Rocketbook Core Reusable Smart Notebook

The Rocketbook Core features durable synthetic pages that feel surprisingly similar to traditional paper, giving you a smooth writing experience. Use the included Pilot FriXion pen to take notes, then simply wipe the pages clean with a damp cloth and use them again and again – an easy way to cut down on paper waste.

Owala FreeSip Water Bottle (24 oz)

Staying hydrated is easy with the Owala FreeSip 24 oz bottle. Its clever FreeSip spout lets you drink through the built-in straw or tilt the bottle to sip from the wide opening, while the locking lid helps prevent leaks when it’s packed in your bag. Durable and easy to carry, it’s a school-day favorite. Available in various vibrant colors.

Bentgo Chill Kids Lunch Box

The Bentgo Chill lunch box features a removable ice pack built into the lid to help keep food cooler, longer. Multiple compartments keep snacks and lunch items neatly separated, making packing simple and organized.

Pilot FriXion Erasable Highlighters

Highlight with confidence knowing mistakes or highlighting don’t have to be permanent. Pilot FriXion Highlighters use thermo-sensitive ink that can be erased with the built-in friction tip, making it easy to tidy up notes or your friend’s book. They’re perfect for students who like color-coded revision without the stress of getting it exactly right the first time.

Nelko P21 Label Maker Machine

Keep school supplies organized with the compact Nelko P21 label maker. It connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth, letting you design and print labels for notebooks, folders, storage containers, and chargers in just a few taps. It’s a simple gadget that can make staying organized much easier.

Poojaed Magnetic Levitating Floating Globe

This eye-catching desk accessory uses magnetic levitation to suspend a globe in mid-air, where it slowly rotates above its base. It’s a fun demonstration of magnetic forces and is a unique decoration for a study space. Science and style come together in one cool gadget.

Shure MV5C Home Office Microphone

Whether you’re recording a school presentation or joining an online class,  the Shure MV5C is designed to capture clear, natural-sounding speech. It connects via USB to compatible computers and helps deliver more polished audio than many built-in laptop microphones. It’s a great upgrade for students who regularly create digital content.

Mustard Made Twinny Locker

Bring a touch of classic school style into your bedroom with the Twinny locker from Mustard Made. Inspired by traditional lockers, it includes shelves, hooks, and lockable doors for storing books, stationery, sports gear, or collectibles. It’s practical storage with plenty of personality.

Vihose Classroom Pencil Lamp with Glass LED Design Add a playful touch to your desk with this oversized pencil-shaped LED lamp. Its warm light makes it a fun decorative accent while creating a cozy atmosphere for reading or relaxing. It’s an easy way to brighten up any homework corner.

Linda  Sadacka

There is a difference between protesting a government (namely Israel’s) and intimidating a religious community.

Across the country, anti-Israel activists have increasingly taken their political grievances beyond government buildings, universities, and public squares and brought them directly to synagogues. Jewish families arriving for prayer services, communal gatherings, and events have found themselves confronted by hostile crowds, aggressive chants, blocked entrances, and an atmosphere that can make walking through the doors of a house of worship feel like an act of defiance.

First Amendment Protections

The First Amendment protects the right to protest. It protects offensive speech, unpopular opinions, and political expression that many Americans may find reprehensible. That protection is not incidental to American liberty. It is one of its foundations.

But the Constitution protects something else as well: the free exercise of religion.

Those two freedoms should not be treated as though one must swallow the other.

Americans have every right to protest Israeli policy, condemn Zionism, or criticize the Israeli government in public spaces.

Targeting

But when a political movement deliberately chooses the entrance of a synagogue as the place where American Jews will be confronted over the actions of a foreign government, we should ask a question that has too often gone unasked:

Why the synagogue? A synagogue is not an embassy. It is not a legislature. It is not the Israeli government. It is where Jews pray.

And to Brooke Goldstein, a human-rights attorney, award-winning filmmaker, and Founder and Executive Director of The Lawfare Project, the choice of target is itself revealing.

“The target tells you everything about who these protesters are really targeting,” Goldstein said. “When protesters walk past consulates and embassies, the United Nations, and every government office in New York City and choose to stand outside a Jewish house of worship, they are clearly and unambiguously targeting Jews as Jews.”

Intimidation

Goldstein points to the November 19, 2025 protest outside Park East Synagogue, where, a demonstrator was captured on camera saying, “We need to make them scared.”

“A synagogue doesn’t make foreign policy and is not representative of any government,” Goldstein said. “The only ‘them’ to make scared are congregants.”

New York State Senator Sam Sutton put that distinction plainly.

“When a protest is deliberately positioned at the entrance of a synagogue, the message is no longer simply political. It’s usually an act of intimidation designed to make Jewish families afraid to walk through the doors of their own house of worship. We must protect the First Amendment, but the First Amendment does not give anyone the right to threaten, harass, or intimidate people exercising their own constitutional right to worship. That is exactly why the buffer zone was so important: no New Yorker should have to face a gauntlet of agitators simply to pray.”

No American should have to run a gauntlet of political agitators simply to pray.

Yet elected officials have often appeared more worried about being accused of restricting protest than about confronting conduct that crosses from expression into intimidation.

As Sutton put it, “Protecting free speech and protecting people from intimidation are not contradictory principles. We can and must do both.”

That is the heart of the issue.

Protecting Freedom of Religion

Religious liberty cannot exist only on paper. It must be possible to exercise it in practice. Americans should be able to walk into a synagogue, church, mosque, or other house of worship without having to calculate whether organized intimidation awaits at the entrance.

The bipartisan Right to Worship Act seeks to address this. The legislation would create a 100-foot protected area around houses of worship during services and communal gatherings, to provide greater protection against obstruction, harassment, and intimidation while preserving constitutionally protected expression.

A Jewish mother should not have to walk her children through a crowd screaming about a foreign conflict simply to attend a synagogue program.

This is not an argument for silencing protest. Holding a sign, criticizing Israel, and peacefully demonstrating are considered speech. Blocking synagogue entrances, threatening worshippers, or deliberately disrupting religious activity are considered conduct.

Any buffer-zone law must be carefully drawn so government cannot suppress lawful political expression. But protecting access to a house of worship is not the same thing as suppressing speech. The right to protest does not create an entitlement to threaten or harass worshippers. Protecting religious access does not require the suppression of political dissent.

More importantly, this cannot be understood merely as a Jewish issue. Sutton framed the larger principle in terms that should concern every American.

“No citizen should have to choose between exercising their constitutional rights and exposing themselves or their family to harassment and intimidation. Today that may be a Jewish family walking into a synagogue. Tomorrow it could be any religious or minority community.”

Adaption – Not Acceptance

Freedom of religion is not a special accommodation. It is a foundational American right. Perhaps the most troubling development is how rapidly the extraordinary has become ordinary for American Jews. Private security, guards, and locked doors have become familiar features of Jewish communal life. Jews have learned to adapt. But adaptation should never be mistaken for acceptance.

The burden must also fall on government to ensure that intimidation does not become the price of practicing one’s religion. And this is where outrage must become action.

The Orthodox Union Advocacy Center is urging constituents to contact their senators in support of the Right to Worship Act through its pre-written action alert. Synagogues, schools, rabbis and community organizations should circulate it.

There will always be fierce political disagreement in America. There should be room for demonstrations over Israel, American foreign policy, war, religion, and countless other subjects. But the existence of one constitutional liberty does not require the surrender of another.

We should not have to choose between an America in which people can protest and an America in which people can pray. A free society should be capable of defending both, especially when political anger directed at a foreign government is redirected toward American citizens walking into a house of worship.

That is no longer simply a debate about Israel. It is a test of whether Americans still understand what religious liberty requires and whether we are prepared to defend it before intimidation becomes an accepted feature of American religious life.

America has plenty of space for protest. Surely we can preserve 100 feet for worship.

Sam J. Sutton

Eighteen years.

You would think by now M&S Softball had exhausted every possible way to create drama.

Apparently not.

As the 2026 regular season reaches its final games, we already know who sits atop the mountain. We know one semifinal matchup. We know who is waiting in the Wild Card. But somehow, incredibly, we still don’t know who the fifth and final playoff team will be.

And getting there may require an entire tournament just to determine who gets into the tournament.

Welcome to Year 18.

Icey Hot Leaves No Doubt

While chaos reigns beneath them, Icey Hot has been the one constant.

At 11-3, they officially secured the No. 1 seed after closing their regular season with six consecutive wins. Their latest statement was a sweep of the Party Animals. Two wins that simultaneously cemented Icey Hot atop the standings and threw the rest of the league into complete disarray.

Marc Sayegh has anchored the pitching, while Moshe Menshikov, David Brecher, Jackie Haber, and a deep lineup have made Icey Hot arguably the most complete team in the league.

Their reward? Rest.

Icey Hot now waits for the dust to settle and will face the eventual Wild Card winner in the semifinals.

A Heavyweight Semifinal Is Set

We also know the other semifinal matchup.

Chronicles Unhinged and the Summer Knight Kings will meet in the 2-vs.-3 series after both finished 8-6.

Chronicles has featured one of the league’s deepest offensive groups throughout the season, while the Summer Knight Kings looked nearly unbeatable early on, beginning the year 6-0 before navigating a much tougher second half.

Now none of that matters. They’re both in, and one will play for an M&S championship.

One Mo Time Is Waiting

Perhaps no team changed its trajectory more dramatically than One Mo Time.

At one point, buried near the bottom of the standings, OMT completely reshaped its roster through a flurry of trades and acquisitions. The result was a second-half surge that secured the No. 4 seed at 7-7.

Their assignment is now simple: wait.

One Mo Time will play the eventual No. 5 seed in a nine-inning Wild Card game, with the winner advancing to face Icey Hot.

Figuring out who OMT will actually play?

That’s where things get ridiculous.

Four Teams. One Spot.

The Party Animals and Murderers Row are both 6-8. Downtown and Take Two are both 4-8, with their final doubleheader still to be played.

And all four are alive.

If Downtown and Take Two split, Party Animals and Murderers Row meet in a seven-inning winner-take-all game. Winner gets the No. 5 seed.

But if either Downtown or Take Two sweeps, the sweep winner first faces Party Animals. That winner then faces Murderers Row.

Survive all of that and congratulations! – you’ve earned the right to play One Mo Time in the Wild Card.

Four teams. One chair.

The Future Is Now

Earlier this season, we called 2026 “The Future Is Now.”

A major youth movement has reshaped M&S. New stars have emerged, younger players have taken larger roles, and they’ve joined a veteran core that isn’t quite ready to hand over the keys.

After 18 years, the league keeps evolving. The names change. The stars change. The standings change. The drama never does.

By the time you read this, we may finally know who survived.

As I write it?

Four teams. One playoff spot. Absolute chaos. Welcome to M&S Softball!

This month we explore the intriguing history behind the…

SELF-DRIVING CAR

For decades, a car that could drive itself existed mostly in science-fiction movies and futuristic drawings. The idea seemed impossible: a vehicle that could understand the road, avoid obstacles, follow traffic rules, and make decisions without a human behind the wheel.

Today, self-driving technology is no longer just a dream. While fully autonomous vehicles that can drive anywhere under all conditions do not yet exist, cars with advanced automated features are already on roads around the world. Behind this transformation is more than a century of research involving engineers, computer scientists, robotics experts, and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers.

The modern self-driving car was not invented by one person or one company. It was created through decades of discoveries that allowed vehicles to sense their surroundings, process information, and respond to changing situations.

The Early Search for Automated Vehicles

The idea of a driverless vehicle began long before modern computers existed. In 1926, a radio-controlled vehicle called the American Wonder traveled through New York City streets in a public demonstration. Although it appeared to drive itself, it was controlled remotely by a person in another vehicle. It was an important demonstration of automation, but it was not truly autonomous.

Interest in automated transportation continued throughout the twentieth century. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, designer Norman Bel Geddes presented his famous Futurama exhibit, which imagined a future filled with advanced highways and automated traffic systems. Although the technology needed to create that vision did not yet exist, it encouraged engineers to explore new possibilities.

Real progress began when computers became powerful enough to help vehicles understand their environment. During the 1980s, researchers developed experimental autonomous vehicles using cameras, sensors, and computer programs. Carnegie Mellon University’s Navlab project and German engineer Ernst Dickmanns’ work on computer vision demonstrated that vehicles could begin recognizing roads, lanes, and other objects.

Another important milestone was the European PROMETHEUS Project, launched in 1987. This large research effort helped advance technologies such as computer vision, intelligent vehicle systems, and automated driving concepts.

However, early experiments revealed how difficult autonomous driving really was. A human driver makes thousands of decisions almost instantly, often without thinking. Teaching a computer to handle the same variety of situations required major advances in sensors, software, and artificial intelligence.

The Engineering Breakthroughs Behind Self-Driving Cars

Modern autonomous vehicles work because several technologies operate together.

Cameras provide visual information similar to human eyesight. They can recognize lane markings, traffic signs, pedestrians, cyclists, and other vehicles. However, cameras can struggle in conditions such as heavy rain, fog, or darkness.

Radar helps solve some of these problems by using radio waves to detect the distance and movement of objects. It is especially useful for measuring the speed of nearby vehicles and maintaining safe distances from them.

Many autonomous vehicles also use lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging. Lidar uses laser pulses to create detailed three-dimensional maps of the environment around the vehicle. This allows the vehicle to understand the location and shape of objects nearby.

Location technology is another key part of autonomous driving. GPS helps determine where a vehicle is, but self-driving systems require much greater accuracy than ordinary navigation apps. Engineers combine GPS with high-definition maps, motion sensors, and other information to determine a vehicle’s position.

The most important technology may be the vehicle’s artificial intelligence system. AI software combines information from all the sensors, identifies objects, predicts how they may move, plans a safe route, and controls the vehicle’s steering, acceleration, and braking. These decisions must happen in fractions of a second.

The Competition That Accelerated Innovation

One of the biggest turning points in self-driving technology came from the DARPA Grand Challenge, organized by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The first competition in 2004 challenged teams to build vehicles that could travel across a desert course without human control. None of the vehicles completed the route, showing how challenging autonomous driving was.

By 2005, progress had improved dramatically. Several teams completed the course, and Stanford University’s autonomous vehicle, Stanley, won the competition. The achievement proved that self-driving technology was advancing quickly.

In 2007, DARPA created the Urban Challenge, which required vehicles to handle more realistic driving situations, including intersections, traffic rules, and interactions with other vehicles. Many researchers involved in these competitions later helped develop autonomous technology at major technology companies and automobile manufacturers.

In 2009, Google launched its self-driving car project, bringing together experts in artificial intelligence, robotics, mapping, and engineering. The project later became Waymo, which became one of the leading companies developing autonomous vehicle technology.

How Self-Driving Technology Is Used Today

Although fully autonomous cars are not yet available everywhere, self-driving technology is already being used in several ways.

Some companies operate autonomous ride-hailing services in limited areas where vehicles have been carefully tested and approved. These vehicles use cameras, radar, lidar, maps, and AI systems to navigate without a human driver inside under specific conditions.

Most people encounter a simpler form of this technology through advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS). Features such as adaptive cruise control, lane-keeping assistance, automatic emergency braking, and automated parking help drivers but do not replace them. Human drivers must remain responsible and ready to take control.

Autonomous technology is also used outside passenger cars. Mining companies use self-driving trucks in controlled environments, farmers use automated machinery for precision agriculture, and warehouses use robots to move products efficiently.

The Benefits and Challenges

Supporters of autonomous vehicles believe they could make transportation safer and more accessible. Human mistakes, including distraction, fatigue, and impaired driving, contribute to many crashes. Autonomous systems do not become tired or distracted, and engineers hope they can eventually reduce accidents caused by human error.

Self-driving vehicles could also provide greater independence for people who cannot drive, including some older adults and people with disabilities. They may improve access to jobs, education, healthcare, and daily activities.

However, major challenges remain. Autonomous vehicles must handle unpredictable situations such as construction zones, extreme weather, emergency vehicles, and unusual road conditions. Engineers must also protect vehicles from cybersecurity threats and create safety standards that build public trust.

Another challenge is that today’s autonomous systems operate only within specific limits. A vehicle that can drive itself in one location or situation may not be able to operate safely somewhere else.

The Future of Autonomous Driving

The future of self-driving cars will likely develop step by step rather than arrive suddenly. Engineers continue improving AI, sensors, computer power, and mapping technology.

Researchers are also exploring vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, which could allow cars and roads to share information about traffic, hazards, and changing conditions.

Autonomous trucks, robotaxis, and automated systems in agriculture and logistics may continue expanding. However, the goal of Level 5 autonomy – a vehicle capable of driving anywhere in any conditions without human involvement – remains a long-term challenge.

The invention of the modern self-driving car is a story of human creativity and engineering persistence. From early experiments with remote-controlled vehicles to today’s AI-powered systems, each breakthrough has brought transportation closer to a new era.

The self-driving car is still being invented. The engineers and innovators of the future will determine how far this technology can go – and how it will reshape the way people move around the world.

Your incredible sense of smell can tell you so much about the world around you. It can give you pleasure (think, the wafting aroma of freshly baked challah), warn of danger (think, the smell of smoke or gas), and help you taste food. Life without scents, odors, and aromas would be pretty boring.

Smells are made from tiny chemicals that are inside of odor molecules. These molecules are really small – at most, a few nanometers in size (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) – and they float in the air.

Smelling starts with your nostrils. When you breathe in through your nostrils, the air, along with the odor molecules, travel into your nasal cavity, which is behind your nose and above the hard roof of your mouth. Inside your nasal cavity, you have a smelling factory called the olfactory epithelium (ol-FAK-tor-ee eh-puh-THEE-lee-um). It contains very tiny cell receptors that pick up and recognize odors. Your nose has between six million and ten million of these receptors! (Although this sounds like a lot, dogs have up to 300 million olfactory receptors! No wonder dogs have such a great sense of smell!)

These special receptor cells detect smells in the air that you breathe in, and send information about them to the parts of your brain that deal with emotion and memory. This is why smells from our past, such as a delicious bowl of cholent on Shabbos morning or the salty spray at the seashore, can bring back strong feelings and powerful memories.

Mother Nose Best

Women have a stronger sense of smell than men!

Words of Wisdom 

When referring to Mashiach, Yeshayah Hanavi says, “V’haricho b’yirat Hashem… – And he will delight in the fear of Hashem…” (Yeshayah 11:3). “V’haricho – “and he will delight” has the same root as the word for “rei’ach – smell.” Chazal interpret this to mean that Mashiach will be able to judge through the sense of smell. Indeed, the Gemara (Sanhedrin 93b) discusses how a false Mashiach was detected because of his inability to judge by scent.

As with taste, our sense of smell is based on receptor cells (in the nose) detecting odor molecules floating in the air, and sending messages about them to the brain. Unlike taste, smell is a long-distance sense; we can sniff out certain odors from hundreds of yards away.

Makes Sense

Smell is the only one of the five senses directly connected to the area of the brain where memories are formed and emotions are processed.

Why Can’t I Taste When I Have a Cold?

When you have a cold, your nasal passages become swollen and produce extra mucus, which blocks your nose. This makes it difficult for your sense of smell to work. But why does a cold diminish your sense of taste?

The answer is that, although taste and smell are separate senses, with their own receptors, they are closely intertwined. While the tongue has thousands of taste buds to detect the five primary tastes (salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami), it’s the sense of smell that provides the rest of a food’s flavor. That is why it’s difficult to appreciate a food’s flavor when you have a nasal obstruction due to a cold or stuffy nose. However, you can still feel the texture and temperature of the food, since this information is processed on the tongue. That is why you are still able to distinguish whether the food you are eating is hot or cold, and coarse or smooth.

The Common Cold

In the United States, colds account for more visits to the doctor than any other condition!

Fact or Fiction??

Cold temperatures can cause a cold.

This is not true. Cold weather makes you cold, but it doesn’t cause a cold. Both the common cold and the flu are viruses, and they’re not hanging out in the wintry air but in other humans and the surfaces they touch. While the weather is not directly responsible for making people sick, the viruses that cause colds may spread more easily in lower temperatures, and exposure to cold and dry air is not good for the body’s immune system.

Selective Smelling

The same way that the brain can block out sounds that are unwanted, a similar block-out mechanism exists for odors. If you are overwhelmed by a particular odor, after a while you cannot detect it. This makes it possible for someone to tolerate an unpleasant odor after overcoming his initial dislike of it. However, the sensitivity of the smelling organs remains. Even in the stench of a garbage dump, a rose will still smell as sweet as ever.

The sense of smell is backed up by an excellent memory. Every odor that is recorded by the brain is stored away in a person’s long-term memory bank, where it remains ready for instant recall. There are distinctive smells of childhood, homes, gardens, cars, clothes, foods, flowers, etc. Each and every one of the thousands of different odors that enter our noses is faithfully filed away in a manner that no one can explain.

The ability to detect odor is a great kindness, one that we sometimes only appreciate when we temporarily lose our sense of smell due to a cold. The fact that there is such a variety of odors and aromas in flowers, fruits, and vegetables, each more pleasant than the next, and that so many millions of odor-sensing “machines” are consistently, faithfully, and humbly working hard at the top of our nose, is no accident. It points to a great plan and design, expertly created by the most brilliant Designer.