On My Mind

Master Teachers

I remember sitting in the Chemistry classroom of Mrs. Virginia Levin back in 1971 at Northwestern High School.
These were the days of slide rules and of course periodic tables. But the bottom line was that I was phobic about numbers and feared what sort of grade I’d end up earning in Chemistry.
I tell my children that you’ll look back in your life and you’ll understand that if you were lucky you were blessed with a handful of “master” teachers.
These were instructors who reached out to you and really cared for you. I remember like it was yesterday Mrs. Levin saying to me, “Philip, you are a good boy.” For me, back then, that’s all I needed. She willed me to pass this course. She figuratively held my hand through it. And I’ll never forget her as one of my master teachers.
I can name a small group of others as well, Pearl Lerner, my French teacher, Mr. Grant, my Modern Problems and homeroom teacher, Mrs. Denenberg, my history teacher, Mr. Cooper, my high school newspaper advisor.
At the University of Maryland, my favorite teacher was actually a nun. She taught me math, and like Mrs. Levin, really cared enough to help me understand and learn.
Teachers can have such an important impact on our lives. It’s wonderful when we can remember even a select few who were there for us. It’s difficult enough to master the courses we are faced with. But to have a caring, loving, impactful teacher, means so very much.
Next Thursday, my daughter Emily will graduate from Yeshivat Rambam. It is my prayer that she and her classmates carry with them the example and memory of their own “master” teachers.
And to those teachers, be they my own or my those of my children, I say what isn’t said enough. Thank you.

Can We Re-Invent The Walk For Israel?

Those who worked so hard on Sunday’s Walk for Israel deserve a huge pat on the back of appreciation from the rest of us who had the freedom to just show up and leave when we felt like it.
There were volunteers, however, who stayed all through the day, and who worked on planning this for months.
It was a beautiful spring Baltimore Sunday. The usual attractions were there, the Moon Bounce and slide for the children, the kosher food, the live Jewish musical entertainment (quite good, by the way), and the Jewish network of informational booths and artisans.
So with all due respect. And not that I have any great ideas.
But I think the concept has to change. It has to be re-invented somehow before the community takes on another.
This Walk for Israel seemed tired.
It didn’t have the energy, the excitement of one’s we’ve seen in the past.
Again, it shouldn’t be anyone’s fault. Because the idea of bringing Jews together for a lovely day in support of Israel is a winner.
But the Moon Bounce, face painting, kosher food, Jewish music model is as my teenager would say, “so 20 minutes ago.”
I realize this is a stretch, but the best “Walk for Israel” I’ve ever seen happened in the early 90s in Detroit. That’s when the federation underwrote a huge portion of a ticket and trip to Israel for the Jewish community. Some 1300 Detroit Jews went to Israel together aboard El Al jets from the Detroit airport.
It was unbelievable.
Busses awaited us at the airport and each bus had its own schedule and itinerary.
People in their late 60s to teens just turning 18 were there together.
I was sitting with a man in his 70s who was a first-timer. Said he had no desire to go to Israel. But once he got there, he was angry at himself for waiting so long. This same man would go on to write a huge check to an Israel-based charity he was so emotionally charged.
Maybe our Walk for Israel should be based on this theme, of let’s get Baltimore to go to Israel in greater numbers.
We’ve got an incredible sister city in Ashkelon.
Maybe the festival should consist of booths that help us through passport and registration process. Maybe we could get ElAl to have a booth, hotels to have booths, tour guides to have booths.
And maybe, just maybe we could get someone to underwrite 10 free trips to Israel.
Again, I’m sure you have a much better idea than this one.
I’d love to read them. Just respond to the blog here, and we’ll offer them up to our local community leaders.
No harm, no spite, just suggestions.
But I do think the Walk needs to be re-invented.
Do you?

Bet You Believe in the Lord Now

So I have a Jerry Falwell story.
In October of 1985, I flew from BWI to Lynchburg, Va. to interview Jerry Falwell. Traveling with me was then-Jewish Times photographer Craig Terkowitz.
The subject of the interview was his feelings about Judaism.
I don’t remember a single thing he said about that.
What I do remember is a couple of lines that had nothing to do with our subject.
The airline of choice was a now defunct commuter service called Henson Airlines, which was part of Piedmont Airlines.
I remember getting to BWI and looking for the gate which did not have a skyway, but instead had a door that led to a staircase to the tarmac. There, what looked like a cracker box with propellers was waiting for the dozen so of us flying to Lynchburg.
When the plane’s engines started, if one had been holding a glass with two scoops of ice cream, chocolate sauce and white milk, he would had a milkshake. That’s how deep the vibration was.
The plane somehow took off and we flew to Lynchburg. Lynchburg’s airport looked like the Northwestern High School football field with the cinder track surrounding the goalposts.
We landed, rented a car, and went to the Thomas Road Baptist Church where Rev. Falwell hosted his “Old Time Gospel Hour.”
We got there, and the pulpit area was a studio, complete with sound and light boards and plenty of high intensity lighting.
Rev. Falwell greeted me.
He pointed to the makeup he was wearing for the TV production by saying, “I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of funny boy.”
I didn’t think that for a second.
But then he asked,
”How did you boys get down here? Did you drive or fly?” The word “fly” came out as “flah.”
When he was told we flew.
He asked, “Henson?”
He looked at us and said, “I bet you believe in the Lord now.”
When we returned to the airport, there was a plane waiting on the tarmac that was smaller than the one we arrived in.
We got into the plane and sat down on chairs that reminded me of my mother’s dinette set while I was growing up. You know, the red vinyl covers tacked over about 1/8th of an inch of foam padding.
We were sitting directly behind the co-pilot. I mean DIRECTLY. We could hear everything he said to the pilot, to the tower, to himself. We could have pressed buttons we were so close.
The pilot asked the co-pilot if he had ever flown into Baltimore at night before?
Words you should never hear on a small airplane.
The Rev. Falwell started to ring in my head as the plane headed for its landing at BWI.
When it touched down and cruised past the “real” planes on the tarmac, I was relieved.
But when I got off at that plane in one piece, I kissed that ground.
I believed!

The Conversation Continues

Saturday night at a class in Jewish spirituality a friendly middle-aged married man with a great smile came over to me and simply said, “I’m one of those guys.”
I knew exactly what he was talking about.
A couple of hours before at Seudat Shlishit, a friend said that he was able to talk for the first time to a loved one about the abuse he suffered from a relative as a child. The man is 60 years old.
Sunday afternoon at the pizza shop, another young man asked me if he could speak in Hebrew. He didn’t want his young son to understand the conversation. He said he had an experience as well, and he wanted to talk about.
The conversation, much to the chagrin of some, is out there and is all over our community.
We received a phone call here at the Jewish Times. A middle age man told us about himself and how he could bring about 10 others to the conversation.
There are plenty of 12-year-old children “trapped” in 55-year-old bodies out there waiting to come out. It’s important to keep the conversation for those “children” alive and safe.
Truth is, they can come out now.
We have to make sure as a Jewish community that we care more about listening to them and helping them with our validation.
They need us now more than ever.

Who Knew?

A tremendous amount of support should be given to the rabbis who signed last month’s statement on child molestation.
I would also like to give a yasher koach to the spiritual leaders who stood before their congregations to talk publicly about this deepening issue. Their words were courageous and supportive.
Both of these actions were encouraging first steps.
It is my hope that rabbis who don’t have formal training and certification in the areas of molestation do their utmost to refer congregants seeking help to those who do have proper qualifications.
I don’t go to my doctor to ask about a mezuzah. I don’t believe we go to therapists and dispute the opinions of the Rambam versus the Ramban. I doubt many therapists or doctors, (except of course those are Torah scholars) would even venture to give an answer to a question like this.
Of course not. They’d be the first tell all of us to ask a rabbi.
On the same course, we need to encourage our rabbis to have a list of proven resources that can help a family with these issues.
On the flipside, we need to give our rabbis a break. They don’t know everything. Yes, we want them to. And yes, the Torah is our precious codebook for life. No disputing that.
But on this issue of child molestation, there are so many incredible resources right here in town be it JFS or the Sidran Institute or Shofar Coalition or others.
Now, on another note.
Child molestation is a crime.
It is against G-d’s law. It is against society’s law.
Child molesters need to be identified to the local authorities if they committed the crime yesterday or 30 years ago. If found guilty, they need to go to jail.
We just can’t place them in other towns or jobs hoping that they will keep their hands off of our children. That “hope” is part of what got us into this mess.
That a rabbi molested hundreds of times not only speaks volumes about him, but also says something about us.
Why didn’t we know? You mean to tell me that besides the many children who knew, not one single adult was aware and did anything? Not one rabbi knew or did anything?
We are a community who dissects the finest points of Talmud. We are a kehillah who checks each lettuce leaf for bugs. We are a neighborhood who inspects our eruv each week and gets the word out if it is “down.”
How on earth did we not know that a man had molested on multiple times?
And if someone did know. Who knew?
If a person wounds or murders another person and there is a witness, is not that witness legally bound to come forward?
This issue isn’t about exposing names or loshon hora. The magnifying glass doesn’t belong on who is dead or who is alive.
The magnifying glass needs to be on the lives of the victims, and that they find justice for the people who violated their lives.
And most of all, that they find a healing.