Michael

The Perfectionist’s Dilemma: When is Good Enough Good Enough?

Deborah Grayson Riegel
06/25/2010
Deborah Grayson Riegel
Special to the Jewish Week

I wanted my newborn twins’ homecoming to be perfect. But four days after Jacob and Sophie were born, my husband Michael and I were permitted to bring our robust seven-pound son home while our daughter, a dainty four pounds, had to stay in the NICU for a few more days. With one baby in arms and one left behind, our return home was far from perfect. I would quickly learn, however, when perfection would be critical -- and when good enough was good enough.

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What George Carlin Taught Me About Knowing Your Audience

Deborah Grayson Riegel
05/28/2010
Deborah Grayson Riegel
Special to the Jewish Week

When I met my husband Michael thirteen years ago, we knew within the first two weeks that this was it. (I like to tease him that he knew within the first two weeks, and that I’m still thinking about it, but we both know that’s a load of stuffed derma.) So it didn’t feel like we were rushing things when he asked me to meet his parents after one month of dating.

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Chabad’s Presence Making Big Waves In Oceanside

Chabad of Oceanside’s Hebrew school has touched off a bitter debate over educational standards. Courtesy of Chabad of Oceanside

Outreach group’s thriving one-day-a-week Hebrew school splitting a L.I. community
fighting to hold onto Jews.

02/11/2010
Stewart Ain
Staff Writer

Rarely has a single day — one day less of Hebrew school instruction a week, to be exact — so polarized a Jewish community. But in the desperate fight for Jewish souls playing out in the Long Island town of Oceanside, Chabad of Oceanside’s one-day-a-week Hebrew school, now in its 10th year and drawing a big crowd of students, is tearing the community apart, the town’s leaders suggest.

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'Honey Did It All'

08/08/2003
by Eric J. Greenberg
Staff Writer

In October 1979, Honey Rackman was asked to help a friend whose daughter was being denied a "get," or Jewish divorce. A group of Modern Orthodox women held a meeting in their Flatbush, Brooklyn, neighborhood to discuss how to help.
Since then she became a tireless advocate for "agunot," or "chained women," whose husbands refuse to grant their wives a religious divorce, leaving them in a kind of purgatory.

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Rabbi Abraham Klausner, Holocaust-Era Chaplain, Dies 92

07/06/2007
by Steve Lipman

Staff Writer

Rabbi Abraham Klausner, an American rabbi who as a chaplain in the U.S. Army served as an advocate for the needs of Jewish Holocaust survivors, died June 28 in his Sante Fe, N.M., home of complications of Parkinson’s Disease. He was 92.
For 25 years he had served as spiritual leader of Temple Emanu-El in Yonkers, N.Y., retiring in 1989.
The first American Jewish chaplain to arrive at Dachau after its liberation in 1945, he coordinated efforts on behalf of survivors in the American zone of Germany who remained in displaced-persons camps for years after the war.

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