Style & Living

The excitement around Grossinger’s was the idea that you could be in a glamorous hotel adorned with photos of famous guests such as Elizabeth Taylor, Jackie Onassis, President John F. Kennedy, and Joan Rivers while dining on flanken with a side of chopped liver and another side of kishka. The beautiful resort was the ideal world where you were able to ski, golf, and swim without compromising your religious practices. While eating lox and bagels at the Sunday breakfast extravaganza you were assured that the mashgiach was watching the food preparations in the massive kitchen.

Having grown up in Kew Gardens Hills, my summers were planned around weekend getaways to “the mountains.” Before Vacation Village and other summer communities there was a magical place called the Borsht Belt. Dancing in the Pink Elephant Lounge, golfing on the Monster, laughing with Jackie Mason, or ordering 10 side dishes with your two mains were celebrated activities within the area known as the Catskills. If you have ever participated in Simon Says or collected a fistful of photo visors, you know exactly what I’m referring to.

At the Sunday family barbecue, I was complaining that my whole body ached from the intense Pilates class I took that morning. My husband’s older son, a Torah scholar and law student, quickly commented that Pilates sounds a lot like the beds of Sodom. Frankly, I had no idea what he was talking about while he quoted the source in the Gemara, but anyone who takes real Pilates knows that the “reformer” bed-like apparatus is very serious on the body – with the sole function of stretching, toning, and strengthening the body with straps, coils, bars, and balls.

The A-list celebrity jeweler Lorraine Schwartz designed the ayin hara tennis bracelet with perfectly matched diamonds and blue sapphires to display in the windows of The Palace Hotel in St. Moritz and Bergdorf Goodman in New York. Her pieces can be seen on the wrists of Blake Lively, Beyoncé, Mariah Carey, Heidi Klum, and Madonna. Outside of the Middle Eastern countries, evil-eye jewelry has been quite fashionable for at least 20 years. The Kabbalah Centers sell these types of spiritual adornments, including the famous “red string,” to their thousands of followers. One can’t go to the Kotel (Western Wall) without being approached by numerous merchants who want to entice your spiritual awareness with special red strings. I googled “evil eye jewelry” and explored the hundreds of sites selling everything from amulets to ankle bracelets, toe rings to diamond rings, all boasting a metaphysical meaning to their making. The evil eye crosses over every religion and offers an overall protection against negative energy. The red string is a personal boundary that keeps the positive forces in and the opposite out! Personally, I do remember the delightful store on Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills called PEREG. Tucked away between the scented spice barrels, assorted dried couscous mixes, and etrog jelly there was a mysterious shelf of evil remedies such as preserved fish eyes and other “Shakespearian” ingredients. This reminded me of the witch’s potion from childhood fables.

On our bus ride down to the Dead Sea, the tour guide promised nothing short of a series of medical miracles. Multiple minerals soaked in the waters of 2,000 years can cure almost anything that ails the body was the better portion of her description of this salty aquatic surprise. Considering that it was my hus-band’s first trip to Israel, I felt compelled to show him all the tourist highlights of this magnificent country. Having gone to the Dead Sea since I was 12, paint-ing myself in mud and floating above a pink rock salt floor, I knew this would be a fun adventure for him. The sea with no fish or life of any kind has grown into a massive industry of cosmetics and other related areas. One is almost as-saulted upon arrival at the airport with advertisements, media campaigns, chain stores from companies such as Ahava, Premier, Black Pearl, and other assorted brands of seemingly magical treatments enhanced with the minerals of this region.

A new Israeli study authored by Dr. Michel Balaish, director of the Veterinary Institute at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, has discovered that the blood pressure of children who were raised with a dog in the house was lower than children who were raised without one, according to Israeli media.