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Staying Away Is Not an Option By Joanne Kenen Stefanie Augustine It may not be the easiest of 613 commandments to fulfill, but visiting the sick is nevertheless one of the most significant, meritorious and, ultimately, fulfilling of the interpersonal mitzvot. It is hard to visit sick people. And the sicker they are, the harder the visit. Visiting someone in the hospital can set off fears of illness and infection, stir up memories of past losses or remind us uncomfortably of our own mortality. Then there is the “shlep factor,” as Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector of the American Jewish University in California and a leading bioethicist, puts it. In our 24-7 multitasking lives, it is hard to find time for what can turn out to be an aggravating experience. We drive to the hospital, pay for parking, wander through unfamiliar corridors looking for the right room—and then discover that the…

A few days before my 100-year-old mother’s death this summer, she said she had only one regret: not being able to see her family in California again. But then I realized that I had my MacBook (with its built-in webcam) in my briefcase. A few phone calls later and my mother was using iChat to speak with and see her great-grandchildren for the first time in years. My mother, born in a Belarussian village before the advent of commercial radio, was by her late 90s using a cellphone, receiving e-mail messages from her family and asking me “what is this Twitter thing anyway?” She was far from the only centenarian using technology for more than just medical monitoring and protection against falls. Contrary to stereotypes, computers, social networks, e-mail and even video games are becoming essential parts of older peoples’ lives. Some of the highest growth rates in broadband use…

New Documentary Revisits Israel’s Holocaust Reception LEFT: COURTESY IZHAK WEINBERG; RIGHT: COURTESY KASZTNER FAMILY Another Kind of Train: Reszo Kasztner, pictured above in Switzerland, was in a position to liberate trains of Jews, including those Jewish children pictured to the left in 1944. Of course that meant he had to choose who would ride to freedom and who would remain under Nazi rule. By Jerome A. Chanes Gaylen Ross’s splendid new documentary, “Killing Kasztner,” comes at a time when a new generation of Israelis is rediscovering a forgotten conflict, one that threatened to tear apart Israeli society in the 1950s. Until recently Rudolf Yisrael “Rezso” Kasztner had been the forgotten person in Israel. An ironic and puzzling situation since in the mid 1950s, the “Affaire Kasztner” was the flashpoint in Israel. It was an event that split Israeli society more deeply than even the Lavon Affair. The idea that any…

Shalom In my Israel appeal I will not ask you to donate funds, nor will I ask you to visit Israel, important as these actions are in supporting Israel there is something else that I will appeal to you to do. When we donate money to Israel we are making a sacrifice, when we visit Israel as wonderful as the experience might be we are giving our time and resources, and depending upon the situation with Hamas and Hizbollah and how close we are to the border, taking a certain risk. Today, on Yom Kippur I will appeal to you to donate, to sacrifice, to risk something else for Zion’s sake. I will ask you to donate your voice, to sacrifice your social comfort zone, and to possibly risk your public reputation. Israel is increasingly being slandered, isolated and delegitimized; her reputation in much of the world community has gone…