By Five Towns Marriage Initiative

In the song of Ha’azinu, it says, “My lesson will drip like rain; my word will flow like dew.” Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt’l, explains that dew and rain have both good and bad connotations. On the one hand, everyone is happy to see fresh dew coating the ground each morning, but it doesn’t do a great job of watering the plants. Rain has the advantage of helping plant growth, but the downside is that people are not pleased when the force of the rain interferes with their plans.

The goal when teaching and promoting growth is to strike a balance, channeling the properties of both dew and rain. There should be enough sweetness to the words being used that everyone will feel receptive to the lesson, but also enough strength to enable development and growth.

This idea can also be applied to marriage. When we want to make a point to our spouses and convey a message, it’s imperative that we strike the balance of sweetening our words while simultaneously injecting them with enough strength to get our message across properly.

This idea is especially appropriate as we approach Sukkos, when we will finish praying for the dew to fall and begin to pray that the winds should blow and the rains should fall. It is an auspicious time to think about the qualities of the rain and dew and the lessons we can learn from these waters. May we merit speaking softly and kindly to our spouses at all times, and may our spouses accept our warm words. v

Five Towns Marriage Initiative provides educational programs, workshops, and referrals to top marriage therapists. FTMI will help offset counseling costs when necessary and also runs an anonymous shalom bayis hotline for the entire community Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings, 10:00–11:00 p.m. For the hotline or for more information, call 516-430-5280 or e‑mail dsgarry@msn.com.

By Rochelle Maruch Miller

With his background in business analysis of restaurant operations, it’s not surprising that Douglas Soclof’s brainchild is one of the most exciting concepts on the kosher market.

A 1991 graduate of Yeshiva University, he began a career in commercial real estate in New York City, but the food industry was always his passion. Possessed with an entrepreneurial spirit, Douglas recognized a need for a relaxed and crowd-pleasing kosher barbecue restaurant. In 1994, he launched Dougie’s Bar-B-Que & Grill, a wildly successful kosher barbecue concept that grew to 15 locations in New York City, New Jersey, Baltimore, and Miami, with annual revenues of over $25 million.

In 2008, after 14 years, Douglas decided to sell the company to pursue other endeavors. In 2009, he was approached by a group of investors interested in bringing The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf from Los Angeles to New York City. Enjoying a reputation as an experienced hospitality and operations expert, Douglas was named the director of operations and business development in 2009. Responsible for all market studies, feasibility reports, real-estate site selection, and operations, Douglas successfully opened eight locations in New York City in a 12-month period.

And then, he says, “I saw the trend in the non-kosher world in the meal kit industry and thought, hey, what a great way to start servicing the kosher market. In the kosher world, kosher concepts typically follow the non-kosher market by years, but this is cutting-edge. If you look at other concepts that were introduced into the kosher market, such as cheese, you will see that it caught on very slowly. But because of its uniqueness, Kitchn Synch caught on from the outset, and has been generating excitement even before it launched.”

Now, with Kitchn Synch, he once again taps into his foresight for launching food concepts that are ahead of the curve. As he has proven, he understands the market and how to create a superior concept that will be enthusiastically embraced.

Simply stated, Kitchn Synch is a win-win situation for the contemporary kosher consumer. Unlike non-kosher meal delivery service plans, Kitchn Synch features no commitment, no hidden fees, and free delivery service. Kitchn Synch features many palate-pleasing possibilities, with exciting new options introduced.

“When we were putting this concept together, we realized the kosher market had to be different than the non-kosher one,” Douglas says. “Being locked in was not the model for us. We are attentive to the needs of our clients and carefully consider their requests when planning and implementing our programs. For Rosh Hashanah, we offered a different kind of program, which we will be offering for yomtov and Shabbos as well. All of the ingredients were cut and chopped. Everything was already prepared—it was like having your own personal chef! And the response we received was great—so many e-mails thanking us for alleviating the stress of shopping, chopping, and preparing. One client’s e-mail read, ‘Oh, my goodness! This works so well! It’s pretty amazing—a soup, appetizer, and entrée, all fresh and delicious—and so simple to prepare.’”

Douglas prides himself on filling in this niche in the online market by creating the first and only glattkosher meal delivery service—all in a box—featuring everything you need to make the perfect, healthy, homemade, fresh meal. Kitchn Synch offers three plans, each of which includes three recipes plus all the ingredients needed to prepare meals that are absolutely delicious.

You can order Kitchn Synch for 2 or 4 people, or opt for a family plan, which features enough food for 2 adults, plus 3 to 4 children under age 14.

“We’re introducing a lot of unique dishes to the consumer that they may not have had the opportunity to experience. We might try to create as a kosher item something in the non-kosher market. Or bring things back from a nostalgic time. Or use old restaurant recipes and culinary trends.”

Douglas is delighted to help his customers create delicious meals, stress-free, by bringing them high-quality and healthy pre-portioned ingredients and helping them synch their kitchen, computer, and life.

“The feedback has been unbelievable,” Soclof told the 5TJT. “Even from a gift initiative—for a birthday, anniversary, hostess gift, Kitchn Synch is the perfect option and is always appreciated by the recipient. Just go to our website, place your order, and we will take care of everything.”

Kitchn Synch is the perfect way to expand your culinary horizons, without the stress. Whether you are an empty-nester or live a distance from your elderly parents and are concerned about their caretaker purchasing kosher food for them, Kitchn Synch is ideal. Perhaps you are traveling and are concerned about your children eating healthy, delicious food—consider Kitchn Synch. If yomtov didn’t fall out the best way for you this year, if you have an 8-hour project that is due, if you are looking for a component in your life to make it a little easier, Kitchn Synch is for you. It’s all about making your life easier.

Visit www.kitchnsynch.com and enhance your culinary creativity.

Beth Faitelewicz and Lisa Samson

The Faitelewicz family enjoying time together

Beth Faitelewicz and Lisa Samson

The Faitelewicz and Samson families

By Chana Braverman

On September 7, my cousins Beth and Morris Faitelewicz, as well as their future son-in law Yehuda Bayme, were tragically killed. They were returning from a great weekend together up in the country. They were a close family, always spending time together, and were even already discussing their plans for Pesach 2016.

The Faitelewiczes are a distinguished and well-liked family in their Lower East Side community. Morris was a member of Hatzalah (known as ES17) as well as an NYPD Auxiliary officer. He also nobly served as a 9/11 first-responder. Beth was a nurse in the Emergency Department at Beth Israel Medical Center. They were the parents of Yaakov, Shani, and Avi.

Beth and Morris were a special part of our family. I remember when I first met Morris. It was on a July Fourth weekend when my parents, Rabbi Benjamin and Rebbetzin Lisa Samson, were working in what used to be called the Pineview Hotel in South Fallsburg, NY. My parents met Morris and thought that he would be a perfect match for Beth. They hit it off and Morris was a part of our family ever since.

Throughout the years, we have all attended each other’s simchas, always excited to be together. I always have the picture in my mind of Beth with a smile on her face whenever I would see her.

September 11, 2001 will be forever etched in all our minds, and Beth and Morris were both involved in helping others on that day. Morris was supposed to be working and by some miracle he was late to work that day. However, as a Hatzalah member, he spent weeks at Ground Zero helping out. Beth, a nurse, was not supposed to be working that day at Beth Israel Medical Center. But after ensuring that her family was safe, she walked from her home to the hospital to see if she could help any survivors. However, as she told Fox News when she was interviewed, she and other medical personnel realized there were no survivors.

As years passed, Beth’s mother became ill and Beth took on the role of being a great caregiver to her mom. On Shabbos and yomtov, she would walk over the Williamsburg Bridge to see her mom at the nursing home. After her mother died, she would call her dad six times a day to ensure that he was okay and visit him as much as possible.

The last time we were all together was at a wedding of our cousin Sandy Schlesinger. We were having a blast, talking and dancing away. Shani was proudly showing us her ring, and we were all saying that the next family wedding to celebrate would be Shani and Yehuda’s. The date hadn’t been set yet and we couldn’t wait to hear when it would be. Shani was telling us about her dress that she was having made, and Beth and Morris couldn’t be happier that Shani and Yehuda were getting married after dating for five years.

The morning of the accident, Beth sent a message to friends and relatives: “Save the date! Shani and Yehuda wedding with G‑d’s help January 10, 2016.” For some reason, G‑d didn’t will it, but I keep that message on my phone, and it will be forever etched in my memory.

As heartbreaking as the loss is for us all, we must also consider that their children were passengers in the car at the time of the accident. Two of the children are still suffering from their injuries, but baruch Hashem are improving daily. Please continue to daven and say Tehillim for Yaakov Dov ben Blima Chana and Shoshana Chaya bas Blima Chana.

Now the community and relatives have to pick up the pieces. The Lower East Side community has been amazing, ensuring that Shani is never left alone in the hospital, as well as ensuring that the boys have everything they need, including being taken to their doctors’ appointments. We, as a family, are there for our cousins emotionally and physically. At this time, we have started a GoFundMe account to assist them in rebuilding their lives. Please visit https://www.gofundme.com/faitelewicz to assist them in rebuilding their lives.

Though we have no answers as to why this tragedy occurred, may we be able to lift ourselves up and be there to provide nechamah for the Faitelewicz family; Beth’s brothers, Michael and Mordecai; Beth’s father, Rabbi Bentzion Pitem; and Yehuda’s family and friends.

As we start a new year, may we all be zocheh to see only happiness and nachas from each other and witness no more tragedies in this world.

By Esther M. Schonfeld, Esq.

It continues to amaze me that not all couples are signing halachic prenuptial agreements to eliminate the issue of get-refusal, especially in light of the growing agunah crisis. When I meet with clients and ask why they did not sign a prenuptial agreement, the response is almost always the same—“I never thought this could happen to me.” Others have admitted that they were told it was not necessary.

The newest dispute arises with the International Beit Din, which has been attempting to utilize two halachic tools to resolve cases where a get is being withheld or not accepted. The rabbis use the mechanisms of declaring the witnesses from the wedding not kosher or declaring that there was a preexisting flaw in the husband that was not disclosed to the woman prior to the wedding, so that the marriage was a mistake.

Both these tactics have been used, in rare cases, by other rabbinic courts around the world, but the International Beit Din is interpreting cases with wider latitude, looking to find halachic loopholes. Not surprisingly, this has generated fevered controversy. But this is not the first time efforts have been made to find loopholes to justify the granting of a get when one of the parties is not cooperating. In the past, similar attempts have also ultimately failed to win acceptance. For example, Rabbi Emanuel Rackman created a beitdin in the 1980s to free agunot by granting annulments and circumventing the need for a get. This, however, was not universally accepted as a valid termination of the marriage.

Each time the agunah problem makes the news, clients, friends, and rabbis reach out to me with the same question: “Esther, how do we solve this problem?” Despite the seeming proliferation of serious discussions as to the depth of the problem, to date there exists but one practical method to solve the crisis. The solution lies in prevention. That is where the concept of the prenuptial agreement comes into play; at this point, the most widely accepted halachic method meant to circumvent the problem of agunah altogether is the halachic prenuptial agreement. If couples would enter into a valid, enforceable prenuptial agreement and agree that should the marriage break down, neither will withhold the giving or accepting of the get from the other, the problem would be avoided.

The leading prenuptial agreement used within the Orthodox community is the Beth Din of America’s “Binding Arbitration Agreement,” also referred to as the “RCA prenup.” By signing the RCA prenup, the bride and groom are authorizing the rabbinical court, as an arbitration panel, to render a binding decision on all issues relating to a get. There are also optional clauses empowering the religious court to decide all of the divorcing couple’s monetary disputes and child custody and related issues. The entire agreement is in keeping with the law of the state where it is signed and can be enforced as a binding arbitration agreement in the secular court. The core of the prenuptial agreement, however, is the groom’s obligation to support his wife at the rate of $150 a day as long as he refuses her request for a get.

The basic idea of the halachic prenuptial agreement is that it brings about financial penalties against the resisting spouse for being recalcitrant in the divorce proceedings. The Beth Din of America reports that in practically every divorce proceeding where a prenuptial agreement was signed, the get has been given within a reasonable time. This is a remarkable track record. Since 2006, the Beth Din of America has even mandated that its member rabbis have the couple sign a prenuptial agreement before officiating at the marriages.

It should be noted that the RCA prenuptial agreement is not the only way to effectuate the desired outcome here. Similar prenuptial agreements can be drafted for couples that are more comfortable with a different beitdin or with their attorneys drafting the prenuptial agreement.

It is important for everyone to understand that when signing any legally binding document, such as a halachic prenuptial agreement, it is advisable to seek legal counsel. An experienced attorney will help a person make choices appropriate to their situation and that will meet their comfort level. For example, in the RCA prenuptial agreement, parties can choose which aspects of the divorce they would want arbitrated in the beitdin. The agreement can be as narrow as to just include the get, or it can encompass all end-of-marriage issues, thereby empowering the religious court to decide all of a divorcing couple’s monetary disputes and questions of custody and visitation. Because this can be a binding arbitration agreement, it is advisable to discuss the various options with an attorney. As a side point, and to further emphasize the importance of consulting with an attorney, is the potential non-enforceability of custody-related decisions made by a beitdin. Therefore, in order to avoid potential conflict and prolonged litigation in the future, the parties should be aware of their legal rights and be educated on potential future outcomes. Avoiding doing so can have dangerous ramifications.

While the prenuptial agreement is vital in this day and age, it is a preventive measure, not a cure-all. Think of a prenuptial agreement as a form of insurance which is reliable for the problem of get-refusal, but is not effective in all circumstances. What is most remarkable about the prenuptial agreement is that, for now, it seems to actually be working. It has been utilized in scores of cases, including many of my firm’s cases, and has consistently prevented the use of the get as a tool for improper leverage or extortion. It has even worked in highly contentious cases, where the parties litigated all the other issues of the case. Where there is a prenuptial agreement, most often the beitdin does not even need to begin formal proceedings to award support under the arbitration provisions of the agreement.

The problem is that many people are either ignorant of the problem or of the importance of signing a prenuptial agreement, or it was recommended to them not to sign it. As a result, there are still many recalcitrant husbands who are able to use the get as leverage or extortion over their wives. While husbands can also be refused the acceptance of a get, men have other options to be granted a get, such as permission from 100 rabbis, called a hetermeahrabbanim. Moreover, the prenuptial agreement may ameliorate the plight of the agunah, but it does not solve the problem totally, since the monetary demands imposed on a husband will have no impact on a husband who is wealthy, is mentally unstable, or has absolutely no funds, and therefore would not be threatened by the monetary obligation.

The halachic prenuptial agreement can only be effective as a solution to the community-wide problem of get refusal if it is adopted for use by the community as a whole, since those who are most likely to need it are usually those least likely to sign it. There must be communal pressure to sign prenuptial agreements. It should be universally accepted that a couple must sign one, similar to it being universally accepted to attend classes concerning family-purity laws. Unfortunately, in some circles, the signing of a prenuptial agreement is taboo. While there is still a need to find a more comprehensive solution to the agunah crisis, the prenuptial agreement serves as an effective solution by way of prevention. v

Esther Schonfeld, Esq., is a founding partner of the law firm Schonfeld & Goldring, LLP, with offices at 112 Spruce Street, Suite A, in Cedarhurst. Schonfeld & Goldring, LLP limits its practice to divorce law, family law, and matrimonial law in both secular court and rabbinical courts. The firm represents clients in the five boroughs, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and Rockland Counties in all aspects of family and matrimonial law with resolution through litigation, mediation, and collaborative law. Ms. Schonfeld, also a trained mediator, is a member of the NY State Council on Divorce Mediation. She can be reached at 516-569-5001 or through www.SchonfeldandGoldring.com.

By Larry Gordon

It has become so that the only time to quietly read any book these days—aside from sefarim or the daily daf—is on Friday night, Shabbos, or at this time of year on yomtov. My father, Reb Nison Gordon, z’l, was a prolific and respected Yiddish writer. As a result, he used to receive a regular barrage of books in the mail from publishers and authors to read, review, and I suppose write about at some point.

My guess is that he was interested in some and less so in others. When he passed away 25 years ago, I discovered stacks of unopened padded manila envelopes with books contained therein. Some of these envelopes were never opened. Perhaps he had just received them recently and did not have the opportunity to open them, or maybe he knew what was inside and it just did not pique his curiosity or generate interest. Some of the envelopes were covered in dust, which seemed to indicate they were lying around for a while, maybe longer.

As a result of his profession, we were surrounded by those and other books. The first time I was able to summon up the personal courage to take a day off from yeshiva high school, I didn’t go to a ballgame or movie as many others had done. When I finally decided to cut out for a personal day of rest and relaxation, I ended up in a library on Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn. That was the day I discovered books by Ernest Hemingway and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. They were different writers, but I thought their styles shared a similarity that I was drawn to.

From there, I discovered writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Franz Kafka, and then more contemporary writers like Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, and Mr. Vonnegut. It goes on and on, as good reading leads to more good reading and then in college to some English literature courses and more books, some which I liked and cared for, others that I could have done without.

This idea of writing about books occurred last week when our office received envelopes and boxes packed with books for a few consecutive days. I marvel at some of the books and the obscure ideas some of them explore while others—despite our advanced electronic age—are about topics, subjects, or periods in our history that are so valuable that they are precious and fascinating to be able to recall.

Still, these days, one requires some peace and quiet and minimal interruptions in order to be able to read a book and absorb and enjoy the content. These days I find myself reading very little fiction. I just don’t seem to have time or patience for it anymore, though I once enjoyed that kind of reading immensely.

So let me tell you what I’ve read recently and what I am in the midst of reading now. Mostly, it is the history of certain periods in Jewish life that I have lived through, and I like the idea of reflecting on what was once news but is now in the past. Today there are three fairly substantial books on my night table that I reach for on Shabbos or, during the week, when I tire of reading on my iPad. It’s funny how when you put down the iPad and pick up a book, you can also feel like you’ve just traveled a few decades back in time.

A book I am currently relishing is titled The Secret of Chabad by David Eliezrie. Rabbi Eliezrie is a longtime Chabad shliach in California and he writes with remarkable and at times breathtaking insight into the inner workings and history of Chabad.

His grasp of and the thoroughness with which he communicates the early history and development of the group is easy to retain and understand. There are so many interesting dimensions covered in the book it is difficult to select just one or two that stand out, but I will try.

He goes into detail about the historical presence of Chabad in Russia during the most intense oppressive era of Communist rule and how from the time of glasnost and perestroika under Mikhail Gorbachev, Chabad activities in the former Soviet Union began to steamroll with a breakneck-speed momentum. That story continues today with the unusual connections and relationship between Russia’s chief rabbi, Beryl Lazar, and President Vladimir Putin. Most interesting is how Putin as a child was taken in and cared for after school each day while his parents were at work. A Jewish religious couple cared for him, fed him, and even did homework with him over those years. So often it is those little acts that make an impression and weigh so heavily on a person.

This is an excellent read, and I am enjoying it more than recent books on Chabad by Joseph Telushkin or the book on the same subject by Adin Steinsaltz. I appreciated all these books because so much that was written about took place while I was growing up in Crown Heights. I observed many of these events but did not realize the impact or deep significance many of these occurrences had until I was able to read about them and explore them in print.

Another contemporary historical read that I tried to read every day—after I put my iPad down—was Open Up the Iron Door, memoirs of a soviet Jewry activist by Rabbi Avi Weiss.

The book features a riveting and dramatic chronology of the evolution of the efforts of a few for the cause of Soviet Jewry—amongst them Rabbi Weiss, Rabbi Jacob Birnbaum, Glenn Richter, and others. The book covers a lot of ground with particular emphasis on the debate as to whether it is beneficial or detrimental to mount protests against the Soviet Union as a way of pressuring them to ease up on restricting emigration. Weiss dedicated the book to Richter, whom he calls the tzaddik of the Soviet Jewry movement. Richter was the founder and director of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ). Back in the late 1970s and early 80s when I hosted daily radio programs in New York, Glenn was a regular guest on those programs, updating us on the latest protest demonstrations and their impact. Glenn was relentless and certainly can be considered a prime moving force behind bringing the issue of Jews locked in the Soviet Union to the top of the international Jewish agenda.

Amongst the fascinating aspects of the book is the fashion in which establishment Jewish organizations, while organizing their own demonstrations for the cause, did not seem to want to adapt extreme or maximalist positions when it came to protests.

Weiss goes into detail about the opposition of the Lubavitcher Rebbe to public protests and to the position of Rabbi Meir Kahane that Rabbi Weiss and the SSSJ were not extreme enough and refusing to use violent acts to catapult news of Jews in Russia on to the front page of major newspapers.

This is a great book that everyone—especially those who were not of age during that time period—can utilize as a captivating educational tool to discover important events about the history of the movement.

Another book that I’m going to start over yomtov is The Unfinished Diary: A Chronicle of Tears by R’ Chaim Yitzchok Wolgelernter. This looks like an excellent volume that is an important part of Holocaust literature, of which enough can never be said or written. This is the story of a 140-page diary uncovered in the 1970s about a family’s life in a nondescript Polish town and how they suffered in the Holocaust. I’ve spoken to people who have read the book and they say that it is important and unique.

I’ve always been intrigued by the inaction of the United States, specifically when faced with the opportunity to bomb the railways into Auschwitz or the camps themselves during World War II. The eye-opening piece of work on this subject was written decades ago by Professor David Wyman of the University of Massachusetts. This book—The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945—was the first to openly suggest that President Franklin D. Roosevelt may have deliberately looked the other way as Jews were being systematically murdered by the Nazis, especially toward the end of World War II.

Now a new book that I have on my desk, 1944, by Jay Winik, takes a closer look at why FDR and his foreign-policy officials may have decided not to bomb the railways leading into concentration camps, especially as 750,000 Hungarian Jews were being transported to Auschwitz and other points east.

The Wyman book, published in 1984, discusses how U.S. planes actually flew within a few miles of the Auschwitz camp with a full load of bombs; but they were ordered not to drop their ordnance, which could have destroyed the camp. In 1944 it seems that there were intense high-level discussions about bombing Auschwitz and in particular the railways that allowed the Nazis to transport victims from all directions into the gas chambers and crematoria.

According to the book, the Secretary of War (today the position is called Defense Secretary), James McCloy, “after consulting with the military, shelved ideas about bombing. Air attacks on the rail lines were ‘impracticable,’ and ‘of doubtful efficacy,’ he wrote on July 4, 1944 and could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces engaged in decisive operations.”

The suggestion here is not that FDR or anyone else did not particularly mind that Jews were being killed, but that at this point of the war, the number-one priority and objective was winning the war and everything else was secondary.

This is a tense discussion and a debate that will most likely never end. The book is great reading that provides us with a great deal to contemplate.

So, do I read anything else besides all this intense material? For now the answer is no; this is what I’m interested in reading. Of course I read most of the articles every week in the 5TJT, but that is my job. In addition, I also peruse daily the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the online editions of the New York Post and the Daily News. I surf around the Net looking for interesting things online, but in terms of other reading on Shabbos and yomtov I also receive in the mail the Jerusalem Post, the Jewish Week, and the Forward.

There are plenty of diversionary and not-so-intense journalistic pieces in those publications that soften up your mind and prepare it to absorb and even retain the periods covered in these books that so carefully examine our history.

So with Sukkos here, it is time for a short pause, but there is really never a break from good books.

Here’s wishing you happy reading and a great yomtov. Chag Samei’ach.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

Halachic Musings

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman

It is well known that throughout all the days of Sukkos, we recite the berachah of “LeishevBaSukkah” when entering the sukkah (before eating a meal). The Gemara (Sukkah 46a) asks whether the blessing is recited on all the days of Sukkos, or only the first day(s) of yom tov. The Gemara answers that since the great rabbis recite a new blessing on tefillin on subsequent days, here too, a new blessing should be recited.

In regard to the mitzvah of matzah on Pesach, however, we only recite the blessing of “Al Achilas Matzah” on the Seder night(s), and not on the other days of Pesach. What, then, is the difference between these two mitzvos?

There are no less than four opinions in the Rishonim that address the matter. The four opinions are further developed in SeferYeshivasHaSukkah by Rav Yisroel Meir Morgenstern and in the Sdeh Eliyahu by Rabbi Shmuel Dovid Koshbovitz.

The Ba’al HaMaor And Orchos Chaim

Rabbi Zechariah HaLevi, also known as the RaZah or the Ba’alHaMaor, explains (Pesachim 26b) that matzah is different because one is not obligated in this mitzvah at all during the other days of Pesach. How so? He does not have to eat matzah—he could eat other (non-chametz) foods. The mitzvah of sukkah, however, is different because it is not possible to go without sleep for more than three days. Therefore, when he sleeps, he is obligated to be sleeping in a sukkah. The OrchosChaim (HilchosPesach #29) writes that eating matzah on the latter days of Pesach is also a reshus—a choice.

The Rashba

The Rashba explains that the mitzvah requires a person eating bread to eat it in a sukkah. It also requires that if he sleeps, he sleep in a sukkah. Regarding matzah, however, it did not say if he eats, he is required to eat matzah. He may eat things that are neither matzah nor chametz. Hence there is no additional berachah on eating matzah.

The Maharil

The Maharil (ChagHaSukkos #2) answers that the mitzvah is not in the eating of the matzah (on the latter days of Pesach), but rather in the avoiding of chametz. Regarding the sukkah, however, the mitzvah is each time one sits in it, as the verse tells us, “ba’sukkos teishvu shivas yamim.”

The Kol Bo

The Kol Bo also answers that the mitzvah of matzah is avoiding forbidden chametz, just like avoiding the meat of an impure animal. We do not recite a blessing on the fact that we are eating pure animals. However, sitting in a sukkah is not a physical need, but rather solely a spiritual mitzvah. This is why we recite a blessing on every sitting.

The Vilna Gaon

It should also be noted that the view of the Vilna Gaon, as cited in the Maaseh Rav, is such that there is a mitzvah to eat matzah each of the subsequent days of Pesach. The Vilna Gaon’s view would not fit with the Ba’al HaMaor’s answer, but could fit with the other views. He could also fit with the Orchos Chaim, because he could understand the Orchos Chaim as a mitzvahkiyumis and not chiyuvis. Kiyumis would mean that one performs a mitzvah when one does it, but it is not obligatory.

What Is ‘Leishev BaSukkah’?

The berachah that is recited on the sukkah is “Blessed are You . . . who has sanctified us with His mitzvos and commanded us to sit in the sukkah.” But what do these words actually mean?

The Rambam (Hilchos Sukkah 6:12) writes that the words are quite literal. They mean to sit down. It is because of his understanding that he requires the blessing to be recited while standing—so that he can immediately sit down right before he performs the mitzvah.

The Rosh (Sukkah 4:3), on the other hand, understands the words “Leishev BaSukkah” to mean “remain within” rather than “to sit.” According to this translation of the blessing, the remaining refers to every instance of being in the sukkah—not just sitting in it. On account of this, the Rosh writes that the blessing should be recited immediately before the eating, since eating is the means of establishing oneself in the sukkah.

The Ramban has a third interpretation of the words “Leishev BaSukkah.” He understands it to mean “to dwell in it.” This is different than the Rosh’s understanding of “remaining in it.”

So how do we pasken? The ShulchanAruch (O.C. 643:2) rules in accordance with the Rambam. Yet the Rema (ibid.) states that the custom is to follow the Rosh and to bless while sitting.

The Pri Megadim, however, writes that even according to the custom of reciting the blessing while sitting, it is still a good idea to have the Rambam’s interpretation in mind when reciting the berachah.

The author can be reached at Yairhoffman2@gmail.com.

By Larry Gordon

Ann Coulter is obviously a piece of work. And she knows how to draw attention to herself, not apologize, and get a pass so that she can move on to her next bestselling book.

It’s a good thing that
the obscene pejorative and expletive-­deleted term she used was juxtaposed to the word “Jews” as she expressed her chagrin at the Republican candidates for president, who articulated their avid support of Israel in their much-ballyhooed debates last week. Had she used that same term with blacks or Muslims, it would not have slid by so easily and, as you can now see, be almost completely forgotten.

The crazy thing is that even the Jews seem at ease with her decision to use extreme profanity as an adjective to express her vexation about across-the-board support for Israel emanating from the candidates for the nomination. If you missed it, after four or five would-be presidential candidates voiced support for Israel, Coulter tweeted, “How many —— Jews do they think there are in this country?”

The next day Coulter explained that all she meant by that rather unsavory word selection was that we understand full well that Republicans—today anyway—are enthusiastic supporters of the State of Israel and there is therefore no reason to spend time discussing that in a Republican forum when there are so many other issues that need discussion.

That seems like pretty deep commentary. What she really meant is what every pedestrian anti-Semite means when wondering aloud why with only six million Jews residing in the United States, the Jewish community seems so influential and even dominant in so many sectors. That does not necessarily mean that Coulter harbors anti-Semitic tendencies, but rather she calculated a way in which she can garner screaming headlines with a controversy that would not have much staying power. For now anyway, it looks like the calculation was a good one.

When someone tries to marginalize the case of Israel in that way, we have to remember that at least half of American Jews—and maybe more—probably agree with those critics. They harbor critical views of Israel and of the fact that U.S. policy regarding Israel is consistently near the top of the congressional agenda.

Some feel that Israel does not deserve that kind of total support, while others are uncomfortable with the spotlight and all the attention that Jews and Israel attract.

Take the recent campaign to defeat the U.S. nuclear deal with Iran. The White House did not do Israel or American Jews right by trying to marginalize the community for opposing the deal instead of respecting our right to a different opinion than that of the Obama administration. The president intimated that the opposition was largely Jewish by the suggestion that “donor money” to senators and congressmen was at play here and possibly the agent that could sway a vote either way. Mr. Obama is not naive. He knows that when you use the terms politics and money in the same sentence, you mean “Jews.”

Additionally, what does it take in this day and age to realize that Israel is not only a loyal ally of the U.S., but the only stable country in the entire Middle East? Leave the fact that they are a working American-style democracy. If Prime Minister Netanyahu has a serious issue with the Iran deal, then his concerns should be seriously considered instead of minimized and dismissed.

But now comes the next phase of the Iran deal—working to unseat those who were otherwise fairly good supporters of Israel but who, when push came to shove, went with political considerations rather than Israel’s long-term security. That means otherwise good folks like Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Richard Blumenthal may have tough elections on their hands next time around. It is especially Gillibrand’s behavior that was so puzzling. In her defense, she was acting as though her hands were tied, and they probably were by Chuck Schumer and others.

Just look what is going on now with presidential hopeful Ben Carson and his comments on his belief that a Muslim, by virtue of his or her religious persuasion, would not be suitable to be president of the United States. Unlike the Coulter comment about Jews, which has just about disappeared from the news, for Carson his comment about Muslims might become the defining moment in his campaign to date. The liberal media are reluctant or perhaps even prevented from labeling Carson an out-and-out racist because he is African-American and therefore has some inherent protections against the usual media accusations of that type. On the other hand, Carson is also a Republican and extremely critical of the Obama presidency, which means that some of those built-in protections are weakened.

The New York Times took Carson to task the other day, asking how it is that he can believe that being Muslim should eliminate a candidate from the right to be president. The paper suggested that if this is the case, then the existence of canon law should eliminate Catholics from being president and the existence of halachah should discount a Jewish candidate from the position.

I cannot speak in any authoritative way about Catholics and canon law, but halachah and Jews in politics is an entirely different matter. We cannot expect any of those with the most minimal of knowledge about anything Jewish to understand anything about halachah or Jewish law.

There are two things relevant to this discussion about halachah. One is that those Jews in Congress—with few exceptions over the years—have absolutely no knowledge about anything to do with Jewish law, nor have they tried to apply it in any fashion to any policy or legislation.

The other thing is that if anyone at the Times had a speck of familiarity with halachah, they would know that one of its underlying principles is “dina d’malchusa dina,” that the law of the land in which one resides is considered the law. Does sharia share that same doctrine? It doesn’t look like it.

Mr. Carson, who disappoints liberals and especially the mainstream media by being both black and conservative, has people like those at the Times lying in wait, ready to pounce as soon as he utters a word that they can contort and use to bring him down. The Muslim reference, as the Donald Trump Mexican/illegal-immigrant reference, is sticking and will be brought up whenever and wherever these candidates appear. Ann Coulter’s denigration of Jews in the most vile and repugnant terms is already ancient history.

But then again she happens to be one of the few conservatives not currently running for president.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

By Mordechai Schmutter

This coming Monday, October 12, we celebrate yet another holiday.

“Another holiday?” you’re saying. “I’m not cooking for this one.”

The holiday is Columbus Day, which is named in honor of Christopher Columbus, who discovered America on the second Monday in October.

The day is celebrated in several countries in America by going to work like it’s a regular day. Except for the Canadians, who celebrate Thanksgiving.

So maybe we should learn about it.

Chances are, if you went to school, you already know about Columbus, considering your history teacher spent the first several months of the year discussing his journey in real time.

So we know that he was the first person to discover America. Besides the Native Americans. OK, he was the first European. Besides the Vikings. For example, there was Leif Eriksson, who’d discovered Canada 500 years earlier, but nobody counted it, because it’s Canada.

Columbus went on many other voyages that few of us know about, because (a) we stop paying attention after he discovered America, and (b) he was never able to top that first voyage. He didn’t discover any other worlds. Just the new one.

But at least he proved that the world was round, right?

Actually, he didn’t. First of all, he could only prove it if he actually got to Asia, which he didn’t. He told people about it, and they said, “That doesn’t sound like Asia. Are you sure it was Asia?” and he said, “No, no. That was Asia. I saw Indians.”

“Really? How do you know?”

“I called them Indians.”

“Did they have a problem with that?”

“Well, they tried to kill me. But I’m pretty sure that was unrelated.”

And anyway, everyone already knew the world was round. That’s why they didn’t freak out when, every time they sailed away from land, that land seemed to sink into the ocean.

So actually, what Columbus wanted was two things:

1. He wanted to find a convenient trade route to India, so he could bring home gold, silks, and spices, such as curry. Though spices really seems to be a weird thing to put on that list. We don’t work 80 hours a week so we can get money, health insurance, and spices.

In those days, spices were important, because there was no refrigeration, so you had to dress up the taste of your meat so you could fool your friends and family into eating it.

So Columbus wanted to find a better way to get these things and exchange them for European commodities, such as disease.

(Actually, I don’t know what the Europeans gave the Asians. But whatever it was, the Asians weren’t risking their lives to come to Europe to get it.)

2. Columbus wanted to prove his calculations about the circumference of the world. Everyone knew the world was round, but they figured that even so, the Far East was too far to travel to by boat. But Columbus was convinced that the Earth was really about a fifth the size, only nobody wanted to fund the idea, because everyone knew he was wrong, and they didn’t want to lose a bunch of boats in the middle of the ocean. Finally, the Queen of Spain agreed to give it a shot, and gave him 100 men and 3 ships, called the Niña, the Piñata, and the Santa Maria.

We all know the names of those ships, but no one can name a single person on them besides for Columbus himself, who was on the Santa Maria.

Anyway, the naysayers were right. He didn’t end up anywhere near Asia. But luckily for him, he hit land anyway, and then spent the rest of his life convinced he was right. Even once he realized he’d just been landing on islands, he decided that it was Japan. Though he still kept calling everyone “Indians.”

He kept exploring for a while, trying to find his gold and spices, but he just kept finding more land. Then, in December, his cabin boy accidentally steered the Santa Maria into even more land, so he was down to two boats, and he had to leave 37 men behind so he could get back to Spain without everyone elbowing each other overboard.

Then he headed back to Spain so he could recount his adventures.

“Listen to my adventures,” he said. “The Indians there don’t even speak Indian.”

“Wait. What happened to the Santa Maria? Wasn’t that the one you were piloting?”

“Um, no. Some kid crashed it.”

“Hang on. Where’s all your gold and spices?”

“What? Oh, man! I left it there. Can I go back?”

No one asked about the 37 guys, though.

So Columbus went back to “Asia” in 1493. This time, he was given 17 ships and 1,200 people.

“Don’t lose any this time,” he was told.

“People?”

“Ships.”

This time, his passengers included some animals, such as horses, cows, and pigs. They also thought to bring along some farmers, which they did not think of the first time.

“Why would we need farmers on a boat?”

The purpose of this journey was to set up a colony in the name of Spain, see if any of the 37 people were still alive (they were not), and keep looking for gold and spices, because the king and queen of Spain were getting antsy.

But the natives had nothing to trade. So he took some natives.

“What are we supposed to do with natives?” the queen asked when he got back to Spain.

“Slaves!” Columbus said.

But the queen had little use for slaves, because technically, she had a whole kingdom of slaves.

“Stop bringing us slaves!” she said. She wanted gold and silks, and he was running a ferry service.

So Columbus went back to America again, in 1498. But first he broke down in the middle of the ocean for several weeks. Everyone has one vacation like that. Then he explored the coast of Venezuela. (“I think that’s still Japan. Look, there are some Indians!”)

He finally got back to his colony, where, as you can imagine, no one was happy to see him. They were all mad at him for sneaking back home and forgetting to tell them. And also for being a much worse governor than he was an explorer. For one thing, he kept calling it Asia. Also, he was pretty brutal.

So the colony turned on him, and Spain sent another governor, who put Columbus in chains and sent him back to Spain. Once he got there, he was put in prison for six weeks, which was probably not as long as it took him to get back to Spain, and then he went back to “Asia” in 1502, where they didn’t even let him into the colony. So he got back in his boat and kept exploring, trying to find a route to the part of the Orient with the spices and gold already. But his boats fell apart (he was putting serious miles on those things) and he ended up stranded in Jamaica.

He sent a canoe back to the colony asking them to pick him up, but no one wanted to, so he spent a year on Jamaica until someone finally came to get him, and he and his men all piled in, like on a tow truck. Then they put him on the next boat right back to Spain.

Columbus died in 1506. Then he came back to America again, in 1542.

I’m serious. Someone dug him up and brought his body back. There’s just no getting rid of some people. He was then in America until 1898, when he was brought back to Spain, except that some people in the Caribbean claim that they still have the body. So he’s on both sides of the ocean.

But why Columbus Day, right? Because he discovered America? He wasn’t the first!

But the answer is that it doesn’t matter. Have you ever come home after a long day and discovered a huge stain on your shirt? Do you think you’re the first person who noticed it? Yet you still “discovered” it, right?

Also, while Columbus wasn’t the first person to get there, he was the first person to leave people there.

So in the end, we celebrate Columbus Day because a guy did something by accident, didn’t accomplish either of the things he meant to do, and at the end of the day, still thought it was Asia. He never once said to anyone, “OK, I’ll go around the world this way, and you go around that way, and we’ll see if we meet.”

But no one ever sets out to discover something. It just happens on the way to doing something else.

Mordechai Schmutter is a weekly humor columnist for Hamodia and is the author of four books, published by Israel Book Shop. He also does freelance writing for hire. You can send any questions, comments, or ideas to MSchmutter@gmail.com.

By Hannah Reich Berman

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” I do not know all of George Bernard Shaw’s sayings, but this is one I relate to. It is especially true for me on Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Summer officially ended just recently, as fall began on September 22. But for most of us, it’s Labor Day that marks the end of summer. It is the final day of summer employment for lifeguards and cabana boys since pools and beaches close then. This year, though, some Long Island executives decided to extend summer by keeping beaches open for an extra week of fun in the sun.

The one-week extension, which undoubtedly gave pleasure to a great many people, meant nothing to me, as I derive no enjoyment from the beach. I eschew the sun because it causes wrinkles. I detest the feel of sand between my toes, and, above all, I hate to bring so much as a single grain of sand into my house. As a child I stepped on more than my share of broken shells, replete with sharp cutting edges, and I managed to get my feet tangled in a fair amount of seaweed, which I hated. As a result, I cannot even look at sushi, much less eat it. In my mind—which, according to my children, is a somewhat closed one—seaweed and food are not to be mentioned in the same sentence.

But in recent years, it is the talk of shark sightings in our area that has put an end to any chance that I might change my mind about braving the sun and the sand for a dip in the ocean. The only thing I like about a beach is the view of it from a bench on a boardwalk. I enjoy looking at the waves as they roll in, but that is it for me. So the Labor Day beach closings do not affect me in any way. Nevertheless, the day does play a large role in my life.

There are rules for that holiday, rules I grew up with. Everything I learned about life, I learned from my parents. In the fashion department, it was my mother who guided me. Often, those rules revolved around what was acceptable and what was not. It matters not that the rules have changed since half a century ago, when I first learned them; I have not changed! My mother taught her daughters that one does not wear white after Labor Day. As a young child, I wondered if it was a federal law or a state law. Only later did I discover that it was simply a house rule.

Back in those years, perhaps there was no such thing as “winter white.” But if there was, and if it was an acceptable color to wear after the summer, clearly my mother did not know it. White was white, and under no circumstances did you wear it after Labor Day. We are not talking just clothing here. White shoes were out, and white handbags were also verboten. That’s just the way it was. And for me, it still is. I have done my best to move forward, but change has proven to be elusive, specifically in the world of fashion. Regardless of what anyone says about it being perfectly acceptable to wear white after Labor Day, I am unable to change my mindset. It would be a betrayal of my mother, who felt strongly about this issue.

But I like to get maximum use of my clothing, so for that reason, for as long as I can remember, it has been my practice in August to wear white shoes, carry a white handbag, and put on a white skirt often. It is, after all, a short season! And as the countdown continues, in the final week before Labor Day I am decked out in white every single day. I see it as my last opportunity to do so. Each year, the day after Labor Day, all things white are retired. White skirts, shoes, and handbag will not see the light of day again until the last Monday in May.

If the weather remains hot, I continue to wear sandals, but not white ones. After Labor Day, even on a hot day with bright sunshine, I still do not bend my mom’s rule. The fashion police would not arrest me if I did, and it is unlikely that anybody would notice, or even care, if I still wore white. But I am not taking the chance that my mother, who has been gone for more than 50 years, may find out about it. George Bernard Shaw might say that I am one for whom progress is not possible. But I do try. In the millinery department, at least, I have made a concession by occasionally wearing a hat in that color known as winter white, even after summer has ended. I have done it but do not like it. To me, winter white looks like a dirty white, so I rarely go for it. There are enough colors in the rainbow and more than enough colors in my favorite hat store, Sunflowers, for me to choose from, without resorting to a color I do not like.

According to my mother, one may not wear white even one day before Memorial Day. Since the Labor Day holiday is the first Monday in September, the date is subject to change. Memorial Day used to be observed on May 30, but since 1971, it is celebrated on the last Monday in May. But regardless of the exact dates of these holidays, rules are rules! No white before Memorial Day or after Labor Day. Clearly, I have been unable to change. Hopefully, though, that does not indicate that I have been unable to progress, because that’s just the way it is.

Hannah Berman lives in Woodmere and gives private small-group lessons in mah-jongg and canasta. She can be reached at Savtahannah@aol.com or 516-902-3733.

By Anessa V. Cohen

As the saying goes, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.” On my recent trip to Israel, that became “When in Israel, do as other Israelis do!”

When I go to Israel, I definitely need the convenience of a car. So right after landing at the airport and picking up my baggage, my next stop is always the car-rental desk.

One of the nuisances when you decide to go the route of renting a car in Israel is dealing with finding that elusive parking space. If, like me, you are going to Jerusalem, parking is always at a premium—pretty much like taking a car to midtown Manhattan and looking for a parking space as opposed to a parking lot.

If you really get lucky and find that great parking spot in Jerusalem (or anywhere else in Israel, for that matter) don’t get excited too quickly. You must now look for the red parking box to pay for your car to stay in that spot, to avoid getting a parking ticket.

The parking boxes post the times that metered parking is in effect, as well as how many hours you can purchase at one time. Most parking rules are standard, with an 8:00 a.m. start time to 6:00 p.m. end time, after which you can park for free, and an end time of 1:00 p.m. on Friday. There’s free parking over Shabbos and holidays, of course.

The real nuisance has always been that once you park and pay at the red box, you get three hours at most and then you typically must return and put more money in to stay longer. If you leave the car overnight in a parking spot, you need to make sure you are up and at that red box by 8:00 a.m., paying for permission to leave your car where it is. Try not to oversleep!

Well, there is a new way of doing things here and all I can say is I hope this comes to New York soon. It is a dream! There are two new apps that can be downloaded on your phone—Pango and CellPark. Essentially, these apps manage your parking fees from wherever you and your phone are located.

You want to pay for three hours. So you open your app and enter the amount of parking time you want to secure; the app automatically charges the fee to your credit card and registers the license plate with the program. If a meter maid or policeman comes by your car, the app notifies them that the parking is paid for and up to date.

Did you decide you want to sleep late in the morning? Great! The parking app can be prompted the night before to start the meter rolling on your parking spot at 8:00 a.m. the next morning while you sleep in comfort, knowing you do not have to go down to the car the next morning and feed the meter.

Friday is here and you are not sure where you will be when it’s time to feed the meter? You can prompt the parking app to charge you till 1:00 p.m. when everything stops.

But the aspect I like most about this app is that when you pay for a parking spot—let’s say for three hours—and then realize after an hour that you need to go someplace else, you can freeze the time used on the app, drive wherever you need to go and then park, unfreeze the app, and then use the remaining time left on that new parking spot!

The one negative thing about this app is that it will not take all credit cards. You have to check in advance which credit cards the app will take.

Once you start using this app, it will be hard to go back to the old way of feeding the meter. When you get back to New York, you will feel as if you dreamed the whole thing. But it is definitely a new must for those renting cars in Israel!

Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a licensed real-estate broker and a licensed N.Y.S. mortgage broker with over 20 years of experience, offering full-service residential and commercial real-estate services (Anessa V Cohen Realty) and mortgaging services (First Meridian Mortgage) in the Five Towns and throughout the tri-state area. She can be reached at 516-569-5007 or via her website, www.AVCrealty.com. Readers are encouraged to send questions or comments to anessa.cohen@AVCrealty.com.

SpaceIL, an Israeli team competing in Google’s moon race, has signed a launch deal with the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX to launch a rocket to the moon in 2017.

An Israeli team competing in a Google-sponsored rocket-launch race to the moon has signed a deal with the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX with a plan to launch a rocket in 2017, officials said.

Sixteen teams are competing in the rocket-launch race for a $20 million first-place prize. To win the race, a privately funded team must have an unmanned spacecraft reach the surface of the moon, explore 500 meters (1,640 feet), and transmit high-definition video and photos back to earth.

Israel’s SpaceIL is the first team to have its launch agreement approved by XPRIZE, the organization overseeing the race.

“The magnitude of this achievement cannot be overstated,” said XPRIZE President Bob Weiss, Israel Hayom reported. “This is the official milestone that the race is on . . . They’ve lit the fuse, as it were, for their competitive effort.”

According to the CEO of SpaceIL, Eran Privman, the agreement with SpaceX comes on the heels of a long search for an affordable way to launch a rocket without government financing, especially because his team’s spacecraft is smaller than the majority of those being used by SpaceIL’s competitors. The SpaceIL rocket is about 1.5 meters (4 feet, 11 inches) tall and wide, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 launcher is equipped to carry 20 small satellites whose fares will offset the cost of the launch.

“Other teams are trying to find such solutions,” Privman said. (JNS.org)

By Yagil Henkin

I want to tell you a little bit about Eitam. Eitam was a jokester.

I know it’s surprising to say this at a funeral, and all the more so about a rabbi and scholar who was headed for greatness, but he was a jokester, and that’s a good thing. If you want to be serious, you should also be able from time to time to make fun of yourself. A rabbi who doesn’t take himself too seriously is of great benefit to himself and others. The Torah warns us regarding a king, “that his heart shall not be raised” [above his brethren]. This is the trap that awaits the rabbi too; the greater he is, the greater the trap. Eitam’s ability not to take himself too seriously, to make fun of himself and his world, was very important.

However, Eitam was also extremely serious. For years, I insisted that in our family we have alternating generations: one generation of rabbis, then one of Ph.D.s, and so on. Then came Eitam and ruined my joke since he decided to be both a rabbi and a Ph.D., and he excelled in both fields. He didn’t write in order to be promoted, but because he couldn’t stop writing—since he had what to say and it was important for him to say it. Moreover, Eitam had the intellectual and moral integrity that a serious rabbi must have. This is the integrity needed at the moment when the rabbi wishes to reach a particular (halachic) conclusion and he knows that if he will manipulate the texts for his purposes, he can reach his desired conclusion, and perhaps even receive rounds of applause. But then, the small voice of his conscience intervenes and tells him, “But that isn’t the truth.” And since he knows the truth, he sticks to it. This isn’t easy, but that was Eitam’s integrity.

He was only 31 when he was murdered; in his too few years, he managed to write two halachic works and one historical work. And if not for his murder he would have added many more books in both fields. And when that would have happened, I would have had to deal not only with people correcting me when I say “Eitam” to call him instead “Rabbi Eitam,” but with people who would have directed me to call him “HaRav HaGaon Professor Eitam.” If on top of that, we were to add that he also played guitar better than me, the situation would have been dire indeed. Well, I wish these would be my problems today and not what we have to deal with today.

I am sure during the shivah, I will hear many stories about Eitam. Some will be familiar, some will sound familiar, and some will probably fit someone else. (Yes, media reporters, you who moved him to a different residence, gave him an additional two children, and recruited him retroactively to an elite army unit, I am speaking also about you.) At a shivah, you always tell the positive stories, minus a few embarrassing events like, for example, a fire following which Eitam was expelled from some high school. But I don’t need the shivah to know that he was the most talented of us brothers, an extremely talented individual in general. He was full of knowledge but not full of himself. He was a phenomenal father and husband, who knew how to balance his family and his learning and his various occupations.

The Torah world lost one of the great rabbis and leaders of the next generation, and the academic world lost an excellent researcher. And I lost a brother, which you can imagine, isn’t less important for me.

However, this is not the only reason you all came here [today]. The many people who are here, and the reason we eulogize during the Sukkot holiday, as distinct from the usual halachic ruling, is that it was not “blind fate” which took the lives of Eitam and Na’ama. They are “Harugei Malchut,” the term used for those who died as part of the unceasing struggle of the Jewish people. If you go to Mt. Herzl, you will discover that the first death from “hostile acts” buried there is Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Tzoref, who was murdered 164 years ago. This means, from the perspective of the State of Israel, that the national struggle of the Jewish people did not begin 67 years ago with the establishment of the State of Israel. Nor did the murderous acts against Jews commence with the 1948 Declaration of Independence. Those acts were the consequence of hostility to the notion of the Jews returning to their ancient homeland and living there as a people.

Eitam and Na’ama became involuntary fighters in this struggle. Eitam and Na’ama are persons slain by acts of hostility. They are not “terror victims.” Do not call them “terror victims.” Do not say that Israel has a war on terror.

Israel has no war on terror. There was never a war on terror, and never will be such war. Bernard Lewis, the great Middle East scholar, once said (regarding the U.S.’s “Global War on Terror”), that to declare war on terror is comparable to imagining Churchill, in the dark days of 1940, declaring in his famous speech to parliament something along the lines of: “We are fighting against submarines and warplanes, against tanks, against bayonets, against guns and three-inch mortars! We will fight them on the beaches…”

Technically this would have been correct. It would have also been complete nonsense. It was not the planes that fought the battle of Britain, but the pilots—British and German—and the nations—Britain and Germany—who sent them. Britain was fighting Nazi Germany, not planes and not submarines.

There is no such thing as “terror of stones,” just like there is no “terror by individuals,” no “car terror,” nor is Jerusalem “plagued by stone-throwing.” And similarly Eitam and Na’ama were not murdered (in contrast to a headline on a certain media site) by a passing car firing at them.

These are all methods. Not enemies. Terror is a tool. The one who uses terror is the enemy. Terror is the enemy’s tactic, knives and bullets are the weapons at hand. To say “We fight terror” is to say, “We do not know who the enemy is, or we are not willing to define them as such.” In other words, “We have no strategy.”

Do not fight terror; fight those who dictate it. I don’t mean, G‑d forbid, to call for acts of vengeance against innocent Arabs. I’m also not implying that we should give up on war ethics and laws of war. My intention is that we should not pretend that there is no hostility, hatred, ideology, or agencies who manage terror. Nor should we pretend that there is no widespread support for terror. We should not forget that there is a religious and national conflict that has laid and continues to lay the foundation for terrorism.

We ourselves say, rightly, “We should not be like them.” Then why do we lie to ourselves and say that there is no “them,” that there is no enemy but only an abstract and faceless “terror”? If we are fighting “terror,” then who are those “them”? Do not promise that our hands will reach the murderers. Behind those murderers, there is a society that supports this kind of warfare. A society that supports targeting civilians, a society that supports finishing off a young couple. (Thanks to G‑d their children were not hurt, but do not credit the murderers with “mercy.”) The murderers are the hangmen. But those who preach that ‘here is a Jew and therefore he deserves death’—they will not be imprisoned. And those who today will give candies to children in order to celebrate the murder in cold blood of two more Jews, will pay no price.

Eitam and Na’ama were not killed by “terror.” They are victims of an act of hostility. It was hostility behind the murder. Human beings driven by hatred went out to the road in order to murder Jews, and they succeeded. They took my brother from me and from my siblings; from Yishai they took his sister Na’ama; from my parents and from Na’ama’s parents they took their children; from the children—Matan, Nitzan, Neta, and Itamar—they took their parents, they took the right to grow up in a family, with the experiences and memories of a warm, unified, and loving family. They took from you, who stand here, a talented and optimistic couple, who were destined to greatness. And they continue to take from everyone the sense of security. They were Arab murderers, backed by a too-large segment of Arab society, with far too little principled opposition to murder.

Do not degrade their memory by turning them into victims of a force of nature. Debate about policy, not about the murdered. Do not find justification and sympathy for murderers. Keep your empathy for the children who were left orphans, to the parents who were left bereft. And for the people of Israel, who still have a long way before being able to sit peacefully beneath their vines and fig trees.

There can be no compensation for our loss. It is a personal loss, an open hole which will never be filled. Most of you are not here because of it. You are here because, as the Babylonian Talmud says, “When permission is given to the destroyer to destroy, he does not distinguish between the righteous and the evil.” And how can he distinguish? The destroyer is so evil, he has no clue about what is good. He is evil to the bone, “and all of the thoughts of his heart are only evil all day.” What can he know about goodness? And he also does not care.

Eitam and Na’ama: “Few and good were the years of your life, but they did not reach those of your fathers in their homeland” [a paraphrase of Yaakov Avinu’s words about his own life]. Woe to a generation where parents are burying their children!

There is a verse from Isaiah that is customarily quoted in funerals: “He will swallow up death forever, and G‑d will wipe away tears from all faces.” The conclusion of this verse is no less important, nationally and not just personally. Here is the full verse: “He will swallow up death forever, and G‑d will wipe away tears from all faces; and He will remove his people’s shame from upon the entire earth, because G‑d has spoken.”

And He will remove his people’s shame from upon the entire earth, because G‑d has spoken! (Arutz Sheva) 

Translated by Rabbi Heshy Billet of Woodmere

Note: To provide some perspective on the nearby article by Jeff Ballabon, the 5TJT presents the following facts and ideas for the reader to consider.

AIPAC is a registered lobbying agent for the State of Israel. Unlike NORPAC, ZOA, ADL, AJC, and others, AIPAC, by law, must be nonpartisan. It is there to make Israel’s case to the U.S. government and people. Its job is to represent the views of the current Israeli government.

AIPAC has a history of toeing the line for Labor and Likud governments. It has been accused of being right wing and left wing—depending on which government’s views are being represented at the time.

Many agree that AIPAC didn’t really lose the Iran vote. Some argue that Obama used powers that are questionable at best, unconstitutional at worse. AIPAC did get many Democrats to vote against the Iran deal.

AIPAC does not belong to the Likud, Labor, Bayit Ha Yehudi, etc. It is not there to reflect a particular political view. Overall, AIPAC has done a remarkable job since its inception in getting the U.S. to see that the interests of Israel and the U.S. are in most cases identical. AIPAC has managed to be viewed as serious and nonpartisan. This is no small feat.

By having Republican and Democratic members, AIPAC is able to have a voice in almost every congressman and senator’s office. The same has been true of presidential candidates. Obama is the exception. Many view him as a “J Street president” and speculate that he hates AIPAC.

To learn more about AIPAC, visit www.aipac.org.

By Jeff Ballabon

With the introspection of the YamimNora’im behind us, and as we look ahead to what 5776 may bring, it’s impossible to avoid the sobering—even frightening—significance of recent events in Washington. Many in our community are asking, “What can be done to protect Israel? What can I do?”

Together with a group of policy experts, political insiders, and campaign veterans, I have launched at least one answer to what can be done: the Iron Dome Alliance, the first pro-Israel SuperPAC. Iron Dome Alliance is the only initiative of its kind and one that has potential to make strengthening the U.S.–Israel relationship and protecting Israel a major factor in the 2016 elections. But before we move to “aseitov” it’s crucial that we understand the nature of the problem and engage in real “surmei’ra.”

In recent years, there has been an aggressive incursion into our community of a left-wing group that has misled people who are passionate about supporting and protecting Israel. Well-intentioned people who want to help Israel have given this group not only money, but the imprimatur of mainstream Orthodox organizations and congregations. In return, it has pushed the kind of leftist policies that most of our community believes are harmful to Israel’s safety and security and has even lobbied directly against Israel.

The group? AIPAC.

For years, Washington insiders who care about Israel have watched in dismay as AIPAC helped elect anti-Israel Democrats like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry, assuring us that they were great friends of Israel. In election after election, AIPAC insisted that it absolutely did not matter which party controlled Congress or who sat in the White House—and then orchestrated delivery of vast funds that donors had allocated to Israel’s security to the very politicians whose abandonment of Israel we are witnessing today. Make no mistake—for years, AIPAC has been directing your pro-Israel donations to the politicians whose votes and actions threaten Israel’s existence. And they continue to do so even now.

If AIPAC knew Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry would be bad for Israel, then they lied to you and knowingly helped elect Israel’s enemies. If AIPAC didn’t know, then they were inexcusably clueless. Either way, they certainly do not deserve our support.

But it gets worse—this summer, months before the Iran deal debacle, I hosted meetings in New York where members of our community heard directly from a number of Members of Congress what I’ve known since I was counsel to a U.S. Senator in the early 1990s and have watched happen countless times in the 20 years that I’ve been a lobbyist: using its imprimatur as representative of American Jews, AIPAC routinely kills Republican-sponsored pro-Israel legislation—including vital legislation that can easily pass. This outrageous behavior was on public display last year when AIPAC openly lobbied against legislation that would have strengthened sanctions against Iran—legislation that had the votes to pass both the Senate and the House and that Israel said it needed. Why does AIPAC kill pro-Israel initiatives? Why would AIPAC lobby directly against Israel’s top priority? In AIPAC’s own words, because “stopping the Iranian nuclear program should rest on bipartisan support.” In other words, AIPAC cares less about helping candidates and promoting policies that protect Israel than about sustaining the illusion of bipartisanship, so crucial to its liberal Jewish donor base.

A few years ago, AIPAC set its sights on money from the Orthodox community. It wasn’t easy; AIPAC had an unpleasant history of being anti-Orthodox. They also had to cover up some very alarming practices. For example, did you know that when AIPAC takes members of Congress to Israel they refuse to take them over the Green Line—even if they request to go, as many truly pro-Israel congressmen do? Do you understand the toxic message that sends to Congress about Yehuda and Shomron? Because AIPAC does not reflect the views of “the democratically elected government of Israel” as they claim; AIPAC reflects the views of its overwhelmingly liberal base and liberal staff and they are opposed to Jews living in Yehuda and Shomron. Members of Congress are clear that AIPAC views those Jews as “obstacles to peace” because, like its rival J Street, AIPAC is committed to creating a “State of Palestine” regardless of the position of the Israeli government.

A few years ago, an exception was made to AIPAC’s Green Line rule. AIPAC still refuses congressmen’s requests to cross the Green Line to visit sites of Jewish and Israeli significance, but they now take them on a trip to Ramallah to meet Abu Mazen and hear his pitch. If you’ve been supporting AIPAC, your support has been used to consistently undermine the Jewish communities in Yehuda and Shomron and to pay for pro-PLO propaganda.

AIPAC would never tell you that, because AIPAC wants your money. AIPAC put up an Orthodox president and hired an “Orthodox outreach” staffer with YU semichah and an OU pedigree and set out to ensnare our community. No sooner did that happen than I received a series of calls from the Israeli Foreign Ministry asking if there is some way to stop this. I received similarly frantic calls when AIPAC decided it wanted to do outreach to Christian friends of Israel.

Unfortunately, as I told them, it couldn’t be stopped—not so long as they send the prime minister and others to AIPAC’s glitzy party in Washington each year. “We have to keep a relationship with the broader Jewish community,” is the Israeli government’s understandable rationale. But that doesn’t mean that those of us who stand more firmly with Israel than AIPAC does should be co-opted by their leftist appeasement agenda.

For years, dedicated idealists like Zionist Organization of America’s Mort Klein have criticized AIPAC’s approach to no avail while AIPAC dazzled friends and foes with its glamorous annual conference and deceptive display of apparently lavish influence. Now, all pretense has been stripped away. As should be evident from the Iran deal debacle, AIPAC isn’t a pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse at all; it’s a Jewish fundraising and marketing gimmick—a party planner, not a power broker. As Gil Troy, a pro-AIPAC defender would have it, people who criticize AIPAC have AIPAC all wrong: AIPAC isn’t a “political cabal,” writes Troy, but a “Zionist hootenanny.”

I’m all for Jewish pride, and given how low Israel ranks on the list of American Jews’ political priorities, a fun annual conference, or, in Professor Troy’s words, “a rousing, joyous, pro-Israel celebration” is a fine idea. But that isn’t how AIPAC portrays itself. Rather than presenting itself as a more elaborate Celebrate Israel parade, AIPAC sucks millions into its maw by making the case that it is a hugely powerful lobby. Worse, it interferes with actual policy lobbying, often going directly against Israel’s interests in order to keep the broadest possible swath of politicos happy to come to its big bash, the woefully misnamed “Policy Conference.”

Other AIPAC supporters tell a different tale, arguing to our community that extreme bipartisanship is actually part of their big “strategy” of engagement, of keeping doors open. Well, if so, the disastrous failure of AIPAC’s strategy is now on full public display. Israel, for the first time, reached out to the United States, seeking support to counter a genocidal plan that threatens the security of America and the existence of the Jewish State—a plan the American public rejects 2:1 and that should be easy to kill. AIPAC went straight into fundraising mode, boasting about the tens of millions of dollars it would spend on advertising and touting its hundreds of high-level meetings. The results of AIPAC’s big show? Catastrophe, utter and complete. Humiliation for American Jews and peril for Israel. AIPAC squandered millions to no avail and held meetings without effect. It was inevitable: this is the price of AIPAC’s fetish for “bipartisanship” and “access” to the chambers of power for fundraising purposes at the expense of actual pro-Israel policy.

But we must face an even more uncomfortable truth. The threat that we can confront, the threat that we have enabled, is not Iran. It is the AIPAC-endorsed anti-Israel Obama administration and its supporters in today’s Democratic Party. Working together, the U.S., Israel, and other Middle Eastern allies could have contained Iran. But Obama, Clinton, and Kerry withdrew American support for that containment. Instead, they made the deliberate choice to transform Iran into a nuclear power—and to send it hundreds of billions of dollars to fund its program of nuclearized global terror. Obama, Clinton, and Kerry decided to shift the balance of power in the Middle East to favor the world’s greatest funder of global terror, knowingly and willingly triggering a nuclear race among Muslim states.

Democrats in the House and Senate—including many other AIPAC favorites of long standing—have demonstrated the same contempt for AIPAC that AIPAC has shown for us. Though every poll shows that Americans hate this Obama/Iran deal by vast margins, Congressional Democrats have worked overtime to ensure that Obama’s plan comes to fruition. So powerless was AIPAC, so incapable of delivering any support, that rather than forcing the members to go on record with actual votes on this incredibly significant issue and forcing the president to veto a resolution of disapproval by the Senate, the Democrats were able to block the Senate from even having to cast votes on this deal—all to save President Obama the embarrassment of a veto.

Patriotic Americans, friends of Israel, committed Jews, you should be outraged. AIPAC’s self-serving argument that, unlike every other issue in Washington, when it comes to Israel, “access” and “bipartisanship” trumps policy, has been revealed as the sham it’s always been. AIPAC’s strategy of whitewashing and collaborating with Democrat hostility to Israel is a disaster. As I wrote in the aftermath of the Hezbollah war on Israel on the eve of the 2006 midterm elections:

Before the [2004] election, Israeli polls showed Israelis overwhelmingly preferring Bush to Kerry . . . the Israeli government had a conspicuous preference for Bush. As the JTA reported in May 2004, however, “AIPAC has touted this election as a ‘win-win’ proposition.”

Bush and Kerry “win-win”? Republicans and Democrats indistinguishable? It would be funny if Jews weren’t being killed.

It’s time for a major change in the way we conduct pro-Israel lobbying.

The need for a true guardian of the U.S.–Israel relationship, the need for a new way forward—the need for the Iron Dome Alliance, a pro-Israel SuperPAC that will reward friends and punish enemies—is now more apparent than ever. Remember the “Unity Pledge” that leftist Jewish groups tried to push on us in 2012? To ostracize anyone who dared to state the obvious—that Obama was anti-Israel and that Democrats were worse for Israel than Republicans? That nonsense ends now. Control of the Congress and the White House are a matter of life and death for Israel. Our country’s alliance with Israel must be a front-and-center issue in the 2016 election. Iron Dome Alliance will ensure that it is.

This is not an easy or popular truth to reveal. I know how many people in our community have been conditioned to see AIPAC as an unmitigated good. I know how many have been generous with their money and time. And I know how breathtaking the spectacle of AIPAC’s annual conference is. After all, that is what it’s designed for: to impress you. But the situation has become too grave for silence—and the evidence is now available for all to see what Washington has known for many years.

Rabbi Noach Weinberg, z’l, of Aish Hatorah used to say, “For Patrick Henry and American patriots, the cry is ‘Give me liberty or give me death.’ For Jews it is ‘Give me clarity or give me death.’” Our community has become involved and sophisticated in the workings of local government. Given the stakes, it is high time our community has clarity on how Washington really works. We must articulate clear principles and goals and actual policies—something AIPAC avoids at all costs. Then we must create incentives for supporting them and disincentives to thwarting them. Iron Dome Alliance is doing these things. We will support members and elect candidates for whom the safety and security of the Jewish state is a priority. We will oppose and unseat those who vote against Israel. We will fight strategically to keep control of Congress away from Democrats, but also to empower the few Democrats willing to fight for Israel so that others may join them—because bipartisanship is indeed a tactical advantage, but not at the cost of protecting Israel. And let us be clear: we are nonpartisan; we are driven exclusively by policy, unlike AIPAC whose primary concern is keeping Democrats happy because its liberal base requires it. It’s unlikely to happen anytime soon, but if we see a shift in policy between the parties, we will not hesitate to move our own political strategy.

As we enter this new year, the 2016 election season is well under way. Obama has ominously called for a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Without doubt he now intends to force Israel to create an Arab state in Yehuda and Shomron and perhaps even to tear Yerushalayim in two. Our community must know that there are things we can do. No sector of the American public is more knowledgeable about or committed to Israel than Orthodox Jews. Instead of being followers, we should lead the way on Israel policy. Instead of being manipulated for others’ agendas, let us commit to renewing and strengthening the U.S.–Israel relationship; commit to fighting radical Islam; and commit to protecting the Jewish State. Let us commit to a fearless pro-Israel strategy that begins and ends with pro-Israel policy, commit to a political strategy that actually holds members accountable and delivers votes—rather than to a marketing gimmick featuring self-serving ad campaigns, ritzy self-aggrandizing conferences, and “lobbying” meetings that are nothing more than paid photo-ops. The time has come for clarity. The time has come for the Iron Dome Alliance.

Jeff Ballabon is chairman of the Iron Dome Alliance. For more information about Iron Dome Alliance, contact info@IronDomeAlliance.com.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

The chicken has landed.

Fun at the monkey park

Our Aliyah Chronicle

By Shmuel Katz

I hope you had a terrific Sukkot and a wonderful Yamim Nora’im season. At this time of year, I generally have some great yom tov stories and pictures to share with you, and I had been plotting the post-Sukkot article in my head. Then events intervened, and I intended to write an article about the latest tragedies here in Israel.

As I sat down to write this morning, I decided that I would not let terror and intimidation take over. Our lives here are not ruled by the latest attack and cannot be ruled by concern or fear. So let me share a few words with you about chickens.

You may know that the Muslim calendar is lunar. However, that calendar is not adjusted with an occasional extra month, as ours is, to keep the seasons in line. Therefore, their holidays fluctuate, coming a few weeks earlier in the Gregorian calendar each year. This means that their holidays will sometimes, but not nearly always, coincide with ours.

This year, Muslims celebrated a ten-day festival that coincided with the middle of our yamim tovim. While this would not normally be a major issue, the idiosyncrasies of this year’s calendar had a weird result: a chicken shortage.

You see, the shochtim did not come to work for three days the week of Rosh Hashanah and two days the week of Yom Kippur. And the Arab workers in the poultry plants did not come to work for their holidays, beginning somewhere at the end of that week. The combination meant that very little fresh chicken was produced for the marketplace at a time when demand would be high—for the erev Yom Kippur seudah ha’mafsekes, followed by Shabbat, chag, Shabbat, and again chag.

We have a neighbor who runs the meat department in a local store and he posted a notice warning everyone that the shortage was coming. But we all thought it would happen after Yom Kippur. So I went to the supermarket on Monday night, the night before Yom Kippur, to stock up, only to discover that they were sold out. I ran to the next store, where I bumped into Motti and Penina Eichler, who told me that every supermarket in the city was sold out.

With reports coming in that there were shortages throughout the country, I got nervous and hurried to a meat market in the old commercial center of town, where I thought they might still have some chicken. The owner told me that he did not have any chicken, but that a fresh delivery would be arriving at 6:30 the following morning.

So at 6:40 a.m. on erev Yom Kippur, I headed out to find some chickens. I got to the store to see that there was, indeed, a chicken delivery truck waiting at the store. But the store was closed. So I figured that I would wait there until they opened to sell me some chicken.

At 7:05, the truck suddenly pulled away. I assume the driver gave up on the delivery and was going to his next stop. In a panic, I put the car in gear and decided to follow him to his next stop, so that I could buy chicken from them.

At 7:06 I got a text message from Motti: “Did you make a chicken run this morning? Do they really have chicken?” I replied, “You’re not going to believe this. I was there at 6:45, the truck was there and no one was at the store. I am now following the truck to see where the next delivery is. He might end up leaving the city, in which case . . .”

I tailed the truck to a restaurant, where I got out and asked the driver if he would be making a delivery to any markets in the city. He named a nearby supermarket, and I followed him to that store. As he drove to the delivery dock, I parked my car, grabbed a wagon, and headed to the meat counter. As I approached the counter, the manager said, “Sorry, we have no chickens.”

I said, “Yes, you do—I just followed the truck here. He is unloading right now!”

About 20 minutes later (after a quality check by the store and a kashrut verification by the mashgiach), they brought out the chicken, with the driver cracking a big smile as he recognized me waiting. And within the 10 minutes it took for them to process my order, at least 40 people (including Penina Eichler) queued up to buy chicken.

Only in Israel.

• • •

Our chag and chol ha’moed were pretty good (and routine, thank G‑d). We hosted the annual Katz barbecue in our sukkah, along with a Kreinberg mini-barbecue the next night. With our older kids all occupied with friends, I took Moshe to the monkey park one day—we both enjoy zoos and similar attractions. Goldie and I went with the boys to the local police academy in Bet Shemesh, where there is a police museum, and they had some fun displays and demonstrations for the public. And I took the boys to the beach one day, where, unfortunately, I lost my glasses.

One final note. As we do each year, we joined my uncle and aunt for a meal on the second night of Sukkot (their yom tov leil sheini and our first night of chol ha’moed) and had a wonderful time. This year, their son, my cousin Shua Ray, also came for Sukkot. So we headed back to Yerushalayim on isru chag (their Simchat Torah) to visit with him and his family.

While we were there, Shua tried to convince Moshe (age 10½) to come spend a week visiting them in Chicago. Despite Shua’s continued insistence, Moshe would not agree to go. Nor would he explain his reasons. He was not afraid of the trip or of being there; he simply did not want to go.

It was not until we left that Moshe explained his reasoning. He apparently did not share the truth because he did not want to offend all the chutznickim in the house there. But the real reason he did not want to go to America?

“There is no kedushah there, Abba.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

Shmuel Katz is the executive director of Yeshivat Migdal HaTorah (www.migdalhatorah.org), a new gap-year yeshiva. Shmuel, his wife Goldie, and their six children made aliyah in July 2006. Before making aliyah, he was the executive director of the Yeshiva of South Shore in Hewlett. You can contact him at shmu@migdalhatorah.org.

New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn

By Larry Gordon

Conventional wisdom dictates that we stay away from hospitals if at all possible. The only time when it is a good and positive experience to be in a hospital is when a family member has given birth and you are there to see the mother, father, and baby—or babies, as the case may be.

If you have to be in or visit a hospital for any other reason, you want it to be because someone is on the mend, recovering from whatever landed them there in the first place, and on their way home.

I do not want to go into too much detail so as to protect the privacy of those involved, but most of my Sukkos was spent in and around some fairly nice and proficient medical centers here in the New York area. Everyone is OK, though I learned that hospital personnel work within their own concept of time, which has little to do with the everyday outside world as we know it.

To that end, if you are impatient about something or on a schedule that means you have to be somewhere else at a certain time, then do not include hospital visits into your schedule for that day.

Why am I all of a sudden dwelling on hospitals and hospital stays? Let me start by expressing a hearty mazal tov to our children Mari and Dovi Gordon on the birth of beautiful twins—a boy and a girl—a few days before Sukkos began. I’m not well versed in the science, but I suppose if two human beings are going to share a limited common space, they possibly run the risk of being a little on the small side, if nothing else—though not in all cases—as a reasonable accommodation to one another. That might be the precise opposite of sibling rivalry.

Then there was the matter of my mother who was admitted to a hospital in Brooklyn, also prior to yom tov to address an old cardiac issue that finally had to be dealt with. My mom was admitted to Methodist Hospital on a Shabbos morning, and my son and daughter-in-law went to North Shore-LIJ that same night.

The twins were born a few weeks earlier than anticipated and were finally allowed to go home on chol ha’moed. My mom was discharged from the hospital on the same day. What exactly is going on here?

My wife and I were not exactly shuttling between hospitals, but we were in each a few times with long stretches spent with my mom in Methodist. Another similarity between the two otherwise quite opposite situations was that there were a number of false starts for both when it came to being allowed out of the hospital.

With the babies, first it was their size, then a little jaundice. One moment they are in an incubator under the lights, then they are out, then they are back in. With my mom, there is her cardiologist, a valve specialist, the resident, and a host of other doctors. They too had us jumping up and down before and during Sukkos. In the morning, they say she can go home in the afternoon. Then some other doctor says he doesn’t like something so she should stay another night.

I spent one night at her bedside in a fairly comfortable recliner, alternating between watching Fox News on my iPad and sleeping as lightly as I do on an airplane.

That first night—it was a few hours after Shabbos, a couple of days prior to Yom Kippur and still a week before Sukkos—I drove from my home to the hospital in Brooklyn to relieve one of my brothers at 1 a.m. It was something of a surreal experience, as it is with only rare exception that I am out driving around anywhere at this time of night.

The route from the Five Towns took me from South Conduit Avenue to Atlantic Avenue to Eastern Parkway, to Flatbush Avenue and then to Prospect Park West, which is approximately where Methodist Hospital is located. It was already around 1:45 a.m. as I was traversing Eastern Parkway at around Rochester or Buffalo Avenue. Though it was the middle of the night and I knew that back home Central Avenue was like a ghost town at this hour, at this part of Eastern Parkway, life was teeming as if it were the middle of the afternoon. I saw people sitting on benches, riding bicycles, and walking in and out of stores. I marveled at what was going on and noted to myself that in this community there is no distinguishing between night and day and that the clock is just one big jumble.

I was sure that what was going on here was unusual and that when I got to the heart of Crown Heights a little closer to 2 a.m. I would see nothing like this. When I finally hit Albany Avenue, I noticed that it was not exactly a tranquil night. Then at Kingston Avenue—one block further at the corner of the main Chabad shul—it was mamash as if it were broad daylight. The streets were crowded with young people moving around.

It was before Yom Kippur, so there was a crowd assembled on Eastern Parkway doing kapparos. A little further up, there were crowds assembled on the corners of Kingston and Eastern Parkway, probably browsing tables of esrogim in preparation for Sukkos. There were bright lights emanating from the shul and adjacent buildings. I observed a chassidic couple jogging on the Parkway, and girls and boys in groups of two and three out for a nighttime, or should we say early-morning, walk. Things were exactly the opposite of what I had anticipated.

The parts of Methodist that I walked through were fairly impressive. There are long winding hallways. My mother was in a private room and one of the nurses commandeered a leather recliner from a nearby empty room so that I could stretch out and at least try to sleep. And that’s what I did for the rest of that night—try.

It’s a funny thing about medicine. Doctors make decisions solely based on science, medicine, and their experiences. But at the same time, when they meet to discuss a case, they want family members to hear them out, to know what we are thinking, and then to have our consent for whatever it is they are proposing to do to the patient.

So while their decisions are essentially based on science, they seem to want our emotional input. They can tell you what they think will work and what the statistics are and what they have found when they have performed similar procedures on other people. We can’t make scientific or medical decisions. But this is our mother and they are looking to us to balance and synthesize what they have said with what we feel and think.

So at the end of the day it is basically up to us, the children. Sometimes when you have another Orthodox Jewish doctor on the case—as we did for one procedure that we had to authorize—we asked him what he would do if this were his mother. His answer was that it is a difficult choice to make. We were back to square one.

Back at LIJ, things were different. The babies were well cared for and slowly moving in the direction of going home. Did I mention how adorable they are? My son and daughter-in-law were hoping to be out for the first days of Sukkos but that was not to be. They tell me that there is a wonderful Ronald McDonald House near LIJ that Bikur Cholim has arranged for use by frum people stuck there over Shabbos or yom tov. There is also a Chabad rabbi nearby, Rabbi Aharon Wolf, who opened his home to them and invited them to him for all the yom tov meals.

Back in Brooklyn, it was much the same situation for my sister and brother-in-law, who spent the first two days of Sukkos in Park Slope where the Chabad rabbi is Shimon Hecht, son of the unforgettable Rabbi J.J. Hecht. They stayed in a comfortable bikur cholim apartment a block from the hospital and Rabbi Hecht invited them for all the holiday meals too, though they brought their own food along and used a sukkah built at the shul.

It was going to be a quiet yom tov with these and other babies “scheduled” to be born in the immediate aftermath of the chag. Sukkos or any Shabbos or yom tov is a little difficult to navigate when circumstances demand that you need to be with someone at a hospital. Over time you get too familiar with the excellent bikur cholim rooms and a little tired of all those tuna-fish and egg-salad sandwiches on mezonos rolls.

The kids are home and so is my mom as of this writing, though she will have had to go back in for a few days over this weekend for another procedure that was explained to us in scientific detail by a team of doctors with all the associated options. A good deal of the time you hear nightmare stories about hospitals, especially when you are forced to stay for an inordinate amount of time. That is not the case here as we were impressed with the fashion in which these two facilities are run.

The only complaint is that when they tell you that you are being discharged and can go home but you are still there seven hours later waiting for paperwork, that is somewhat annoying. Being rushed to the hospital is one matter; it appears that there is no rushing when it comes to leaving.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov with U.S. secretary of state John Kerry in 2013

By Larry Gordon

The season of our rejoicing was interrupted and degraded by torrential rains and horrific murder. Sitting in the sukkah last week was a meteorological obstacle course, with many traditional celebrations associated with this great holiday being held indoors. In the Shomron, near Itamar, shots rang out from the guns of brutal, inhuman Arab terrorists destroying a young family enjoying an outing together and heading home. Over last Shabbos, there were two vicious murders of two men walking along after Shabbos on the streets of Israel’s eternal capital.

Rain happens not infrequently on the long Sukkos holiday, so we have grown accustomed to taking dismal yet blessed weather in stride. But the murder of a young couple in Israel in front of their children is something we are forced to endure all too often but will never be able to wrap our minds around. This time, the murder victims happened to be from a recognized Israeli family—the Henkin family. The husband was Rav Eitam Henkin, son of the recognized posek Rav Yehuda Henkin and grandson of Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin.

The senior Rav Henkin was born in Russia in 1881, emigrated to New York, and was the innovator of the well-known Ezras Torah shul calendar and the director of the organization until his death in 1973. His daughter-in-law, Rabbanit Chana Henkin, is the founder of Nishmat—the advanced Torah institute for women in Israel, and a noted lecturer on Torah subjects in her own right.

On Thursday, the third day of chol ha’moed, tragedy struck this golden, accomplished family. Eitam Henkin was 31, his wife Na’ama was 30. They leave behind six orphans, the youngest just four months old. Four of the children were in the car with them and witnessed their parents’ murder.

Our faith, on one level, demands silence. And even if we can talk about it and try to assign reason, what would we say? But there is also a political dimension to these events, and this needs to be immediately addressed by Israel’s leadership. The country unfortunately has been down this road many times. They know what needs to be done and how to do it. It’s frustrating to Jews and fair-thinking people everywhere, but it is not our task to offer advice on Israel’s security matters from a perch in New York.

The murderers of Jews in Israel say the motivation is acquiring their own state. This incongruous thought process—and the violence it produces—has proven that it drives such an objective further away. We know and understand that to Palestinians and other Jew-haters, Jewish lives are expendable. But are those lives also expendable to Israel’s leadership? Is this how Mr. Netanyahu believes he will be able to evoke a diplomatic response from UN member states which he complained remain silent while Jews are murdered? Since he addressed the UN last week, four more Jews have been killed and more injured. Still, the UN is silent. What a price for diplomatic credits from that morally bankrupt institution!

If the Israeli leadership does not believe that defending its people is politically plausible or expedient, then perhaps it is time that they seriously consider withdrawal and conceding defeat to the Arabs. Sometimes you are in a battle and at the end of the day you have to simply deal with losing. This option is not preferred or recommended, but the U.S. type of symbolic and superficial reactions to serious matters has been demonstrated to be ineffective. Words are good for newspaper columns like this but they are otherwise simply not enough.

The United Nations is another forum where much is said but little is done. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s General Assembly address last week was dramatic, impactful, riveting. But it won’t change anything. Bibi has delivered extraordinary speeches in this forum as well as in Congress. But a well-crafted presentation has a staying power of about a day or so. What is required here and now is action on the ground. Perhaps they should ask Vladimir Putin about how that works if Israel’s leaders really don’t know.

Still and despite the disappointment, Bibi is a shrewd and seasoned politician. He knows, and we all know, that like a container of milk in the back of your refrigerator after yom tov, President Obama has an expiration date stamped across his forehead. The end of his disastrous presidency is still a bit more than a year away but its end is thankfully in sight.

There have been awful, tragic murders over the chag that certainly require a Jewish response. And even though that response should begin to be enacted today, political prudence says to wait, to not fall into an Obama-type trap. Sure, there should be increased building in every community of Judea and Samaria with even more projects added in response to the recent terror attacks. But even as much as we do not like or appreciate the passiveness and delays, it is important to take a step back sometimes and wait.

So what exactly are we waiting for? We might be waiting for a few things. Chief amongst them is the end of the Obama administration. The president has demonstrated that he is well versed in the diplomatic mechanics of undermining the Jewish state. Sure, support for Israel is high in Congress and across the U.S. But Barack Obama has perfected the art of going at it alone. The damage and harm he has sought to inflict on Israel—with his likeminded allies in the UN—has been only a bit reduced by that broad support here for Israel.

And then there is the matter of waiting for Mr. Putin to do his thing. After dawdling around, treading water, and immersing himself in professorial rhetoric for four years now, it seems that at least some of the world has had enough of the Obama procrastination disguised as hesitancy and inaction.

The Middle East—except for Israel, which is an Obama obsession—is in a shambles. Libya without that scoundrel Gaddafi is a bigger mess than ever. Iraq without Saddam is also in violent disarray. Egypt had a close call with the Obama-supported Muslim Brotherhood terrorist President Mohammad Morsi until he was deposed by the military.

In Syria, chaos reigns; over 300,000 people have already died, caught somewhere in the crossfire between Assad, the rebels, and ISIS. Mr. Obama says that regardless of what happens, Assad must go. What happens to Syria after Assad is apparently as much a concern as what happened after Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Under Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, we take one step at a time—usually one step forward and a few steps back.

As Putin sets his sights on pulverizing and destroying ISIS, what happens to the Obama effort to “downgrade” the proficient terror group? It looks like there might be a conflict at some point between the Russian pulverization and the U.S. downgrading of the ISIS monsters. The Russian objective to kill all the ISIS terrorists in the field might undermine the Obama policy of downgrading the group.

And that is why we had to be introduced to new diplomatic terminology at the UN last week when Secretary Kerry met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Mr. Kerry said that the thrust of the meeting was about “deconfliction.” That is, to reduce the possibility of Russian and U.S. planes attacking one another, thereby exacerbating the conflict.

That’s a great word that is right on the mark. But in terms of foreign-policy success for this administration, that’s about it—new words.

Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at editor@5tjt.com.

The Levi Yitzchak Library, located at 564 Central Avenue in Cedarhurst, is excited to continue many of its popular programs as well as launch a new program, all specifically geared to excite and educate children in unique ways.

Homework Helpers. Homework has never been so exciting for our children! Children ages 5–10 are paired up with teens to do homework and have fun! Tuesday and Wednesday 5:30–6:30 p.m.

Story Time. Children ages 3-6 are welcome to join for an interactive story time! Storytime concludes with a themed activity and project. No registration necessary! Thursdays 3:30 and 5:00 p.m.

‘Mac’ Book Club. Jewish books coming to life with lively discussions, exciting activities and fun projects. Join one of our two clubs for third- and fourth-graders or fifth- and sixth-graders.

FRAHP. Calling teen girls grades 7+! Research genealogy and create a Family Report and History Project through a fun online scrapbook book.

For more information and to register, e-mail info@lylibrary.org or call 516-374-BOOK.

By Binyomin Wolf

This motzaeiShabbos,ParashasNoach, October 17, Congregation Aish Kodesh of Woodmere will commemorate the 72nd yahrzeit of Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapiro, the Rebbe of Piaseczna, Poland, with a special hilulah, yahrzeit event, featuring the music of Yosef Karduner and inspirational words by its mara d’asra, Rav Moshe Weinberger. The hilulah will take place at the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst beginning at 8:30 p.m.

At its founding in 1992, Rav Weinberger named the shul after the Piaseczner Rebbe’s profound sefer, Aish Kodesh, which is a compilation of the Rebbe’s discourses in the Warsaw Ghetto between 1939 and the liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; the Rebbe was interned in the Trawniki labor camp and then murdered by the Nazis. (See related story on page 79.) Rav Shapiro was one of the most prominent Polish chassidicrebbes before World War II. He also founded an innovative chassidic yeshiva, Daas Moshe, to help combat the social upheaval and rampant assimilation prevalent after the First World War.

This year is the 16th annual hilulah and will be especially meaningful; in addition to the beautiful music of Yosef Karduner with Gadi Pugath on violin and the inspiring words of Rav Weinberger, the shul will introduce a newly published sefer, Warmed by the Fire of the Aish Kodesh, a compilation of Rav Weinberger’s discourses from previous years’ hilulahs. The sefer, distributed by Feldheim Publishers, was adapted by Binyamin Wolf and is also available at Jewish bookstores and on Feldheim’s website.

The hilulah often attracts as many as 1,000 people of all backgrounds, from far and wide. What makes the teachings of the Aish Kodesh so compelling and why do they resonate with this generation more than those of many other great tzaddikim? Rav Weinberger explains, “The Rebbe was far ahead of his time. When one opens up Chovas HaTalmidim [which discusses education], the methodology and the psychology were very, very modern . . . It speaks to modern man and it speaks very much to our generation . . . The Rebbe had his finger on the pulse of the generation . . . He ‘gets’ it.”

Seismic Shifts

While Congregation Aish Kodesh continues to host events like the hilulah for the Piaseczner Rebbe and its popular Lag BaOmer hilulah, the shul has taken a number of important steps recently to reinvigorate and augment its overall learning and programming schedule. Most importantly, the shul appointed Rav Yoni Levin as its first assistant rabbi. Rav Levin is an alumnus of the Kollel Elyon at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University and is currently a rebbe at Yeshivas Lev Shlomo in Woodmere, an affiliate of HALB.

Rav Levin is now leading two new morning learning programs, Mondays through Thursdays, 6:00–7:00 a.m. One group is learning Gemarab’iyun and the other focuses on halachahb’iyun. Participants in the halachah program will be tested and ultimately earn semichah, rabbinical ordination, after approximately three years. Participation in either of these chaburos is not limited to Aish Kodesh members, so readers are encouraged to check the Aish Kodesh website (www.aishkodesh.org) for more information.

Friday mornings at Aish Kodesh are now almost standing-room-only with two new morning classes. At 6:00 a.m., Rav Weinberger teaches a new weekly shiur titled “Sugyos in Chassidus: What is the chiddush of the Baal Shem Tov?” This series is a great introduction for anyone interested in obtaining a basic, systematic grasp of chassidus. Participants will come away with a greater understanding of why chassidus, as a spiritual and intellectual movement, seems to take the religious world by storm more and more every year.

At 8:00 a.m. Friday mornings, Rav Weinberger teaches a shiur on the sefer “Eretz Cheifetz: Desired Land,” a systematized compilation of the writings of Rav Kook, zt’l, on the land of Israel and those who built it prior to and after the founding of the modern state. EretzCheifetz was compiled by Rav Yeshayahu Shapiro, scion of the Polish chassidic world and brother of Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the Aish Kodesh. This class is open to both men and women and is a must-hear shiur for anyone who wants to understand what the land of Israel means to the Jewish people and the part it plays in the unfolding of the ultimate redemption.

There are multiple other new shiurim every night of the week by speakers including Rav Yoni Levin, Rabbi Yussie Zakutinsky, Rabbi Shalom Yona Weis, and Rabbi Yosef Richtman. The full schedule of shiurim is laid out on the shul’s website, aishkodesh.org. Newcomers, visitors, and other explorers are welcome.

Certain shiurim, particularly on Friday mornings, are also available via live teleconference for those who cannot make it in person (605-475-6333; passcode: 183654#). The shul’s website indicates which shiurim are available by phone. Shiurim may also be downloaded/streamed online at yutorah.org. The shul also hopes, in the near future, to make a live video stream of many of the shiurim available on its website. v

Binyomin Wolf is the adapter of a recently released book by Rav Moshe Weinberger, distributed by Feldheim Publishers, titled Warmed by the Fire of the Aish Kodesh: Torah from the Hilulas of Reb Kalonymus Kalman Shapira of Piaseczna. He studied at RIETS and Sh’or Yoshuv, served as a member of the Community Kollel of Des Moines, and is now an attorney in New York.

Jonas Armstrong as Elek (left) and Mark Wells as Ferenc (right)

By Rochelle Maruch Miller

Walking with the Enemy is first-time director Mark Schmidt’s fictionalized account of the heroic travails of Pinchas Rosenbaum, who boldly donned the garb of the enemy in order to save the lives of thousands of Hungarian Jews. It is an unforgettable film of love, courage, and sacrifice.

During the final months of World War II, a young man sets out to find his displaced family by using a stolen Nazi uniform in order to pose as an officer. In a journey filled with suspense and danger, he undertakes extraordinary measures to reunite his family and bring others to safety (with the help of Swiss officials and other Christians) by disrupting the activities of the German officers.

Elek Cohen (Jonas Armstrong), who is Pinchas Rosenbaum’s fictional stand-in, disguises himself as a Nazi officer to save as many lives as possible in war-torn Hungary.

Despite the acts of anti-Semitism perpetrated upon Elek and his friends early on in the film, the treatment of the Jews of Hungary had been relatively mild up until then. Under the leadership of Regent Horthy (Academy Award Winner Ben Kingsley depicts the controversial leader), the country was an ally of the Reich, maintaining tenuous independence and avoiding the worst of the Holocaust. But as the war turns against the Nazis and Horthy attempts to extricate himself from Hitler and seek a separate peace with the Allies, conditions worsen. Bending to German demands, Horthy sends Jewish men off to labor camps, including Elek and his friends. They escape the brutal camps only to return home to find that their families have been deported. With nothing to lose, Cohen joins up with a group that provides Jews with Swiss passports.

While Horthy struggles to strike the right deal to protect his people, Elek risks his life to bring as many people to safety as possible, while desperately searching for his family.

Elek, the son of a rabbi, shows unusual pluck, alertness, and foresight early on; he is also extremely fortunate, narrowly managing to escape death at a labor camp, but not before becoming singularly acquainted with the ruthlessness of the enemy. Returning to a Budapest now occupied by S.S. soldiers and members of a newly empowered anti-Semitic Hungarian extremist group called the Arrow-Cross Party, Elek is shaken; but when his friend Hannah (Hannah Tointon) is brutally attacked in front of her family by two S.S. officers, he springs into action.

It’s a brutal scene, and when it’s over, the two soldiers are dead, and Elek has possession of a uniform that, along with his perfect command of German and considerable temerity, will allow him to pass for a Nazi.

In real life, Pinchas Rosenbaum acquired an Arrow-Cross uniform, not an S.S. one, and under considerably less dramatic circumstances. Still, it is incredibly stirring to see Elek putting on his disguise, striding into tense situations, ordering officers to hold their fire, and leading numerous about-to-be-executed Jews to safety while barking at the puzzled Arrow-Cross officers who dare to question his actions.

Key to the success of Elek’s operation are Hannah and the Glass House, a shelter where numerous Jews take refuge on the false pretext of having Swiss citizenship.

Filmed primarily in Rumania, Walking with the Enemy is beautifully photographed (A-list veteran Dean Cundey) and is a compelling addition to the Shoah canon.

I discussed the film’s inception with Marty Katz of Libert Films and Chris Williams, who is a producer of Walking with the Enemy as well as one of its leading actors.

“It all began with Mark Schmidt, (the film’s producer/director),” Marty explained. “He had seen Unsung Heroes, a documentary about incredible heroes who had demonstrated extraordinary acts of courage during World War II. One of the stories was about Pinchas Rosenbaum, who had disguised himself as a Nazi officer during WWII and saved thousands of Jewish lives. Mark was inspired by this young man’s selflessness. He felt that he had to tell this story.”

“We all got involved from the get-go because the story was so compelling,” says Chris. “We were amazed to hear about the risks Pinchas took to save people’s lives. He was very bold; what he did was unbelievable. He would go into the barracks and bark orders at the Nazis—and they’d follow his orders!” He adds, “We did have to create quite a bit of story, adding details and events.”

Unfortunately, Pinchas Rosenbaum is no longer alive, and although his family members were not involved in creating the film, Chris told me that one of Pinchas’s sons as well as a grandchild had both seen the film and reached out to them with positive feedback.

I asked Chris and Marty to describe the challenges they encountered while bringing the film to fruition.

“Any time you do a period piece, it’s always tricky,” Chris explained. “How do you make it authentic? We put together a top-notch, award-winning team for this film. This is a story that must be told. Its message is timeless and universal. A lot of people don’t know what happened in Hungary—600,000 people were deported in six weeks! It’s amazing that we haven’t heard more about it.”

Chris adds, “The Swiss Embassy was very involved in giving out passes, and there was a great deal of support from the Swiss government. There is a good German in the film, and the Catholic Church helped as well. There are always people who risk their lives to help others.”

Says Marty, “Unfortunately, there has been a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe. Ninety percent of audiences who see this film love it. They tell us they want to continue the conversation, as there are fewer and fewer survivors left to tell their story. It’s a beautiful story.”

“This is a very inspirational story with a universal message,” Chris explains. “Most of us have the ability to help others. This is the core of the movie—the individual taking risks. No matter how bad things look, there is always hope. One person can make a difference.”

Liberty Films was founded on a desire to bring inspirational, true life stories to the big screen. Liberty’s mission is to celebrate outstanding individuals for their accomplishments past and present.

Walking with The Enemy is playing at the Malverne Cinema (350 Hempstead Ave in Malverne, 516-599-6966) and North Shore Towers Cinema (27240 Grand Central Pkwy in Floral Park, 718-229-7702) during October 16–29.