I write this as I sit on El Al Flight LY1 from TLV to JFK. I am traveling with my family and my youngest daughter has a diagnosis of Downs Syndrome. I have flown countless times to countless destinations worldwide and I wanted to publicize that the crew on this flight is outstanding! They are professional, caring, mindful of the passengers myriad situations and needs, and they have been handling any and all issues with aplomb. One flight attendant pulled me aside and asked me if my daughter had any specific needs while flying or if she had any fears or anything he should be aware of. I have never been asked that question while flying with her before. I was touched by his sincerity.

Dear Editor, I am writing this email out of sheer frustration about how I was treated today by El Al. My family and I were on flight LY27 scheduled to leave at 12:30AM Monday morning (Sunday night). It then got changed to 4:45AM, and now to 6:00AM. Making matters even worse, is that I and many others had already checked out of our apartments and hotel rooms that we rented for Pesach. We literally have no where to go. El Al has no call center, and no one to talk to. There is a joke of a WhatsApp business account that sends “auto replies” and does absolutely nothing to assist frustrated travelers. It’s  now 1:00AM, and I am spending the night with my family in the airport.

Dear YWN, I am writing this letter on behalf of the thousands of you who have not yet done this. Recently, El Al was purchased by a member of the Frum community. Everyone was thrilled. But I have no idea what changes were made since this airline changed hands, but it’s utter insanity what is going on now, and I’ve personally had enough. For those of you unaware, every single day flight that is scheduled to land in Newark Airport is being changed to JFK Airport. This was done without any prior notice. People who have their cars parked in Newark are now over an hour away from their cars when they land.

As Vladimir Putin straight-up steals land from Ukraine and threatens to completely overtake the country and become a neighboring nuclear threat to other U.S. allies in Europe, all I can think of is: baruch hashem for Biden! Only a sane, strong, no-nonsense force of power like Grandpa Joe could keep Putin from invading all of Europe, and only Biden would release such strong statements in support of Ukraine. The proof is out there for all to see. As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden tweeted exactly two years ago from Monday, “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be President. He doesn’t want me to be our nominee. If you’re wondering why – it’s because I’m the only person in this field who’s ever gone toe-to-toe with him.” How profound, how true. Imagine if Donald Trump were president.

To all of you who enjoy public places such as malls, amusement parks and other attractions: As so many of you have done over the past week, I took my daughters to American Dream Mall for a nice mid-winter vacation outing. They have beautiful lounge areas and I decided to relax while my daughters were enjoying themselves in the water park. As I sat down, I noticed garbage littered about the couches, coffee tables, and floor. Upon further inspection, I saw that this was very obviously kosher food thrown around. This bothered me to no end!! In my mind, this was a huge chilul Hashem! How much effort does it take to pick up after yourself and walk to the nearest garage bin and dispose of your trash? (There are bins all over the mall.) People notice everything!

After hearing about the tragic events last week, I read an article about how to talk to children about what had happened. One of the things it explained was how suicide is a final solution to a temporary problem. After reading the article I thought about how lucky I was that I didn’t need to speak to my kids about this. It also spoke about protecting the innocence of children. In my naivety, I thought they were too young, only 9 and 11. I would be saved from the hassle of needing to have a talk with them. Boy was I wrong. When they came home from school, they brought it up. However, the narrative was one that I did not want them to hear. It was full of falsehood and lies.

For days I have been waiting to see a mention about the Walder saga on YWN. The silence was deafening. When Tzvi Gluck’s article was published I thought finally this is being addressed. I was dan lkaf zechus that the delay was due to the fact that this was a sensitive topic and shocking revelation. I thought YWN must have needed some time to address this topic intelligently and properly. But then there was more silence. And even though when I searched enough I was able to find choshuva people from our circles who addressed it (Rabbi YY Jacobson among them) nothing appeared on YWN. The breaking point came when I read a letter posted from the mailbag about how important it is to use this horrific story as a teachable moment to reinforce the gravity of embarrassing someone.

If you are following at all what is going on in our communities and across the countries, you are, like myself, probably utterly perplexed. Hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, are sick in bed with fever; some are also experiencing vomiting and other odd symptoms, as well. Yet so many of them have tested for both Covid-19 and influenza, with those test results coming back negative. Now, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but this has really piqued my interest, so much so that I reached out to a couple of doctors that I know for their take on the matter. All of them told me that, at least to some extent, whatever is going around is not being picked up by the regular tests that are being used.

There has been a lot of discussion in recent days over the severity and comparison of two aveiros  – bah al eishes ish and malbin p’nei chaveiro.  Many people, including most notably HaRav Gershon Edelstein shlita, have pointed out that one who embarrasses someone publicly loses their chelek in olam haba, whereas one who is bah al eishes ish does not, and that people should get their priorities straight, especially when discussing recent developments in the frum community. This has led to further debate and discussion within our community and a renewed interest in the concept of hamalbin p’nei chaveiro b’rabim ein lo chelek l’olam haba.

With the subject of teacher salaries at the forefront of the communal conversation, I am wondering if there is a basic flaw in our system that should be addressed. Specifically, I wonder why the majority of people opening our schools and running them are not bnei torah who are looking to be marbitz torah but are rather baalei batim. Think about it for a moment: the deans and administrators of schools ultimately have the last word in every decision that goes into chinuch. Do you want someone who is a lifelong ben torah to be making those decisions or a baalebus? Who is calling the shots in schools and who paskens the shaalos? I have a hard time believing that it’s the dean’s moreh derech – what does he know about running a school, right?