YINW Vacczine

It's 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday as I sit down to write these thoughts.  

I finally fell asleep last night at 3:00 a.m. and I was up at 6:00 a.m. eager to get to Gourmet Glatt in anticipation of avoiding a crowd. Much to my surprise, I was able to walk right in and there was barely anyone in the store. Unfortunately, there was also barely anything yet stocked on the shelves. As...Read more...

ZOOM

Jeremy stared at his computer screen, tapping and deleting and deleting and tapping, not quite willing to comprehend what he was writing. Could he finally be here, a rabbi in full, leading the congregation in Hewlett that he sparsely attended in his youth, only to have it all changed with the flap of a Chinese bat?  

Surely it was...Read more...

Zooming Through Life

For the record, I've had a zoom account for well over a year.  I've mostly figured out the tools, like the choice of backgrounds:

or ….

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I grew up "Modern Orthodox." At the time, what that title meant to me was I could dress like and be tuned in to the same TV shows and movies as the rest of the world – but I also kept Shabbos and went to a Jewish Day School.  I can't exactly say that I felt pride in being modern orthodox as opposed to any other type of observance level on the religious spectrum. I think what I felt can be better described...Read more...

So Many Questions

Tomorrow night we know which questions to expect. The big four. Mah Nishtana Ha’layla Ha'zeh. Insert joke.

But, going into Pesach, we have the big five. The usual big five queries as we try to navigate and analyze this new abnormal.

Who? What? When? Where? and Why? Let’s take a shot...Read more...

Fear and Living in Long Island

Anyone who knows me is aware that I'm not one to sit around at home. I was born with shpilkes, the desire to get out, see and do, visit and attend. So these past couple of weeks of self-quarantine have been weird, to say the least. The only thing that makes it even more (or possibly less) bizarre is the fact that most everyone around the world is...Read more...

A Page from the COVID Diaries

With my regular office closed, my main workload these past few weeks has been at teaching hospitals in Brooklyn, where we have largely transitioned to tele-dermatology.  One of these hospitals has been declared 100% dedicated to treating COVID patients.

Last week, I responded to an email plea for volunteers at South Nassau Hospital...Read more...

Minyan

Dedicated to the memory of David Herman, z’l

The men greet each other with fraternal love and then find their places, next to their closest friends

It's a fast-moving affair, and the air is filled with the one-mindedness of the mitzvah

Men standing shoulder to shoulder, chanting ancient prayers

Afterwards they talk about work, their house, vacation plans, hopes and...Read more...

Dayeinu

I wasn’t feeling well yesterday afternoon. It was not that pre-flu feeling; it was more like that 2:00 pm Yom Kippur day headache.  When I told Enid that I was coming home early, she asked that I stop at Gourmet Glatt to pick up another dozen eggs.  And to have my temperature taken. It is, after all, one week until Passover.

The guy at the door with the made-in-China scanner let...Read more...

This past Shabbat, my spouse turned to me and said, "It's only been two weeks since the kids have been home."

I don't know why I was surprised by that. Did it feel longer? Shorter? On one hand, it certainly did not feel like two weeks, or that the world could have possibly changed so much in just two short weeks. Or perhaps it was being able to be home with my kids every day...Read more...

A couple of decades back there was a popular song played at many Jewish weddings. The lyrics went: He-avar ayin, ve-he-atid adayin, ve-hahoveh ke-heref ayin, da'agah minayin. 

"The past is gone, the future is yet to come, the present passes like the blink of an eye, so worry why?"

The words of the song were written by a medieval French...Read more...

Fiction

"PROTECTION"

He was nervous. Of course he was nervous. The incessant gnawing at his nails might have been a dead giveaway. Or maybe it was his leg, shaking north and south and east and west like a yeshiva guy trying and failing to keep himself awake in the beis medrash. 

He checked the room to...Read more...

“Love in the Time of Corona”

My daughter Nina was proposed to on bended knee by her beloved Amit in a beautiful field of fall flowers on Long Island on September 13, 2019. They had met in the iconic millennial way on JSwipe exactly a year before. In May 2018, Nina, a lone soldier serving in Israel as a new citizen, was on a short vacation in New York for her brother's...Read more...

Five times a year synagogues resound with the words: chazak, chazak, vnitchazek (from the book of Daniel,10:19), admonishing congregants to be strong, stronger than strong and then to strengthen one another.

These words are reserved for the special occasion when we conclude each of the Five Books of Moses as we are about to commence the next sefer. Why is that the blessing we ask from Hashem precisely at...Read more...

A DIALOGUE

Yoni: Hi Grandpa, I'm back home! (from Israel study program). Being stuck at home may be difficult... but not when I think about how you were stuck in a dark, gross hole with nothing to do for 18 MONTHS in Nazi Ukraine. How are you?

Grandpa Karl: Yoni - it could be a worse experience. When I was 10, I got a slightly different experience, ha ha ha!

I was not stuck in the hole - I lived in a hole adjacent to...Read more...