FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)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… read more
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Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/26/12 at 02:34 PM
Parched For Parchment
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/02/12 at 10:46 AM
Things Change
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/06/12 at 11:12 AM
True Relations
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/04/12 at 09:54 AM
Remembering Mike Wallace
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/09/12 at 09:06 AM
Walkin’ On Eggshells
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 –… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/05/12 at 02:53 PM
Miss Jeanne’s JT
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/22/12 at 03:37 PM
Up Where We Belong
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/13/12 at 02:37 PM
A Missing Link
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/08/12 at 12:09 PM
Mormon Mischief
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/29/12 at 01:41 PM
Misplaced Loyalty
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 –… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/06/12 at 12:16 PM
Not So Civil
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/19/12 at 11:42 AM
Don’t Get Me Started
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/05/12 at 10:07 AM
Learning From Old Guys
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/21/11 at 09:21 AM
The Razor’s Edge
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/16/11 at 12:17 PM
The Right Note
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/01/11 at 11:23 AM
A Sad Task
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/17/11 at 10:55 AM
Searching For Trembling Knees
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.… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/25/11 at 11:57 AM
Out Of Bounds?
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/06/11 at 03:39 PM
A Sacred Mission
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/27/11 at 10:19 AM
Another Anniversary
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/13/11 at 03:32 PM
Ghostly Voices
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/07/11 at 12:40 PM
A Painful Legacy
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/01/11 at 02:43 PM
Beyond Answers
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/15/11 at 08:23 AM
Green & Sustenance
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/13/11 at 08:43 AM
A Father-In-Law’s Lessons
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/13/11 at 09:29 AM
A Natural Day
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.… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/02/11 at 09:11 AM
Copping Out
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/11/11 at 01:55 PM
The Last Outpost
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/23/11 at 12:45 PM
Giving Thanks
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/10/11 at 12:36 PM
The Fire This Time
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/17/11 at 11:40 AM
A Smile Like No Other
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/09/11 at 03:36 PM
Hamming It Up
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/28/11 at 02:17 PM
A Cold Silence
“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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/07/11 at 11:27 AM
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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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/14/10 at 06:22 PM
Still Trying To Imagine
“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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/30/10 at 12:34 PM
Rae Of Hope?
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/11/10 at 05:05 PM
Rearview Mirror
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,… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/29/10 at 09:45 AM
Speaking Falsely
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.… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/21/10 at 12:58 PM
Edifice Complex
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/13/10 at 09:30 AM
Remembering Rabbi Joshua Shapiro
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/17/10 at 08:27 AM
Close To Home
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/06/10 at 12:18 PM
Broken Light
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/03/10 at 09:05 AM
Baptisms Of Fire
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/15/10 at 01:13 PM
Falling Through The Cracks
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/12/10 at 09:25 AM
Peking Around For Answers
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/06/10 at 01:24 PM
Yeshivat Rambam, Bnos Yisroel to trade campuses.
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… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/02/10 at 03:36 PM
Remembering Jerry Adler
Weird how life works. A few months ago, the Baltimore-born harmonica virtuoso Jerry Adler crossed my mind, so I emailed him, saying I hoped he was doing well. Don’t ask me why I happened to think of him. But I never heard back. I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr. Adler, via telephone, nearly four years ago, on the occasion of the publication of his memoirs, “Living From Hand To Mouth.” He was an absolutely delightful interview—lively, funny, classy, highly quotable and warm. He was impressed that I had interviewed his more famous brother, Larry, in the late ‘90s, and we schmoozed for a while about the virtues of the harmonica (aka, the Mississippi Sax, tin sandwich, gob iron, etc.). Recently, I heard (belatedly) that Mr. Adler passed away in March of prostate cancer, at age 91, in Sarasota,… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/22/10 at 03:14 PM
A Word Of Thanks
Sometimes, it does the conscience good to say thank you to someone who helped you along your journey. Even if it’s by accident and almost three decades overdue. But I’ve always run a little late. Let me explain. A few months ago, I wrote a cover story for the Jewish Times on the UMBC chess team, which is considered the finest college chess team on the entire planet. Of course, as an alumnus of UMBC, I was quite proud to write about the team, even though I know virtually nothing about chess. And naturally, walking around the campus during my reporting of the story set off major flashbacks and a supreme sense of shock about the way my old school has changed. At one point, I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski III, UMBC’s dynamic president… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/17/10 at 09:14 AM
Peace, Love & Understanding?
Elvis Costello says he won’t perform in Israel anymore. Should we care? What do we do when some of our favorite performers voice opinions about the Middle East that are not necessarily to our liking? (I must admit, this would’ve been a lot tougher on me if it’d been Springsteen.) Maybe you haven’t heard but Elvis recently announced he was canceling his scheduled performances in Tel Aviv next month. “One lives in hope that music is more than mere noise, filling up idle time, whether intending to elate or lament,” he wrote on his Web site. “Then there are occasions when merely having your name added to a concert schedule may be interpreted as a political act that resonates more than anything that might be sung and it may be assumed that one has no mind for the suffering… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/20/10 at 11:27 AM
Little Cold Wars
Yesterday, my wife called me at work. Normally, in the crush of deadlines, she knows better. But this was different. “Your cousin from Long Island left a message at home,” she said. “Sounds like you should call her back.” I immediately called back my cousin, who is named after the same person as I am (our grandfather) and to whom I have not spoken in about 17 years. She was calling to inform me that her mother—my 85-year-old ailing aunt—had passed away suddenly. The funeral was held only a few hours after her passing, so I was too late to attend. I hadn’t talked to my aunt in about five or six years, and hadn’t seen her since the early ‘90s. My cousin, who is an Orthodox Jew, wailed over the phone lines. She and her sister no longer… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/05/10 at 10:35 AM
Woman Of Valor
I’ve known Jael Freedman now for about four years. I’ve written a couple of articles about her. She is funny, smart, adorable, intuitive, immensely and intensely creative, and incredibly compassionate and empathetic. Oh, and one more thing—this lady has guts. Jael called me today to let me know she is donating a kidney to her nephew, Joshua Wood, 20, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, and suffers from Goodpastures Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease that affects the lungs and kidneys. “I decided I had to do it,” Jael said. “I don’t know what the outcome will be. I just keep thinking, `I cannot not do this.’ The feeling was so strong. This is his life we’re talking about here.” Jael didn’t make this decision lightly. She is a 39-year-old single mother of two daughters who works as a nanny, personal… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/21/10 at 03:38 PM
Rubin’s Wrath
I’ve known Rubin Sztajer now for 20 years, and one thing I know for sure about him is that he always shoots from the hip. Even if it bothers people in the Jewish community. When it comes to matters regarding the Holocaust, I trust Rubin’s gut. He is, after all, a survivor himself. Rubin—who speaks about his time during the Holocaust to 60-80 local schools each year—sees something in the Jewish community today that he feels is quite troublesome and painful. He and his family were in attendance at last Sunday night’s community Holocaust Remembrance Day observance at Chizuk Amuno Congregation. “If I, of all people, don’t go,” he says, “how can I blame others for not going?” But Rubin, like many of us, has seen the number of people attending Yom HaShoah programs dwindle considerably over the years.… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/12/10 at 11:36 AM
Welcome Home
A certain amount of skepticism can always be a useful tool, we’re all taught when coming up in the journalism field. “Never lose it,” a journalism teacher once told me. Avoid sentimentality or emotionalism. Don’t allow yourself to get snowballed by nostalgia and maudlin talk or ideas. Keep your antennae up. You know, all that hard-boiled reporter stuff. But sometimes, something gets you right in the kishkes when you cover an event and the emotion just leaves a large lump in your throat. That’s how I felt on a recent Friday afternoon when I joined about 20 residents of the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville on a visit to BWI-Thurgood Marshall Airport to greet military troops returning home from Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries. The Charlestown group goes monthly to BWI as part of Operation Welcome Home Maryland, and… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/23/10 at 02:41 PM
Radio’s Revere?
I’m going to say something here in this space that will make me sound tragically “un-hip,” overly PC, supremely humorless and highly whiny. But so be it. Wouldn’t be the first time. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who absolutely worship Howard Stern. Besides being blisteringly funny and acerbic, they say the mother of all shock-jocks is a brilliant commentator on virtually everything (and everyone) in our society that is false, vain and patently stupid. In other words, he says it “the way it is,” articulating in one way or another what all of us may think or feel but would never have the guts to utter aloud. Honesty for a change, in the tradition of his fellow Jewish humorists Mort Sahl, Philip Roth, Lenny Bruce and even Al Franken. For some time now, I’ve felt that… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/10/10 at 02:47 PM
A Movable Feast
Suburban House … is moving … into Fuddruckers. When I say that sentence to people indigenous to the Pikesville-Owings Mills corridor, their jaws simply drop and their eyes get as big as manhole covers. It’s almost like how I imagine informing people about the Orioles’ four-game sweep victory in the ’66 World Series, or even the Kennedy assassination, would’ve been. I mentioned it to a co-worker the other day and her 7-year-old son, who was in the office because of snow, started cradling his head in his little hands, moaning, “Fuddruckers?! Oh no!” I’m sure that losing “The Fudd” in Pikesville will be a big blow to some people in this area who, like me, have wonderful memories of taking their young kids there, watching them devour a large burger or grilled cheese, only to retreat into that den… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/03/10 at 11:05 AM
A Shanda, Freud?
There are certain words in our language I just can’t get enough of. One of them is “schadenfreude.” Schadenfreude is that wonderful German phrase stolen by English speakers that loosely translates as the phenomenon in human nature of gaining great pleasure from someone else’s misfortunes. Perhaps like the proverbial schlemiel who chuckles after he inadvertently spills the proverbial boiling hot soup in the lap of the proverbial schlamazel. Bad weather seems to bring out the schlemiel and the schadenfreude in the best of people, but why I can’t understand. (Of course, I can’t really understand why so many people spend all of their waking moments thinking, talking and worrying about the weather.) I’m used to my parents-in-law – Midwesterners by DNA, personality and outlook – who have lived in Florida for more than two decades calling us every time… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/15/10 at 02:46 PM
Quieted By The Quill
Like you, I don’t know what to make of the recent Washington Post investigative article on Rabbi Menachem Youlus. What is one to make of someone who you’ve met from time to time over the years and have surmised is an individual of the highest ethical caliber and standards – and then read an article claiming he possibly is not? The article calls into question some of the Baltimore scribe’s longtime claims about the provenance of many of his Torah scrolls, which he says he largely unearthed or discovered throughout Central and Eastern Europe—lost, discarded holy remnants of that highly-emotional touchstone we call the Holocaust. Who would play fast and loose with anything connected to something as sacrosanct as the Shoah? Who would give the chazzers—the deniers—a scintilla of a chance to extend their feast, their orgy of lies?… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 02/02/10 at 01:43 PM
A Shtark Reminder
Way back in the mid-‘90s, my wife and I thought we should get back in touch with our roots and finally learn Yiddish. After all, my in-laws speak the language fluently, and my parents certainly understood it well and could converse. So we figured that before we had kids, we’d better learn Yiddish (so we could speak in a code our children could not break, much like the Navajos with the Japanese during World War II). Ah, the best laid schemes of mice and men. We took a once-a-week evening class at Baltimore Hebrew University with the late Dr. Solomon Manischewitz. While we earnestly wanted to understand the language, I think what we really wanted to learn was enough to get by, just when we wanted to chat among ourselves (and maybe for a few good jokes). As anyone… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/18/10 at 02:08 PM
Egg Cream, Not Eggnog
In a recent syndicated column titled “Nonbelievers, Please Leave Christmas Alone” that ran in The Sun, the great Garrison Keillor takes umbrage with non-Christians who jump on the commercialization bandwagon of what we Jews call “that other December holiday.” “This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough,” he writes. “And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write `Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah’? No, we didn’t.” Amusing stuff. I’m sure plenty of curmudgeonly Jewish readers were incensed by Mr. Lake Wobegone’s remarks – one Sun reader even condemned the newspaper for printing the column – but Keillor… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/17/09 at 01:53 PM
A Stone Unturned
Sam Stone. The name itself is as solid and dependable as the man. Last Saturday morning, Dec. 12, my old friend Sam’s synagogue, Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation, honored him for his decades of service to the Pikesville shul. Sam got a new title at MMAE – he will become the congregation’s president emeritus, after years of holding many leadership titles with the shul. Sam tells me he is not being put out to pasture and that he will remain active in the leadership and direction of MMAE. That’s a good thing, particularly at this critical juncture when Rabbi Elan Adler is planning to leave the shul to relocate in Israel. With his strong mind, charisma, work ethic and sense of Yiddishkeit, Sam will continue to be integral to MMAE’s growth. As a former Hebrew school student and… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/11/09 at 09:40 AM
Who Is A Mentsch?
The other day, someone who isn’t Jewish asked me to define the Yiddish word mentsch. I did the best job I could, explaining that it means someone who is a decent, caring, upright individual. I know a lot of people who call themselves mentsches, but it’s rare that I see what I consider “mentschlikeit” behavior. But every now and then, something comes up to remind me that there are some mentsches out there. Recently, I was at a Judaica shop in town. A friend of mine who lives in a non-Jewish area asked if I could get him a Chanukah cookie cutter set, since I live on the “Jewish side” of town. (By the way, I’m not mentioning this to in any way indicate that I am a mentsch. Believe me, I know better, and my wife can second… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 12/04/09 at 11:18 AM
Remembering A Visionary
Last year, I got a really good taste of the genius, generosity and extraordinary vision of Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin—who died yesterday at age 85—when I wrote a series of articles about the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, D.C.’s Chinatown district. If you haven’t been there, get over to the Sixth & I as soon as you can. It’s something else. Housed in the gorgeous, 101-year-old former home of Adas Israel Congregation, Sixth & I is known throughout the region for its innovative services and programming, ranging from the hottest speakers of the day (from the political, religious, literary and entertainment realms) to a plethora of cutting-edge performers and happenings. It’s more than a shul. It’s an experience, a decidedly Jewish one, without boundaries, hang-ups or labels. Sixth & I wouldn’t exist without Abe Pollin, his… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/25/09 at 11:17 AM
Good Case Of The BLEWS
I know you’re busy getting ready for Thanksgiving, and maybe even Chanukah, too, but let me tell you a quick personal story about how far we’ve all come in a fairly short period of time. For nearly two decades (including during World War II), my late father was a Merchant Marine. Only God knows how many ports my dad stopped in during his years as a Merchant Marine, but one of them was Baltimore, on many occasions. My father told me a story that when he came to Baltimore once in the late ‘50s, he went to the old Greyhound bus station near Mount Vernon Square. He happened to be using the restroom there when he heard the screams of a man coming out of another stall. My father ran out to see what all the commotion was about,… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/24/09 at 03:29 PM
Nu, Jews?
In a feature article on CNN’s Web site this week, Jessica Ravitz writes about “the New Jews” out there, blazing a new, glorious trail in the latest chapter of the American Jewish experience. “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai about 3,300 years ago, he couldn’t have seen these Jews coming,” charges Ms. Ravitz. The article chronicles the unbridled and unfettered manner in which many young Jews today are observing and celebrating their faith and heritage, and it generally doesn’t have anything to do with shul, Israel, continuity concerns or paralyzing fears about anti-Semitism. A few unconventional examples – Gen-X and Gen-Y Jews with tattoos featuring Stars of David and other Jewish icons and themes; women exchanging vows in a Jewish wedding ceremony; guys guzzling bottles of HE’BREW, The Chosen Beer; a PhD candidate who writes a letter condemning… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/04/09 at 01:31 PM
Saving Face
Last week’s funeral at Beth El Congregation to mourn the loss of Rabbi Mark G. Loeb was a veritable “Who’s Who of Baltimore Jewry.” I must admit, I didn’t see too many “black hats” in the crowd—not a shocker since Rabbi Loeb always wore his liberal views on his sleeve, thus becoming the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with left-of-center Judaism to some frum folks. But I did see people there from across the denominational and congregational divides, demonstrating how well-respected Rabbi Loeb was among his fellow Jews (and non-Jews, since I noticed a number of Christian clergy there as well). Among those in attendance was Rabbi Jacob A. Max, the former rabbi emeritus of Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah (MMAE) Hebrew Congregation, a shul still known fondly in some circles as Liberty Jewish Center. As you likely know, Rabbi… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/20/09 at 03:31 PM
Memories Of Mark
Rabbi Mark G. Loeb’s sudden passing on Wednesday night is a shock for all of us who knew this incredible man and respected him. Everyone knows that Rabbi Loeb was brilliant and a powerful speaker to boot. He was also capable of enormous compassion and empathy, and could be quite acerbic and straightforward at times. That’s what we all loved about him. You knew you were getting it straight from Mark. Everyone has a favorite Rabbi Loeb story or two. Let me share two of mine. When I first came to the Jewish Times, my old boss, Gary Rosenblatt, suggested that I make appointments with local rabbis and learn about their congregations. One of the first rabbis I touched base with was Mark Loeb. I remember meeting him at his office at Beth El. We schmoozed for a little… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/08/09 at 02:11 PM
Host Of Concerns
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not sure I’ll ever feel the same way about David Letterman again. Since the late night talk show host made his dramatic confession on TV last week that he was being blackmailed for $2 million for having numerous affairs with female employees, I’ve been talking to different people about Letterman. It seems like everyone basically wants to give Dave a free pass because a) well, he’s Dave, and just about everyone likes Dave, b) we all hate extortionists, and c) we’re all pretty sick of these silly sex scandals. Blackmail is wrong, no doubt about it. And it certainly sounds like Robert “Joe” Halderman, the Emmy Award-winning “48 Hours Mystery” producer who was arrested for the alleged extortion plot, is a real piece of work. But that doesn’t mean Dave should completely get… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 10/05/09 at 10:14 AM
A Luddite’s Lament
On occasion, I’ve been accused by friends of being a “Luddite.” What’s a Luddite? By definition, a Luddite is someone who is opposed to technological changes, a term dating back to early 19th-century England when textile artisans protested the Industrial Revolution. (The leader of these upstarts was reportedly someone who went by the sobriquet “King Ludd.”) Of course, if I was indeed a Luddite, you wouldn’t be reading this since I wouldn’t be using a computer and writing a blog. Nor would I have a cell phone, TV, washing machine, electric shaver or telephone answering machine. I’d actually make a lousy Luddite. My old Royal typewriter no longer works and is only for decoration, and there are no clotheslines flapping in the breeze in my backyard. Technology often improves our lives greatly when used well, and one of the… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/25/09 at 08:49 AM
He’s The One
“So you’re scared and you’re thinkin’ that maybe we ain’t that young anymore.” You know these words. You’ve heard them more than a billion times. They’re seared into your brain at this point, like a mantra. Today is Bruce Springsteen’s 60th birthday. Yes, you read that right. Sixty. How can that be possible? For nearly as long as I can remember, this man has provided so many of us with the guidelines and narratives of our lives – stories about those who get stepped on and beaten up by society (“Born In The USA,” “Atlantic City”), lessons about how to get through it all with grit and determination (“Badlands”), lamentations about life and loss (“The Rising”), the pain of love gone bad (“I’m Goin’ Down”), the perils of temptation (“I’m On Fire,” “Brilliant Disguise”), the price of familial dilemmas… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/23/09 at 08:30 AM
Politics, Jimmy And Mary
A day or two before the general elections last November, my wife ran into what I’ll call a “quasi-relative” of mine and his son-in-law. They were all schmoozing harmlessly – the kids, the weather, the stock market, nuclear fission, world peace, etc. – when my quasi-relative, a rather crusty, self-assured fella in his early 70s who enjoys offering his opinions (solicited or not), asked my wife what she thought of this guy named Barack Obama. He said it with a certain amount of disgust dripping from his lips. When my wife replied that she liked Obama, the guy went into full-attack mode and started kvetching up a storm, “joking” that they’d be “serving chitlins in the White House” if he won and warning of the Democratic candidate’s wicked, wicked “socialist” ways. (And this was well before all of the… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/17/09 at 09:53 AM
Lame Stuff
So let me get this straight—the president of the United States wants to talk to the nation’s schoolchildren about the importance of education next Tuesday, Sept. 8, and the conservatives are riled up? When did we become an anti-education nation? The speech, which is to be live-streamed from the White House Web site, is President Obama’s manipulative attempt to push his legislative agenda, according to conservative commentators and “thinkers.” (Boy, they were right all along! This guy really is a commie! He wants kids to stay in school!!) Some conservatives have even called for parents to keep their kids at home that day – a “national truancy day” of sorts—so they won’t be “indoctrinated” by Obama’s nefarious message. And some schools have announced that they will not show the speech at all. Obama’s opponents – who obviously taste blood… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/04/09 at 08:42 AM
Remembering Teddy
Sometimes, even when you’ve had a fleeting brush with fame and greatness, memory has a way of tricking you and then chuckling right in your face. That happened to me last weekend while intermittently watching on television the funeral service, procession and burial of Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy. As the commentators spoke about Senator Kennedy’s distinguished service to his country for nearly a half-century – and even touched on his ability to transform himself into a vessel of great compassion and high purpose, with a feeling for those not as fortunate as himself—I thought to myself, “Man, I would’ve loved to have met this guy, or at least to have been in his presence.” And then, it dawned on me: I once was in his presence. Cue up the flashback music. Back in ‘86, I was a young reporter… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/31/09 at 03:24 PM
Dinosaur Mentality
The other day, I was sitting at a stoplight, behind a pick-up truck, spacing out. Tapping my fingers on the steering wheel to some silly tune on the radio, I noticed the truck’s bumper-sticker, with the words, “Secession: It’s The Right Thing To Do.” I have to admit, my first impulse after seeing this bumper sticker was to drive around to the truck’s driver, roll down my window and yell, “Hey, moron, the South lost. It’s time to move on already, Einstein!” And in my younger years, I might’ve done so. (With youth comes a great deal of chutzpah and stupidity.) But I decided I wasn’t interested in endangering my life, so I just kept my mouth shut. When I drove by the guy a few minutes later, I did look at him rather dismissively, shook my head and… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/07/09 at 11:11 AM
Edifice Complex
I don’t want to pat myself on the back too hard. After all, one must always keep their ego in check. But in my many years as a reporter, I’ve written about a lot of topics: murders, suicides, interfaith relations, immigration, neighborhoods, education, politics, spirituality, discrimination, sexual abuse, you name it. I once even covered a dog fashion show, believe it or not, in Hampstead. (A docile, doe-eyed beagle named Penny emerged the victor, if memory serves correct). But never – and I mean never – in all of my professional years have I received an avalanche of responses from readers about an article like I have about my recent story on what I call the “mystery building” on S. Caroline Street in East Baltimore. I can’t tell you how many calls, letters and emails I’ve received on this… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/17/09 at 11:19 AM
S&H Blues
Look, I don’t like to be the bearer of bad news. But I knew I had to tell him. He’d want to know. So reluctantly, after coming home last Wednesday night from the charred remains of the Suburban House, I called “Jersey Boy” – my good buddy who lives in the so-called Garden State – to let him know that the landmark Pikesville restaurant suffered a major fire. There was a long pause on the phone, and I even wondered if some tears were being shed. “Is it gone?” he asked, sounding fragile. I told him the damage was fairly extensive, but I was hopeful that they would reopen. I sensed a great relief. “That’s good,” he said. “That place just has to stay open.” Whenever he comes to town for a visit, Jersey Boy always wants to go… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/10/09 at 09:05 AM
Tell ‘Em That It’s Human Nature
Someone asked me the other day, “So, pray tell, what’s the Jewish angle on Michael Jackson?” Then, they chuckled. Of course, there is a Jewish angle on the late, great King of Pop. (Isn’t there always?) Supposedly, his ex-wife, Debbie Rowe, is Jewish, and thus two of his three kids are members of the tribe (well, at least from a halachic point of view). And then there was one of his best pals, Liz Taylor, who’s among the most famous converts to Judaism in history (after she snatched Eddie Fisher from under Debbie Reynolds’ nose back in the late ‘50s). But there really isn’t much of a Jewish angle to Jacko, who will be memorialized in Los Angeles today at a service unlike any other in history that’s expected to be viewed by an estimated billion or so. He… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/07/09 at 09:40 AM
Church Of The Poisoned Mind
It’s a tough call. What do you do? You hear that a controversial group – a church outfit, no less – is coming to town, for a rally in front of three Jewish institutions. They want us all to repent, and they don’t mind getting nasty and bigoted in their condemnations and proclamations. They’re famous, most of all for holding protests in front of funerals for U.S. soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan. (How vile and sacrilege can you get?) They’re fundamentalists who believe that everyone else is going to hell and only they have the true answer, and that the rest of us better straighten up and soon. (Some people would say that really means they’re just a bunch of nutjobs.) And they obviously love attention and media coverage, almost as much as they love their so-called… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 07/01/09 at 10:50 AM
Think Again
Sometimes in our little sporadic sectarian skirmishes (the Owings Mills JCC/Shabbat issue, family holiday meals, etc.), those of us who are not as observant as our traditional friends, relatives and neighbors often forget about what they go through in their daily lives in America. This slapped me upside my head the other day. My last blog entry, as you may or may not recall, dealt with my almost 7-year-old son and I hearing a bizarre anti-Semitic comment made at a recent Fort McHenry Flag Day gathering. The reason for the comment was that a family walking behind us had the audacity to be Orthodox and wear traditional attire. (Me, I thought people were allowed to dress in the manner in which they choose in America, as long as they weren’t buck naked.) Anyway, I happened to see a neighbor… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/22/09 at 08:34 AM
An Un-Fort-unate Situation
Last Sunday night, I took my son to a great fireworks show at Fort McHenry, the birthplace of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” in honor of Flag Day. He got his first real taste there of good old-fashioned American patriotism, with a brass marching band belting out prideful tunes and dazzling red, white and blue colors lighting up the downtown skies (and reflected in the murky harbor waters). But he also got something else that I hadn’t bargained for – his first real taste of good old-fashioned American bigotry. Here’s what happened. After the program ended, we and thousands of others headed back to our parked cars, many of which were located outside of the fort. It was a beautiful night, and everyone was in a great mood after the wonderful presentation. The police officers kept us in line, asking folks… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/15/09 at 02:56 PM
A Horrific Reminder
This afternoon, James W. von Brunn, a noted white supremacist and Holocaust denier from Annapolis, stepped into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., wearing a Confederate hat, and opened fire indiscriminately with a long rifle, killing a security guard named Stephen Tyrone Johns before being shot in the head by two other guards. Von Brunn, 88, reportedly a World War II veteran, did this while the museum – sacred ground to many, many Americans – was filled with innocent schoolchildren. The assault comes only a few days after President Obama’s historic and touching visit to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Von Brunn’s action doesn’t make any sense, of course. It defies logic. But for years, he has been outspoken about his hatred for Jews and African-Americans, and even told one of his ex-wives that he planned to go… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/10/09 at 03:54 PM
Stone Cold Reminder
The other day, I was driving through the Greengate neighborhood when I passed by the Moses Montefiore Anshe Emunah Hebrew Congregation. For those of us who grew up in this area, that shul was, and always will be, in our minds, Liberty Jewish Center. Driving by, I couldn’t help but notice the prominent stone monument in front of the synagogue’s parking lot, designating the area the “Rabbi Jacob A. Max Torah Campus.” I wasn’t looking for it, but there it was, a proud and bold homage to the congregation’s rabbi emeritus. It all would seem quite innocuous if one didn’t know all of the facts. A couple of months ago, Rabbi Max, as most of you undoubtedly already know, was convicted, at age 85, of sexual molestation. Since news reports first surfaced of the conviction, a sizable number of… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 06/02/09 at 11:21 AM
Harping On Shavuot
For this year’s observance of the festival of Shavuot, I would like to offer a real-life parable of sorts, one that hopefully evokes thoughts about love, compassion, the power of music, empathy for society’s disenfranchised, human connections and mutual respect. I know, it’s a tall order. A few months ago, I was driving home from work, about to get on I-83, at a stoplight on North Avenue. A gentleman wearing tattered jeans and a homemade sign around his neck proclaiming himself a homeless war veteran stood on an island, asking motorists for spare change. Now this might sound horrible but I don’t usually give money to these folks, because I really prefer not encouraging panhandling. Plus, I never seem to have any spare change in my car. But I was in a good mood on this particular afternoon, and… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/28/09 at 02:34 PM
Bigotry Or Survival?
A few weeks ago, a guy – who identified himself as being Jewish—called to tell me about what he considered a prime case of religious and ethnic discrimination. It seems that a local Catholic high school was holding a prom for its seniors, and one of the students wanted to bring her platonic Jewish male friend. The school, however, forbade it, because the friend was not Catholic. “Tell me, is that blatant discrimination or what?” the caller asked. Yes, I responded. Then, the caller admitted that the whole scenario was a fabrication, a great big lie. Never happened. He said the “real” story was of a friend’s son who attends a local Jewish high school and wanted to take a platonic non-Jewish female friend to the prom. The school basically said, “Um, sorry, ain’t gonna happen. It’s against our… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/20/09 at 11:41 AM
Rush To Judgment
Many years ago, I covered a Baltimore Jewish Council lunch gathering at which the keynote speaker discussed apartheid and how it was affecting South Africa’s Jewish community. After the talk, I grabbed the speaker in the hallway for a moment and asked a few questions, including one about whether he felt a holocaust was imminent in South Africa. Remember, these were the days when Nelson Mandela was still in prison and the white minority ruled. One older audience member, Chiae Herzig, who was eavesdropping, came up to me afterwards and said, “Excuse me, Alan, but you asked him if there could be a holocaust in South Africa. I don’t mean to butt in, but you need to know that there was only one Holocaust, and to ask if there could ever be another one is incorrect. There could never,… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/13/09 at 11:48 AM
One Kind Gesture
The story pulls at the heartstrings and reminds you that in such a world of darkness, there is some light. Nancy Lichtig Frederick was Michelle Harf-Grim’s best friend for 36 years. According to Michelle, “Everyone was like family to Nancy. When someone would first meet her, she always made them feel like they were her best friend. She had a way of including you so you would never feel alone. She took care of those around her.” But in July of 1995, Nancy was diagnosed with late stage-3 ovarian cancer. Now, it was Nancy who needed someone to take care of her. Nancy, according to Michelle, never stopped battling the disease, and her courage was inspirational. She called herself a “stubborn Hungarian,” and her thirst for life was unquenchable. She often gave speeches about her situation (and the symptoms… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/06/09 at 01:30 PM
Remembering Kemp
Jack Kemp’s passing late last week, of cancer at age 73, didn’t get as much attention as you’d think it would. After all, we’re talking about a guy who ran for president (in ’88) and vice-president (in ’96, with Bob Dole), played professional football (an NFL quarterback, no less), and spent virtually his entire life in the public eye. I guess with so much going on these days – economic turmoil, Swine flu, “American Idol” heating up, Jessica Simpson’s fluctuating weight (poor dear) – a guy like Jack Kemp snags precious little ink when he dies. But I vividly recall being in attendance at Chizuk Amuno Synagogue 11 years ago when Mr. Kemp spoke passionately and eloquently at an Associated gathering about his deep commitment to Israel and how being a Zionist informed him as a human being. “People… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 05/05/09 at 09:50 AM
The Beauty Of Candor
The issue of same-sex marriage is a complicated enough one without having idiots getting involved to stifle our freedom to express what we believe in, or without the Politically-Correct police swooping down on us. Perhaps you’ve heard about the recent controversy involving a Miss USA contestant and Perez Hilton, the celebrity blogger and gay activist. It seems Mr. Hilton, who served as a judge at the pageant last weekend, had a decidedly pointed question for Miss California, a.k.a. Carrie Prejean, about whether she supports same-sex marriages. Ms. Prejean did something that’s getting to be pretty rare in American life – she said how she really felt. In a respectful, gracious way, she replied, “I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman—no offense to anybody out there. But that’s how I was… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/23/09 at 08:37 AM
Back To Basics (& Bread)
The final, fleeting hours of Passover are now upon us. With visions of garlic bagels, croissants and pizza slices dancing in our heads, we prepare to reenter the leavened realm, hopefully with a new appreciation of the role of bread in our lives and, more importantly, the great privilege of living in a free, open society. I was honored recently by a request from Rabbi Ron Shulman of Chizuk Amuno Congregation to write a piece, to be sent out via the synagogue’s email list, on how I mentally, spiritually and emotionally prepare for Passover. Rabbi Shulman asks several congregants every year to share their reflections on how they get ready for Pesach. I must confess, I don’t do as much as I should to prepare for the holiday. We’re all so busy, the holiday just seems to sneak up… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/16/09 at 10:40 AM
Headlines That Hurt
Maybe I’m just getting a little overly-sensitive or cranky in my old age. I don’t think I’m a right-winger. And as someone who has worked in journalism his entire adult life, I’m certainly not a media-basher. But the headline slapped me upside my head and made me, well, annoyed. It was an article in today’s Sun about Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli who was brutally killed by a Palestinian man wielding a pickax on April 2. The headline was, “Palestinian Kills Israeli Settler, 13.” Now it’s true that Bat Ayin, where Shlomo lived, is a settlement located in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. I’m not going to start getting into that whole thing. My point is, this was a 13-year-old boy. He was a boy. This was a terrible, senseless tragedy. I would never call a boy… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/03/09 at 02:09 PM
Ciccone Syndrome
So word has it today that a judge in Malawi has turned down a petition by Madonna – oops, I mean Esther, as she’s known in kabbalistic circles – to adopt a second child from that southeastern African country. Madge, now 50, adopted her 3-year-old son, David Banda, in Malawi in 2006. Now, it seems that a residency requirement there has prevented the pop superstar and mystical dabbler from adopting 3½-year-old Chifundoercy James, whom she first encountered in an orphanage three years ago. The residency requirement for prospective parents is 18 to 24 months in Malawi. Shockingly, Madonna, who lives in New York and London, doesn’t apparently plan to move to Malawi anytime soon. I admit, I’ve never been a big fan of the Material Gal. But I do admire the tremendous amount of good work she’s done for… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/03/09 at 10:42 AM
Prague Spring
Let me just say this: I’ve never been to Prague. Much to my dismay. I think I flew over it once, on my way to Israel. And I’ve read some Kafka. (He drives me buggy. Bad joke.) But I’ve never visited the Czech capital. At the same time, I’ve always been interested in cemeteries. I know that sounds somewhat depressing. Having written about local Jewish cemeteries over the years (including the really old, compelling ones in eastern Baltimore and Baltimore County), I think such final resting places can tell you a whole lot about communities and their history and sense of priorities. Plus, they can be aesthetically fascinating. As a result, I was mesmerized by the documentary “House Of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague,” which will air next Monday at 10 p.m. on Maryland Public Television (Channel… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 04/02/09 at 10:04 AM
Blimpie’s Lessons
From time to time, friends (and my wife) make fun of me because in the middle of the workday, I’ll occasionally run down the street and grab a quick lunch at the nearby Blimpie sandwich shop. It must be something about that silly name – Blimpie—that just sets people off, like some kind of Pavlovian response (but without the mutts). “Oooooh! Why would someone eat at a place called Blimpie?” a co-worker once asked me, intimating that becoming a great big “blimp” was not an enticing notion to her. (I never said it was gourmet or necessarily diet-friendly cuisine, but what’s in a name?). Another person put down the quality of the food there, even though she admitted that she’d never actually eaten there. “Hey,” I’ve responded to all of the Doubting Thomases, “don’t dis the Blimp.” (How’s that… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/25/09 at 01:15 PM
The `D-Word’
People keep using that `D-Word’ nowadays – Depression. I don’t mean the mental or emotional state of anguish and dejection – let’s face it, that’s an ongoing saga for our times, regardless of the Dow – but Depression as in, “Let’s ride the rails, get out our harmonicas and live in hobo jungles, with sepia Dorothea Lange images, `Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?’” kind of Depression. As a child of Great Depression-era kids, I’m not sure what to make of that word’s current usage. How many times have I heard the stories about how my mother didn’t have soles in her shoes because times were tough back then? Or that my dad had to quit high school and joined the Merchant Marine to make ends meet for his family? Or that my grandparents needed to leave New York… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/18/09 at 01:34 PM
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Perhaps you’ve been reading the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES long enough to remember our old “Kvetch” column, which allowed our faithful readers the opportunity to vent about nearly anything that passed through their minds. No one was more of a participant or enthusiast of this column than a gentleman who went by the poetic sobriquet of “El Syd,” aka Sydney Goldfield of Pikesville. I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with Syd and his lovely wife, June, a few years ago, and even wrote a profile on him. The piece was written shortly after the column was put to bed, chronicling Syd’s lament over “Kvetch’s” demise. I recently read in our paper’s death notices that Syd, a true character if there ever was one, passed away. In his honor, I’d like to reprint here my article about him. May… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/13/09 at 09:05 AM
What Would Esther Do?
Sometimes when I go to shul – just about any shul – I can’t help but think about how the maintenance staff views what’s going on there. After all, the majority of maintenance workers at our synagogues and temples tend to be non-Jewish, and you’ve got to wonder what goes through their minds when we conduct our services, gatherings and such. This thought particularly weighed heavily on my mind the other night when I attended Purim services at a local mega-shul (which I’ll leave anonymous). The scene was typical for Purim. The service, of course, was pure pandemonium, bedlam and decidedly juvenile, and understandably so—to get the kids revved up about the holiday. After all, Purim is really a holiday for kids, even though it deals with such heavy themes as potential annihilation, bigotry, revenge and sexual exploitation. But… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/10/09 at 12:49 PM
Every Picture Tells A Story
Sometimes in our busy, chaotic existences, something happens that shakes us out of our dusty zones and reminds us that something else may be going on in the cosmos. It extracts the cynicism and fear that tend to dominate these times and makes you think about what some people like to call “the bigger picture.” That happened to me recently when writing a news article about a young lady named Hannah Schlessinger. In March of 1998, Hannah, a beautiful, vibrant 7-year-old Bolton Street Synagogue religious school student, was on her way to a ballet class with her mom when they got into a three-car collision near Greenspring Station. Hannah didn’t make it, and one look at her beaming face in the family photos tells you that the world lost a major ray of light that day. Hannah’s parents, Andy… read more
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/03/09 at 10:46 AM
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