A bris is a ritual circumcision of an 8-day old Jewish boy.

It is part of God’s covenant with Abraham.

When the gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh this morning, a bris or a baby-naming ceremony was taking place.

Earlier today, a friend sent me an article headlined Study: Online attacks on Jews ramp up before Election Day

The study was conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, whose CEO said that the midterm elections have been a ‘‘rallying point’’ for far-right extremists to organize efforts to spread hate online.

I was the House sponsor of the bill creating Maryland’s hate crimes law.

This article prompted me to ask our legislative staff in Annapolis, “Are all of the online acts described in the article linked below covered by our hate crimes law? If so, does the law treat automated ‘bots’ as one criminal act?”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2018/10/26/study-online-attacks-jews-ramp-before-election-day/LBEDGDx1dIKNcaII5edH6H/story.html?s_campaign=8315

Learning about this hate crime in Pittsburgh prompted me to go vote.

I was voter number 401 at 1:50 pm. By day’s end four years ago, 343 people voted at the Public Safety Training Center.

Join us.

It is our covenant with our Founding Fathers.

“You had offered to help with getting a state agency to take action on its problem property in our community. This seems like a good time to get that started if you can.”

That’s the message I received from a neighborhood president this week.

I responded right away. Not with an email to the agency, but by asking if I could meet with my constituent to get updated on the property.

After that, I’ll write the head of the agency, letting that executive know that I’m speaking on behalf of myself, the community, and my 41st Disrict colleagues.

At another community meeting, residents raised their concerns about a commercial property that’s a real eye sore in the community.

Are there incentives that governmet can provide to the property owner if he improves the site? Are there consequences for not doing so?

I’m working on it.

I’m elected to work on big policy issues. I’m also elected to work on neighborhood issues.

Now it’s your turn, your obligation.

Vote.

From kindergarten through 12th grade, I used the Pratt Library branch at Park Heights and Garrison.

It closed more than 20 years ago.

In Annapolis next year, I’ll be working with Mayor Pugh and my 40th and 41st District colleagues to secure state funding to help build a new branch – one block away at Park Heights and Woodland.

That location is next to the C.C. Jackson Recreation Center, which features a baseball/football field, thanks to the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation.

The new library site was chosen after a study funded with the slots money designated for Park Heights redevelopment.

In addition to books, a 21st Century library provides computer access and social services for its borrowers.

I was reminded of that at a community meeting about the new branch this week.

I also saw that when I visited branches in my district that are open longer hours because of legislation we enacted after the Pennsylvania Av. branch stayed open in the midst of the Freddie Gray demonstrations.

Communities cherish their library.

My first bond bill, in 1983, was for the Jewish Heritage Center.

I was not the lead sponsor. The chair of the Baltimore City delegation was. He had more influence than a freshman member.

As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, I sat next to Delegate Bobby Neall. I began to notice that he was often erasing and changing numbers on the same sheet of paper. It was the list of bond bills – requests from non-profits for state money for capital projects. Spreadsheets had not been invented.

I began to make the case to Del. Neall for the Jewish Heritage Center. It was funded at $250,000.

Yesterday, I visited the Jewish Museum of Maryland, now the name of what was the Jewish Heritage Center. There is a sign for the Robert L. Weinberg Family History Center. I had kept Bob updated on the bill’s progress in 1983.

We were told about the proposed expansion of the museum on Lombard St. “It would be my honor to sponsor that bond bill,” I emailed Marc Terrill, leader of the Associated, the community’s leading charitable and service agency.

And I hope that someone who has played a role in the history of the Baltimore Jewish community will edit my testimony on the bill. My mother.

It’s a Baltimore landmark.
But it’s seen better days.

People don’t go there like they used to.
There are public safety concerns.
It needs to adapt to the 21st Century.

I’m talking, of course, about the Lexington Market.
The City announced this week that the market’s renovation will be overseen by the developer of the successful R House in Remington, Seawall Development.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-md-ci-lexington-market-20181003-story.html

I could also be talking about Pimlico and the Preakness.
The similarities to Lexington Market are many.
To be decided is whether the public and private sectors will invest in the future of the Pimlico community and the Preakness.

The Maryland Stadium Authority’s Pimlico study will be released soon after Election Day.
All of the parties involved, public and private, will then need to negotiate an outcome that is a win-win for the surrounding communities, the racing industry, the City, and the State.

Earlier this week, the Baltimore Sun ran an op-ed about college dating experiences.

I wrote this response.

Dear Editors:

“I was about to meet Amherst College preppies,” Carolyn Buck writes of her first party there. (“Undermining our new empowerment,” September 25)

I was an Amherst student. I graduated in June 1972. Ms. Buck entered Mt. Holyoke that fall.

I was not a preppie. I went to City College.

My only misgiving about Amherst was that it was all-male. Women could spend an academic year on campus, but they were never full fledged members of the community.

There is more than a kernel of truth in the “Animal House” depiction of the relationships between men and women. The movie’s Emily Dickinson College, Ms. Buck notes, was a parody of Mt. Holyoke.

There’s an Amherst reference in the movie as well. One of the floats in the parade bears a slogan, “If better women are made, Ferber men will make them.” At freshmen orientation, we learned about that slogan.

A dean told Holyoke students, “Remember, ladies the ‘h’ is silent. Pronounce it ‘Am-erst.'”

What happened on Amherst and other campuses should no longer remain silent.

To borrow the Johns Hopkins motto, “The truth shall set you free.”

The op-ed is at http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-op-0925-basic-civility-20180924-story.html

“I can only say that I view it as the most important subject which we as a people can be engaged in.”

The subject is public education. The speaker is Abraham Lincoln, campaigning for the Illinois Legislature.

The source is Leadership in Turbulent Times, a profile of Presidents Lincoln, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson, written by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The people of Maryland and the General Assembly will be engaged in this issue next year. Our funding and policy decisions will affect public education for the next decade and beyond.

Reading Lincoln’s quote prompted me to review what I’ve been doing.

Over the last two weeks, I’ve had breakfast meetings with advocates, brought about a meeting on pre-kindergarten, solicited chaitable funding for two of the 21st Century schools in my district, and discussed this issue with my Legislation classes, with the assistance of a former student, Senator Bill Ferguson.

“This is a once in a generation moment,” he told the class.

Will we provide sufficient funding to prepare all students, regardless of their zip code, to be partipants in the 21st Century economy and society?

Will we hold teachers to standards that the evidence tells us make a difference in pupils’ performance?

“Everybody says they’re for education,” an advocate told me this morning.

In the general election campaign and the legislative session that will follow, we’ll learn who follows through on that commitment..

The Jewish High Holidays are a time for reflection.

I read about a sermon that prompted a member of the congregation to do the right and courageous thing.

That prompted me to write this letter to the editor of the Jewish Times.

Dear Editors:

How does a rabbi address the compelling political issues of the day without alienating someone in the congregation?

That important question was raised last week in Rabbis Balance Politics on the Pulpit.

In a Rosh Hashanah sermon in 1963, Rabbi Morris Lieberman addressed the compelling political issue of his day – racial segregation in Baltimore. It motivated someone in his congregation – Mal Sherman.

A successful real estate broker, Sherman was prompted by that sermon to announce that his company would sell to all individuals, regardless of race, creed, or color.

One of his clients in 1966 was a newcomer to Baltimore, who could not find a house in a safe neighborhood with good schools. Sherman found a home in Ashburton for Frank Robinson. That October, the Robinsons and their neighbors celebrated the Orioles World Series victory.

How do I know this?

I read the autobiography of Wendy Sherman, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and Mal Sherman’s daughter, on Rosh Hashanah morning.

Delegate Samuel I. “Sandy” Rosenberg

The text of Rabbi Lieberman’s sermon is at
http://www.delsandy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Lieberman-RH-1963-Sermon.pdf

The sermon on this topic by Rabbi Elissa Sachs-Kohen, also given from the pulpit at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation, is at
http://www.delsandy.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/May-We-Be-Changed-for-the-Good.pdf

Is Judge Brett Kavanaugh qualified to serve on the Supreme Court? That’s the question Republican Senators want the public to focus on.

What impact would Kavanaugh have on a woman’s reproductive health and President Trump’s future if he became the fifth conservative vote on the court? That’s how Democrats want to frame the debate.

Closer to home, the GOP wants the gubernatorial campaign to center on this question: Will Ben Jealous’ universal health care plan bankrupt the state?

Democrats, on the other hand, want the campaign to center on this question: Will Governor Larry Hogan commit to funding the Kirwan plan for state aid to public schools?

With the opening of school yesterday, there were dueling press conferences.

Governor Hogan wants to combat corruption in the schools. By executive order, he created the position of “Investigator General” and filled it with the chief education adviser for Comptroller Peter Franchot.

Jealous wants to ease the burden on teachers of buying supplies for their classrooms. It would be funded by allowing people to donate a portion of their tax refunds.

Meanwhile, schools closed early because students were sweltering in their un-air conditioned classrooms.

This was no surprise. City and state officials should have met before now to solve the problem.

For the long term, we need the candidates for governor and the legislature to answer the bigger questions of funding preventive health care and state aid to public schools. We have a recent history of doing so in in a bipartisan way for health care. In the four years ahead, we need to do so in both areas.

“And now the ideas and the ideals which he so nobly represented must and will be translated into effective action.”

Those words could have been spoken by a eulogist for Senator John McCain. They were not.

They come from President Lyndon Johnson’s first address to the Congress – on November 27, 1963.

We could be at a similar moment today.

Will our elected officials use this opportunity to advance the “ideas and ideals” of a fallen leader?

Years of gridlock and the approaching elections make that unlikely in Washington.

What then can we do in Annapolis?

I’ve reached across the aisle before.

During my first term in the House of Delegates, I worked with pro-choice and pro-life legislators to increase funding for family planning.

After Freddie Gray’s death, I had discussions with a Republican colleague, but our alliance floundered because family planning was now linked to Planned Parenthood.

This week, I’ve started thinking about where I might find common ground on encouraging people to follow John McCain’s career path of public service.

I will let you know what happens.