This week I traveled to the Chizuk Amuno Congregation, which is right outside Baltimore. A special event was prepared for around 50 high school students, all for SeltzertopiaLive!

It was fun to revisit all of my material from a youth lens. All the hard seltzer material, about White Claw – removed. Some of the younger material I don’t include for older audiences, like The Simpsons – back in. And I could no longer rely on nostalgia to engage the audience. When I showed the clip from The Mary Tyler Moore Show (“A little song, a little dance…”) I had to explain what strong cultural resonances that has for their parents and grandparents.

Planning began when I received an email from their rabbi, Rabbi Seltzer. Of course, with that name, how could I not love him. But I was not prepared for what came next. His father had died earlier that summer. Sitting by his bed, he decided to read to him (as I had done back in 2020 with my own dad). What did he decide to read to his father to comfort him while he passed away? Seltzertopia. Rabbi Seltzer now wanted to host an event for their teens to honor his dad.

Of course I had to do it.

And once I got there I was surprised, as always, by the power of “Jewish geography”. Their other rabbi (in the photo) grew up half a block from my mother-in-law; while he was a teen, and I was courting my now-wife, I often went to his home for Passover seders. He then introduced me to two of the teens, both friends with my nephew in Philly. And finally, I got to connect with a friend of my youngest child who moved there from NYC during the pandemic. I could not have felt more welcomed.

Along with the after-event egg cream, we held a seltzer tasting competition. The flavors – cherry vanilla, watermelon, raspberry, coconut, and mango – were confounding, as is usually the case, making the competition quite fun.

I never imagined five years ago, when my book was first published, that after all of these years there would still be such interest in SeltzertopiaLive! But there we are. I need to run now – I have to go finish my presentation for Temple Beth Torah in Melville this friday…