Sometimes I have to write on what I see in the streets and blocks and neighborhoods in which I live. What is added to that is the work that I see done by my volunteer Shomrim colleagues.
As the weather warms up, I hear on the Shomrim radio more and more calls for stolen bicycles and even stolen lawn mowers.
I guess what gets to me is that most times, a bike or a lawn mower doesn’t have to be stolen.
So to prove a point to myself, I took a ride Sunday afternoon from Glen Avenue to Slade and then from Pimlico to Reisterstown Roads. I followed side streets, back roads and main thoroughfares.
I could have walked away or loaded into my car at least 17 bikes, by my count. Most of them were strewn on front lawns for the taking. About five were literally on the sidewalk. Two were in the street.
So what happens is that Shomrim gets a call or the Police Department gets a call that a child’s bike is stolen.
Yes, it was stolen.
But you ostensibly offered it up.
The same goes for that wonderful self-propelled piece of machinery that makes men feel so manly and can be found in the shed. Pay $300 or more for a lawn mower, and then go out and find the piece of junk lock of your dreams at the dollar store. Guess what? Your lawn mower is being pushed along those same back streets where it will be soon sold. Last summer on a Shomrim call, we followed a person with a stolen lawn mower, and before the police could get there, we watched him sell it to another person who drove away in a pick up truck. The same guy in the pick up truck is probably cutting lawns for a living. He could be cutting your lawn with your lawn mower.
We have Shomrim volunteers who spend hours and hours away from their own families spending money on gasoline or losing money they could be making to provide for their own families.
Why?
Because you haven’t taught your kids that in the five minutes it takes for them to drop the bike, run in the house, use the bathroom, get a drink and come out, the bike is gone.
It’s also because you aren’t taking the thefts seriously. Oh, you say you do. You get hysterical when your child’s bike is stolen. But do you think it is an accident that bikes seem to be stolen from you and your neighbors?
The people who steal bikes. They know about our neighborhood. They know how careless some of us are. They know where to come when they need a bike that they don’t want to pay for. They could be six feet tall, but they’ll ride away on your child’s 24-inch bike,
Except we are paying much more than the loss of the bike. We’re paying for the loss of trust our children will have, a real sense of violation.
Let the children bring the bike into the house for the five minutes. But overall, puchase locks for these bikes. In this day and age when everyone has a cellphone with a camera app, take pictures of your children’s bikes. Show your children that this is their property, that they received out of your love for them.
If bikes were locked up securely or kept out of sight of those who would steal them, I think we’d see our neighborhood as less of a target.
For now, we’ve become like a shopping mall of theft. Yet, we’re offering up the merchandise for free.
You can help make this stop to a degree.
Black, white, Jewish, gentile, the thieves don’t care what race or faith you are or your neighbors are.
They want the bikes.
After my little tour last Sunday, I’m here to tell you, we’re giving them away.

Baltimore Hebrew Congregation again proved why it “gets” our community so well.
In the same spirit as its acclaimed “Rosh Hashanah Under The Stars,” Baltimore Hebrew invited the community last Wednesday evening, the second night of Shavuos,” for a free scoop of ice cream in honor of the holiday.
The event was called the Community-Wide Free Scoop Night and was held at Maggie Moo’s in the Quarry.
Rabbi Andy Busch and Rabbi Elissa Sachs Kohen, congregation president Philip Abraham, program director Andy Wayne as well as other Baltimore Hebrew officials were on hand to meet and to greet the lines of people who came out to be with one another, have a taste of Shavuos and a great deal of friendship. It was just a beautiful night all around.
The evening was a perfect complement to the congregation’s Rosh Hashanah Under The Stars, which by the way is only a little over three months away.
Also on Friday night, Temple Oheb Shalom, Baltimore Hebrew’s across-the-street neighbor, is holding (or depending when you read this, held) a healing service for survivors of trauma.
At least two of its congregants will speak on the issue, beginning 7:30 p.m.
Temple Oheb Shalom, in conjunction with the Shofar Coalition, a constituent agency of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, is taking a lead on this difficult issue.
It is the second such healing service in our community for trauma survivors. The first occurred last fall at the Park Heights JCC just prior to Rosh Hashanah.
At that service, an audience member was so moved to make contact with the Shofar Coalition, and the follow up is Friday night’s service at Oheb Shalom.
Both of these events were open to the community, the entire community. And both congregations gave us all an opportunity to come together in the spirit of friendship and healing.

There is status in many of us.
I remember answering the question when asked, “how many times have you been to Israel?”
Whenever I answer the question, and it could be almost any number, I’m answered typically back with, “I’ve been there 50 times. And each time is better than the others, and I’ve learned so much on each trip.”
Or…
“Oh you’ve been to Israel, and you haven’t been to Chever Rachel? How about Hebron?
How can you not have gone to Hebron?”
Don’t know about you, but each and every time I have been to Israel, I have a recurring thought. And that thought comes at the Kotel, when I think that I was the first person in either my Dad’s or Mom’s family to see this most holy place.  The responsibility I feel of representing them there is what I think about.
I think about the time after September 11, 2001, when I visited Israel with Emily, my younger daughter. We were there to visit DeDe, her older sister, who was learning in a seminary that was reached through a checkpoint. Cab drivers either refused to take us there or charged us a ridiculously high fee to take us there.
The hotels were far below capacity. I am completely certain that Emily and I were among the only occupants of a Tel Aviv hotel.
A man working behind the counter of a bagel store, walked around and hugged me when saw that we were Americans.
We spent money, we took DeDe’s class out for pizza.
We bought souvenirs and then came home.
I wasn’t thinking of how many times I had been to Israel.
The point is, every time any of us go to Israel, be it the first time, the third time or the 48th time, it is an important time.
If a family can afford but one trip, then that trip is as golden as your 50 and has its own merit of meaning.
So here we are on the eve of Shavuous. This is the night we received our Torah.
Once again, we play Jewish numerical status.
This time, it goes like this?
“How late did you stay up learning?”
“Did you make it through the night?”
Now, some of us make it through the night, but are so exhausted that most of what we hear doesn’t get through.
Yet there are others who stay up as long as they can, and are inspired by what they learned before falling asleep at an hour appropriate for their physical and mental health.
Again, it’s not about the hour.
It’s about the study. It’s about the information.
May we all be inspired by what we hear and learn that it keeps our minds stirring to want to hear more or delve more into the subject. That’s what learning is all about. It’s not about staying up late to stay up late.
It’s when the words, the information are the stimulants, not the caffeine nor the coffee.
We want to be in an exciting frame of mind where we’re learning, and the side situation is that we have happened to stay up late doing so. But maybe we didn’t even notice the hour, because the learning was so wonderful.
It shouldn’t be that we stay up all night to learn. Somehow that misses the point.
It’s the learning that leads us through the night.
It’s not the night that leads us through the learning.

Recently, I was attending a community meeting.
There was as always scholarly insight and important information shared. I was and always feel fulfilled by these meetings.
I’m having trouble remembering some of the meeting’s highlights, because for me that meeting came down to an unfortunate remark from a rabbi.
So I’m walking through the meeting, getting ready to leave when the rabbi, who I choose not to name, walks over to me.
Instead of reaching out his hand and saying simply “hello,” he alludes to my clothing with a put down.
I was wearing a khaki pair of slacks, blue shirt and khaki jacket.
His comment to me was, “what are you, the ice cream man?”
That was the best he could do.
Why do I comment on this?
A couple of years ago, I was at a kosher market with a friend. We were picking up food for our shul’s seudat shlishi (Shabbat dinner). We were both wearing tan autumn jackets, the type of garment that keeps the chill off as the seasons turn from summer to fall.
In this market were men and women, mostly dressed in black. One man we both knew, donned in a black suit, white shirt and black hat came over to us and asked without a smile on his face, “are you guys trying to be twins?”
The irony of such a quip didn’t dawn on him as we all looked around at a market filled with people dressed just like he was dressed.
So what am I getting at?
Walk to shul on Shabbos, frequent a store during the week and in the Orthodox community in recent years, even sweet, cute little children are wearing shades of black.
If a child now is in pink or blue or yellow or green or heaven forbid, red, it is clearly looked down upon. It’s almost like an unsaid competition of the blacker your clothes, the more religious you are.
Wear khaki, and you are now the “ice cream man.”
If the sages themselves, in colorful robes, scarves and head coverings were to walk in certain neighborhoods, doors would be locked at their approach.
This, of course comes from the top down. It comes from smart aleck remarks from a sub-culture more worried about the white and black of their clothing than they are concerned about helping one another as human beings.
What it’s also done is it has yet again separated one part of our community from another. A Torah scholar could wear a blue shirt and that would not be considered frum enough in some circles. A woman could wear a pretty, floral dress in honor of spring, and be judged as not a good example for her children.
Say hello to people. Make them feel good about themselves. Find out what’s on their minds. Reach out to them.
My God rabbi, where did you get this from?
So what the rabbi didn’t know was that for me, the use of the term “ice cream man” was a double whammy.
I have written before that I am a survivor of sexual molestation.
The person who molested me was a man named Bob Weisman. He owned a truck. An ice cream truck.
He was an “ice cream man.”
That’s the black and white of it.
Nice suit rabbi.

He was an announcer for a short time here.
I doubt few people without Detroit connections will feel any impact.
Learning of Ernie Harwell’s death last night brought tears to my eyes.
At age 92, he had succumbed to cancer.
When Lisa and I moved our family to Detroit in 1990, we were ostensibly alone.
I remember on the day we moved, driving sadly through Pennsylvania and into Ohio. By mid-afternoon outside of Toledo, I searched the radio dial, and I found what I was looking for.
It was a friendly, welcoming voice calling a baseball game.
I knew then it was the great Ernie Harwell. Like a tracking beam, his soft, genteel voice brought us to our new home in Southfield, Mi.
Ernie Harwell was Detroit Tigers baseball.
We arrived in Detroit in mid-summer of 1990.
After living through our first Michigan winter, I received a phone call from Joanne Levine, a woman, who along with her husband Steve, found kindred baseball spirits in their new friends from Baltimore.
Joanne told me to turn on the radio, that the Tigers first spring training game would start soon, and that I had to hear Ernie Harwell’s traditional first words of the baseball season.

The words were a poem:

“For lo the winter is past.
The rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of the singing of birds is come
And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

In our remaining years in Detroit, I heard him say that before each season. I knew that cold would give way to the spring and warm days at the old Tiger Stadium.

At a time when we can easily so much to find wrong, when I need to hide from oil spills, terrorism, and the disaster of the days, I find that hiding place watching or listening to a baseball game. I feel privileged to have listened to a man call the play by play of a sport I love.
He brought peace to the lives of many, and made us all feel good about the game on the field and its place in our American tradition.

Thank you Ernie.