Twice this week, I’ve had conversations that went something like this:
Me: “I haven’t seen you lately, how’s it going?”
Them: “Well, you probably know that I lost my (son, mother).”
One of these conversations happened over a luncheon spread of tuna and egg salad and cut up fruit while the two of us were putting food on our plates for our respective working lunches.
The other happened while I was kvetching my way through another couple hundred calories on the treadmill at the JCC.
If it’s possible to get stopped in one’s tracks on the treadmill, than that was the situation.
We’re all kind of stuck in a broken conversational record connecting every discussion, debate or dialogue to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
So with this economic cloud hanging over us, all other conversations sometimes seem to get lost…well, in those clouds.
I think that sometimes I get more involved with an article I’m working on or the state of affairs in the community, I have to shake my head and almost wake up.
Those wake up calls are provided for me by conversations like the ones I had last week.
But the wake up calls get even deeper. On March 15 at the Gordon Center, a one-woman play, “The Blessing of a Broken Heart,” based on Sherri Mandel’s book of the same title will remind this community of the death of Koby Mandell.
Koby and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran were brutally killed in a Tekoa, Israel cave in May of 2001. But the two young teens weren’t just killed their bodies were bludgeoned with rocks beyond recognition, such was the hatred of the murderers towards two boys who happened to be Jewish.
At the time, there were so many stories written, so many interviews done. The Koby Mandell Foundation continues to provide respite to children who have been touched by terrorism in Israel.
In preparation for the performance, I went ahead and read Sherri Mandell’s incredible book. It’s not just great writing, but it’s got a flavor to it, a difference to it. Kind of like when you taste a piece of fruit that is just so much different and incredible than anything else you’ve eaten in years. You’ve eaten an orange before, but this time the orange was just so different.
But I admit, I let life go on. Even though I have a daughter and son-in-law who live in the same town as the Mandells, I guess I moved on. And I know we’re supposed to move on.
Sometimes, though, I don’t want to. I want the reminder. I think already about how the victims of the Mumbai massacre have fallen off of the radar screen. That shouldn’t be.
So for now I’m just asking, especially as we head into the Purim and Pesach seasons, and I know money is impossibly tight. But perhaps the tzedakah we give can go in part to families who have set up utilities to help those of us in dire need who our dearly deceased have left behind.
If anything, I’m getting a new radar screen with a heightened sensitivity chip.
It’s just something I’ve got to do.

Back in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a BBYO AZA chapter called Kellam AZA. It later was renamed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. AZA.
Many of its chapter members are probably in their 50s and 60s by now.
Kellam/King AZA had as its chapter advisor a man named Bob Weisman.
He was a balding, short statured, heavy set man, who was also known in the community as “Big Bob.”
Bob owned a soft-served ice cream truck and used to do business by stopping his truck in various streets and neighborhoods mostly in the Upper Park Heights, Cheswolde and Pickwick areas.
He was also an employee of a former electronic repair store located back then in the Fallstaff Shopping Center and called Sirkis Music.
While Bob was active with the youth of the day, he might have been a little too active.
He was known to show what were called back then “stag” films to the boys in his AZA chapter and to other boys in the neighborhood as well. Stag films, just in case you might not know, are reel-to-reel porno movies.
Can you imagine sending your son off to a Jewish youth group meeting not knowing that instead of playing sports or raising tzedakah of some sort, they would be watching a porno movie provided by their chapter advisor.
One person I interviewed about Mr. Weisman said that Mr. Weisman tried to “seduce” him many times when he was in 11th and 12th grade.
I located and placed a call to the man who was the director of BBYO in Baltimore back then, and when I asked him about Mr. Weisman, he didn’t “remember” or didn’t offer a reaction.
How could the director not know?
Then again, most parents knew nothing of the activities of their sons back then. As a member of this generation, a member of AZA, not Kellam/King, I remember that this was a time when boys probably wouldn’t have mentioned anything like this to their parents.
I have been told that Mr. Weisman died allegedly of AIDS.
If you know of any information about Mr. Weisman, I would be forever grateful. My email is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
A friend told me that Mr. Weisman would ask him how much money he would accept from him to have sex with him. My friend is 57 now. He was 17 when these questions were asked.
God only knows what other questions Mr. Weisman was asking of boys back then.
And what about the answers?
So, if you knew of Bob, know of Bob, were members of his AZA chapter, I’d love to hear from you.
And Bob, if the information is incorrect about your death. Call me, we can discuss other “issues” of impact to my life.

In the mid-80s, I wrote an article about four homeless Jewish men living here on the streets of Baltimore.
One of them was sleeping behind MICA, the Maryland Institute College of Arts. His name was Phil, and he was a member of my Cub Scout den when we were both young boys. He was fighting a difficult fight with mental illness.
There was a second man, whose name was also Phil. He was a Viet Nam War veteran, also with mental illness issues, and he would walk from the a homeless shelter near Harbor Place to Temple Oheb Shalom on Park Heights Avenue on Friday nights just get something to eat and to be around Jews.
By his account, no one ever asked him his name, nor did they offer him a ride back to the shelter, or a way out of the shelter. Think about that walk for a second. We’re talking walking from Harbor Place to the almost the corner of Park Heights and Slade. Could you walk that walk?
At least one other was sleeping on a steam grate on Baltimore Street or as it is better known, the Block. In a pile of blankets and old coats and paper bags, he told me about his bar mitzvah, and a little bit of his life growing up in Jewish Baltimore. Glittery yellow and red lights flashed in the background from the seedy and sad strip joints.
The fourth guy was just plain living in his car.
Each one of these guys had a mental illness of some sort. Each one of them were familiar names to what was then called Jewish Family Services. While their cases were private, I got the impression that their mental illnesses stood as obstacles even when it came down to receiving help from JFS.
I understood that there was a sincere effort by the Jewish community to reach out to these men. And that effort remains stronger than ever.
But then I ran into a comment that I still carry with me. It’s the comment that motivates me to write articles like the one written in last week’s issue about, “Homeless in Pikesville.”
It was the mid-1980s, it was Friday the story appeared in the JT on the homeless Jews, and I was meeting with a couple of community leaders, one extremely wealthy man who was wearing a dark tailored suit and wrote with a fountain pen that probably would have been my week’s salary back then.
I don’t remember to this day what the meeting was about. I just remember him saying to me, “we take care of 100,000 Jews here in Baltimore. You find the four we couldn’t help, and you put them on the cover.”
The man who said this probably donated millions to the Associated and other causes. His name probably has dedicated building wings and classrooms and done so much good. Yet, it was that one statement showing me his disconnect from reality.
If this man’s own child were homeless, I guarantee you he’d be out there looking for him, trying to find a way to bring him back to safety and productivity.
For homeless people, it’s not just about the food and the shelter and the clothing. That’s difficult enough to bear. But it’s also about getting beaten up. It’s about washing your hands and face and hair in a gas station bathroom, if you’re lucky. It’s about getting mugged, robbed and you have nothing to give the robbers. If you are a woman, it’s about rape. It’s about standing in line at a soup kitchen, not getting there in time, and getting cut off for lunch.
It’s about people who pass you by and don’t want to talk to you, touch you or wish you would just disappear.
It’s about children who are also homeless, who get their best meal in a school cafeteria.
Look, in this economic climate, there is so many individualized levels to homelessness.
We’ve got an excellent system in place to help one another in the Jewish community.
That doesn’t mean, however, that someone, can’t slip through the cracks of the safety net.
The answer can’t be, out of all the Jews we save, we managed to find the one who slipped through.
That is not the message of a caring community.
It’s only a clue that we have to work harder on our selves as Jews, and we have more work to do to help others in need.
What are we on this earth for if not to help one another?
Who cares what is in place if one Jew is homeless, we’re all responsible.
We need to find him and take care of him and his family.
If there are more, then it is our God-given mandate to find them and help them heal as well.
 

When we were first meeting with married couples our age, my wife and I would go out with our friends, and we’d talk about affording apartments, maybe saving for a down payment on a house, or buying a car.
Then when babies were on the way, we’d read Consumer Reports, and we’d check every known source (pre-Internet) on the sturdiest stroller, the safest infant seat and of course the best pediatrician.
That discussion evolved into early childhood education, mini-vans and the hot new item at the time, video cameras.
So time has moved on, and for some of us, our children are beginning their adult lives or working diligently on college academics.
Meanwhile, the conversation among our friends has taken a bit of a change. Some of us have been discussing this as couples for quite some time now, only to learn that others of us are having similar discussions.
So, what is the talking point?
It’s not about digital cameras or new cars or new appliances. Instead, we’re discussing how do we trim our budgets to better afford the here and now, not to mention the future.
Can we figure out as a couple how to cut down on the food bill for instance?
What happens when the utility spikes and almost doubles for a month?
Do we really need cable?
What telephone long distance carrier are we using? Can we get a better deal if we bundle, Internet, telephone and cable?
Some of us exchange stories of really examining our credit card bills more carefully. One friend talked about how after using a particular long distance carrier, he changed to another. The new carrier was supposed to notify the former carrier. But it never did. So despite not being used for one long distance call, the friend said that a charge of $1.13 showed up on his bill month after month. He kept waiting for it to go away, but the passive approach didn’t work, and after two years, he finally made the call to erase the nagging $1.13. It all adds up.
Others are now talking about finding ways to plan their family meals, especially if they are empty nesting so that they spend less money. And as recently as last night, my wife and I unplugged our TV and our Internet router and turned the heat down. Will these small moves help?
Well, like the $1.13 a month from my friend’s credit card bill, it sure can’t hurt.
But one thing is for sure, it is interesting how the theme and tone of conversations are now changing.
From buying Italian made baby strollers to getting yet another 10,000 miles out of that 2000 car.
The conversation has really changed.