Responding To Florida Tragedy
I would like to suggest a response to the horrific school shooting in Parkland, Florida. As frum Yidden, our responses to tragedy are phenomenal. I think that in this case as well there should be a sincere and loving response from our community.
Very simply, we can write letters to the families of these young victims. The letters can be brief, stating that we are all one family, one nation, one soul, and that we cry with them and we pray for them. They are our brothers and sisters.
The school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, is 40 percent Jewish and one Jewish teacher and four Jewish student were murdered. But of course let us not forget all the victims in our tefillos and our letters.
If teachers or rebbeim would have their students write letters in class, it would be a tremendous chesed. Hashem wants a response from His children. And nothing pleases Hashem more than when His children love and support one another. Achdus, unity, will protect Bnei Yisrael from further tragedies/karbanot.
These are the names and ages of the Jews who died in the shootings:
Scott Beigel (teacher), 35
Alex Schachter 14
Alyssa Alhedeff 14
Meadow Pollack 18
Jamie Guttenberg 14
The address for the local Chabad rabbi:
Rabbi Yosef Biston
Chabad Of Parkland
7170 Loxahatchee Road
Parkland, FL 33067-3901
May Hashem comfort the families among all the mourners of Tzion and Yerushalayim.
Laya Litton
(Via E-Mail)
Not Too Early For The Pesach Falafel Fund
The Falafel Fund sends entire poor religious families to our neighborhood falafel store in Yerushalayim so that harried mothers get a break from cooking one meal for 10-15 kids the week before Pesach.
Remember how it started? I saw an 8 year old with long peyos clutching three loaves of unwrapped bread against his sweater the day before bedikas chometz. It made me realize that mothers of large, poor families are cooking meals until erev Pesach because they can’t afford to go to restaurants or get takeout food.
So, for $12 per person, we send entire families for a falafel, a portion of French fries, and a canned drink. One meal for an average family (12 children and 2 parents) costs $168 – an amount way beyond even the dreams of these families. (The bigger children and the parents eat the extra half falafel not needed by the little children.)
All the families are carefully chosen. Every penny of all money goes directly to the falafel store owner, with a voucher to the chosen families. We thus ensure that no money gets redirected for anything else by the financially-strained parents.
The children are thrilled beyond belief since they rarely get to eat store-bought falafel, and they never go out to eat in a “restaurant” (they don’t realize it’s only a falafel store, since most have never been inside a restaurant). The falafel store owner helps us with this mitzvah as well.
Last year we were able to send quite a few families to the local falafel store. But the project is so appreciated that people are already asking to get on the falafel list.
Please join this unique mitzvah by sending checks made out to Tzvia Klein –Arzei Habira 49, apt. # 32, Jerusalem, Israel. And include your e-mail address if you have one so I can personally thank you.
Help make life happier for these families and easier for the wives and mothers. Checks arriving after Pesach will go toward the ingredients to make a Shavuos cheesecake for other families.
Please do not make checks out to Falafel Fund as it costs more to cash such checks. And money orders can’t be cashed.
Thank you.
Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein
Via E-Mail
Editor’s Note: Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein is a Jewish Press columnist and the author of several books, most recently “Youre Joking! The Kosher Joke Book” (Menucha Publishers).
Schumer’s Phony Indignation
Your Feb. 16 editorial “Again, Senator Schumer Disappoints” was right on target in stating that Sen. Chuck Schumer is “the last person to talk accusingly about a failure to confront hate” by the Jewish community for not condemning President Trump’s criticism of “both sides” in the August Charlottesville, Virginia, demonstration.
Schumer seems to think the detestable neo-Nazis being on one side automatically makes the other side saints. The left spews hatred on a regular basis with or without the presence of neo-Nazis.
At campus riots the left is not up against neo-Nazis. Their hatred is directed at the right to free speech by conservative speakers. It’s not the lives or livelihoods of neo-Nazis the left destroys for supporting the traditional definition of marriage. The left destroys the lives of law-abiding citizens who disagree with their views.
Trump actually confronted the full spectrum of hatred on both sides. All Schumer did was pick sides, completely ignoring the viciousness of the left. It’s typical of the left to put on a display of phony “righteous indignation” and accuse others of their own faults; it helps to detract from their own lack of moral or ethical values.
Trump was absolutely right to condemning both sides. Schumer’s criticism of the Orthodox Jewish community for not having the same shortsightedness as he does is laughable.
Josh Greenberger
Brooklyn, NY