Over 20 years ago, on a cold Christmas eve, I covered an incredible volunteer effort in some pretty bleak areas of Baltimore. A Jewish woman named Linda Greenberg was spending a great deal of her own money, renting trucks and distributing gifts such as gloves, hats, scarves and socks to the homeless. We traveled to spaces next to railroad… read more

Sunday is going to be a day of fun, football and a community showing its appreciation for our City’s Police force. From 1-5 p.m. the grounds of Northwestern High School at Park Heights Avenue and Fallstaff Road will be transformed into a festive carnival with children’s activities, food, police exhibitions and of course the big game. Shomrim will take… read more

Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day. Today, certain municipalities close their doors while many businesses attract customers with sale prices. Our military is engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, I am willing to bet that Veterans Day won’t be or wasn’t mentioned much among our families this week. Many American citizens simply don’t know what it is… read more

Just want to remind as many people as possible that next Sunday morning, if you have time to spare, you can do so with a huge mitzvah. Weather forecasters are already warning us that this might be a severe winter. It’s more concerning this year because of the worries we have of both the seasonal flu and the swine… read more

I was watching the other night a stand-up comedy routine by an African-American comedian. She talked about how when she was growing up when she and a sibling would misbehave, her mother would scold them by saying, “stop it, white people are looking at you.” She went on to say that since Barak Obama became President, she feels a… read more

I read with interest the comments to the Baltimore Sun’s article on the Jewish Times suspending principal payments on a city loan. Why was the Jewish Times singled out? The Jewish Times, after all, is just one part of Alter Communications, a diverse media group including Style Magazine, Chesapeake Life Magazine and an array of custom publishing magazines. Being… read more

Had one of those conversations again. The one about affording day school education. There are just so many difficult nuances to all of this. I, at one time, sat on a tuition committee. We’d weigh a family’s request for tuition reduction. We’d ask for full financial disclosure, check important financial documents and then do what we could do to… read more

Every so often a person passes away, and we feel awful for that person. We hope that she didn’t suffer. And we look at her age, and if that age is say 80 or above, then we add the line, “well, she lived a good life.” I think Esther Rosenblatt died at the age of 92 because God needed… read more

Once again, Rabbi Jacob Max is the center of media attention and for that matter the general conversation in the community. Be it a meal in a sukkah or just walking along greeting people on Sunday, the Baltimore Sun’s regurgitation of all that we already knew, had people shaking their heads once more. We learned almost nothing new from… read more

A civics lesson of sorts was brought to the Baltimore City Zoning Commission last Tuesday. If any high school or university educator wanted to teach civics and community issues in its most pure form, this was it. It involved the request by a private resident, living in the Cross Country area, for zoning approval for a day care center… read more