On Monday morning, a Ner Israel Rabbinical College student died, according to police reports, after he jumped into the Susquehanna River from the Millard E. Tydings Memorial Bridge on Interstate 95 near Port Deposit in Harford County.
Zvi David Zahler, 24, of blessed memory, should be an aliyah for all of our neshamot.
What I hear of him, he was just an incredibly wonderful young man, and it is our loss that he won’t be able to give his goodness to this hurting world.
What was as daunting as his death were the initial reports on a small handful of Jewish blogs or websites. The incident was originally reported by these outlets as an auto accident of some sort.
Some of the comments on the blogs criticized those blogs for getting the story straight when they based their information on details provided by the authorities.
I don’t know anything about Zvi David Zahler, so I’m not going to write about him specifically. What concerned me the most was the initial public comment that this couldn’t possibly have been a suicide, that it was an accident.
What concerns me is this propensity to cover up.
Because what this does is it discourages others who could be suffering from chronic depression from seeking help. No, not the help that their rav can give them, but the help that a licensed clinical social worker, psychologist or psychiatrist could help them with. Or stated differently, the best help the rav could give a troubled soul is a referral to a trained professional.
It is one thing to be sad, but quite another to be depressed. It is one thing to say, “I feel like killing myself,” but it’s quite another to actually find that dark place where a realization that this is “for keeps” still isn’t enough to stop one from ending his life.
There is such a daunting list of reasons why a person living in an insular life wouldn’t seek treatment. I guess going to a “shrink” could end up impacting a relative’s shidduch (dating ability). I guess getting psychological help carries with it a stigma that connects to words such as “weakness” or “instability.”
But then there is the possibility of our old friend arrogance holding power over accountability. If this was, indeed, a suicide, I fear that it was arrogance taking a troubled soul away from us. It’s the same cover, the same hurt that keeps some of us from asking for help we desperately need for ourselves or our loved ones who have been sexually molested, verbally or physically assaulted.
Our rabbis can offer up Rashi or Rambam. But we some need are therapy and yes even medications. That’s not a weakness, that’s a strength that makes sense. If your loved one suffered from any sort of physical ailment, you would in a heartbeat take them to the doctor, have a prescription filled and nurse them back to health. My goodness, you’d take your car into the shop to get a strange noise fixed before you’d admit to a mental illness.
Mental illness needs the same sort of tender loving care. It is not intangible, it hurts. Depression has physical pain in many instances connected to it. It shouldn’t be treated with shame nor embarrassment. Because if it is treated as a stigma, more “amazing, kind, gentle learned men,” could look for bridges to stop their pain instead of seeking our help.
And that cannot be.

I’m tired.
I look at the Baltimore Sun and it greets me with a headline “Scores Die In Israeli Attack” “Gaza’s Desperate Hospitals Overwhelmed by Casualties,” “Arabs Throughout Middle East Protest Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza.”
Why haven’t I seen any headlines over the years posted on baltimoresun.com recording the hundreds if not thousands of Quassam rocket attacks on the small Israeli development town of Sderot or of Baltimore’s sister city Ashkelon?
The rocket fire started in the Western Negev in January of 2001 has wounded over 500 Israelis, but maybe worse has caused life-long trauma to thousands of adults and children.
Where are your headlines on these stories?
Have you ever sent a reporter to the Sderot and seen what has happened there?
Do you know what it is like to open your reporter’s notebook opposite an 11-year-old girl and ask her if she is too afraid to go outside to play?
Or how about people who cannot get from their top floor apartments down to the shelters in the 15 seconds they have to heed the warning of the ominous “color red” alarm that goes off?
The number of Israelis living under rocket threat in 2008, according to the Sderot Information Center is something like 250,000.
As of November 7, that’s not counting the recent activity, over 8,000 rockets have been launched at Sderot and the Western Negev. Almost 2,500 have scored hits.
Between 70 percent to 94 percent of Sderot children show symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder.
In my many years as an editorial staffer of the Jewish Times, I have never once publicly pointed a finger at another publication’s attitude or point of view.
But today, this Sunday, I read the Sun, a once great newspaper, and I cannot believe my eyes.
I visited Sderot twice this year, and I admit it changed me. You walk into a town where mothers have to figure how to get their children out of their car seats and into a shelter in 15 seconds. You see school kids who find safety in special rooms in their schools where they measure their level of fear on a cardboard rocket scale. You walk into a grocery store and the store owner tells you of a rocket attack at his shul during the dedication of a holy Torah. If Israel had attacked a mosque and ruined a Koran, you would have seen that headline everywhere.
I would be surprised if anyone writing a headline in the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun has ever stepped into Sderot. So, it’s easy, because you are so far away from the Israel and from the truth.
Meet people with shrapnel wounds. Meet school children who can’t get through a class period without going to a shelter. All of this has been going on for years, and when Israel finally, finally decides enough, this is when it earns a front page headline.
Instead of taking the land abandoned by the settlements and used it in a way to create a peaceful society, an intelligent society a civil society, Gaza is empowered by the grid of hate. If there is no hate among its Hamas leaders, then they have no reason to be in control. They’d have no worth, no value. Hate is their “value.”
I expect more from my local daily newspaper. For G-d’s sake, do some simple research. Don’t write throw-away headlines. Write headlines that mean something, that have real facts behind them.
That is your responsibility.
Did you miss the barrages of missiles from Gaza?
Did you not know that Baltimore’s sister city is a Hamas target.
Do you even know the name of Baltimore’s sister city?
No, because it’s too easy to fall into the lowest common denominator of knowledge.
And believe me, Sunday’s headline shows many of us who care that you are there.

It was the coldest of nights, yet an enthusiastic group gathered at Temple Oheb Shalom for the second night of Chanukah to celebrate.
Even in the bitter night, little children sang Chanukah songs and elected officials spoke.
Morris and Ann Cohen, the two people largely responsible for hosting this event over the years outside of their home, better known as the “Chanukah House,” were deservedly spoken about by Mayor Sheila Dixon.
Inside the warm Oheb auditorium, it was nice to see Jewish, gentile, white and black neighbors getting together to watch an entertaining juggler, purchase holiday gifts from vendors and have a bite to eat.
But I also saw something there that still makes me wonder if we’re “getting” the spirit of Chanukah.
You remember how cold Monday night was. There was a man with a yarmulke on asking people for a ride from the event, which was located near Slade Avenue, to his apartment, near Clarks Lane and Park Heights.
He asked if anyone was heading in that direction?
He was told “no,” over and over again.
There was nothing at all threatening about this man, but there was no room in the cars he asked. Did I mention he was limping?
I was leaning against a wall watching this all turn out.
What happened to the flickering light against the darkness?
What happened to the spirit of Chanukah?
And it’s exactly what concerns me sometimes about our community. We can put on a great show, a great costume, look Jewish, observe the holidays to the max. But when it comes time to live the message of the holiday, we so many times drop the ball.
If we can’t give a ride home to a man in subfreezing temperatures, let’s just blow out the candles and stop being hypocrites about all of this.
Eventually he did get his ride home. That’s all that he wanted.
That was his Chanukah gift, a little warmth to make his life easier.
On Christmas Day, Thursday, many in our community will satisfy this feeling of help when they volunteer at the soup kitchen in the inner city. People with cameras will capture images of their friends and synagogue members serving turkey, gravy and stuffing to the poor.
We’ll pat each other on the back, and talk about Tikkun Olum.
Well, Tikkun Olum day doesn’t happen once a year.
It’s every day of the year.
And it doesn’t have to be dramatic.
A simple ride home to a fellow human being on a cold Chanukah night. It won’t be on any one’s digitial camera or shul newsletter.
You get the idea.
Let’s live Chanukah and its message, let’s not just celebrate it.

Between the November 26 attacks in Mumbai, the purchase a U.S. senator scheming in the great state of Illinois and now the news of the shameful Bernard Madoff, it makes it difficult to even look at the news lately.
Because on top of this we’re still dealing with the every day challenges of a sinking economy, less weight to one’s 401K,  a constant gray cloud over rust belt cities such as Detroit and even the local news of Gov. O’Malley’s decision to furlough state employees.
We’re approaching Chanukah, and we could all use a flicker of light to rid ourselves of this darkness.
It is with relief that we learn that the Madoff scheme didn’t infiltrate the finances of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore. It’s our hope that it didn’t impact individuals as well.
But this issue just speaks to so many different issues. And I believe that one of them is just flat out arrogance in the Jewish world.
Madoff, I’m told flaunted his wealth, and so did many of his inner circle. And he did it on the backs of charities and schools. And today there are unemployed people because either the charity no longer exists or there was a need for an immediate cutback.
This guy Madoff gets to stay out of jail on $10 million bond and wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.
Terrific.
Some of us remember Jeffrey Levitt puttering around in his golf cart with the Rolls Royce front, the indoor swimming pool and all of the expensive amenities. People, whose retirements and children’s educations stood in line, some with lawn furniture to rest on, to claim their CDs. All the while, bank officers went up and down the line telling everyone their funds were “safe.”
Arrogance.
We’re already worried about what the anti-Semites are going to say. Well, in this day of blogs, chats and emails, this is a gift given from the Gods of hate to them.
But maybe instead of worrying what they are saying. We need to worry more about what we as a people are doing and how we’re living.
Because some where along the line, we’ve lost our moral compass.
And we’ve got to get it back.
Listen, we live in a nation filled with opportunities and advantages. But to take those opportunities and advantages and use them to destroy other people while flaunting the wealth you stole, is beyond comprehension.
Mr. Madoff and his colleagues have created a nightmare.
I just hope that we can take some sort of lessons from this economic carnage and use it to glue together what is now broken.
That compass might never be “good as new,” but we’ve got to start somewhere, and it’s got to be now, in our families and in our classrooms and synagogues.
“Getting away” with financial murder is no way to get ahead in life.
It’s a death sentence.
And this is what Mr. Madoff has done to the dreams of many, many people. He’s killed their dreams, but perhaps worse, their faith.

The further I distance myself from Monday evening’s Memorial and Solidarity Gathering, the more upset I feel.
This was an evening in memory of the terror victims in Mumbai, and it was co-sponsored by Lubavitch of Baltimore, the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, the JCC and the Vaad Harabanim.
Governor Martin O’Malley spoke. Mayor Sheila Dixon and City Council President Stephanie Rawlings Blake along with State Dels. Sandy Rosenberg and Dr. Dan Morham kindled memorial candles.
But when I looked around the crowded JCC Park Heights auditorium, I didn’t see a single non-Orthodox rabbi, not one. Now, maybe I missed someone, but I’m going to find out over the coming days who was invited, and who wasn’t invited.
I also noted that with only a handful of exceptions, most of the crowd was from the Orthodox community. This shouldn’t have been the case, not at all.
First, on its own merit, the sign on the door doesn’t say the Orthodox Jewish Community Center, it is a facility Jews of all denominations and non-Jews can enjoy.
Second, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg, victims of this tragedy, dedicated their lives to bringing spirituality to all Jews regardless of their level of observance. In the video shown on their lives following the speeches, I remember one scene of Rabbi Holtzberg sitting and learning with a young man who was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt.
Alan Scherr, who grew up on Nadine Drive, and was not Orthodox, was memorialized as was his daughter, Naomi. Both were killed while dining at a Mumbai hotel restaurant.
The fact is, we have to tell the truth about what the word “community” means in Park Heights. Because unfortunately the “community” members who attend Baltimore Hebrew, Oheb Shalom, Beth El, Chizuk Amuno and others aren’t the same “community” members who call themselves Orthodox.
They are from altogether different communities. I’m not so sure that one community reached out and invited the other community over to this Monday night event.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
How many times there is a “community” tehillim or prayer gathering when there’s a difficult event happening in Israel or even when someone’s life is in danger. I don’t think I’d be in error in writing that the Conservative and Reform synagogues aren’t even on the “phone tree.”
But on Monday night when we had elected officials on hand, when the president of the Associated spoke, when the executive director of the Center for Jewish Education spoke, wouldn’t you think that we were all invited to this event.
I don’t think we all were.
The Reform, the Conservative, the non-Orthodox were overlooked.
As much as I have given credit to the sponsors of this event Monday night in my previous blogs and in the JT itself, the more I distance myself, the more it bothers me.
At the risk of promoting any one organization or constituent agency over another, I think the Baltimore Jewish Council should be the organizer of events such as these in the future. The Council is an umbrella group already in place with connections that transcend all of the Jewish and non-Jewish “communities” out there.
Monday evening was an Orthodox event with the Governor and Associated President and a few candles lit to touch some bases.
But community event?
Hardly.
I wanted to hear what my personal hero and Jewish leader Shoshana Cardin had to say.
I needed to hear Rabbi Steve Schwartz’s calming influence.
Dr. Robert Friedman is arguably the Baltimorean with the greatest knowledge of how this world works. He could have helped us gain understanding.
Kudos to Rabbis Hauer and Kaplan, the governor, Marc Terrill for their beautiful words and Cantor Avi Albrecht’s for his powerful, emotional voice.
Offer us more. Diversify. Let the community be represented by those who really make it a community.
We don’t mourn for the deceased of this horrible Mumbai tragedy because they were mostly Orthodox Jews. We mourn because they were innocent victims. Can we as a “community” agree to that or do we have to wear a certain kind of yarmulke and long skirt and sheitel to be entitled to express our grief.
Let’s hope not.

Yes, I thought it was wonderful that there were Jews of many different denominations and affiliations attending Monday evening’s Mumbai memorial.
But I can’t help but feel that there was still a big elephant in the room that evening.
There is a general disdain for anything Lubavitch among the main-line Orthodox world. The fact that Lubavitch has its own factional differences with the question of the late Lubavitch Rebbe being cast as Moshiach by some, doesn’t help when one is attempting to put together a community memorial service like this one.
Usually when there is a life threatening event in Israel, there is a call for Tehillim or psalm groups in the Orthodox community.
It’s entirely possible that I missed that call this time around, but I don’t seem to recall any such call for Tehillim outside of the Lubavitch community.
I was glad to see that the Vaad Harabanim was listed as one of Monday’s event sponsors. Rabbi Moshe Heinemann sat on the dais and read words of Tehillim. And Rabbi Moshe Hauer, listed in the program as representing not only his own Bnai Jacob Shaarei Zion, but also the Vaad, delivered an incredible address.
So I’m hoping that what I saw on Monday evening was real.
By the end of the evening, I was crying, so much so that I asked a JCC staffer to let me exit through a back door of the facility, because I couldn’t talk to anyone else.
My tears were for a combination of reasons. The first was that the events bringing us together from Mumbai were emotionally crushing. I kept thinking about the young couple and their baby son. But I was also crying, because I was hoping beyond hope that it would be true what Rabbi Hauer was asking us, that we were all one people now. That it wasn’t an issue anymore of who was Lubavitch, and who went to Ner Israel or who was from Yeshiva University or whatever and wherever. And that made me cry, that it was actually a possibility that these two young deceased people, Rabbi Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg could help erase the cynicism, the judgment, the loshon hora and the divisions between our people. If it were true, then I was also crying tears of joy. But if it was just a show, just artificial concern by some or a chance to be seen, then these were tears of added pain.
Because if we haven’t learned now to get over our internal arrogance, how can we ever expect to face HaShem and ask him for a favorable eternal judgment?
This couple was our corbon, our sacrifice.
Maybe we can grow as a unified people in the spirit of am yachad now.
This is all I ask.
Nothing more

I was proud of our community Sunday night.
There in the center of the Orthodox neighborhood, at the Etz Chaim campus, the memories of two people most of this community never knew, were being given the honor and memories they deserved.
Alan Scherr and his daughter Naomi, were killed while on a spiritual meditation visit to India. They were cut down as part of the horrific acts of terrorism that hit Mumbai last week.
Mr. Scherr grew up in not far from Etz Chaim’s Fords Lane campus on Nadine Drive. He attended Baltimore public schools and taught photography and Loyola College.
His sister, Soozie Seiden and her husband Kurt are Etz Chaim students and members of Rabbi Goldberger’s shul.
If one looked around the Etz Chaim synagogue on Sunday evening, one would be likely to see the mix of Orthodox Jews and secular Jews, gentiles and people who were there just because they loved Alan and Naomi.
But the way Rabbi Shlomo Porter, who has helped so many Jews navigate their quest for spirituality navigated the sensitive, emotional evening was done with such beauty, validation and feeling.
It’s not often that those of us from diverse backgrounds have an opportunity to come together and turn something tragic into a lesson of love and hope. I believe this is what Rabbi Porter accomplished Sunday night.
Alan Scherr, himself not Orthodox, I believe would have found all of this at the highest level of spirituality. This tragedy brought people together. And Rabbi Porter helped take us all to an even higher place.

This is the best Italian food in town. We have tried many others and nothing can top Fazzini’s. Everything is fresh, homemade and delicious.

The pizza here was undercooked and really doughy.
entrees on other tables looked good though.

we like fazzini italian kitchen because of good wait staff and consistently good italian food. everything there is homemade; pasta, sauce,bread,pizza dough,etc.  large portions and reasonable prices and no ambiance!