Editor's Viewpoint
Letter to the Editor
Odds and Ends
Mrs Burris
Pesach Cleaning for Rosh Hashanah, or Won't All That Teshuvah Send Me on a Guilt Trip?
Making Marriage Work
The Challah that Rose and Disappeared, or Rosh Hashanah - A Time for Sharing
The Intricacies of Chocolate Production
Life on the Chessboard
Psychology Q and A
Flood in a Fifth-Floor Walkup
Fishing for Compliments

To the Editor:
I have been reading your magazine for years and have always recognized products you endorse as having a very high level of kashrus. That is why I was shocked at your cover article in the June 1997 issue. I have never met Meir Abehsera. I have heard good things about him over the last 20+ years. I remember him bringing quite a few people back to Judaism and to Chabad. But to call Mr. Abehsera “The Healer” is a serious error.

“The Healer” is Hashem and only Hashem. Consider that for almost all of the actions we perform in a day, we have some type of bracha and the free will to make a choice of doing or not doing the mitzvah. There is no bracha for “doing healing,” because there is no choice for us to make. Healing is outside of our control. For us, the Jewish system of healing provides a pathway for “a complete healing—healing of soul and healing of body,” but we must never forget that the outcome is in the hands of Hashem. Perhaps an even better cover story would be to lay out the basic principles of Jewish healing.

Pen and Paper I have been very involved in Jewish healing for several years and am very careful not to call myself a healer. Instead, I call myself a facilitator, based on the Jewish tenet “The art of the human healer is to know which steps to take in order to facilitate recovery.”

Kol tuv,
Bryna Wexler, Director
Beit Nachman: The Washington Center for Jewish Spirituality

To the Editor:
Thank you for your excellent article on “Applying for Kashrus Certification” in The Jewish Homemaker (June 1997). Hunt-Wesson has so many people who are involved, in one way or another, in the production of our kosher foods, that we would like your permission to distribute this article to those people. This would include Plant Managers, QC Managers, Food Engineers, Marketing, R&D, etc. On a personal note, I would like to thank you for my subscription. I try to read as much of each issue as I can. I have found it to be very informative. The only problem I have is that sometimes I can’t figure out the Hebrew and Yiddish (I ask Joel Gallin for the translation!). Someday I’ll just have to start learning those. When I have finished with it, I pass it on to several of my Jewish friends.

Regards,
Britt Nichols
Hunt-Wesson, Inc.

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