Yitzhak (47) and Talya (45) Ames, of Beit Hagai who leave behind 6 children and Talya was in her 9th month expecting another child.

Kochava Even Chaim, 37, of Beit Hagai who leaves behind a husband and 8 year-old daughter

Avishai Shindler, 24, of Beit Hagai who leaves behind a wife, their 1 year wedding anniversary was Wednesday.

Adding to the pain of this tragedy, Kochava's husband is a ZAKA first aid volunteer who was one of the first responders to show up on the scene. “We saw a crying volunteer, and at first we did not understand what was happening - he has seen many disasters before,” ZAKA volunteer Isaac Bernstein told The Jerusalem Post. “Then he started shouting, ‘That’s my wife! That’s my wife!’ We took him away from the scene immediately,” Bernstein added.

Dr. Tom Little, 61

Dan Terry, 63

Brian Carderelli, 25

Glen Lapp, 40

Cheryl Beckett, 32

I first met Tom last May when I volunteered to go to Leh, Ladahk, India, with Global Dental Relief, the charity organization my sister founded and helps run that provides dental care to children in certain Third World countries.  Tom was GDR's first volunteer in 2001, and has since served on more than a dozen trips and treated as many as 25,000 kids.  My sister and Tom became best friends during that time and, almost literally, travelled to the end of the World together.  In 2002, for example, Tom, my sister, and a couple other GDR volunteers hiked half way up Mount Everest to the Tengboche Buddhist Monetary with dental equipment loaded on yaks. They treated monks and about 100 other people in a room lighted by a single bulb.

Tom and I were the early birds in our group.  We talked every morning for at least an hour while the town of Leh awoke around us.  We spoke of usual things for new friends -- work, family, our past.  Tom also spent hours talking of his trips to Afghanistan.  Since retiring from his lucrative dental practice in Durango, Colorado, in 2008, Tom spent nearly all of his time providing dental care in that country when he wasn't staffing a GDR trip.  Tom started going to remote villages five years ago where the local warlord could offer him protection.  Everywhere he went, he wore native dress, learned the native customs, and even spoke some of the language.  Tom knew of the risks, but nothing could keep him out of the country.

In the clinic, Tom was a marvel.   As the intake dentist, Tom diagnosed the dental condition of each child, including which teeth could be saved and which had to be pulled.  This is a staggering decision considering that none of these kids has access to meaningful dental care, let alone cosmetic dentistry, but Tom handled it with unerring technical competency, compassion, and energy.  He inspired every volunteer in the clinic.

Tom's group, working under the auspices of the International Assistance Mission, was returning from a two week mission in the remote Parun Valley about 160 miles north of Kabul when it ran into a group of Taliban gunmen.  The Taliban forced Tom and the others to sit on the ground while they looted the group's vehicles.  They then shot the volunteers where they sat.  Only the driver survived, apparently by reciting verses from the Koran during the shooting.

I imagine there are as many responses to tragedy as there are people in the world.  In the few instances I have faced it, I have responded by plodding ahead and thinking about it as little as possible.  But a better response for those of us who knew Tom or who have lost someone like him would be to use his memory to try to become a little more like him -- to try to care more for those we take for granted, to take a few more risks to help others, to not turn away as often from those in need.

If I can presume to speculate in memoriam about someone I have known only since May, I think Tom would appreciate the fact that the memory of his life and work helped a few people make small changes in their lives to become more caring. Certainly he will continue to serve as beacon for those of us privileged to know and work with him, as well as for the thousands of children he helped throughout the world.  May we all live a life as full and rich and significant.

- Rabbi Chaim Poupko

Researchers at the Ohio State University's James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in Columbus say they were not surprised tobacco-related cancers were 63 percent lower among the non-smoking Amish than in the non-Amish.

Other factors such as eating organic food, having few sexual partners and wearing long sleeves and wide-brimmed hats, may also have helped keep cancerrates 40 percent lower in the Amish community, the researchers say. [emphasis added]

- Rabbi Chaim Poupko
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Some have argued that the more we know about ourselves and the world around us, the less we need religion. The following is one of the most articulate expressions of why religion becomes ever more relevant as humanity progresses (or just as relevant as it always has been). It restates the simple message of religion with a remarkable sensitivity to contemporary society. From The Dignity of Difference, (1^st  ed. p. 40) by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

 ...no other system does what religion has traditionally undertaken to do, namely to offer an explanation of who we are and why, of our place in the universe and the meaning of events as they unfold around us. The great post-Enlightenment systems - science, economics, and political ideologies - have all retreated from their earlier roles as overarching philosophies. Science has become descriptive, economics transactional, and politics ever more managerial. They tell us what and how but not why. We turn to them to get what we want, but not to know what we ought to want. That is their power, but also, from another perspective, their weakness. Never before have we been faced with more choices, but never before have the great society-shaping institutions offered less guidance on why we should choose this way rather than that. The great metaphors of our time - the supermarket, cable and satellite television and the Internet - put before us a seemingly endless range of options, each offering the great deal, the best buy, the highest specification, the lowest price. But consumption is a poor candidate for salvation. The very happiness we were promised by buying these designer jeans, that watch or this car, is what the next product assures us we do not yet have until we have bought something else. A consumer society is kept going by an endless process of stimulating, satisfying, and re-stimulating desire. It is more like an addiction than a quest for fulfillment.

 - Rabbi Chaim Poupko
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Welcome to the 21st century.  Please be patient with me as I become accustomed to this new method of communication to the congregation.  I’m a pretty fast learner, so it should work out.

After the wonderful excitement and hectic activity surrounding our son Yehuda’s engagement, Auf Ruf, marriage to Noa Leibowitz and Sheva Brachot in Los Angeles, Barbara and I are finally ensconced in our summer location near Woodridge, NY in the Catskills.  I have a firm schedule for the summer months: recreation in the morning, shul-related activities, writing, and other rabbinic responsibilities in the afternoon.  The weather has been beautiful over last few days and the opportunity to once again appreciate the beauty of God’s natural world is a wonderful experience. 

In addition to my normal concerns surrounding the shul and the community, two other areas have been occupying my thoughts and my attention:  a series of issues that I have become involved in as 1^st Vice President of Rabbinical Council of America; and ongoing issues surrounding the tuition crisis in Bergen County.  In posts to come, I expect I will be sharing some of the details with you.  Today, however, I‘d like to return to Yehuda’s wedding for a moment.  It was an extraordinarily beautiful event for our family.  Yehuda and Noa make a beautiful couple together, and having so many friends from the community with us to share was extremely meaningful.  As some of you know, our daughter Rivka offered some additional excitement to the evening which led to a beautiful article printed by Noa’s uncle in his column in the Long Island Jewish Star (click here or on the link below to read).   Before signing off, our deep thanks to many members of the community who were solicitous of Rivka’s welfare during and after the wedding and in part to Dr. Francine Stein, who together with our daughter-in-law, accompanied Rivka to the hospital, and to Dr. Steve Herman for insuring that she got immediate and excellent care.

-Rabbi Shmuel Goldin

The lesson of giving is a keeper http://thejewishstar.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/seidemann-the-lesson-of-giving-is-a-keeper/#more-7398

I’m sure it will come as no surprise to those who have heard me speak Shabbos morning in shul over the course of the past year, that the issue of how technology affects our lives both as people and as Jews occupies a lot of my “sermonic” attention. The internet, television, and wireless technology are some of the most pervasive influences on our lives and the development of our children. Like many of you, my feeling is that it is useless to judge these things as to whether they are “kosher” or not. Rather, we must be conscious of how they influence our lives and how we ensure that they do so positively. With regard to the internet, I have mentioned on Shabbos the following article entitled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" which highlights some of the side-effects that internet use can have on our minds and our patience to engage topics that require more effort and time than most. I have also made reference to a book entitled, No: Why Kids - of All Ages - Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It, by a psychologist named David Walsh. The excerpt I mentioned in shul one Shabbos morning discussed how the media and marketing that we and our children are constantly exposed to has instilled our culture with a sense that everything worthwhile must be either “more, easy, fast, and fun.” There are many challenges in raising children in today’s society with all of its technological gifts. These are just a few of the things we have to be mindful of.

- Rabbi Chaim Poupko

Welcome to the new blog of the Rabbis. Rabbi Goldin and I are very excited to utilize this blog as another tool with which we can communicate with the membership. Very often there are issues we raise in sermons and classes that we can’t fully develop or there are issues that don’t lend themselves to being discussed in those contexts. This blog will enable us to share with you these kinds of thoughts, ideas, opinions, and observations – as well as articles and books we’re reading that may be of interest to others. We hope you find the posts stimulating and always welcome feedback and further discussion either by email, phone, or in person.

While this is the first official post, please read the next one for the first non-introductory post.

 - Rabbi Chaim Poupko