Last Thursday night, I had the privilege of attending the 2019 Daughters of Miriam Center (DMC) Annual Board of Trustees Dinner. It was my first time visiting the Clifton campus of DMC, although I have long known about this special institution that is such a big part of our community. This is mainly due to my long relationship with Rabbi Ira Kronenberg, the longtime and now retired head of the religious services department at DMC, whose son, Ely, and I are close and old friends from our high school days. Also, practically all of my children—as have so many in our North Jersey home communities—have visited DMC over the years with their respective elementary, middle, and even high schools, to spend time with the residents of DMC. Partly due to these school visits, DMC appears pretty frequently in our paper and I was excited to see DMC and meet the people behind it.
I was not disappointed at all. DMC’s multi-building campus is quite beautiful and well kept and it was easy to tell that the staff and residents all enjoyed being there.
The evening began with a lovely buffet dinner where I had the chance to meet and speak with DMC’s senior leadership, ranging from DMC Board president Jeffrey Silvershein and CEO Frank DaSilva, at whose table I sat. I also met and spoke with their director of religious services, Rabbi Moshe Mirsky, and Caren Speizer, DMC’s marketing and development director. Other local leaders in attendance were Rabbi Solomon Ryback of Cong. Adas Yisroel of Passaic, and his wife, Shoshana. Rabbi Kronenberg and his wife Faigie were also there as well and it was good seeing them.
After introductions, board president Jeffrey Silvershein delivered an overall positive update and report on the 2018 DMC highlights and he also noted some of the significant funding and budgeting challenges faced by DMC and other facilities like it both in NJ and nationally.
After these remarks, the featured speaker of the evening, Rabbi Dr. Yosef P. Glassman, got up to speak. Dr. Glassman, a Bergenfield resident, internist, certified mohel, and rabbi, has taught at both Harvard and Tufts Medical Schools in Boston and is a former lieutenant in the IDF Medical Corps, proceeded to educate the room about cannabis. With humor and dozens of slides, he reviewed Judaism’s long standing relationship with and deep connection to cannabis and its use in medicine. He cited examples from the Torah, Tanach and Mishnah about cannabis and the clear fact that cannabis was treated in a special and holy manner by virtually all Jewish communities going back thousands of years. He also noted the many medical benefits and the incredible fact that the human body has a special and separate cannabinoid receptor system which has only just begun to be studied seriously by modern medicine. He noted that cannabis medical research will likely lead to advances in Alzheimers, cancer research and pain medicine, among many other areas. According to him, cannabis research is “the future of medicine, I guarantee it,” he said.
As part of his presentation, Dr. Glassman presented a fascinating Youtube video from Israel showing the effect of medical marijuana use in Israel that emphasized its incredible impact on seniors suffering a range of conditions such as Parkinson’s and chronic pain. He noted also that cannabis has the potential to change geriatric care completely and he hopes that its positive effects will ultimately filter into DMC and the care of its residents as well.
At the end of the evening, Dr. Glassman gave out kosher marijuana leaf shaped cookies as a gift to all and promised that there was no cannabis contained within the cookies. All present laughed heartily at that final joke and on that note, the dinner ended with dessert and additional conversation. It was a beautiful evening for DMC and I was proud to be there.
