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THE THRIFTER’S BUG

I read with delight “The Spiritual Side of Thrifting” (July/Aug 2025 issue) by Deborah Fineblum, and not only because she and I hail from the same corner of New Jersey and our parents are still close. I also share an incurable love of rummaging through other folks’ castoffs.

I am not sure if it was in Massachusetts, where my hobby started while in college, or later during my time in Maryland, but I definitely remember acquiring a pair of Wrangler jeans for a buck and an absolutely divine vintage camel-hair coat for a pittance. These treasured finds now live only in my memory or, with luck, in someone else’s closet.

Today, I help run a free secondhand (or yad shniyah) shop on my kibbutz in Israel and happily frequent other such stores in the area. One of my greatest joys is finding the perfect item for someone else and infecting friends and family with what I call the thrifter’s bug.

Melissa Milgram
Kibbutz Gezer, Israel

Many years ago, my mother, Gloria Dravin, was a member of the Pascack Valley, N.J., chapter of Hadassah.  She lived in Westwood, which then had a Hadassah thrift store. She always saved goods that she wanted to donate for the Hadassah shop, especially in the years during which thousands of Russians arrived in the United States and needed to furnish entire apartments. I was so surprised to read in Hadassah Magazine that there is only one remaining Hadassah thrift store, in Maryland.

Linda Pearl
Estero, Fla.

I bought this vintage Whiting & Davis bag and matching comb at the Hadassah thrift shop in Brighton, Mass., years ago. The bag is large enough for the comb, a lipstick and a tissue but not a cell phone. It was made well before our digital age! 

Amy Goldstein
Needham, Mass.

‘CLOUDY’ IN MIAMI?

I was very interested in the July/August travel story “Miami Reinvents Itself—Again” because I partially grew up in Miami Beach. My grandparents moved there in 1946 from Jacksonville when my mother was 3. According to my grandmother, they arrived to signs on some businesses reading “No Blacks, No Jews, No dogs.” My grandfather and she both worked in teaching in Jacksonville but struggled to find jobs in Miami Beach. 

My family joined Temple Emanu-El during the early years of Rabbi Irving Lehrman’s long tenure at the Conservative congregation. According to accounts, my mother was the first bat mitzvah at the synagogue, in 1956. There’s so much Jewish history in Miami, and no doubt much has changed. But I think my family’s experience came with some clouds.

Shayna M. Steinfeld
Atlanta, Ga.

WOMEN’S HEART HEALTH

I am a three-time marathoner, a distance swimmer and, like my mother, a life member of Hadassah, and I want to share a recent experience with readers. I am almost 78, my weight is good, and I am still very active. But a few months ago, I started to feel lightheaded and extremely tired. I went to a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and, after a series of tests, my doctor scheduled me for an angiogram. 

Imagine my amazement after the procedure when I learned that I had three 80 to 90 percent blockages of my main artery. I now have two stents, and I feel so energetic that I can’t stop cooking and baking.

Please, Hadassah sisters, don’t wait to find out if you have heart disease. (For related reading, see “Partners of the Heart” in the March/April 2024 issue of Hadassah Magazine, which explores the gap in awareness about women’s heart health.) My mother had four heart attacks, open heart surgery and a pacemaker. With mazel, I will skip the heart attacks, and I hope that you do, too!

Barbara Barran
Brooklyn, N.Y.