HOME & FAMILY

Once, I took a cab ride with a driver who appeared to be far from Torah and mitzvos. Along the way, he started talking about his brother who had moved to America. "He moved to California and became religious," he murmured. After a pause, he added softly, "If I lived in California, I'd also be religious."

Out of Balance
by Bayla Gimmel

Who sets the pace in our society? Why not me and you? Let us be the Cohens and not the Jones.

Holier Than Thou
A tongue-in-cheek by A. Anonymous

Once upon a time, maybe even today, there was a place called Musser. Musser was a picturesque town surrounded by lakes and mountains and boasted a modern city center where most of its inhabitants worked and small neighborhoods around it where most of its inhabitants inhabited. The people of the town were civil to one another, often friendly, but most of them kept to themselves except, of course, when they were telling others what they were doing wrong and how to change for the better.

Aggression
by A. Ross, M.Ed.

About trampolines, holding hands, bear hugs and nailcutting...

Big or Small?
by H. Tzuf

Without meaning to, I found myself listening to a conversation between two women who were sitting on a bench in the park while their children went back and forth from the slide to the swing.

Chapter Fourteen
CAMP
by Sudy Rosengarten

A camp of a different sort. Excerpts from the recently reviewed Onion for the Doctor, by Sudy Rosengarten

A Three Weeks Selection from a book you must read!

BOOK REVIEW
Race to the Top
a novel by Sara Kisner
reviewed by Sheindel Weinbach

It's mid-Tammuz. You're recuperating (Boruch Hashem, of course) from marrying off a son/daughter or from a year's teaching, or from professional babycaring. Whatever. It's vacation and...

Each child and his internal developmental clock...

Your Medical Questions Answered!
by Joseph B. Leibman, MD

Summer is upon us, and I want to add a piece of information that we haven't spoken about in the past.

POET'S CORNER

We Sit on the Floor...

by Sara Gutfreund

We sit on the floor
The pieces scattered before us
Slowly, we turn over the pieces
One by one

In silence, we build the frame
And then begin to fill in the spaces
A picture emerges, an image of wholeness
A small moment of peace
Until I hear the soft voice beside me
"Ima, we are missing a piece."

And then I notice it
The empty space, the yawning hole
The senselessness, the loss
And the dull ache of imperfection

We look down at the puzzle
And suddenly I know
I know that the gap is part of the whole
It is the part that gives us room to dream
And a space to reach
Until all that is broken
Becomes whole again.

Under Construction

by Sara Miriam Gross

My room doesn't look appealing
Baby brother colored on the wall
And the pictures we hung up have started to tilt and fall
Did I mention my desk with books piled almost to the ceiling?

A new paint job, new pictures and new bookshelves --
That's what I'd like to try.
Abba said these are nice ideas, for after Tisha B'Av
I was really disappointed, I felt I wanted to cry
Then I remembered that You, Hashem, and Your Shechina
Don't have any home at all
For ever since the destruction of the Beis Hamikdosh
We've been left with only one Western Wall.

But, unlike my room and its repairs
That need workers and Abba's instructions
Your house, Hashem, is always under construction.

Every kind word, every blessing, each good deed in hand,
Builds the future House of Yours
Until we'll all be back in our beloved Land,
And that House will also be Ours.