Rabbi’s Musings & Amusings

In Camp Dora Golding, we invest a lot of time and effort to develop a Tish’ah B’Av morning program that will inspire our campers and hopefully resonate with them. As is the practice in many shuls and camps, we don’t recite too many kinos. But each one that we do say is introduced by one of the camp rebbeim, followed by an inspiring and relevant video.

In my youth, I read a series of books about a protagonist hero who always saved the day in the nick of time. Despite the many enemies who wanted to destroy him, somehow, he always just happened to uncannily have exactly what he needed to get out of every precarious situation. Sometimes the “it just so happened” was a little ridiculous. If he was thrown off a building, he just happened to be wearing his sneakers with springs on the bottom. If he was locked in a cellar, he just happened to have little tools in his pocket that enabled him to get out. The best was when he was imprisoned in a freezer and he just so happened to have worn his thermal undergarments that morning, even though it was the middle of the summer.

Shortly after we arrived here in camp a few weeks ago, I opened one of our kitchen cabinets and an odious smell wafted from it. I quickly closed it, hoping it was my imagination. But a few hours later, my wife confirmed that there was a terrible smell emanating from that cabinet, like something was rotting.

At some point during the school year, while teaching Gemara, I tell my students about Paul Harvey.

Last week, I received the following voice note from my dear talmid, Abie Jacoby:

Before I became the perfect person I am today, I was a pretty stubborn kid. When I made up my mind about something, it was hard to convince me otherwise (for the extent of that, see Musings #199).