I am so ridiculously fed up. Why does Purim have to be this way? I flip though magazines, I scroll through websites, and all I see are insanely expensive mishloach manos gifts being hawked and peddled to the frum community. I don’t have a problem with expensive things; I enjoy the finer things in life too. But this is beyond the pale. In the past week alone, I have come across advertisements for $5,000 meat boards, $1,000 meat platter (different than a board, apparently), and a $2,500 “King Achashveirosh” platter. Those are at least the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I’m afraid we’ve all fallen on our heads. Just a few years ago, Purim was a day of celebration.

Dear Society, I am writing this letter not to society as a whole, but to each individual, and yes primarily YOU. Imagine the scene: a couple is out on a date night and one of them is on his/her laptop. A mother is putting her kid to bed with the TV screen on for her in the room. Two friends are chatting, but one is just as much in Thailand as on the bench with her friend. That’s extreme, right? Who would do that? Not me! Not in our community! But that’s literally what a phone is. A mini laptop and TV screen. Which means it takes away just as much of your attention. My heart breaks when I pass the playground and see a parent pushing their child on the swing with eyes on the phone. This all also applies even if the phone is not a smart phone.

There is a big problem in our midst, and we are all very aware of it;  It is a problem felt by all, and the term “crisis” is no exaggeration. We are witnessing a devastating situation that is seemingly getting worse each day, and for some inexplicable reason, nothing substantial is being done. I am sorry to bore you, but yes, I am referring to the shidduch crisis. Our holy Chachomim made many leniencies when it came to agunos (meeshum eeguno hekeelu). There is a well-known story of one of the gedolai haposkim from a previous generation to whom an aguna shaalah came. He worked tirelessly and delved into the depth of the sugya and all the relevant halachos to try find a heter, but he was unsuccessful and gave up. Soon after, however, he successfully came up with a heter.

The “goldene medina” that was America back in the 1800s and early 1900s was a sad place as it pertained to Jewish life. Unfortunately, many people were unwilling, unable, or simply didn’t know better regarding keeping all of our beautiful mitzvos. One mitzvah in which Jews in America were severely lacking was that of shaatnez – not wearing wool mixed with linen. For many decades, this mitzvah was pushed aside, with nary anyone to care for it. That changed in the mid-1900s and it is now commonplace for suit stores to have in-house shaatnez checkers to ensure that those buying merchandise will not be nichshol. This is all wonderful. However, I think there is one area that people do not realize or understand the obstacle that they face on literally a daily basis.

Like many others, I was shocked today upon hearing that Donald Trump will be addressing the Torah U’Mesorah President’s Conference on Friday. I understand the importance of being on good terms with influential leaders, but the context in this case is damning. As president, Trump was one of the best ever – if not the best ever – for Orthodox Jews and Israel. There’s little doubt about that in my mind. He has a long list of accomplishments under his belt that I am very thankful for. But now he’s running for president again, and this time, he has been meeting with outspoken antisemites, and perhaps more importantly, refusing to condemn them. It wasn’t even a month ago that Trump invited Kanye West to his home at Mar-a-Lago and dined with him.

Look around at any Jewish neighborhood and you’ll find families struggling. Not one or two, but dozens. I’m talking about families not being able to cough up the money to keep their homes heated. And some can’t even buy food. The food part is what troubles me most. It’s not a secret that inflation has taken a chunk out of everyone’s bank accounts. Everything we need to buy is more expensive; from cheaper items to large expenses, costs have soared for everyone. But this problem appears to be much more acute in the frum community. Take a look at food prices. The prices of eggs, chicken, meat, dairy – literally everything – has shot up way beyond the amount that prices have gone up in non-kosher supermarkets.

It was with no small amount of dismay that I recently witnessed one of the most troubling things I’ve ever encountered in a frum establishment. I was participating in a business meeting at a high-end kosher establishment in New York City when a woman walked over to our table. We had just sat down and taking one quick look at her, I was appalled. If she hadn’t immediately introduced herself as our waitress, I would have assumed someone had ordered “adult entertainment” for us. I don’t say that as a joke. Without getting into the gory specifics, the woman was dressed beyond inappropriately. Professional, yes, but with an unbelievable lack of modesty, including tight, revealing, and suggestive outerwear. I couldn’t believe it.

Reading through the comments on YWN’s recent articles about former President Trump meeting with antisemites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago has me nearly sick with worry. Let me first say that I voted for Trump twice and that I appreciate a lot of what he did for American and global Jewry. But the further away from his presidency we get, the more obvious it becomes that many of my brethren have an actual cultist mindset when it comes to Trump. Last week, Trump met – purposefully, willfully – with Kanye West, a rapper whose antisemitism is impossible to ignore. In the past few weeks alone, West has gone on tirade after tirade and rant after rant against Jews, even saying he would go “death con 3” on them.

As the 2022 election season has worn on, it has become increasingly clear to every Orthodox Jew in New York State that there are two issues at the forefront of this election: yeshiva education and crime/bail reform. That being said, I’m bewildered that we, as part of the broader Orthodox Jewish community in New York, are still left wondering where some of our brethren stand on the crucial upcoming elections. Specifically, we are still waiting to see who the two Satmar factions will endorse for governor. This is particularly surprising to me because in 2018, one of our foremost manhigei hador, Hagaon Harav Aharon Teitelbaum shlit”a, declared war on the New York State Education Department over its adversarial stance against yeshivas.

Dear Editor, Is it time to end the “freezer” – the rule that says that young men who come to one very large Yeshiva from Eretz Yisroel may not date until Tu B’Shvat? The answer should be a strong “yes” because – a growing number of young girls are not getting dates, and many are just not getting married even several years later.  Statistics of still single alumni of Beis Yaakovs in Lakewood, New York, and across the country are very high. There are a number of systemic causes to this. The first cause is the age discrepancy between eligible young men who date and eligible young women who date creating a very unequal pool of candidates.  Currently, the average age of young men when they begin to date is 23.1.  Young women generally begin somewhere between 18 and 19.