On April 16, Greenleaf Compassion Center in Montclair was issued a permit by the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services to begin growing medicinal marijuana. A permit to dispense medicinal marijuana will be issued to Greenleaf when its dispensary is operational. That is expected to occur in about six months.

A physician’s task is to heal and to do no harm. Jewish medical oaths as well as the Hippocratic oath constantly emphasize the palliative aspect of medical care. Jewish law has codified the role of the physician, and prescribes strict standards regarding the treatment of patients.

It has been documented that marijuana is an analgesic for sufferers of nausea related to chemotherapy, appetite, and weight loss related to AIDS, migraine headaches, Alzheimer’s, muscle spasms, fibromyalgia, arthritic pain, glaucoma, and other conditions. If marijuana is superior to other drugs, and concerns raised about its continued usage, we need to analyze a number of pertinent halachic issues. We need to determine whether it is permissible to prescribe marijuana according to Jewish law.

As the number of survivors able to give direct testimony about their horrific experiences during the Shoah is dropping precipitously, the Jewish community is considering seriously how the narrative of the Holocaust may adjust to a future where no eyewitnesses remain.

According to Hillary Kessler-Godin of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, about 500,000 survivors remain alive worldwide. The Holocaust Survivors Assistance Act of 2011 estimated that about 127,000 survivors were still alive in the United States, and Paul Winkler, executive director of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, suggests that over the past six or seven years, the number of survivors in New Jersey has decreased from 5,000 to about 2,000.

Shira Sheps remembers walking through an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan and stumbling upon her grandmother’s long-ago school reports alongside family photos and her great-grandparents’ wedding invitation.

Sheps, 25, had known that shortly after Kristallnacht, her grandmother, Marion Achtentuch, at age 9, had left Furth, Germany, on a Kindertransport to England. Seeing personal mementos, however, of the life that had been taken from the family, as well as her grandmother’s uncanny resemblance as a young girl to Sheps’ younger sister at that age, “I freaked out,” she says.

TRSICE, Czech Republic – Nearly 70 years after a Czech Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis by retreating into a nearby forest and relying on non-Jewish locals for help, a New Milford High Schol teacher has helped erect a permanent monument to their memory.

Earlier this month, several dozen people went to the wooded site where the Wolf family hid to unveil a modest stone monument that commemorates their struggle to survive and the locals who helped them.

For three nightmarish years during World War II, the Wolf family survived by intermittently hiding in the woods, a friend’s shed, and people’s homes — all the while depending on others to provide them with food, fuel, and other supplies.

All politics are local. Whatever benefits us takes priority. The Talmud codifies this by putting local needs ahead of others

The Orthodox Union (OU) is supporting a scholarship bill in Trenton that will benefit other communities, but not Northern New Jersey. I support any legislation that will help ease the burden of rising day school costs, but I am committed to my community first. There is and has been a vehicle available to us which we should utilize, namely tuition tax credits.

Beginning with this issue, The Jewish Standard begins a weekly column on issues of Jewish education in our area. It is written by noted educator Dr. Wallace Greene. In this first column, he explains why we believe this column is necessary.

There are many multi-million dollar businesses in northern New Jersey. When one considers the total amount of tuition and salaries paid, the cost of bricks and mortar, infrastructure, and other ancillary costs, the enterprise known as Jewish education is one of the biggest industries in our community. We estimate it at somewhere around $80 million a year.

Jeff Levine has spent 40 years searching for a God he can believe in. He’s finally given up — but he’s not giving up on Judaism.

“I did a lot of studying, and I realized about a year ago that it’s OK to say I’m a Jew — I like everything it stands for, but I don’t like the concept of believing in a deity,” said Levine, 55, a member of a Reform congregation in Los Angeles for the past 25 years.

Levine doesn’t want to abandon religion. While he’s looking into Humanistic Judaism, a stream that disavows divine power, he’s not sure that’s the answer, either.

Last fall, 27-year-old Ohad Ben-Yaakov was injured in an accident at his part-time job, and he died after two weeks in a coma. Ben-Yaakov wasn’t married, nor was he in a relationship. No woman was pregnant with his child.

Nevertheless, his devastated parents believe it’s not too late for them to become the grandparents of his offspring. And because they live in Israel, the world capital of in-vitro fertilization and a country that regularly pushes the envelope on reproductive technologies, they might get their wish.

Mali and Dudi Ben-Yaakov, upon learning that their son was brain dead, had his sperm extracted. Now they are awaiting the decision of Israel’s attorney general on whether they will be permitted to find a woman to bear their grandchild.