Over the recent years, we’ve all spent too much time at Levinson’s listening to rabbis speak in their eulogies of the young man or woman whose body is before us in a coffin.
The eulogies have the same heartfelt mantra about them: He was loved by everyone. She was getting her life together. He just made some bad choices.
The other day I sat with a young Jew who was clean for a handful of months. He/she (gender matters not here) grew up in Pikesville to “your typical Jewish family.” There was no abuse, there was a dedication to education and hard work and even fun. There was little or no alcohol and certainly no illegal drugs to be found in the house.
Still, the disease found this young person. It quickly spread from “weed” and alcohol to prescription drugs and finally heroine. There was jail time, there was lost time, lost trust, lost schooling, a life interrupted.
The person is clean now.
Hopefully, this time clean means clean.
Drug addiction can come back like a cancer cell once in remission. Through all of the guilt, stigma, sorrow and struggle, families have to remind themselves that this is a disease. This isn’t anyone’s fault.
There are so many opportunities to shed light and to give back.
One of them that is coming up is called Baltimore Party in the Park. It is to benefit the Nikki Perlow Foundation.
Nikki, the 21-year-old daughter of Cliff and Amy and sister to Josh, died of an accidental overdose. She had been clean and sober for 15 months prior to her death. But like all of these young people, there is so much more to them than their disease. Nikki loved animals, particularly horses. She loved fashion, sailing, lacrosse, basketball and softball. And she loved her family.
The Party in the Park will take place from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 10, at the Padonia Park West Picnic Area, 12006 Jennifer Road in Cockeysville. It will include games, crafts, interactive activities and music, including the children’s band, “Milkshake,” Baltimore’s own “Tall in the Saddle” and “Cruise.”
The event will benefit the Foundation.
More information can be found at BaltimorePartyInThePark.com or NikkiPerlowFoundation.org
Admission is $10 for adults and free for children 12 and under. Rain date is October 17.
By the way, “typical Jewish families” have family members who hurting from disease, be it mental illness, heart disease, cancer, and yes substance abuse. Like other families who give back, so is Nikki through her family.

“Listen, Believe, Respond.”
These are the three words anchoring the upcoming Jewish Healing Service for “those among us who have experienced the trauma of abuse as children, adolescents or adults.”
The service will take place 7:30 p.m., Sunday, September 13, at the Weinberg Park Heights Jewish Community center.
The event is a community gathering for “all who want to move our community from silence to attention.” It is for survivors of domestic, sexual, physical, verbal and all forms of abuse. It is for families and friends, mental health and physical health professionals, clergy and educators.
There is no denominational label placed on any of this. All streams of Jewish identity and observance are welcome and will be comfortable.
At this service, it is the hope and prayer that survivors will have feelings of safety, validation and a motivation to move from a person who survives to a person who can thrive.
The work that is going on behind the scenes from people who really care is remarkable.  The Shofar Coalition, Chana, the Associated, the Baltimore Board of Rabbis and Jewish Community Services are listening to the voices of many incredible survivors.
It’s a event that will be important for so many of us.
And it can’t be emphasized enough that this is event is for all Jews no matter where they worship or don’t worship. The focus will be on the survivor and how they will hopefully connect to the Jewish community especially in these days before the High Holidays.
“Listen, Believe, Respond.”

Somebody could get seriously injured if not killed where Cross Country Boulevard and Strathmore Road intersect.
Zakah Glaser is at least one determined person to not let that happen.
She, like many others, are hoping that neighbors will step forward, sign an online petition and create a conversation with city and neighborhood officials.
The result of these actions will hopefully be the placement of a much needed traffic signal or three-way stop sign at the intersection.
How many times have all of us in the Cheswolde, Cross Country areas heard the sickening sounds of tires screeching, metal crushing and then the resulting emergency services sirens?
Mrs. Glaser, who lives nearby, has noted at least four accidents in a recent five-day-period. One of these accidents sent a driver off the road, through a neighbor’s metal fence and into the yard where the car was stopped by a tree. In that same yard, children are normally at play. By the grace of HaShem, they weren’t out there at the time of the accident.
Many of us know, however, that passing through the intersection is almost always risky and must be taken with patience and care.
Cars coming from the either direction often aren’t giving themselves enough time to brake for pedestrians or drivers entering the intersection from Strathmore. Time and patience are needed to cross the intersection or to turn in either direction from Strathmore.
This is an intersection heavy with carpools during the school year. It’s an intersection where children are riding bikes, pushing scooters or on skate boards.
The possibilities for accidents and injuries are just waiting to happen, and it is fortunate that there has been no loss of life.
But it’s a ticking time bomb.
Indeed, carpools of little children are dropped off near the intersection. People walking to and from shul are at risk at the intersection. Then there’s the distractions even of cars entering Strathmore from Western Run.
Come on Baltimore City, this is traffic study that is so important and necessary.
It’s not out of the ordinary for people walking to shul to see car parts littered sometimes on the road, a headlamp here, a bumper there.
With the High Holidays approaching and the community using the Western Run for Tashlich, there’s even more concern.
Mrs. Glaser has started this important petition and awareness drive. It’s one we should all support. There needs to be more traffic control at this intersection.
The petition can be signed at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stopsignoncrosscountry/

One of the great things about having a long-standing news presence is that the newspapers produced by the Jewish Times are ostensibly historical reflections.
On September 24, the JT will be 90 years old.
So as an editorial department project, we’ve been looking at what might be the 90 most important news stories covered over the years.
You are invited to send us what you think might qualify as a top-90 story. We’d love to know what you think. Just respond to this blog.
With 90 years to choose from, I started my search with the 1929 editions. The reason was simple, with the recent recession we are either still in or pulling out of, I wanted to see how the Great Depression was covered by the Jewish Times.
Interestingly enough, there was little written on the news or editorial pages about the greatest economic dark period of our nation’s history. The only way one would have really know that something was going on was through a series of advertisements from banks and savings loans assuring Baltimore Jewish Times readers that their funds were safe and that Baltimore wasn’t like New York. There was plenty of money to lend, according to the ads.
While, however, looking for these economy-related pieces, I came across the first-hand stories of quite another important dark period in our peoples’ history. This being the massacre of 67 Jewish Hebron residents by Arabs on August 23-24. The killings, done mostly with knives and machetes, were described in horrific detail. The editorials and opinions of condemnation were came from all over the world.
Reading these articles came for me on the eve of the 80th anniversary of these terrible events in Israel. It was difficult enough to read these articles. They obviously didn’t have the technology of satellite news images or digital photography to bring the devastation into our living rooms. The words were enough.
Also, these articles from the 80 years ago provide a platform of perspective and information on history being made and history yet made. The reasons why Hebron has remained an important issue in the day in the life of the State of Israel, can be gleaned from the articles written some 80 years ago.
And after 90 years, 80 years in this case, some stories are as important as ever.
Again, if there are stories you feel need to be recognized in our 90 years of reporting the news, please respond to this blog or email your ideas to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

The murder of two Israeli teens and the wounding of several others at a Tel Aviv gay community center reminded me of a 1984 conversation I had with a prominent Baltimore rabbi.
AIDS was very much on the rise. Though it was impacting intravenous drug users to children to married women to everyone everywhere, it seemed as if gay men were the audience targeted by religious fundamentalists. It was called the “gay men’s disease” at the time, and there were those convinced that it was HaShem’s punishment for male homosexuality.
What the rabbi simply told me was that there were young adult Jewish men on their death beds here in town dying of AIDS. But what shouldn’t have been such a stunner, yet it was back then, was the rabbi telling me that some of these young men were coming out to their parents literally on their death beds. So the rabbi not only had to give pastoral counseling to a dying Jewish young man, but also help the child and his parents process all of this.
Even on their death beds, the young men sometimes feared that they could hurt their parents. They also feared the unknown, not certain of how their parents would react to the news that their son was gay, and that this illness was possibly caused by his sexual lifestyle.
News reports coming out of Tel Aviv have shown that while Jewish gays and lesbians have become more at ease with their self images and identities, there is still among some that worry of stigma and social rejection. In this case, parents of some of the wounded didn’t know until they were summoned to hospitals that their teen-age child was/is gay.
One can accept homosexuality, one can deplore it. A child, however, should never, ever be afraid to show their mother or father who they are.
I want the monster who fired the shots to be caught and convicted.
But I also want another “monster” eliminated.
Fear.
Gay teens have a disproportionate amount of suicides. These are children who fear sometimes just the act of going to school each day. They listen quietly and sadly at gay jokes or one kid calling another “gay” as if that were some sort of knock.
As parents we might not agree with what directions our teenage and adult children sometime take.
But a home should be a place of unconditional love where children especially can be themselves and speak truths that they know are safe, especially safe with their moms and dads.
Sadly, a person can be motivated by hate to pull a trigger against another person.
Sometimes our attitudes, our feelings, our own lack of knowledge is enough ammunition to wound another person.
I never want to hear or read again that a parent learns their child is gay on his hospital bed.
That to me is almost as bleak as a hater holding a gun.
I’m glad that Tel Aviv has a place where gay teens can learn that they are not monsters, but they are beautiful. I’m glad there’s a place that builds up their image of self.
One day, I hope the kids can bring their parents and show them.
And I hope that their parents come away with pride.