Winter 2016(5777) 5777

I am often asked how mindful eating can fit in to an Orthodox lifestyle. With so many holidays, Shabbat, and semachot, there is always a reason to eat!

One day this winter Ronit Comrov will make dozens of latkes, and sufganiyot, “just raspberry,” for her friends in Milwaukee. In London, Rabbi Hillel Simon will host a Chanukah party for friends and Rabbi Rashi Simon, also in London, will sponsor one at the outreach organization he founded. In Bnei Brak, Shira Pollack will arrange her work schedule to get home at the earliest possible moment to light the menorah with her family. Sounds like typical frum life in a big city. But the four Simon siblings are products of small-town America.

In truth, sometimes when I was with him and began to consider all of his accomplishments, I felt as if I was sitting in front of an entire team of people, until I blinked again and it was just Rav Cooperman sitting across the table, with his disarming smile and easygoing manner.

Perhaps the most famous female print shop owner was Devorah Romm. The Romm printing shop began in 1799 and continued printing until 1940, when the Russians invaded Vilna during World War II. But the printing house truly flourished under Devorah’s guidance.

While female writers became increasingly prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many chose to use pen names, leave their work unsigned or refrain from publishing their work altogether. However, perhaps the greatest barrier to female writing was the issue of literacy.

Last year, in the pages of this journal, we explored the unique halachic issues related to Ebola, a highly contagious and fatal disease.1 The article was accompanied by a photo of me wearing HAZMAT protective gear. The procedure of putting on the gear is called to “don,” and to remove it (ironically a much more […]

“You can talk to your children about the value of chessed, and what it means to give, [but] I have a feeling [that my children] learned a lot more from this one act [of donation].”

Walking through the unknown without a compass is bewildering, and at times, devastating. Yet there are those who have managed to rise above their ordeals.

Essentially, they seek to answer one overriding question, burning in the hearts of all thinking Jews: Where is American Jewry headed?

Then Sherwood came in and he was different. “His voice was simple and pure, but what really got all of us was how his neshamah shone through.”