By Yosef Yitzchak Gershon as related to Barbara Bensoussan

Yosef Yitzchak Gershon went from perfecting his tennis serve to serving time, but along the way he learned that only Torah holds the key to real healing and peace, and that it’s never too late to shake off the past

IFyou saw me today, in traditional chassidic garb on Shabbos, or on the tennis courts teaching or playing in tournaments during the week, you’d never guess that I was once on the most-wanted list of Broward County criminals in Florida and spent months in prison.

The pasuk in Hallel, “He raises the poor from the dust, and the needy from the garbage heap,” resonates with me deeply. Hashem pulled me from the muck of substance abuse and criminal behavior and raised me to where I am now, living life as a frum Yid, happily married and blessed with children.

For a long time, I wanted desperately to simply run as far as possible from the sordid parts of my past. Yet I learned the hard way that our shadows follow us no matter where we go, and the only way to go forward is to face our mistakes head-on. I’ve learned to draw strength from knowing that Hashem’s love is boundless, even for those who have strayed very far. But let’s start at the beginning.

Self-Destruction

My parents’ marriage was destined for challenges from the start:  She was American, he was Israeli, and their perspectives on many things diverged. Still, despite their different backgrounds and lack of Torah education in their early years, they both did their best to raise us.

My father threw himself into everything he did with passion. He had a deep love for tennis, and when he saw that we kids showed promise, he was determined to cultivate it. He decided we would move to Florida, with its year-round good weather and many tennis academies, to give us our best shot at success. When my sister and I started winning tournaments, he took us out of school and arranged for us to be homeschooled to leave us more time for practice.

This promising future took a dive when my parents’ marriage fell apart. I was about 15, and I took it hard. I started rebelling and drowning my pain in reckless activities like driving my dad’s V8 Cadillac down the highway at 115 miles per hour. I was getting speeding tickets every week and blew two engines, but I relished the negative attention.

As my parents navigated their personal challenges, I went to spend the summer with my paternal grandparents in Tel Aviv. Saba and Savta have always been a strong anchor in my life, traditional Jews and straight, honest, good people. But Tel Aviv is a big city, and that summer I discovered alcohol. I met people who brought me to clubs and offered me hard liquor. Wow, I thought. This stuff takes away all the pain.

The post Game Point  first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

In the almost exclusively male domains of chemistry and kashrus, Dr. Judith Leff a”h laid the foundation to certify high-tech kosher ingredients

Kosher grocery shopping 2024. We pull a package of candy off the shelf, glance at it to check it has a kashrus symbol, and casually toss it into our cart.

What we don’t think much about is that somebody had to make sure the unpronounceable additives, preservatives, and colorants in the ingredients list are kosher. And as over the years, food became more high tech, kashrus supervision needed to turn high tech as well. Most of us are unaware that the person who pioneered the kosher certification of all those mysterious chemicals was an unassuming and brilliant woman with a short sheitel, glasses, and a warm smile, named Dr. Judith Leff (née Weisz) a”h.

A mother of three and grandmother of many, Dr. Judith Leff was nifteres this past November. And while she wasn’t a household name — that’s how she preferred things to be — she’s one of the unsung heroes of the male-dominated kashrus certification industry.

Wandering Jew

Judith Leff’s life literally took her around the world.

Born in Vienna in 1935 into a family with Hungarian roots and yichus from the Maharam Ash, she was the daughter of an accomplished artist and a seamstress. When the Germans took over Austria during the Anschluss of 1938, Judith’s family fled to Paris, believing they would be safe there.

But a few years later, the Germans invaded France. The French police, in cooperation with the Nazis, began rounding up Jews. Judith’s father was arrested and sent to the French detention camp at Pithiviers in 1940. The last letter the family received from him said he was being transferred to Auschwitz, where he died of tuberculosis. Judith inherited the letter after her mother’s passing and kept it framed in her living room.

In the meantime, the rest of the family — Mrs. Weisz and her five children — connected with a network of Quakers who had made it their mission to rescue Jewish children. The family was separated and placed with different peasant families in the free zone of France, often moving from one place to another. After the war they managed to reunite and went back to live in Paris, where Mrs. Weisz went to court and reclaimed their apartment.

“At one point, when my mother was about twelve, she was sent to an aunt in England for a couple of years,” Judith’s daughter Chana Laks relates. “There, she attended the Hasmonean school and learned English.”

Judith, who had been interested in science from a young age, returned to Paris in 1948 for high school and then enrolled in the Sorbonne, studying toward a doctorate in plant physiology. Attending a secular university could not sway her rock-solid Jewish convictions. “There was an exam for the doctorate that was only held on Shabbos, and in France, there was no flexibility allowed,” Mrs. Laks says. “The only alternative was to repeat the whole year and try again. She refused to show up for the exam.”

So Judith left France to study at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but later returned to the Sorbonne. There her perseverance ultimately paid off, and she was awarded her doctorate in plant physiology despite the challenges of remaining shomer Shabbos in an inhospitable system.

The post OUr Woman in the Lab first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

Terror, faith, and hope seem to be opposite narratives, but they converge in a powerful display of resilience and fortitude, produced by artists from around the world who give their own expression to the horrors of October 7 without losing sight of the bigger picture

The ambiance at the Hadas Gallery, located in the Rohr Chabad of Clinton Hill and Pratt Institute, is that of any upscale Manhattan exclusive art showing on this chilly November night. There’s a table on the side offering bottled water and wine, and visitors are milling around the exhibits, with many of the artists in attendance to meet the public. Strategically located across the street from the Pratt Institute of Art, this Brooklyn Chabad House opens its doors to art showings by students and artists, while doubling as a shul and locale for classes and events.

“Since it’s in an art-centered area, this venue opened up as Hadas Gallery in 2003,” says Rabbi Yossi Eliav, who has been the shaliach there for the past five years. “The intention was to connect people with art and Yiddishkeit.”

Tonight, we’re here to view the works of over 30 Jewish artists under the umbrella of an exhibit entitled October 7: Terror, Faith, Hope.

Never Lose Hope

Abigail H. Meyer, the curator of this exhibit, is on hand to greet us. An art historian, curator, and museum educator who has worked for both Kestenbaum and Company, a boutique Judaica auction house, and the Judaica Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Abigail currently serves as a private consultant and educator for museums, universities, libraries, research institutions, and private collectors. She guides visitors through the exhibit, explaining the more abstract works whose meaning may not be immediately obvious to the uninitiated.

Walking into the gallery, the first painting that meets the eye is an all-black, textured, charred-looking canvas by artist Babette Marciano entitled “Burnt Nova.” Abigail explains it to a cluster of spectators: “If you look closely, you see the outline of the para-terrorists invading the Nova festival. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” Indeed, now I can make out the outlines of the paragliders.

Photos by Sharon Abeles highlight the destruction of that day. “Car Cemetery” depicts the car graveyard at Moshav Tekumah, where over 1,650 mangled vehicles recovered from Highway 232 are being kept — cars that clogged the highway as people tried to escape while being shot at, bombed, and burned by terrorists. “Bomb Shelter” depicts a burned bus stop and its adjoining public bomb shelter, or migunit, outside Kibbut Kfar Aza. Since October 7, its walls have been plastered with images of the hostages and words of prayer, and the floor is almost completely covered with yahrtzeit candles lit in memory of the victims.

The post When Words Fail   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

I was walking to shul recently when I passed a woman standing outside an apartment building, speaking on her phone with her back to me. She looked tall and vigorous, although the braid hanging down her back was snow white. When she turned around, I was surprised to see she had the wrinkled face of an old woman. She was at least in her late seventies. But what truly struck me was the way she was attired: Like a teen on her way to the beach.

No, I thought. Just: No. A woman that age has no business dressing like that.

The image stuck with me because these days, as a grandma many times over, I often find myself second-guessing what to wear. I’m like an adolescent trying to figure out (or arguing with her mother about) whether she’s old enough to wear high heels and makeup. Except now, at the other end of the cycle, I’m trying to figure out what not to wear. Like maybe not stilettos or puffy skirts. On the other hand, I still crave a little pizzazz! I don’t want to be totally out of the style loop, even if I’ve forsaken high heels at simchahs.

The post Adolescence in Reverse first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

When psychology professor and ADHD specialist Rabbi Dr. Nachi Felt recently returned to the very school in Queens that had shown him the door when he was just six years old, it was to teach rebbeim and morahs — some of whom had been around in his day — “how to teach children like me.”

Nachi Felt had a long history of making trouble at school, but the clincher came when he walked into class brandishing a fake gun and threatened, “Hand over the licorice or I’ll shoot!”

When Nachi was dismissed from that school, it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to leave, or even the second. As a constant troublemaker and disrupter, he’d already been asked to leave the preschool and kindergarten he’d attended.

Nachi wasn’t an unmotivated child, nor did he have cognitive impairments — quite the contrary. He was bright and had a lively, curious mind, but he couldn’t stay focused on anything that didn’t appear absolutely compelling to his brain. His attention would wander; he’d lose chunks of information. That would make him anxious, and then he’d simply avoid trying at all. His inability to succeed or to sit nicely for long periods, paying attention like the other kids, created deep wells of frustration and anger that would erupt in acting out and misbehaving.

“I felt misunderstood for years,” he reflects today. “All the other kids would be getting rewards for good behavior, and I’d be the only one who got nothing. I was smart but I just couldn’t succeed.”

It took a combination of medication, therapy, supportive rebbeim — including his own father — and a generous dose of inner discipline and drive for Nachi to jump the hurdles that led him to become a husband, father, rabbi, professor and researcher at Columbia University, and PhD psychologist in private practice specializing in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and executive functioning techniques. By sharing his journey, he says, he hopes to help others who are struggling with similar challenges.

The post Undivided Attention   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Conventional medical practitioners today are noticing a shift in the way frum patients approach healthcare: There’s an increasing distrust in standard medicine and an almost blind faith in alternative treatments, even ones that are dubious at best and harmful at worst. An inside look at a growing phenomenon

Shoshana was sitting in the waiting room of her ob-gyn. To pass the time, she struck up a conversation with the 20-something woman sitting next to her.

“Is this your first time seeing this doctor?” she asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. “For my previous birth, I used someone else. He was amazing.”

“Really? What made it such a good experience?”

“Well, he was just so natural,” she said. “Not medical at all. And he let me do a home birth, which is what I always dreamed of.”

Shoshana’s approach to medical care is pretty conventional, so she was intrigued by the woman’s story. “If you loved your old doctor so much, why are you switching to a new one for this pregnancy?”

“I would’ve loved to stay with the other doctor.” The woman sighed. “But he’s in jail now. A baby he delivered died. So… here I am.”

Stories of people trusting in quasi-medical “practitioners” are, unfortunately, not an anomaly in our frum circles. There’s a growing receptivity to alternative medical approaches — much of which has little to no scientific backing — and conventional doctors are noticing the shift.

Reena Grant, a nurse-midwife who practices in a hospital in Jerusalem and recently opened a prenatal clinic, relates a time when she was caring for an expectant woman in the hospital whose baby had presented as breech earlier in the pregnancy.

The woman informed Reena that she hadn’t returned to the hospital for the recommended follow-up, but had instead felt safer going to someone in the community who “turns babies.” This wasn’t the first time Reena had heard that — but it always left her feeling uneasy. “Turning a baby,” or external cephalic version, comes with its own risks of cord entanglement, fetal distress, and placental abruption. The observation and monitoring following the procedure are no less crucial (if not more crucial!) than the procedure itself. Suffice it to say that a woman who provides this treatment at home cannot provide the same standard of precaution and monitoring as mandated in the hospital.

“This sort of thing goes on all the time,” Reena told Family First. “I have many patients who distrust the mainstream medical world. Instead, they will go to unlicensed practitioners or practitioners working outside their scope of practice. Regulations and protocols are in place for safe practice. Even the best driver who drives without a license and has never had an accident is breaking the law. When it comes to healthcare, this is even more crucial. All of those licenses and regulations protect patients from potential harm.”

Dr. Hylton Lightman, a pediatrician with a practice in Lawrence, New York, underscores this point. “There are many risks to turning a baby, and follow-up is essential,” he says. “Things can happen like exposing a baby to the mother’s blood cells in the case of Rh incompatibility. There must be ultrasound guidance. To attempt turning a baby otherwise is dangerous.”

If we, as a community, are willingly putting ourselves at risk with alternative medical approaches, it bears asking why. What makes us vulnerable to quasi-medical treatments that may be ineffective at best and risky or harmful at worst? What compels us to seek out pills or procedures that may just be lining the pockets of charlatans? How do we become gullible to claims unsubstantiated by medical evidence?

The primary reason is a painful one, and it’s something that should push the medical establishment to do some serious soul-searching.

The post The Guru Will See You Now     first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

No one was able to locate high-quality originals of those vintage Megama records that could be converted to an updated form. Would the music of my father, Moshe Yess a”h, be relegated to a pile of scratched oldies in someone’s basement?

As told by Tali Yess to Barbara Bensoussan

W

hen you think of family legacy, many people think of heirlooms, time-hallowed seforim, perhaps jewelry or property.

My father, Moshe Yess a”h, half of the 1980s-era Megama duo together with Shalom Levine a”h, passed away with a negligible bank balance and no heirlooms to pass on. Those things had never mattered to him anyway. What did matter — his music — created a legacy that continues to inspire Jewish fans and musicians to this day.

But it looked like that legacy was in danger of disappearing. His music, produced in an era of vinyl records and cassette tapes, had not found a place as music increasingly moved to streaming platforms. The masters for his LPs — including such classics as G-d is Alive and Well in Jerusalem and The Megama Record — had been lost in a fire many years ago, and the remaining albums had been played so often that most of them were scratched.

No one was able to locate high-quality originals that could be converted to an updated form. The quality was so poor on the few recordings we had that Spotify and similar platforms wouldn’t accept those versions for their listeners.

As the second son in the family, and the one with the most musical interest and production know-how (I myself am a recording artist and producer), it had fallen to me to become the custodian and manager of our father’s musical legacy. Was Moshe Yess’s music doomed to fade from history, left behind by the onward march of technology? Through a Providential convergence of circumstances, I can now tell you that the answer is a resounding no.

The post Rescued Legacy first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

He’s not a backpacker randomly sauntering into a Torah class in Jerusalem. This fellow has already committed to a life of mitzvah observance, but he doesn’t have the family support, educational background, or cultural frame of reference to become a real part of the new world he’s chosen.

That’s why Rabbi Yosef Simon opened Toras Dovid. Because someone had to step into the breach to help those who’d committed to Torah Judaism yet found themselves adrift

Classically trained singer and musician Alex Gershoni grew up in Manhattan feeling that some of his extended family members — the ones who were frum — possessed something special that he lacked. And so in his late twenties, he decided on a whim to go to a shul and check out Jewish observance. He was impressed by the people he met and interested in the way they lived their lives, and before long, he became a shomer Shabbos Shlomo Aryeh.

Upon his engagement two-and-a-half years ago, Shlomo Aryeh told his then-fiancée that he really wanted to invest in some full-time learning. But he couldn’t just enroll in a kollel — he had precious little Hebrew background and no learning skills. He knew about yeshivos for beginners in Eretz Yisrael, but Shlomo Aryeh’s future wife wasn’t keen on moving so far from her Brooklyn-based family.

Yet Shlomo Aryeh, for his part, realized that “You can only go so far trying to learn Gemara with an English translation.”

What recourse is there for second-stage baalei teshuvah like Shlomo Aryeh, people who have become frum and are deeply motivated but don’t have the skills to enroll in a mainstream yeshivah?

Rabbi Yosef Simon had the very same question, and in his own experience helping young men going through the teshuvah process, he decided to create an answer. Rabbi Simon is a talmid of Ohr Somayach Monsey’s Rav Yisroel Simcha Schorr, from whom he received semichah, and when he himself began teaching chassanim, he saw up close the variant struggles of baalei teshuvah trying to find their way in a new world without the usual family support, educational background, or cultural frame of reference. Someone, he realized, needed to step into the breach to help those who had committed to Torah Judaism yet found themselves adrift, someone who could encourage their progress and help them navigate milestones like shidduchim, marriage, children, and parnassah.

When Rabbi Simon conceived the idea to open a yeshivah-within-the-yeshivah to service men who were already committed to Torah observance but needed further guidance and development of learning skills, young men who have typically left behind their old friends and family and are in need of a supportive community to encourage their progress and help them navigate milestones like shidduchim, marriage, children, and parnassah, Rav Schorr was all in.

The post Second Act   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Sometimes, it can feel like you’re doing all the work and your spouse isn’t chipping in as much. But is that an accurate perception of your household split? And if too much is resting on your shoulders, what can you do about that?

Faigie comes home from her job after stopping at the grocery and picking up the baby from day care. She barely has a minute to throw in a load of laundry and start boiling water for pasta before her three other children come bursting through the door.

Her husband, Shimmy, started working last year. By the time he gets home from his job, it’s often seven or later. By then, she’s putting the baby to sleep, starting bedtime, and finishing homework with the older ones. Shimmy enters in the middle of this. Between tasks, she makes him a plate of pasta and salad and eventually sits down to join him.

It doesn’t last long. Shimmy jumps up after 15 minutes. “I’m going to Maariv, and I told Yanky I’d play basketball with him after that,” he says.

Faigie smiles wanly. “Have a good time,” she says. As he exits stage right, she looks at the toys scattered everywhere, the dishes piled next to the sink, and the washing machine ready for its second load, and she bursts into tears.

Things come to a head on Sunday. Faigie is trying to clean up the post-Shabbos mess, keep the kids busy instead of destroying the house, and hoping that Shimmy can watch them for a couple of hours so she can do the weekly food shopping in peace. But no such luck. Shimmy is sitting on the couch scrolling through his phone when she asks him to babysit. “What — just me with all the kids?” he says. “You know I don’t do diapers. Anyway, I have a shiur before Minchah!”

Faigie explodes. “You don’t do anything in this house, EVER!” she yells. “I work, too, in case you hadn’t noticed! And I also take care of everything else — the house, the kids, the laundry, the cooking, the shopping! This just isn’t fair!”

A Vicious Cycle

Does any of this sound familiar? When a husband allows his wife to become the sole caretaker of the home and children, the wife grouses that he can’t, or won’t, pull his own weight. He doesn’t pitch in, or he does the job so poorly that she feels it would be better if he stopped trying. “I thought I married a grown-up,” she grumbles. “I’m his wife and partner. I’m not his maid or mommy!”

Mishpacha columnist and therapist Sarah Chana Radcliffe runs a workshop entitled The Unbalanced Marriage to help women address these issues. “When one partner is left with too large a load, she will feel exhausted, uncared for, unloved, and resentful,” she explains. “Eventually, that leads to rage.”

The post The Right Balance     first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Itzik Roytman

We met balloon polar bears and a balloon Eskimo, and that was after passing through an “underwater” balloon tunnel facing a 70-foot-tall balloon octopus with moving parts. For Kobi and Yonatan, founders of the Balloon Story exhibit that has just ended in New York, the “popping party” of hundreds of thousands of balloons was a fitting end to family fun that goes way beyond those elongated twisted shapes of dogs and swords

Park Avenue, on the East Side of Manhattan, is sun-washed and noisy on an August afternoon. But as we enter the Park Avenue Armory building, a venue for exhibitions and events, we suddenly find ourselves in a darkened hallway that opens up into a room filled with 140 oversized, eye-popping, brightly colored sculptures made completely of… balloons! We felt like we’d left Kansas to find ourselves over the rainbow in Oz.

Balloon Story, this enchanting exhibition — which, sadly, wrapped up before we went to press — is the brainchild of Israeli entrepreneur Yonatan Eizik and balloon artist Kobi Kalimian. Originally launched in Tel Aviv a year ago, they decided to bring it to New York as a way of sharing the magic, as well as providing employment for several dozen Israelis during the wartime downturn. Balloon Story combines an incredible feat of balloon art with a generous effort to generate parnassah for Israeli families.

Not Just Dogs and Swords

We’re greeted at the Armory by Kobi Kalimian, the artistic director of the show, and Yonatan Eizik, the producer. They seem visibly more at ease when they discover their American press contingent is comprised of a reporter wearing a mitpachat and an Israeli photographer.

The exhibit is filled with families of all types, and we have to speak loudly to hear each other over the delighted screams of young children in this cavernous, 55,000-square-foot space. But Kobi and Yonatan’s enthusiasm for this 700,000-balloon wonderland project is contagious. Kobi is a good sport about allowing himself to be photographed sitting in an armchair with a bucket of balloons pouring onto his head.

As the master conjuror behind these enchanting illusions, Kobi serves as our guide through the exhibit, which is kept at a cool 69 degrees to prevent the balloons from deflating. A resident of Kedumim, in the Shomron, this father of five was selling cell phones when he first became captivated by balloons at an exhibit in Jerusalem.

“When you mention balloon art, people think of the guys at parties shaping dogs and swords,” he says. “It’s so much more than that.”

Most people start small when they pick up a hobby. But Kobi, who had no prior artistic training, says he likes a challenge.

“I’m crazy — from the start, I made big projects,” he says.

The post Art That Pops   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.