by the time this article will appear in print that his death certificate will have already been signed (though it could be a forgery) but it’s even more likely that many more days will pass until we’ll be able to squeeze the truth out of Palestinian leaders about the disposition of Mr. Arafat.
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George W. Bush For President
The argument that it is a particularly selfish and a narrow perception of our countries requirements if one chooses to vote for President based on a single issue usually has significant validity to it. America is so diverse and is in need of so many things on a multiplicity of levels---social, economic and so on--- that it is patently unfair to say that I’m voting for this or that candidate for one or another singular reason. And while few in the overall Jewish community actually vote with this type of consideration, the upcoming election may be one in which the approach to our choice may be made by solely considering the nature of the relationship between the US and Israel......click here for more |
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My Day Off
It was Monday, two days after Yom Kippur and two or so days before Succot. We weren’t publishing that week so I had an opportunity to sit back and at least mentally relax for a few days or if that didn’t work choose from a variety of things in which to re-channel my energies. Of course there were the preparations for Succot, buying five lulavim and esrogim, getting them made up so that they last through the Chag, doing some shopping, making some calls that I don’t usually have time for, meeting some people without watching the clock or being in a rush and then----visiting my mother......click here for more |
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Remembering Shabse Gordon
When I heard the other day that Shabse, a”h was niftar I was stunned. I sat down in disbelief and then told the people I was with that this was a man that was a true legend. For decades it seemed that everywhere I went when I introduced myself one of the first questions always and inevitably was---are you related to Shabse Gordon? For a long time I said that I wasn’t because I really didn’t think we were though people seemed to find that odd considering that for all those years there were two Gordon families in Crown Heights and both lived on Montgomery Street. As time passed I grew accustom to the idea that despite the apparent coincidence---we were indeed not related......click here for more |
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Tuition Comes To Fruition
You know those large white and blue signs you see hanging somewhere outside most Yeshivas around here that urges you to leave 5% of your estate to Yeshivas? Well, according to many in the education industry in this area and others it’s an excellent idea but Yeshivas have yet to see the first dollars from the campaign. The subject comes up because I spoke with several local Yeshiva administration people over the last several days about getting everyone lined up to pay their Yeshiva---yes, private school tuition----for the coming year and the inevitable zig zags in the process.
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“…Beside Tranquil Waters….”
Under the blue skies of another wonderful summer Sunday we take a step outside of the hustle and bustle of a visiting day reality that is overrun by thousands in the Catskills. Finding a parking space, pushing a wagon around in Wal-Mart, standing endlessly on the check out line and then back to camp to begin the process of winding down the summer by bringing some of the kids clothes home seems to define---on at least one level---the essence of another quickly dissolving summer......click here for more |
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Wedding Plans
This is a preliminary test to see whether I am up to the task of enduring the drills that one must make their way through when making a wedding these days. So bear with me as I navigate my way through this life cycle event that, at the same time, will answer the question as to whether I will be able to think or focus---or better yet, write---about anything other than planning a wedding over the coming summer. .....click here for more |
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Loss and Life
You live with the bad news which hopefully allows you to appreciate the good things that we have in our lives that much more. But sometimes it is more difficult then others to assimilate the events you hear about into that part of your psyche that allows you to live with things that you are certain that under other circumstances would drive you or any person insane. And so it is that while there are myriad subjects that we can and need to cover here, the story that made the general press the day after Pesach sticks out more then most. Somehow it refuses to squeeze itself into that safe part of our psyche that allows us not to obsess on it and after a few days not to think about anymore.
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The Search For Chometz
The story is re-told every year at this time about an elderly holy Jew who resided in just one room in a small Russian town and the ordeal he endured in his search for Chometz on the night before the Yom Tov of Pesach began. Though he lived in just one small room the search took him all night up until the sun would rise in the morning. And that’s because as we become reoriented with the concept of Chometz this time of year we learn from the story of this Rebbe that the search for Chometz that we traditionally conduct is not simply about little pieces of bread, a wooden spoon and a candle. .....click here for more |
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Political Rumblings
It’s no surprise that Senator John Kerry swept the New York primary on Tuesday and did so overwhelmingly well throughout the country in the Super Tuesday primaries. Kerry is smart, articulate and has come up through the political ranks, fought in Vietnam then returned home to protest and oppose a war that killed over 57,000 young people. In other words to many his is considered as a man who has earned his stripes......click here for more |
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Where You Are Going For Yom Tov?
You may not know where you are going for Pesach yet but there are people out there that do know. There is so much to consider when charting the holiday behavior patterns of Jews seeking to observe Pesach in freedom (from cooking, cleaning and serving) and in style (warm weather, Olympic size pool, interesting tourist attractions). .....click here for more |
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Not So Super Bowl
Where have you gone Fred Biletnikoff? Fred was a ballet style wide receiver on the Oakland Raiders of yesterday who flew through the air like a bird snatching passes from his quarterback---mostly Daryle Lamonica---particularly at times when it seemed that all was lost, that a comeback or victory was improbable. As if out of no where Biletnikoff would seem to emerge with the football, in the end zone, touchdown!
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Fathers and Sons: Years Later
Now all these years later I find myself in somewhat un-chartered territory, drifting and still groping to emotionally define what I am dealing with. With the High Holy Days safely tucked away into the past and Chanukah just ahead and almost within our grasp, I am once gain faced with dealing with remembering in that unique Jewish way that which attaches us to our deeply rooted history as well as our personal and eternal forever’s......click here for more |
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Controlling The World: It’s A Big Job
I wasn’t that upset about what Malaysia President Mahathir Mohammad said last week about the Jews. Actually I think he was kind of right on and his timing was pretty good too. Additionally, even though his comments seemed on the surface to be classic anti-Semitism, by reading the full comments of his address it becomes clear that he was criticizing his Arab brethren more then he was indulging in denouncing Jews in general......click here for more |
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Heard In The Bagel Store No More, Part #91
Ah Goot YurIt’s a universal and seasonal; slogan that cuts across all lines of linguistic demarcation. You don’t have to know or understand a single word of Yiddish to wish a friend, family or neighbor---ah goot yur. How else can you say it? Can you in good conscience wish someone a simple good year without conjuring up images of steel-belted radial tires? Somehow wishing someone a plain old good year ahead misses the mark, it fails to convey the essence and substance of your intentions......click here for more |
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Bash!
How would I know that it’s Chodosh Elul or Labor Day without Sy Syms letting me know that it’s the day on which his great Bash sale comes to a conclusion? I don’t live for the Syms Bash but I have to admit that it is a watershed moment on the annual calendar. The Syms Bash is an awesome undertaking, almost----and in fact beyond almost but rather, positively---a religious experience......click here for more |
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Summer Diary
Well DoneThe rest and distress were distributed in full measure. In retrospect, however, and with appropriate placement in context this was nothing more than a minimal inconvenience that opened the floodgates of immeasurable kindness. .....click here for more |
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A Hampton Spiritual Indulgence
Summer and the living is laid back and easy. The weather is warm and it's always a perfect time for a walk somewhere outside. With summer at its midway point and with most of the children safely parked in some sleep away camp the urge to get away---if only for a day or two---seems to intensify. Though we have been in the Hampton's many times before this was going to be the first foray of this type to take place over Shabbos where, as you are well aware, the rules are dramatically different. .....click here for more |
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Shabbos Plans
The age old question was always--- why can't they just do nothing on Shabbos just like me? Don't they know that Shabbos is Shabbos, the one day that you cease the running and jumping, the shaking and baking? Sit still for one beautiful and perfect day. But no, they always had to go somewhere and I had to do the manual version of car pool to get them there.
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Heard In The Bagel Store No More, Part #79
Car PoolIt’s almost over, more than 10 months of checking the list---sometimes checking it twice---to see if it’s our turn to drive the children to school. It’s car pool. It jumps out of you from nowhere, it catches you by surprise, it happens to you when you least expect it......click here for more |
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An Encounter With Reb Leib
I never met Reb Leib Shainen and up to this point I’ve never written about him either. You see I really didn’t or don’t know him but then again I really do. Reb Leib was the Rov of a long ago small town in Russia, a town of fiercely pious men and women who served G-d with great diligence and fervor despite the most unfavorable material conditions. I picture the town that he led and inspired as always being cold, gray and cloudy. I don’t recall really focusing on it but somewhere in the recesses of my mind I can see and feel the town of Dukcyze and it’s cold and gray and no one there is smiling......click here for more |
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Answered Prayers
“If You, Oh Hashem, would preserve and remember sin, O My Lord, how could anyone survive?” These words are King David’s in Psalms, words that most shuls recite every day at the conclusion of morning and afternoon Tefilos. In the past this space has expressed that the words---while being said widely around the Jewish world, are uttered too perfunctorily and without appropriate focus and concentration. Indeed, we do say them every day, after a final and speedy Aleinu, before scooting out to the shul parking lots and driving off to our daily realities. .....click here for more |
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WAR
I was getting used to the frustrating rope a dope of the UN on the issue of Saddam Hussein his WMD and Iraq. Somewhere inside I believed---naively, though---that the world or at least the civilized world had outgrown savage conflict. But I was wrong. Bombing, fighting, killing and torture seem too frequently to be the natural state of the human condition. What can I say---that I’m disappointed in humanity? That could be the understatement of the new millennium.
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The International Culinary Adventure
Two thoughts to start. First is that if one travels to Israel---especially these days----and is a writer, then one should be able to squeeze out more than two or three columns from the experience. The second---and only slightly connected to the first is---that if you are on a diet (like I have been for the past few months and down 21 pounds) then you quickly realize that traveling is not compatible with dieting......click here for more |
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The Loneliness OF Rachel
The highpoint was also the low point of a once again all too quick jaunt into Israel last week. Ostensibly planned to visit our daughter studying in Jerusalem we nevertheless found ourselves slaves to the hectic tourist schedule that seems to come naturally to those who live with the contradiction of loving Israel and living here. How much can you pack into six short days and the idea that there will always be time to rest later?
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Saddam and Me
With my younger daughter and her friends studying in Israel for the year we have been privy to a number of e mail updates from her school about their preparedness in the event of war in the Gulf and in the event Saddam decides to fire his scuds, once again, in Israel’s direction. .....click here for more |
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Torah And Terror
Flying into Israel a few weeks ago the man sitting next to me said as we neared the end of our journey that he was surprised that we were just 100 miles from Ben Gurion Airport and the plane was still traveling at 39,000 feet. Until he said what he did I was quietly thinking to myself that I recall a time when the descent into Israel would start a good hour or so before touchdown and that the planes used to gradually lower their altitude from the mid to high thirty thousand foot level to the 20’s and then gradually lower until we landed. .....click here for more |
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Jerusalem Diary
As Jews who live outside of Eretz Yisrael and as those who feel so intertwined and attached to whatever goes on there, it is a continuing struggle to express our personal attachment to the people and the land. So it is that my quick jaunt over last weekend was yet another step in my seemingly ever-continuing effort to acquire Eretz Yisrael while still living in the Diaspora. My quest, while not unlike that of so many others, manifests itself in multiple ways. More interesting, however, is how others in the same position as you and I deal with these circumstances.
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An Unusual Bar Mitzvah
Sitting in Ben Gurion Airport late one night last week, the thing that caught my eye was the torn lapels. I was preparing to return to New York after three days of visiting my daughter who is attending seminary in Jerusalem as well as friends in and around the Old City. Shabbat at the Kotel was high and exhilarating. Contrary to what people feel comfortable believing the place was packed with students and tourists welcoming the holy Shabbat on a warm and always exciting evening. We danced in circles with pomp and exuberance in anticipation of the arrival of the Sabbath queen......click here for more |
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LEFTOVERS
In a different life maybe I would have been a food critic. It just seems that I have this predisposition to relating things to or writing and making reference to food. Now you do not need me to tell you that food is essential to life and I guess that’s why it is such a big part of life. We can’t live without food---it’s also difficult to live with it......click here for more |
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Rosh Hashana’s Future Past
They are years that seem increasingly long ago. Despite their increasing distance, however, it is clear to me now, that they will never fade away to a place beyond retrieval. They are so special, in fact, that they seem to not be a matter of what once was, but rather live side by side with the reality of the present.
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The Widow
I sat with the widow late into the night. The way it worked out I did most of the talking. There were lots of silent spots too at which point I really wasn’t sure about what to do. Not that it was uncomfortable or anything but at those points I mostly either just looked down or just stared straight ahead.
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Eight Years Later On Long Island
It’s said part jokingly and more than half seriously that the two things that you are assured of as you travel around the world are that you will most likely find two thing everywhere you go. And those two things are Coca Cola and Lubavitch. Business people who have no attachment or involvement with Chabad frequently plan their travels around where a certain Chabad House may be located. You can travel to Las Vegas, Knoxville or Quito, Ecuador and there will be a Lubavitch House in which you can catch a minyan or a Shabbos meal......click here for more |
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Where The U.N. Can Really Help
Needless to say or write I do not have too much use for the United Nations. They spend a lot of money and accomplish very little. In addition they are very unfriendly to Israel and to Jews in general. So far I’ve been very pleased that the Israel cabinet has displayed the fortitude to keep the UN scoundrels out of Jenin where the UN team was preparing to excoriate Jews and Israel and once again declare the Jews the real Nazi’s and the Palestinians the real Jews. It’s this sought of fraud that is common every day fare in the UN. If there is anything in the world that the UN is united about it is that they are united against Israel......click here for more |
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Heard In The Bagel Store No More Part XXXVIII
We’re All Settlers.Our Secretary of State, Colin Powell, urged Israel, upon his departure from the Middle East last week, to come to grips with “the destructive impact of settlements” and the fact that their existence are an obstacle to peace. The truth is that I’m still undecided about whether Colin Powell really says what he means or just floats these antagonistic word combinations out there so that they play well and buy time in the Arab world......click here for more |
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A Time To Be Counted
For one day this week I wasn’t me. It was unusual because---like you and yourself---we are saddled---for better or for worse---with being who we are every day of our existence. But this past Monday, April 15th, the 3rd of Iyar and the 18th of the Omer, I didn’t only take off from work but I took off from being me for a day. It was an awe inspiring and fascinating experience......click here for more |
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Not an Uncommon Encounter
>Being an undercover Shliach has its challenges and “nisyonos”. It wasn’t a role I chose but rather one I fell or was maneuvered into as a matter of fate, I suppose. Functioning undercover may sound humorous, and at times it is, but the way things have changed out there it has slowly become a serious endeavor......click here for more |
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Joyous Solemnity - The Klein-Rosenberg Wedding
They could have danced all night. Actually they did kind of dance most of
the night as Shloimy Klein of Crown Heights and Chanie Rosenberg of Montreal,
Canada were married Monday evening at the Beth Zion Congregation in
Montreal. It was clear and very cold as scores braved temperatures near
zero degrees as the chupah was held just outside the main entrance to the
very impressive synagogue building.
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Worried About The Holidays
I’m sure that after all these years you know that there is one more thing that is unique about the Yom Tovim that you may not be conscious of, and that is that for some reason they never seem to arrive on time. Without fail---year after year---the holidays are either here early or late. Of course, as you know, that has everything to do with the lunar year and the relationship between our planet (that’s the earth) and the moon as well as the nature of our calendar.
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Lemrick and Jonathan
So Lemrick Nelson, who apparently mercilessly stalked Yankel Rosenbaum up Brooklyn Avenue in Crown Heights, gets another chance to have his guilt proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Don’t forget that despite Nelson’s fingerprints on the knife that penetrated Rosenbaum’s back, his blood was also found on Nelson’s pants.
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Heard In Snag City
It's not pretty out there. Years ago, maybe ten years ago, when the Rebbe was alive and the push for Moshiach was at a fever pitch I was walking home from shul one Shabbos when I heard encouraging words......click here for more |
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My Father, The Rebbe and Me
In just a couple of weeks we will observe the 12th Yahrzeit of my father, Nison Gordon a"h. My father passed away at home on Montgomery Street in Crown Heights some hours after lighting Chanukah licht on the sixth night of Chanukah in 1989. The last time I saw him was three nights before, on a Sunday, as we gathered together at home to light candles of the third night. He had experienced (I really can't call it suffered because he wasn't sure until the doctor told him) a mild heart attack just a few weeks prior to Chanukah. He was told no stay at home until the doctors could chart an approach to both diagnose and treat his condition. .....click here for more |
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Remembering Kahane
Several acquaintances have voiced to me their concern about whether I will have a problem manufacturing enough news to fill this paper on a regular two week---and very soon---weekly basis. They are not concerned about the possibility that there will not be enough business to sustain this effort (chas v'sholom) or that I will get a severe case of writers block (chas v'sholom). Frankly I never thought that a news shortage would ever be a problem. I mean have you looked at the New York Times or the Daily News and all the nonsense those papers are filled with daily? How could it be possible that there be a shortage of news especially in the Jewish community and particularly in a community like ours?
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Food For Thought
It was Sukkot. Beautiful, deeply meaningful, not enough. Truth is I'd like more Sukkot-more of the closeness to G-d that a Yom Tov like this affords us. Coming on the heels of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur we are taught that those things that are hidden inside the observances of the high holy days manifest themselves in an open fashion during the holiday of Sukkot.
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A Tale of Two Tales
It was indeed the best of times and the worst of times. Here we are in a beautiful modern and technologically advanced world. In just a few hours we can be anywhere in the world we desire. Children fly off to study in Israel, we visit them, they come here to visit us. We worship freely, build homes and shuls dedicated to beautifying G-dliness, which considering the history of the world is no simple thing. .....click here for more |
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Those Great and Little Miracles
The Jewish people have been the recipients of fantastic miracles from time immemorial. In ancient times after the long awaited euphoric exodus from Egypt we found ourselves at the mouth of the Red Sea with the angry and determined Egyptian army in hot pursuit of us, their former charges. .....click here for more |
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How Much? How Long?
Even if I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me;
Sefer Tehilim, Psalm 23When John Kennedy was shot and killed in 1963 I was sitting at the table of the dinette of the kitchen table eating a slice of pizza. I had come home from Yeshiva less than an hour before the news broke, I couldn't believe that this kind of thing could happen---how could they kill a President and what did it all mean. It was a bright sunny day. After sitting and listening with my mother I then went out to play punch ball with my friends.
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All The News That's Fit To Print
One day this summer they switched to a clear plastic bag. This threw me off stride completely. I guessed the paper hadn't come yet. Maybe the guy who flips the papers through all the windows of his car wasn't feeling well or more likely maybe his car just refused to start. That can happen and is expected to happen a few times during the year. But clear bags instead of those handsome blue ones, now that knocked me off stride......click here for more |
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From Karnei Shomron To Woodmere To Victory
"Jerusalem belongs to every Jew, wherever he or she may be or live in the world," says Shmuel Sackett. Sackett, a Queens native and a former resident of Queens and the 5 Towns moved to Israel 11 years ago. Together with his friend and neighbor, Moshe Feiglin, they formed Zo Artzeinu out of the helpless frustration that accompanied the implementation of the Oslo Accords which called for the ceremonious dismantling of Israel the way we knew her......click here for more |
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Summer Singles
Of all the subjects I've covered in this space during the past year I don't believe that I have pontificated sufficiently or extensively enough about the state of Jewish singles. Well that and I think that besides the subject of Israel you, the reader, like reading about singles, the Shidduch scene, the Parsha or whatever you enjoy calling it more than anything else. .....click here for more |
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Inter- religious Shabbos Lunch
The wine was flowing, the cakes and cookies were in abundance seemingly available and begging to be tasted at every turn. They were on the kitchen table, coffee table, in the den, in the dining room and beyond. It was Shabbos lunch on July, 7, Parshat Balak. The guest seated to my immediate left was Rabbi David Rosen, a distinguished scholar, the product of England's finest Yeshivas, a student of the Mir in Jerusalem and the recipient of smicha from the very prominent Ponivich Yeshiva. Rabbi Rosen is the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland, the Israel representative who negotiated the opening of diplomatic relations between The Vatican and Israel and now works with the American Jewish Committee on inter-religious issues around the world. .....click here for more |
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Crunching The Numbers
I finally saw it in print last week. It was a paragraph in a Jerusalem Post story about the world's effort to salvage the cease-fire or the peace or whatever you call it in the Middle East. I read the words over several times. The truth is I've been thinking this for years. I know it's true in most of the world but I never thought it was true of Israel, her leadership or her people......click here for more |
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Summer Camping, A Memoir
All of a sudden it is thirty years ago. There I am sitting in the back seat of my father's car being involuntarily driven to the Port Authority bus terminal in New York City. I was going to camp for the summer and sitting here now contemplating that episode I can still effectively and genuinely feel to what extent I did not want to go. Maybe what I really felt was the adolescent trauma associated with resignation. Of course there was no such a diagnosis then. In those days I was just a stubborn kid that did not want to go to camp. .....click here for more |
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Gaza Here We Come
Twenty-one years ago I rode through the Gaza Strip in disbelief. There I was on a mini bus riding slowly through the hordes of young Arab children; hands outstretched begging for Shekels. I think we did what most American or any tourists do when the used to visit Gaza---we had a kosher lunch. More than two decades later the Gaza Strip is a war zone, the battleground of an undeclared war. Mortars, machine guns and roadside bombs are common place. Since then I've been to Israel numerous times but never gave a second thought to going to Gaza. It was too far, there was nothing to see, and there was not enough time......click here for more |
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A Hero of Israel
I met a hero of Israel. I met him one morning in the Shul after Shachris. He was taking off his Tefilin as I was folding my Talis. He was obviously an Israeli and from Israel. I could tell by the distinguising Kipa he wore. It said that he was not just any Israeli, he was a settler, a hero of Israel and the Jewish people......click here for more |
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Mountain Climbing
There is an obsession out there with climbing mountains. Chief amongst those big hills to conquer is the world famous Mt. Everest in Nepal. Throngs of people flock to Everest to gawk and observe it. The more ambitious have risked their lives and given their lives to scale this monument to G-d's construction. Looking at Everest one gets the impression that the world's tallest mountain reaches the heavens......click here for more |
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Cheese Cake, Soufflé, Blintzes, Kugel at Mount Sinai
It's almost Shavuos. That means it's time to make those cheese dishes. Everyone knows what happened on Shavuos---the Jews were commanded to eat cheese. Right? Not exactly. As you know, of course, Shavuos is that beautiful Yom Tov that marks the day on which the Jewish people after a torturous enslavement in Egypt prepared themselves very expeditiously in just 49 days (including weekends) to receive the Torah from Hashem at Sinai......click here for more |
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Pesach's Modern Day Exodus
This story is about going away for Pesach and not going away for Pesach. Believe it or not this is one of the most agonizing decisions some Jews have to make (which in and of itself is a great bracha).
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The Courage To Compromise Orthodoxy
It only hurts when you think off all the things our grandparents suffered and sacrificed to stay devoted and true to Jewish life. In fact they sacrificed life itself so as not to have to compromise on any aspect of Jewish life taught to them by their parents and their parents before them. Now, however, recently in New York most of those things were analyzed and explained away and perhaps gathered in a neat little intellectual pile before it is placed on a shelf or at least some place similar but out of the way.
.....click here for more |
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PURIM DAYS — THEN AND NOW
It's a little strange, Purim on Friday, isn't it? It kind of feels like a half of Purim actually — with the extensive distribution of Shalach Manos with one eye always on the clock. Whereas the Purim feast would sometimes commence as late as 4 or 5 in the afternoon this year, with Purim on Friday, we will have to begin the Seudah by about 12 noon. And at the Seudah we will have one eye on the clock making calculations about the arrival of Shabbos at about 5:30PM. .....click here for more |
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