A not so simple childhood

With significant change comes stress and worry By Chandrea Serebro Being a kid is awesome. Exploring, playing with friends, learning new things in and out of school, hobbies and pastimes, lazy days and sleepovers, grampa’s love, and birthday parties. Then came Corona. And with the snap of its toxic fingers, any outlet that kids might have had to deal with their problems, their anxiety, their difficult feelings and experiences to make them more manageable was whisked away with their freedom and their outside time. Because, yes, says Ashley Jay, Educational…

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The Shidduch Project?

A modest proposal…for increasing proposals By: Alex Cohen We are taught from a young age that one day, when we grow up, we’ll meet a suitable young person, look into each other’s eyes, discuss our life dreams, assess our compatibility on a practical level, and eventually get married, please G-d have kids, and build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisroel (a faithful home among the Jewish people). The Talmud specifies that it is forbidden for a man to marry a woman until he meets her and she finds favour in his eyes. Furthermore, a…

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Juggling life

The new reality of everyone learning and working from home By: Maria Beider There is an astute meme about homeschooling that has been doing the rounds on social media recently with a picture of Mary Poppins and Miss Hannigan side by side. On day one of homeschooling we exemplified the kind, virtuous, calm image of Mary Poppins. By now many of us have become the frazzled, impatient Miss Hannigan. How have we as parents risen to the challenge of distance learning in 2020? What a novel position we all find…

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Hearty meals for winter

The quickest way to warm your heart is through your tummy By: Sharon Lurie In these uncertain times, where the corona virus could be lurking on our doorstep, one thing’s for certain, we don’t want to be out shopping unnecessarily. And, as we approach colder weather, who really wants to go out anyways? Hopefully, most of the ingredients in these recipes will be in your cupboard and freezer. Although they’re soups, some of them can be served as hearty meals, especially with the crispy “as simple as that” bread. Carrot…

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Law of return

What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours By: Rabbi Dr David Fox There was no doubt about it, he was dishonest. There was nothing I could do about it. True, it had been money owed to me, and it was a large sum in those days. In fact, it had been a very large sum; money which I had earned through hard work. In fact, it had been very hard work over a very large interval of time. Through a series of deceptions and other manipulative legerdemain, the…

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Coping with financial distress

New initiatives in the time of Corona By Ilan Preskovsky At this point, what more is there to say about COVID-19? Most of us have never experienced a global phenomenon even remotely like this; one that has so thoroughly altered our most basic, day-to-day existence on so fundamental a level that even with all the political and social upheaval that 2020 has wrought, it will forever be defined by this pandemic. And that’s only partly because of its health implications. The forced disruption of day-to-day living by life under lockdown…

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Where to from here?

COVID-19 and the Economy By Ilan Preskovsky The first two decades of this new millennium have certainly had their challenges, but 2020 seems to have taken all the uncertainty, anguish, and anxiety of the 21st century and condensed it into a single year – or, as of this writing, half a year. Hysterical premonitions of the apocalypse may be rather premature (there have been significantly worse years in human history), but we are living in the midst of the greatest global crisis of most of our lifetimes. All from a…

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