A Jew In Oregon
Dear Editor:
A couple of weeks before Pesach, my husband said, “I think Mendel is going to go to Oregon for the Seders…. He doesn’t want to tell us yet, but I think he’s going….”
Pride was NOT the feeling that came from my gut and welled up in my throat.
“No,” I said with a cavalier tone as I exhaled that heavy breath. “He wouldn’t leave his mama,” I said, making light of the will of a boy who left home at twelve years old.
“Oh, you don’t think…?” his father shot back with a knowing grin. “I’ll really miss him.”
“Are there even any Jews in the middle-of-nowhere Oregon?” I wondered out loud.
“I don’t know,” said the Chabad rabbi to whom I’m married, “but if there are, Mendel is going to find them.”
It’s a rare moment when all five of my children sleep under the same roof. From ages 11–22, they occupy four different zip codes. Such is the life of a Chabad mother. But Pesach is the time when (I thought) all the ducks come home. We sit around the Seder, nuclear family intact, and absorb the blessings of a full house.
Last year, my son Mendel and a friend went to the southwest corner of Oregon before Pesach to meet as many Jews as he could find and distribute handmade shmurah matzah along the coast. We were so proud of him. Raised in a campus Chabad House, he was taking on the mission to bring G-dliness to the farthest reaches of the land and making it his own.
It’s true I run a Chabad House. It’s true that the way of Chabad is to look out for every Jew—even in towns on the edge of the West Coast with a community too small for any synagogue and where the nearest Chabad House is three hours away. This is all true—but this is my son, and it’s our family Seder, and the kids are never home at the same time, and….
My husband accepts Mendel’s plans like a commander who must regretfully see his soldier go on a mission. But I’m his Jewish mother.
“I heard you’re going to Oregon,” I greeted Mendel with a sarcastic smile. He chuckled and shifted a bit uncomfortably, like a boy who has been called to the principal’s office and is not yet sure of the reason for his summons. “To break your mother’s heart?”
He laughed. He’s the firstborn, and he reads my thoughts. He knows I’m trying to say I love you dearly—so deeply I don’t even have words. I carefully shield my emotions in bad jokes and wry humor.
“Were you planning on telling us?”
“I just did,” he smirked.
The pride is there, but it’s still quite latent, buried under layers of my emotion.
“I went to Siberia when I was Mendel’s age to make Seders, and those were some of the best experiences of my life,” my husband reflected. Twenty-five years later, he still talks about the Russian families for whom he hung mezuzahs and the men who wrapped tefillin with tears in their eyes.
“I know,” I reasoned, “I’m just going to miss him.”
It’s Shabbos Hagadol—a few days before Pesach—and I told one of the women in our shul that my son is flying to Oregon for Pesach. “There are a lot of flights being canceled,” she mentioned. “You’ll see what happens with his plans,” she suggested.
I didn’t have the right words to explain, but I realized in that moment there is no way his plans will change. You’re not going to stop a Chabad bochur from going on his mission. “His plans aren’t changing,” I replied, and the conversation was over.
Mendel came home to pack his bags. “I see the Jews in Oregon are more important than your mother’s heart,” I said as I helped him pack. “Maybe you should check a bag? Will the oven have Shabbos mode? Do you want to order a Crock-Pot and electric egg pot on Amazon and have it sent straight to Oregon?”
We pulled out one of the camp duffels, and I started digging through my Pesach supplies. “Take a peeler; here is a stack of foil pans—I’m sure you’ll need them. Do you want a box of precut tin foil? How about this box of tablecloths?”
“Mommy, I thought you didn’t want Mendel to go,” said one of the younger kids.
“I don’t,” I reminded them.
“Take some sponges and a few deli containers,” I continued, aiding and abetting my son. “I bought a lot of meat; take this second-cut brisket. If you wrap it in a towel, it will stay frozen in your luggage.” In the end, he took two briskets and his monogrammed matching matzah cover in his checked bag.
I arranged the next day such that I happened to have a three-hour window available to drive him and his two friends to Newark airport. By the time they all piled into the car with their luggage, I indeed wanted him to go. He wanted to go, and I wanted him to succeed.
Before leaving for the airport, it was clear that the bochurim had no chance of catching their connecting flight, but I was not the least bit worried. I know they will find a way and they will get the job done.
The airlines awarded them each $36 in food vouchers and a hotel room in Seattle to compensate for the missed connection. They stocked up on the only kosher food they can find at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport—chummus. The local Chabad rabbi took them out for pre-Pesach bagels the next morning before they caught their final flight to Oregon one day late.
“We met a Jew in the supermarket,” Mendel called home, “and he’s coming to the Seder.” They checked lettuce and made kugel, brisket, chicken, and soup.
The bochurim hosted the first-ever Seder in Brookings, Oregon, for 35 people. My heart is so full.
Tzipah Wertheimer
Isn’t It About Time We Do Something Differently?
Dear Editor:
Current events are meant to serve as a Divine wake-up call—not only individually, but communally as well—as the Rambam teaches at the beginning of Hilchos Ta’anis.
We have witnessed many such wake-up calls: COVID-19; the ongoing Ukraine war; the Simchas Torah pogrom; the war in Gaza—leaving Hamas entrenched despite over a thousand Israelis killed and more than 20,000 seriously maimed; skyrocketing Jew-hatred fueled by the ever-evolving conflicts in Israel and beyond; the first Iran war; the current Middle East war; the Lebanon quagmire; the global economic instability surrounding the Strait of Hormuz; and Iran’s continued ability to withstand U.S. military pressure while posing an escalating ballistic missile threat—having evidently depleted Israeli interceptor systems to dangerously low levels while continuing to launch advanced cluster warheads and maintaining a looming nuclear threat.
And this is before we even begin to address the many spiritual assaults we have endured in recent years—in the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere—whether self-inflicted or otherwise.
Each of these events should have awakened us—individually and collectively. Have they? And if so, how?
Tuesday marked the yahrtzeit of Rav Avigdor Miller, zt”l (27 Nissan). Ask yourself: When was the last time you saw communal leadership uphold the non–politically correct Torah imperatives—to clearly and courageously articulate an uncompromising stance against the very communal failings that Rav Miller spoke against so forcefully?
How many communal “leaders”—lay, organizational, or otherwise—are willing to risk their positions and reputations to challenge ongoing “community” support for politicians (from either major party) who promote the very forms of moral subversion that Rav Miller—and many other Gedolim—opposed with such clarity and conviction?
Case in point: As discussed at length on our weekly WSNR radio broadcast, Levin at 11, had the Orthodox community followed Da’as Torah on matters of foundational morality and retzichah—voting based on values rather than financial incentives—we could have prevented the passage of physician-assisted suicide legislation. In New York, as previously in New Jersey, such legislation passed by a single vote—one Assemblymember from Passaic. And, as seen in Canada, the worst may still lie ahead, rachmana litzlan, if this trajectory continues.
As a child, my father merited being dismissed from his final rabbinic position in Edmonton, Alberta—yes, there is a frum community there. Through that experience, he taught us that principle must come before position and that parnassah is, in truth, solely in the hands of Hashem.
In Eretz Yisrael as well, do we see frum politicians—who currently hold significant power—even speaking out against the moral challenges that Rav Miller and the Gedolei Eretz Yisrael fought so firmly? Whether it be the normalization of LGBTQ ideology, abortion-on-demand, the exposure of non-Chareidi soldiers to inappropriate environments within the IDF, or the drafting of young Jewish women into a setting that undermines their dignity and spiritual integrity—where is the outcry?
Every one of these issues should be a unifying priority across all Orthodox factions. So why is there barely a whisper from most quarters (aside from the No’am Party)?
Rather than focusing solely on the ever-present Jew-haters, the strident leftists, and the Islamist extremists, perhaps it is time we turn inward. Let us look in the mirror. That is where real change begins.
May we merit the Redemption through sincere communal teshuvah, rather than through the necessity of enduring further yisurin.
Rabbi Noson Shmuel Leiter
Cogito Ergo Sum
Dear Editor:
Cogito ergo sum. Now that I’m back to my diet of Keurig coffee and cake, I can think. For those of you who don’t recall your Latin, that phrase means, “I think; therefore, I am.”
A wise person once told me that once I learned how to drive, I’d want to reside in my car, not my living room. Well, I guess with age, I’ve become that wise person, and I don’t really enjoy driving. Sure, I can reach my go-to spots like T.J. Maxx and ShopRite, but the two things that give me agita are the potholes and the lawyer advertisements on billboards and the radio.
Did you know that Queens had the highest number of pothole complaints in the city this year, accounting for nearly half of all reports to 311? Unless you’re driving a Hummer, if you hit one of those babies at 50 mph, your car will feel like it’s losing its wheels, and your implants will probably fall out of your mouth. Sure, you may avoid them while driving during daylight hours, but what about the night when you can’t see anything? Just going to Aaron’s is taking your life into your hands. Sometimes I feel like saying Tefilas Haderech for a four-minute drive.
Next comes the slew of “ambulance chaser” ads on the radio. You can call Specter and Associates for “serious injury accidents.” Is there such a thing as a non-serious injury accident? Or Morgan & Morgan, where the mother (one of the Morgan lawyers) says how nervous she was when her teenagers started driving. Now she can describe how wealthy she has become, in part due to all those accidents.
So what’s a “Nervous Nellie” like me supposed to do? I have to have bitachon, grab the steering wheel, listen to Waze, watch for potholes, listen to Nach Yomi, and drive! Now you think about that.
Debbie Horowitz
Justice And Sovereignty Under Attack
Dear Editor:
How many more American citizens must be murdered by an illegal immigrant? Maybe Mr. Hecht will answer the question in his next column, but I highly doubt it. Right before Pesach, an 18-year-old girl from Westchester, Sheridan Gorman, was shot and killed at a beach in Chicago by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela. Instead of condemning the shooting, the Loyola Phoenix, the student paper at Loyola University, apologized for calling the murder suspect an “illegal immigrant.” This is journalism? I have a neighbor who has a lawn sign that displays a bunch of left-wing nonsense rhetoric, among which it says, “No Human is Illegal.” The left advocates for open borders and the citizenship of all the illegal aliens who entered illegally between January 20, 2021, and January 19, 2025. The Democrats want to erode our sovereignty just so they can gain power.
The left also advocates on behalf of criminals in our streets. Here in NYC, the killer of Police Officer Jonathan Diller was convicted of aggravated manslaughter, not murder, by a jury on April 1. There is no way any law enforcement officer can get a fair trial in this city. From the education system to Democrat politicians, all we hear is “defund the police,” “cops are racist,” and “ICE is the Gestapo.” This week, former NYPD Sgt. Erik Duran, charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the 2023 death of Eric Duprey, opted for a bench trial. His lawyers figured he’d have a better shot with a judge rather than a Bronx jury. They thought wrong. The left-wing activist in a black robe cosplaying as a judge sentenced Duran to 3–9 years on April 9. Afterward, the judge had the audacity to say that he gave a harsh punishment as a “general deterrent” to other officers. It is a sad state of affairs that our civilized society is eroding because of the Democrats.
As if this wasn’t enough, Democrats in Congress are now calling to remove President Trump from office—either by invoking the 25th Amendment or through impeachment—after the latest threats regarding Iran. The 25th Amendment has nothing to do with Congress, so that argument is just theater. Does anyone think for two seconds that if the Democrats win back the House in November, they won’t impeach Trump for a third time? They have watered down the impeachment clause of the Constitution so it has very little meaning anymore. They use the Constitution to abuse the Constitution. In fact, when Republicans impeached DHS Secretary Mayorkas for dereliction of duty, Senator Schumer refused to even hold a trial in the Senate. Democrats don’t care about the legitimate existential threat to Israel and Western civilization should Iran get a nuclear weapon. They can scream all day that this was a war of choice and that Congress didn’t approve of it. President Trump is on the side of good, and Democrats are on the side of evil.
Shalom Markowitz
