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Speakers include OU Executive Vice President, Emeritus Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb; Rona Novick, PhD; Rabbi Naftali Besser; Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser; and many others. Topics will range from “Making Shabbos Meaningful to a 21st Century Teen” and “Building Not Breaking the Spirit of Teen Girls” to “Strategies for Dealing with Teen Apathy” and “Turning our Teens on to Tefillah.”

Reservations are not required. For more information, click here or contact Carol Rhine at rhinec@ncsy.org / 516-569-6279.

Find out more here.

On the drive up, I looked over the directions she had printed out which included logs.  The first log said “I’ve been hiking for 53 years and this is the first time I’ve ever needed to be rescued from a hike.”  Another log said, “the hike took us 8 hours and we ended up on a random highway nowhere near where we were supposed to.”  After reading these I began to suspect that perhaps this hike was not such a good idea!  I gently broached the idea to Chani, and got “the look.”

As I read on, I saw the hikes creator giving tips on how not to get lost on the trail such as, if you pass “Times Square” you went to far which I did not find to helpful un til I read later that it was actually a big rock with Times Square written on it.

So we went forward with the hike which was as enjoyable as possible with three of our six children being teenage boys who think a path is a suggestion and a big mountain a can’t walk by without climbing, getting stuck and climbing back down opportunity.

So after 2 and a half hours we were about halfway through our hike and we finally found the point where everyone went the wrong way, whew!  I walked a little farther so I could see “Times Square” (quite a let down) and we sat down for lunch.

While we were eating an Oriental couple began walking down the wrong way.  I tried to explain that they were supposed to follow the small blurry red upside down triangle on a white background not the small blurry red circle on a white background or they would get lost but they just nodded as if they understood and kept going the wrong way.  A short while later they returned with several more people from their party to walk with us “the right way.”

Their leader, started rubbing my arm and asked if I’m a guide.  I said , no, I don’t need a guide as I have a piece of paper with directions.  He then told me that my son next to me was very handsome and asked if he is a movie star, at which point I began to realize he was rubbing my arm and began to worry about that.

I let them go on without us and then noticed that my kids mouths were wide open and they were staring at me.  I asked if it was because the man was rubbing my arm and telling me how good looking my son was which I found very amusing.  They did say that was pretty weird; but, even more perplexing to them was my conversation.  They said, “Abba, he asked you if you are a G-d and you said that you don’t need a G-d because you have a piece of paper??!!”

Boy did this give me a great story for my next class on our relationship with the creator!