The Human Side of the Story

For the week ending 27 April 2013 / 16 Iyyar 5773

Generation Gap as Wide as a Lake

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l
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Do you recall how you were taught in elementary school to remember the names of the five Great Lakes of North America?

If you are from the generation that had no Jewish Day Schools and received your geography education in public school, you probably would answer HOMES (for the non-American reader this acronym stands for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior). But when 14-year old Binyomin Albin, a student of Yeshivat Telshe of Chicago, was asked how he remembers the Great Lakes, he had a surprising answer.

Binyomin was visiting Eretz Yisrael this past summer together with his father, Rabbi Yehuda Albin, Director of Ohr Somayach operations in Chicago, and the question was put to him by the rabbi who hosted them for a Shabbat meal. His answer was MOSHE!

The host proudly concluded that this was an expression of the gap between generations. (But he thought to himself that it was perhaps also an expression of local patriotism to use an acronym that placed Chicago-boarded Lake Michigan first!)

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