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Twenty-six years ago, I received a phone call from Gary Rosenblatt, then the editor of the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES and now the editor and publisher of the New York Jewish Week. Gary wanted to let me know I’d made the cut, that after writing a tryout piece on a Tu B’Shevat gathering at the Owings Mills Jewish Community Center, I was hired for a staff position at the JT.

Ecstatic and overwhelmed, I raced over to tell my buddy Paul, who lived in a garden apartment around the corner from me in Randallstown. He opened the door, looking a bit grim-faced, as I blurted out my news. “Have you seen the TV news yet today?” he asked. “The space shuttle exploded. All the people on board are dead.”

That was my first real life lesson that a) the world is a lot bigger than just me, and b) the latest news (personal or otherwise) can be eclipsed by something far more profound in mere seconds. It’s a fickle universe, and especially today with the information technology revolution and news dissemination operating at breakneck speed, our lives often seem to be swirling in some sort of existential blender.

Since then, I’ve covered nearly every story imaginable for the JT, from zoning meetings and talks by Soviet refuseniks to breaking news about arsons and hate crimes at shuls to controversial neighborhood patrols and death row inmates. I’ve written articles about Holocaust survivors and interfaith relations, of heroes and quirky characters, about spirituality (or the lack thereof) in contemporary congregational life, about Israel and the challenges of sustaining Zionism in American Jewish life.

I even had the opportunity to travel to Louisiana in 2005 and chronicle Jewish communal rescue efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

And I’ll never, ever forget the sight of empty plates dotting the landscape on Reisterstown Road after the blaze at the old Suburban House, left there by older patrons who exited the building still noshing.

There’s not enough space here to reminisce about all of the stories I’ve written for the JT. Don’t worry, I’ll spare you.

But even more than the articles, what’s given me the greatest pleasure has been getting to know the people who live, work and give their life’s blood for this community. They are what makes Jewish Baltimore special. They value community in a way that may be unlike any other Jewish community in North America.

Oh yes, they can be a vexing, demanding bunch. Over the years, we’ve often half-joked here about how our readers feel that the JT isn’t owned by any particular family or business group, but by them. When something appears in the paper that comes off as inappropriate, inaccurate, demeaning or just plain dopey, they often let us know in a frank, no-holds-barred way.

Trust me, I’ve done my share of listening to incensed readers. But that sense of “ownership” and entitlement is what’s made working here so incredibly rewarding and enriching.

I’m leaving the JT after 26 amazing years here. I take with me wonderful, poignant memories and a wealth of meaningful knowledge and insights.

But the most gratifying aspect of this job has always been serving the readers and community. You’ve allowed me to come into your homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and shuls, to help tell the ever unfolding story of Jewish Baltimore. You’ve opened your hearts and souls to me, to share your tragedies and triumphs. And I will always be grateful.

Larry Carton is searching for Torah. Or to be more precise, one Torah in particular.

An amiable Social Security retiree and amateur genealogist who lives in Pikesville with his wife, Mical, Larry first heard about what he’s dubbed “the Morstein Torah” from his bubbie in the late ’70s. It was a sefer Torah that his great-grandfather Harry Morstein commissioned while visiting Palestine in 1927-1928. Harry, a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who owned several movie theaters in Baltimore, was an inveterate traveler and a flamboyant personality. He had the Torah shipped to Baltimore and gifted to the old Agudas Achim Synagogue in Lower Park Heights, to which he belonged.

In 1983, fueled by curiosity, Larry decided to locate the Torah. He learned that Agudas Achim had merged with Randallstown Synagogue Center on Church Lane. The spiritual leader there, the late Rabbi Israel O. Goldberg, helped him find the Torah, which featured the name of his great-grandfather inscribed in Hebrew into the wooden handle holding the scroll. “It was in perfect condition,” Larry recalls. “I’ve never seen another Torah like it. It was so identifiable and distinctive.”

Over the years, Larry thought about the Torah occasionally. Last year, his sister, Eileen Samberg, visited from Massachusetts and happened to ask about it, re-igniting Larry’s interest. Initially, he inquired about the Torah at Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation, which at one time was located on Church Lane, too. The folks at MMAE told him they had no records of the Morstein Torah.

When learning that Agudas Achim was never part of MMAE but Randallstown Synagogue—and the latter shul disbanded about eight years ago—Larry contacted Rabbi Leonard Oberstein, former spiritual leader of Randallstown Synagogue. Rabbi Oberstein said the shul donated its Torahs to different synagogues and Jewish schools in need of sifrei Torahs. But he said there are no records of where they were sent. Larry also checked with the Jewish Museum of Maryland about possible leads on the Morstein Torah, but the JMM doesn’t keep records on such matters.

That’s why Larry, 65, who in his “retirement” has a side business of antiques dealing and chair caning, recently called the Baltimore Jewish Times. “I once found it and it seems I’ve lost it again,” he says of the Morstein Torah.

Larry, who grew up at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation but doesn’t belong to a shul these days, says he doesn’t want to find the Torah for spiritual reasons. He’s not looking to acquire or claim it, or write it off on his taxes. He simply looks at the Torah as a special connection to the great-grandfather he never knew, a man known for hobnobbing with Hollywood stars and being a schmoozer and bon vivant of the highest order.

Like many of us, he has an unquenchable thirst to know more about the family members that came before him. “This is part of my family lore,” Larry said. “And it has disappeared.”
Larry requests that anyone who has information about the Morstein Torah contact him at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). “When I find it, I’ll put it in my family genealogy,” he says. “This is a mystery. But if find it, I won’t lose it again.”

Years ago, in the early ’90s, I covered an event at the Park Heights Jewish Community Center that I’ve never forgotten. The AIDS Quilt had come to the JCC, and there was a special presentation. I don’t recall who the keynote speaker was, but there was a good-sized turnout in the auditorium. And the quilt, of course, was amazing.

When the time arrived for questions from the audience, one gentleman stood up. The passage of time obscures his exact words, but the man basically said something to the effect that it seemed highly inappropriate and offensive that the JCC would bring the AIDS Quilt to a Jewish institution, since he said the Torah expressly forbids homosexuality. When the organizers asked him to sit down, the man steadfastly refused and continued to pose the question, over and over. Eventually, as the rest of us watched in utter amazement, the man was literally picked up by the then-executive director of the JCC and the head of another Jewish agency and carried out of the building, kicking and screaming.

What seemed innocuous to the rest of us—the AIDS Quilt, a symbol of loss and hope, bearing the names of victims of an epidemic—to this man was the manifestation of just about everything wrong in the world. He simply didn’t want to see it at his JCC.

But times do change.

Recently, I saw a notice that among its summer programs, the JCC—this time in Owings Mills—is offering a discussion session in June for parents and friends of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, questioning or transgender.

Like I said, times do change. And what was once alien or unusual to us is now, for the most part, commonplace.

When he first came to Baltimore from New York in 1960, my dad used a public bathroom downtown. He suddenly heard a big commotion, to find a cop beating up a man in the bathroom. The man’s “crime” was that he was born African-American. It turns out my dad, a native New Yorker, had wandered into a “whites-only” restroom and received a firsthand lesson in segregation-era Baltimore.

It’s easy to talk the talk, it’s another to walk the walk. Recently, I heard from an old friend, a woman I haven’t seen in two decades who moved from Baltimore to California. It turns out she at some point decided that she was living a lie and decided to become a he.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I was a bit blown away with this development. After all, we’re not talking about someone just switching shuls or making a job change. But I wrote back and said I was glad he was doing well and would love to catch up over a beer the next time he was in town. And by the tone of his response, I could tell my acceptance meant a lot to him.

These issues coming before us as individuals and as a society are not easy ones. They require struggle and contemplation. But what’s important is being open and welcoming to these folks. Because someday, our discomfort will seem as antiquated and inane as a “whites-only” bathroom.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked into a courtroom on the sixth floor of the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse with a good deal of trepidation. Preparing for the verdict to be rendered in the Eliyahu and Avi Werdesheim trial, the Jewish brothers accused of assaulting an African-American teenager in Northwest Baltimore in November 2010, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

Downstairs in front of the courthouse, I didn’t see any protesters, just TV cameras and some cops. So I knew it wasn’t going to the L.A. riots of ’92. But I also knew that a racially-charged case like this, coming so soon on the heels of the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, could prove to be a volatile situation if folks on either side of the aisle were vehemently displeased with the verdict.

So opening that chamber door, I knew the courtroom would probably be packed with media people, black and Orthodox activists, clergy, family members, attorneys, concerned citizens, etc. But I wasn’t sure what the mood in the air would be.

To my surprise, there was an air of civility and respect that filled the courtroom. Not to sound too “We Are The World,” but I saw African-Americans schmoozing with frum and secular Jews, laughing and discussing matters not even related to the case. I’m not saying it was like a country picnic, but you would’ve never known that the verdict was about to be announced for a divisive case that has chilled relations between African-Americans and Jews in this town.

I made my way through the courtroom—only a half-hour before Judge Pamela J. White cleared Avi Werdesheim of all charges but found Eliyahu guilty of false imprisonment and second-degree assault (although cleared of carrying a deadly weapon with intent to injure) – and found a seat next to a woman I didn’t know.

After a few pleasantries, I learned she was Tessa Hill-Aston, president of the Baltimore City branch of the NAACP. A longtime educator and activist, Tessa spoke to me about how the wheels of justice should’ve turned more quickly in this case (something probably most local African-Americans and Jews would agree on), and then about her organization. We discovered we had several people in common, and she was delighted when I told her I grew up in the Gwynn Oak-Woodlawn area, which is where she lives.

A proud Forest Park High School graduate, Tessa told me she’s had Jewish friends all her life and still keeps in touch with old pals from Forest Park. She asked me if I was old enough to remember Gwynn Oak Amusement Park. Old enough? I told her my family’s timeworn story about when as a 4-year-old, I ran away from home because I wanted to go to Gwynn Oak. After learning I couldn’t get on the rides without a ticket, I came back home in a police squad car. (But that’s another story.)

Tessa had a good laugh about that story and informed me that her son – now 30 and like me an alum of Powhatan Elementary School – sort of did the same thing, playing hooky from school with a buddy to catch fish and worms in a stream at the park. (Ironically, he now works for the Baltimore City Bureau of Water & Wastewater.)

In the midst of these anecdotes and revelry, a member of the sheriff’s office came into the courtroom and bluntly told us all to clam up, because the judge was coming. But I couldn’t help but think how my conversation with Tessa, as well as the other exchanges going on in that courtroom, is the true heart of black-Jewish relations, not these incidents that occasionally arise and (with the assistance of carnivorous fanatics, lawyers, media and politicians) threaten to tear us apart.

That’s where true relations begin and end – out of the glare of the spotlight.

Like any working journalist, I feel a great debt of gratitude to Mike Wallace, the hard-hitting “60 Minutes” investigative reporter who died yesterday at age 93. Wallace was the epitome of the take-no-prisoners journalist who wasn’t satisfied with canned, fluffy answers. In his storied career, he taught all of us to probe harder, ask deeper questions and not settle for press release statements, all with a sense of fairness, honesty and integrity.

Of course, the testimonials for the legendary, hard-charging Wallace are ubiquitous right now, as they should be, given his profound impact on contemporary journalism, broadcast and print.

Here’s my own little reminiscence of him.

Back in March 1987, when I was a cub reporter for the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES, “60 Minutes” did a controversial piece on the status of Jews in the former Soviet Union that was denounced by several national Jewish organizations as being highly imbalanced and distorted. Remember, these were the days when leading American Jewish activists were routinely being arrested outside of the Soviet embassy in D.C. Former refuseniks speaking about the harsh treatment and persecution of Jews in the FSU were a common sight in Baltimore and other Jewish communities around the nation. The liberation of our brethren living under communist totalitarian rule was a unifying mission among American Jews of all denominations and stripes.

The “60 Minutes” piece, now largely forgotten, was condemned by major American Jewish groups for depicting life for Soviet Jews as being fairly pleasant and upbeat, save for those pesky, troublemaking refuseniks.

My editor at that time, Sherwood Kohn, assigned me to write a story about the controversy and even suggested I call Mike Wallace, who anchored and reported the segment. Initially, I felt that Sherwood’s suggestion to call Wallace had no merit whatsoever, that I might as well try to climb Mount Everest barefoot in a half-hour. But wisely, I kept my feelings to myself and called CBS in New York.

“`60 Minutes,’ please,” I said to the receptionist there who answered the phone. (Remember, this was back in the days when human beings actually answered phones at companies and corporations.)

A few seconds later, I said to the “60 Minutes” receptionist, “Mike Wallace, please.” To my great astonishment, about 10 seconds later, I heard, “Hi, this is Mike Wallace. Can I help you?”

I probably stuttered for a second or two – completely in shock that I was interviewing arguably the most famous and influential journalist of the latter half of the 20th century – and then I identified myself and my publication. Wallace couldn’t have been any kinder or more charming, probably noticing I was a bit young and nervous.

“Hi Alan, so nice to talk to you. Hope you’re doing well. Tell me about yourself and the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES.”

We spoke for about a minute about the JEWISH TIMES and its circulation and such, and then I explained to him why I was calling. Again, Wallace couldn’t have been more pleasant, even though I was calling to say that the leaders of American Jewry were really steamed with him (born Myron Leon Wallik to Russian Jewish immigrant parents) and his piece, even to the point of calling him a traitor.

Calmly and thoughtfully, Wallace defended the piece as well-researched and balanced, noting that he and the producers had intermittently spent six months on the project to make sure it was done right and thoroughly. “To say this story wasn’t well-researched or [was] one-sided is absurd,” he said. “This was done with a lot of care. I don’t think there was any distortion or lack of balance.”

When I pointed out to him that many Soviet observers strongly felt the piece completely bought into the Kremlin party line that Jews were treated quite well there – maybe in my naivete I was trying to “out-Mike Wallace” Mike Wallace – the veteran reporter didn’t even flinch or balk for a moment.

“Why isn’t the other side of the story ever covered? I deplore the Soviet Union’s policy of denying exit visas,” he said. “But as a reporter, I try to find interesting stories and shed light on our society and world.”

As far as Jewish communal criticism of the segment, Wallace said, “We don’t calculate what effect a story has with our audience. That’s up to the public. We don’t anticipate or second-guess.”

In the long run, history might now take issue with Wallace and his segment’s depiction of a sanguine life for Jews in FSU. Maybe Mikhail Gorbachev and the boys in Moscow did somehow pull the wool over the characteristically jaded eyes of the planet’s best-known “gotcha” reporter.

But on a personal level, I’ll never forget Mike Wallace’s easygoing manner, grace and spirit of generosity toward a young, nervous reporter who couldn’t begin to fathom that he was merely chatting on the phone with one of the field’s true giants.

People ask me occasionally what it’s like to work at the JT. (That is, when they’re not grilling me about our recent legal woes.)

Working with the Jewish community here, of course, can be fun and intriguing, and it can be challenging and vexing at times. And sometimes, you get a good laugh when you need one. Here’s a sampling.

Yesterday, I got a phone call from a very nice woman who sounded like she was in her 30s or 40s. She said she had a great human interest story for me. “I’m not a writer myself, so I can’t write it for you,” she explained. “But maybe you or one of your people will be interested.”

She said that she’s an interior designer – not an interior decorator, she emphasized when correcting me later in the conversation – who lives in the Jones Valley area. She’s about to move to Florida and get out of “Smalltimore,” as she put it. (When I asked where she was moving to in the Sunshine State, she seemed a bit unsure – just that she was hitting the gas the minute she settled on the sale of her townhouse.)

Anyway, she told me that about 15 years ago, her mom had a friend whose adult son was—um, how should I put this? – rubbed out by the Russian Mafia. (Well, allegedly, anyway.) Seems this poor fellow, a popular local hairdresser, had fallen into substance abuse and hard times, thus running afoul with the nefarious immigrant underworld. (Is there any other kind of immigrant underworld?)

The caller and her mom were invited to go through his belongings, to see if there was anything they may want or need, since the bereaved family was probably going to give much of it away to charity. While going through all of the stuff in his place, the caller noticed a custom-designed egg, artfully hand-decorated and with a loving, personal inscription to the deceased from the artist. The caller decided to keep it, as a quirky, rather morbid tchotchke.

But, alas, here’s the problem. She’s now flying down South and fears that the egg will not survive the car journey, especially since it’s already starting to crack with the cruel passage of time. She’s trying to find a good home in “Smalltimore” for it, but so far has been quite unsuccessful.

“So why, may I ask, are you calling the Jewish Times?” I said to her. She merely giggled, cleared her throat and said, “Well, you never know, maybe someone wants this egg and will take it in and take good care of it. Maybe someone remembers him and wants it, for some reason. I don’t know what to do with it, and I thought it’s a cool story. This egg has a special history and value. It’s funny, you know?”

Hmmm.

As the caller herself might say, only in “Smalltimore.”

They say that a ray of sunlight can shine through even during the darkest hours. I always thought that was a bit of a cliché, but there are times when I can see what they mean.

On this week’s cover of the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES, you’ll notice a grouping of our previous covers, some old and some fairly recent. At the center is a JT dating back to Feb. 13, 1953, with its cover partially showing a well-dressed lady chatting with a man driving a car with logos on the doors: “MD. SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND” and “DONATED BY THE FRIENDSHIP SISTERS I.O.B.S.”

Our cover story this week is about the JEWISH TIMES’ current legal and financial situation, something that’s received a great deal of community interest lately. I won’t get into that here, you’ll have to read the cover story package.

But I want to give you a little background on that particular issue from 1953—and that lady in the photo.

Until about seven years ago, I had an elderly next door neighbor who lived alone named Jeanne Goldberg. We always called her “Miss Jeanne.”

Miss Jeanne was a wonderful neighbor: friendly, pleasant, thoughtful, generous, and mainly kept to herself and lived her life. When my kids were born, she sent over gifts. When I shoveled snow from her driveway and cleared off her car, she always later sent over chocolates to show her appreciation.

Miss Jeanne was all class.

She lived a full, rich life. She had lots of friends and interests, and even belonged to a bowling league well into her 80s.

Unfortunately as she got older, it became increasingly difficult for her to maintain the house where she’d lived for 40 years and raised a family. She eventually decided to clean out her house, sell it and move in with her daughter, Doris.

But at one point, Miss Jeanne called and asked me to drop by her house. She had something for me, she said.

When I went over, she handed me a mint-copy JEWISH TIMES from 1953. The editorial that week, penned by managing editor Bert Kline, was about anti-Semitism in the former Soviet Union.

“I thought you would like this, since you work at the JEWISH TIMES,” Miss Jeanne said. I didn’t even know she knew where I worked. It never came up in conversation before.

Thumbing through the issue in utter amazement, I said, “Jeanne, why do you even have this?” She said, “That’s me,” and pointed to the lady chatting with the driver in the top right photo of the cover. “I belonged to the Friendship Sisters, so I was on the cover that week. I had it somewhere in the house for many years, forgot about it, and when I was cleaning out my stuff, I saw it and thought you would enjoy having it.”

She was right. A couple of days later, I brought the issue to work, left it on my desk and have shown it occasionally to people over the years.

Not too long after that, Miss Jeanne moved in with her daughter and passed away. The world lost a wonderful, gentle, kind soul.

Now fast-forward to earlier this week. Our art director, scrambling to put together a collage of images conveying the legacy and relevance of this publication, asked me if I happened to have any “loose” copies of old JTs. All of our back issues are bound in volumes in our storage area, and that would be hard to photograph independently and well. She needed a loose one, and it seemed no one had one available.

Immediately, I thought of Miss Jeanne’s copy in my office and gave it to the art director. This week, Miss Jeanne is again gracing the cover of the JT, albeit in a very different way.

But it seems to me appropriate that she’s on the cover, helping us out. After all, it was people like Miss Jeanne who helped make the JT what it is. They considered the paper an essential, integral part of their lives, read it voraciously every week, and took personal pride in the JT’s national reputation. They reported their weddings, kids’ births and other simchahs in the JT, not to mention the times when they were trying to do some good in the world (like the Friendship Sisters).

May that tradition go on for a long, long time to come.

May Miss Jeanne’s memory always be a blessing. And may the JT always be a relevant, authentic part of our lives.

On a cold, icy night in 1982, I went to see the film “An Officer And A Gentleman” at the old Pikes Theatre. I wish I could say I went with a gorgeous date – after all, that’s one of the greatest date movies of all time – but I have to confess I saw it with a buddy. Nonetheless, that was the night I fell in love with Debra Winger (mind you, this was before I even knew that she was Jewish and a former kibbutznik to boot), and the Pikes, of course, was a great place to catch a flick, with its plush seats, moody lighting and art deco flourishes.

After leaving the Pikes that evening (and watching in horror as that smarmy Richard Gere swept adorable, husky-voiced Debra off her feet), I immediately realized that I left my scarf in the theater, somewhere around the first or second row. Like I said earlier, it was a very chilly night, and back then I actually wore scarves. This was my favorite scarf. So I contemplated trekking back and begging an usher to be allowed inside to retrieve the scarf. But since it was late and the theater was likely closed, I bagged it and figured I’d return a few days later to pick up the scarf.

When I did so, however, I discovered that the Pikes had closed – for good, as a movie house.

So much for my scarf. And Debra Winger.

Of course, since then the historic Pikes has reopened in a multitude of fashions – as a kosher bistro, as an Italian-themed restaurant and as a diner. Owner Will Reich has worked hard to make the Pikes Diner a fun and unique dining experience, and he’s been a strong backer of revitalizing downtown Pikesville in the post-Suburban House era.

Now, as reported by Rochelle Eisenberg in this week’s Jewish Times, Reich is attempting to transform Pikesville’s nightlife – “What nightlife?” you ask—by showcasing live music at the Pikes.

With the paucity of live music venues in Northwest Baltimore, this is an idea that merits kudos and applause. For years, I’ve heard people kvetch bitterly about having to schlep downtown or to D.C. to hear live music or for some vibrant nightlife. Years ago, I even wrote a column about how synagogues and temples in the area should host post-Havdalah coffeehouse shows and live music performances at their facilities, as many with-it churches do on Saturday nights.

Everyone I spoke to about this matter heartily agreed with me, but nobody did anything. Zilch. Sometimes it feels like it’s easier for us all to complain than to actually follow up on decent, fairly obvious ideas.

It seems that Reich is putting his thoughts into action, recruiting live entertainment acts for after-dinner performances on weekends. Since January, the Pikes has featured such fine local bands as the Rube Goldberg Solution, Mister Wilson, JD and the Blades, Heads Up, and Shinola.

And lo and behold, people are coming in droves. Naturally, Reich is taking this on to help his business, but it’s also reminding people that downtown Pikesville is still a viable place to visit, shop, enjoy and maybe even be entertained.

Who knows, maybe other businesses in P-ville will open on weekend nights and give Reich a little run for his money and help build a reputation for Pikesville as a go-to place? Having a vibrant nightlife center would only benefit everyone in the area (except, possibly, those poor teenagers who might cringe at the sight of their parents “dancing” to classic rock tunes).

Let’s hope that Will Reich is on to something.

Now if I could only find my scarf.

Years ago when I first came to the JT, I couldn’t help but notice that, as a young reporter, I was by far the youngest person in the room when I went to cover public events, be they political debates, theological discussions, Middle East forums or cultural gatherings.

Now, I still find that to generally be the case, even though I’m a good distance from being characterized as remotely young anymore.

Recently, I went to Beth Tfiloh Synagogue to cover a talk given by Wall Street Journal reporter Lucette Lagnado on her new book “The Arrogant Years,” about growing up in Cairo and Brooklyn. The talk was absolutely fascinating, Lagnado was delightful, and BT’s Epstein Chapel was packed.

But still, frankly speaking, hardly a young person – or even a moderately young person – was anywhere in sight.

I hear this from people in the local Jewish community all the time. “I went to the such-and-such lecture, and I was the youngster person in the auditorium by a long shot.” Not long ago, my wife and a friend went to Chizuk Amuno Synagogue to hear Dr. Gershon Baskin discuss the clandestine talks that went on between Israel and Hamas to free abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

She told me that the talk was mesmerizing, but she and her friend were a bit surprised to be among the youngest in the room.

By the way, this is meant as no screed against the older generation, who tend to be more compelled by profound issues and intellectually-oriented discussions and are willing to come to these events. Unlike my generation and the generations coming up, they’re the ones that really keep dialogue and discourse thriving. God bless ‘em.

But I’ve been to New York, D.C. and other towns. I’ve gone to hear speakers at different venues in those cities, and I’ve seen young people come out in droves. I know young people are truly interested in matters other than the newest reality show bimbo, what happened on “American Idol” last night, and video games.

Nobody has ever been able to adequately explain to me why the Jewish under-55 set in Charm City tends to avoid intelligent and informative community talks and events at all costs. Is it all about marketing? Admission fees? Busy careers? A lack of curiosity or time? High gasoline prices? Mass apathy? All of the above?

I always thought that as time moved on (and I myself grew older), I’d see a change as people mature and evolve and get more interested in weightier topics. Of course when you’re in your 20s, you’re usually thinking about members of the opposite sex, creating an identity for yourself, members of the opposite sex, forging a career for yourself, members of the opposite sex, etc. (You get the picture.)

But now that we’re older, we can’t all be home reading books by Kierkegaard, can we? Why are we less willing to take out the time to stimulate our minds in a communal setting than our predecessors?

The question remains, post-Boomers, where are ye?

I must admit that I’ve only met a few Mormons in my lifetime. But theirs is a religion I just don’t really get. After all, how much fun and satisfying can it be to save souls after someone’s dead?

Lately, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and other Jewish leaders have wasted their collective breath condemning proxy ritual ceremonies conducted by Mormons to posthumously baptize Jews. (Unfortunately, I seriously doubt anyone’s listening over in Utah.)

The latest victim of this bizarre practice? Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and savagely executed by terrorists in Pakistan a decade ago this month.

Seems that Pearl was baptized by proxy last June at a Mormon temple in Twin Falls, Idaho, according to the Boston Globe.

This news comes in the same month it was learned that the parents of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal were recently baptized posthumously by those pesky, tenacious Mormons. Also, Anne Frank was posthumously baptized earlier this month, and the names of Wiesel’s father and grandfather were found to have been submitted for proxy baptisms.

OK, in the United States, there are nearly six million adherents to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Internationally, there are nearly 13 million of ‘em.

Really, do they need to recruit a handful of Jews in the hereafter? Don’t they enough members, living and deceased? What kind of religion is this, anyway? Is it like Facebook, where you want to snag as many “Friends” as possible?

Not surprisingly Daniel Pearl’s parents, Judea and Ruth, told the Globe that learning of the proxy baptism was “disturbing news.”

“He lived as a proud Jew, died as a proud Jew and is currently facing his creator as a Jew, blessed, accepted and redeemed,” they stated. “For the record, let it be clear: Danny did not choose to be baptized, nor did his family consent to this uncalled-for ritual.”

Even Pearl’s French-born widow, Mariane, a Buddhist herself, called the baptism “a lack of respect for Danny and a lack of respect for his parents.” She joined Wiesel in calling for Mitt Romney, the world’s most famous Mormon (next to Donny & Marie), to apologize on behalf of the church.

Well, I’m not sure you can really expect ol’ Mitt—who’s pretty busy these days—to apologize for the policies and actions of his church. That’s a little like asking JFK to apologize for the Catholic Church’s pre-Vatican II policies, or Joe Lieberman to apologize for Adam Sandler movies.

But here’s the thing. Yes, it’s patently gross, insulting and offensive that Mormons indulge in this kind of behavior. We’ve been dealing with it for decades now. But on the other hand, it’s almost too ridiculous and inane to get too bent out of shape about.

I have this running argument with a good friend of mine. He can’t stand that fundamentalist Christians believe that he and every other Jew (and all non-Christians, for that matter) is going to hell because they refuse to be saved. It drives him nuts, and it also makes him meshugah that it doesn’t keep me tossing and turning at night.

My feeling about it is, if that’s how they feel, fine. I know who I am and what I am. They can talk as long as they want—just as long as they’re not rounding anyone up.

And that’s how I feel about the Mormons and their ridiculous, eccentric, ghoulish retro-proxy nonsense. If they wanna try and get me after I check out, that’s cool. Give it a whirl.

Just keep out of my face ‘til then.

Back in February of 2010, I wrote an article about allegations that first appeared in the Washington Post that Rabbi Menachem Youlus – the Baltimore-based Judaica/bookstore operator known as the “Indiana Jones of Torah scribes” for his swashbuckling tales of rescuing Holocaust-era Torahs from Europe and other places – had fabricated his stories for profit.

Frankly, over the years, I’ve dealt with a lot of head-in-the-sand attitudes in the local Jewish community. But this time, it felt different.

Several people told me that even though they had strongly suspected over the years that the rabbi’s stories were largely nonsense, he still didn’t deserve a negative write-up in the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES. After all, they said, this guy was a very mentschy person who was willing to go to shuls of every stripe – even though he was Orthodox – and even shake the hands of female clergy.

“Don’t take this away from us,” one person yelled at me. “This is a decent man. He doesn’t deserve this. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”

One rabbi told me that whenever Youlus spoke at his shul about the provenance of his Torah scrolls, he usually simply walked out of the room, preferring not to hear such fanciful tales that defied logic and reason. Another rabbi/educator complained that Youlus was being “crucified,” even though he admitted that he privately and quietly discounted some of Youlus’s stories.

“Should we judge him because he says things that don’t sound quite right?” he asked. “Do we stand behind him and support him, even if he’s not telling the whole truth since he did things that were not necessarily legal [to acquire and transport Torahs out of Europe]?”

Another Jewish communal official who’d bought one of Rabbi Youlus’s Torahs said of the accusations, “I’m saddened to hear this, but he has been so helpful with the continuing care of this Torah. I take it back to him once a year. I take it to his house, [and] he lives very modestly.” She attributed the rabbi’s alleged fabrications to the fact that “he wants people to feel good. This was a midrash.”

Midrash, eh?

Misplaced loyalty may be admirable, but it’s still misplaced.

As you likely know now, Youlus recently made international headlines when he pled guilty in a Manhattan federal court to defrauding a charity he founded called Save A Torah Inc. of $862,000.

“Menachem Youlus concocted an elaborate tale of dramatic Torah rescues undertaken by a latter day movie hero that exploited the profound emotions attached to one of the most painful chapters in world history – the Holocaust – in order to make a profit,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “Today’s guilty plea is a fitting conclusion to his story and he will now be punished for his brazen fraud.”

Between 2004 and 2010, about $1.2 million came in to Save A Torah, according to the court. An investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s Complex Frauds Unit revealed that Youlus’s accounts were contradicted by historical evidence, witness accounts and records showing that he passed off used Torahs sold by local dealers.

In addition, records showed that Youlus never left the United States during some of the years he claimed to be finding Torahs abroad.

I met Youlus a couple of times over the years and I have to admit, he fooled me, too. When he spoke of his journeys to unearth Torah scrolls and bring them to “safety,” I didn’t really question it. Like everyone else, it made me feel good, like any good yarn does. After all, the man was very likable, articulate, personable, knowledgeable, open-minded – and who’s going to question a rabbi, right?

One of the first people who told me privately that they questioned Youlus’s stories was an Orthodox rabbi who’d had some negative business encounters with him. He said he discovered that a group of Torahs that Youlus said he “made kosher again” for him were never actually taken care of.

In conversation, when I made a comparison between Youlus and Deli Strummer, the local Holocaust survivor whose wartime accounts were strongly challenged by the organized Jewish community and historians, the rabbi said to me, “Excuse me, Alan, but I beg to disagree. Deli Strummer was an old lady who got caught up in her stories about the Holocaust and just liked the attention. Youlus is making money off the Holocaust with his bubbe meises about these Torahs. It’s disgusting. That’s blood money, and people in this community need to wake up.”

Youlus now faces a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and will be required to pay restitution to his victims. Sentencing is scheduled in federal court on June 21.

Around the time that allegations first arose against Youlus, I wrote a blog entry about how I was concerned that Youlus was still speaking about his Torah scrolls to my daughter’s class at Hebrew school. I didn’t mind his educating the kids about the Torah and why it’s sacred to the Jewish people. I just felt, as a parent, that he shouldn’t discuss where he allegedly got these scrolls from while he was being accused of creating falsehoods about them. And I felt the synagogue had a responsibility to put a muzzle on him.

“What do I tell my daughter now?” I wrote. “That there are questions about this bright, articulate, very likable man, raised by some of the very people who believed in him the most and spent their hard-earned dollars to spread the love of Torah in memory of their loved ones? How do I explain these serious allegations, one that could horribly damage the reputation of someone that many of us previously held as a highly moral individual on a very noble mission?”

One official at the shul angrily wrote to me, “There is nothing to tell your children yet, unless it is a lesson on how to avoid the common trap of confusing allegations with truth.”

Well, I guess that’s not really an issue anymore, is it?

Like I said, misplaced loyalty may be admirable, but it’s still misplaced.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been getting up particularly early in the morning before work—long before the sun peeks over the fairly new subdivision to the east of my house—to watch Ken Burns’ epic documentary series “The Civil War.”

I know what you’re thinking: “Bubbeleh, where ya been? That thing came out more than 20 years ago.”

I know, I know. I’m a late bloomer.

Actually, I’ve watched parts of the series over the years, when PBS would occasionally re-run it. But I recently saw the whole series resting on a shelf at my local library branch and decided to finally watch it in its entirety.

And boy, am I glad I did. More than simply another documentary or historical series, “The Civil War” is nothing short of grand poetry, a sweeping, majestic narrative of our country’s most dire and bloody period, told by a master storyteller. In my mind, the series – which actually took longer to make than the war itself – was a landmark event, a brilliant, accessible and highly articulate means of comprehending where we as Americans have been and where we’re going. It’s about more than battles and skirmishes, generals and strategies. It’s about human beings and events that changed their lives. And it’s not difficult to see running themes and concepts that are analogous to our own bleak times.

Of course, when hearing me blather on about the series to my wife, my kids think it all sounds quite boring and antiquated. Who cares, they say, this is something that happened a long time ago. And I know a lot of adults who would agree with them. After all, slavery’s over, secession failed, we now have an African-American president. It all worked out, let’s move on and have a nosh. The times have changed.

But have they really?

The other day, a small article in the newspaper caught my eye. I almost missed it. It was about an elementary school teacher in the suburban Atlanta area who recently resigned from her job after she and three colleagues were being investigated by education department officials regarding the content of their math homework assignments.

Seems that one of the math problems read, “Each tree has 56 oranges. If eight slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?”

Yet another problem went, “If Frederick got two beatings each day, how many beatings did he get in one week?”

OK, this is how we’re teaching our children math nowadays? Is this “the new math”? This is how carelessly we view the heinous practice of slavery and arguably the darkest chapter in American history? This is how we teach children to view people of other races and groups? What if it had been, “How many Jews does it take to … ?”

Two things I know for sure. One is that the Civil War didn’t really end at Appomattox. The second is that history isn’t something we should ever view cavalierly or simply jettison and not teach in schools because it “took place a long time ago.”

Look, I don’t want to sound too Seinfeld-esque here, but there are certain little things in everyday life that just … bug the living hell out of me. Just drive me mad! Maybe you as well.

Blogs were invented by Al Gore or Steve Jobs or someone like that so people can vent their spleens to the faceless masses – or at least to two or three of their buddies who follow their rants every now and then – so what better place to share some of my favorite pet peeves? After all, it is a new year. Maybe it’ll give us all something to think about before 2012 winds down into a life-ending ball of unadulterated hellfire (as reportedly predicted by the Mayans, Nostradamus and others).

Let’s start with those pesky people who decide to back into parking spaces. These dreadful, ridiculous, heinous folks need to be corralled and shipped over to a remote, uninhabitable part of western Australia immediately. I can’t fathom why so many drivers over the last year or two in America have decided that they can’t possibly just pull into a space headfirst. (Did I miss the interoffice email?)

No, they have to back in (even those not driving Lamborghinis) so that when they need to leave they’re all set for their immediate launch, as if they were Batman speeding off to save Gotham City or something.

Natch, I always get behind these people in a parking garage or lot. They typically drive slightly past the space and suddenly turn their wheel a little to back in. By this point, I have to back up as well since I can’t actually read their minds (and the cars behind me have to back up too). Then, I have to wait about a half-hour or so until this driver—who’s usually got a cell phone tightly wedged between their ear and their shoulder and is jabbering away—backs into the space just right. Sometimes they’re a teenager, sometimes they’re likely a World War I veteran. Doesn’t matter. It usually takes at least two or three good attempts to fit into the space, and they have no concern that they’re holding up others.

OK, glad I got that off my chest. Let’s move on.

People who like to speak in an obnoxiously loud manner on their cell phone about the most inane stuff while waiting in line. Yes, I’m usually in front of or behind that person and have to listen to all of their so-called dirty laundry. The question remains, why do these people even need cell phones? None of them are the president of the United States or even members of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives. Is talking on the cell really just entertainment for them, like hanging out with pals or playing golf or playing video games? Do they really have to talk with their cousin about how much they ate and drank last year during the Thanksgiving meal at Aunt Hilda’s? More importantly, do I have to listen to it?

Next: those perky, can’t-get-‘em-down, cockeyed optimists who like to say all the time, “It’s all good.” Yes, “it’s all good.” That’s gotta go – and quickly. Very 2004, don’tcha think? It’s all good? Let me take you to a couple of places where it’s not all good. Then you’ll stop uttering that insipid saying that belongs on the trash heap of bumper sticker bromides. Take a good look around, pal, and get your head out of the clouds. It ain’t all good! In fact, in some parts things are quite rotten!

Alright, back to cars. Why do so many people nowadays have to drive with tinted windows? Are they movie stars? Drug dealers? Both? Who are they hiding from? The paparazzi? The taxman? Panhandlers on street corners? Hitmen? And why are they trying so hard to look like they’re above everyone else? What’s with the self-removal from the human race? That’s what email, voice-mail and cell phones are for, right? To avoid us.

OK, Facebook. Oy, where do you start? That great Talmudic sage of our times, Betty White, had it right – what a “colossal waste of time”! Sorry but I don’t need to read all about your colonoscopy today. Or see that dopey photo of Jacques, your 9-year-old Rottweiler, in a mauve tutu.

Next: people who seem to go on vacation every month of the year. Good vacations, too, not just day trips. Paris, safaris in Kenya, Prague, Monte Carlo, etc. We’re not talking northeastern Jersey here. Do these people have unlimited access to trust funds? Is there scholarship money available for going on cool vacations regularly? Where do I sign up?

Alright, one more curmudgeonly outburst – people who insist on sending holiday cards bearing their kids’ photos. Yes, the kids are cute, but do we really need to show off our children like prized bovines at the state fair? The worst ones are the photo holiday cards from Jews that either proclaim “Seasons Greetings” or “Happy Hanukkah.” Talk about Christmas envy - just throw in a crèche scene in the background and call it a day.

Well, I’m out for now. If you’ve got any pet peeves for the new year (and no, they can’t be about kvetchy, whiny, self-important bloggers), please share ‘em with me. Misery loves company, you know?

My wife likes to joke with me that I collect old guys.

Well, everyone needs a hobby.

But it’s true. For some reason, I connect with older gentlemen on a personal, visceral level, much more so than with guys my own age and of my own generation. Maybe I’m an ancient soul, or perhaps I’m just in training for my own geriatric years.

I just find I can learn so much more from older folks than those who’ve lived through the same fairly dull times as myself.

Last week, I lost one of my old guys, Morris Martick. Morris was the owner, operator, chef and head bottle-washer at Martick’s Restaurant Francais, a French bistro on Mulberry Street that would’ve never existed if not for the sheer force of personality, innovativeness and quirky determination of this irascible, idiosyncratic man. To call him a true Baltimore character of the highest order would be a colossal understatement.

I’ve lost a few other great old guys in my time whom I still miss. One was Harry Zweback, a Toms River, New Jersey, chicken farmer who originally came from Poland. I met Harry when he and his ailing wife, Bella, lived downstairs from me and my wife at Pickwick Apartments. Harry had a thick East European accent, and even though he was a small man, he had the muscular arms and shoulders of a guy who had worked with his hands all of his life. He used to call me and say, “Come on, lemme take ya to the Suboibian sometime,” alluding to the Suburban House restaurant. He loved deli.

Then, there was my old Yiddish teacher, Dr. Solomon Manischewitz. Back when we first got married, my wife and I decided to get in touch with our roots and learn the mamaloshen. But what we learned early on while taking evening classes at Baltimore Hebrew University with Dr. Manischewitz was that Dr. M didn’t fool around. He didn’t look at Yiddish as this cute little language in which to tell corny, outdated jokes. He took Yiddish quite seriously and academically – conjugated verbs, past participles, you name it – and he expected the same commitment to the language from his students.

Naturally, I started trying to cut his classes, because I wasn’t prepared at all, but my wife forced me to go, especially when it became quite clear that Dr. M took a particular shine to me. (My wife called me the teacher’s pet.) He used to smile at me and cup my face in his hand, saying, “Ah, he’s a good boy.” (Of course, I was in my early 30s at the time, and not so good in reality.)

Frankly, my strong hunch is that he liked me because I work at the Jewish Times. Anyway, I could do no wrong in that class in Dr. M’s eyes, and here was my wife pulling me by the ear into the classroom. Let’s just say she wasn’t too pleased. I still hear about it on occasion.

The last time I saw Dr. M was in the supermarket a few years after taking his class. He was very friendly but had just lost his beloved wife, and he said to me, “Everything I went through during the war and in the [concentration] camps, nothing compares to what I’ve been through with my wife.” His eyes were full of pain, sorrow and fear. I’ll never forget it.

And then there was the one and only Sol Milgrome, the Torah reader at my old shul, Shaarei Tfiloh Synagogue by Druid Hill Park. I still can’t drive by Shaarei Tfiloh without thinking of Reverend Sol. I could hear his voice chanting Torah on Shabbos morning and feel like I was being transported back to the Polish shtetl, hearing it all done the authentic way of my ancestors. This former student of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein had a tireless love for his shul and for people in general. He used to walk all over Baltimore, just to schmooze with people and shed a little of his unique light upon them. He liked to be a street philosopher and dispense his life’s wisdom, whether you were interested or not. Yes, he could sometimes drive you a little meshugah after a while with all of his preaching and jabbering, but you always knew Reverend Sol was good people.

He was a real mentsch, he wanted to make the world a better place, not by writing checks or sitting on committees but simply by talking to people and enlightening them, maybe just giving them a chuckle. And when someone didn’t come to shul, he’d always take it personally and yell, “What? He wants to sleep?! There’s always time to sleep when you’re dead!”

These guys are all gone now. They were among a vanishing, rare breed. I know it sounds trite, but they can’t be replaced. They had something – I don’t know what you call it, character, a zest, moxie, a generosity of spirit, an aversion to B.S., a humility, a je ne sais quoi as they say in Yiddish (I told you I was a rotten Yiddish student) – that precious few of us have. Certainly not those of us born after World War II. They were byproducts of their time and places, perhaps emblematic of their era. Maybe as my father used to say, they were graduates of the College of Hard Knocks. Maybe that’s what made them so special.

Hopefully, for those of us who enjoyed their company, sat at their feet and learned from them, they still live in a part of our hearts and spirits. I know they’ll always bring a smile to my face.

In the tight-knit Jewish world, sometimes the weirdest, quirkiest stories get the most attention. Especially if they involve a Jewish celebrity.

This week, the biggest story in the Jewish realm by far was the sudden news that Matisyahu – the Chasidic hip-hop artist formerly known as Matthew Paul Miller and raised in Westchester County (despite his Jamaican accent while rapping) – shaved off his beard.

Stop the presses! A grown man shaved off his beard! I can’t tell you how many people emailed me links to this story.

Of course, this wasn’t just any man but arguably the most famous Orthodox Jew on the planet. No one can deny that Matisyahu has become an icon of sorts, for Jews and non-Jews. Besides transcending conventional wisdom about Orthodox Jews and Jews in general with his rhymes and beats, he has brought a certain type of spiritual fervor and awareness to his listeners that goes well beyond labels and boundaries.

There was always something a bit New Agey about Matis, despite his peyos and tzitzit. You always felt that if he didn’t fall into the frum lifestyle, he could’ve just as easily immersed himself in another spiritual or religious discipline, like Buddhism or Evangelical Christianity or something else. (By the way, that’s not putting him down.)

His “gimmick” was always the frum thing, the sight of a guy in a fedora and a long gabardine coat, who looked like a diamond trader from Williamsburg, rapping and moving around like Jay-Z. But unlike us old people, the kids always knew it wasn’t a gimmick or an act, that Matis was being authentic and sincere in his approach, in his kavanah (intention) and creative muse. (Admission: I say this as someone who is not a big fan of his music or that musical genre, but respects the feeling and depth he brings to his work.)

And that’s why Matis never went away after making it big several years ago, like so many other musical fads and one-off poseurs. And in the process, he inspired many of his fans to be more receptive to contemplating their own spiritual lives, including young Christians who just happened to like his tunes and thought he was cool, not to mention all of the young Jewish seekers out there who are sick of the trappings and restrictions of conventional Judaism.

In his big announcement to the world that he’d shaved off his whiskers, Matis sent a photo and wrote, “No more Chasidic reggae superstar. … When I started becoming religious 10 years ago, it was a very natural and organic process. I felt that in order to become a good person I needed rules—lots of them—or else I would somehow fall apart. I am reclaiming myself.”

This “reclaiming,” the shedding of the beard, might make headlines for a couple of days and good water cooler fodder at Jewish agency offices. But there’s nothing seismic or cataclysmic going on here, it’s not a major indication of the changing times we’re living in. It should just be viewed as part of Matis’s spiritual evolution. (That or his face was getting scratchy.)

When he first broke into the big time in ‘04, Matis was affiliated with the Chabad movement. But throughout the process, he announced that he was no longer involved with Chabad – while never putting down that movement – but was simply an observant Jew, without all of the labels and such.

“I’m really religious, but the more I’m learning about other types of Jews,” Matis said, “I don’t want to exclude myself.” He said he was “not feeling bound to one way or one path, but open to many paths within Judaism.”

Now, it seems that Matis has come to the conclusion that one doesn’t have to sport a beard – or a mustache or a Van Dyke, for that matter – to be a good Jew (or a good person). Some people are already questioning his intentions (Publicity? Gone Hollywood?) and criticizing this move (Is it bad for the Jews? For the frummies?).

Only in the Jewish community could people get worked up about a guy shaving off his beard. I can’t imagine Methodist mayhem over a mustache.

Like Bob Dylan, Matis’s spiritual journey is obviously not based on a herd mentality or a sense of complacency but a healthy restlessness and undying desire to understand his place in the cosmos.

Thirty years ago, while trying to sort out his infamous, much criticized “Gospel Period” and his reemergence as a Jew, Dylan wrote, “In the fury of the moment I can see the Master’s hand/In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand.”

Matis, with or without beard, is on that same journey, that fury of the moment, to find God’s presence in every grain of sand, every speck of dust, every gust of wind. And you have to respect him for taking that walk into the lonesome valley, no matter whom he annoys, angers and amuses with his actions and words. That’s the mark of a true artist and seeker.

So much of the time, those of us who belong to synagogues – particularly those of us who belong to mega-shuls – find ourselves kvetching a lot about what we don’t like about our congregations. We don’t generally do anything to improve what we view as the synagogue’s problems or flaws, we just seem to like to complain.

Maybe it’s a Jewish thing.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to me to meet someone like Marshall Kohen. Marshall is the choir director at Temple Isaiah, the Reform congregation in the southern Howard County hamlet of Fulton. This past year, Isaiah – led by Rabbi Mark J. Panoff for 27 years – has celebrated its 40th anniversary. Of course, 40 years has a special place in Jewish hearts, since the Children of Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness to reach the Promised Land.

Last week, I went out to Fulton, to interview Marshall, and I must say, it is the Promised Land. A lovely rural community that is now booming with new housing developments and shopping centers, Fulton is going through a great deal of change. So is Isaiah, which moved to Fulton in 2004 (after 33 years of adhering to Columbia’s interfaith centers concept) into its own sprawling, gorgeous facility.

Like the Children of Israel after the 40-year mark, Isaiah congregants are facing a big leadership change, with Rabbi Panoff retiring in June and a new spiritual leader expected to be hired by next month. And like almost every shul these days, they’re confronted with the challenges of how to maintain membership numbers, keeping the veterans happy and attracting young families, all in a tough economy.

But with congregants like Marshall, I’m confident that Isaiah will be in good, solid shape. Over a year ago, Marshall decided to do something special for the culmination event of Isaiah’s yearlong 40th anniversary celebration.

So he spent a good chunk of his weekends, weeknights and spare time while on business travels laboring on a grand choral work chronicling Isaiah’s history. The four-movement piece, titled “From Then To Tomorrow” and performed by the Shir Isaiah Choir (conducted by Marshall), will premiere tomorrow night, Dec. 3, at Isaiah’s “From Then To Tomorrow: A Musical Celebration Of Temple Isaiah’s 40 Years” gala.

When you’re a busy professional and a married dad of two, writing a choral work in your “spare time” is no easy feat. I have not yet heard the piece, but I can tell you that I’m highly impressed with Marshall’s dedication and tenacity. His love and commitment to his shul is nothing short of inspiring.

Of course, in every synagogue and temple, you’ll find people who quietly, earnestly and diligently do things – large and small – for their congregations, only out of love and fellowship. Not all of them write epic musical pieces, but they all help keep the places running and humming. We’re lucky to have them and should appreciate them more.

They’re the folks that carry the rest of us kvetchers on their coattails. We could certainly stand to learn a thing or two from them.

A hearty yasher koach to Marshall, Rabbi Panoff and the rest of the folks at Temple Isaiah on their milestone and simchah. They greatly contribute to the tapestry that is Howard County’s Jewish community.

Back when I was an 11th grade student at Randallstown High School, we had an English teacher who was one of those rare types among her breed in that she could keep your interest and attention at all times. She just had a way of connecting with students and keeping the material fresh and intriguing, which is no small feat among fidgety suburban kids raging with hormones and insecurities. I fondly remember developing a love of literature in her class with her intense reading and scrutiny of “The Great Gatsby” and other novels, showing us that these weren’t merely boring old tomes but living, breathing guides to art and culture, with lessons about our lives today.

But unfortunately, beside her gifts as an educator, I’ll also always remember this teacher – whose name I’ll omit – for something she once said as an aside. It just demonstrates to watch what you say fleetingly—someone might still remember it 30 years later.

It was right before the High Holidays, and she noted at the start of a class that some of us might be out of school for a couple of days. “Of course,” the teacher, who wasn’t Jewish, said with a bit of a sneer, “I really wonder how many of you will actually be in synagogue, praying, and how many of you might be elsewhere, like the mall or someplace like that.” She then rolled her eyes.

Now I’m not saying that this belongs in the Anti-Semitism Hall of Fame, but I recall never feeling quite the same way about that teacher. After all, even though I was going to shul for those holidays, whose business was it to question the beliefs and motives of my fellow Jewish classmates? Does every Christian student go to church on Christmas Day? Are we going to send out truancy officers or the thought police if someone takes off for a religious holiday and doesn’t go to their particular house of worship? Can’t someone pray at home on their holiday, if that’s their choice?

This memory came flooding back to me recently when a friend of mine told me about a recent situation with his child. One day in school, when about to discuss a book about the Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during World War II, the kid’s teacher prefaced the conversation by saying, “Just remember that we had concentration camps in America, too. It wasn’t only the Jews in Europe during the Holocaust who had concentration camps.”

First of all, if this teacher had just bothered to read the book’s introduction, she would have noticed that the author stressed that what Japanese-Americans endured were internment camps, not concentration camps.

Big difference.

That’s not to minimize what Japanese-Americans went through during the war. These people, most of whom were upstanding, hard-working American citizens, were forcibly relocated to these camps and lived under difficult, deplorable conditions, all based on racial prejudice, hatred and hysteria. They were slapped in the face by their home or adopted country, to which they were loyal. It was largely a blatant case of guilt by association, one of the darkest moments in U.S. history.

But to compare such dire circumstances and naked unfairness to the Nazi concentration camps in any way, shape or form is unconscionable. What America did was absolutely wrong, unjust and mean-spirited, but the U.S. did not slaughter millions of Japanese-Americans. There was no “final solution” of Japanese-Americans. We did not herd them into gas chambers or perform medical experiments on them or turn them into piles of ashes.

I don’t know this teacher. It may have simply been a slip of the tongue. I don’t want to sound too paranoid here. But my hunch is that she – like some non-Jews, and even more than a few Jews on occasion – gets tired of hearing Jews talk about the Holocaust and the other episodes of persecution throughout our history. I could be wrong but my guess is that she thinks we may be a bit of a whiny breed. After all, other people have suffered, why do the Jews have to outdo everyone else and kvetch about it all the time?

If only we couldn’t outdo everyone else in the category of genocide, hatred and oppression.

The fact that an educator is so historically-illiterate and poorly-equipped is a bit disheartening. And scary. But it reminds you how we have to constantly be on our guard to explain why the Holocaust was different from other tragedies in history. That’s a sad task to still have to perform, but unfortunately it’s still with us.

And no doubt will be for a long time.

OK, here I go again, sounding like a grumpy, whiny old man, perhaps a Jewish version of Andy Rooney.

But I just can’t stop myself.

Recently, I attended a friend’s simchah at a big shul in town. I tend to be one of those people who prefers sitting in the back of a room, so I plunked myself down in the rear of the sanctuary, near a couple of rows full of kids around 12 or 13 years old. They were a good-looking bunch of youngsters, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that I wouldn’t be spending much time focused on God or Judaism or what was going on in the siddur or on the bimah.

Let me put it plainly – these kids just wouldn’t shut up. And it was more than a little distracting.

Over and over again, I watched as ushers, worshipers, teachers and even old guys (even older than me!) went up to these brash kids – who were boisterously chatting, laughing, clapping, flirting and carrying on, like they were in a movie theater – to tell them to shut the hell up, that some people in the sanctuary actually wanted to hear the service (and maybe even pray).

It was pretty clear that the youngsters didn’t care, because they went right back to their loud discussions and shenanigans, only quieting momentarily when the next adult came over to chastise them. (Which, of course, was an exercise in futility.)

I went over to one of the ushers later in the service and noted that some of the kids were students at a local Jewish day school. He simply laughed at me.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “They all act like this nowadays. That’s just how it is. It doesn’t matter where they go to school, Jewish or otherwise.”

I admit, I was no choirboy in Hebrew school or elsewhere as a young teenager. I used to like to schmooze and goof around with my buddies, especially during a long shul service or in the hallways. But I know one thing – when an adult came over to tell me to keep quiet, I did so. Usually with my knees trembling.

It seems that sense of awe, that skittishness about adults, is long gone, like polyester suits and mood rings. I mentioned this the other day to a friend who works with college students and he said, “Young people today, in general, aren’t scared or intimidated at all by adults. The problem is we’ve leveled the playing field. Kids now are immediately taught by their parents to call other adults by their first names. There’s no Mr. or Mrs. So-And-So. There’s only Stu and Zelda. And that’s how it all begins, that sense of disrespect and entitlement. Plus, they all know more about technology than us, and that really gives them a sense of superiority. So yes, there’s no respect for adults today.”

He may be right about that. But the problem goes even deeper, from a Jewish perspective (natch).

On Yom Kippur, my wife mentioned to me that she went into the ladies’ room at a shul and noticed several teenage girls in the lounge area. The girls, whom she recognized as students at a local Jewish day school, were on their cell phones, talking and texting away like crazy. Here they are, with their parents spending gobs of dough to give them an intensive Jewish education, and they’re texting in shul on the day Jews believe is the holiest one of the year?

Obviously, the problem isn’t just a lack of respect for adults but also a lack of respect for what is and isn’t appropriate behavior in shul. And maybe Judaism itself.

As parents and educators, we seem to have failed, to a certain extent. We seem to be raising a generation that doesn’t have much regard for anything, regardless of where or how they’re being educated. They just want to do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it, and all with a sense of entitlement. And we’re the ones whose knees are trembling. We just want them to like us and not get mad at us.

That might sound quite uncool and “old fogie” to say out loud, but so be it.

How do we stem the tide? That’s for deeper minds to figure out. Right now, we have to recognize this problem. Because it only stands to reason that if we raise a village of spoiled brats (with some exceptions, of course), we’re going to reap just what we sew.

I recently ran into a guy I’ve known for many years. We were swapping anecdotes and updates on our lives and families, and at some point he started kvetching to me about his daughter’s soccer league, of all things.

Seems that the nefarious league – which is independent and non-sectarian, predominantly non-Jewish in players and coaches, and based in the Timonium/Cockeysville area – is having a regularly-scheduled game this Saturday morning, even though it’s Yom Kippur, held by Jews as the holiest day of the year.

“Can you believe that?” he said, exasperated and seething. “How dare they do that? It’s Yom Kippur, for crying out loud! Thank God it’s just a regular game and not a big playoff game. But come on, people!”

OK, pardon me for asking this question – well, I will anyway – but when did the United States become a Jewish theocratic state? Are we living in Israel? Or even Brooklyn?

Let’s keep in mind that this league has, tops, four or five Jewish players—out of hundreds. And let’s also not lose sight of the fact that we live in a section of the country where our schools are usually closed for our major holidays and people are, for the most part, quite mindful of our holidays and traditions. They even put up with our traffic and congestion snarls on yontif at synagogues.

Look, I know this guy’s kid will be disappointed that she has to go to shul this Saturday instead of kicking a ball around and having fun with her teammates. She’ll miss a game. But she’ll live. The world will remain on its axis.

Am I missing something here? If I were a non-Jew overhearing our conversation, I know what I’d be thinking – “Geez, these Jews are never satisfied.”

A couple of months ago, Chazzan Emanuel C. Perlman was visiting the Vatican with his lovely wife, Janice. They toured St. Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel and other museums and Catholic holy sites, but the Chizuk Amuno cantor couldn’t help but notice an abundance of Jewish iconography seemingly everywhere there.

“I said to my wife, `This place reminds me of the Holy Temple,’” Chazzan Perlman told me recently. “All I saw were Jewish symbols, nothing particularly Christian, and I began to realize how sad it is that we Jews don’t appreciate what we have. Others do, but we don’t. We’ve run away from tradition and brought secular things into our synagogues. Why? Because we’re insecure.”

Manny Perlman is a warm, friendly, engaging man, but he’s also a passionate and indefatigable crusader for tradition. In particular, he considers himself the preserver of the chazzanut, the grand style of cantorial music and performance as typified by such “golden age” cantors as Yossele Rosenblatt, Leib Glantz, Richard Tucker and Jan Peerce.

The essence and art of being a chazzan is something very dear to Cantor Perlman’s heart. It’s in his blood and in his soul, and it’s something that he promised those who came before him – like my late friend and neighbor, Cantor Saul Z. Hammerman – that he will cherish, perpetuate and fight for.

And even if that kind of synagogue worship music is not your particular cup of tea, you can’t help but be impressed and inspired by Chazzan Perlman’s intensity, commitment to integrity, and devotion to keeping this part of our musical heritage alive and strong.

Everywhere in shul life today, we see this style of music being discarded, jettisoned and denigrated. Younger people, we’re told, don’t want an operatic kind of performance at synagogue; they want music they can relate to, something they can sing along and clap with, whether it be Jewish summer camp music, folk, rock, reggae, ska, jazz and even rap.

Chazzan Perlman says he enjoys and appreciates those kinds of music, too. But he says they have their place, and synagogue worship services ain’t one of them.

“I love the Beatles!” he told me in his office, with a great sense of urgency and frustration in his voice. “I’ve played their music in a band with my brother, I’ve taught a class on them. They’re wonderful! But they’re not my God, and they don’t belong in shul! And that’s next, Alan! You’ll see, people will want to bring the Beatles into services!”

(Hmmm, I’m trying to imagine “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” played at Shabbat services.)

“We live in an era when Yankee Stadium isn’t even the same place where Babe Ruth played,” Chazzan Perlman continued. “People want to move on and remove and repackage. We grew up with Cracker Jack, and you loved that toy. But now, that toy would be just a throwaway.”

He employs yet another analogy: “Upstate New York is one of the most beautiful places to drive through in the world. But some people would rather fly to upstate New York than drive in the autumn and look at all of that gorgeous foliage and just enjoy it. People want shortcuts today. But sometimes you have to say no, to yourself and others. … We’ve become a society where there’s 500 channels and nothing on. People are constantly changing the channel. We want what we want right now.”

The diminishing interest in chazzanut music and the growth of the “Kumbaya” shul mentality reflects a major change among Jews today in general, he charges. It reflects a lack of knowledge and appreciation of our heritage and legacy.

“We need to become more Judaically and Biblically literate and embrace our heritage,” Chazzan Perlman says. “People can tell me who they’re favorite singers are off the top of their heads, but who’s your favorite prophet? Your favorite Biblical figure?

“I feel we have to go back to the virtuoso days of cantorial prayer, to explore where we came from.”

While listening to the chazzan on this subject, I couldn’t help but think about a mega-church in suburban Chicago I visited a few years ago. This church looked more like the Mall of America than a house of worship, and its membership may have exceeded the population of France. One of the secrets of its success, I was told by the church’s leadership, was that the old hymns and liturgical music – considered antiquated and uninspiring by these Baby Boomers—were thrown out for a decidedly more hip, contemporary Christian rock sound.

At one point during my visit there, I sat down with a group of four or five 20-something males who belonged to the church. Several of them had tattoos and nose rings, as well as ripped jeans and T-shirts bearing the names of various mainstream hard-rock bands. All of them were quite courteous, respectful and highly enthusiastic about the church and its impact on their lives.

But when I asked them if they enjoyed the church’s weekly rock music performances and selections, they looked at each other and fell silent.

Intrigued, I pressed on. After all, the Christian rock performances that were an integral part of the worship services there were supposedly tailored for young guys like them. And everyone knows that music of all types can be a great portal for spiritual discovery and growth.

Finally, one of the young men said to me, “Um, we like it OK but it’s really for the, um, older people here.” (Translation: fossils like me.) “Don’t get me wrong,” he said, “we all like rock and hip-hop and stuff like that. But we listen to it all the time – at work, at home, in the car, in our social lives. We just wish that when we were in church, we could hear the old-time hymns and music that’s been around for so long. That’s what we want to hear in church, not the same old stuff in our daily lives. In church, we don’t want to rock out. We just want to be inspired and moved. We want to feel something.”

Chazzan Manny Perlman couldn’t have said it any better.

So much has been said and done this week regarding the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks (if you watched the Ravens-Steelers game, you’d have seen that commercial in which the Budweiser Clydesdales poignantly bow their heads in the direction of Ground Zero) that lost in the shuffle has been that today is the 18th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords.

Maybe that’s because it’s something most of us – on both sides of the aisle—would probably like to forget.

For me, it’s something I’ll never forget. I was sitting in a crowded, darkened office at the Associated, huddled with federation employees around a big TV set. Of course, there was nervous chatter and jokes. No one knew what to expect. Were we watching history? Another false start? Bill Clinton’s greatest folly? (Of course, that came later with “Lewinskygate.”)

When Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat shook hands, largely with the prodding of the genial, avuncular Clinton, a roar swelled up from the ranks of the Associated employees sitting on the floor. None of us could believe what we were seeing. I suspect many of us dared that day to dream, to cast off our cynicism, to believe that peace was actually within reach. After all, if Rabin and Arafat could shake hands …

Of course, like a lot of things in life, it wasn’t meant to be. In some ways, things have certainly gotten worse. Now, we face a situation in which the Palestinians will soon bring to the world body a unilateral proposal for statehood, one without any direct negotiations or accord with the Israelis or approval from the Americans.

And what we can expect from all of this – maybe even a war, God forbid – seems as hazy and unclear as in that darkened room at the Associated in September of ’93.

When dealing with people and human nature in general, I’ve often told family members and friends, “Expect the least from people and you might get more than you ever expected.” (I’m sure I stole that from someone.) We all keep expecting the Middle East scenario to turn itself around, that everyone will reach an accommodation just out of sheer exhaustion from fighting and arguing for so long.

At this point, I strongly suspect that the world – even American Jewry in general—is sick and tired of the Israelis and Palestinians and their never-ending saga, their long-playing comedy of errors. That’s probably why other matters have kept the statehood issue, for the most part, in the back pages, near the horoscope section. Who wants to deal with this one?

Let’s just hope things don’t soon escalate to the point where the subject once again has the world’s full and undivided attention.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a quirky-yet-fascinating 3-CD box set I stumbled across at the Central Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free library – truly one of our city’s greatest treasures – called “People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938.”

I know what you’re thinking – fun stuff. This guy must be loads of laughs at cocktail parties.

Lady Gaga or Katy Perry this ain’t.

Don’t ask me what draws me to this kind of old-time music and its rather grim, ironic, archaic tunes of death, destruction and disaster, recorded by long-deceased, usually-quite-obscure-in-their-day performers. Call it “O Brother Syndrome.” It’s like listening to the distant voices of anguished spirits, or as music journalist and cultural critic Greil Marcus calls it, “the old, weird America.”

But if you love “roots music,” this 2007 collection – featuring 70 recordings and co-produced by Henry “Hank” Sapoznik, the great proponent of traditional Yiddish and American music – is absolutely amazing stuff. Most of the songs are about the sinking of the Titanic (quite a national preoccupation!), train wrecks, plane crashes, mine explosions, earthquakes, floods, famines, fires, hurricanes, dust storms, droughts, and of course, that old standby of human nature, homicide. (Interestingly, one of the tracks is a chilling 1913 recording of the El Malei Rachamim prayer performed by the illustrious Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt, specifically for the victims of the Titanic.)

In their own way, these songs were the Twitter alerts, Facebook postings, and CNN or MSNBC breaking news headlines of their era. They were melodic messages in a bottle, informing the public of some calamity or atrocity, often within days and geographic spitting distance of the tragedy. These fabulous, scrappy, twangy artists – on their banjos, harmonicas, jugs, kazoos, Jew’s harps, etc.—let people know what was going on, without any sugarcoating or holding back at all, and usually even threw in a moral or two about fate or one’s ethical conduct. Brilliant stuff.

So what does this all have to do with 2011?

We are in the midst of being bombarded with the painful, haunting images of 9/11. With the 10th anniversary upon us, that horrible day hangs heavy in our psyche and in our souls. The media is already revisiting this topic with photos and images of the towers, aflame and in rubble, almost as if we’ve somehow forgotten what 9/11 looked like, as if it wasn’t already indelibly seared into our brains, as if we could ever escape it.

That was a deadline news day for us here, working on our annual Rosh Hashanah issue, and 9/11 meant watching the tragedy unfold on television as Americans and then getting down to journalistic business and writing about it all very quickly. No easy feat. It was a long day and night.

One thing I remember is chatting with an art department co-worker toward the end of the afternoon, when everyone was in high gear and deadline was looming. At one point, I noticed she’d placed a Post-it note on the edge of her computer screen, simply with the scribbled words, “September 11th, 2001.” When I asked her why she’d put that note on her screen, she replied, “I just want to have that date up there, to remember this day, so I don’t forget it.” I stared at her and said, “Kiddo, don’t worry, this is a date you’re never, ever going to forget.”

True enough. But at the same time, there’s a lot of overstating and grandstanding when it comes to 9/11, something we all have to be careful of because of the solemn nature of this historical event. Too often, we call 9/11 the day that changed our lives or changed America. It’s true that we’ve all been forced to become somewhat more vigilant and careful in our lives since that day, and our foreign policy has transformed drastically. Our confidence and sense of security was shattered.

But on a personal level, few of us – outside of those who lost loved ones that day—have experienced major changes in our lives as a result of 9/11. I remember a couple of friends, after the tragedy, remarking to me that they no longer enjoyed watching sports, because 9/11 compelled them to realize that athletic competitions had very little to do with the order of the cosmos. Despite their lapse into existentialism, I believe all of them returned to their obsessions with sports. Other friends mentioned to me that they decided to take big vacations after 9/11, again with the sudden realization that, well, life’s just too short.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying sports or taking vacations. Everyone needs their interests, hobbies and various distractions. After all, going to the movies was virtually a religion during the darkest days of World War II.

But we have to be careful about falling prey to melodrama, reactionary flag-waving and facile proclamations. 9/11 was a day that took our collective breath away and made us sit up and take notice, but for better or worse, we all returned to our same old habits and tendencies. In that respect, the terrorists didn’t win. We did eventually go back to normalcy. What we shouldn’t do is raise the specter of 9/11 for the justification for everything we do or utilize its power as a means of self-pity or soapbox sermonizing. Worse yet, for monetary profit – I don’t want to ever see a 9/11 department store sale.

So would the likes of Fiddlin’ John Carson, Ernest Stoneman, the Floyd County Ramblers, Charley Patton or the Skillet Lickers have recorded songs about 9/11 if they were still with us? My guess is they probably would’ve, but with a great sense of compassion and carefulness about not coming off as exploiting this solemn moment in American history. They might’ve sung about the enormous loss of life, the individuals who perished and the heroes who attempted to rescue those who were endangered, the spouses and children left behind and forced to figure out how to somehow go on with their lives.

Of course, it’s important to remember. But 9/11 is more than just a date or an anniversary. It’s something in our DNA, our American fabric. And we don’t need any songs or archival images of burning buildings to remember that.

I have a confession to make. I loved Rabbi Jacob A. Max. The Rabbi Max I knew was funny, warm, engaging, easygoing, thoughtful and the absolute definition of the Yiddish word haimish (loosely translated as folksy or comfortable). He was charm personified.

The thing to remember, however, is that things are not always as they seem.

We don’t like to accept that. It screws with our minds and messes up our narrow view of life. It upsets the apple cart. But it’s true.

And obviously there was a side to this genial man – a virtually ubiquitous figure in our community for more than five decades – that we never really knew.

Things are not always as they seem.

About a week after Rabbi Max passed away recently and I had written a fairly parve obituary about him, I got a note from a veteran local journalist, someone I know a little bit and who was in the news business when I was just a mere lad. In his quite cordial, collegial note, he questioned why I would mention in the lead paragraph of my obituary that, besides serving Liberty Jewish Center for more than a half-century, Rabbi Max was convicted in 2009 for molesting a female funeral home employee. The journalist’s friendly suggestion was to bury that piece of information lower in the story.

I don’t get it.

If I had written an obituary in 1994 about the passing of Richard M. Nixon, should I only have mentioned that he was the 37th president of the United States and initiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union? And not have mentioned that he resigned from office in the face of almost certain impeachment? Or should I have relegated that tidbit to the 14th or 15th paragraphs?

For a long time, Rabbi Max is going to be a source of contention and pain in this community. He has his diehard supporters, people who knew the Rabbi Max I knew and loved. But there are also his detractors, some of whom say they were inappropriately touched or handled by Rabbi Max. And they can’t be negated, ignored or disrespected.

Respect. People say let the man rest in peace; respect the dead. Leave him alone. Give him some respect.

Fair enough. But maybe we should cut ourselves a break too and simply agree to disagree about this complicated, enigmatic man who has left a lot of mixed feelings in his wake.

We’ll be sorting this one out for a while.

In our rapidly shrinking world, from our narrow prism of life on which we are raised and weaned, we always believe that there are answers to all things in life. Being satisfied with a mystery just being a mystery—inexplicable, unsolvable, unmovable – tends to be a foreign concept to Americans, especially in an age in which virtually any answer is right at our fingertips, instantaneously.

But the cold truth is, sometimes there is no answer.

Or if there is one, only God knows it.

The impossible-to-fathom murder of Leiby Kletzky, an 8-year-old Brooklyn boy who was strangled and dismembered earlier this week, allegedly by a fellow Orthodox Jew named Levi Aron, 35, is a prime example.

Aron reportedly says he did it because he feared getting in trouble with the law after fliers were posted all around Brooklyn about Leiby in the wake of his disappearance. But the truth is we’ll never really know why someone would commit such a gruesome, heinous, unspeakable, despicable act. Of course, it makes no sense.

Even Aron probably doesn’t know why he did it.

The case reminded me of when I used to go to the Supermax prison facility on a fairly regular basis to visit my former high school and college classmate, Steven Oken, who in 1987 went on a drug-induced spree and murdered three women. I once asked Steven, who was executed by the state by lethal injection in 2004, what made him do it.

He didn’t answer right away, then simply swallowed, stared right through me, and as if he were really talking to himself, said in a slow, whispery voice, “I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know.”

That’s a bitter pill to swallow – the unknowing of it all. It’s discomforting, slippery, vexing. Because it means that residing within all of us is not necessarily the capacity to kill like that but the wherewithal to harness a seemingly limitless reserve of anger and hatred. We don’t want to recognize that quality or element in us – after all, we’re civilized, rational people—so we chalk it all up simply to some people being born evil, sick and depraved.

That’s just too easy.

Years ago, I had an interview with a Catholic priest in East Baltimore. Looking to make a little small talk before the interview, I held up a daily newspaper I was carrying, which had headlines screaming about five Amish children who were inexplicably killed in their schoolhouse by a crazed assailant.

“Doesn’t make any sense, does it, Father?” I said. He looked back at me with woeful, perplexed, almost scornful eyes.

“It’s not about making sense,” he said. “Alan, this is how the world works. Always has and always will. The world is full of tragedies, horrors and sadness. Killing is, unfortunately, a part of human nature and existence. It’s up to us to accept that, but also to make the world in God’s image to the best of our abilities. That’s all—and nothing more.”

Perhaps he’s right. Still, it’s hard not to wonder what makes people do the things they do.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean we should expect to find an answer. At least not in this lifetime.

One of the kvetches I hear most from young people today about why they’re often turned off by the organized Jewish community is regarding money – that everything seems to revolve around the Almighty Buck.

Maybe they’re just a bunch of kvetchers, right? After all, you need money to make shuls run, federations thrive, advocacy groups flourish, Israel bloom, etc.

Or maybe they’re on to something.

I was recently in New England for the bat mitzvah of the kid of some old friends. They’d asked my wife and I to participate in the service, to read the Prayer for Our Country, which is always a great honor.

Shortly before the point arrived in the service when we were slated to do our bit, the gabbai came up and gave us a card, which designated that we were the folks to recite this particular prayer. Fine. But on the other side of the card was a little note, mentioning that if the holder was so inclined to make a donation to this fairly well-off congregation after he or she returned home, that would be much, much appreciated.

So even on Shabbat, a time when traditionally we’re not supposed to exchange money, someone is still digging into my pockets? Imagine the reaction of someone – maybe a young, unaffiliated person—who’d never stepped into a shul before. It’d be such a horrific turn-off.

I know this is a tough time for shuls. Seats need to be reupholstered, bimahs need to be upgraded, light fixtures need to be replaced, rabbis and executive directors need to get paid, etc. But there must be a more proper and tasteful way of soliciting funds than reminding someone before they read a prayer on the bimah for our country that generous “tips” are most welcome. Truth is, I’ll probably never be in that shul again – why should I send a check to them? I’ve got my own shul to send my checks to.

                              * * * * * * * * * * *

OK, on to the next rant. An elderly friend of mine recently told me that she heard a rabbi speak about – you’ve got it – the Bible. He shared with her group a couple of his thoughts about a certain passage in the Torah.

Her response to me later was, “Who cares about these bubbe meises? What does that have to do with me? I was bored out of my mind.”

In this world, there are good teachers and bad teachers. But when it comes to teaching Torah, my experience has been that few rabbis have been able to really get across why these stories from our sacred texts matter so much and why they’re relevant today. Sure, talking about something that may or may not have happened 3,500 years ago might sound dull from the outset. But a skilled, gifted teacher will have the capacity to demonstrate why the story pertains to our lives today. They’ll make it live and breathe, even for those of us who aren’t necessarily traditional or observant.

I know these teachers are out there. Heaven knows we need more of ‘em.

While visiting my in-laws in Orlando, Fla., more than a decade ago, I was driving in a car with my father-in-law, Meyer E. “Mike” Pollack, when we noticed a huge billboard with a photo of The Beatles (in their Sgt. Pepper-era regalia). It was an ad for a local radio station, bearing the slogan, “The Beatles Rock WJRR.”

My father-in-law – no Fab Four fan was he – merely smirked and said to me, “That’s about all they do.” (Mike’s musical knowledge base stopped somewhere in the early ‘50s, before the advent of rock `n’ roll. He was strictly a Big Band kind of guy, with classic Jewish music on the side.)

But Mike had more in common with John, Paul, George & Ringo than he ever imagined, because he was the living embodiment of the Beatles credo (“Abbey Road,” “The End,” final verse) that “the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

Mike, who passed away last Saturday night, was all about love. Maybe not the kind of free love you think of when contemplating The Beatles, but love nonetheless – for his wife of 52 years, his three children, his 10 grandchildren and his three great-grandchildren. And his two daughters-in-law and one son-in-law (yours truly).

He was unashamed to show his unconditional love, in actions, words and deeds, something that’s unusual for men of his generation. Sometimes, it was embarrassing or discomforting how much he showed that he cared for you. But he knew life is short and it’s important to show loved ones how you feel. And he received that love back in spades, as evidenced by his grandsons’ highly emotional eulogies delivered earlier this week at his funeral.

Mike loved being Jewish. Although not an observant Jew, he was traditional in the way he thought and felt. And he knew his stuff. Being Jewish filled every fiber of his being. It was in him where it counts – in the way he lived his life. He was—to employ a much overused word—a mentsch. That’s why he worked as a Jewish nursing home administrator for several decades. He cared about people, especially those in the darkest, scariest times of their lives. He wanted to comfort them and raise them up, even if it was just for a few minutes. He wanted them to feel respected and not obsolete, discarded, unwanted or forgotten.

Mike owned a formidable collection of 78 RPM records. It is a treasure trove of Jewish and American music from the first half of the 20th century. After retiring in the ‘90s, he took a rolling cart full of his 78s and a record player and frequently visited nursing homes, becoming a “professional volunteer.” He played old-time music for dementia patients there, because he wanted to spark a memory for them, even if it was only fleeting. Many were the times he called to say how a particular Glenn Miller or Artie Shaw tune got a strong reaction from a patient who normally never spoke much. They might recall a special time in their life after hearing an old record and discuss it with the group, much to their caretakers’ absolute shock and awe.

One time, Mike played a pre-war Japanese record at a nursing home, eliciting an intense, emotional response from a Japanese patient there who usually simply faded into the woodwork. (I like to think the record might’ve been a 78 we found while going on one of our occasional jaunts to antique shops in this area when Mike visited.)

Mike knew he had a unique role in this act of volunteerism. Besides knowing the music through and through, he understood how to work with nursing home patients and how to reach them. Very few people could do this adequately and with such grace and thoroughness. I have many of Mike’s 78s now and I could play them at nursing homes. I could even read up on the records and talk about them. But I don’t have his vocational training to know how to press the right buttons with these folks. I don’t have his feel for the situation, and I didn’t live the music.

Simply put, he was a unique, unusual man.

I don’t believe in mythologizing people. I know that’s our tendency after we’ve lost someone, and I’m still feeling raw about losing my father-in-law. Like all of us, he wasn’t perfect. Like all of us, he was far from it. He could be stubborn. He could be “my-way-or-the-highway.” He could be vexing and taxing at times. Like most fathers-in-law and sons-in-law, there were occasions when we probably let each other down.

But I know I’m a better person for knowing him. And that’s probably the best thing you can say about anyone.

Several years ago, my in-laws were visiting from Florida and enjoying dinner at our house when we happened to mention we’d bought an outdoor bench but hadn’t had the time to put it together. It was still in the box, but we’d get around to it. Mike immediately asked where it was, pulled all the bits and pieces out, and started building the bench, despite our protestations. The sight of this man in his mid-70s laboring over directions and rolling up his sleeves to put a bench together was something to see. Being our guest, we pleaded with him to stop. We were frankly afraid he might overdo it.

“Please, let me do this,” he implored. “I want to do this for you.”

About a half-hour later, the bench was finished. It was perfect, and Mike beamed while looking at his job well done.

This was typical of the man. He wanted to contribute, to be useful and make a difference in some way.

And he did.

While I sat in Baltimore Hebrew Congregation’s Dalsheimer Auditorium last night, trying to figure out how to adequately capture in written word the always touching annual community-wide Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemoration, I had no idea that only 50 miles away, President Obama was trying to figure out how to let the world know that Osama bin Laden was dead.

Finally.

As we all sat there last night at BHC, recalling the darkest chapter of human existence – and watching as Holocaust survivors went up to the stage to light a candle of remembrance with their grandchildren – we had no idea that, once again, we would be served a reminder that in the long run, evil never wins. Sooner or later, justice is served and good triumphs over evil, even if it comes at incredibly great expense.

As I listened to the President’s televised announcement late last night—telling the world something I never really believed I would hear, that the mastermind of 9/11 was killed by U.S. forces—I thought of a scene from the film “Dead Man Walking.” It’s that scene when Sean Penn’s character, a murderer, is executed by the state, and in the viewing room window’s reflection are the images of his victims, watching somberly as justice is served. In my mind’s eye, I imagined the thousands of victims of 9/11, listening intently to President Obama announce that bin Laden had been killed.

Yom HaShoah is a sad, solemn day, but it is also a declaration of triumph over the forces of evil. It is only apropos and natural that the death of bin Laden – the ruthless murderer of so many Americans and the hater of Israel and world Jewry – was killed on the day when we remember not only those who perished in the Holocaust but the fact that we’re still here, to carry on long after Nazism was defeated.

Sometimes, it’s still hard for me to believe how little – even with our penchant for schmoozing, commentary and over-analysis – we Jews really talk to each other.

Yesterday, my wife told me something I found difficult to grasp. She was driving our 8-year-old son to Hebrew school, at Chizuk Amuno Synagogue, when she found that the beltway exit to Stevenson Road was blocked off by Baltimore County Police officers. Determined (probably to my kid’s dismay), she drove around to the Reisterstown Road exit and tried to gain access to Chizuk via Brooks Robinson Drive (that’s Radio Tower Drive for all you old-timers and third baseman haters.)

But she was still roadblocked by the cops and forced to walk from Brooks Robinson Drive to the shul. Not a far walk, mind you, but naturally when you see a bunch of cops stopping you from getting to a synagogue, you get a little nervous.

Middle East terrorists? White surpremacists? Sisterhood insurgents?

Fortunately, she was soon alerted that it was because of the “Mitzvah Miles Walk/Run” to support Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School’s Yad b’Yad Fund, which was wending through the neighborhoods around Chizuk and Beth Tfiloh Synagogue, which are maybe a half-mile apart.

The cops, it appears, forgot to tell Chizuk officials about the run, thus inconveniencing religious school parents, students and others trying to get to the synagogue that morning, not to mention residents of the surrounding neighborhoods. That’s pretty bad but look, mistakes happen.

But before we get too critical of Baltimore County’s finest – I’m certain Chizuk’s leadership contacted them about this matter, and it won’t happen again – a question begs to be asked: why didn’t someone at Beth Tfiloh simply contact Chizuk about the run? I admit I don’t know all the inside facts here, and that there are bigger problems in the universe. But did they just assume the cops would take care of it with Chizuk? Why didn’t information somehow filter over the months between these two mega-synagogues at some point?

Believe me, I’m not trying to take sides. Like I said, mistakes happen. But I think the episode points to a larger problem in the Jewish community and its mindset and ethos.

Yes, I’m kvetching again. But let’s face it: often, no one seems to really talk to each other – organizationally, institutionally – because everyone only worries about their own turf. We have all these fiefdoms and self concerns, and that’s all that seems to matter. It’s like if I didn’t care about Pennsylvania because I live in Maryland and only cared about Maryland – basically, I’m so patriotic about my own state I forgot that I’m an American.

We’ve all seen examples of this myopia. When I used to send my daughter to Beth El’s preschool and then switched to another shul’s, a good friend who attends Beth El half-jokingly called me “a traitor and a turncoat.” A traitor and turncoat because I switched synagogue preschools?

And at the Jewish Times, we hear often from rabbis, “You only cover their shul but not ours,” as if we have a vendetta against their synagogue. And then, when we do cover their shul, we hear zilcho.

People tell me all the time that this shul or that Jewish organization won’t participate in a particular event or endeavor because they didn’t plan it, or because another group is involved. It gets pretty petty. And more importantly, it turns people off and leads to unaffiliation and disgust with the community (and the Jewish people) in general. And that’s quite dangerous for a community’s future.

So religious outfits don’t talk, even when it’s for something as simple as logistics for an event passing through a neighborhood? Aren’t we all Jews? Don’t we have a common concern and a general interest in each other’s well-being? It all sounds pretty silly to me. It sounds like winning the battle but losing the war.

I don’t know about you but I don’t like having to always defend myself. It gets a little wearisome.

But when you work for a Jewish publication, sometimes it comes with the territory.

Trust me.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, when you put something out there week after week that touches people at their core – about their community, values and faith – you’re going to hit some raw nerves.

Recently, I wrote a news article about B’nai Israel, the historic shul on Lloyd Street in East Baltimore. B’nai Israel has a special place in my heart. My Latvian-born great-grandfather, Aaron Sauber, was a melamed (teacher) there around the turn-of-the-century (the 20th, that is), and from what I gather was a beloved, respected figure.

Much of my family is buried in B’nai Israel’s cemetery on Southern Avenue in Hamilton, and I still remember going to the shul back in the ‘70s, before its major renovation, with my parents. We found a dilapidated, crumbling structure, one in which pigeons frequently flew in and out of gaping holes in the roof. It was a former shell of its onetime grand self, barely on life support, kept going by a small crew of committed, caring individuals.

Check out B’nai Israel in 2011. My, how times have changed. It is now a gorgeous, thriving shul, with a solid, devoted membership, regular services and activities, and lots of people around the community who feel a strong connection to the synagogue and care deeply about it. After all, it’s our greatest (and last remaining) living connection to the immigrant Jewish community that once thrived in East Baltimore, paving the way for what we have and enjoy today.

But one of the shul’s leaders—for the record, not B’nai Israel co-presidents Howard L. Cohn or Frank Boches—recently got irked with me for the article I wrote last week about some recent security problems that B’nai Israel has experienced. He simply felt I didn’t go far enough in questioning in my article why the shul’s landlord, the Jewish Museum of Maryland, and its parent organization, the Associated, weren’t communicating more with B’nai Israel about security matters.

He also accused me of having a vendetta against B’nai Israel, bringing up an article I wrote several years ago about the synagogue’s battle with its former rabbi regarding his abrupt dismissal. At that time, the firing caused a schism at the shul, largely between its younger congregants who liked the rabbi and its old guard who obviously weren’t card-carrying members of his fan club.

As far as the latter subject is concerned, I personally view that as ancient history. B’nai Israel is still around and has moved on and has a wonderful spiritual leader today, the wise and kindhearted Rabbi Alan J. Yuter. Perhaps the shul leader is correct that the Associated, the museum and B’nai Israel should have better lines of communication about security (although as I reported, several meetings have been held so far between those groups). I just wish he would’ve said it in a less rancorous and more constructive way.

But here’s the bottom line, all bruised egos aside – this community needs to support B’nai Israel, financially, morally, logistically, in any way possible. Besides the fact that it provides a warm, wonderful house of worship for the largely unaffiliated young professional crowd living in Canton, Federal Hill, Fells Point and other downtown neighborhoods, it is a testament to our history, heritage and resilience. It is the last outpost of what once was, and it would be a great shanda if the synagogue followed the path of so many inner-city shuls and went out of existence, or only had services during the High Holiday season.

We shouldn’t forget this gem in our midst. More than a nostalgic footnote, it is a model for rebirth—a living, breathing part of our community that serves a vital role. We need to get more in the game about B’nai Israel, whether it’s ensuring the shul’s security or focusing on its longevity and perpetuity.

The other day, I was coming out of a meeting here at the JT offices when I saw someone approaching me. The man, wearing clothes covered in old paint, was none other than Loring Cornish, the local “outsider artist” whose works about the shared legacy and mission of the African-American and Jewish communities are now being exhibited at the Jewish Museum of Maryland. If you haven’t seen this exhibition yet, do yourself a favor and do so. Loring has a gift and a sense of empathy that might truly be beyond words.

I wrote about Loring two years ago (when he had a somewhat similar show at Morgan State University), and I wrote last month about his current exhibition. Each time, I found him to be an extraordinarily kind, energetic and friendly man who genuinely loves people. He almost seems too good to be true, with his spiritual nature and childlike optimism. In our cynical times, you don’t meet many people like Loring. He’s always like a shot in the arm. You always feel good after seeing him.

Which is why I was delighted to see him the other day. He stretched out his hand to shake mine and asked me how I was doing. But of course, I was a bit puzzled by his sudden appearance. (You have to understand that this man spends night and day working on his art in his West Baltimore rowhouse, when he’s not prowling the streets of “Charm City” for “found objects” for his brilliant pieces.)

“So Loring, what brings you to our office?” I asked him. He simply smiled and said, “Oh, I’ve just been so busy with everything – with the exhibition and stuff – that I realized I never got a chance to thank you and Kirsten [Beckerman, the Jewish Times’ staff photographer] for doing such a great job with the article. You guys here have all been so wonderful to me, I can’t thank you enough.”

This might sound trite, but I was a bit stunned and dumbfounded. Occasionally after I write an article, I get a phone call from someone, thanking me (albeit with some minor kvetches). Maybe an email, or if I happen to run into them somewhere, they’ll happen to remember to say thanks, often in an offhanded way.

But to actually come down and offer gratitude in person, to say how much you appreciate what someone did, well, that’s almost unheard of.

And like a bolt of lightning, Loring was gone, running off to his next appointment or mad creative endeavor, waving and thanking us again for doing our best to get his message heard.

It all made me think about the concept of gratitude, and how—like good etiquette and manners – it’s fallen by the wayside and become a casualty of our hyper-caffeinated, tech-obsessive age, something as antiquated and seemingly out of place as the steam locomotive or churned butter. I’m guilty of it, you’re guilty of it, too. We all are.

There’s a power in saying thank you to someone. It empowers them, to see that the world ain’t so bad after all, and it empowers you to bring that gift to someone and to do the right thing. Now here’s a confession: Sometimes I think that in the Jewish community, we’re even more guilty of not offering thanks to each other than in non-Jewish circles. Of course, I could be wrong about that. People are people, right? Still, without indulging too much in potential stereotyping (or “self-loathing”), it’s a phenomenon of sorts that I’ve often discussed with colleagues in Jewish fields, and I’ve frequently found they feel the same way, that there’s a sense of entitlement and expectation, and a lack of gratitude.

Loring has once again taught me a lesson, something that our moms taught us long ago. It’s important to say thank you. It makes you a mentsch, and it makes the world a more mentschlikeit place. Simple stuff.

Anyway, thanks for listening (or in this case reading).

Standing outside the Clarence M. Mitchell Jr. Courthouse yesterday morning, I shivered with folks on both sides of the aisle who were there to voice their support and disgust with Eli and Avi Werdesheim. The Werdesheims are the Jewish brothers (one of whom at the time was on a call for the Shomrim patrol group) accused of assaulting an African-American teenager on Fallstaff Road last November.

Despite the presence of lots of cops and TV cameras, there was a weird, inexplicable tension in the air. About 200 Jews, mostly Orthodox, were stationed on the north side of the block, singing Jewish (“Hava Nagila”?) and American tunes and praying in support of the Werdesheims, while eating Dunkin Donuts (no, this is not a product placement) and drinking coffee from their Boxes O’ Joe.

On the other side were about 20 people, mostly African-American, who seemed to be genuinely fuming – at the Werdesheims, at City State’s Attorney Gregg L. Bernstein (for reducing the charges from felony to misdemeanor), at what they perceive as the Jewish community’s seemingly blind support for the brothers, even that our side had doughnuts and theirs didn’t.

But things stayed cool for the most part. The only time I was concerned about a possible confrontation was when one anti-Werdesheim protester, Leo Burroughs Jr., a self-described former “’60s activist,” showed up with a sign reading, “Bernstein Promotes Black Holocaust.” (Ouch. I feared some hothead might pass by and clock him for invoking the Shoah.)

“Our numbers will grow,” he told me about his side’s smaller showing yesterday. “We can’t tolerate brutality against the people of this city – black, white, Jewish or otherwise.”

But the person who really got to me was Renee Washington, an East Baltimore resident, who told me—without any hesitation or concern for political correctness—that the case “all comes down to one thing – money. Most Jewish people have money, and they all stick together.” (Hmmm, a double-whammy.)

Ms. Washington, who appeared to be a very pleasant, cordial and peaceful woman, clarified that she knows Jews and has worked with them in the catering business for years. She seemed to be making sure I recognized that she’s no anti-Semite.

“I’m not saying all Jewish people are racist, but this incident should never have happened,” she said. “Just because you have money doesn’t mean your child is any different than mine. People shouldn’t be afraid to walk where they want. If [the Werdesheims] were African-American, they’d be in prison right now, serving time.”

And to make sure I understood she was no radical or militant, she added, “We may disagree with those people over there, but there’s no need for confrontation. We’re not out to fight. In fact, we’re here because of violence. Violence solves nothing.”

The whole conversation, though, reminded me of the days when I used to occasionally cover speeches delivered by controversial Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. When I would approach African-Americans before, during or after these gatherings, they let me know what they thought of Jews, no holds barred. They didn’t care if I was Jewish, half-Jewish, a quarter-Jewish, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Ashkenazi, Sephardic or even a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov (which, of course, I’m not).

One time in the early ‘90s, I chatted on a Pratt Street sidewalk with a young African-American gentleman outside of a Farrakhan speech at the World Trade Center in Baltimore. While alluding to the travesties of the Holocaust and slavery, he stopped me dead in my tracks. He didn’t want any part of it.

“Please, stop there,” he said gruffly. “I don’t want to hear it. I’ve heard enough. We’ve all heard enough. Look, all I know is what my people have been through and are still going through. And my pain is more than your pain when you now are up there and I’m still down here. So just move on and don’t talk to me about your pain anymore.”

Obviously, the tendency of trying to outdo each other in the misery game is a ridiculous one. It’s not a competition. However you feel about the Werdesheim case, what’s important to remember is that there is a lot of anger out there in the African-American community toward Jews. It’s been there a long, long time.

I understand that it swings both ways, but we still have to recognize that hurt, frustration and anger. We can talk about Heschel and King, about the Jewish martyrs for the civil rights movement, etc. We can even sing “Ebony And Ivory” in Yiddish and Ladino. But we have to remember there is a lot of fury and pain there, some of it possibly warranted (even though we don’t want to hear that) and maybe some that’s not. But it’s still there.

And maybe one of these days, instead of just blowing it off, we should really address it, if for no other reason than to prevent situations like the Werdesheim case from unraveling and turning into flare-ups ripe for exploitation by leaders on both sides of the fence.

What do you say to someone who is young and going through the surreal experience of losing someone they love – inexplicably and without any warning—in the prime of their life? Death never makes any sense, it always stuns and slams and blindsides you at any age, but how do you deal with it when you’re fresh and young and have the whole world ahead of you? How do you make any sense whatsoever of the incomprehensible and unfathomable?

I spent some time this week interviewing friends of Mitchell Perlmeter, the 17-year-old son of Rabbis Rex D. Perlmeter and Rachel Hertzman, both of whom were well-known and well-respected leaders in Baltimore’s Jewish community from 1996 to 2008. Mitchell died suddenly Feb. 1 of a massive coronary in his family’s home in Montclair, N.J.

I know his parents, but I never actually met Mitchell. But I now feel like I knew him, thanks to his friends’ loving and vivid descriptions of him. I’ve written tons of obituaries over the years, and yes, everyone who dies seems to be viewed in a haze of adulation and reverence. I do the same thing when someone I know passes away. I suppose it’s just human nature.

But I’ve never, ever heard people rave about anyone like I heard Mitchell’s friends and others rave about him. One friend, Emma Kane, a McDonogh School student, even said, “Look, Mitchell wasn’t perfect. No one is perfect. But Mitchell was as close to perfect as you can get, especially for a teenage boy.”

Wow.

From what I gather, Mitchell was the kind of kid who always had a light around him. He was friendly, outgoing and fun-loving by nature, but smart and kind-hearted as well. A good listener, a good friend. I guess that’s why so many people were drawn to him and loved him so much. And why his funeral was completely packed.

Everyone talks about Mitchell’s smile. It was apparently radiant, warming, soothing, magnetic. And now, eternal.

He had lots of interests – sports, video games, rap music, books, movies. He loved sweets, especially chocolates. He was your everyday kid.

And he loved a good joke or a tasty prank (but always good-natured). “Mitch was sarcastic bliss,” his close friend Josh Mandell told me, trying to summon the right words to describe him adequately. “His sarcasm was the greatest thing about him, next to his big heart. He was so creative with his insults, they just always made you smile. But everything he said or did was out of love. It’s just who he was – a loveable kid. So much fun to be around. That feeling you’d get with him – he was just one of a kind. He brought out the best in you.”

Last week, Josh was in Spanish class at Friends School when he felt his cell phone vibrate, and he started getting a flurry of voice-mail messages from his friends. He ignored them all until he got a text message from his mom: “Call ASAP.” That’s how he found out about Mitch. Like so many others touched by Mitch, Josh’s world will never be the same. He now knows that life just isn’t fair.

“It didn’t even hit me at first,” Josh said. “I went back to class for another minute, the bell rang and then I went straight home. … When I first heard about it, I was just like, there’s no way. It didn’t seem real.

“It was not a day to remember, but one I know I’ll never forget.”

When I was 15, I lost two friends in a pair of completely separate drug-related incidents. One drowned at Liberty Reservoir, the other froze to death in a field in Howard County. Sometimes on a cold, moody night, I find myself getting lost in thoughts and wondering how their lives might have turned out if they had lived and not gotten dragged down in the drug epidemic.

But to be totally honest (and not to minimize their deaths), they were not close friends. I can’t even imagine what Josh Mandell and Mitch’s other close, close friends – not to mention his family – are going through right now. But I know they touched my heart with their stories and descriptions about this amazing young man whom I wish I could’ve met.

When I asked Josh how he was getting through it all, he responded, “I’m taking it day by day. There’s no way to really describe it. I see a lot of his friends and we all have our own ways of coping. I think Mitch may be gone but he lives on in our memories. He touched everyone he came into contact with. No matter what, I’ll always carry a piece of Mitch with me. Mitch is family. … I’m trying to celebrate his life instead of being upset about the death. But I don’t think it will ever be completely real to me.”

Life just isn’t fair. It’s true. But I do believe that Josh and his friends are absolutely on the money when they say Mitch will live on because he dearly touched the hearts of everyone who ever loved him and basked in the warmth of his smile.

I have a friend who a few years ago, for some very odd reason, decided out of the blue to acquire a ham radio operator’s license. Naturally, I made fun of him.

“Hey, Nerdo,” I said to him, “we don’t need ham radios, CBs or Morse Code anymore. There’s a thing out there nowadays called the Internet. We also have something called e-mail”

His curt response to me was, “You’ll see, someday ham radio operators will take over the world.”

Now, looking at the neighborhood of Greengate, I’m starting to think he had a valid point.

As reported by Rochelle Eisenberg in this week’s Jewish Times, Vitaly Galilov, a Greengate resident, has many of his neighbors up in arms. Why? Seems that Mr. Galilov, a ham radio enthusiast, built a pair of ham radio towers on his property. An attorney for the neighbors claims that one tower exceeds Baltimore County Zoning regulations, while the height of the other is in question.

Last spring, Mr. Galilov says he received a permit to erect a 50-foot ham radio tower with antennae. But upon installation, his installers said he needed a taller tower – I hate when that happens!—because his house backs up to a wooded lot. They said it needed to be least 70 feet in height to be effective, so he went ahead and had the larger tower installed. Afterwards, he said he applied for a variance with the Baltimore County Zoning Office.

In other words, shoot first and ask questions later.

Usually not a good policy with one’s neighbors.

The second tower, which is 65 feet high, should not have received a permit, since any tower built must be less than 60 feet, based on county zoning regulations, according to the neighbors’ lawyer.

Should the Greengate residents be concerned that one of their neighbors has an interest in ham radios?

Definitely.

But Mr. Galilov’s response to Rochelle Eisenberg’s question about how he will proceed if a zoning hearing for the towers doesn’t go in his favor—“I spent a lot of money, and I will not stop. If I have to, I will appeal.” – also gives pause for concern.

That’s called not being a very good neighbor.

“A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words.” – John Lennon

Last night, I dropped by a town hall meeting organized by the Associated to encourage members of the Jewish community to discuss their views on Jewish identity matters. The Jewish Baltimore Talks Town Hall Meeting, held at the Reisterstown Library, was part of a series of gatherings intended to inspire dialogue and thought about what people want their community to be and look like, now and in the future. What does it mean to be a Jew? How do they want their children to live Jewish lives?

Is there a Jewish future?

Unfortunately, it was a pretty lonely experience. Four people turned out, including the facilitator and myself (and I was there as a reporter).

Nonetheless, the four of us had a lively, thought-provoking discussion about what being Jewish means to us and where the organized Jewish community (the Associated, the shuls, the various organizations and agencies, etc.) does things well and not so well. Maybe because it was a small, intimate group, we were pretty candid about the state of the Jewish community, warts and all, and I found myself transitioning from journalist mode to participant (and probably talking a lot more than I should’ve).

The other two participants there were a middle-age man born and bred in Baltimore’s Jewish community and a young woman from “the outside.”

For the man, this is his home and he’d probably never want to live anywhere else. My sense is that he sees room for improvement with the synagogues and temples—which he characterized as being too full of narrishkeit politics, inane territorialism and going through a general malaise—but overall that being Jewish and part of a community is an essential component of who he is. And it’s something he’s strongly, desperately attempting to pass on to his children.

The young woman is originally from another big East Coast city. She attended a Jewish day school for 12 years and has a strong Jewish foundation, but has adopted a more universalistic, holistic approach to life that may be viewed as alternative and not within the confines of the normative Jewish communal experience. I gathered that conventional Judaism and its institutional trappings and precepts, in many, many ways, turn her off, like so many in her generation.

Holding a book in her hand at worship services and simply reading from it, she said, leaves her cold. She seems to want a spirituality that is based on compassion and communing with nature and fellow human beings, not on what she views as rigid “indoctrination,” intractable tradition and prayer by rote. In other words, the conformity and repetition of Jewish life ain’t her thing.

And then there was me (and my big mouth), kvetching about things I often complain about to friends and family – why can’t shuls “steal” some of the more fun, successful concepts adopted by certain liberal-based churches (coffee houses, fellowship groups, dropping the formal attire, etc.)? Why is the community so focused on money and buildings (a true turn-off to so many young Jews)? Why are God and spiritual nourishment so often devoid from the picture, even at shuls?

But at the end of the evening, the man I mentioned earlier posed an excellent, albeit obvious, question to the facilitator that perhaps really spoke to the state of the local Jewish community – where is everyone? Why are we the only ones here?

He pointblank asked her how many people received emails about the town hall meeting – which was posted on the Associated’s Web site and promoted by e-blasts and other means—to which she responded more than 500.

“That says a lot,” he said, looking around the empty, austere meeting room at the library, brimming with historical artifacts and renderings of Reisterstown and its founders. “I took the time out to come here. I’m a busy person. Where are all those other people? Don’t they care?”

At that point, you could hear the January wind whipping around outside. Just a cold silence.

I know the Associated will be having more of these gatherings in the future. Let’s hope that they get bigger turnouts. Figuring out who we are and where we’re going is nothing to slough off. This is an important conversation to have.

Abe Foxman is in an enviable position. He gets to decide when we should and should not be upset with people – even our fellow Jews – if their true colors happen to come out.

Case in point: the ADL national chief says we shouldn’t hold Henry Kissinger accountable for saying (nearly 40 years ago) that if the Soviet Union throws its Jews into gas chambers, it is “not an American concern.”

Oh really, Abe? Who exactly made you king of the Jews? Aren’t you the guy who freaks out every time someone in Riga or Bangladesh says something remotely anti-Semitic? But we should give ol’ Hank a free ride?

Here’s the deal: recently-released Nixon White House tapes from 1973 have the German-born secretary of state telling his boss – after a meeting with Golda Meir in which she pleads for American pressure on the Soviets to release the Jews there – that U.S. foreign policy does not include freeing Soviet Jews. “If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern,” he is heard saying.

Those are chilling words, especially coming from someone who fled Nazi Germany as a child and likely lost plenty of relatives in the Shoah.

In an e-mail to the JTA Wire Service, Kissinger rebuffed all calls for an apology – natch—and said the comments should be viewed in the context of the times. (Sorry, but when was turning a blind eye to potential genocide OK?) He also notes that Jewish immigration from the Soviet Union rose dramatically during the Nixon/Kissinger years. (Isn’t that sort of like saying, “Well, yeah I said that, but some of my best friends are Soviet Jews”?)

Perhaps just as infuriating, though, is Foxman’s response. First, the ADL issued a statement saying Kissinger’s remarks are a reminder that “even great individuals are flawed.” Also, “Dr. Kissinger’s contributions to the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel have solidly established his legacy as a champion of democracy and as a committed advocate for preserving the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel.”

In an interview with JTA, Foxman said of Kissinger, “He worked in an atmosphere that was intimidatingly anti-Semitic toward Jews. We need to understand the intimidation under which it occurred.”

Hmmm, so because Nixon and others in the nation’s capital back then were less-than-P.C., we should excuse that kind of comment, from a Holocaust survivor of all people?

Sorry, Abe, but I’ve got to agree with Menachem Rosensaft of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants when he says, in an interview with the New York Jewish Week, “Now that Kissinger’s true nature has been exposed, the Jewish community and Jewish institutions must draw the appropriate consequences. We now come to the realization that as far as he was concerned, human rights in general were an irrelevancy. He needs to know that when he is in the company of Jews, we will know precisely who he is and we hold him in contempt.”

History will take care of Kissinger, I’m certain. But why does Abe Foxman get to decide who gets a free pass right now?

“Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast,” wrote Bob Dylan. “Oh but what a shame if all we’ve shared can’t last.”

As I get older, the concept of time passing just knocks me out, more than it ever did before. I find myself thinking about something that once happened to me – it could be as trivial as a song I heard on the radio, or a funny thing a buddy said to me – and I’ll realize it took place 25 or 30 years ago, a time when some of my co-workers weren’t even born yet.

Call it “the Middle Aged Blues.” Everyone gets ‘em, even if they don’t want to own up to it.

Which leads me to something that will be discussed a lot in the days ahead—the 30th anniversary of the first global news event that really gob-smacked me out of my slumber and unconsciousness as a suburban teenager: the assassination of John Lennon. For my generation, that was our Pearl Harbor-JFK-9/11 rolled up in one, with a Beatles anthem or two playing in the background.

Like a lot of things in life, it didn’t make any sense. It didn’t then, it doesn’t now.

And it still hurts.

It was my first real lesson in how unfair, brutal and patently ugly the world can be.

Here’s my rendition of where I was the day the music died. I was 18, in my freshman semester at UMBC. In the Randallstown garden apartment complex I lived in, I had a close friend named Stacey (a male, and a hunky Greek one to boot, with a thick, enviable mustache) who had gone off to college in Tennessee. He made me promise that I’d keep an eye on his longtime girlfriend and first true love, who was also going to UMBC.

She and I got to be good friends during that semester, and many were the nights that I’d listen to her rhapsodize over a beer about Stacey’s virtues and tell me how much she missed him. Frankly, it got a bit exhausting. But one night—around 9:30 on Dec. 8, 1980, to be fairly exact – she called me up, hysterical, crying, shrieking and beyond consolation. Stacey had called her earlier that evening to inform her that he was dumping her, he’d met a little Southern Belle hottie at his school. He was done with her, see ya babe.

Trying to be a good friend, I listened to her wail about how much she loved him and didn’t know if she could actually live without him. In my naivete (or stupidity), I even let her convince me to call him in Tennessee, to try to discern what exactly was going on down there and talk some good sense into him. He was mildly pleasant on the phone but didn’t really want to talk to me about the subject, just saying he’d met someone else and was happy and wished me well. (Turns out he dumped me that night, too.)

So I called back his UMBC girlfriend – strike that, now his ex-girlfriend – and told her I’d failed abysmally in my valiant effort to win him back for her. She commenced crying and whining incessantly again, but at one point a roommate of hers came over to her. “Alan,” she said, “hold on, something’s happened!” I heard them talking in the background and then she returned to the phone, to say, “Oh my God, Jack Lemmon’s been killed.” I was pretty stunned – why would anyone want to kill Jack Lemmon?!—and she said the news just came over the TV. Then, she went back to her weeping jag, for about an hour or two. (Seemed like an eternity.)

Next morning, I woke up, groggy and thinking about the star of “The Odd Couple,” “Some Like It Hot,” “The Apartment” and so many other great films. Like I did every morning, I reflexively turned on the radio, to hear “Strawberry Fields Forever.” Then came on “All You Need Is Love” and “Imagine” and “Give Peace A Chance.”

And then, suddenly, I got it – it wasn’t Jack Lemmon (who’d live for another 21 years, to age 76) who was killed.

It was John Lennon.

For me and my buddies back then, John was at the forefront of the generation we felt we’d missed out on and lived vicariously through. We felt cheated – born too damned late. We knew he’d just made a comeback album and was taking care of his kid for the last few years, a bit of a recluse while Yoko took care of the bills. But being big Beatles fans, he was never, ever far from our thoughts. We didn’t really care about New Wave or disco or any of that stuff. We knew better. We knew the good stuff – the stuff with some meaning, vitality and purpose—came before us.

That morning, driving to school, I actually saw people crying in their cars while on the highways. I knew they were listening to the same songs and news reports on the radio that I was hearing. It seemed like the whole world was coming unhinged, or at least it did in my feeble 18-year-old brain.

It didn’t make any sense and never will. I wanted someone to wake me up and tell me it was all a bad dream.

I still do.

Naturally, all of my teachers mentioned it that day during classes. I remember my Introduction to Theater teacher, Xerxes Mehta, a cousin of the great Indian conductor Zubin Mehta, saying to us, “Today is a very difficult day for artists everywhere. When something can happen to someone like John Lennon … what kind of world are we living in?”

And I recall coming home after school and driving directly to my friend Chris’ apartment building. He was the person who largely turned me on to the Beatles in my early teens (probably because he had about 16 older siblings and step-siblings), and he was the biggest Fab Four fan I knew. When I pulled up to the building, I spotted his old, black jalopy station wagon covered in signs with John’s photo – “Give Peace A Chance,” “John Lennon: 1940-1980,” “We Love You, John,” “All You Need Is Love.”

When he opened his apartment door, Chris looked at me woefully and could barely talk. He looked spent, like someone who was sitting shiva (even though he’s Catholic) and barely gestured for me to come in. We largely sat in silence, trying to make sense of it all in some way, lost in our thoughts. Maybe we were a bit melodramatic or maudlin in retrospect, but we knew the world would never be the same.

An hour or two later, I went home and saw my dad, who unbeknownst to me would die suddenly two years later, almost to the day. It was actually the day after his 58th birthday, but he was never one much for birthdays. I tried to explain to him why I was so distraught about John’s murder, but I don’t think he really got it. He didn’t know from Beatles. They were just bubblegum to him. He was a World War II vet and a hardworking electrician who didn’t really care about celebrities and pop culture. To him, it was silliness. He reminded me that I never actually met John Lennon.

He did, however, note that Mae West had died a couple of weeks earlier. “Who cares?” I snapped at him. “She was just an old lady. She didn’t move or inspire a generation. This was someone who got killed for no reason, a really talented person who changed the way people think, and really gave a damn about doing something to change this world. He was someone who worked so hard for peace and wound up getting shot in the back, just the Kennedys and Dr. King.”

When my rant was over, my father stared at me for a while. I think he was surprised by my passion and ardor. He knew this meant a lot to me. I could see the wheels turning in his head, trying to figure out what to say next.

“Well, that all may be true. No one deserves to get killed like your guy did,” he said, wearing a solemn expression. “But you should know that Mae West was built like a brick s—-house.”

That was my day when John Lennon died. Somehow, with his perverse and quirky sense of humor, I think John would’ve liked it.

But can it really be 30 years? Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast.

When I first walked into the vestibule at Weinberg Village in Owings Mills last week, I spotted Rae Rossen sitting alone in the lobby, waiting for me, and thought to myself, “That can’t be her. She certainly doesn’t look dead.”

Then, I shook Rae’s warm hand and said, “You look great, Rae, considering …” That’s just my morbid sense of humor, but Rae actually thought I was referring to the fact that she looks far younger than her 81 years. “Oh, thank you,” she said, seemingly a little embarrassed and rubbing the smooth skin on her face, “I get it from my mother, alav hasholom.”

As Monica Lopossay, the photographer for my cover story this week on Rae, said to me, “If there is anyone in this world who is absolutely not dead and full of life, it’s Rae Rossen.”

Monica’s right. I wish I had as much energy and joie de vivre as this lady. When Rae’s not cracking jokes or telling amazing anecdotes about her life (such as working at Baltimore Hebrew College for the one-and-only Dr. Louis L. Kaplan), she’s sharing family stories or happenings (such as her granddaughter sneaking into a photo recently with President Obama – shhh, don’t tell the Secret Service).

There are sad things, too, like losing her beloved husband, Harry, in 2007 and her battle with breast cancer in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. And of course, like any octogenarian, she has her aches and pains.

But Rae – who with Harry and local bon vivant Jeffrey Amdur used to run a society for the preservation of Millard Fillmore’s legacy, and raised money for good causes with their quirky homage to the 13th president – has a way of looking at life upside down and sideways, and always coming up smiling.

It must be the result of growing up during the Great Depression in East Baltimore. That’s a generation that knew how to get through just about anything.

Nonetheless, the Social Security Administration, in its infinite wisdom, last August informed the unsinkable Miss R that she was dead and gone. No more monthly SSA benefits. As if that wasn’t bad enough, her Medicare, prescription plan benefits, and credit and debit cards were nullified and terminated. Ciao!

It was all the result of a “key error.” In other words, someone at Social Security typed in the wrong number for someone who had recently died and Rae’s SSA number came up.

The worst part of it, however, was the brick wall that Rae constantly ran into for well over two months when trying to rectify the situation with Social Security, just to let ‘em know that she was still among the living and kicking. Agent after agent – that is, when she could actually get an agent after enduring countless telephone answering systems – merely placated her, telling her to be patient, and coming off as quite indifferent and even irked. Or they gave her runarounds, telling her to call other offices and departments.

It all reminded me of that old “M*A*S*H” episode (why do I always wind up referencing old sitcoms or Springsteen songs?) when Hawkeye is informed by the Army that he is deceased. He tries and tries to work through the military’s pretzel logic and red-tape labyrinth, and at one point even gives up and decides to take advantage of the situation and go home. (Of course, noble creature that he is, he stays with the 4077th because he knows he has to be there for the wounded troops. Me? I’d be headed for the Greek Isles.)

But there was nowhere for Rae to run, nowhere to turn. She was stuck in a governmental Bermuda Triangle and could do nothing other than keep soldiering on, although she admits that there were times when she thought the bureaucratic screw-up might outlive her (or even knock her off, with all the stress). I can’t imagine all the anxiety she endured, all those days of calling the SSA in sheer exercises of futility, getting to the point where all she could do was laugh about it so she wouldn’t cry.

At one point, because of all the frustration, she didn’t even want to leave her apartment and shirked her beloved volunteering chores for a couple of days.

Who needs that kind of stress at 81 – or at any age?!

Natch, the politicians were useless. She approached the offices of the governor and a congressman, but didn’t get too far. She tried filing an official complaint with the SSA, but never heard from them (well, until this week, but more about that in a moment).

After I met with Rae for a couple of hours and heard all that she’d gone through, I called the SSA media relations troubleshooter in Philly, to discuss the whole sordid mess. Please believe me, I’m not out to pat myself on the back. There are enough journalists out there who do that sort of thing quite well. Insecure tribe that we are, we’re pretty good at wrapping ourselves in the banner of self-congratulations.

But an hour after my inquiry, Rae told me she received a call from an SSA representative, apologizing – yes, apologizing—and saying the matter was all straightened out. Oh, and a check was in the mail, to compensate for all of Rae’s benefits that were withheld.

That’s all great, but what if Rae hadn’t just sold her house in Randallstown last year? She admits that she never would’ve been able to pay her rent during this period and probably would be bunking with her son.

You’ve got to wonder, when talking to this sweet, gentle older lady with a fine, almost childlike sense of humor and nary a curmudgeonly bone in her body, didn’t any of these SSA agents ever think to themselves, “Wow, this could have been my mom or grandma going through this?” Don’t they care at all? Has empathy completely vanished from American life? Are we all that immune to each other’s problems? Have we stopped caring completely?

These are government bureaucrats. They work for us and are handling our money. And yet they treat us like they’re doing us a favor by merely talking to us on a telephone, much less helping us with our problems (some of which are caused by them, by the way).

Why did it take a quick call from a dorky reporter to get the ball rolling? I’m glad I was able to help Rae, it’s very gratifying, but you’ve got to wonder why it took me only a few minutes to do what Rae was attempting to take care of for more than two months. After all, she’s their constituent on this matter, not me.

Rae, however, wasn’t surprised. After all, she’s seen a lot in her lifetime. “Boy do they jump if they think their reputation is going to be marred,” she said to me.

The scary thing is that there are other Rae Rossens out there. And I strongly suspect there will be more, especially with Social Security’s murky future.

The bottom line is, we all deserve better.

I recently went on a bus tour of Druid Hill Park and its once-Jewish ‘hoods that was presented by the Jewish Museum of Maryland. With my old friend Barry Kessler, the museum’s former curator, leading the tour, you knew you were going to learn a lot. Barry has an encyclopedic mind.

And since there were a lot of senior citizens who grew up in the Druid Hill Park area (or remember going there to visit friends and family) onboard, you knew there were going to be a lot of firsthand recollections of that neighborhood’s golden age. Not a mousy generation.

So the tour was the perfect mix of scholarship (Barry) and folksy remembrances and anecdotes.

But what was missing – like at so many other Jewish gatherings – were young people. Granted, the tour was on a Wednesday morning, so most people under 30 are either in school or at work. But I think it’s fair to say that a nostalgic journey through Eutaw Place and such would not attract a lot of Gen-Xers or Millennial types even on a weekend afternoon.

Which is their loss. Because more than anybody else, it’s young people who should’ve been on this tour and would’ve benefited.

Why? Well for one thing, it goes without saying that the only way you can properly understand where you and your community are coming from is to know where you’ve been. On this tour, they would’ve seen that we fled some amazing, gorgeous areas that brimmed with style, character and grace, a world that few have us have ever really lived in.

But a tour like this one also makes you appreciate how important the city’s health is to all of us. After all, if the “Great Recession” has taught us anything, it’s how interconnected we all are – socially, culturally, economically, politically, etc. There really are no islands, so if you hear on the news about a murder “down” in Reservoir Hill, you’re only deluding yourself by saying you’re still safe in Pikesville and Owings Mills, that “that place” is so far away. We’re all connected. (Sorry to be so Pollyannaish, but it’s true.)

That’s something people who lived in the city during Baltimore Jewry’s golden age understood well. And that’s something we’ve lost track of, even with all of our cell phones, Twittering, emailing and Facebooking that seem to enhance our abilities to contact each other but thwarts anything resembling actual communication.

Instead of happy hours at bars, why don’t the community’s organizational young adult divisions take tours of East Baltimore and learn about what a thriving community really looked like? Why aren’t we taking our day school and religious school students on tours through the city’s onetime Jewish centers, to understand what came before and what could (to a certain fashion) be again?

The whole time I was on the bus, I kept wishing that my own children were with me, hearing the stories and learning the specific histories from Barry. They could’ve learned a thing or two, probably a lot more than they were learning in school that day.

The older folks on the tour, they didn’t need to learn about where Wagner & Wagner’s or Manheimer’s Pharmacy were. They already know. They know how special it all was. They didn’t need to learn about the 1948 civil rights action at Druid Hill Park when Jewish and black tennis players got arrested for playing together on clay courts. They already know.

After all, they lived it

But we didn’t.

The Holocaust, at least in my mind, never really goes away. Even if you’re not a survivor or the relative of someone who went through that hellish time, it seems like you can never truly escape the pain and knowledge of what human beings can do to each other. If you’re only merely somewhat of a knowledgeable Jew, it still has to inform virtually every aspect of your life and viewpoint.

And that’s probably good (as long as it doesn’t border on all-out paranoia or pathological anger). Needless to say, we should never forget. But at the same time, too many people cavalierly invoke the Holocaust for their own agendas, identities and viewpoints, usually in manners that are highly offensive to the remaining survivors, their families and the memory of those who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Since last Tuesday night’s elections, my colleagues and I have been approached by several people interested in something I reported at the campaign party headquarters of Sherrie Becker, the candidate for the 2nd District councilmanic seat for Baltimore County. (By the way, Ms. Becker, who lost to Vicki Almond, never had anything whatsoever to do with any comments regarding the Holocaust.)

As I reported in my article last week, one of Ms. Becker’s supporters, Paul Hollinger, was highly agitated and upset with the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES for not endorsing his candidate (or any Jewish county candidates). He called me over to his table and in forceful, angry tones (and with plenty of choice language), he said the JT should have endorsed Ms. Becker because she is a) Jewish and b) the most qualified candidate in the race. (FYI, Ms. Almond is not Jewish.)

He ranted for quite a while, seemingly wanting to drag me into a heated debate about the topic, and he didn’t seem satisfied with any response I offered. I stayed calm but, frankly, after a while I just walked away. I figured I had let him vent and that was enough.

But later in the evening, from across the room, he pointed me out to his wife, former state Sen. Paula Hollinger, and said something threatening and offensive about me that I won’t repeat here. (Let’s just say that, anatomically speaking, it would be quite a trick to pull off.)

When I confronted him and in no uncertain terms pointed out that his behavior did not reflect well on Ms. Becker or her supporters, he cooled his jets a bit and retreated to his earlier criticism of the JT.

But then he came up with a zinger – that the JT’s “spinelessness” in the 2nd District race was “just like” the international media’s failure to report the atrocities of the Holocaust and prevent the annihilation of six million Jews.

I must admit, I had to catch my breath for a moment when he uttered that one. I might’ve even chuckled, out of disbelief. I didn’t mention that I have a close family member who survived the Holocaust. I simply said something to the effect of, “Oh, so now you’re comparing something like this to something like the Holocaust?” and he reiterated his comment. Everyone at his table, including his wife, hung their heads and said nothing, seemingly quite ashamed.

I wasn’t totally shocked when I heard this. After all, it seems like people conveniently bring up the Holocaust all the time for just about every real or perceived debacle, fiasco, slight or obstacle. It’s a knee-jerk, cowardly reaction that comes up way too often in our society when someone does or says something that you don’t happen to agree with.

And it’s obscene and it’s something we all need to stop doing. As my friend Rubin Sztajer, a survivor of five concentration camps, has said to me on multiple occasions, “Anyone who didn’t go through it has no right to speak about it or use it in a false fashion. Only we, the survivors, know what it was really like—and if you did, you’d know that it was like nothing else.”

I thought I knew vintage Jewish Baltimore pretty well. And being a geeky architecture buff since my teens, I was fairly confident that I’d seen just about every building, structure, edifice and shotgun shack in B-more that had some kind of tangential Jewish connection.

But when someone recently mentioned to me the Hebrew Orphan Asylum and efforts to preserve this incredible building in West Baltimore, I must admit I was clueless.

The 134-year-old building, which has been owned by Coppin State University since 2003, is located at 2700 Rayner Avenue in the Mosher-Greater Rosemont neighborhoods. It actually hasn’t been a Jewish institution since 1923, when the asylum merged with the Betsy Levy Home orphanage and moved to West Belvedere Avenue (at the current site of the Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital).

The structure – which has been vacant since ’89—became the West Baltimore General Hospital and later the Lutheran Hospital of Maryland (where two of my closest cousins were born in the early ‘70s, as I was informed recently by my mother).

The asylum is now the focus of a grassroots campaign for a national competition called the “This Place Matters Community Challenge.” The competition, sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will have people from across the nation voting online to support historic buildings that exist within their communities. The project receiving the most votes by this Wednesday, Sept. 15, will be awarded a $25,000 grant.

The Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Coppin Heights Community Development Corp., and the groups Preservation Maryland and Baltimore Heritage Inc. are working closely with the university on the grant project.

Baltimore Heritage is also spearheading a project with Coppin to have the building listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

After reading up on the asylum, I found myself last week driving down West Lafayette Street, past all of the boarded-up houses, bodegas, storefront churches and corner taverns, to check out the orphanage building.

It is an amazing facility – a red-brick Victorian Romanesque structure with battlements, turrets and intricate cornice resembling a fortress. With merely a sliver of imagination, you can see indigent youngsters in the late 19th and early 20th century running around the lawns and through the hallways, like a scene out of “Oliver!”

But I have to confess, I didn’t get out of my car to look around the building (which is quite dilapidated and for the most part boarded-up). Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like a wise idea to poke around too much in this neighborhood (and I was already getting some weird stares from a few guys on the street).

Of course, part of the reason why Baltimore Heritage and the other groups are working so hard to restore the asylum – besides to return the building to its former grandeur – is to help spark a socio-economic renaissance in that community. And that’s certainly a worthy endeavor.

It’s going to take more than $25,000 to restore this building; it’ll take millions. But it is a start, and West Baltimore could use a new beginning. Just take a drive down West Lafayette Street sometime and you’ll see what I mean.

For information about the preservation campaign or to vote for the asylum, visit mypreservationnation.org. The Facebook page for the campaign is facebook.com/baltimoreheritage.

Back when he was the spiritual leader of Shaarei Zion Synagogue (today it’s Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion) in Upper Park Heights, Rabbi Joshua Shapiro – who passed away earlier this week—and I spoke by phone a few times. We never actually met, as far as I can recall, but I interviewed him on the phone for a few matters that now escape me.

Rabbi Shapiro was always very cordial to me, but one time I must’ve caught him on a bad day or maybe the issue I was calling about touched a nerve. The rabbi got rather snippy with me and eventually simply hung up the phone.

I was a bit surprised, but reporters get used to people getting brusque with them. After all, we’re often parachuting into their lives and calling about highly sensitive or personal matters that people would sometimes prefer not discussing in a public forum.

Anyway, the phone rang the next day and it was Rabbi Shapiro. “Mr. Feiler, I was a bit rude with you yesterday and I felt bad about it,” he said. “I apologize. I hope you’ll forgive me.” I was absolutely stunned since, frankly, that kind of thing doesn’t happen a lot. I told him not to worry about it and that I understood completely and appreciated the call.

But I’ve never forgotten that exchange because, let’s face it, how many of us have the inner strength, humility and capacity to recognize when we’ve screwed up, much less call the person we’ve wronged and apologize? That’s a rare quality. (As Elton John once sang, sorry seems to be the hardest word.)

Unfortunately, I never got to know Rabbi Shapiro well, but I’ve never forgotten his unique ability to simply say mea culpa. May his memory always be a blessing for his family and friends, and as we enter the High Holiday season may his example always stay with us and serve as a lesson of how to deal with each other.

The recent news that Ian Jacob Baron, the 22-year-old Montgomery County man accused of recently desecrating B’nai Shalom Synagogue in Olney, was raised by adoptive Jewish parents shocked me … and yet didn’t shock me.

You may recall that not so long ago, in October of 2008, we had a somewhat similar case here in “Charm City.”

Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and Beth Tfiloh Synagogue were also hit by anti-Semitic vandalism and graffiti, during the High Holiday season no less. Their lawn signs for the Associated campaign were defaced. And it turned out that the perpetrators were young men of reportedly Jewish backgrounds, according to the police.

Of course, the two cases are quite different. Baron described himself to police as a neo-Nazi who is active in the white supremacist movement.

I’m not excusing them but the two young adults and 17-year-old in the BHC/Beth Tfiloh case were basically typical American teenagers doing something very stupid and wrong (and unlawful) but not necessarily intentionally ideological, according to my sources.

Still, you have to wonder, what is inspiring a few – and I stress a few – Jewish kids to feel such antipathy and anger toward the Jewish community that they would go to such lengths of sheer hatred?

Where does this well of unleashed, uncontrolled fury come from?

When I wrote the BHC/Beth Tfiloh article in 2008, I posed that question to Beth Tfiloh’s Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg. “It does not surprise me,” he said of the perpetrators’ Jewishness. “Acts of teenage rebellion take on many forms.”

Art Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, told WBAL-TV at the time that the suspects might be “self-hating Jews. … Hopefully, that’s not the case in this instance, but it could be.”

And BHC’s Rabbi Andy Busch would only say to me, “I wouldn’t pretend to guess the motivations.”

Look, I still can remember being young and angry. But not to the point where I’d get a can of paint and spray swastikas on a synagogue or throw coins on a shul’s stoop to signify Jewish greed.

What’s going on here? Where does this hatred come from within our own ranks? What can we do about it?

I drove into work this morning listening to John Lennon’s gorgeous, ethereal “Across The Universe,” and thought of Josh Isaac.

“Pools of sorrow, waves of joy/are drifting through my open mind/Possessing and caressing me …”

Josh, who passed away yesterday only a short time after his 38th birthday, refused to go quietly into the night or wallow in pools of sorrow. A former Mount Washington resident who returned to his hometown of Seattle several years ago, Josh was determined to document his tragic journey with cancer up until the end, if for no other reason than to serve as a testament to life and perseverance for his three young children and wife, Kim.

Many of us were constantly moved and touched by his daily blogs (often written from medical facilities), as well as his documentary, “My Left Hand,” which made its East Coast premiere in Westminster late last June.

“Images of broken light which/dance before me like a million eyes/That call me on and on/across the universe …”

To my regret, I didn’t personally know Josh very well. My wife and I had the Isaacs over for dinner one summer Saturday night in the mid-‘90s, and I met him another time when he freelanced for the Jewish Times. He was friendly, likeable, handsome, creative, bright and funny. He had a light attached to him, a radiant quality that you sometimes detect in certain people. You didn’t forget him.

I didn’t really communicate with Josh again until seven weeks ago when I wrote an article about “My Left Hand” being shown here. At the time, he was recovering at a rehabilitation facility near Seattle from a bout with pneumonia.

In response to my question about why he decided to make such a personal documentary and statement about his health struggles, Josh was characteristically upbeat and inspirational. He said he wanted people to always remember that “life is worth celebrating, and [when] you go through this it only increases your love for family and friends and time on this planet. So I hope I help people by showing the challenges of my life to see the beauty in theirs.”

If only those of us who are not as wise and brave as Josh could and would always remember that.

But Josh, I think you accomplished your mission. And thank you.

May your memory always be a blessing and a source of great strength for your family and friends.

”Sounds of laughter shades of life/are ringing through my open ears/exciting and inviting me/Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns/It calls me on and on across the universe ... ”

I recently met up with an old friend for a beer. This is someone I’ve known since the age of 4, so he and I have some mileage together. I’ve also known his family for many years.

Before I could barely sit down on the barstool, he grabbed my arm and said, “Hey, I’ve got to tell you something. My little brother is getting baptized—or christened, or whatever you call it – in a couple of weeks.”

It took a few moments for the information to sink in for me, since these folks are Jewish. Nominally Jewish, but still Jewish.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

My friend laughed and said, “Yep, he’s gone goy.”

He went on to explain that his brother – who is in his mid-40s and was brought up with no religious education, background or observances (other than bagels and lox) – had been hospitalized for a few days about a year ago. While there, a pleasant couple representing a Christian group dropped by, offered some friendly, soothing, encouraging words, and suggested that he drop by their church sometime, just to check it out.

“That’s more than anything any Jews ever did for me!” the brother told my buddy.

He started going to their services or study sessions, enjoyed the camaraderie and spiritual ambience, and after a while wanted to sign up.

Hence, the upcoming baptism.

I think my friend expected me to literally fall off my barstool (and maybe plunge a plastic stirrer into my heart) when he offered his news. After all, you don’t hear about this kind of thing happening in Baltimore’s Jewish “shtetl” too often, right? And since I work at a Jewish newspaper, he said he figured I’m “all Jew, through and through,” and would be absolutely blindsided.

But for some reason, I wasn’t really all that surprised.

Besides the fact that Judaism was never really part of this family’s DNA, I think this fellow found something with this church group he obviously never experienced in the Jewish community – some warmth, caring, a search for the sacred and spiritual, intimacy, and perhaps a lack of focus on all things of a monetary value.

Of course, he may not have been looking in the right places in the Jewish community. We certainly have groups and institutions that provide those comforts and accoutrements.

But I hear this from unaffiliated—and affiliated—Jews over and over and over again: “All they care about in the Jewish community is getting your money,” “It’s all about who’s the best Jew,” “Being a good person doesn’t seem to count,” “Too many labels and divisions,” “It’s so boring,” “Shul just seems to be a big fashion show,” “It’s all a power/ego game.”

Let’s face it, certainly if one goes to most mega-shuls, that’s pretty much what they’ll find. We seem to be pretty good at being what a lot of people don’t want for their religious needs. Of course, when I tell people in the community that I hear these views from the unaffiliated, they usually sneer and say it’s just a bunch of kvetching.

In the midst of all the chest-thumping about how great we are – raising this much money for the building campaigns, getting new members, etc.—we’re turning off generations of people in droves.

Or some just stick around and go through the motions.

I tried to comfort my friend by reminding him that his brother is an adult and at least now has some kind of faith system to guide him. “We all need something to get through it all,” I told him. “Something was obviously missing from his life.”

But in my heart of hearts, I can’t help but wonder when the Jewish community is going to wake up and realize that to attract Jews and keep them, more spiritual nourishment and communal warmth need to be part of the package. The rest of it – the trappings, the mindsets, the culture—is just repelling folks.

How many more baptisms will it take?

When my father was a Merchant Marine in the early ‘50s, one of his fellow seamen – a non-Jew—asked him a question regarding Israel. At that point, the state was only a few years old, born out of the ashes of the Holocaust, surrounded by belligerent neighbors, and absorbing millions of Jews from Europe and the Arab lands. Yet no one was starving or living in the same kind of indescribable squalor as seen in Third World nations, the sailor said.

“How does Israel do it?” he asked earnestly, to which my father replied, “Simple – Jews take care of their own.”

Among friends and foes, Jews are known for doing just that – taking care of their own. Others cite it in pressing for taking care of the needy in their own communities. But an article I read over the weekend penned by a Tribune Newspapers writer made me wonder if our reputation for always helping our brothers and sisters isn’t somewhat overblown at times.

The story was about a housing shelter in Haifa that serves Holocaust survivors. The article chronicles how these elderly people, who survived the worst horrors imaginable, now live in relative poverty and isolation.

“We helped found the state of Israel and built it. They should make our final years better,” said one of the residents, Miryam Kremin, 88, a Polish ghetto survivor.

The article went on to say that an estimated 70,000 survivors in Israel can’t make ends meet and often go to soup kitchens or welfare agencies for help. The aid that some survivors receive in German reparations, administered by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, just isn’t cutting it as these survivors get further into their “golden years” and require more health treatments and assistance. (Others get nothing because they can’t prove they are really survivors.)

The Israeli government says it’s working to improve services for survivors, and doled out $700 million this year for 87,000 survivors.

But somehow, too many Holocaust survivors in Israel – and in the United States and elsewhere – are falling through the cracks.

Is the organized American Jewish community – which provides so much assistance to Jews here and all around the world – doing enough to help survivors in their final years? The survivors I know in town tell me, unequivocally, no. And judging by what I’ve read about this shelter in Haifa, I tend to think they’re right.

Dollars are tight, no doubt about it. Times are tough. But these people only have a few more years, and have endured the kind of hell we can’t even begin to imagine. Isn’t it incumbent upon Jews, as my father put it more than a half-century ago, to “take care of their own”?

Last week, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan revealed a fairly well-known “family secret” to the world – that Jews usually spend their time off every Christmas Day chowing down on chow mein, munching on moo goo gai pan, gobbling up General Tso’s chicken and savoring similar delicacies in Chinese restaurants and carry-outs across this greasy galaxy.

Cantonese? Szechuan? Hunan? Fujian? Shandong?

They all sound good.

Chopsticks? Silverware? With our nimble little fingers?

We don’t care. Just bring it on.

Perhaps some folks in the deepest hollows of West Virginia or the furthest reaches of the Philippines jungle brush have never heard of this phenomenon, but most of us chuckled when we heard about Ms. Kagan’s remarks to the Senate committee reviewing her nomination. After all, it’s a popular in-joke that we all like to reference every now and then, just like catching a mindless flick on X-mas. (“What else is there to do when you’re Jewish?”)

But in my family, we’ve usually gone on our annual Yuletide pilgrimages to Greek bistros, which like their Chinese counterparts tend to be open on the day that the world observes the birth of, well, you-know-who. (I believe that’s because some Greeks celebrate Christmas on January 6, the Feast of Epiphany. Or maybe they’re simply astute businesspeople who know that Jews will be eating out in droves that day.)

Perhaps the question shouldn’t have been how Ms. Kagan spent last Christmas but how Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), her interrogator, spent Chanukah last year? Did he get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from spinning a dreidel too many times? Did he get a nasty stomach ache from noshing on so many oily latkes?

And how did those Chinese and Greek restaurateurs fare during the Festival of Lights? Did they burn their fingertips lighting the menorah all those days? Did they grow hoarse from singing “Ma’oz Tzur” so many times?

Maybe the real question is why do Lindsey Graham or any other members of the United States Senate really care how or where Elena Kagan spent Christmas last year, even if it was the day on which an act of terrorism was planned (and thankfully foiled)?

Should Ms. Kagan have darted out of Wong’s Chinese Restaurant on 86th Street, drove several hundred miles to Detroit’s airport, and personally tackled and arrested the 23-year-old Nigerian “underwear bomber”?

Was there a point or purpose to Mr. Graham’s odd query? Not to sound too conspiratorial or paranoid, but what did the good senator really want to know? That Ms. Kagan is Jewish (which is no secret at all) and doesn’t spend much time in church or caroling on Christmas as a result?

That she doesn’t know all of the words to all of the stanzas of “Silent Night”? Is he looking to share a steaming plate of vegetable egg foo young with her at David Chu’s next Christmas Day?

Maybe I’ll find the answers to these questions someday on a little slip of paper in a fortune cookie.

Yeshivat Rambam, Bnos Yisroel to trade campuses.

Phil Jacobs and Alan H. Feiler
July 2, 2010

When Abba Poliakoff could take a breather late Wednesday night, June 30, after hours of phone calls and meetings, he still had two more phone calls.

In one conversation he’ll always remember, Mr. Poliakoff learned from his son that he had just become a grandfather for the first time.

While it doesn’t get much better than that, the second call with Rabbi Hershel Lutch, Yeshivat Rambam’s executive director, came very close.
Rabbi Lutch congratulated Mr. Poliakoff on becoming the “grandfather” of 404 Rambam students as well. That was what it was like in the early hours of Mr. Poliakoff’s new role as president of Rambam.

He is helping watch over and work out one of this community’s most beneficial exchanges.

Yeshivat Rambam and Bnos Yisroel will be switching buildings. The two beloved educational facilities could be on the verge of cementing a bright future for the two day schools. The schools are a short drive from each other on Park Heights Avenue.

Yeshivat Rambam, which has of late relied on the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore for fiscal help and management advice, will be able to move its main campus to the Bnos campus, the former Beth Jacob Congregation. It is located across the street from the Park Heights Jewish Community Center.

Bnos is located at 5713 Park Heights Ave. just blocks south of Yeshivat Rambam’s 6300 Park Heights Ave. location.
The beauty of this is that the Rambam boys are already housed at the JCC. This will bring the two campuses that much closer together.
Bnos, which has seen itself grow into kindergarten through high school with some 500 students, is in a position of needing space to accommodate its growth.

On June 28, Rambam’s board of directors considered a letter of intent to move forward toward a contract with Bnos. The schools would stay in their current locations through the upcoming academic year.

“Now is the time to get reinvigorated and to reach high standards,” Mr. Poliakoff said. “Rambam is vitally important to the community. It plays a critical role, educating children on the derech [path] of Torah Umadah

.”