Center Spirit - Issue #9

FREE! VOLUME 9 - ISSUE 5 ‫תשפ"א‬‎ ‫ תמוז‬- JULY 2021

CHAYALA NEUHAUS: THE CREATOR OF “A YID”

HAIR AND MAKEUP TIPS AND TRICKS BY HAIR + BLUSH

BEHIND THE SCENES AT BORO PARK CENTER THE KITCHEN EDITION

Benny

MAKING HEALTHY FOOD FUN AND APPEALING FOR CHILDREN

BY RAIZY FRIED

FEATURED INTERVIEW

Center Spirit Magazine met up with Benny Friedman, to get his personal take on the astounding success of “A Yid.”

A PROJECT OF

HELLO ALL With spring far behind us and summer has got us basking in the sun- we’re taking in all the warmth we can get!

RAIZY PAVLOV DIRECTOR OF RECREATION

EDITOR'S DESK

I hope you’re all enjoying the newly revamped magazine; our Shavuos Issue got rave reviews Baruch Hashem- and the one you’re reading right now will surely not disappoint! As you can see, we have made it easier for you to pick up your free copy in news-stands in your neighborhood, feel free to take a copy for your friends as well!

OUR MISSION:

Lot’s happening this summer at Boro Park Center-! With weekly BBQ’s, ice cream parties, and stimulating lectures planned for Elul, there’s little time for boredom here!

In this month’s issue, I was fortunate to score interviews with Chayala Neuhaus, the brains behind the hit-song “A Yid” as well as its recording artist, Benny Friedman. Chaya Sara Schlussel did a phenomenal job putting their words into writing. Raizy Fried does it again! The food queen gives us tips on how to make healthy eating fun. You will love her creative presentations! Speaking of healthy living, nutritionist Esther Asher gives us some great tips on staying hydrated during the Summer months.

So many always wonder how different departments at Boro Park Center manage to operate so smoothly and efficiently- being one of the largest healthcare facilities in the Tri- State area. I decided to break-it down for you, one department at a time, so that you can gain a better understanding of how each separate department in Boro Park Center helps to make this facility the five star home that it is. In this issue, Chaim Brull, our head of Dietary, gives us fascinating and informative behind-the scenes information on the Boro Park Center kitchen and its challenging yet successful operation.

There’s a lot more in this book that I have not brushed upon in this letter, but I think I ought to leave some if it a surprise-because who doesn’t love surprises?

Best wishes for a healthy and joyous Summer!

Happy Reading!

PUTTING YOU FRONT AND CENTER

At Boro Park Center we practice a completely home-based approach to out-of-home rehabilitation and nursing care. Home means family, and our Center was founded on the ideal that residents and their families should never be far apart. Come on in, Live HappyTM, and enjoy an environment made possible by compassionate caregivers, therapy specialists, and most importantly, friends and family.

Project by: gcnymarketing●com

Your comments and feedback are important to us so that we can continue to serve you as best as possible.

Please email your comments to rpavlov@boroparkcenter.net

Raizy Pavlov

4915 10th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11219 718-851-3700 www.BoroParkCenter.net

TABLE OF CONTENT Story Center

As Long As I Live ................................................................................................................ 6 The Show Must Go On ..................................................................................................... 8

History Center

This Month in History - The Raid on Entebbe ............................................................12

Feature Center

Benny Friedman .................................................................................................................18 Chayala Neuhaus: The Creator of “A Yid”.................................................................. 21

This Month in History The Raid on Entebbe 12

BTS Boro Park Center

Kitchen Edition .................................................................................................................. 24

News Center

Odd News from Around the Globe ............................................................................ 30

Healthy Living Center

Tips to Stay Hydrated in the Summer Months By Esthi Asher ............................. 34 How to Avoid Slips and Falls at Home ........................................................................ 36

Feature Benny Friedman

18

Hair & Makeup Center

Tips and Tricks by Hair and Blush ................................................................................. 38

Home & Food Center

Making Healthy Food Fun and Appealing for Children by Raizy Fried ����������� 40 10 Unexpected Uses for Dryer Sheets ....................................................................... 44 Recipes ................................................................................................................................ 46

Inspiration Center.................................................................................. 54 Hair and Makeup Tips

By Hair + Blush 36 Cover Image Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benny_Friedman_(singer) 3

BORO PARK CENTER SHABBOS AND YOM TOV SCHEDULES 4 / The Center Spirit / March 2021

SUMMER ZEMANIM ‫פרשת פנחס‬

‫ שבת נחמו‬- ‫פרשת ואתחנן‬

Shabbos / July 3 Shachris.........................................9:00 AM Mincha...........................................8:43 PM Maariv............................................9:30 PM Havdalah.......................................9:43 PM

Shabbos / July 24 Shachris.........................................9:00 AM Mincha...........................................8:31 PM Maariv............................................9:20 PM Havdalah.......................................9:31 PM

‫מסעי‬-‫פרשת מטות‬

‫פרשת עקב‬

Shabbos / July 10 Shachris.........................................9:00 AM Mincha...........................................8:40 PM Maariv............................................9:28 PM Havdalah.......................................9:40 PM

Shabbos / July 31 Shachris.........................................9:00 AM Mincha...........................................8:24 PM Maariv............................................9:15 PM Havdalah.......................................9:24 PM

Erev Shabbos / July 2 Candle Lighting.........................8:12 PM Mincha...........................................7:25 PM

Erev Shabbos / July 9 Candle Lighting.........................8:10 PM Mincha...........................................7:25 PM

Erev Shabbos / July 23 Candle Lighting.........................8:01 PM Mincha...........................................7:15 PM

Erev Shabbos / July 30 Candle Lighting.........................7:54 PM Mincha...........................................7:10 PM

‫ שבת חזון‬- ‫פרשת דברים‬

Erev Shabbos / July 16 Candle Lighting.........................8:06 PM Mincha...........................................7:20 PM Shabbos / July 17 Shachris.........................................9:00 AM Mincha...........................................6:00 PM Shkia...............................................8:24 PM Maariv-Eichah.............................9:40 PM

‫תשעה באב‬

Sunday / July 18 Shachris-Kinos ...........................9:00 AM Mincha...........................................2:00 PM Maariv ...........................................9:12 PM

SHABBAT SHALOM

LISTEN AND LEARN WITH BORO PARK CENTER

THIS MONTH AT

Boro Park Center invites our residents to a fabulous lineup of Shiurim in honor of Chodesh Elul.

Bingo.................................................................................July 11 Music Group with Toby..................................................July 12

August 8 Rabbi Moshe Tuvia Lieff

Pizza Fun...........................................................................July 14

August 15 Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser August 22 Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer August 29 Rabbi Fischel Schachter At the Boro Park Center Shul at 3:00pm Open to Boro Park Center residents and accompanying family members.

Challah Baking................................................................ July 01 Ice Cream Social............................................................. July 02 Music with Don Stern.................................................... July 05 Zumba with Sury............................................................ July 06 Soap Creations............................................................... July 06 Falafel Fun....................................................................... July 07 Music with Boruch and Mende................................... July 08 Potato Kugel Workshop............................................... July 09 Shiur with Shlomtzy....................................................... July 10

Cookie Decorating with Esty.......................................July 12 Crepe Making..................................................................July 13 Juicing Demo...................................................................July 14 Challah Baking.................................................................July 15 Judy on the Piano...........................................................July 16 Shiur with Chumie...........................................................July 17 Women’s Group with Shoshana..................................July 19 Music with Chaim Mayer.............................................. July 20 Ceramics.......................................................................... July 20 Paint Party........................................................................ July 21 Soul Songs Music........................................................... July 22 Oneg Shabbos with Rabbi Waijsfeld......................... July 23 Danish Cart...................................................................... July 24 Guitar Strolling with Shoshana................................... July 25 Music Group with Chava.............................................. July 26 Pretzel Fun....................................................................... July 27 Zumba.............................................................................. July 27 Cooking Pancakes........................................................ July 28 Music with Moshe Weiss.............................................. July 29 Trivia.................................................................................. July 31 Lecture with Meirav....................................................... July 31

M O N T H LY S E R I A L

WEEK 134 CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR HONORARY CITIZEN “Okay, so what do we do now?” I asked the doctor.

reprinted with permission from the author Aharon Margalit

told him, “I want you to personally operate on Judge Margalit.”

(They were still calling me “the judge.”)

As yet, only Dr. Ron, the paper, and I knew the secret.

We scheduled a date, I wrote it in my business appointment diary, and left the hospital, feeling somewhat dazed.

“First we excise the suspicious gland and send it for a biopsy.

After we get the results, we’ll have a better idea of how to proceed,” he said.

The easy part was behind me. Now I had to break the news to my devoted family and my good friends. How could I burden them with my seemingly endless bouts of suffering?

The scenario was chillingly familiar. Until the results of the biopsy, we couldn’t know if it was lymphoma or some other malignancy.

The gnawing doubt was familiar, too.

Driving home, I put on a CD. From the car’s speakers burst the crystal-clear voice of a wunderkind singing, “Avinu Malkeinu, Avinu Malkeinu, have pity…have pity on us and on our children.”

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I joined in his prayer.

Dr. Ron accompanied me to the surgical ward on the fourth floor to get things moving. The elevator and corridors hadn’t changed.

Neither had the traffic of people coming and going. Most seemed in a hurry, as if chasing some treasure that they’d lost within this huge facility. What am I doing here, for Heaven’s sake?

STORY CENTER

Dr. Ron found Professor Micha Rabo, the department head, and

6 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

“My Father in Heaven, I believe with perfect faith that everything is for the good. Just give me the strength to bear it, that’s all I ask. Give me the strength to stand up to the task. Give my wife strength. Give my children strength. Give my friends strength.

We’re still reeling from the past trauma. I’m still going to periodic follow-up tests. Now, all of a sudden, I’m forced to deal with another tumor. And we’re still in the year of mourning for our beloved son! At night we weep and mourn his loss.

“My beloved Father, don’t cast me away at a time of illness. Dear G-d, strengthen my dear mother, a Holocaust survivor and a bereaved parent, who cares for Abba with such devotion. Have pity, Tatte, Have pity…have pity on us and on our children.”

Convinced that the operation wasn’t urgent, the surgeon had set the biopsy date for another three weeks, namely, two weeks before Pesach.

“Is there any connection between the growth that I had on my skin and this?”

As previously, I asked the department head to have the operation performed under local anesthetic, so that I could make use of this critical time to daven for my recovery, but the surgeon wouldn’t even consider it. “The operation will take place with general anesthetic, and that’s that,” he said unequivocally.

I realized right away that there was no point in arguing. The time before, my rare tumor had entitled me to special treatment; this time, I had no such privilege.

During the waiting period, I didn’t tell anyone except Rav Firer and, of course, my wife, about the new developments.

Although I always maintain that one shouldn’t waste energy on concealing illness from others, still, as long as the diagnosis hadn’t been established beyond all doubt, I saw no reason to worry loved ones unnecessarily.

The following story bears this out: Decades earlier, when I was in my thirties, my doctor suddenly suspected that I had a foreign mass in my abdomen, and sent me to Tel HaShomer Hospital for further tests.

I scoffed at the doctor’s fears. I’d had no previous experience with cancer and didn’t believe things would take such a sinister turn. I made an appointment, as per the doctor’s orders, but didn’t bother telling anyone about it.

After I completed what I felt was a superfluous procedure, the nurse told me to come back the following week for the results.

Seized with a desire to leave an impression of mischievous cynicism, I asked the attending physician with a smile, “Tell me, is there a chance of surviving this?”

“You’d be surprised, but 80 percent make it,” he said in all earnestness.

I was shocked into solemnity, my jocularity shattered. I suddenly

grasped that this wasn’t a dentist’s appointment. The doctor’s answer had come too close for comfort.

I swallowed hard and said, “Do I understand correctly that there’s cause to suspect a cancerous growth?”

I hoped he’d say, “Not at all.”

But the nurse answered instead. “Definitely.”

“And the 80 percent survival rate. Is that accurate?”

“Totally,” the nurse said.

I felt deflated. I hadn’t prepared myself for this. “Increase knowledge, increase pain,” I quoted reproachfully to myself.

“Why did you have to ask that question?”

“What’s the earliest time that I can receive the results?”

“Friday morning.”

I left the clinic, much more thoughtful than when I’d arrived.

That week was a nightmare — but I didn’t share my fears with anyone, not even my wife. The tension was hard to bear, but I was reluctant to worry my loved ones, especially since there was still hope that it was nothing.

When Friday finally rolled around, immediately after davening, I raced to the hospital’s outpatient clinic. The nurse handed me an envelope.

“Well?” I asked impatiently.

“You’ve moved into the category of 100 percent. It’s not cancer,” she said.

Apparently, the fear and anxiety I’d undergone had sufficed, giving me a twenty-year reprieve until my real battle with cancer.

to be continued...

7

TheShow MustGo On

S

hoshie!! Mazel tov!”

“Can’t believe you’re a kallah!”

“I heard the chassan’s family is just incredible…”

Blissfully, I greeted one well-wisher after the next, smiling until my cheeks ached.

I could hardly wrap my head around the fact that I was engaged, let alone to the boy of my dreams.

I was so glad that we hadn’t waited to announce our engagement; initially my chassan, Betzalel, was thinking of holding off a bit until his sister—who lived in my hometown of Detroit—had a baby so that his family wouldn’t have to fly in from New York twice. As it turned out, she was admitted to the hospital the night of my vort, so my in-laws were able to celebrate both simchos simultaneously.

STORY CENTER

The next day, I called my mother-inlaw to reminisce about the vort.

8 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

“I really must apologize,” I told her.

“There were so many people pouring in, I hardly got a chance to shmooze with you.”

“Please, Shoshie,” she laughed, in her warm and easygoing way. “We’ll have plenty of time for that down the road.”

Ahhh, if only…

Since my sister-in-law had given birth to a boy, my in-laws decided to remain in Detroit until after the bris. During that week, we managed to take care of many wedding arrangements. The details fell into place so naturally and flawlessly; we felt a special siyata d’Shmaya guiding all our decisions. Each encounter with my in-laws made me aware of what an exceptionally gracious family I’d been zocheh to join. I was amazed at how comfortable I felt in my

mother-in-law’s presence.

That week will be etched in my memory forever.

My in-laws returned to New York and I resumed my hectic teaching and tutoring schedule. My days were a juggling act of lesson planning, sheitel appointments, and gown fittings. I reveled in it.

And then came the monstrous tidal wave that threatened to destroy happiness as we knew it.

One brisk morning in December, my mother-in-law stood waiting at the corner for her ride to take her to work. A veteran director of a renowned chessed organization, she’d been the mainstay for countless individuals, and her commitment had only strengthened throughout the years.

That day was no different.

As she waited, a shuttle bus suddenly swerved into the corner of the street. The driver never saw her.

In an instant, she crumpled to the ground.

Hatzolah whisked her to the hospital in a blaze of lights and sirens. Her prognosis was grim: heavy internal bleeding. The family was summoned frantically.

My mother looked at me, ashen-faced. An icy needle of grief pierced my heart and the bubble of joy that had enveloped me for the past three weeks.

This morning, my sweet, unassuming mother-inlaw had been walking, talking, and breathing—and now she was…gone?

Betzalel would not have his mother walk him down to the chuppah?

Hashem, please wake me up from this nightmare!

My dear kallah, life was never meant to be a gently flowing brook…

Before our numbed minds could absorb this shocking blow, decisions had to be made. Our rav ruled that I should not attend the levayah; instead I should fly in to be menachem avel.

“Please, Shoshie,” she laughed, in her warm and easygoing way.

“We’ll have plenty of time for that down the road.”

Meanwhile, I’d gotten a message from the school office that my mother-in-law had been struck by a bus and was now hospitalized. Shakily, I dialed the number to the hospital; I could not get through to any family member. Then I tried my in-laws’ house—no answer either. (This was in the era before cell phones.)

I spent the most nerve-wracking day of my life trying to call, with no success. While murmuring Tehillim, I attempted to console myself with the thought that she had to be all right in the end. Having survived a horrendous car accident myself as a child, I knew that it would be a long haul—but there was hope.

Finally, I asked my mother to call the hospital, hoping she would somehow make headway.

“Hello, I’m calling to speak to the family of Toba Jacobowitz,” my mother said hesitantly.

There was a moment’s pause on the line, and then the receptionist said, “Hold on, I will transfer you to the morgue…”

In hindsight, I was so grateful to have da’as Torah—witnessing Betzalel’s raw pain would have been too much. As it were, walking into a beis avel hearing, “Oh, there’s the kallah…” was a most awkward situation. I had no idea how to provide comfort to my chassan of less than a month.

I don’t remember what I said, or whether I said anything at all.

People spoke in hushed tones about my mother-in-law’s extraordinary chessed and stellar middos; I felt a double sense of loss—at not having had the opportunity to cultivate a real relationship with her.

If there was some measure of consolation to glean, it was that she had met me and given her wholehearted approval to the shidduch. And that everyone else in the family was already married.

After the shivah, the family slowly returned to routine. Gone was all the drama and excitement over our upcoming wedding, to be replaced with a throbbing, ever-present pain.

But if I thought all the preparations would fall to my side now, I was mistaken. With incredible strength, Betzalel directed his energy and interest toward finalizing arrangements and tending to the million details that cropped up. Rather than wallowing in justifiable misery, he stepped forward to begin a new stage in life with all its responsibilities.

Taken with permission from "Life Unwrapped" by Rochel Braverman (As told to the author by Sarah Taub) 9

Naturally, because of the circumstances, our wedding had to be postponed by several months as so many matters had to be reconsidered. Originally, we’d planned to live in Brooklyn but now we were advised to settle in Detroit in order to have a fresh start. And so we began apartment hunting and applying to kollelim.

Just when I thought everything was finally coming together, the yeshivah hall where we were to get married was struck by lightning—a mere week before our wedding! The hall was rendered unusable and we had to scramble around to find an affordable alternative. The local hotels were well beyond our budget. Finally, the school where I taught offered its hall and we all breathed a long sigh of relief.

Deep in my heart, I davened that everything should go smoothly from that point on—I simply could not deal with one more setback, big or small!

Chasdei Hashem, we were zocheh to a lively, uplifting wedding; everyone made a tremendous effort to be mesamei’ach chassan v’kallah. Though the joy was laced with sorrow, it was a heartfelt simchah.

Certainly my mother-in-law was beaming from above.

STORY CENTER

To be quite honest, shanah rishonah in aveilus was no walk in the park. We were so grateful to have each other, but the constant shadow of my mother-inlaw’s passing filled every aspect of our lives. The halachos of aveilus were instituted by Chazal to honor the departed’s memory, and we felt the loss keenly. Even the seemingly trivial factor of not listening to music affected me; there was a somber atmosphere that hovered around us constantly and I couldn’t just chase it away by turning on the CD player.

It was so tempting to slide into the slippery slope of self-pity— not only did I have a tumultuous engagement, but to be deprived of a normal shanah rishonah…!— yet I reminded myself dozens of times that it was an exercise in futility.

What was the point of bemoaning my destiny when it was al-

10 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

ready sealed and stamped by the Author Himself?

If I couldn’t rewrite my story, at least I could edit my reactions and tweak my thought processes. And so we embarked upon the delicate process of building a home upon the heels of a very vulnerable beginning.

I had to learn how to be empathetic while allowing Betzalel the space and time to heal at his own pace.

A carefree couple we weren’t, but we were both united in our determination to do it right—and make it last.

Our first touch of nechamah came with the birth of our first child, a girl, whom we named after my dear mother-in-law. Little Toby filled our home with giggles and sunshine, eliciting genuine smiles from the family at last.

At times my friends would vent (l’to’eles, ostensibly) about their interfering or indifferent mothers-in-

law and I couldn’t help but think, So you feel slighted that your mother-in-law forgot to acknowledge your birthday, but do you realize what a gift it is for your children to have a relationship with their grandmother? Do you know how priceless that is??

And do you know how lost a man can feel without having a mother to celebrate his achievements in life?

annual raffle of $25,000 and wrote our names on it.

But of course, I kept my mouth closed; each person to her nisyonos. I had been spared their challenge, though the irony never escaped me. Here I could’ve had a beautiful and rewarding connection with a wonderful woman—who was beloved by all those who knew her—yet she had been taken away too soon. While so many out there struggled for decades with difficult mothers-inlaw, who caused much friction with shalom bayis and chinuch…

Gradually, his health deteriorated. We treasured his visits, knowing it wasn’t easy for him, and tried to go in as much as possible—though never as much as we would’ve liked.

Astonishingly, he won again!

When we called to tell him that his ticket had won, he told us happily, “Keep it—it’s all yours!”

After my mother-in-law’s death, he was completely shattered. He could not even consider remarrying; my mother-in-law had been the light of his life.

When we called to tell him that his ticket had won, he told us happily, “Keep it—it’s all yours!”

I was fortunate to live near my parents, who provided much comfort and emotional support, especially throughout the early years. Indeed, living in my hometown proved to be magnificent hashgachah, as Betzalel was able to blossom in an out-of-town setting and carve a niche for himself in kollel.

My father-in-law had always been an extremely caring, selfless, and generous individual in his own right.

He was not a man of means, but he lived to give. Meshulachim would surround him as though he was a major gvir. Once, he won a raffle for $25,000—which he promptly distributed among various tzedakos. Hashem repaid him: several years later he purchased a ticket for the same

Less than a decade later, he, too, passed on to a better World.

And Betzalel, only thirty-two, was left truly bereft.

Once again, we had to grapple with grief and try to make sense of suffering. Our children had questions. We had no answers. …And we still don’t.

Did Betzalel ever dream before his marriage that his parents wouldn’t be around to reap the nachas of our growing family?

Do I know why I am the only one among my contemporaries who does not have in-laws?

All we know is that the only recourse is to move forward.

The effort is strenuous and the trek often lonely, but we cannot afford to spend our lives mourning our losses.

As I always tell my kids, the words “what if” are the most toxic in our vocabulary. For if we become submerged in the quagmire of the past—of what could’ve been, should’ve been—we risk losing all that is precious in the present and all the potential of the future.

Memories are there for us to cherish—and to use as a bridge to bond one generation to the next.

Totty and Mommy, although you’ve been gone now for so many years, you will forever remain in our hearts. Your legacy is alive and thriving!

11

This Month in History

The Raid On Entebbe July 1976

'We thought this would be the end of us': the raid on Entebbe, 40 years later It was the most daring rescue mission of a generation, with a cast that included three future prime ministers, Idi Amin and more than 100 hostages. How did it shape modern Israel?

A crowd lifts the squadron leader of the rescue planes on their return to Israel.

Photograph: David Rubinger/Corbis via Getty Images

HISTORY CENTER

0

n 4 July 1976, the day the US celebrated its had a big window in the front,” he recalls 40 years la200th birthday, an Israeli expat took a photer, sitting in the office of the Israeli prime minister ne call that would change his life. A student which has been his, on and off, for 10 of the last 20 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he went by the name years. “I could see my father pacing back and forBen Nitay, an Americanised shortening of the origith. And all of a sudden he turned his head and saw nal, the better to fit into the land where he hoped to me. He had a look of surprise, but forge a business career and build a life. On the phone he immediately understood and let was his younger brother, calling with grave news. It out a sharp cry. And then I walked concerned their older brother Yonatan, or Yoni. As in.” Netanyahu pauses as he relives children, they had idolised him; he the moment. “This was was the one who led their games, even harder than Yoni’s who, they felt, had raised them. death: telling my father This was Then 30 years old, ruggedly handand mother.” even harder some and newly installed as the The family flew in virhead of Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal than Yoni’s tual silence from the commando unit, Yoni had, in the death: US to Israel for the early hours of that day, led a raid to telling my funeral of the son and rescue more than 100 Israeli hostafather and brother who had alreges held at Entebbe, Uganda. Word ady been garlanded as mother.” had just come that the operation a military hero and was had been an astonishing success now about to enter the and the hostages were free. But the national mythology. leader on the ground – Yoni – had been killed in acThe Netanyahu name would take tion. Their brother was dead. its place in the Israeli pantheon and, And so, while the people around him watched marin the process, open up a path that ching bands and held street parties to mark Ameriwould take young Binyamin to the top of Israeli polica’s bicentennial, and while the world marvelled at tics – a path that began in Entebbe. the sheer audacity of a military raid that defied all The career of Netanyahu is the most visible legacy of odds, Ben Nitay – born Binyamin Netanyahu – made that July day four decades ago, but the impact of Enthe seven-hour drive to Cornell University in Ithatebbe would be felt in countless other ways, too. With ca, New York, where his father was teaching. The its extraordinary cast of characters – including a trio 26-year-old was determined to break the news to his of future Israeli prime ministers as well as the garparents himself. gantuan, volatile Ugandan dictator Idi Amin – Ente“I walked up the path leading to their house which bbe would alter the calculus in the conflict between

12 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Yoni Netanyahu.

class cabin, her face a ghostly white. This was meant to be the holiday of a lifetime, a trip to America to celebrate the bar mitzvah of her 13-year-old son Benny.

But now Sara turned to her husband, a navigator with the Israeli air force, and told him she feared they’d been hijacked.

It wasn’t such an outlandish thought. At that time, hijackings were frequent, a staple of nightly news bulletins. In 1972, there was one hijacking a month.

For Palestinians, they had been a favoured tactic since the late 1960s, initially targeting jets of the Israeli national airline, El Al. Besides the ritual demands for the release of prisoners, hijackings were seen as a swift and powerful way to win publicity for what was then the emerging cause of Palestinian independence. Still, Sara’s husband laughed off her suggestion: “You and your frightening ideas. Everything is OK.” A minute later it was clear who was right.

Following Böse’s orders, Bacos flew the plane to Benghazi, Libya. “He warned me not to break the landing gear: we’d need to be able to take off again.”

Israel and the Palestinians, changing the way Israel saw itself and was seen by others. It would come to seem a high watermark in global attitudes to the country, perhaps the last time Israel was viewed with admiration rather than suspicion or hostility. Entebbe would become a byword for military daring, the subject of three blockbuster movies, taught and studied by armies around the world – including by the architects of the raid that captured and killed Osama bin Laden. A raid that lasted a total of 99 minutes would live on for decades.

I

t began on Sunday 27 June with a routine Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris, carrying 247 passengers and 12 crew. The plane made a planned stop in Athens, but within a few minutes of takeoff from Greece, trouble struck. “We heard shouting coming from the cabin,” the plane’s captain, Michel Bacos, now 92, recalls. He sent his chief engineer to find out what was going on. “He opened the cockpit door and found himself face to face with Wilfried Böse, armed with a revolver and a hand grenade.”

Böse and his female comrade were part of a German faction known as Revolutionary Cells, or RZ, one of several urban guerrilla groups active in the era of the Baader-Meinhof gang. They had teamed up with two members of a breakaway faction of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Together, the four had boarded flight 139 at Athens, where security was notoriously lax. Böse shoved his way into the cockpit, Hijacker Wilfried Böse. threw out the co-pilot and, grabPhotograph: AP bing the microphone, announced that the plane would now be called Haifa 1, taking its name from the city in the north of the country the passengers called Israel and the hijackers called Palestine. Their demand was the release of 53 prisoners held in five different countries.

Even before they heard the announcement, in a heavy German accent, some of the passengers knew something was up. At the back of the plane, Sara Davidson – a nervous flyer anyway – had anxiously clocked the air stewardess emerging from the first

The Libyan stop was brief, just long enough for a British-born woman, Patricia Martel, to pretend she was having a miscarriage and get herself released from the plane. She had emigrated to Israel a few years earlier and was newly married; her mother had just died and she was en route to Manchester to visit her father. Not only was the miscarriage a fake, Martel wasn’t even pregnant. But she was a nurse – and a good actor.

Bacos was ordered to take off again. He asked Böse where: “He says, ‘It’s none of your business.’”

The plane flew for hours, long enough for Benny to lie on the floor and sleep. “So many hours we flew and flew, and we didn’t know where to,” Sara Davidson told me. The passengers tried to guess. Was their destination Siberia? China?

Eventually the plane touched down. Davidson and the others were allowed to open the window shutters and there on the tarmac stood the instantly recognisable, internationally notorious figure of Idi Amin, in camouflage battle fatigues. Only then did they realise that they were in Uganda. They were escorted off the plane and into the old terminal building of Entebbe airport.

They were no longer passengers. Now they were hostages.

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ack in Israel, military planners were trying to assemble what they knew – which was not much.

At his desk in military intelligence sat the officer in charge of planning for missions of this kind, the former elite commando, and future prime minister, Ehud Barak. He had direct experience of rescue operations but this situation was infinitely more complex, chiefly because of the location.

The military brass gathered in a Tel Aviv conference room, adorned by an enormous globe. One general began turning it slowly before asking a colleague, “Are you really sure you know where Entebbe is?” As

Idi Amin talks to hostages.

Photograph: AP

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Barak told me recently in his office in Tel Aviv, “We were in total blindness.”

They worked through the night, assembling fragments of information. In the preceding years, Israel had forged alliances with several African states, Uganda among them. Amin himself had received military training from the Israelis; fighting for space among the medals on his enormous chest were the wings of the Israeli air force.

The officers who had trained Amin came in to be debriefed. They offered the nugget that he coveted the Nobel peace prize. Someone attempted to pass the message to Kampala that if Amin brokered a peaceful resolution of the crisis, the Nobel might be his.

Meanwhile, an engineer at an Israeli company that had tendered to build the new terminal at Entebbe airport came forward: he happened to have, stashed in his desk drawer, the plans of the old building in which the passengers were now held hostage. Barak and his team soon spread out the blueprints, studying the target.

Originally, they imagined their sole adversary would be the four hijackers (information on whom had been helpfully provided by Martel, the woman who had faked a miscarriage).

But it was now clear Entebbe had not been chosen by accident: Amin and his regime were colluding with the hijackers. Israel’s plans adjusted accordingly.

Now it was just 94 hostages and a dozen crew. Bacos and his team were offered freedom, but refused it: they felt it was their duty to stay with their passengers. Time slowed to a crawl. The adults tried to distract the children with bottle tops and cigarette cartons turned into toys; they’d also work shifts, cleaning up or stretching out the food to make it last, and assembling a library of the books they had imagined reading on the flight. They slept “an hour or two, lights on all night, a lot of mosquitoes and flies,” Davidson says. “The smell was terrible. No clothes to change into. No water.”

Are you really sure you know where Entebbe is?” As Barak told me recently in his office in Tel Aviv, “We were in total blindness.”

Barak’s team flirted with the idea of parachuting Israeli Navy SEALs into Lake Victoria: they could make the subsequent journey on rubber dinghies. “We even thought about taking a speedboat from neighbouring Kenya,” Barak told me, but Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, warned that the Kenyans, while prepared to cooperate tacitly, would not agree to “such explicit participation”.

Round and round they went. Barak was clear that if they could not come up with good military options, then the Israeli government – despite its professed policy of “no talking to terrorists” – would be forced to negotiate for the hostages’ release.

For the Davidsons and the others, every minute felt like a week, every day like a lifetime. Herded together and frightened, speaking only in whispers, they were watched over at gunpoint. And then, on the fifth day, came the separation.

HISTORY CENTER

“Selection,” Sara Davidson says now, using the word deployed by the Nazis at the death camps, as they divided those who would live from those who would die. Among the hostages were Holocaust survivors, people with “numbers on their hands”, as Davidson puts it. And here they were, being selected by a German woman and a German man. “It was very frightening.”

The hijackers, in a plan agreed with Amin, divided Israelis from non-Israelis, gathering the former in the transit hall, the latter elsewhere. The non-Israeli group were soon released and flown to Paris. But included in the group kept behind were some Jews who were not Israeli. “There were two couples, religious Jews, and they had no Israeli passports,” Davidson recalls. “They were crying and shouting that they are not Israelis – it didn’t help them. The [hijackers] just pushed them to the other room, which we called the Israeli room.” Some remembered this process differently, but to Sara and others, it seemed as if the hijackers were dividing people not by citizenship, but by ethnicity. The fact that these orders were issued in German accents stirred a painful memory.

As for Benny, “I was living on an hourby-hour basis, finding friends, trying to read, to play, to sleep. You get used to being a hostage. As a 13-year-old, you simply adjust.” His greatest horror were the daily visits of Amin and his entourage, when the dictator would address the hostages. Sometimes posing as their protector, sometimes as a mediator, he would deliver long monologues, never allowing the hostages to speak. His sheer size was terrifying to the children. Benny would cower at the back, looking at Amin’s son and wife and aides. “They’re all in the shade when you’re standing close to Idi Amin: he’s simply gigantic.”

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ack in Tel Aviv, a plan was forming. The Israelis heard that Amin was due to spend the weekend on a diplomatic trip out of Uganda.

That provided an opening. If Israel could somehow fly four huge Hercules transporters the 2,500 miles to Uganda, one of those could land and disgorge a motorcade of vehicles dressed up to look as if they were the dictator and his party returning from Mauritius. The call went out for a rare Mercedes limousine, like Amin’s. They found one – but it was the wrong colour. Hurriedly, the Israelis sprayed it black.

By Shabbosnight, the team was assembled, led by Yoni Netanyahu. They went through the plan again and again, preparing for every contingency. The four Hercules would be accompanied by two Boeing 707 jets, one to serve as a command post, the other as a field hospital – to treat what they anticipated would be many injured.

On Shabbosafternoon a force of more than 200 Israeli soldiers took off, bound for Entebbe. To avoid radar, they flew extraordinarily low – at one point no more than 35ft off the ground. It was extremely bumpy, inducing intense vomiting in those on board. The flight took eight hours.

In the dead of night, Entebbe came into view. The designated runway was unlit; the planes would have to land in the dark. The first aircraft landed and out came the Mercedes. It headed straight for the terminal building. All was going to plan. It seemed the

troops would retain their most precious advantage: the element of surprise.

in Hebrew and English: “Lie down, don’t get up. The army is here, the army is here.”

But then a Ugandan soldier appeared, raising his rifle. Netanyahu’s deputy, Muki Betzer, who had previously lived in Uganda for four months, was untroubled: he thought the guard would wave them through. But Netanyahu made an instant decision.

He and another commando fired at the soldier with their silenced pistols and the man fell. But then he sat back up, prompting another Israeli to shoot – this time with an unsilenced weapon. Another Ugandan returned fire with a Kalashnikov. “And that’s it, disaster,” Betzer says now, his memory of that night as sharp 40 years on, he insists, as if it were yesterday.

“We’ve been found out. The element of surprise has been lost.”

ara Davidson remembers it very differently.

Motzei Shabboshad been particularly fearful. Sunday was the deadline, a word that, with its blunt first syllable, terrified Benny. If no prisoners had been released by then, the hijackers would start killing the hostages.

Several people had been taken ill and the night was hot. Some of their captors were outside, sitting on chairs and sofas. Her husband was trying to read, her sons trying to sleep.

There was a firefight, Israelis and Ugandans shooting at each other. Netanyahu and Betzer ordered the Mercedes to stop – not in the place they had planned – and they jumped out and ran to the terminal building. The commando teams, who had been carefully assigned to different entrance points, were now “mixed up”. And all Betzer could think of was a botched rescue effort two years earlier, in the Israeli town of Ma’alot – where Palestinian hostage-takers ended up killing 25 of their captives, including 22 children.

But somehow they made it in time: the hijackers had not had the chance to open fire on the hostages. As the commandos burst into the terminal building, one hijacker was killed instantly. Betzer saw two more as he entered: “We shot them and killed them.”

Meanwhile a fellow soldier on a megaphone shouted

Soldiers in a black Mercedes used in the raid. Photograph: Courtesy of Ministry of Defence Photo Archive/ IDF

S

Suddenly they heard gunfire. “We were sure this is the deadline and this is the end of us.” Her husband sent them to hide in the bathrooms. He took one son to one toilet, she took Benny to the other and curled herself around him. “I was just hoping they will kill me and that maybe I can save him.

And during these terrible noises, smells and shouting and shooting, I heard him saying [the ancient Jewish prayer] Shema Yisrael. And listen, we are not religious people, and he didn’t remember the prayer, he invented his own words: ‘I want to be alive, I don’t want to be killed.’”

I was hoping they would kill me and maybe I could save him’: hostages Sara Davidson and her son Benny.

Photograph: Michal Rubin/The Guardian

And then she lifted her head a little and there, standing in the doorway, was an Israeli soldier, dressed in

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camouflage. He was talking to her in Hebrew. “And he said, in a very calm voice, ‘Listen guys, we’ve come to take you home.’”

Once they were sure the shooting was over, leaving all the hijackers and at least 20 Ugandan soldiers dead, the Israelis shepherded the hostages into the waiting Hercules planes. They took off, bound for Nairobi. On board were 102 hostages and crew; four were either dead or missing.

Among them was the commander, Yonatan Netanyahu. Once the rescue had been completed, Betzer had got on the radio to report that their mission had been successful. He heard nothing but static. Eventually a radio operator came across to say: “Yoni’s down, Yoni’s down.” He had been shot within minutes of the first Hercules landing. A medic tried to treat him close to the terminal building, eventually handing him over to the commander of the medical unit, Dr Ephraim Sneh – another future Israeli cabinet minister. Around 25 minutes after the planes had first touched down, Netanyahu died in Sneh’s arms. Now, at the front of the plane, a stretcher carried his body.

When Ehud Barak, who had been handling the Kenyan end of the operation, climbed aboard the Hercules in Nairobi, he was struck by the mood on board.

The hostages were “ebullient”: this was just one hour after their liberation. But, he told me, “The fighters were far from happy. They were very tired, more than anything else. And sad.”

He approached Netanyahu’s body. “His face was white. He was a handsome young man. I put my hand on his forehead: it was still warm. It was just an hour after he had died. It was kind of a serene face, not expressing any kind of suffering.”

Soon the phone would ring in the home of the young man then called Ben Nitay.

HISTORY CENTER

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hortly after the hostages were home, what had been Operation Thunderbolt was renamed Operation Yonatan, in his memory. The family helped organise conferences in his honour and set up a Jonathan Institute, with branches in Israel and the US. The British journalist Max Hastings was commissioned to write a biography, Yoni, with the family’s cooperation. The slain hero of Entebbe was becoming a national icon.

Binyamin would speak at these conferences and run the institute in the US, setting out his view of how the west should defeat terrorism, focusing on states he believed enabled terror – as Uganda had enabled the hijackers of flight 139. He began to drift away from

16 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

the planned career in business and marketing, and into politics and diplomacy. With his US-accented English and telegenic looks, he fast caught the notice of Israel’s ruling circles and in 1982 was made No 2 in Israel’s Washington embassy. Within 14 years, he was prime minister.

Netanyahu himself readily admits it all began at Entebbe. “Totally,” he told me in Jerusalem. “It changed my life and steered it to its present course.”

Some say he has taken advantage of his experience.

When I spoke to the Haaretz columnist and historian Tom Segev, he said, “He is exploiting the history of his family, he is exploiting the story of his brother, he is exploiting a very shocking experience he had.” But even Segev is at pains to stress that there is nothing artificial about the prime minister’s pain: the two brothers were close, Binyamin’s grief genuine.

Others, including some who were there, believe Yoni’s role in the rescue has been exaggerated, with his fateful decision in that short journey to the old terminal – opening fire when he did – conveniently overlooked. There has been a war of the memoirs, with Betzer’s version in one corner, a book by the youngest Netanyahu brother, Iddo, in the other.

When Hastings probed this controversy, he recalls now, he was warned off, including by Barak. “He said, “‘You are dealing here with the heritage of the state of Israel, with one of our national heroes. At your peril do you walk on his grave.’”

The hostages return to Tel Aviv.

Photograph: Courtesy of Ministry of Defence Photo Archive/IDF

The presence in the prime minister’s office of Yoni Netanyahu’s brother is only the most current and tangible legacy of Entebbe. In 1976, Israeli self-confidence was low. The country had been rocked by the surprise attack of the Yom Kippur war in 1973, which had felt like a brush with collective catastrophe. It had also watched, powerless, as 11 of its athletes had been held hostage, then killed at the Olympic games in Munich in 1972. Entebbe felt like an antidote, if not a redemption.

in one of the three movies) to ask his advice.

Carter was planning an Entebbe-style rescue mission of his own. Peres told me: “[Carter] said, ‘If you were me, what would be your opinion?’ I said, ‘Fly. You don’t have a choice.’ Well, it was a catastrophe, as you know.” The botched raid on Iran was a humiliation for the US president, aborted amid mechanical failures and a midair collision before America’s aircraft got anywhere near the US hostages. Eight US servicemen lost their lives; Carter’s standing never recovered. But Totally,” he that very failure fed the myth of Entebtold me in be: it suggested that Israel had managed a feat that was beyond the capacity of Jerusalem. even the mighty US. “It changed

Inevitably, it had a direct impact on the Palestinians. Several factions had already moved away from hijacking, but after Entebbe that tactic was never tried again. Earlier this year, I met Leila Khaled in my life and As late as 2011, when the US military Amman, Jordan, who gained global steered it to planned its operation to capture and notoriety for hijacking both a TWA kill Osama bin Laden, the man in charge its present flight to Tel Aviv in 1969 and an El Al was Admiral William McRaven, author of course.” plane to New York a year later. She a detailed study of the raid on Entebbe. told me what mattered was never When it came to audacious missions – the means but the ends: to present involving stealth flights over vast distanthe Palestinian cause to the world. “We were obliged ces, maintaining the element of surprise till the last to do it. It’s not because we liked to, but because we moment – Entebbe still seemed the best precedent. didn’t have the capacity to impose ourselves on the world. We have no land: it’s occupied. We have no state: we are refugees… We had to ring the bell in a different way.”

But Entebbe changed the tactical calculus. From then on, Palestinians had to reckon on the possibility that Israel might travel halfway across the world to free its people, if that’s what it took. Hijackings were abandoned, then, a few years later, the Palestine Liberation Organisation renounced “the armed struggle”. Entebbe had helped establish the notion that Israel’s reach was simply too long for it to be defeated militarily.

In Uganda, Amin’s humiliation would lead to his overthrow less than three years later.

Further afield, the raid would be taught at military colleges, including Sandhurst, as the model special forces operation.

In 1980, when 52 US embassy staff in Tehran were held hostage, Jimmy Carter asked to see Shimon Peres – who had been defence minister during Entebbe (and was played by Burt Lancaster

There is perhaps a more subtle legacy, too. A year after Entebbe, Israel took the diplomatic path, engaging in direct negotiations – which led to an eventual peace treaty – with Egypt. Even so, the outrageous success of Operation Thunderbolt planted a thought among some on the Israeli right that proved hard to shift: the belief that there were few problems to which there was not a military solution, that the unglamorous business of compromise could be avoided, so long as the men in uniform were sufficiently creative, courageous or crazy to think of an alternative.

Few Israeli politicians would admit they might be prone to an Entebbe syndrome, but that is often how it looks.

It also helps account for the most noticeable change since July 1976. The admiration triggered by Entebbe soon gave way to worldwide opposition to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, to the wars that have come regularly since and, of course, to the entrenchment of the Israeli occupation. In the four decades that have passed, Entebbe and the feelings it stirred have come to feel very far away.

But not for the people involved and those they left behind. Not for Israel’s prime minister, who recalls the loss of his brother as “like somebody amputated your arms and legs and you’re never going to be whole again”. Not for Benny Davidson, who says of Entebbe, “I left as a child of 13, and I came back as a mature young man.” And not for his mother Sara, now 81 years old, who still has tears in her eyes as she remembers the moment she and her child were saved and who says, 40 years on: “The whole thing is still inside me.”

Binyamin Netanyahu at his brother’s grave. Photograph: Ahikam Seri/AP

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Benny Fried ma

By C haya Sara Schlu ssel

Many people are of the opinion that only contemporary music appeals to our generation. Think modern pop, with a Jewish twist. They are under the impression that unless frum music reflects modern culture, it will not resonate with its audience. But one song just toppled that notion in an instant. It proved that people’s neshamos are thirsting for authentic Jewish sound, and genuine music that emanates from the heart, will penetrate the heart – no matter how distant or disheartened the listener may seem. That song is “A Yid.” Sung with all the warmth and sincerity that is quintessential Benny Friedman, the track hit the Jewish world with the force of an emotional firestorm, igniting souls and uniting an entire nation.

FEATURE CENTER

Center Spirit Magazine met up with Benny Friedman, to get his personal take on the astounding success of “A Yid.” In his signature humble way, Benny deflected the praise and directed his success to the One who is in control. He says, “I could never have predicted or envisioned how this song would take off. It was all Hashgacha.”

18 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

ee-r r p p w aavveed oow h h h h r r d e e .. eevv iissiioonnee ooff ff n n d d e e aakk ..”” oouull oorr eennvv lld t t c c d I I ““ uu d d hhaa o o e e c c t t w w a a c c g g d dii ssoonng hhg s s a a H H tthhiiss aass aallll w IItt w

Benny Friedman doesn’t just sing – he conveys. His dance tracks force us out of our seats, his slow ballads pierce us and bring us to tears. His masterful performances take listeners on an unparalleled journey through a full spectrum of emotions. It is unsurprising that Benny has been singing all his life. He reminisces, “My uncle, Avraham Fried, was my childhood hero. At every opportunity, I would belt out his songs, along with my other personal favorites; at the Shabbos table, in yeshiva, at my friends’ simchos, anywhere I found an available stage and a mic.”

Eventually, people started sitting up and taking notice when the talented up-and-comer took over a song. He started getting requests to sing at events, and Benny Friedman quickly became a household name.

an

ee-w hhoow ff.. e ooff aa..””

When a yeshiva in California did a show, they asked him to be their opening act.

He was happy to comply, and the audience loved every minute of it.

His career took on a life of its own, snowballing from ‘singing for fun,’ to singing for organizations, events, and special occasions.

When Izzy Taubenfeld a’h, owner and president of legendary production company Sameach Music, heard a recording of a Chicago dinner at which Benny Friedman was the headliner, Izzy offered him the opportunity to record an album. The CD “Taamu” catapulted him further into JM stardom, with hits like “Misod” and “Moshiach.” With the release of “Yesh Tikvah,” Benny rose to the very top of the JM stratum, and that track could be heard blasting from homes and cars throughout every frum community for months. What followed was a cavalcade of spectacular songs, one following another in quick succession: “Bishvili,” “Kulam Sharim,” ”Tatty My King” and the empowering blockbuster, “Ivri Anochi.” Bonei Olam featured the stunning “V’zakeini” on their campaign, inspiring 18,000 women to contribute towards the future of Klal Yisroel. When asked what his favorite song is, Benny had to give it some thought. “I’d have to say my favorite is “Charosho.” I wanted to do it for a long time, I worked on it for a long time, and I think it’s the perfect fun-filled, positive energy song. It’s all about appreciating Hashem and the incredible people in our lives.”

““M Myyuunnc cl Avv hhaam rraa-mFFrriieedlee,,A d , , w waassm cchhiillddhh myy o o o o eevveerryy ddhheerroo.. A Att ooppppoorr IIw t t u unniittyy,, woouulldd b b e e l lttoouutthh ssoonnggss iiss , , a a l l o onnggw ootthheerr w iitthhm p p e e r r s s o o rriitteess;;aa nnaallffaavv myy ttaabbllee,, tttthheeSShhaabbbboo-i m myyffrriieeinnyyeesshhiivvaa,,aatooss t nnddss’’ssi aannyyw i m m cchh wh aavvaaiillaabheerreeIIffoouunnddooss,, b m miicc..”” lleessttaaggeeaanndaann daa

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When renowned producer Donny Gross presented the song “A Yid” to Benny, he grew instantly attached to it.

Written by skilled songwriter Chayala Neuhaus, “A Yid” was hauntingly beautiful, reminiscent of the Jewish music of old. Benny says, “I never record a song I don’t like.

I have to connect with it right from the start, or I won’t use it. Then, as a song develops, it keeps getting better and takes on more layers and dimensions, until it becomes a beautiful, finished product. With ‘A Yid,’ I was immediately hooked.” But Benny was busy, and although he intended to record it, somehow it kept getting kicked to the sidelines. It was 6-7 months before he finally tackled it.

FEATURE CENTER

By that time, Corona had come and devastated our collective morale. Although the tragedy had largely passed, its effects lingered in the hearts and psyches of the entire community, as we were left saddened and confused.

Benny explains, “I would never have felt comfortable using a crisis as an opportunity to record a song. But Corona was different. It was a crisis that effected everyone, everywhere. It was over, but not forgotten. And I felt that the song would help uplift people’s spirits.” Shortly after it was released, Benny recorded it again in an acapella version, which went instantly viral. “We thought we were releasing a song about something that had passed. But for reasons unknown to man, more disasters hit Klal Yisroel, and the song

20 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

that was supposed to be a comfort for yesterday’s pain, ended up being like a kind of therapy for a new, current tragedy. Which shows how little we are in control, and how much Hashem is in charge.” With the catastrophe in Meron, we were left reeling. Confusion, pain and despair all fought their way to the surface of our minds and hearts. We desperately needed reassurance and encouragement. We needed to be reminded that our Father loves us, and He has a plan.

Benny admits that although he was really happy with the way “A Yid” came out, he never imagined the extraordinary response it engendered. Even before Lag B’omer, it had become a sensation with people worldwide. After the calamity in Meron, it became a profound source of comfort and support. People reached out to him from across the globe, from every community, telling him how much the song meant to them. Every listener took it as a personal message, an individual dose of much-needed inspiration. “Honestly, I have mixed feelings about the overwhelming reaction towards “A Yid.” I’m grateful to have played a part in heartening so many people. But when people tell me they listen to it all day because it helps them deal with the terrible challenges in their lives… I really wish that wasn’t necessary.”

“A Yid” could have held up half a century ago. It’s real.

It has no electronic gimmicks, no synthesized backing – it’s in no way a reflection of secular culture. Instead, it’s an enduring theme song for emunah, a bolstering of the neshama, and an imbuement of faith. Just the way a hartzige niggun was always meant to be. And the fact that it resonates so explosively with such a wide-ranging audience, is truly an accomplishment. It’s a testament to the fact that genuine Jewish music is still very much alive.

rrddaa o o c c e e r r eerr .. ““IInneevvIIddoonn’’ttlliikkee ssoonngg ttooccoonn-- tt IIhhaavvee iitthhiittrriigghh w rrtt,, a a nneeccttw t t s s e e mtthh ’’ttuussee ffrroom oonn Y w w I I iidd,’,’II r r Y oo A A ‘ ‘ iitthh W W ttee-. . a a . . i i t t ii d d e e m mm w waassiim kkeedd.”.” o o o o h h llyy

The Creator of “A Yid”

Chayala Neuhaus

By Chaya Sara Schlussel

Ask people what their favorite song is, and their answer will largely depend on a combination of factors including age, community, and popular trends. A yeshivish guy in his mid-forties, living in Lakewood, will almost inevitably start waxing poetic about the songs he grew up with – from the vocal power of MBD, to the warm ‘hartz’ of Avremele, to the tear-jerking ballads of Abie Rotenberg.

A teenager living in the Five Towns will more likely start belting the high-octane, up-tempo beats of 8th Day or the dance floor hits of Uri Davidi. It’s all about demographics.

Which makes it all the more incredible when a single song speaks to an entire generation; from the Bais Yakov schoolgirl to the Holocaust survivor, from black kappel to colorful kipah srugah; from Brooklyn to Belgium to Bnei Brak, the song “A Yid” has captured hearts and uplifted souls without discrimination. It’s both timely and timeless – a classic that’s as relevant today as it would have been half a century ago, and doubtless will continue to be for decades to come. The teenager who’s struggling spiri-

tually hums it right along with the zeide for whom physical pain and loneliness are a daily challenge. “A Yid never breaks, and a Yid never bends, and a Yid never gives up in the night.” Those words strike a chord with Klal Yisroel that is more poignant and pertinent than anyone would have imagined.

I caught up with Chayala Neuhaus, the talented composer and lyricist who masterminded the song “A Yid,” to find out what inspired her, and how it feels to know that your song is literally changing the frum world one Yid at a time. “I’ve been composing since I was 11, and I’ve never stopped since.” There’s a smile in her voice as she recounts how she would walk around holding a tape recorder practically everywhere she went. Whenever inspiration struck, she’d sing into the device so as not to forget the tune. Later, she’d tweak it and fine-tune it, molding it into an actual song. By the time she was 18, she was composing and writing professionally for camps, schools and

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people who want to boost their musical abilities,” she says. “I got a recording studio when I was little. Today, Chayala explains that what really drives her is the ineveryone’s buying studio equipment but they don’t reaherent message in the song. If the lesson she’s imparting lly know what to do with it. They don’t know what good is one that resonates with her, she will invariably deliver audio is supposed to sound like. But if they’re going to something beautiful. Sometimes the song is so meanindo studio recording, they might as well do it well – and gful to her, it practically writes itself. “The great thing I have the experience to help them.” She’s been training about songwriting is that you get to put a message right people privately for the last 12 years, but because of the into listeners’ pockets. People don’t always have time or Covid lockdown, she finally had the time to consolidate patience tuning in to a 45-minute speech, but a 3 ½-mithe training into a broader-reaching nute song can pack the same punch, course. Ever resourceful, Chayala put in a fraction of the time.” And while a together a course that teaches wo“I got a lecture is inspiring for the moment, it men and girls how to implement great is usually quickly forgotten amid the recording studio sound and audio. Not surprisingly, the daily grind. By contrast, a song is placourse sparked and took off. It caught when I was little. yed repeatedly, and so its influence with teens who were recording for echoes with every press of the play Today, everyone’s on high school productions, married wobutton. “I’m not a singer, I’m a writer,” buying studio men who were looking for new career Chayala relates. “Which means I don’t options, and professional musicians equipment but need ‘fillers’ or shallow songs to fill up who wanted to create music from the an album. My goal is always to create they don’t really comfort of their own workspaces. Now, music with meaning.” know what to do she is no longer limited to students in By the time she was 29 years old, she her own vicinity. This online platform with it.” had hundreds of tracks, all of which has given her the opportunity to reach were close to her heart. Contemplapeople around the globe, and provide ting the idea of producing her own CD, them with a comprehensive curriculum that inculcates she collected the ones she felt were most profound, and the art of songwriting, along with the recording, mixing tried them out on a test audience. Those listeners were and mastering of incredible music in new, innovative instantly wowed. At the time, a renowned child soloist by ways. There’s a whole virtual community of talented the name of Dovid Pearlman kept coming to her studio students, comprehensive workshops, and meetings on to record various projects he was working on. She decizoom to spread the harmony. Sure, there are Youtube ded to collaborate with him and release an album. With videos that teach pro audio, but they’re not geared to the the encouragement and support of her ever-growing mores of the frum world. With Chayala’s course, wouldfan base, she eventually created “Miracles,” a collection be artists are getting top-quality training, without haof her favorite works, in 2015. “Miracles” touched the ving to fill their headspace with non-Jewish junk music. heartstrings of discerning audiences worldwide, who Because each of us is, after all, “A Yid.” were captivated by Chayala’s inimitable writing style. It The song “A Yid” was composed for a school play years was so well received that “Miracles 2” was released three ago. Chayala was always very attached to it. She even years later, sung by Yehuda Kirschner and produced by got a few offers from singers to purchase it, but she held the legendary Donny Gross. Songs like “Im Atem Mishaback because she wanted the perfect singer to do it justimrim,” “Miracles” and “Holding Back the Tide” became ce. So it lay in her song stash collecting musical dust mothe melodies kids sang around the campfire and moms tes until Donny Gross presented it to Benny Friedman, sang while washing the dishes. who was immediately touched by the depth of emotion Chayala’s been teaching piano, voice and guitar for in it. At that point, in the summer of 2020, the urgent years. Between that, fulltime mommying, and freelantrauma of Corona had already passed, but we were all ce writing for productions and events, she was always still so confused and dejected by all we’d been through. too busy to reach out to singers and expand her horiWe needed a song to uplift us and make us feel whole zons. But those singers eventually found her. Mordechai again. To strengthen us and encourage us and tell us that Shapiro, Moshe Tischler, Uri Davidi, Benny Friedman – everything would be alright. When “A Yid” was released they were all looking for quality material, and they knew in February, nobody could have fathomed the response. exactly where to go.

“The track became the theme song for the Meron traToday, Chayala runs C-note Studios, a musical engigedy, which actually makes me both incredibly humbled neering studio where women and girls can learn to optiand slightly uncomfortable. Humbled because I had the mize their talents. “I have a very big passion for training wonderful zechus to be mechazek many people in such

FEATURE CENTER

organizations.

22 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

a fundamental way. And uncomfortable because it might seem exploitative of the disaster, which of course was never my intention.” It’s already been covered in Yiddish and acapella versions. It’s been used as the soundtrack for video clips of people suffering in hospitals, of teenagers dealing with spiritual challenges, of a rebbe in cheder sitting and singing it emotionally with his students. People from every walk of life have reached out to Chayala with the same personal statement: “I feel like you wrote that song just for me.” One woman admitted that her husband hasn’t been religious for a while, but he listened to “A Yid” for an entire week straight, on repeat.

It’s like a chant, a personal mantra. No matter what they are going through, no matter how weak or inadequate or vulnerable – the song is a private reassurance to every Yid that we, as a nation, will persevere. We will find our resilience.

Chayala says she is incredibly moved by the overwhelming feedback. “As a writer, I always wonder whether or not a song will be well received. And sometimes, the lines that I consider taking out are the ones that end up resonating with people the most.” With the medium of music, she’s grateful to be able to connect with so many listeners, in her own private way.

Klal Yisroel has endured so many tragedies recently, we often find it hard to catch our collective breath and move on. We feel like we’ve been punched one time too many, and we’re left reeling. The song “A Yid” reminds us that sometimes, all we can do is accept. We can’t always fix what’s broken, or change what’s unrelenting. But we can rise to the challenge and be what Hashem needs us to be, even in the hardest times. All we need to do is remember that our Father loves us – and that’s what “A Yid” holds on to.

A Yid

Lyrics

My friends, in times like these It’s hard to see past the insanity In a reality So uncertain and unknown Life as we knew it - Forever changed And there’s no peace of mind to be found Who can even make sense of tomorrow When our dreams keep crashing to the ground And yet as we rise to greet another day And the sun is still bright in the sky Always a reason to hope for better times Though it seems like the answer’s worlds away We’ve got enough just enough to keep us going Holding on to unbroken simple faith Because a Yid never breaks And a Yid never bends And a Yid never gives up in the night A Yid perseveres, through the deepest despairs His emunah strengthens him for the fight

And a Yid understands that Hashem has a plan And that’s all it takes to make it through His Tatte loves him that’s what a Yid holds on to The world went dark The crouds dispersed On the streets that were once filled with light But a brilliant light emerged from deep inside our hearts Shuls were shuttered and still But our prayers rang through our homes Instead of looking out for inspiration We dug deep and found strengths we’d never known And one more time We will rise to greet another day Where every moments more precious than ever And life’s sweetest little joys they are the treasure Because when it feels like the answers worlds away We’ve got enough More then enough to keep us going We’re holding on to unbroken simple faith

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Behind thescenes Boro Park Center Opens its Kitchen, While Staff Members Open Their Hearts to Nurture Residents Back to Health

on i t i d E n e h c t i K

By Yehudit Garmaise

W BTS BORO PARK CENTER

hile serving 504 residents and hundreds of additional family members and staff 365 days a year might give pause to the even the most seasoned baalbuste, it is all in a day’s work for Chaim Brull, Boro Park Center’s food service director, and his highly organized, competent, energetic, and loving team of 62 uniformed employees, who work together like a well-oiled machine.

To explain how he and his team create their magic every day, Mr. Brull gave Center Spirit Magazine a “behind-the-scenes look” at how he and staff create three kosher meals a day, plus snacks, parties, and special events: all of which are attuned to each resident’s likes, needs, and dietary restrictions.

The day at Boro Park Center’s kitchen begins at 5am, when Rabbi Yisroel Friedlander, Boro Park Center’s lead mashgiach, unlocks the door. As the only staff member with a key, he launches the whirlwind activity that is to soon ignite, when he is joined by a chef, four cooks, and two cooks’ helpers, who start cooking breakfast and also start prepping for lunch.

24 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Boro Park Center’s chef Mr. Sammy Ben, a Moroccan Jew, has cooked in kitchens as impressive and varied as that of the King of Morocco, French bakeries, and the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel in Manhattan.

Mr. Ben, who is an expert fruit carver and master baker, as well as a chef, is especially beloved for his delicious treats and incredible baked goods. He is famous for his fresh, hot cheese danishes that are served to the residents on Shavous mornings.

At 6am, the “tray line personnel” report for duty, and at 6:30am sharp, kitchen staff start “setting up the tray line,” which means warming up all the palettes or warming elements and heating up the plates in plate warmers so that residents’ plates of food can be kept hot until they are served.

While the palettes and plates reach high heat, the kitchen staff puts all the cold food and condiments on the trays on which residents will eat.

During COVID, the New York Department of Health (DOH) recommended that institutions use disposable

plates to avoid transmission of the virus. Mr. Brull, however, did not like the idea of residents eating on paper plates, and so after researching the safety of using dishwashers with extra high temperatures, he received the approval of his supervisors to allow the kitchen staff to turn up the temperatures to 190 degrees on both the dairy and meat dishwashers, so as to ensure that the kitchen’s China plates would be sufficiently cleaned, sanitized, and virus-free.

As the pallets heat up, staffers check each resident’s individual preferences and dietary restrictions, which are recorded on individual tickets. Then, the customized condiments, breads, milk, and desserts are placed on the trays until 7am, when the cooks send the hot food “to the tray line.”

Actual meal served The mashgiach, who ensures that all proper at Boro Park Center temperatures are maintained for food safety the and to keep food hot, also turns on the flames and unlocresidents in each of the facility’s 10 ks all the refrigerators and freezers. floors.

While staffers continue to set up the trays and send food Creating residents’ trays is serious business. Staff memdown the tray line, seven other kitchen staffers, while rebers do not leave their posts, and everyone must focus maining focused on residents’ customized tickets, start intently on each individual tray to make sure that every to add each resident’s required hot food. Then, a “checresident gets all of his or her needs met and all restricker” ensures that each resident’s food requests are on tions considered. each tray before a loader take the trays to stack them into

the carts.

The trays in the carts are carefully ordered by residents’ rooms and bed numbers, so that “transporters” can deliver the trays quickly and easily to all of

Not only does the kitchen staff deliver residents’ customized trays as quickly as possible, but the staff takes the time to use many different types of foods and many different colors to make all of the center’s serving trays look attractive and appealing.

“You can see on the trays, which get place mats on Yom Tov and other holidays to provide heimishekeit, that we do our best to make our residents feel happy and cared for,” Mr. Brull proudly said. “We don’t just ‘put food on a plate.] Everything you can think of, we make sure to provide.”

In addition to putting their hearts and souls into everything they serve, kitchen staff members always works at top speed because the tray line is automatic.

“Once it’s going, you really can’t stop it,” Mr. Brull said with a laugh.

Fifteen minutes later, which is record time for such a large facility with hundreds of residents, all the residents get delicious hot meals.

Actual meal served

r at Boro Park Cente

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dents are here for rehabilitation and to feel better, and we do our utmost to play our role in providing nurturing meals,” said Mr. Brull, who first started cooking for crowds when he was in yeshiva in Williamsburg and he was invited to work in the kitchen.

“Food sets the mood, and food helps people to feel healthy, happy, and positive,” he said. “Without food, you can give as much medication as you want, but you are not going to get a positive result. Food is the medicine.”

After 30 years of nourishing people back to health, such as when he cooked for Aim B’yisroel in New Square, the Aishes Chayil D’Kiryas Joel Mothers Relief Center Inc., and the Friedwald Center for Rehab and Nursing in Rockland County, he speaks from experience.

For nine years, Mr. Brull also cooked for 5,000 boys at Yeshiva Avir Yakov and Girls’ School of New Square and for the thousands of guests who were m’sameach at Avir Yaakov’s wedding hall.

BTS BORO PARK CENTER

“We work very, very fast, and we stay very focused,” Mr. Brull said. “We have to be very precise.”

26 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Soon after delivering the breakfast trays, kitchen staff begins to collect the empty food trays so that they can be scraped, scrubbed, and cleaned in order to be ready for lunch at noon, which staffers starts to set up at 10:30am.

“All of our tasks come together like a beautiful puzzle so that we can deliver to the residents beautiful, nice, heimish, geshmake’h meals three times a day, every day. Resi-

For Boro Park Center, Mr. Brull creates menus that change according to the times of year, the holidays that coincide, and what produce is in most in season.

“We are inspired by the time of year and we celebrate accordingly,” said Mr. Brull, who explains that he creates four-week cycles of menus.

For instance, in the summertime, Boro Park Center just re-launched its tradition of hosting residents from rotating floors, outside on the patio, for barbeques on Wednesday evenings.

“We serve barbeque chicken, hot dogs, burgers, French fries, onion rings, and watermelon. All our lunches and dinners have hot soups. Everyone loves our soups,” he said with pride.

What if whatever is on offer does not happen to appeal to residents?

“Every lunch and dinner, we serve hot soups, which everyone loves. We also serve simple sandwiches, such as bologna, salami, turkey, peanut butter and jelly, tuna salad and egg salad. The sandwiches are presented elegantly and look appetizing and delicious,” Mr. Brull answered.

Also available at every meal are beautiful platters with tuna salad or egg salad served with lettuce, sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Everyone can always find something he or she likes at every meal. In addition, if residents cannot find anything they like, the kitchen is always open and accommodates even the smallest requests.

On Shabbos mornings, the kitchen provides a weekly Kiddush in Boro Park Center’s shul, before serving dishes that many residents find reminiscent of many Shabbos afternoon meals: kugel, sweet carrots, farfel, and a hearty cholent.

made, homey, simple, ‘like my bubby used to make it.’”

Yom Tov at Boro Park Center is a particularly special time when the kitchen pulls out all the stops.

“We use special Yom Tov-themed foods, and we make a big deal out of [what we serve and our] food presentation for every holiday,” Mr. Brull declared.

On Pesach, for example, the center provides elaborate seder meals; for Sukkos, the Center serves different steaks, and on Rosh Hashana, residents receive fish heads, Cornish hens, and other simanim.

To enable Boro Park Center’s staff in creating their magic on a daily basis, three times a day, Mr. Brull has large quantities of groceries delivered every day, throughout the week.

“One day we get the refrigerated foods, one day we get the non-perishables, and one day the paper goods,” related Mr. Brull.

Not only does Boro Park Center serve particularly tasty, healthy, heimish, and beautifully presented food, but the kitchen carefully and lovingly customizes every resident’s diet to match his or her health needs and personal tastes.

To do so, Victoria Malev, who is the facility’s chief

“We serve food that tastes very much like anything you would get in your own home,” Mr. Brull says. “I believe in food with a lot of heimishekeit.”

What does “heimish” mean in terms of food?

“Simple, good, baked chicken falling off the bone is a ‘heimish piece of chicken.’ A tuna pattie is ‘heimish’ when it is made with tuna, breadcrumbs, eggs, and love, and then fried on a griddle, just like at home.

“A cholent made with fried onions, potatoes, beans, and good pieces of meat is ‘a heimish cholent.’ A chicken soup made with chicken bones and vegetables-that is ‘heimish,’ which means: home-

Chaim Brull, Head of the Dietary Depar tment at Boro Park Center with Mr.

Sammy Ben, BPC Chef

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sident needs, wants, likes and dislikes, so that we can properly take care of each resident.”

Even though in general, the kitchen cooks without sugar and salt, the staff takes care to create dishes that match residents’ cultural needs and preferences to equal what would they eat in their normal lives, outside the facility.

Although providing favorite foods, while also accommodating residents’ restrictions can be challenging, Mr. Brull and his team always provide thoughtful, loving, and nutritious solutions.

For instance, residents who cannot eat sugar receive sugar-free cake and cookies, and those who cannot eat salt can eat salt-free potato kugel on Shabbos.

In one particularly innovative solution, Brull substituted sesame oil for sesame seeds to provide the right flavor for a Chinese Sesame Chicken dish that was requested by one resident who has trouble swallowing sesame seeds.

For residents who have food allergies, such as to gluten, Brull shops himself for alternative breads, flours, and gluten-free products that he keeps at the ready in the kitchen.

Seder Night at BPC

clinical dietician, heads a full staff of dieticians who make it their mission to speak with all residents upon their arrivals.

BTS BORO PARK CENTER

Speech and language pathologists, as well as other clinicians, also help to determine what foods should be allowed and which should be restricted for each resident.

“The hardest part in feeding our residents is finding out exactly what they can eat,” explained Mr. Brull, “so every resident meets with the center’s clinical team, speech team, and dietary team to create individual menus that will help us to nurse every resident back to health. We work hand in hand together to understand what each re-

28 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Not only is the kitchen of Boro Park Center attentive to residents’ personal preferences and nutritional needs, but the staff takes care to provide multiple different consistencies of food that many residents need to chew, swallow, or tolerate their meals.

Mr. Brull revealed the extent to which he and his staff go to nurture his residents with nutritious, heimish food, and individualized attention, when he remembered a resident to whom no food seemed to hold any appeal.

The resident was losing a lot of weight, was complaining about a severely upset stomach, and was not able to hold any food down.

In response, Mr. Brull and clinical dieticians Malev and Jewel Ifill walked up to talk to the resident to see how

Meal Prepping at BPC

be ready-to-go the next day, when we will bake it, so as to serve it fresh.”

Kitchen staffers work on the lunch tray line from 11am to 1pm, at which time the first shift of workers goes on its lunch break, while the second shift continues to clean the tray line and to start scraping, cleaning and sanitizing for the supper meal.

they could help him.

“What did you like before you became ill?” the kitchen’s team members asked. “What is something that you liked at home?”

“Oh, I loved rice pudding and pancakes,” remembered the resident.

After Boro Park Center’s team members evaluated the resident, they determined that the kitchen should create a personalized blend of rice pudding and apple-juice flavored pancakes.

A short period of time later, the resident expressed his gratitude to the kitchen and his caretakers.

“He said that he finally realized the importance of food and how it affects his health,” Mr. Brull recalled. “I work with my heart, and I understand people who are in need.

When I see a patient who comes in very sick and lying on a bed, who then later leaves our facility looking healthy, happy, and positive, I can definitely see that I made a difference in that person’s life.

Not only are the cooks creating fresh food every single day, but they are always multi-tasking by prepping for the next day.

“We have to make sure to defrost the chickens, meats, and all the fishes safely,” said Mr. Brull. “When we are serving eggplant Parmesan the following day, for instance, we prep all the fried eggplant the day before so that it will

“We have to make sure to clean up and immediately start getting ready for supper,” Mr. Brull said as he described the continuous hum of activity in Boro Park Center’s kitchen. “No one has time to walk around and do nothing.

All staffers are assigned to certain jobs and their tasks, and they have to do their tasks 100%.”

The Boro Park kitchen maintains its extremely high standards both by continuously testing and tasting all the foods that are served every day, while also keeping its kitchen immaculately clean and safe.

“Everyone in the kitchen has one goal: We want to give residents as many opportunities as we can to make them feel at home,” Mr. Brull explained. “The process of our kitchen follows the same pattern every day, except for Yom Kippur and Shabbos, when we don’t cook.”

“We always make sure our residents are served 100%.

There are no shortcuts.

“Our residents always come first. Our entire team comes in every day with the same question: ‘What we can do to make our residents happier today than they were yesterday?’”

Mr. Chaim Brull would like to express his gratitude to Hashem first and to his entire team: Jewel Ifill, Sammy Ben, Rabbi Yisrael Friedlander, cooks: Mary Sarkodie, Sandy Bolden, and Amika alexander, supervisors: Pamela Mclean, Calixe Mingot, Rebekah Butler, and his entire Dietary team. With all of you, we make our mission possible.

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ODD NEWS FROM AROUND T Idaho Dive team finds lost iPhone with alarm still sounding in Idaho river

Tom Adams said he and his wife, Marlo, were kayaking on the Snake River when his boat overturned causing him to lose his phone, keys and wallet into the fast-moving waters.

Adams contacted the Bingham County Search and Rescue Dive Team, which agreed to help look for his lost property as a training exercise.

"They use opportunities like this to practice and get more dive time in to prepare for the real calls, and more important events such as lifesaving," Adams told the East Idaho News. "Many members of the dive team met at the boat ramp, geared up, and hit the water. Because of the current, they had to use a safety line."

Adams said it took about 20 minutes of searching before one of the divers surfaced with his keys and his iPhone -which was still sounding an alarm. "It was still alarming from my Sunday morning wake-up call reminder," Adams said.

Florida Customer finds 7-foot gator inside Florida post office

Washington, D.C Woman Wore Same Hawaiian Shirt To 264 Zoom Meetings — And No One Noticed

Sheriff’s officials say someone stopped by the post office about 3:30 a.m. ET Wednesday to drop off a package and saw the 7-foot (2-meter) gator roaming around the lobby. The building has automatic double doors that allows off-hours entry, officials said.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission considers an alligator a “nuisance” animal if it is 4 feet or longer and deemed a threat to people, pets or property.

30 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

The resident of Washington, D.C., identified only as “Jackie,” said she wore the shirt to 264 remote meetings between April 2, 2020, and June 16, 2021. “I was like, wouldn’t it be funny if I wore this shirt again? Like that’d be a funny joke and everyone would say something,” she said. Sadly, no one said anything.

“And then I thought, well, I’m going to keep doing this until someone notices, and no one ever noticed,” she said.

Keeping the gag going despite the lack of reaction wasn’t easy, Jackie said. “I had some real ups and downs. Like the first month, I was like, this is really funny.

Then it’d be like, oh, I’m still wearing this. And then it’d be funny again,” she said.

Jackie finally spilled the beans about her shirt on her last day of work.The reaction was ... not what she expected. “When I told my team that I had been wearing the same shirt, they didn’t know what I was talking about. They hadn’t noticed,” she said. “The intern literally said, ‘On purpose?’ So, there’s that,” Jackie said.

D THE WORLD France Australia

People Are Stealing Legos.

111-Year-Old Australian Man Claims That Eating Chicken Brains Once A Week Is The Secret Behind His Longevity 111-year-old Dexter Kruger, Australia's oldest-ever man has claimed that eating chicken brains is the secret to his long, long life.

Kruger gave an interview to Australian Broadcasting Corp. at his nursing home in the rural Queensland state town of Roma. He said that a weekly addition of the poultry dish was the reason for his longevity.

"Chicken brains. You know, chickens have a head. And in there, there's a brain. And they are delicious little things", Kruger said.

"There's only one little bite," he added.

Kruger's son, Greg, 74, said that his father's simple outlook on life is how he has managed to live for so long.

French police have been investigating an international ring of toy thieves with a particular affinity for Lego. In this case, three suspects were caught taking boxes of Legos from a toy shop near Paris, with the goal of selling them in Poland. And it's not just Europe. Lego robberies have happened in the United States as well. Last month, a man in Oregon was arrested after local police suspected he stole $7,500 worth of Lego toy sets.

There's a lot of money in Legos. Lego sets come out in limited editions and they soon become collectors' items.

There might even be a whole black market for the bricks, Lego specialist Gerben van IJken tells Scott Simon on Weekend Edition. "Well, that's very difficult to prove that there's a black market. However, there is an enormous amount of collectors out there who are missing out on certain sets right now and are willing to pay a lot of money for these sets," he says.

Van IJken is an auctioneer at an auction website for collectibles. He says the most valuable and sought-after sets are those in their original packaging, not opened yet. For example — Lego Café Corner, a set released in 2007 for about $150, can nowadays run up to $3,000 if kept in its original condition, van IJken says. Other sets routinely fetch thousands of dollars in online marketplaces. Some sellers are asking for more than $3,500 for an unopened set of the Lego Millennium Falcon.

Just like almost everything else in the world, the pandemic could be a driving force behind this phenomenon. "Especially during the lockdown period, as we are in right now — it's still extremely popular," van IJken adds. "And Lego sales are still extremely high, not only in the Lego Company itself but on our platform too. We saw a 100% rise in sales over the past year."

Thailand Visitor crashes through kitchen wall in Thailand Ratchadawan Puengprasoppon was awoken in the early hours of Saturday morning by crashing and banging. When she went to find out what had happened, she discovered an elephant’s head poking through her kitchen wall beside the drying rack.

The male elephant, named Boonchuay, appeared to be looking for something to eat. His trunk rummaged through the kitchen drawers, knocking pans and cooking paraphernalia to the floor. He chewed on a plastic bag as Ratchadawan, unsure what to do, filmed the episode on her phone.

It’s not the first time Boonchuay, who lives in Thailand’s Kaeng Krachan national park, has visited Chalermkiatpattana village. “They come to visit quite often. They always come when there is the local market because they can smell food,” said Itthipon Thaimonkol, the park’s superintendent.

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mp a C r e m m u S ro s ' o t I B t a d n u o r r r! yea e t n e C Park

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Tips to Stay Hydrated in the Summer Months By: Esti Asher, MS, RDN, LD

Although often overlooked, drinking water is an essential and critical recommendation to promote health and wellness. Providing your body with the water that it requires often results in exceptional benefits such as increasing focus, increasing recognition of hunger cues, decreasing fatigue, aiding in weight loss, helping with digestion, flushing out toxins, and improving skin complexion.

HEALTHY LIVING CENTER

Water recommendations vary by individual, but the following is a general calculation used to help determine one’s daily water goal. Aim to drink the amount of water (in ounces) that equals your weight (in pounds) divided by two. For example, if someone weighs 150 pounds, it is recommended that he or she drinks 75 ounces of water per day. (Please note, there are some medical conditions such as kidney disease and congestive heart failure that require fluid-restrictions; it is best to ask your physician if you require a fluid-restriction.) Also, factors such as physical activity level and rising temperatures (which cause us to sweat more) increase our water needs as well.

34 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Esti Asher, MS, RDN, LD is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist and Self-Care Enthusiast on a mission to help women reach their ultimate health and wellbeing potential inside and out. She shares credible, clear and inspiring nutrition information with women via her virtual private practice. To contact Esti with feedback or inquiries regarding her nutritional services, please e-mail her at: esti@estiashernutrition.com or visit estiashernutrition.com.

Disclaimer: The information in this article is for informational purposes only. This article is not meant to be used as Medical Nutrition Therapy and thus is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health conditions. Please consult with your physician if you have specific questions regarding your health.

While drinking water is relatively simple and inexpensive, adopting the habit to drink enough water can sometimes be challenging. Below are 5 tips to help you stay hydrated this summer (and all year round)!

1

Have a daily water goal. Whether you think of your goal in ounces, cups, or number of water bottles consumed, be mindful of what your goal is. It is helpful to keep track of the water you drink throughout the day in order to help you reach your goal.

3

4

2

Know your water preferences. What water temperature do you prefer? Cold?

Hot? Room temperature? With ice? We each have different preferences, and tailoring your beverage to your preference will make drinking water more enjoyable

Think outside the faucet. Drinking water does not need to be basic from the tap or bottle – consider drinking seltzer (carbonated water), tea, or water infused with different fruits.

Sip with a straw! Drinking water with a straw (either disposable or reusable) makes drinking water more effortless and often leads to reaching your daily water goal more easily.

5

Drink throughout the day. Have intentional times throughout the day to focus on drinking water. Furthermore, have a water bottle or cup within reach at (almost) all times, to make it easier to drink throughout the day.

Have a daily water goal. Whether you think of your goal in ounces, cups, or number of water bottles consumed, be mindful of what your goal is. It is helpful to keep track of the water you drink throughout the day in order to help you reach your goal.

1

Fruit salad – Cut up a variety of fruits and place them together in a bowl and enjoy! You can follow a recipe, or simply put one together based on your preferences and/or what you have in your kitchen. The fruit salad can sit within the juices of the fruit themselves, or you can add an additional liquid such as orange juice. If you have apple pieces within your salad, add some lemon juice to prevent them from browning.

3

2

Fruit skewer – It is so fun (for both adults and kids who are old enough) to assemble and eat fruit skewers!

When preparing the pieces of fruit, make sure they are big enough to slide onto the skewer. I recommend using cake-pop sticks for an added safety precaution. Of course, parental supervision is always necessary.

Smoothie – Prepare a smoothie of your choice with whatever (fresh or frozen) fruit that you have on hand. Smoothies are fun, delicious, refreshing, hydrating, and are always appreciated – especially in the hot summer months! In addition to fruits, use a liquid base such as water, milk, milk-alternative (such as almond milk or soy milk), yogurt, or juice. Feel free to include a mild tasting vegetable for added nutrition and hydration as well! For an extra nutrition boost, aim to include a protein such as Greek yogurt or a nut/seed butter as well.

Notice the benefits to reinforce your good habit! When you notice how you have more energy, can think more clearly, and do not feel the need to snack (as much) throughout the day, among the countless other benefits, remind yourself how your efforts to stay hydrated have paid off and are noticeably beneficial.

Use this to reinforce the good habit you are forming. L’Chaim!

35

How to Avoid Slips and Falls at Home.

By: Jeff Grazybowsi - Director of Rehabilitation at Boro Park Center

HEALTHY LIVING CENTER

Many patients who require rehab at Boro Park Center are here because they badly injured themselves taking a fall. What if some of these folks could have avoided falling? Life would certainly be very different for them right now. Let’s take a look at some of the ways we can prevent falls at home.

36 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

One way is making our households safer. If we can get rid of some of or correct some of the things around our home that could make us trip while organizing our home we would be a lot better for it.

1 2 3 4 5 6 First, make sure that all electrical, telephone and other cords are secured closely against a wall so we don’t trip over them

Area rugs and floor mats that we can trip over or that might slide out from under us should also be removed so that we don’t slip on them

Clean the clutter. The more organized our houses are and the less things on the floor, the less likely we are to stumble over them

Keep necessary items you may need on the nightstand next to while sleeping i.e. cell phone, water, our pills, etc. Whatever you may need near during the night. At night we are less alert and a bit groggy when first wake up, so if we can avoid getting up we should.

Keep your home well lit. use the maximum watt bulbs that your lamps and fixtures safely recommended. If you’re lighting is too dim it increases the chances of not noticing a hazard you can trip over.

Wear shoes or sneakers when up and about. Our feet tend to not stay in slippers that open in the back causing us to trip. Socks are very comfortable but don’t go well with smooth surfaces.

37

&

Hair Makeup Tips and Tricks by

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HAIR & MAKEUP CENTER

IE M CA

n order to get a flawless can be found in your local pharmakeup application macy and are super budget it is vital to prepare friendly! the skin well. StarNow we are ready to ting with a clean prime the face. Primer face is key! Before I apply gives the makeup a any products on the staying power, and also skin, I use a cleanser or a creates a canvas to start cleaning wipe to cleanse painting the face. I like the skin. Neutrogena wipes the MAC Prep and Prime S S (1) are my favorite for cleaning E Radiant Primer (5). It’s good to S, ST MA the skin. I use the wipes to clean TI use on all skin types and is budget KEUP AR around the eyes,nose, and lips to take friendly. After you’ve moisturized and off any leftover makeup or products. primed the face, it’s time to apply foundation Once the face is clean and bare, I like to go in and continue building up the face! with a moisturizer. Different skin types require An important tip to keep in mind is that you different moisturizers. For someone with oily should not go to sleep with makeup. Make sure skin, it’s best to use an oil free moisturizer, such to wash your face thoroughly before going to as Neutrogena Hydro Boost Moisturizer (2), bed. After you wash your face, moisturize your while someone with dry skin needs a moistuface and around your eyes. rizer with some oil in it. A great moisturizer for I hope you enjoyed these tips! dry skin is Eucerin (3). There’s also normal skin, which means skin that is not oily or dry. Cereve (4) has an amazing moisturizer that I really recommend for normal skin. All these products

Good s Trick

38 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Xoxo, Cami

A good trick before getting makeup done before a simcha is to get a facial two weeks before your event. This will help rejuvenate the skin and make it look glossy and more vibrant. If you would like to prep your skin on your own, it’s important to exfoliate the skin using an exfoliator. This removes all the dead skin cells and creates a smooth canvas to apply makeup.

2

3

4

5

so that they don’t end up with a nasty build up.

This is very important, therefore I recommend shampooing twice then condition, this way you have a thorough cleanse. For those people with more greasy hair, I recommend the same method of washing minus the conditioner.

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When shampooing your hair, it’s very important that your entire head get washed with the shampoo and not just coat the top layer. I recommend S S scratching your head and O R Y OC G There are many different kinds of massaging with the shampoo in H E V ED hair textures, and they each require it to really get a thorough cleanse. For different shampoos, and sometimes different those that have a hard time doing this method, washing methods, for example, a girl with thinI find that it also helps to use a brush in the ner/oily hair should not be using heavy shamshower to help circulate the shampoo properly. poos and conditioners. In fact,she shouldn’t All of my recommended products can be purbe using conditioner at all. There are softer chased in your local pharmacy. shampoos available, such as Garnier Fructise (1) I hope you find these tips helpful or Herbal Essences (2). A person with thicker/ heavier hair can use stronger shampoos and conditioner, like Tresame (3) or Pantene (4).

People who put product into their hair daily should make sure to wash their hair really well

1

TYLIST

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hroughout my many years of working with hair, I have found that sometimes the hair was not being washed properly.

Having a clean fresh head of hair is very important when styling hair, especially for an event.

Most of the time your hair stylist will tell you to wash your hair the night before getting your hair done. There is a difference between unclean hair, and not fresh hair.

3

4

Xoxo Yocheved

5

Good s Trick

6

When it comes to frizzy hair, there are many different ways to get it under control.

1- Use a good mousse, such as Tresemme Extra Hold (5) or L’Oréal Curl Boost (6). Those products can help keep frizzy hair tame.

2- Here’s a cool and brilliant trick that my cousin used to do growing up.

After taking a shower in the evening, tie a bandana tightly around your head and go to sleep with it on. This will ensure your hair dries super flat and smooth. When you wake up in the morning and take off the bandana, most of the frizz will be gone.

3- Another good idea to control frizzy hair is to use a strong hair spray around your hairline, and then comb it back into a pony. This will give you a smooth, clean & polished pony tail. You can use Tresemme Extra Hold (7) or Got2be hairspray (8).

7

8

39

Making Healthy Food Fun and Appealing for Children By: Raizy Fried

“You eat with your eyes first”

HOME & FOOD CENTER

A well-known adage among chefs is, “You eat with your eyes first.” What this adage alludes to is the fact that foods that look unappetizing often are not eaten. And vice versa when food looks pretty, it automatically lends to a tastier experience…

Although presenting healthy food in an appealing manner is important for both children and adults, somehow, we tend to take this topic more seriously when talking about children. I’m not sure why…

Think about it. Imagine the title to this article would read “Making Healthy Food Fun & Appealing for Adults”. For some reason that doesn’t ring well… Maybe because as adults it should be a given? Maybe because as adults we are expected to know better… We should want and crave healthy food no matter what shape it’s served as…

To be perfectly honest, teaching kids to eat healthy food is probably as difficult as teaching adults to avoid unhealthy foods. And between me and you, when fresh veggies are presented beautifully, cut with precision and arranged in a bowl with a sprinkle of spice, it gets me excited…

When it looks pretty, I’ll eat it all. (see photo of breakfast bowl) When it’s in the refrigerator, it’s often time not enticing enough.

Both children and adults entertain the common misconception that healthy eating is blah and boring. While this might be the case if you choose to eat the same food in the same way every single day, there are alternative ways to get your natural vitamins without becoming bored.

Here are some ideas of how to get children (or adults) excited about healthy food choices without bribes:

41

HOME & FOOD CENTER 42 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Plate your veggies. It might take a long time before they eat it, or even allow it to remain in their vicinity, but presenting vegetables in a consistent way will eventually help kids accept them as familiar and acceptable foods. Having veggies, or fruit nicely cut up and plated, ready to grab n’ go, has definitely proven to make them more grabbable and move faster.

Healthy Shish kabob.

Make it interesting. It’s all in the presentation. Make healthy food visually interesting by making shish kabob fruit, all you need is wooden skewers. Arrange fruits or vegetables by slicing or chopping them and then threading them onto skewers. This is a great way to serve vegetables fresh or grilled.

Offer fruits and veggies for the first course.

This is one way to take advantage of hunger to develop lean eating habits. Fruits and veggies are brimming with nutrients but low in calories, so a first course of produce makes sense. I always loved the idea of serving a fresh salad as an appetizer versus as a side dish. Also try offering different fruits and veggies samples while you’re cooking supper, to keep them happy in a healthy way, till supper is ready.

You can grill veggie shish kebobs on medium-high flame turning and brushing with a mixture of olive oil and spices or your favorite marinade for 10 minutes or until cooked.

Face Plates. Fred’s Food Face plates are a great investment and can be found on amazon.com. Each plate has a cute simple face outline of eyes, nose, and mouth.

Kids will have endless fun playing with food designs on the face, they’ll create a hat out of peas, glasses out of cucumbers, a beard out of scrambled eggs and carrot earrings.

While I originally purchased these plates for a fun activity at a Chanukah Party, I have utilized them in many ways since. Face plate provides entertainment that helps even the fussiest eaters make it through a meal. It's where healthy-eating meets imaginative play and innovation.

Where dinner meets dress up. It's deliciously fun!

For an appealing dessert, you can thread a combination of fruit, like berries or melons and serve alone, or alongside melted chocolate or a dipping sauce.

Healthy versions. I love creating healthy versions of junky dishes. For example, creating a play on the traditional ice cream “banana split” using fresh bananas scoops of Greek yogurt topped with fresh berries, granola and cocoa nibs. (see photo) Create a food story. Make veggies and healthy staples exciting by creating fun characters and objects or offering a variety of foods cut up into shapes that they can mix and match.

To me, there’s just nothing as satisfying as making those intelligent little eyes light up. Vitamins aside, I always like to get those creative young minds working. Demonstrate possibilities and enlighten their imaginations!

SNACK Apple & Cheese boat. These are easy to make, delicious, and super healthy.

What you will need: Apple Peanut butter Crisp rice cereal Mozzarella cheese Toothpicks How To: Cut the apple in half, removing the core. Spread peanut butter on top of the lower half of the apple.

Sprinkle with rice crispies.

Cut a sail for your apple boat from a thick slice of cheese and attach with a toothpick.

That’s it, all ready to sail!

43

10 Unexpected Uses for Dryer Sheets You can thank this common household item for making your linens smell fresh, but did you know about these other ingenious uses?

1. REMOVING SOAP SCUM The next time you notice a bit of buildup on your shower door or bathroom tiles, skip the heavy-duty spray bleach and reach for a dryer sheet instead. Wet it lightly under the faucet, and the rest is elbow grease.

2. LOOSENING FOOD RESIDUE A well-worn baking sheet tends to give away its age. To remove stuck-on food residue and dark spots, place a dryer sheet in the middle of the pan, add warm water and a generous squeeze of dish soap, and let it soak. After an hour has passed, remove the dryer sheet, drain the water and simply wipe away the stains with a sponge.

HOME & FOOD CENTER

3. PICKING UP HAIR When it comes to stubborn flyaway hair on your sofa and clothing, cheap lint rollers just don't cut it. Save yourself some aggravation (and cash) and dip into your dryer sheet stash instead. Rubbing a fresh sheet against your clothes and upholstered furniture does the trick every time.

4. MAKING YOUR SCREEN SHINE Since computer screens are electrically charged, they tend to attract dust particles.

Lucky for us, dryer sheets are designed to reduce static cling—meaning they remove the dust and prevent it from resettling.

44 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

5. WIPING DOWN YOUR WINDSHIELD AND BUMPER You may think your car needs a top-to-bottom hose-down, but before you rush off to the car wash, try this quick home remedy: Dampen a fresh or used dryer sheet and run it along your windshield and bumper. The dead bugs and dirt will disappear.

6. LIFTING MELTED WAX OFF HARD SURFACES Give an old candlestick new life by placing it in a sink or bucket with hot water and a dryer sheet. After an hour's soak, use the dryer sheet to wipe away even decades-old wax with ease.

7. REMOVING DEODORANT MARKS That shirt you wore to brunch last weekend still has one more wear in it before it's ready for the hamper, so don't let those telltale deodorant streaks give away your secret. Grab an unscented dryer sheet— you won't even need to wet it—and gently dab at the smudge until it's gone.

9. SHARPENING YOUR SCISSORS As if by magic, carefully running a dryer sheet against a dull blade will restore some of its sharpness. Although it isn't a permanent solution, you'll get enough of an edge back to carry on with that weekend craft project you've been eager to start.

8. KEEPING THE CREEPYCRAWLIES AWAY Before mosquitoes put the kibosh on your cookout, try tucking a dryer sheet or two into your pocket.

Outdoor enthusiasts swear the bugs can't stand the scent.

10. TAMING OF THE DO As if this humble hero of the laundry room didn't already have plenty to do, there's yet another hidden use for the dryer sheet: taming frizz.

Just run one from root to tip and you'll soon be winning the war on frizz and static.

45

And h c a e P Grilled lad a S e s e e Goat Ch N DURATIO

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t into aches, cu e p e ip r - 2 large edges ½-inch w ve oil virgin oli a r t x E ula hes arug - 2 bun c se o r o a t c h ee g d le b m cru - ½ cup ese feta che alnuts opped w h c p u c - ¼

HOME & FOOD CENTER

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ME PREP TI es 10 Minut

ME COOK TI s 2 Minute

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tion: Prepara n to r grill pa o o d in r o t a grill 1. Prehea . high heat d g rill mediumve oil an li o h it w hes e. Set the peac each sid n o 2. Brush e t u 1 min heat for over high . hes aside ther the peac king toge is h w y b sing the dres powder, 3. Make nd garlic a r a g e in wine v whisking the red olive oil, e h t in ly drizzle mbined. then slow ing is co s s e r d e h ly, until t drizzle constant owl and b e g r la a ith your arug ula in rug ula w a 4. Place e h t s . Tos dressing ed with with the is combin g in s s e r til the d hands un s. aches, the leave g rilled pe e h t h it w lnuts. e arug ula pped wa o h c 5. Top th d n a ese, g o at ch e crumbled

salad. s u m m er r e p u s is led. ein to th Notes: when g ril add prot r e o s v e a e fl h c incredible an d go at develop Walnuts it u fr r e h ot hes and The peac

46 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

OM ELLER.C JAMIEG

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ME PREP TI es 27 Minut

ME COOK TI es 25 Minut

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HOME & FOOD CENTER

tion: Prepara

r with and co ve rg e pot la a in toes th e th e pota es abo ve nts: 1. Place to 2 inch r te Ingredie a 1½ w t r, about u es (abo lted cold st tende a to ju s l ta y ti o tl n p h u t il lig oil. Bo m ru s s e ce th e g to a b ater. On - 4 m ediu toes. Brin h cold w ta it o w p d e e s b b in s c ru th e an d r pounds), eel a way s. Drain handle, p 20 min ute to h g u o n e salt a re c o o l m - Kosh er potatoes r, at roo te t u b d d e nsalt ttom an spoons u skins. e th e bo s a e r G - 3 table .

350°F th e ish with e o ven to ture baking d reh eat th le P tempera b m . a 2 ta e r c to so u r t o ven ntainers a 2- quar unce) co sides of - 2 (16 -o a d milk to butter. re a m a n c ilk r u m o s p u e - 1 c mix th ¼-inch peeled rg e bo wl, toes into oked and la o ta c o a p d n r e I a . h 3 Slice th ottom e eggs, sistency. on th e b - 10 larg able con otatoes r p u o e p th f r peppe Place e half o d white ch thick. nds. Plac - Groun eggs ¼ in thick rou bs e m u th r with c e d lic dish . S toes. Top ry brea th e pota e baking as o n ed d e th r s f ve o p o u c on r - 1 a laye 1 teaspo e eggs in son with a e S . e r half of th mixtu of u r c re a m with half sion of th e so entic ver . Sprin kle lf th te a u s h a ta e h with th e DOWN: T pepper to s, ending e d eg g s d white r r n e e y a DRESS IT y la lt la e a d s un d ed a n peat th crisp aro thinly slic um bs. Re chop calls for b re a d c r coarsely tarting to s e n t a th s c ju u l o y r 5 to 10 ake unti toes. But a ru s h r u m bs . B to cool fo c in w d and pota e a llo e ’r A r u . b o s to wh en y min ute ge spoon it all up 5 to 45 work. use a lar and mix edg es, 3 t all th e d e u n o th a h it le w b vor th e ta t th e fla Bring to and wan ing (can min utes. m a e r c s This is e r of d serve.

A MEAL: ne—a lay salad scoop an een it do MAKE IT en leafy s e r e g ’v I t h t d u lig ssic, b nions an it?) for a : Not cla Vidalia o e g you h ear r la Variation 2 slice until ns. Thinly ide. ium h eat on th e s es téed onio o ver m ed k u a n a s a m p s. it e g a lar er, and 15 min ute butter in y egg slic e, 10 to in m liz e e té s m u u a a r I s . a TIP: lo ve it rs . ting to c cinch . I egg laye just star e eg g s a tato and o p soft and e th slicing th etween onions b Add th e

ed to . Th ey us asserole c n ia r a re a d nt Hu n g d eggs, b is indulg e hard-boile made th d i e z t lic : u s s p . Bake e ), t U No (full-fat! us layers Ma a n d r c re a m wo fabulo u dm a a n d t o n s r a , r fo s as G e h d potato py an a, which, aking dis Both Pop layers of ith paprik - q u a rt b n 2 w o p a is u t th s u r o g ye ed spicin pulled s upon la s o I a dd and just of people do layer k pepper, got lazy e h e a rd c ’v I la I b r. y. r h te e c t b n an d b u re m e m e n - c ru crum bs, and gold on’t even idn’t. I d f c re a m y d o t e r w o s t u ’s ian, b it until it o Hu n g a r OM e, is oh s in g a ELLER.C im n JAMIEG you ca . e r u s a g ood m e white for

48 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

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HOME & FOOD CENTER

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50 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

OM ELLER.C JAMIEG

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51

elon m r e t a W Spinach, Salad h s i d a R And N DURATIO es 15 Minut

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HOME & FOOD CENTER

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ME PREP TI es 15 Minut

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tion: llow Prepara large sha a in , d ala ke the s tly 1. To ma s to gen fingertip r u o y e hes, bowl, us ch, radis a in p s e ther th mix toge mint. lon, and all jar waterme e, in a sm t t e r ig a egar, ke the vin 2. To ma he oil, vin t r e h t e og , shake t on with with a lid ds. Seas e e s e m d sesa . Drizzle honey, an d pepper n a lt a s inch of s all a g ood p alad, tos s e h t r e rette ov the vinaig ve. , a n d s er together elon and e waterm h T : ip T Ahead in the 3. Maked stored n a d e r a be prep p to mint can ers for u in a t n o c separate ed in fridge in e prepar b n a c s e he radish weeks.

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52 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

Spina ch, W aterm

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53

Bank Account With a personal savings account Where interest is added on a daily basis Four times the principal amount Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven Where richness is measured by prayer Where you need not worry about after hours For a teller is always there Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven Make deposits at any time Write faith upon your withdrawal slips And trust to your frame of mind Lay up for yourself treasures in heaven Never wait in a rush hour line Then be assured your checks will be cashed Without an overdraft fee or fine Treasures in heaven moths can’t corrupt Thieves can’t break through & steal And assurance you’ll never go bankrupt With the highest of interest yield!!

INSPIRATION CENTER

-Anonymous

54 / The Center Spirit / July 2021

LISTEN &LEARN WITH BORO PARK CENTER

Boro Park Center invites our residents to a fabulous lineup of Shiurim in honor of Chodesh Elul.

AUGUST 8 Rabbi Moshe Tuvia Lieff

AUGUST 22 Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer

AUGUST 15 Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser

AUGUST 29 Rabbi Fischel Schachter

WHERE: THE BORO PARK CENTER SHUL WHEN: 3:00PM

OPEN TO BORO PARK CENTER RESIDENTS AND ACCOMPANYING FAMILY MEMBERS. 55

GET YOUR

FREE

MAGAZINE!

Boro Park Center has made it easier for you to pick up your free copy of our new and improved Center Spirit Magazine!

Look out for our magazine stands in your neighborhood, and enjoy informative articles on health and wellness, personality profiles, torah insights, fabulous recipes, and more!

THE

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