On My Mind

“How To Keep Our Children Safe”

On Wednesday, February 20, the community is invited to attend an evening focused on the issue of child molestation.
It is set for 8 p.m. at Congregation Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, 6600 Park Heights Avenue.
The program is organized by the The Institute for Advanced Professional Training at the Ohel Children’s Home and Family Services.
It is called “How to Keep Our Children Safe.”
Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb, spiritual leader of Congregation Shomrei Emunah, and a person who is taking a leadership role in this issue, strongly advises that this event is not just an Orthodox event, but its benefits are available to the entire Jewish community.
The evening’s keynote speaker will be Dr. David Pelcovitz, who as Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Chair in Jewish Education of Yeshiva University’s Azrieli School of Jewish Education, has publicly tackled these sensitive issues before.
According to Rabbi Gottlieb, there is no admission cost.
This is an opportunity for the community to come together. For some it could be an evening offering a pathway of healing.
For others it could be an evening of validation.
If anything, if this is an area of concern for you and your family, please make plans to attend.
A great deal of behind-the-scenes work went into putting this effort together.
It is a sincere step forward.
It is my hope and prayer that follow-through and follow-up suggestions and opportunities will be made available. And that we can all take steps, whatever they may be, towards a refuah (healing).

Learning From Hall of Famers

I’ve had the pleasure of researching and beginning interviews for the first 11 inductees of the Jewish Community Center’s Hall of Fame.
All that I can say is thank God for these people. They include Jacob Blaustein, Shoshana Cardin, Jacob Epstein, Dr. Louis Kaplan, Zanvyl Krieger, Joseph Meyerhoff, I, Dr. Daniel Nathans, Dr. Solomon H. Snyder, Walter Sondheim, Jr., Dr. Bert Vogelstein and Abel Wolman.
There is no way to misunderstand why through the generations Baltimore is considered one of the greatest Jewish communities in the world.
A mere internet search of the people on this list will show that this community has provided the world with outstanding industrialists, philanthropists, educators and really when one gets down to it, leaders.
The JCC Hall of Fame, which will induct these 11 in June, is more than a recognition of achievement, it’s a real explanation of leadership. Some of us read book after book on leadership. I recommend strongly that you find out what you can from these 11, and you’ll know learn why we are who we are as a people here in Baltimore.
I honestly could not put down the information I read on many of these people. Their lives, their careers and contributions were “page turners.”

Remembering Gertie Kramer

Gertrude Kramer isn’t anyone famous whose name will appear on building edifices forever.
But for my family, Gertrude Kramer was and will always be a vital part of our lives.
When my wife, Lisa, returned to work after having our first child, Gertie with help from her devoted son Irwin, would come over to the house and provide day care for our baby.
It wasn’t just daycare, though. It was love.
Gertie kept our DeDe, herself a handful of energy, busy with walks in the stroller, observations of nature, drawing, games and plenty of hugs and kisses.
But there was an additional issue that Gertie was working through. At the time, I had lost my mother to complications of multiple sclerosis. Within a year after her passing, my father would die of colon cancer. Gertie patiently taught my wife and I to parent our little girl while grieve the loss of our parents.
She used to say with a joke that she taught our “DeDe” everything she knew. I can tell you that for two brand new parents who were dealing with ill parents, Gertie was and will remain one of the true champions and friends in our lives. Again, she’s no one famous, but she’s one of those persons who made this world a better place to live through her love and kindness. Her place in the world to come should be peaceful and beautiful.
That little DeDe went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa and is living a wonderful married life in Israel.
Gertie, we could not have done it without you.
You were a gift from HaShem, and we’ll always miss and remember you.
Thank you for the difference you made.

An Unscheduled Great Moment

So I had one of those moments you live for.
I wasn’t exactly sure or excited when my travel agent booked us through Frankfurt, Germany on our way to Israel.
We were to have a three-hour morning layover.
I’m used to putting my tfillin on at 35,000 feet. But nothing could make me feel higher or closer to G-d then Tuesday morning, Dec. 25, when at the Frankfurt terminal awaiting a connecting flight to Tel Aviv, I joined a handful of other Jews who were saying our morning prayers.
But you know that somewhere during that davening, the thought crept in my mind, that here we were decades after the Holocaust, in a country ruled by pure evil, and we Jews were davening proudly, but still davening with our tfillen on in Germany.
Next to davening later that day at the Kotel, and seeing my son-in-law in his army uniform, it didn’t get much better than that.
Hitler, the SS, the Gestapo, a society of killing and racial purity, dead.
A small handful of G-d fearing Jews in a German airport with tfillen visible. I looked around the waiting area several times and felt so good, so strong about being Jewish.
That moment in time wasn’t on the itinerary. Like many of you, I lost relatives in the Holocaust.
I felt I was touching everyone of their souls on a gray, cold Tuesday morning in a German airport.