At his bar mitzvah at Cong. Keter Torah in February, Teaneck resident Daniel Raykher announced that he’d use a portion of his gift money to sponsor bar mitzvahs for disadvantaged boys in Israel.

True to his word — and with lots of help from his parents and Bris Avrohom executive director Rabbi Mordechai Kanelsky — Daniel and his family traveled to Israel this summer to join 13 young men at the festive occasion.

The initial outbreak of H1N1 (also known as swine flu) in the spring, first in Mexico, and then in the United States, has provided some lessons on what will be needed when the flu virus returns this fall. Based on patterns seen in past flu outbreaks, health-care professionals and government officials expect a more widespread outbreak of H1N1. They are preparing for this by educating the public, providing for extensive vaccinations, and planning strategies to handle workplace and school outbreaks.

A report by the non-profit group Trust for America’s Health projects that in the case of a severe pandemic more than 2.5 million New Jersey residents could get sick, and tens of thousands might die.

A day of advocacy in Washington last week and a rally in New York next week mark major efforts by the American Jewish community to push the issue of Iran’s nuclear program to the forefront and increase the general sense of urgency to end it. (See page 29.)

Members of the northern New Jersey Jewish community joined more than 300 other Jewish leaders from around the country who met with legislators in Washington Sept. 10 to thank them for supporting the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009 and drum up support among those who had not yet signed on. The measure would penalize companies that help Iran import or produce refined petroleum.

For Andrea DeVries, Mother’s Day is forever etched into her mind as the day her youngest son was killed in a traffic accident.

Twenty-four-year-old Daniel DeVries was engaged and working in human resources at Meadowlands Hospital in Secaucus. He had graduated a year earlier from Monmouth University and lived with his parents, Andrea and Roger, in their Paramus home near the Ridgewood border. On Mother’s Day 2008, he was crossing the intersection of Maple and Ridgewood avenues when he was struck by a driver making a left turn. He was killed almost instantly.

The only charge brought against the driver was failure to yield to a pedestrian. There was no investigation into whether he had been intoxicated or operating a cell phone at the time of the accident, according to Andrea DeVries. The driver paid $300 in fines and had his license temporarily suspended, but DeVries said she felt justice had been eluded.

I’ve been doing shadow training for years through my practice,” says psychologist Tamar Kahane, Teaneck resident and founder of Englewood’s Kahane Center for Developmental and Psychological Well-being.

Shadows — teachers’ aides who help facilitate the functioning of students in the classroom — are essential for many children, she said, yet “anyone can call themselves a shadow, regardless of their skill-set or educational background.”

To address this, and “concerned about the difficulties that children with autism spectrum disorder and ADD/ADHD face every day in the classroom,” in September Kahane and her associate Chassia Boczko created the Shadow Training Institute.