The M&S Softball League is about midway through the 2020 season and the playoff picture is starting to get clearer. Almost all seven teams feel they have what it takes to hoist the M&S Cup this season and things are starting to get really interesting!

Who to Watch

At the top of the standing is WWG1WGA – run by Teddy Ishak and Sammy Esses – who started the season pushing all the right buttons and are an impressive 6-2. This team is extremely talented. Anchored by a star-studded outfield featuring former league MVP Michael Cohen, Aharon Cohen, and break out star Alan Jemal. The team also features a rock solid infield manned by Sammy Esses, TI, stud Yanky Gutman, and David Harary. But this team does have some question marks come playoff time. As currently constituted, this team throws out two starting pitchers on game day. Yaakob Seruya starts the first game and then hands the ball to the rising young gun Eddie Harari for the second game. Will they keep up the two-headed monster approach?

Now here is where it gets interesting. Currently there is a tie for 2^nd place at 5-3.

Spindrift, led by Steven J Gindi, is a team built on discipline and fundamentals. Spindrift is paced by the SJG and Joe S combo, but Joey Cohen on the mound has been the story of that team. In his first year in the league, Joey is pitching like a battle-tested veteran. Joey is, of course, the son of softball legend Abe Cohen, and was taken with a premium pick in the 2020 draft.

Two-time reigning Cy Young Max Yedid leads the G.O.A.T. organization, which features star shortstop Jon Eliezer and a great supporting cast, such as 2019 batting champ Nathan Kushner, Juber, and Butchy Cohen. The one question mark is the team’s back end of the lineup, but so far so good, they have been producing and have been clutch.

At 4-4, the Punishers, led by captain extraordinaire Michael Melech Solomon, are feeling good about themselves. After starting the season in a hole, they have dug their way out and have been enjoying great pitching by Ralph Hanan paired with slugging by Saul Cohen, Archie Eichorn, and Shimi Cohen. This team plays with confidence and is extremely dangerous. The one bugaboo with this squad is they are not fleet of foot, which can be a problem come playoff time.

Anything Is Possible! Watch for These Teams, Too

Currently 5^th in the standings, Michael Sabon Salomon’s Supreme has a record of 3-3 due to an unbalanced schedule. It’s way too early to make any assessments but any team with Abe Saka on the mound will be in the heart of the chase for the cup. Supreme’s deep lineup makes them dangerous. Featured players are Natan Safdieh in CF, reigning MVP JoJo Seruya at SS, along with a strong supporting cast.

Currently at 2-6 Jimmy Malack’s Fauda are scoreboard watching. This team on paper was one of the preseason favorites. A lineup featuring first ballot hall of famer Allie Marshal, Five Towns legend Yanky Itzkowits, Jimmy, and more. Unfortunately, this team has not played crisp ball but if they finish out strong, anything is possible.

In the cellar the Joe Greenberg-led Blue Moon is 1-5 and has been playing without Joe, who injured himself early on. This team has talent. Zack Ashkenazi dominates the shortstop position, Ike Mavorah continues to mash, and Mokass is playing an exceptional right field.  The injury to Joe has hampered the team, but Greeny will be back as soon as next week just in time for the stretch run.

League Sponsors

M&S would like to acknowledge their league sponsors, The Sephardic Food Fund, who does amazing things on a daily basis, and American Friends of Ariel University.

M&S now in its 13^th year is firing on all cylinders. Each game is streamed live on Youtube. You can also catch all the highlights via their extremely popular Instagram @MandS_Baseball and website www.MandSBaseball.com.  

“Behind every dark cloud there is a silver lining.”

During this terrible time of the COVID-19, which has permeated every aspect of our lives, our community, and the world at large, we find there are actually many positive consequences.  Last month, I observed how we have rediscovered ourselves, our kids, spouses, families, and friends, and vice versa.  We are using the technology that formally isolated and divided us to keep us connected.  We have seen how resilient, creative, and caring we all are.  These things can be viewed as the silver lining.

Estate Planning

In the legal area, as well, there have been unexpected silver linings.  The low interest rates are driving a surprisingly robust real estate market. And negatives such as the stalled economy, volatile stock market, record unemployment, and lowered asset valuations, coupled with the highest estate and gift tax exemptions in history, have created  a unique but short-term window of opportunity for estate planning, asset protection, and tax shelters.   Most people feel that these things are not relevant to them. Rather, they are significant  only for very high net worth individuals. This is a common misconception. Estate planning includes preparing the basic documents, such as wills, powers of attorney, and living wills/health care directives. Estate planning takes into consideration each family’s unique circumstances and goals.  Take, for example, if there has been a second marriage, a divorce, or a loved one with special needs. Estate planning also must consider if there is Medicaid eligibility, business succession planning to plan for, etc.  It is important to note that  properly prepared estate plan can minimize or even eliminate estate taxes.

In “normal” times, common estate planning tools include gifting and creating trusts. Again, do not be intimidated by the idea of a “trust.”   A trust is simply a legal entity that holds assets for the benefit of others.  Irrevocable trusts are generally drafted to make the assets immune to estate tax and, when applicable, to creditors.  And unlike a straight gift, the trust terms dictate how and when the assets are distributed to the beneficiaries.

In order to understand why now is the perfect time to create, review, amend or enhance your current estate plan, you need to be aware of the following:

Gift and Estate Tax Exemptions

Gifts are transfers to either individuals or trusts and the gift giver is the one who is taxed, never the person (or trust) that receives the gift.   At present, the federal gift tax exemption is likely the highest it may ever be – currently $11.98 million per individual. This means that a married couple can make lifetime gift totaling $23.16 million (combined) without incurring any federal gift tax.

The federal estate tax exemption is the same as the federal gift tax:  $11.98 million per individual ($23.16 combined for married couples). Lifetime gifts are subtracted from this amount to calculate a person’s estate tax exemption.  This exemption amount is expected to be lowered significantly after the November elections (no matter who wins) to recoup the billions of dollars being spent for COVID relief, which will leave many estates suddenly subject to an estate tax. This will occur as well on the state level, so it is very likely that our estates will soon be subject to either federal or state estate tax, or both.

It is important to note that New York State has an estate tax exemption of just $5,080,000.00 ($10,160,000.00 for couples). Right now, if the exemptions were to be lowered, many NY estates would be subject to NY estate tax..

Decrease in Valuation of Assets Is to Your Advantage

The valuation of the assets gifted or transferred to trusts is crucial in determining the amount of exemption used; the lower the better. Given the current state of the economy, the valuation of most assets is way down. Appraisers note that they are seeing valuations reduced by up to 50% for real estate.

And valuation discounts are increasing due to higher risk amid the current historic uncertainty. Valuation discounts are used together with appraisals to value commercial properties and  business interests.  Higher discounts further lower the asset value for gift and estate tax purposes.

Now is the time to take advantage of the high estate and gift tax exemptions, depressed asset values, and increased valuation discounts to create the perfect estate plan.

* This information is not intended as legal advice and should not be used or relied upon as such.  It is provided for information purposes only.  Please consult your legal, financial, tax, or other professional advisor.

 Lois D. Sutton is an attorney whose practice area includes residential and commercial real estate, estate planning, wills and trusts, including Halachic wills and Halachic Health Care Directive/Living Wills,  probate, and estate administration, and business matters.   Contact her at 732 245-4500 or at Lsutton@loissuttonlaw.com.

Long before the modern-day special education system was created, Shlomo Hamelech, in Sefer Mishle (22:6), recommended individualized instruction: “Teach the child according to His way.”

Many commentators explain this to mean that one should educate the child in Hashem’s way – the way He wants us to conduct our lives. But others explain this to mean that a child must be raised in his – the child’s – way.  As the Stone edition of the Tanach writes, “…the effect of a proper upbringing is lifelong but in raising a child parents and teachers must take careful account of his ability and character.” No two children are the same, and so no two children should be educated in precisely the same way.

Rochelle Gemal, a”h, exemplified both meanings of this verse.

She dedicated her life to the service of Hashem through her innumerable acts of hesed, and by educating each and every person she taught according to His ways. And while she was taken from our world before we were ready to say goodbye, her legacy will live on in the state-of-the- art Rochelle Gemal A”H Special Education Learning Center and Resource Room at Yeshivat Keter Torah.

A Thirst for Knowledge

Together with her husband, Mitchell, Mrs. Gemal built a beautiful Torah family, and they were blessed with many grandchildren. Her daughter, Sara Bijou, relates that while growing up, she and her siblings had limited access to television, and by the time she was in high school, the television was gone. “Not for religious reasons,” Sara explains.  “My mother just didn’t believe in it.” Instead, Mrs. Gemal spent hours reading to her children, and later to her grandchildren.

“We learned that education, and reading, in particular, was a fundamental value to my mom and influenced everything she did in her life,” Sara reflects.

Rochelle’s thirst for knowledge was evident in the sheer number of classes she attended. Rabbi Shlomo Diamond recalls how Rochelle attended his classes consistently for 40 years.

“In the beginning, she took copious notes which made the class better than it was,” Rabbi Diamond says. “She made xerox copies and shared them with her friends.” Later, she made cassette tapes and distributed them to friends in Deal and Brooklyn.

Mrs. Gemal’s daughter, Adele Cohen, recalls a story told by her grandmother.  “Apparently, my mom loved school so much that when she was told she couldn’t go to school because she had the chicken pox, she cried and cried all day.  My mom loved school so much, she always said she made it her ‘lifelong profession’.”

And what an illustrious profession it was, spanning 48 years, during which time Mrs. Gemal taught students of all ages, including newly-arrived Russian immigrants, in almost every educational institution in our community.

A Love for Knowledge

After graduating from Brooklyn College, Mrs. Gemal began her teaching career at Magen David Yeshiva in Brooklyn, where she was beloved by her students. In fact, when her daughter was approached to babysit, she was told by the mother looking to hire her, “You come with a great recommendation from my husband.”

“But I never met your husband,” the babysitter said, perplexed. “How could he recommend me?”

To that the woman replied: “Well, you are Mrs. Rochelle Gemal’s daughter, and she was my husband’s favorite teacher, so you come recommended!”

As much as Mrs. Gemal loved her profession and enjoyed teaching, her first priority was her own family. And so when the family moved to Deal, she did not immediately pursue a full-time teaching position. Her passion for teaching was satisfied in her position as a substitute teacher at Hillel, where her own children attended school. She also pursued her own educational goals by studying and receiving a license to teach special education.

She later began teaching at Ilan High School, where her versatility and vast knowledge allowed her to teach both AP courses as well as special education students. “Rochelle had the ability to bring out the best in all her students,” her husband, Mitchell, describes. “I watched her work with a student who was clearly having difficulty with the material. By the time she was finished, the child not only knew the material, but had a newfound confidence that Rochelle instilled.”

When she believed in you, you believed in yourself.

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman, who worked with Mrs. Gemal extensively at Ilan High School, and later, on several proofreading projects, says of her: “She had a relentless thirst for personal growth through knowledge. According to Rabbenu Yonah in Avot (4:1), the measure of a wise person is not how much knowledge he has accumulated, but how much he loves knowledge. Rochelle had knowledge, but even more important, she had great intellectual curiosity.”

Aside from teaching, Mrs. Gemal took on the role of proofreader “par excellence” of every yearbook and publication that the school produced. Mrs. Hena Diamond, principal at Ilan High School, describes Mrs. Gemal’s work as “meticulous, catching every mistake, be it grammar, context, font size, and more.”

But where Mrs. Gemal made the most impact was in her keen sensitivity to others. Mrs. Diamond says it most succinctly: “She had the intuition to be there for people in a deep and consistent way…in a way that they can gain true hizuk [encouragement].”

In a speech she gave to high school students about the importance of hesed, Mrs. Bonnie Mansour spoke of her “best friend,” Mrs. Gemal, and the “one small gesture that gave me the confidence to become who I am today.” That small gesture took place in the lunchroom at Boody Middle School in Brooklyn, and it was quintessential Rochelle – intuitive and sensitive. Seeing Bonnie, a fellow student who had just moved from out of town and looking a little lost, Rochelle, all of 14 years old, waved to Bonnie and patted the seat next to her, inviting her to sit with her and her friends, thus making her an established member of the group. It was this character trait that informed every aspect of Rochelle’s life and career as an educator.

“Powerhouse”

After working at Ilan for many years, Rochelle took on the role of support teacher at Yeshivat Keter Torah.  She would enter a classroom and work alongside a student who needed extra guidance during the lesson. This allowed the student to remain in the classroom with his friends and peers, while receiving the extra coaching and assistance he needed.

Rabbi Aharon Yanai, the yeshiva’s menahel, describes Mrs. Gemal as a “powerhouse” dedicated and devoted to her students.  “Education meant everything to Mrs. Gemal, a”h, and the students sensed her seriousness about learning and took their learning seriously because of that.”

Her message to the students was twofold: This is important, and you can do this.

The Rochelle Gemal Learning Center

 With her limitless devotion, commitment to her students and compassionate intuition, Mrs. Gemal created a legacy of learning that Yeshivat Keter Torah continues to embody.  How befitting it is that the yeshiva is honoring the memory of this exceptional woman by establishing the Rochelle Gemal A’H Learning Center and Resource Room. The room will be designed to look and feel pleasant and fun for the student. Through its trained professionals, who will utilize individualized and small-group instruction, targeted assessments, multi-sensory learning, and strong teacher-student relationships to address the specific goals of the individual student, the Learning Center will enhance the academic and general growth of all its students.

“At Keter Torah, we passionately believe that every child can succeed,” says Mrs. Chaya Sima Wahrman, Director of Special Services at Yeshivat Keter Torah. “In the Learning Center, our goal is to provide each child with the tools he needs to attain the foundational skills necessary for academic success.”

Research shows that when a child has strong foundational skills, those learned in pre-school through third grade, he has the best chance of academic success. The Common Core Standards, developed in 2009 by state leaders, including governors and state commissioners of education, addressed the need to ensure that critical thinking skills, reasoning, skills, and evidence collection skills in both math and reading, were achieved. In the same way that we monitor an infant’s milestones in baby steps – crawling, standing, walking, running – foundational skills are milestones that every student should reach in grades pre-k to 3 in order to become a strong reader. The standards emphasize that when it comes to these foundational skills, “Instruction should be differentiated: good readers will need much less practice with these concepts than struggling readers will. The point is to teach students what they need to learn and not what they already know – to discern when particular children or activities warrant more or less attention.”

Without realizing it, this committee put into practice the advice of Shlomo Hamelech – “Teach every child according to his way.”

The Keter Torah faculty and administration are committed to identifying student challenges while they can still mold skills and make sure the basics are mastered.  As Rabbi Yanai, menahel, explains, the assessment process is thorough and ongoing.

“Each student is assessed for strengths and areas of challenge.  For instance, a student may be strong in reading but requires support in math or vice versa, or a student may be strong in both but needs support for his reading comprehension. Our goal is to assist in areas that are needed while keeping the child in his regular class for all other subjects. This reduces the stigma sometimes associated with the resource room and does not compromise the child’s socialization with his peers. The child gets the message that ‘I have needs that need to be met, but I can still be part of the regular class’.”

Weekly assessment meetings are held by the classroom teacher and resource room professional working with the student. When it is determined that the student has mastered the necessary skills, he is mainstreamed back into the classroom. But not without the support he needs.

The Rochelle Gemal Tutoring Fund

To that end, the Gemal family is spearheading a second initiative that addresses the financial burden borne by the families of students requiring supplemental support, or tutoring, outside the resource room. Most tutors receive as much as $80 an hour, which can impose an extraordinary financial burden on a family already paying yeshiva tuition.

“Special education needs special attention, and no child should be denied the opportunity for success because of lack of funds,” Mr. Gemal explains. He says that Rochelle believed this and set a personal example of selfless devotion to help struggling students and their parents. “When Rochelle identified a student who was falling behind in class and in danger of being left back a grade, she would offer to tutor them in our home. Many times, knowing the family could not afford to pay, she would not charge them for her services. Her main concern was making sure the child succeeded.”

Following in the tradition of Mrs. Gemal a”h, her family has set out to create the Rochelle Gemal A”H Tutoring Fund. The model they envision is simple but ingenious – tutoring services for children who cannot afford the fees, provided by teachers or tutors requiring supplemental income.

“Our gemach [charitable fund], will not only give the parents who cannot afford the cost of tutoring the ability to provide their children with the much-needed support, but also address the parnasah needs of the families of teachers,” Mr. Gemal explains. “We help the child, his parents, and families that can use a few extra dollars to cover their expenses.”  Truly a win-win-win situation.

The initial funding for the program will be endowed by the Gemal family, and it will be replenished by donations.

Rabbi Shlomo Diamond describes Rochelle as “a lady who in her quiet, modest way influenced so many others,” and who “left the world hidden, without any fanfare, and that was the way she was her whole life.”  She was a woman deeply committed to education, knowledge, and personal growth, devoted to hesed and lovingkindness, and who lived by the guiding principle, “When you save one neshamah (soul), you save the world.” Her smile, her reassuring words, and her gracefulness, will be sorely missed.  But through the Rochelle Gemal A”H Resource Room and the Rochelle Gemal A”H Tutoring Fund, her legacy of education and hesed will continue for many years to come.

Even when Mrs. Gemal became ill, she kept to her teaching schedule as best as she could. It was always a top priority for her. The following touching poem, presented to her by the administration, faculty, and students of Yeshivat Keter Torah, illustrates her singular dedication:

Each Tuesday and Thursday

And some Wednesdays, this year

Our school was so privileged

Because you were here

You’d peek into the classroom

And then kindly enter

Circulating to aid each student

In the front, back and center

With clarity you’d explain

Grammar, reading and math

You’d teach and elucidate

Setting each student on the right path

And so Mrs. Gemal,

We thought you should know

Our best wishes are with you

And WE MISS YOU SO!

Thank you for touching the lives of our students

An Opportunity to Share in this Mitzvah

Rabbis have taught us that providing funds for a child’s Torah education is considered an admirable outlet for a person’s ma’aser kesafim (charitable tithe). Anyone interested in sharing in this mitzvah and donate to the Rochelle Gemal A”H  Special Education Learning Center, Resource Room, and Tutoring Gemach FUND, is invited to send an email to Mgemal@keter.org.