Need a babysitter, a ride to Manhattan, or a kosher used barbecue grill? TeaneckShuls, a moderated listserv connecting people in the northern New Jersey area, can help you find what you need. Need a kidney? TeaneckShuls can help as well. Ruthie Levi, a moderator for the listserv, reports that “as a result of an e-mail posting on this list for someone seeking a kidney donation, Rabbi Ephraim Simon of Chabad Teaneck has … successfully donated his own kidney.”

“It’s not like I woke up one morning and wanted to donate a kidney,” said Simon, who serves as the Chabad rabbi in Teaneck. “My own children, ages 2 to 14, are my first priority.” He recounted how a woman named Chaya Lipshutz had been posting for years on TeaneckShuls about people who needed kidney donors. “I would read them, and sigh, and go on with my day. I have nine little children and it was not something I would envision doing.” However, one such posting touched him deeply. “In August 2008, [Lipshutz] had a post of a 12-year-old girl — how could I let a 12-year-old girl die? I have a daughter who is 12.”

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the historic Woodstock Music Festival, which attracted perhaps as many as a half-million, mostly young, concertgoers. The peaceful behavior of festival-goers gave, and still gives, Woodstock the aura of being the tangible affirmation of the “peace and love” ethos of the ’60s hippie “counterculture.” The “good vibes” were preserved for posterity by the best concert film of the ’60s.

As I recall from Hebrew school, the Torah likes the number 40 — 40 years in the desert and so on. So, I guess it is appropriate, on this anniversary, to explore Woodstock’s many Jewish connections.

Let’s put on a show

Legislators and lobbyists working to push through President Obama’s health-care reforms have sought out the faith community as a voice of moral urgency.

Indeed, the contentious debate over health-care reform facing the country appears to have united Jewish advocacy organizations. While individuals within the Jewish community may not universally accept Obama’s push for reform, the Jewish organizational world is mostly unified in support, said Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella group for the nation’s Jewish Community Relations Councils.

“Social justice is a Jewish imperative,” said Nancy Ratzan, president of the National Council for Jewish Women, during a telephone interview on Monday. “Access to basic health care for everyone, I think, is understood today as a fundamental social-justice issue. The Jewish community is very engaged and very inspired by this opportunity to change policy to ensure that kind of justice for everybody, so it’s not just those who can afford it.”

Teaneck was in mourning this week for Ovadia Mussaffi and Lawrence Krause, killed by a falling tree during Saturday night’s nor’easter as they walked home from shul after Shabbat.

Teaneck was in mourning this week for Ovadia Mussaffi and Lawrence Krause, killed by a falling tree during Saturday night’s nor’easter as they walked home from shul after Shabbat.

As mourners gathered in the men’s homes for shiva this week, friends and family described both as friendly, sweet, and generous. Mussaffi, 54, is survived by his wife, Susan, and their four children. Krause, 49, is survived by his wife, Zahava, and six children, including a six-week-old daughter.

Born in Israel to Iraqi parents, Mussaffi served in the Israel Air Force. After the death of his parents he began to become more religiously observant. Coming to Teaneck more than 20 years ago, he owned Italian Connection, a clothing store in New York. For the past few years he was president of Cong. Shaarei Orah, Sephardic Congregation of Teaneck, where his loss appeared to be felt most by those he was close to.

Rabbi David Fine, religious leader of Temple Israel & Jewish Community Center in Ridgewood, recalls a book he was required to read in high school.

“The Bridge of San Luis Rey,” by Thornton Wilder, tells the story of several people who die in the collapse of a suspension bridge in Peru. A friar who witnessed the event tries to make sense of it, searching for some kind of cosmic reason for the tragedy.

“People always try to find explanations,” said Fine, who spoke to The Jewish Standard by cell phone Tuesday, since the synagogue’s telephone lines were still down because of the storm. But, he added, even after reading the book, he walked away unconvinced of a cosmic cause, concluding that the bridge collapse was simply an accident.

“Tragedy is random,” he said. “That’s what makes it so terrible. We’re at the mercy of the world. We try to control it as best we can, but events like this remind us of our humility.”

Avi Lewinson, back on Tuesday from surveying the storm’s detritus at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly, strove for some rueful humor. One good thing about Saturday’s storm, the JCC’s executive director told The Jewish Standard, was that “it forces you to purge right before Pesach.”

But he quickly turned serious, noting that eight people had been killed during the punishing wind and rainstorm, two of them from Teaneck. (See related story.) He did not know the area men personally, he added, “but we’re all brothers. One Jew for another.”

The JCC was up and running on Thursday, but the epic storm required an epic cleanup.