BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

by Judith Fein Eighteen years ago, Erv Hinds was a traditional anesthesiologist with an open-heart surgery team. Today he's gone from putting people to sleep with drugs to trying to wake them up with what he calls patient-centered pain treatment. In his practice at the Albuquerque Pain Center, pain at every level is taken seriously. "Patients need to develop a vertical relationship - to nature or Jesus or Buddha or God," says Hinds, "or something that gets them out of entrenchment, outside of themselves." The journey that brought him to this point began when an X-ray revealed that he needed a heart valve replacement. "I didn't know what to do," Hinds says. He prayed with his Presbyterian pastor and did research in the University of New Mexico library. There he found a journal article about a surgeon in France named Carpentier who was repairing valves instead of replacing them, something not done in America. "Carpentier had done most of hi...

In the late 1980s, two friends of mine died waiting for SSDI benefits from AIDS related cancers. They were hard working, smart people who had savings but blew through them... waiting. I, myself, had a good nestegg when I fell ill in 1995. It was two years before I finally got SSDI. Only then with the help of attorney because I was too gravely impaired to fight for myself. My nestegg was gone to medical expenses. My group disability demanded I pay them back every penny when SSDI kicked in finally. This is not unusual, people - check your policies - that is STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE! You have to pay it back! EVERYONE does ! I have never applied for State Aid, Food Stamps or Section 8 Housing help. Nor would I. I only applied for what I put in for the 22 years I worked and only because I needed it. I am now surviving on less income than I made in 1979. I can't sit up too long, it's painful to walk for long, my hands hurt and I have severe headaches. I still ...

SHAVUOT The all-nighter is an observance that developed on Shavuot. By Lesli Koppelman Ross Staying up to study Jewish texts for all or part of the first night of Shavuot is an increasingly popular activity among a wide range of Jews. This custom is called a "tikkun." The word tikkun is most popularly understood to mean a process of "repairing the world" or even an improvement of one's qualities. Tikkun is also used to describe a particular time devoted to study, a seder--order--of texts designed for this study, and also a canonical book containing these texts . Following the holiday meal, many people proceed to synagogue for Ma'ariv [the evening service], followed by an all-night (or into-the-night, as many last only until midnight) Torah study session based on the kabbalists' [mystics'] practice. [This specifically refers to the sixteenth century mystics of Safed, Israel, under the leadership of Isaac Luria. Many people recite Ma'ariv ...