Everybody wants spirituality. To be a good person means to walk in G-d's ways. How does that translate to reality? The only guidebook to spirituality that has stood the test of time is the Hebrew Bible. The Bible says that the Jews will be a light onto the nations. But if you are not a born Jew, you have to convert, which is not so easy!! If you do convert, it is a lot of work to be a Jew (three times a day prayer, keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath).
This blog will show you how to be Jewish without the work!!
Saturday, February 12, 2022
I'm a Doctor and Here's the #1 Sign You Have Dementia-Heather Newgen -and The Jewish Gambler Who Caused The Great Chicago Fire (On Simchat Torah!) By Saul Jay Singer and Yisro: History’s First Management ConsultantBy Daniel Coleman and Gil Hodges Joining Baseball Hall of FameBy Irwin Cohen -
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Gil Hodges Joining Baseball Hall of Fame By Irwin Cohen -
hoto Credit: Courtesy
Hodges in a 1949 issue of Baseball Digest.
I think of Gil Hodges often as I winter in the Orthodox enclave in Century Village West Palm Beach. Hodges, who was finally voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, several decades after he should have, died in West Palm two days shy of his 48th birthday on April 2, 1972, after managing an exhibition game for the Mets against the Atlanta Braves.
The Braves had their spring training complex in West Palm Beach at the time and I pass the site several times in the winter, and coming up to Hank Aaron Drive on the way back to my dugout from downtown, I can see where Hodges' life ended. He was walking with his coaches, Joe Pignatano, Rube Walker and Eddie Yost, after a couple rounds of golf in the late afternoon.
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The coaches asked their manager when he wanted to meet for supper and the skipper responded, "7:30." It was the last thing he ever said as he fell face down dead of a massive heart attack.
Hodges grew up in Indiana, and his talents attracted scouts from a couple of teams but he chose to sign a professional baseball contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Dodgers had him hone his skills as a third baseman and catcher in the minor leagues and brought him up to the major leagues in 1943 when he was only 19. Gil only got into one game and went hitless in two at-bats.
After enlistment with the Marines and earning several combat medals and some more minor league seasoning, Hodges was back with the Dodgers in 1947 as a backup to the backup catcher. In 91 at-bats he had an unimpressive .156 batting average and hit one home run, but owner and general manager Branch Rickey expected stardom and called Gil into his office along with a rookie by the name of Edwin "Duke" Snider. "You two young men are the Dodgers' power combination of the future," Rickey said with an overbearing voice and a cigar moving around his mouth. "I want you two gentlemen to be patient and to work hard to improve yourselves. Both of you have bright futures ahead."
Hodges played in 28 games and Snider got into 40 and neither hit a home run in 1947, but the pair would go on to hit 777 home runs combined before their careers were over. However, the 1947 season was exciting for the future stars as they welcomed Jackie Robinson to the big leagues and the trio became close friends. Robinson played first base in 1947 and manager Leo Durocher would move Robinson to second base in 1948 and install Hodges as the regular first baseman where he would become one of the best defensive first baseman in major league history.
Hodges played in 134 of the Dodgers' 154 games in 1948 and only batted .249 with eleven home runs but Rickey thought his hitting would improve. After the season Hodges married a great Brooklyn girl and the pair would become well-known in the borough, as was their green Mercury convertible. They would eventually set up housekeeping on Bedford Avenue about 15 minutes from Ebbets Field. Many Jewish kids lived nearby, including future politician Chuck Schumer.
Marriage agreed with Hodges and he was considered a star player in 1949 by batting .285 with 23 home runs. It would be the first of eleven consecutive seasons that Hodges would hit 22 or more homers. In those seasons he would top 31 or more six times and pass 40 twice. Hodges also drove in over a hundred runs (RBI) in seven consecutive seasons.
When the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers after the 1957 season, Hodges went west also but returned to New York in 1962 to play for the Mets. Traded to the Washington Senators early in the 1963 season, Hodges ended his playing career there and was named manager of the team. Hodges had a .273 career batting average with 370 home runs, and managed the Senators from '63 through 1967 and the Mets from 1968 until his death in 1972.
Hodges suffered a heart attack in 1968 in his first season as Mets manager, and doctors strongly advised him to give up smoking. He tried but couldn't kick the habit and he remained a heavy smoker. Ralph Branca was a roommate of Hodges and recalls the strong, quiet first baseman going through three packs a day. Branca remembers his teammate as a strong, religious family man and one of the finest men he ever met. He was also respected as a man, player, manager and was embraced by Brooklyn's Jewish community.
While he was managing the Mets, a shul contacted the public relations office of the team and arranged for a player to speak. However, the player had to cancel as the date approached. The rabbi went to Hodges' home on Bedford Avenue and explained the situation to the Mets manager. Hodges offered to pinch-hit on the condition that the shul keep the speaker's fee.
Gil Hodges was the real Mentsch on the Bench. His connections to Brooklyn ran deep and Brooklyn never forgot one of their heroes. Part of Bedford Avenue in Midwood is named, Gil Hodges Way. A section of Avenue L, a school, a park and Little League Field are named for him, and also a bridge that connects Marine Park, Brooklyn, and Rockaway, Queens.
Gil Hodges deserved to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame decades ago. I'm looking forward to his induction ceremony on Sunday, July 24, 2022.
I'm a Doctor and Here's the #1 Sign You Have Dementia
Heather Newgen -
Almost six million Americans live with dementia—a disorder that affects the "cognitive functioning — thinking, remembering, and reasoning — to such an extent that it interferes with a person's daily life and activities. Some people with dementia cannot control their emotions, and their personalities may change," the National Institute on Aging states. While there's no cure for the time being, there are signs that indicate a person has dementia and preventive measures can be taken. Eat This, Not That! Health spoke with Dr. Dalia Lorenzo, neurologist at Baptist Health's Miami Neuroscience Institute who explained the signs of dementia to watch out for and how lack of sleep is connected to the disorder. Read on—and to ensure your health and the health of others,
Dr. Lorenzo says, "Tremors, gait imbalance or rigidity. Once again, tremors, gait changes or rigidity that are present early on may indicate a different pattern of neurodegeneration other than the typical Alzheimer type dementia. These signs implicate other types of dementia that also have an aggressive course, such as Lewy body dementia, multiple systems atrophy or other Parkinsonian plus syndromes."
"One of the few forms of dementia that does have a cure is normal pressure hydrocephalus, which can be treated by a shunting procedure," Dr. Lorenzo states. "Patients that have this condition will present with urinary incontinence early on in their condition. Although most Alzheimer type dementia patients will develop urinary incontinence later on in their disease, in patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus, the incontinence starts early on. Patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus will also report gait changes described as magnetic gait because they have significant difficulty raising their feet off the floor and will walk very slowly, as if magnets were holding their feet down to the ground."
According to Dr. Lorenzo, "This raises the possibility that the patient is having seizures. Not all seizures come with the convulsions, which are obvious and readily diagnosed. Some seizures just present with abrupt lapses in awareness, repetitive stereotyped behaviors that can be very variable. By way of example, picture a person who has a blank stare and is just briefly picking at their clothes, or smacking their lips and the whole episode ends after less than two minutes. Even in between these observed episodes, patients with epilepsy can still be having small electrical discharges that can derail the normal functioning of the brain enough to present with cognitive issues including memory and concentration difficulties."
Dr. Lorenzo explains people who get less than six hours of sleep a night are at a higher risk for developing dementia. "Sleep is a time when most of the cortex of the brain is offline, allowing the neurons to get rid of waste products, recharge energy stores and other general housekeeping needs. Neurons that are overactive for too long accumulate toxic compounds of cellular metabolism including amyloid deposits which can contribute to permanent damage and the eventual demise of those neurons."
"It's also not just about hours of sleep," Dr. Lorenzo reveals. "There are certain conditions where sleep is very inefficient and although people may be in bed for 7-9 hours, their sleep is not deep or is intermittently interrupted. In order for sleep to be efficient and restful, the brain needs to go through certain stages of sleep. These stages occur in 90 minutes cycles and there is a very definite architecture to the way these cycles look over the 7 to 8 hours of a normal sleep period. So, for example, people who have chronic insomnia or are light sleepers, those that snore and have obstructive sleep apnea can spend 8 to 10 hours in sleep and still not get good refreshing deep sleep." And to protect your life and the lives of others, don't visit any of these
The Jewish Gambler Who Caused The Great Chicago Fire (On Simchat Torah!)
Currier & Ives print of the Great Chicago Fire – looking north across the Randolph St. Bridge (copy)
Neither the infamous Mrs. Catherine O'Leary (1827-1895) nor her cow were Jewish, but the person who was most likely responsible for the Great Chicago Fire was.
The inferno that began on October 8, 1871, essentially burned down the entire city of Chicago, killed about 300 people, destroyed 3.3 square miles of the city, caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage (in today's dollars), and left more than 100,000 citizens – more than one out of every three residents – homeless.
The spread of the Chicago fire was exacerbated by several factors, including the fact that the city had sustained an incredibly dry season, having received only an inch of rain from July 4 to the time of the fire, and strong southwest winds that quickly carried burning ashes across the city. Most of Chicago featured wooden construction, including most city buildings (which also had highly flammable roofs of tar or shingle roofs) and city streets and roads. The entire city was protected by only 185 firefighters and 17 horse-drawn steam pumpers, and the city's water system had not been maintained.
Moreover, a comedy of errors ensued, including the failure of an alarm sent from the area near the fire to register with the designated watchman who, upon learning of the fire, proceeded to send the firemen to the wrong place.
Print of Chicago burning (1871).
Later, the hopes of fire officials that the Chicago River would serve as a natural barrier to the further spread of the flames were dashed because, first, flammable waste had collected in the river because of years of improper disposal methods used by local businesses and, second, because burning debris blown by the wind carried across the river to the Chicago lumber yards and warehouse. The dire situation turned even worse when a burning piece of wood fell on the roof of the city's waterworks and, within mere minutes, the building was destroyed and the city's water mains within ran dry.
Ironically, in 1956, the remaining structures on the original O'Leary property were torn down to construct the training facility for the Chicago Fire Academy. Pillar of Fire, a bronze sculpture of stylized flames by sculptor Egon Weiner (1906-1987), was erected on the site in 1961. His parents, who both committed capital offenses under Nazi law – his father was a Jew and his mother was a Catholic who had married a Jew – were both murdered after Egon fled Vienna for the United States in 1938.
Copy of woodblock print of Chicago's Jewish Maxwell Street slum by Todros Geller (1889-1949), a renowned Jewish artist and master printmaker. The slum was only a few blocks away from the O'Leary barn.
At the time of the Great Fire, Chicago's population was at 334,000, of which some 4,000 were Jews, most of whom were wholesale or retail merchants. O'Leary's barn was located just southwest of Chicago's major Jewish settlement at the time, and the Jewish community was particularly hard hit by the fire because so many of its homes and businesses were located in the downtown area. According to newspaper accounts, many Jews were killed rushing into burning structures to save others, and 500 Jewish families were left homeless. The new Jewish hospital was destroyed, burning alive thirteen patients, and five of the city's seven synagogues were destroyed – including Beth El, which had been organized on the very eve of the fire – as were four B'nai Brith lodges.
In the days and weeks following the fire, monetary donations flowed into Chicago from around the country and abroad, along with donations of food, clothing, and other goods, but the only Jewish relief committee organized to support the Jewish victims of the fire was the B'nai Brith Committee, which sent out national solicitations for aid, received funds and supplies, and worked together with the Hebrew Relief Association to distribute the assistance. The Chicago Times noted with great approval that the Jews, who as a community could always be counted on to take care of their own, generated support from within the Jewish community and did not seek aid from the gentiles.
In the wake of the fire, substantial economic problems led a number of synagogues to consider a merger, including particularly the KAM and Sinai congregations, but the plan failed because Sinai insisted that services be held on Sunday instead of Shabbat.
Experts all agree that the conflagration began at Patrick and Catherine O'Leary's barn in back of their property at 137 DeKoven Street, where two tons of hay (her husband says it was three tons) to weather the coming bitter Chicago winter had been delivered and stored shortly before the fire. However, although the experts generally agree about the reasons for the fire not being stopped before it caused such incomprehensible damage, as discussed above, Chicago officials could never determine the actual source and cause of the blaze. Various theories have been offered, but the preeminent lore that has withstood the test of time has the fire beginning when one of her six cows being milked by dairy farmer Mrs. O'Leary kicked over a kerosene lantern at about 8:30 p.m. and set fire to her small barn, from where it spread.
At a time when anti-Irish sentiment was strong in the United States in general, and in Chicago in particular, the poor, Irish Catholic immigrant O'Leary was the perfect scapegoat. Even with the embers still burning, the story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow was published in the very first post-fire issue of the Chicago Republican by Michael Ahern, a police reporter. The Chicago Tribune even went so far as to allege that she purposely set the fire to take revenge on the city for cutting off her welfare payment when it learned that she was earning income as a dairy farmer.
However, the O'Leary family always maintained that they had retired for the evening before the fire began, and twelve years later in 1893, Ahern admitted that he had made up the entire story to heighten intrigue and to sell newspapers. Writing on the anniversary of the fire in 1921, he added that he had fabricated the story with two other reporters, John English and Jim Haynie.
Nonetheless, with the story so firmly established in the public consciousness, the legend persisted, even after the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners cleared Mrs. O'Leary of any responsibility for the fire. In its report of December 12, 1871, the Board stated:
There is no proof that anybody had been in the barn after nightfall that evening. Whether it originated from a spark blown from a chimney on that windy night, or was set on fire by human agency, we are unable to determine. Mr. Leary [sic], the owner, and all his family, prove to have been in bed and asleep at the time.
Sadly, the entire affair and the public attention caused severe psychological problems for Mrs. O'Leary, and she was forced to board the house to protect her family's privacy from the throngs of curious people who regularly congregated at the now-famous site. With books and popular songs keeping the myth alive; with the newspapers continuing to ignore established facts and repeating the story of Mrs. O'Leary's cow on every anniversary of the fire; and with O'Leary's notoriety not waning in the least over time, she became a recluse who withdrew entirely from public life and died heartbroken.
Publication on the 10th anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, which perpetuated the O'Leary's cow myth.
Even contemporarily, the fairytale lives on. In 1937, Daryl Zanuck's In Old Chicago, which repeated the cow and lantern nonsense, was nominated for an Academy Award; Alicia Brady, who played Catherine O'Leary (for some reason, the character's name was "Molly O'Leary" in the film), won the Best Supporting Actress Award; and its popularity only exacerbated the "fake news." (Ironically, the film credited the Chicago Historical Society for its assistance in providing historical research.) Even after a September 10, 1997, official proclamation by the Chicago City Council signed by Mayor Daley that exculpated Mrs. O'Leary (and, perhaps equally important, her cow!), the public remains fixated on the O'Leary myth.
That leaves one intriguing outstanding question: who was actually responsible for the Great Chicago Fire of 1871?
According to one theory, Daniel Sullivan, AKA "Peg Leg," a neighbor who first reported the fire, was the culprit. In his testimony before the official inquiry, he confirmed that the O'Learys had retired for the evening at about 8:00 p.m. when he left them after a visit. He said that he stopped briefly in front of the White home to light his pipe and, when he saw the fire at the O'Learys, he called for help; ran to try to extinguish it; and, failing to do so, managed to escape the burning barn. (The rumor at the time, however, was that while drinking and smoking with some friends in the O'Leary barn, they accidentally ignited the hay stored there with the ashes of their pipes.)
In any event, later analysis showed that Sullivan could not have seen the fire as described because there was a house sitting between the barn blocking his line of vision; because if he was returning home as he claimed, he would not have lingered at the White house, which was further down the road; and, perhaps most significantly, because he could not possibly have done all he claimed on his peg leg.
According to another theory, the fire was caused by a meteor shower fragment from Biela's Comet, which had splintered in 1845 but, for several reasons, this theory has been roundly rejected.
Pursuant to the account most generally (but not universally) accepted today, 18-year-old Louis (Ludwig) M. Cohn was responsible for the fire. Born in Breslau (now part of Germany), he came to New York with his family, including father Marcus and mother Therese, arriving in New York Harbor on October 26, 1957. Cohn (1853-1942) later became a prosperous German Jewish importer and an outstanding civic-minded citizen recognized as an expert on Chinese customs, political history and art who established important relationships with Chinese royalty. He also served as the respected treasurer of the Chicago Elks and, as a renowned world traveler, he visited every country in the world at least twice.
In his will, he admitted that he was gambling in the hayloft of the O'Leary barn by the light of a lantern with a group of neighboring boys, including one of the O'Leary's sons and, when she came out to chase them away at about 9:00 p.m., he scooped up the money (he claimed that "I was winning" when Mrs. O'Leary broke up the game) and, in their haste to flee, one of the boys knocked over the lantern.
Cohn chose an ironic evening to gamble because October 8, 1871, was Simchat Torah. As it turns out, this was a particularly fortuitous time for the Jews who, because they were dancing with their Torah scrolls when the fire reached their synagogues, were able to save most of them.
In 1942, the day after Cohn's will was admitted to probate, the Chicago Tribune noted his $435,000 scholarship to Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism but made no mention of Cohn's confession. A few days later, however, the Sun-Times reported that Cohn's estate had been bequeathed to Medill but ended its story with a brief mention that Cohn "had claimed to have been present in the barn of Mrs. O'Leary on the night of the Chicago Fire."
There was no further mention of Cohn's revelation until 1964, when gambling historian Alan Wykes' discussed him in The Complete Illustrated Guide to Gambling (1964). Some commentators hypothesize that Cohn's friends purposely quashed the story to preserve Cohn's good name, but Cohn's account has several important indicia of reliability.
First, Chicago was then arguably the greatest mecca of gambling east of the Mississippi River, and wagering games were broadly popular, particularly amongst the immigrant working class to which Cohn belonged. Second, he was almost certainly near the scene of the crime; the 1870 Chicago census shows 32 Cohn households in the area, three of whom listed the male family heads as born in Prussia and who lived within walking distance of the O'Leary's barn. One of the three was Cohn's father, Marcus, who lived less than a mile from the barn.
Third, Cohn asserted that he was gambling with James, one of the O'Leary's two sons who, as "Big Jim" O'Leary, later ran gambling operations, pioneered off-track betting, and went on to become a leading gambling boss in Chicago.
But the most credible narrative of all comes from Stanley K. Feinberg, the son of Cohn's friend and executor, Judge Michael Feinberg. Feinberg, who often served as Cohn's chauffeur, says that he heard Cohn's detailed account of his role in the fire many times: "He would simply state that the story about the cow was hooey. He spoke as though he was correcting history. He wasn't being boastful, or proud or remorseful. He was just setting the record straight. 'Here are the facts,' he'd say." Cohn confirmed that there was a regular floating craps game in the barn and that Mrs. O'Leary was always after them. However, Feinberg says that whenever he would ask Cohn if he personally kicked over the lantern, his response would be only "a knowing smile."
Feinberg explains that Cohn, always a gentleman, was not known to be a liar and that he had no reason to doubt his story. Feinberg's wife, Loie, agrees that there can be no doubt that the charming, gallant, and fascinating Cohn was telling the truth: "Knowing him as I did, I don't think he would have taken the blame unless he was part of the cause. He was smart. He was not a stupid man."
Nonetheless, there are holes in the Cohn theory. First, Mrs. O'Leary testified that all her children were in bed, so how could Cohn have been playing with James O'Leary? (Although, of course, it is possible that she was covering for him.) And if James somehow snuck out to meet Cohn, it defies credulity that, rather than take action to put out the fire, save the animals or, at the very least, wake up his parents, he walked away and left his family's home and business to burn. Moreover, if Mrs. O'Leary was there to chase the gamblers away, she would have seen the lantern being knocked over and been able to prevent the spread of the fire.
In addition, why would the boys choose to gamble in a stuffy hay-filled barn with little room when they just as easily could have gone outside on a beautiful October evening and played out in the alley unseen? Moreover, there was a vacant house across the property where the neighborhood boys often congregated, and the group could have run their game there undetected.
Cohn, who was not at all Jewishly observant – in fact, he is said to have had an aversion to all organized religion – specified in his last requests that "no religious services of any character whatsoever be conducted." He died at age 89 of kidney cancer, and was survived by his wife, Bertha (they had no children).
Having just finished teaching a series on Jewish history, I can say that far and away the best lectures I've heard on this topic are from David Solomon (you can find his courses on YouTube). These helped me as I prepared my course, as did reading Sand and Stars by Yaffa Ganz in collaboration with Rabbi Berel Wein, which chronicles the period post-Bayis Sheini until the 16th century.
I recall hearing Rabbi Wein speak on a few occasions. One time he remarked how so many stories of the acharonim seem to glorify their poverty, and that we have this wrong. Poverty wasn't necessarily a choice or a joy and shouldn't be held as a model for us. Just because life was really hard for them and many of their contemporaries doesn't mean it's a mitzvah for us to aspire to poverty. Another time, he relayed an encounter with someone in front of him in line at the post office muttering to himself about the protracted wait. Rabbi Wein said to the person, "We waited 2000 years for a Jewish post office, what's another half hour?"
Jewish history is full of waiting and the hope that the waiting would be over soon.
Yisro is instrumental in shortening the Jewish people's wait time. He may be history's first management consultant. As a "company" outsider, he observes an ineffective process, helps his client Moshe identify a lack of efficiency, and proposes a solution that will benefit all the stakeholders.
Reading the second and third Torah readings last week, I found it fascinating to see how Yisro makes his case. He starts by innocuously expressing his curiosity around why the Jewish people are left waiting from morning to evening for a meeting. Moshe articulates why this is happening and presumably, as Moshe listens to himself respond, he realizes that his answer is an insufficient justification for the problem at hand, i.e., masses of Jews waiting for him in the desert extremes. Yisro then highlights for Moshe the fact that the problem runs even deeper than it first appears and makes a stark projection: It's not just about the customer experience, it's about the health and survival of the organization itself, i.e., Moshe's diminishing ability to sustain the process over time.
Yisro knows that his client will ultimately be convinced by an argument that demonstrates this is what G-d would want and proceeds to mention G-d several times. This also serves to remind his client that G-d alone is singular and – as much as he may want to emulate G-d – Moshe shouldn't feel defeated if he can't do everything alone: Echad v'ein yachid k'yichudo – G-d is one, and no other singularity compares.
Yisro then recommends a mass hiring initiative, detailing the core character traits of the new hires, and Moshe adopts the plan in its entirety. (The language used to describe Moshe doing "everything he had said" is remarkably similar to the way Moshe and other biblical characters follow G-d's words. Please reach out if you know of another instance in the Torah where this language is used to describe someone following the advice or proclamation of another mortal.)
Next time you find yourself burdened by the weight of a task, know that you aren't G-d and that it's okay to ask for some assistance (even from your in-laws!). Maybe it's time to delegate or let go of something. It's very possible that others will be only too happy to serve as a sounding board and will appreciate the opportunity to lend a hand, advice, or mentorship. And since the whole system stands to benefit when there's less stress on the constituent parts, it's likely that the end users of your product or service will benefit too.
What did Moshe do with all the extra time on his hands? Hopefully he had more time to sleep and relax. Maybe he took up a hobby. What do you think?
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