Abraham Israel

When I was in Israel on business, I was asked to visit the Hazon Yeshaya soup kitchens, an organization which helps feed poor people in Israel. As you may know, Israel’s poor population has grown to unimaginable proportions. There are over 1.6 million people (about 25% of the population) and 900,000 children under poverty level in Israel.

While visiting one of the Hazon Yeshaya facilities, I saw up close the type of work they do. People in their 70s and 80s were waiting from six in the morning for what, for some, would be their only meal of the day. As the people started lining up two elderly ladies in their 70s got on line. All of a sudden a fight broke out between them, with actual punches being thrown for a spot in the line. The ‘loser’ cried silently as she waited for her food. It was truly a heart wrenching scene. To be in Israel, which is considered to be an economic power, and witness such poverty was beyond my understanding and hurt deeply.

Dr. Schussheim with an EFRAT baby

In 2007, 448 Israelis were killed in road accidents, and 13 were killed by Palestinian terrorism. In the same year, roughly 50,000 future citizens were lost to the Jewish people and the State of Israel because they were aborted before birth.

Israel justifiably spends hundreds of millions of shekels annually to lower the carnage on the highways, and billions of shekels to combat Palestinian terrorism. Yet not one shekel from state coffers assists mothers who want to give birth but whose difficult financial circumstances discourage them from doing so. Tragically, dentists invest more effort to avoid extracting a decaying tooth than Israeli society invests to save the life of a Jewish child.

Each week of the year, another of the Torah’s 54 parshat is studied, publicly read in the synagogue, and its lessons applied to daily living. Thus the Jew lives with the Torah: the Five Books of Moses are his calendar, their chapters and verses marking, defining, molding and inspiring the weeks and days of his year.

Simchat Torah is the day on which we conclude the annual Torah-reading cycle. On this day, we read the Torah section of Vezot Haberachah and immediately begin a new Torah-reading cycle with the reading of the first chapter of Genesis.

Imagine you throw a huge party and invite everyone you know. But this is no regular party, it’s one solid week of food, music and fun. Eventually things wind down and people begin to leave. As the host, you quietly go over to a few of your best friends and whisper: “Stick around after everyone else leaves—that’s when I’m breaking out the good stuff.”

Each year G-d has a weeklong celebration called Sukkot. In ancient times in Jerusalem, the service in the Holy Temple during the week of Sukkot featured a total of 70 bull offerings. This, the Talmud explains, corresponds to each of the 70 nations of the world. The Temple was not just for Jews. When King Solomon built the Temple, he specifically asked G-d to heed the prayer of non-Jews who came to the Temple and the prophet Isaiah refers to the Temple as a “House for all nations.”

Yom Kippur is the time to achieve forgiveness for our wrongdoings and shortcomings. Since we don’t want G-d to judge us negatively, we try to distance ourselves from them as much as possible. We do this because we don’t want G-d to judge us harshly.

Sukkot, by contrast, comes after the judgment is sealed. We’ve already been forgiven. Sukkot, therefore, is the first opportunity to do teshuva (repentence) purely out of love. Teshuva out of love means we love G-d so much we can’t believe we committed those sins in the past, and consequently feel an incredible surge to come closer to Him more than ever before—a surge not possible if we had never committed the acts that created the distance to begin with.

Welcome to the first IMAGE Kid’s Page. The goal is to provide parents with an interactive activity that they can share with their children.

We have two selections for you: one is about Columbus Day, October 12 and the other is about Sukkot, October 14 and 15.

Is your son or daughter one of the 18 million students that headed off to college this fall? If so, you’re probably still recovering from the shock of seeing the tuition bill.

During the 2007-2008 academic year, The College Board reports that the estimated average annual cost of attendance was $35,374 at a four-year private college, $17,336 at a four-year public college and $13,126 at a two-year college. The figures are even higher for the 2008-2009 school year.

So, how do parents come up with tuition? Here’s some important advice that will help in case your child is next:

Food is everywhere. Eating is as easy as opening up the fridge or snack drawer and empty calories are consumed without much thought. Our kids, especially, are not taking care of their bodies—indulging on food that tastes good rather than food that’s good for them. They need to be taught how and what to eat in order to form good eating habits. It’s the sort of curriculum that simply hasn’t been stressed enough in our school systems. Until now.

Magen David Yeshivah has realized the significance of teaching nutrition education from a young age and has launched its first series of Nutrition Education classes. The hope is that, with the proper guidance, their students will learn how to eat healthy for life.

Quick: What’s the capital of Albania? How do you figure out the square root of 342? Who was the sixteenth President of the United States?

How do you say the verb “sing” in the plural past tense in Hebrew? Why do we light eight candles on Hanukah when the miracle really lasted for only seven days?

If questions like these bring back fond memories of your school days, then you were probably one of those students who could easily remember facts, figures and information. Chances are you did fairly well in school. But if you get a queasy feeling in your stomach whenever you think about these things, then it’s possible that you were one of the students who was struggling with memory issues. Because all of the above questions have one thing in common: they force you to remember.

In anticipation of the upcoming school year, I had the pleasure of sitting down with two new leaders of the Barkai Yeshivah PTA, co-presidents Shirley Catton and Rachel Ashkenazi, to discuss their new posts, their support for the Yeshivah and their plans and goals for the upcoming year.

Shirley, the daughter of Barbara and Joseph Beyda A”H and the wife of Sammy Catton, comes from unparalleled roots of hesed and philanthropy and is the mother of two Barkai students.

Ahi Ezer Synagogue

We are Ahi Ezer Congregation—a group of immigrants from Damascus Syria and Beirut, Lebanon. The congregation started on the East Side of Manhattan, in the early part of the 1900s (1910 to 1925) amidst the hustle and bustle. With pushcarts and shantahs (suitcases), we peddled our wares to earn a living.

When the Sea Beach BMT Subway opened in 1920, our ancestors began commuting to the suburbs and established Magen David Synagogue on 67th street and 20th Avenue.

The migration to Brooklyn started at that time. Most of the boys went to a kittab, a one-room Hebrew school house, after public school let out at 3 pm.