This year, traditional Christmas Day volunteering is being spread out across December. The shul\’s ATID young adult leadership group\’s annual Dec. 25 Mitzvah Day is being merged with templewide volunteering on Dec. 18, the formal start of Sinai\’s yearlong centennial anniversary.
Less than a 100 years ago, the average age of menarche for American girls was almost 16. Today, 12 is considered late. Theories for such early onset range from the amount of growth hormones injected into the food we eat to the amount of electrical light we absorb. Regardless, it creates a dangerous duality in girls which I often see when working with a bat mitzvah.
Authors Roger Bennett, Jules Shell and Nick Kroll discovered in one long B.S. session that nothing quite engaged their friends, Jew and non-Jew alike, as a trip back down memory lane to the day of their or their friends\’ bar or bat mitzvah.
One week, I would ambitiously attempt to devour the entire \”Box Car Children\” series; another I would host a Judy Blume marathon and vigilantly try to sneak the purportedly trashy \”Deenie\” home in between my \”Sheila the Great\” and \”Blubber.\”
Inch by Inch, Row by Row! This week\’s Torah portion, Tazria, means: \”If a woman gives birth,\” but it can also mean \”plant.\” And so, being the beginning of spring, that is exactly what it is time to do!
I woke up Christmas Day morning with no tree, toys or eggnog, and I understood how Jewish children could feel left out on Christmas mornings as non-Jewish neighbor kids ride new bikes and try out other presents. Like Jewish kids, I had no gifts that morning.
When Lori Marx-Rubiner underwent a bilateral mastectomy two years ago, she lost the use of her arms for a few weeks. She couldn\’t brush her teeth, let alone tackle cooking dinner or driving her son to school.
In the debate over a possible Israeli withdrawal from Gaza — 80 percent of which was already surrendered by Israel in 1994 according to the Gaza-Jericho First policy — little has been said about Gaza\’s Jewish roots.
\”Danny Siegel\’s Bar and Bat Mitzvah Book: A Practical Guide for Changing the World Through Your Simcha,\” by Danny Siegel (The Town House Press, $12). This is a book that we have long needed.
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