Thursday, January 2, 2020

Europe’s Jew-Free Zones

Aug 8, 2015  |  by 
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Europe’s Jew-Free Zones
Jewish life in many parts of the continent is retreating in the face of relentless anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred.
"I never knew we were Jewish." I'll never forget the day my mother's best friend – a brilliant doctor, educated in France and Israel, and now practicing medicine in Chicago – told me about her childhood. She was such a poised, worldly woman, it seemed impossible that she never knew this central fact about her identity.
Her family lived in Romania, she explained, and even after the horrors of the Holocaust had come to light, Romania's remaining Jews still lived in fear. For her safety, her parents had never mentioned their Jewish heritage. One day in the 1950s, they finally confided in their children they were Jews, and – like the vast majority of Romanian Jews who had survived the Holocaust – were about to immigrate to Israel.
Nearly a quarter of Romanians today would prefer no Jews to call their country home.
For the few thousand remaining Jews who continue to call Romania home, a new survey has brought a painful reminder that, for many Romanians, Jews remain unwelcome. In August 2015, the Elie Wiesel National Institute for Holocaust Studies in Romania (where Mr. Wiesel grew up) released the results of a survey showing nearly a quarter of Romanians today would prefer no Jews to call their country home.
Fully 11% of Romanians characterize Jews as "a problem" for the nation, and 22% would like to see Jews as tourists – not citizens.
These negative opinions coincide with ignorance of or indifference to the Holocaust: while nearly three quarters of Romanians have heard of the Holocaust (a 12% rise since a previous survey in 2007), only about a third believed it happened in Romania (despite the fact that half of Romania's then Jewish population of 750,000 were murdered in the Holocaust). A majority of Romanians surveyed characterize their wartime leader as a "patriot" today.
The survey's shocking result – and the hostility towards Jewish citizens – made headlines around the world, but sadly, Romanians aren't the only ones calling for countries or towns to become Jew-free.
Some nations’ anti-Jewish stances are well-known. In January 2015, for example, Saudi Arabian officials scrambled to deny media reports that they would begin allowing Jews to enter the country as guest workers. (The purported policy would only extend to non-Israeli Jews, initial reports speculated; it was always clear that Israeli Jews would never be allowed to work in the kingdom.) When the non-story broke, Saudi Arabia – which already forbids the building of houses of worship other than mosques on its soil – explained: official policy remained. No Jew can legally enter as a guest worker, and Saudi Arabia remains a virtually Jew-free zone.
Yet this poisonous attitude seems to be creeping into some European attitudes as well.
A landmark 2011 survey in Ireland found that 20% of Irish people would be in favor of banning Israelis from becoming citizens, and 11% would be in favor of stopping all Jews from becoming Irish citizens. (When questioned about their personal relationships, attitudes were even more stark: 46% wouldn't want a Jew in their family, and 52% would be opposed to having an Israeli in their family.) Worryingly, the poll seemed to portend an increase in such anti-Semitic feelings. Anti-Jewish attitudes were highest among the younger generation, with 18-25 year olds holding the most extreme anti-Semitic views.)
Father Michael Mac Greal, the Jesuit priest and sociologist who compiled the survey, explains that hostility to Israel in the Irish press seemed to have contributed to negative feelings about Jews in general. "There's a real danger that the public image of 'Israeli' can lead to an increase in anti-Semitism," he found.
In Britain, by some measures, anti-Semitic attitudes are less; "only" 10% of Britons would be upset to have a Jew in their family, according to one 2015 poll. Nevertheless, anti-Israel sentiments seem to be pushing ever more extreme bounds of anti-Jewish discourse.
Anti-Israel feelings run very high in Britain. A 2013 global survey found that Israel was the fourth most negatively viewed nation. (Only Iran, Pakistan and North Korea were worse.) Britons led the pack in negative attitudes towards the Jewish state: fully 72% said they felt negatively about Israel. Against this backdrop of relentless criticism, it became acceptable for a major politician to call for part of Britain to be an "Israeli-free" zone. George Galloway, MP for the city of Bradford, declared that Israelis weren't welcome in his constituency – and then, when he was questioned about his outrageous statement, defended them openly and repeatedly. "We don't want any Israeli goods, we don't want any Israeli services, we don't want any Israeli academics coming to the university or the college, we don't even want any Israeli tourists to come to Bradford, even if any of them had thought of doing so," the MP declared.
In Belgium, the owner of a Liege cafe who posted a sign that dogs were welcome but Jews were banned was investigated by the police in 2014 – but elsewhere in the country, Belgian schools are increasingly becoming Jew-free zones. When the last Jewish student withdrew from a central Brussels high school – she received hundreds of negative comments and threats after posting a photo of herself with an Israeli flag on facebook – Joel Rubinfeld, President of the Belgian League Against Anti-Semitism, warned that the school – and others like it – "had become Judenfrei, there are no more Jews there". Facing relentless, low-level anti-Semitism, Belgian's Jewish families are leaving the country in ever-increasing numbers to move to Israel or, when they stay, withdrawing their children from public schools where hostility towards Jews is increasingly the norm.
In 2014, the Deputy Speaker of Sweden's Parliament faced criticism when he advised Jews to "leave" their Jewish identity if they wished to become good Swedes, but he was hardly alone. Malmo, Sweden's third largest city, has seen an explosion of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activity. The city's annual Israel Apartheid Week is housed in a building owned and administered by the town, at no charge, and the municipality has given official support to Isolate Israel, a group that inspects Swedish businesses and "helps" them become Israel-free in their goods and services.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, dozens of anti-Semitic attacks are now reported in the town each year, and the community's already-small Jewish population is shrinking further. A much-viewed 2013 video of a reporter walking Malmo's streets wearing a kippah showed him subject to suspicious stares and negative comments. A 2015 repeat of the same experiment – shown on Swedish Public Television – showed aggressive threats, warnings to leave (both menacing and from bystanders who wished to spare the reporter harm), and – eventually – the reporter fleeing, running for his life.
Seventy years after the Holocaust, it seems incredible that parts of Europe are once again becoming Jew-free zones. While Jewish life is flourishing in many parts of Europe, for much of the continent, it is retreating in the face of relentless anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred.
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The Real Threat to Europe's Jews

Mar 6, 2004  |  by 
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The Real Threat to Europe's Jews
European Jewry is slowly but surely disappearing before our eyes, melting away through a combination of ignorance, assimilation and intermarriage.
The Jews of Europe are once again in grave danger, but the real threat to their future is not quite what you might think.
While the wave of anti-Semitism sweeping the continent is indeed disturbing, there is a far more destructive force at work these days, one that places the continued existence of European Jewry in doubt.
It is the ailment of assimilation and the malady of intermarriage which are truly wreaking havoc in Jewish communities across Europe. And though they may not receive as much attention as an assault on a rabbi in the streets of Paris or the desecration of a cemetery outside Berlin, the blows which they strike are nevertheless more lasting and more painful, as well as more difficult to repair.
The fact of the matter is that with only a few exceptions, the Jewish communities of Europe are gradually shrinking in size, contracting quantitatively as a result of declining birthrates, aging populations and increasing numbers of young people who marry out of the fold.
According to demographer Prof. Sergio Della Pergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, there were slightly more than 1 million Jews living in Western Europe at the start of 2002. Of these, nearly 80 percent could be found in France and the United Kingdom, home to Europe's largest and strongest Jewish populations.
Instead of worrying so much about educating Europeans to like their Jews, we need to start educating their Jews to better appreciate their Judaism.
Yet, despite a wealth of Jewish communal institutions and a plethora of Jewish organizations, both French and British Jewry have been steadily in decline.
A December 2002 study by the Jewish Agency's Institute for Jewish People Policy Planning found that the number of Jews in France fell from 535,000 in 1980 to some 500,000 in just two decades, a loss of over 6 percent.
British Jewry fared even worse. According to the Board of Deputies, the representative body for Jews in the UK, there were 430,000 Jews living in Great Britain in 1950, but just 283,000 in 1996. Or, as an item on their web site puts it, "Since the 1950s there has been a steady decrease in numbers so that by the 1990s British Jewry was approximately one-third smaller than it had been in 1950."
If anything, these trends are only likely to accelerate, as the negative factors behind the demographic crisis continue to consolidate. Indeed, in both England and France, the annual number of deaths in the Jewish community already exceeds the number of births.
It is therefore hardly surprising that in a lengthy article appearing in the 2002 edition of the American Jewish Year Book, Della Pergola estimated that, "French Jewry will experience a slow but steady decline from 520,000 in 2000, to 480,000 in 2020, to 380,000 in 2050, and 300,000 in 2080." Meanwhile, across the Channel, he wrote, "The Jewish population in the United Kingdom will decline to 240,000 in 2020, 180,000 in 2050, and 140,000 in 2080."
In effect, this means that within just 75 years or so, French and English Jewry will only be half their current size.
In smaller Jewish communities in Europe, the retrenchment rates have been even more pronounced.
Take, for example, Ireland, where the 1991 census found there to be 1,581 Jews. Today, the number is said to be approximately 1,000, marking a decline of over 50 percent in just a decade.
Soaring intermarriage rates have taken a toll as well, in some cases reaching as high as 80 percent or more, raising further questions about the viability of some European Jewish communities.
And even in countries where the numbers have remained fairly stable, such as Spain or Italy, or which have experienced growth, such as Germany, it is primarily due to an influx of immigrants from the former Soviet states, and not because of any inherent vitality within the local community itself.
This disastrous situation should be raising alarm bells throughout the Jewish world. European Jewry is slowly but surely disappearing before our eyes, melting away through a combination of ignorance, assimilation and intermarriage.
Inexplicably, though, Israel and American Jewish leaders prefer to focus on combating anti-Semitism, rather than Jewish ignorance, even as its victims are increasingly facing religious and ethnic extinction.
The result, of course, is catastrophic, as attention and resources are shifted to fighting a question of bigotry, rather than of survival. Soon enough, there may not be any Jews in Europe left to hate.
Now don't get me wrong -- I am not trying to downplay the severity of European anti-Semitism. But when compared to the threat posed by assimilation, should it really be placed at the top of the agenda?
Instead of worrying so much about educating Europeans to like their Jews, we need to start educating their Jews to better appreciate their Judaism.
There is so much that can and should be done in this regard, from sending more rabbis to serve European Jewish communities to translating more material on Judaism into the various European languages. But all this takes funds and energy and commitment, and there is a limited amount of these to go around.
Only by acknowledging the extent of the problem, and deciding to act, can world Jewry and Israel possibly salvage the situation. The first step in doing so is to recognize that as crucial as it might be to fight Europe's anti-Semites, it pales in comparison with engaging its Jews.
This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post.
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Orthodox Rabbi and Non-Religious Jew Share One Goal

Dec 30, 2019  |  by 
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Orthodox Rabbi and Non-Religious Jew Share One Goal
These two former Israelis have formed an improbable partnership to tackle the worrying threat of assimilation.
It is Friday afternoon in Hollywood, Florida. Dr. Neta Peleg-Oren, a non-religious psychotherapist, and Yehuda Kornfeld, an ultra-Orthodox rabbi and educator, are sitting opposite me. Both are former Israelis and they are worried.
“This Won’t Happen to Me” is the name of the workshop they conduct together and it is also the title of their soon-to-be published book. “This won’t happen to me” is the sentence that almost every Israeli parent in America utters regarding the assimilation and intermarriage of his/her children, but it happens. There are more than half a million Israeli-Americans and a significant majority of their children marry non-Jews.
“I never thought about my children intermarrying until I arrived here to do a post-doctorate,” says Neta. “My three children are still unmarried and I am apprehensive about this.”
Sivan Rahav Meir with Dr. Neta Peleg-Oren and Rabbi Yehuda Kornfeld
Neta’s mother is originally from Kibbutz Yagur, not far from Haifa, and Neta, a sabra native Israel, grew up in nearby Kiryat Tiv’on. When she met Orthodox Rabbi Yehuda Kornfeld, who was raised in Israel by Hareidi parents, the two found common grounds for concern.
“We sat together for half a year and constructed a workshop for the worried Israeli parent,” Neta explains. “I met very few Israelis who said ‘I don’t care’ about this matter, and we are not concerned with addressing them. The vast majority of Israelis here want Jewish continuity in their families, but they have absolutely no idea how to achieve it.”
Neta first became aware of Israeli assimilation distress in her psychotherapy clinic. “I received the following phone call: ‘Don’t ask what just happened. We have to come in and talk.’ The frightened couple came in and had great difficulty believing that their son had brought home a non-Jewish girlfriend. As for the son? He did not have the slightest idea that this was even a problem. He did not want to cause his parents pain but he had no idea that this was important to them. He said, ‘Mom and Dad, you sent me to a public elementary school and, one day a week, to a Jewish Sunday school. Today I’m 25. What did you expect?’”
Yehuda adds: “In one of our workshops, a couple said they told their daughter, who was marrying a non-Jew: ‘How could you do this to us? We did Kiddush every Friday night and ate matzah on Pesach.’ To which she responded: ‘I spoke with him and he has no problem drinking wine on Friday night or eating crackers one night of the year… Our traditions are pleasant, we can combine them with his, what’s the problem?’
It does not matter if you are secular or religious – you must pass along to your children the deeper meaning and love of being Jewish.

In other words, if you cannot convey the significance of your traditions internally and penetrate your children’s hearts, you have nothing. And it does not matter if you are secular or religious – you must pass along to your children the deeper meaning and love of being Jewish. I do not minimize the components of Israeli identity, of keeping up with news from Israel, of speaking Hebrew. This is important, but it’s not enough.”
Twelve workshops have already been conducted in Florida and one in Los Angeles, together with dozens of group meetings in people’s homes as the demand for these activities grows. At the same time, Yehuda has been involved in establishing the first school for Israeli children in Florida – The Jewish Academy. 200 children are already studying there in a pilot program that should be spread across the continent.
“From the standpoint of developmental psychology,” Neta says, “the two most important questions of adolescents are: ‘Who am I?’ and ‘To whom or to what do I belong?’ This is what the workshop is all about: Identity and belongingness. We don’t want parents to sit their children down and say: ‘Now we are going to talk about our identity.’ What good would that do? Parent needs to bring Jewish identity into the home on a daily basis without arousing opposition. Just as a Jewish mother drives her son crazy every day that he should go to college and become a doctor, so too Jewish identity needs to be promoted, drop by drop. Over the years, the necessary message will penetrate and be absorbed through repetition of simple sentences such as ‘You are a Jewish boy/girl’ and ‘We are proud to be Jews,’ and by asking questions such as ‘How is our Judaism expressed?’ In the workshop, we ask ‘What is your first Jewish memory?'”
“A lot of pain comes up in our workshops,” Yehuda continues. “Parents always say, ‘We are Israelis,’ but their children say, ‘That’s right, but we are not.’ This is the most difficult thing. Parents are torn up since this is the first time they realize that their child does not identify as Israeli. ‘My child is Israeli,’ they assert with confidence. And yet, he/she is not. But they hold on to this with all their strength with statements like ‘My child eats falafel and humus.’ It is not easy to break free from this illusion about their kids’ Israeliness and there are parents who are unable to do so. But many parents grasp for the first time that they really did leave Israel and that their children do not consider themselves Israeli. Their children are Jews with Israeli parents, and construction of their kids’ identity needs to begin from there.”
“At the same time,” Neta explains, “we need to assure the parents that we don’t mean to take their Israeliness away from them. They will stay Israeli but they need to consider their children. After all, the disaster would be their children’s rejection of Jewish identity and that is what we need to prevent. By the way, there is no insurance policy against assimilation. Even Rabbi Kornfeld is not completely insured. However, regardless of what happens, we will at least be able to stand in from of the mirror and say we tried our best, we did the maximum.”
“It is important to reach parents whose kids are still small,” Yehuda emphasizes. “But these parents frequently say, ‘Let’s talk later on.’ They don’t understand that they have to start early. If they don’t, they end up running to us when their kids are in college and no longer listening to every word their parents say. What do we tell them then? It’s too late?”
I asked them to conduct for me a condensed, accelerated workshop. Neta begins with the Bible: “We need to make them familiar with biblical stories so they feel that their family is a continuing chapter of those stories, that they are part of something magnificent. There is history and there are values associated with every holiday and children need to learn about them, too. Often, there is a family awakening at bar mitzvah time but then the fire goes out. Our task is to see that the enthusiasm around that awakening continues, that the fire keeps on burning.”
“In order to instill Jewish values,” Yehuda explains, “we need to say, ‘As a Jew, this is what I do.’ It’s not enough to say ‘I am a Jew,’ but what I do as a Jew is what’s important. For example, a child needs to understand the statement of our sages that ‘Each Jew is responsible for every other’ and therefore ‘We help other Jews.’ We need to weave such ideas into the fabric of daily living at home, with frequent hints, in order that our children will grow up with these ideas embedded in their hearts.”
“The message does not have to be verbal,” Neta adds. “It can also be conveyed through objects in the home. Is there a Bible at home and how do we relate to it? Is there a Hanukkah menorah? To have a Hanukkah menorah on display in the living room is a big deal. Something also needs to be done on Fridays. If you are in Israel, even if you are secular, there is a special feeling attached to the approaching Shabbat, but here it’s not like that. We suggest sending a ‘Shabbat shalom’ text message on Fridays to the entire family, to remind the children that Shabbat is coming, and it’s not like any other day of the week, regardless of the messages transmitted by the surrounding culture. The Friday night meal is also important. Most Israelis here do not have kids in Jewish schools, saying they cannot afford it, and therefore everything their kids learn about Judaism and Jewish practices takes place exclusively at home.”
I am astonished at their unity and working together. “Both of us received similar reactions from our base. ‘What are you doing together? How can you work with a secular Jewish woman or how can you work with an ultra-Orthodox man?’” Yehuda exclaims. “But we discovered that there is a large community that genuinely wants this combination.”
Neta closes with a comment that echoes in my head long after we part: “In Israel, Yehuda and I would probably never have spoken to each other but here, as two Israeli-Americans, we discovered that we have much in common and need to work together.”
A Hebrew version of this article appeared in Yedioth Aharonot. Translated by Yehoshua Siskin.
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The Experience of Serious Illness

The Experience of Serious Illness

Jun 3, 2006  |  by Naomi Brudner
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The Experience of Serious Illness
Caregiving is never easy, but it is an opportunity to help the patient in a profound and meaningful way.
An excerpt from "CARING, A Jewish Guide to Caregiving" (Jerusalem Publications, distributed by Feldheim) by Naomi Brudner. Taking care of or even 'just visiting' an ill person can be an extremely complex and difficult task. CARING was written to help us live up to that task in the fullest, most meaningful way possible.
A person who is seriously ill is going through a life experience that touches and moves him not only physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. His whole life has been changed and perhaps threatened. In most cases, a seriously ill person can't help but think about the deeper, more serious aspects of life, as well as the deeper parts of himself, his relationships, and other aspects of his immediate life.
Questions arise in his mind: "What is going to happen?" "Why is this happening to me?" "Have I done anything to cause this?" "Can I do anything to cure this?" "Does God love me?" "Do I love life?" "Do I want life?" "Do I love myself?" "Is there anything in my way of life or in my relationships that was a factor in bringing on this disease?" "Can those aspects of my life be changed?" "Will I ever be well again?"
You can help enable the patient to find and create positive emotional and spiritual meaning during his illness.
The questions are endless, and the answers are not always immediately available. If the patient has negative thoughts and feelings regarding his illness, such as blaming himself; or, if he is aware of a lack of will to live because of difficulties in his life, this is where you as a loving caregiver can help. You can help enable the patient to find and create positive emotional and spiritual meaning during his illness. As a loving caregiver, you have the opportunity and the privilege to help the patient have positive thoughts and feelings including love, faith, trust, hope, and joy. You can help the patient to get in touch with his own highest beliefs, values, and aspirations so that during his illness his mind and heart will help him rather than harm him.
Illness is not a one-way street. It is not an irrevocable sentence. It is a process made up of many factors. Some are painful, some are negative, and some can be positive and meaningful. You as a loving caregiver can help the patient to get in touch with all that is or can be positive and meaningful in his life.
Meaningfulness
There is deep meaning to suffering, as there is to everything in life. However, the onlooker, or in our case the caregiver, as well as the person suffering, may not know what the meaning is. God's reckonings are beyond our understanding. Even though we might glimpse one aspect of the meaning of suffering, we cannot understand suffering in its entirety.
When we have contact with people who suffer, it is important to remember that there is meaning to their suffering, though we may have no idea what that meaning is.
People who are in the midst of suffering, or caregivers whose loved ones or clients are suffering, often have an automatic negative reaction to the subject of the meaningfulness of illness. When they hear the concept of making illness meaningful, they often instinctively feel uncomfortable. They wonder if the speaker isn't empathetic enough or isn't realistic enough. Their attitude is often: "When a person is suffering, just try to help him get better or to relieve his suffering. This is not the time to think or talk about meaning."
When a person is seriously ill, the question of meaning in his life is of tremendous importance.
Often this response comes because so many of us are out of touch with our inner beings, our inner realities. However, the truth is that when a person is seriously ill, the question of meaning in his life is of tremendous importance to him, perhaps now more than ever, for his life has been significantly changed -- and perhaps even endangered. His experiences, his relationships, his plans and dreams have all been altered in a most drastic way. Not only the quality of his life but perhaps even the length of his life is also in question.
An onlooker, a caregiver, often would prefer not to talk or think about meaning because it is such a deep, core, true issue for himself as well as for the patient, and unfortunately many of us are used to ignoring or skirting around such deep issues. When we are healthy, we may think or feel that we have the luxury of being able to put off thinking about meaning in our lives, though this is a serious mistake. For the patient who is seriously ill, meaning in life is a topic of utmost importance and relevance to him. He may or may not be aware of this. If he isn't, you as a loving caregiver can help him become aware of it, and you can help him find meaning. Then, though he is limited and also probably suffering as a result of his illness or disorder, you can help him to have a meaningful life -- from that very moment -- even if he remains hospitalized. Discussing the meaning and value of life and different aspects of life is not only important for the patient's recovery or to help him have a more meaningful life after he recovers; it is important because it will give him a more meaningful life now.
Just thinking and talking about serious, relevant topics is already more meaningful and valuable than discussing what the patient had for breakfast or whether the nurse was pleasant. The latter are also important topics for the patient to discuss if he desires to do so, but in addition, his mind and soul yearn to be immersed in more spiritual subjects. He may not be aware of it, but deep within himself every Jew yearns to be elevated, and this is especially true in times of suffering.
By mentioning and perhaps discussing meaningful topics, you can help the patient to have a meaningful life right now despite the limitations his illness has caused. If the patient is already spiritually aware, you can help him by being there with him and reinforcing what is important to him. Following his lead, you can journey together with him or her on spiritual paths that will take him beyond and above his suffering. Regardless of the spiritual level and awareness of the patient, if you feel able and competent, you can help him to get in touch in one of the deepest ways possible with God's loving instruction to each of us to "choose life." You as a loving caregiver can help the person whose life has been changed by serious illness to understand, want, and implement that choice to the best of his ability.
Countless religious Jews have shared their worldview with seriously ill patients and were responded to with appreciation and deep satisfaction, if not joy. One should be careful not to speak of suffering as atonement for sins to a person who does not show interest in hearing such ideas. Especially when speaking to a seriously ill nonreligious Jew, a religious Jew should be careful to share only positive, reassuring ideas such as that God loves him and is waiting for the patient to turn to Him, that there is a better world without suffering, and so on, depending on what is appropriate for the particular person. Nothing that could weaken a person in any way should be mentioned.
My mother was an incredible woman. She went through the Holocaust in her youth and retained her faith and love of God during and afterward. When she saw her brothers slipping away from Torah and mitzvot after the Holocaust, she did everything a human being could do to bring them back, and she succeeded. She married and raised a wonderful observant family and did acts of kindness constantly.
During her last illness, I heard well-meaning visitors tell her not to feel bad about her terrible suffering, because it was an atonement for her sins. Who asked them? What good did they think they were doing? Why didn't they just mind their own business? They may have meant well, but their comments were out of place.
Mentioning religious subjects is a sensitive issue. On the one hand it is important, but on the other hand one must be careful not to say the wrong thing. Your job as a loving caregiver is to add as much as possible to the patient's inner peace, strength, and will to live. Remember: As caregivers, we are trying to restore the patient's health, not worsen it. If the patient says that his suffering is a punishment or atonement, you do not have to negate that. But it would be wonderful to add, "Though we can't fathom God's ways, I do know that He loves you," or "I know that He is merciful and compassionate and wants to forgive us," or "You're always His beloved child." The main thing for you as a caregiver in this situation is to think before you talk, not to say anything negative, and whenever possible to say something positive and reassuring. Before you speak to the ill person, ask yourself, "Is what I am about to say appropriate?" Think well before you answer.
An excerpt from "CARING, A Jewish Guide to Caregiving" (Jerusalem Publications, distributed by Feldheim) by Naomi Brudner.
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