July 11 • 2019 5 jn views W e are quite used to count- ing off or counting down. We all count (no, that is not just a warm and fuzzy senti- ment). Consider some basic ideas associated with numbers. One – the number of seconds between the light turning green and hearing the horn behind you honk. Two – the number of turtle doves on the second day of the famous carol. Also, supposedly, the number of each ani- mal ushered into the ark by Noah. Three – the number after which a parent gets to the ultimatum or comes up with another warning. Four – the corners of the Earth, which are hard to find on a sphere. Five – the requisite number of fingers for a glove, This, of course, excludes mittens and baseball mitts. Six – the number of courses you could be served in a posh restaurant (which would include a palette cleanser) and which no one ought to consume on a regular basis. Seven – the days of the week. One of my punnier students once wrote in a text; “Seven days of this makes one weak.” Eight – the number of the ball you do not want to find yourself behind; it means you are in trouble. It is all right if you’ ve pocketed the others when shooting pool. Nine – the usual number of months of gestation in humans. Things could be worse: Elephants gestate for two years! Ten – usually the number for rec- ognizing the “top” in a category: top 10 hits, top 10 reasons for …, top 10 items on a bucket list, etc. Math used to work in base 10, but then I never did understand any of that so forget that example. Twenty – the day in March set aside, as of 2013, by the United Nations as the International Day of Happiness. Hey, we could try for one day; we give a whole week to Brotherhood in February and look how well that works (NOT). Thirty – the number of days in September, April, June and November. That whole rhyme escapes me. I recall it as “Thirty days has September, April, June and no wonder all the rest are peanut but- ter except Grandma, who walks to work.” Or something like that. Forty and fifty seem to be fright- ening milestones for some people. I say it’ s better to reach them than not. Well, just remember that when it comes to strange observations, you can COUNT on me. ■ I knew I was Jewish before I knew what the word meant. I remember when I was a little girl my Uncle Ronnie’ s friend asked me, “ Are you ticklish?” My answer was, “No, I’ m Jewish!” My love of Judaism and commitment to Jewish causes is in my DNA — it comes directly from my par- ents and grandparents. My grandparents, no matter what their cir- cumstances, always had a tzedakah box. My four grandparents came to the United States in the late 1920s from the Ukraine with nothing in their pockets, but they did have faith and hope for a better future. My father’ s parents came as a mar- ried couple with their one surviving child, Sol. Their other two children passed away from illness before they left Ukraine. A few years after they arrived in the states, my father, and his sister, my Aunt Ida, were born here in Detroit. Growing up, I heard sto- ries about how my father grew up in a house where he slept on the couch because the boarder slept in the extra bedroom. His shoes were held together with rubber bands. My father always described his par- ents as wonderful and very loving — who had very little to give, but always managed to scrape together as much as they could for those who had less. This stuck with me as a young child. It is an understatement to say I had incredi- ble role models who taught me about Judaism, the value of an education and the principle of tikkun olam. An “aha” moment came when I attended Hebrew school as a young teen. Many of my teachers had thick accents and wore long sleeves. One day, the classroom was steaming hot and one of my teachers happened to roll up her sleeve, and I saw her tattoo. It’ s something I’ ll never forget. Later I learned the meaning of what that tattoo represented was greater than the actual numbers themselves. The emotional impact was powerful and was repeat- ed years later when I first visited Yad Vashem. My heart felt as though it would burst with sadness and sorrow. I realized I was given a great opportunity to do something — to make something happen that was bigger than myself — to wear my Jewishness with pride and to do all I could for those who had less. In 1972, the economy tanked, and the construction industry came to a halt just as I was planning to go to col- lege. My father, a heating and plumbing contractor, was hit hard. In 1973, when I was graduating from high school, we were also changing our lives. We decid- ed to move into a lovely apartment. Here I was, all ready to go to college, but not sure it would be possible. My folks figured out a way to send me to for openers Number Please essay Supporting IDF Soldiers Sy Manello Editorial Assistant Joan Chernoff Epstein continued on page 8 Our Story Our Story Click. Call. Give Now. www.hfldetroit.org 248.723.8184 Hebrew Free Loan Detroit 6735 Telegraph Road, Suite 300 Bloomfield Hills, MI 48301 @HFLDetroit Kevin Kellman and Marc Kellman spent 20 years in a family business that was doing fine, but wasn’ t what they really wanted to do. Kevin, who has a love of cooking, and Marc, the practical numbers guy, come from a long line of hard-working entrepreneurs, so when they looked into a new venture, pulling together a plan and doing the work to launch it wasn’ t a problem. “I’ ve been talking about a food truck for seven years,” Kevin said. “Detroit has one of the top foodie cultures in the U.S. now, and there’ s potential here for people who love to cook and people who love to eat. Those are also things we love, and there was a business in that, just not the typical one.” “What’ s great,” Marc said,” is that a food truck is far less expensive than opening a restaurant, and with less overhead and staff. You also need a vision, and ours became Brother Truckers.” Kevin and Marc knew of Hebrew Free Loan from friends, and when they were looking for seed money, they used their business experience to research and refine their business plan and applied to HFL’ s Marvin I. Danto Small Business Loan Program. Brother Truckers launched this past spring, and is gaining a following for the lunch crowd and catering parties and events. “We’ re entering a new season,” Kevin said, “and we have the opportunity to learn and grow because HFL was very supportive, and their willingness to work with us and help us to be successful was just phenomenal.”