Atlanta Jewish Times, Vol. XCI No. 13, April 1, 2016

Atlanta WWW.ATLANTAJEWISHTIMES.COM

VOL. XCI NO. 13

APRIL 1, 2016 | 22 ADAR II 5776

SOJOURN, ADL Cheer Deal Veto INSIDE

Ma Tovu �����������������������������������3 Remember When �������������������5 Calendar ���������������������������������� 6 Candle Lighting ����������������������7 Opinion ����������������������������������� 9 Israel News ����������������������������13 Finance ����������������������������������� 15 Arts ����������������������������������������� 24 Obituaries ����������������������������� 27 Simchas ��������������������������������� 29 Crossword ����������������������������� 30 Cartoon �����������������������������������31 Inside: Finance, Pages 15-17

BAD DAY FOR BDS

With a signature from Gov. Deal, state contractors will have to certify that they don’t boycott Israel. Page 15

STARTUP ADVICE Conexx Women turns its focus to the entrepreneurial side of the business world. Page 16

JOYFUL CHANGE The Marcus JCC marks a double leadership switch at its annual meeting. Page 8

SAFE HANDS Five AJA students are taking their physics talents to Israel to crack safes. Page 24

When the Party’s Over Photo by David R. Cohen

The Purim party masquerading as the main event of the seventh annual spring Atlanta Jewish Music Festival doesn’t stop just because the bands are done as Saturday night, March 26, gives way to Sunday at Terminal West. Adult revelers of all ages, many from Emory University, dance the hora to the house music even after coheadliners A-WA and Jaffa Road have left the building. More photos, Page 21

Security Raises Alarms

By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com

I

ncidents ranging from terrorist attacks in Israel to the mysterious Rosh Hashanah filming of Congregation Beth Jacob by a woman in a hijab compelled about 100 people to gather at the Toco Hills synagogue Sunday night, March 27, to try to shore up security.

Jack Williams, a Georgia State University law professor who specializes in studying “threat” — the intent, capability and authority of someone to cause harm — said the United States has picked up 287 authenticated communications from Islamic State talking about targets in the past year, and most of them not only mentioned the United States, but also identified Jews or Jewish institutions.

Law enforcement does an excellent job of disrupting terrorist plans early, but a fundamental question is whether to focus on the extreme unlikelihood of an attack on any particular target or the potentially catastrophic consequences if

that attack happens, Williams said.

The key is for communitywide planning and training so that if an attack happens, people can respond rather than react, said Beth Jacob member Ariel Siegelman and fellow Israel Defense Forces veteran Gonen Cohen, who travel the world as security consultants and trainers with the Draco Group.

They emphasized the concept of defensive rings of control to identify and stop threats before they can reach the target — “me and us.”

A recent Shabbat when a fire alarm went off and no one reacted showed the lack of Beth Jacob’s preparedness for an emergency, attendees agreed. Now the congregation has to decide on the next steps. Siegelman said he would like to see a rapid response team — an offensive force — be part of Beth Jacob’s plan.

Congregation President Larry Beck said other synagogues and day schools were invited to the briefing, and it’s up to them to decide whether to join Beth Jacob in security planning and training. ■

Gov. Nathan Deal’s decision to veto the only religious liberty bill to clear the General Assembly this year, House Bill 757, won wide praise from businesses, LGBT advocacy groups, tourism organizations and others.

After Deal announced his veto of the Free Exercise Protection Act on Monday, March 28, the Southeast Region of the Anti-Defamation League and SOJOURN: Southern Jewish Resource Network for Gender and Sexual Diversity joined the cheers for the governor.

Deal chose “to be on the right side of history by vetoing House Bill 757,” ADL Southeast Region Director Mark Moskowitz said in a statement. “This unjust legislation would have authorized discrimination against LGBT people and others in the marketplace, as well as in receipt of public and social services. The governor’s decision sends the resounding message that in Georgia government cannot sanction or support discrimination.”

Moskowitz urged the legislature to respond by passing anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation next year.

Rebecca Stapel-Wax, the executive director of SOJOURN, expressed concern in a statement that something like H.B. 757 will be introduced next year, but “we are confident in the growing number of Georgians who understand that equal rights cannot be afforded only to some. … While this is a victory over overt religious discrimination, there are still basic struggles that people have to fight every day, and our work is far from finished.

We will continue to partner with Georgia Equality, Georgia Unites and our entire coalition to bring full legal equality to LGBTQ Georgians across the state.”

That coalition is going ahead with a planned rally at noon Tuesday, April 5, at the Capitol’s Liberty Plaza but will be celebrating instead of demanding the veto while calling for a state civil rights law that protects all. ■ • Deal finds no need for bill risking discrimination, Page 14 • Our view: Deal was right, Page 10

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APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

MA TOVU

Fulfilling My Role adulthood, constant awareness of G-d was not part of my life. Now, like most observant Jews, “Baruch Hashem” and “Thank G-d” regularly roll off my tongue as others ask how I’m doing.

Simply responding, “Fine, thanks,” seems like an obvious omission.

But there are many moments be-

Hands of Hashem

By Mindy Rubenstein editor@nishei.org

tween my “Baruch Hashems” in which I’m not being grateful, not recognizing that a Master of the Universe is in charge of all this seeming randomness and often gut-wrenching pain.

Each of us has a mission in turning the jungle into an oasis. It may not be writing, but with each interaction and decision, we have the choice to acknowledge our partnership in bringing His awareness to the world or not.

I have found that when I take a moment to ask for His help, I get it.

Then it’s a matter of knowing what to do with it — in this case, putting my faith, though sometimes fleeting, into words and sharing those words with the world. Because if it’s just mine alone, it’s not enough.

“It must be communicated to the reader,” the Rebbe says, “the awareness that ‘there is a master of this palace,’ that there is a master in charge of this turbulent world. … In the end, righteousness and goodness will prevail.”

G-d found a way, by the Rebbe, to get a message across. How many messages are we missing? I can hear the skeptical family members and friends who haven’t shared in my belief. For half a moment, I question myself. Do my words sound naive? Maybe.

But I have felt it with almost indescribable certainty. Witnessed it in breathtaking moments that sent chills up my back. My awareness isn’t always there, but my goal is to grow in my connection and to continue to share that message with whoever is willing to listen. ■ Mindy Rubenstein is the founder and editorial director of Nishei, the magazine for Atlanta Jewish women. She lives in Toco Hills with her husband and four children. Send your Hand of Hashem moments — stories in which G-d’s presence was evident — to editor@nishei.org.

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

A

s I was mindlessly scrolling through my Facebook feed one morning, I noticed that two friends with very different backgrounds posted the same video of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. I clicked on the video and immediately realized this message was surely meant for me.

Just a day earlier I was discussing with a friend how I constantly have this nagging feeling I’m not meeting the requirements of my mission in this life.

For 20 years I have worked as a journalist, often sharing stories about my journey to religious Judaism.

Thank G-d, hundreds of my articles have appeared in Jewish and secular publications, in print and online.

But the past few years my writing has slowed down significantly, as has my zeal for my chosen Torah lifestyle.

I’m still living a Torah life, but the passion that kept me racing forward for a decade has somewhat subsided.

I think about this every day: “I’m not writing. I’m not writing.” It nags at me. I find other ways to distract myself, sometimes constructive. But the pesky feeling remains.

Then the words of the Rebbe, spoken decades ago, came pouring into my home in an authoritative yet loving Yiddish. I internalized his voice while reading the English translation on the small screen of my outdated iPhone.

“One whom G-d has given the opportunity to write,” he says, “can use his abilities to spread Judaism … to give an understanding that there is a divine providence.”

I’m dumbfounded. My stomach turns. I can’t escape this message or my mission for another moment.

Even the excuse I often tell myself — “I’m a busy mom caring for four children; certainly my own daily prayer and giving over my faith to my family can be enough” — is refuted.

The Rebbe continues, “The fact that you know it on your own isn’t enough. … You haven’t done your duty by sharing it between you and your family alone.”

I listened to his words several times, my heart racing, my fingers typing on the computer, my body and soul working in beautiful unison. This is the most fulfilling and satisfying feeling we can ever know. Depression and anxiety are no match for a body fulfilling its soul’s divine mission.

As a child and throughout early

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LOCAL NEWS Other’s Day Returns in May

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Mother’s Day is May 8 this year, but children ages 6 to 15 who are missing a mother or father or both get to celebrate a special day a week earlier.

For the seventh year, Leslie Greenberg is playing host to Other’s Day the afternoon of Sunday, May 1, at the Concourse Athletic Club, 8 Concourse Parkway, Sandy Springs.

Magician Howie “the Great” Marmer and face painter Bridget May are highlighting the entertainment at the party, which each year has delivered food, fun and friendship.

It doesn’t matter whether a parent has died, is away serving in the military, or is out of the picture because of divorce or disability; the child is invited to Other’s Day, along with the adult or adults taking care of the child.

Greenberg, a teacher-turned-event planner, said she knows how children missing a parent feel because her father died of cancer when she was 9.

“There are so many children in foster care or single-parent families,” she said.

As the AJT reported last year, Greenberg organized the first Other’s Day to cope with the loneliness of Mother’s Day falling on her birthday, May 9, after her only child, Steven,

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The clergy team at Temple Sinai — (from left) Rabbi Brad Levenberg, Bunzl Family Cantorial Chair Beth Schafer, Rabbi Elana Perry and Rabbi Ron Segal — will change this summer when Rabbi Perry leaves, to be replaced by Rabbi Sam Shabman.

died. The event has continued to grow in attendance and sponsorship.

“My goal is to provide a comfortable, fun place for the kids and help them cope with the absence of their parent,” Greenberg said.

To do her best to fill all the limited spaces for the party, Greenberg requires attendees to RSVP to OthersDayRSVP@gmail.com. For more information, contact Greenberg at 404-5200190 or leslierg@bellsouth.net.

Sinai Burns Mortgage, Hires Rabbi Spring arrived with extra excitement at Temple Sinai, which paid off

Enjoying Casino Royale are event co-chairs Lainie Bardack and Adam Sikora and silent auction chair Tamara Schwartz.

The Temple Sinai mortgage goes up in flames after the congregation raises enough money to pay off the balance March 19.

its mortgage and hired a new rabbi within days of each other.

The goal of the Sandy Springs congregation’s annual Casino Royale fundraiser, sponsored by Fifth Third Bank, was to make enough money to pay the balance on the mortgage. Chaired by Lainie Bardack and Adam Sikora, with a silent auction chaired by Tamara Schwartz, the event drew more than 350 guests Saturday night, March 19, and met the milestone.

The night ended with past presidents and members of the congregation board burning the mortgage on the stage.

On Tuesday, March 22, Senior Rabbi Ron Segal and congregation President Scott Zucker announced the hiring of Sam Shabman as a Sinai rabbi, effective July 1. She is due to be ordained at Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion’s New York campus Sunday, May 8.

Rabbi Shabman will replace Rabbi Elana Perry, who has been part of the Sinai clergy team for nine years. Rabbi Perry announced to the congregation Feb. 5 that she will be leaving because her husband, Craig, will become assistant professor of Judaic studies at the University of Cincinnati in the fall.

“Mixed with the anticipation and pride, there is tremendous sadness, for we will have to say goodbye to Temple Sinai,” Rabbi Perry wrote. “Atlanta is where I started my rabbinic career, where my two children were born, where I established my first home. In many ways, it is here, with you, that my adult life began. You have taught me what a true honor it is to be a rabbi, and you have touched and shaped my life in immeasurable ways.”

Zucker and Rabbi Segal expressed sadness about losing Rabbi Perry but also excitement about Rabbi Shabman, who grew up and did rabbinic internships in the New York area. She’s the president of her HUC class, served as an AIPAC Leffell rabbinic fellow the past two years, recently ran the Jerusalem Marathon, and is married to another rabbinic student being ordained

May 8, Natan (Andrew) Trief.

Rabbi Shabman earned a bachelor’s in international affairs from George Washington University and worked with the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center in Washington.

During her rabbinic studies, she created an award-winning multifaith prayer anthology for Israeli chaplains to use in their hospital work. She has a great deal of experience in youth work and teaching, social justice work, and strong Israel advocacy.

The AJT will publish an interview with Rabbi Shabman in the next few weeks.

Free Screening at Breman

The Breman Museum, working with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, is holding a free screening of “50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. and Mrs. Kraus” at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 3.

The one-hour film documents the story of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Philadelphia couple who in 1939 embarked on a risky mission to rescue 50 Jewish children from Germany. The film was shown during the 2014 Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.

“Many people know the names of heroes from the American civil rights movement, but it’s rare that anyone knows of those Jews who worked to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

The Krauses are examples of Jewish heroes,” Breman Executive Director Aaron Berger said.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion consisting of civil rights center CEO and former refugee Derreck Kayongo, Gabe Wardell of the Fugees Family, an organization that assists child survivors of war, and Lili Kshensky Baxter, a child of survivors and director of the Weinberg Center for Holocaust Education at the Breman.

Admission is free through a grant from Bernstein Private Wealth Management, whose chairman and CEO is Peter Kraus, the son of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus.

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LOCAL NEWS Atlanta

Remember When PUBLISHER

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MARKETING

10 Years Ago March 31, 2006 ■ The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, in a partnership with the Marcus Jewish Community Center, Jewish Family & Career Services, and My Own Back Yard, is opening a community space for Jews living far outside the Perimeter. Leased space in Alpharetta will have a grand opening Sunday, April 2, as the Jewish community campus in North Metro, where 51 percent of Jews are unaffiliated.

■ The b’not mitzvah of Emily and Alexa Molleur, the daughters of Janet Lavietes Molleur of Olney, Md., was held March 25, 2006, at B’nai Shalom Synagogue in Olney.

25 Years Ago March 29, 1991 ■ Renovations have begun on the University of Georgia’s Hillel House, which has been closed for a year while the Georgia B’nai B’rith Association raised money for neces-

sary work. The first phase, expected to be finished in late May, involves a new roof, an upgraded electrical system and fresh paint on the exterior trim. The second phase, for which there is no timetable, includes new carpet, updates to the kitchen and bathrooms, and new air conditioning.

■ Charlotte and Joel Marks of Atlanta announce the birth of a daughter, Megan Jennifer, on Feb. 8.

50 Years Ago April 1, 1966 ■ Governor Sanders, speaking at the recent annual meeting of B’nai B’rith lodges of Atlanta, struck out against “merchants of hate” who “create their filth from the natural and normal differences among men as to politics, religion and race.” Speaking of the Klan, the governor expressed sorrow that the group had established itself here.

■ Miss Linda Marcia Clein, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Clein of Atlanta, became the bride of Lt. Stephen Michael Brown, son of Mr. and Mrs. Martin Brown of Yakima, Wash., on March 20 at the Progressive Club.

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Contributors This Week

BOB BAHR • YONI GLATT MURRAY GOODMAN JORDAN GORFINKEL R.M. GROSSBLATT LEAH R. HARRISON MARCIA CALLER JAFFE RABBI MARK HILLEL KUNIS KEVIN MADIGAN REBECCA MCCARTHY RUSSELL MOSKOWITZ TOVA NORMAN • LOGAN C. RITCHIE MINDY RUBENSTEIN DAVE SCHECHTER SHAINDLE SCHMUCKLER COLE SEIDNER • MAYER SMITH

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APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

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CALENDAR

Daffodil Dash Replanted

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

The Daffodil Dash, a fundraiser for Am Yisrael Chai’s Holocaust awareness and genocide prevention projects, is moving about a mile south in Dunwoody on Sunday morning, April 3.

Last year the 5K run and 1-mile run and walk started at Georgia Perimeter College (now a Georgia State University campus) and ended at the Marcus Jewish Community Center. This year, the start and finish are at Brook Run Park, 4770 N. Peachtree Road. Free parking is available at Peachtree Charter Middle School, 4664 N. Peachtree Road.

Registration at daffodildash.org is available until 5 p.m. Friday, April 1, for $25 for adults and $12 for children 10 and younger. On race day, you can register starting at 8 a.m. for $30. The fee is waived for Holocaust survivors.

The 5K starts at 9 a.m.; the mile begins at 9:15. Awards will go to the top runners in age groups ranging from 10 and under to 75 and over, as well as to the teams with the most participants (the Marist School led at press time) and the most money raised. You can donate at daffodildash.org.

A Holocaust survivor and a refugee will speak after the race. ■

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THURSDAY, MARCH 31

Treatment of Syrian wounded. Salman Zarka, the director general of Ziv Medical Center in Safed, speaks at 6:30 p.m. at Young Israel of Toco Hills, 2056 LaVista Road, about the medical care Israel provides free to those wounded in Syria’s civil war. Admission is $5; www. ajcatlanta.org/salmanzarka.

FRIDAY, APRIL 1

Book cover courtesy of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Jonathan and Drew Scott, HGTV’s “Property Brothers,” are appearing at the Marcus JCC at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 13, to talk about their new book, “Dream Home: The Property Brothers’ Ultimate Guide to Finding & Fixing Your Perfect House.” Tickets are $10 for JCC members and $15 for nonmembers. A $65 premium package includes a signed copy of the book and VIP access to the photo line.

Look for more information about the brothers and their JCC appearance in the Home and Garden section of the April 8 issue of your Atlanta Jewish Times.

Shabbat in the Highlands. Various young adults host Shabbat dinner at 8 p.m. in Virginia-Highland after optional services at 7 p.m. at Chabad Intown, 928 Ponce de Leon Ave., and before a scotch and dessert bar at 10 p.m. at a private home. Free; www.yjpmidtownatlanta.com or 404-931-6449.

SUNDAY, APRIL 3

Indian healing. Emily Siegel discusses “The Gifts of Mandala,” an ancient form of self-awareness and spirituality, for Greater Atlanta Hadassah Health Professionals at 1 p.m. at Amy’s Place, 14 Sloan St., Roswell. Admission is $7; RSVP to Ellen Sichel at elllen@customcalm.com or 770-313-6162 or to Sharon Frank at sharonafrank@aol.com.

Rescuers recalled. Working with the National Center for Civil and Human

Rights, the Breman Museum, 1440 Spring St., Midtown, is the host at 2 p.m. for a screening of the documentary “50 Children,” about a Philadelphia couple’s efforts to save 50 Jewish children from Nazi Germany in 1939, followed by a panel discussion. Free; www.thebreman.org.

Benefit show. “Teens for Teens” is a showcase of musical performances and art by local high school students at 2 p.m. at Congregation Or Hadash, 7460 Trowbridge Road, Sandy Springs, to raise money for the Dr. Israel Goldstein Youth Village in Israel. Tickets at the door are $20 for adults, $10 for ages 8 to 17, and $5 under 8; manela00@ bellsouth.net.

Passover preparation at the mikvah.

The Metro Atlanta Community Mikvah, 700A Mount Vernon Highway, Sandy Springs, holds a program on “Cleansing the Chametz: A Spiritual Preparation for Passover” at 3 p.m.

Free; rsvp@atlantamikvah.org.

TDSA benefit. Torah Day School of Atlanta honors Joseph and Phyllis Tate, Rabbi Moshe and Leah Hiller, and Yacov and Rachelle Freedman at its annual fundraising dinner at 6 p.m. at Con-

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CALENDAR

Wine tasting. Prepare for Passover with a wine tasting at 7 p.m. at Young Israel of Toco Hills, 2056 LaVista Road.

Free; www.yith.org.

MONDAY, APRIL 4

Murrow class. Bob Bahr begins an Emory University-sponsored eight-week course on “Edward R. Murrow — The Voice of America” at 2:30 p.m. at Huntcliff Summit, 8592 Roswell Road, Sandy Springs. Registration is $69; www.olli. emory.edu.

TUESDAY, APRIL 5

Tot holiday class. Chabad of North Fulton, 10180 Jones Bridge Road, Alpharetta, focuses on the Passover seder at its weekly Babyccino class, led by Jeannette Sinasohn, for children through age 2½ and their moms at 11:30 a.m. Admission is $12; hs@chabadnf.org.

Black-Jewish seder. The American Jewish Committee’s Black-Jewish Coalition holds its biennial seder at 6 p.m. at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., Midtown.

Tickets are $36 for adults, $18 for children and students; 404-233-5501 or hershbergh­@ajc.org.

Children’s show. The Chabad Israeli Center Atlanta, 4274 Chamblee-Dunwoody Road, Brookhaven, hosts Israeli entertainer Yuval Hamebulbal at 6:30 p.m. for a show aimed at ages 2 to 12.

Tickets are $25 for children and $10 for adults in advance or $30 and $15 at the door; www.cicatlanta.com/yuval or 404-252-9508.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6

Passover Taste and Tell. Hadassah’s Ketura Group holds an event at 7 p.m. in East Cobb (location shared after RSVP) at which women bring dairy or pareve Passover dishes and tell the stories behind them. Admission is $5; RSVP with the name and recipe of your dish to mslcaras@comcast.net.

Choir performance. The Yemin Orde Youth Choir, composed of 15- to 18-year-olds who have found a haven at Israel’s Yemin Orde Youth Village, performs at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., Midtown, with a dessert reception at 7:30 and the show at 8:15. Free; RSVP

by March 31 at yeminorde-thetemple. eventbrite.com. For information, email trish@yeminorde.org.

THURSDAY, APRIL 7

Game night. Games & Dames, a night of drinks, desserts and various games for women, is the Jewish Fertility Foundation’s first fundraiser, being held at 7 p.m. at Congregation B’nai Torah, 700 Mount Vernon Highway, Sandy Springs. Admission is $30 online or $36 at the door; www.jewishfertilityfoundation.org/gamesdames.html.

Israel at college. Emory University professor Ken Stein leads a discussion, particularly appropriate for college and pre-college students, about “Challenges to Israel on Campus: Causes and Responses” at 7 p.m. at Congregation Or Hadash, 7460 Trowbridge Road, Sandy Springs. Free; RSVP to dlee@orhadash.org.

FRIDAY, APRIL 8

Scholar in residence. Rabbi Bradley Artson, the vice president of American Jewish University, begins a weekend stay at Congregation B’nai Torah, 700 Mount Vernon Highway, Sandy Springs, with a presentation on his installation of the first chief rabbi in Africa at 6:45 p.m., between services at 6 and dinner ($20 for adults, $12 for children) at 7:45. He also speaks about religion and science at 12:45 p.m. Saturday, about Alexander the Great and African female warriors at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, and about synagogue inclusion at 9:30 a.m. Sunday. Details at www.bnaitorah.org/scholar-in-residence-weekendapril-8-10.

CANDLE-LIGHTING TIMES

Parshah Shemini Friday, April 1, light candles at 7:41 p.m.

Saturday, April 2, Shabbat ends at 8:37 p.m.

Parshah Tazria Friday, April 8, light candles at 7:46 p.m.

Saturday, April 9, Shabbat ends at 8:43 p.m. with special needs and their caregivers at 5 p.m. Free; RSVP by April 6 to rkrjr2@comcast.net or 678-305-9401.

The Man Seder. Young Israel of Toco Hills, 2056 LaVista Road, and the Hebrew Order of David mix pre-Passover Torah learning with a four-course barbecue steak dinner, craft beers and bourbon, as well as a collection of gently used business clothes for donation, at 8:15 p.m. Admission is $54 for members, $60 for nonmembers; www. yith.org.

TUESDAY, APRIL 12

Tot holiday class. Chabad of North Fulton, 10180 Jones Bridge Road, Alpharetta, focuses on bread at Passover during its weekly Babyccino class, led by Jeannette Sinasohn, for children through age 2½ and their moms at 11:30 a.m. Admission is $12; hs@chabadnf.org.

Grief support. AJT columnist Nancy

Kriseman speaks at 2 p.m. to the grief support group at the Renaissance on Peachtree, 3755 Peachtree Road, Buckhead, on getting on with your life. Free; 404-240-7811.

Theater auditions. The Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, holds tryouts for Spotlight, its new, yearround theater company for adults for special needs, from 5:30 to 9 p.m. Free; schedule an audition by emailing auditions@atlantajcc.org or calling 678812-4073.

Benefit concert. Colin and Gabi Schachat, accompanied by Raymond Goldstein and such locals as the Atlanta Jewish Male Choir and Atlanta Jewish Academy students, perform a benefit for Israel’s Operation Lifeshield and AJA at 7:30 p.m. at the school’s Sandy Spring campus, 5200 Northland Drive.

Tickets are $36 or $18 for students; secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=1b467a.

SATURDAY, APRIL 9

Jazz show. Israeli jazz guitarist Amos Hoffman performs at Churchill Grounds, 660 Peachtree Road, Atlanta, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15; www. churchillgrounds.com.

SUNDAY, APRIL 10

Passover cooking. The Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, hosts chef Paula Shoyer, author of “The New Passover Menu,” for two Page From the Book Festival events: a master cooking class at 3 p.m. and an author talk and signing at 7:30 p.m. Admission to both events, including a copy of the cookbook, is $65 for JCC members and $80 for nonmembers. Admission to the talk only is $10 for members, $15 for nonmembers; www.atlantajcc.org or 678812-4002.

Special needs seder. Congregation Shearith Israel, 1180 University Drive, Morningside, holds a seder for those

Send items for the calendar to submissions@atljewishtimes.com.

Find more events at atlantajewishtimes.com/events-calendar.

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

gregation Beth Jacob, 1855 LaVista Road, Toco Hills. Tickets are $100; torahday. schoolforms.org/mainevent2016.

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LOCAL NEWS

Marcus JCC Finds Joy in Change

By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com

T

he Marcus Jewish Community Center marked a double transition in leadership at its annual meeting Tuesday night, March 22, and both involved Douglas Kuniansky.

Kuniansky, who brought a heavy heart to the meeting because of the recent death of his father-in-law, had the joy of passing the board chairmanship to lawyer Joel Arogeti, a partner at Kitchens Kelley Gaynes, and in seeing Jared Powers address his first annual meeting since becoming chief executive officer three weeks earlier, relieving Kuniansky of the interim CEO role.

Joy, or simcha, was the theme of Rabbi Brian Glusman’s Torah teaching to start the meeting. As he looked ahead to Purim, which started 24 hours later, and back to that morning, when terrorists bombed Brussels, Rabbi Glusman said simcha can’t happen in a vacuum or alone.

“Simcha is found in community,” he said. “Simcha is found in the JCC.”

The rabbi had cause for more of that joy a few minutes later when he was awarded the Phillip Bush Award for Leadership. Other award winners included Liz Mennen, Volunteer of the Year; Sheila Gonzalez, Team Player Award; Carlos Auger, Customer Service Award; special needs program Transitions, Best New Program, accepted

by Elizabeth Waddey; and Raye Lynn Banks Early Childhood Award, Lori Karp and Helen Sarembock.

In handing over the leadership of an institution that is in strong financial shape after struggling at times the past decade, Kuniansky called it “the most rewarding work of my life.”

“The MJCCA has filled my soul,” he said.

Arogeti praised his predecessor, saying love was at the root of Kuniansky’s 1,051,200 minutes (or two years) as chairman. Arogeti presented a chanukiah to Kuniansky in thanks for his service.

Arogeti served as vice chairman under Kuniansky and has been involved with the JCC since he attended

Photos by Michael Jacobs

preschool at the center 53 years ago when it was in Midtown. He played sports, served as a BBYO officer and went to Camp Barney Medintz, a pattern his children followed.

Looking ahead to his expected two years as chairman, Arogeti said the center must continue to work to meet the needs of all members while striving to bring in new members and to forge new partnerships.

“The J is a blessing on our community,” Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta Chairman Howard Feinsand said.

“We’re in the business of people,” Powers said, emphasizing that the center relies on people, partnerships and programs. He did not offer any details about his vision for the Marcus JCC. He joked that Kuniansky warned him that it’s easier to get to the top than to stay there, but the excitement about his rise after most of a lifetime involved with the JCC is no joke.

“Jared’s appointment has electrified our staff and our membership,” said board Treasurer Sammy Grant, who chaired the meeting. ■

Craig Fagin addresses the meeting on behalf of his 12 fellow new graduates of the Erwin Zaban Leadership Development Program.

Jared Powers speaks at his first Marcus JCC annual meeting as the CEO.

Amy and Philip Rubin present the Harvey Rubin Scholarship, which provides money for college and for the JCC program of the recipient’s choice, to Megan Danz, who is going to the University of Florida and who chose BBYO to share the benefits of her award. “She’s the daughter everyone wants,” Philip Rubin says of Danz.

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The leadership of the Marcus JCC board has passed from Douglas Kuniansky (left) to Joel Arogeti.

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Joy is a function of community, Rabbi Brian Glusman says.

Sammy Grant, who was elected the JCC’s treasurer March 21, does his job as meeting chairman by bringing the event to an end in less than an hour.

Josh Rosenberg (left) and Maury Shapiro present the graduates of the Erwin Zaban Leadership Development Program, which they chaired.

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

OPINION

Anti-Jewish Violence Doesn’t End With Jews met in Brussels. We had several high-level meetings with European Union leadership and members of the European Parliament. During those meetings we discussed many current

Guest Column

By Murray Goldman

topics, including the rise of antiSemitism in Europe, the Iran deal, and the migration of refugees from North Africa, Syria and the Middle East.

To me, it appeared these politicians were spinning the facts to fit their personal agendas so they would not have to address the elephant in the room: the rising Muslim population in Europe not integrating into Western European society.

The rage and terror against Jews in Europe were increasing significantly, but the politicians were reticent on many fronts to combat the true antiSemitism. In fact, that day they initi-

ated the labeling regulations against West Bank agricultural products to punish those “Zionists” who, in their minds, are the reason there is no peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

We left Brussels on Nov. 12. The next day the target of jihadist terrorists was all of Paris, not just Jews.

Another task I have taken in Atlanta for AJC is co-chairing the Muslim-Jewish Dialogue and Social Committee.

I have met many Muslim colleagues worried for the safety of their families. These individuals are willing to do what they can to be productive and law-abiding citizens of the United States. Many have integrated into Western society without giving up their culture or religion. I personally believe this is what has made Jews so successful in America.

The same cannot be said for Europe. What is happening is the isolation of Muslim communities. To change course, valid grievances that Muslims have with Western countries and cultures must be discussed and addressed.

Political leaders in Europe and

America must also publicly challenge the majority of world Muslims to condemn acts of terror and violence.

European Muslim leaders, both political and religious, must act to combat the hatred arising from jihadists.

This hatred may have started against the Jews, but it will not end with the Jews.

Muslim neighborhoods in European cities have become breeding grounds for hate and terror. Now that Israel and the Jews are not the sole targets of terrorist acts, will European politicians start addressing the issues and stop ignoring the facts? They should have known that the attacks were imminent.

Thankfully, in America we have been more successful accepting Muslims and integrating them into our society. We must continue this and not deny Muslims entry. These are our Jewish values. ■ Murray Goldman is an AJC Atlanta board member, AJC Transatlantic Institute board member, and co-chair of Atlanta’s Muslim-Jewish Dialogue and Social Committee.

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W

atching in horror the events that were transpiring in Brussels, I started analyzing how the Western countries in North America and Europe became the focus of the hatred arising from the jihadists.

For the past several years I have been a member of the board of American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute housed in Brussels. I have been next to those airport counters numerous times and walked past the Maalbeek subway station.

George Van Bergen, AJC TAI’s deputy director, decided to walk to work Tuesday, March 22, instead of taking the train and exiting at the Maalbeek station. As he walked past that station, he was a witness to the explosion and the terror that followed. Thankfully George was not hurt, but I know that one day the victim could be me or one of my esteemed colleagues.

Was there any way the Belgium government should have known that an attack was imminent?

In November, the AJC TAI board

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www.atlantajewishtimes.com

OPINION

Our Views

Right Decision

G

ov. Nathan Deal’s announcement Monday, March 28, that he will veto House Bill 757 was news worth celebrating, but it also was a compromise that ultimately may prove difficult for some on the winning side to accept.

We’re glad that the governor rejected H.B. 757, the Free Exercise Protection Act, because of its content and not the threatened business boycott.

As we argued in this space a week ago, H.B. 757 is an inherently discriminatory measure in search of a purpose. Its supporters say it’s necessary to protect followers of the unchallenged majority religion from being forced to violate principles of their faith, but they offer no examples of such oppression in Georgia.

Even if one accepts that forcing a wedding vendor to sell his service or product to a same-sex couple violates religious freedom, the simple fact is that it hasn’t happened in Georgia. The horror stories cited as justification for religious liberty legislation not only come from out of state, but also involve state laws that Georgia lacks.

Deal was right to argue that it’s too dangerous to mess with the First Amendment for no reason, and it was important that, for anyone willing to listen, he put to rest the fears of the faithful regarding this new era of marriage equality. Whatever might be happening in other states, Georgia has neither the plans nor the mechanism to force anyone to bake a cake, supply flowers or take photographs at a same-sex wedding.

That point of emphasis in Deal’s statement — that Georgia lacks the Human Rights Act used against a New Mexico photographer and the Public Accommodation Act applied against a Colorado bakery — reveals the compromise he has struck.

As governor, he will protect the LGBT community, single parents, divorced people, religious minorities and others from discriminatory legislation, but the price is to accept Georgia as it is: a state with no civil rights law, no public accommodation law and no hate crimes law. So those who fought desperately and successfully to stop H.B. 757 shouldn’t be surprised next year when the governor stands against new LGBT protections while continuing to oppose discriminatory religious liberty measures.

Loss for BDS

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We did not want the General Assembly session to fade into history without complimenting its passage of legislation rejecting the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in Georgia.

Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta), who has repeatedly proved himself to be a strong friend of Israel, shepherded through Senate Bill 327, which simply says that if you want a state contract worth at least $1,000, you have to declare that you do not boycott Israel or territory it controls and will not do so during the contract.

We’re disappointed the House removed language that would have applied the same rule to local governments in Georgia, and we’re unpleasantly surprised 70 representatives and eight senators voted against even that weakened measure. But we’re confident Gov. Deal will sign this bill and re-enforce Georgia’s 10 strong belief in doing business with Israel. ■

AJT

Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle

Chalk the Chalk, Talk the Talk

O

n Monday, March 21, panic swept Emory ed values that clash with Emory’s.

University because someone wrote Donald The College Council and Student Government Trump’s name in chalk a few times. TearAssociation sent their own email, declaring their ful students expressed fear for their lives: Someone solidarity with students who have felt a lack of backing the Republican presidential front-runner safety, according to the Wheel. had been on their campus.

Remember, those email statements came after The next morning, at least 31 people were killed the Brussels bombings. But the continued unease when Islamic State terrorists, without warning, set on campus the rest of the week indicates a shocking off bombs at the airport and a lack of awareness metro station in Brussels. among intelligent You might think the real viopeople at one of this Editor’s Notebook lence by real terrorists inflicting nation’s elite uniBy Michael Jacobs real death and destruction would versities about the mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com force the Emory students to face meaning of safety reality: “Trump 2016” and “Accept and the true security the Inevitable” are just words; no afforded all of us by matter how frightening you find their potential conthe First Amendment’s protection of free speech — sequences, they pose no threat of physical danger. political speech above all.

They aren’t bombs killing innocent people.

It’s a lesson Emory seems to be widely failing To pretend otherwise, to whine and demand atto teach. The same student government organizatention because your feelings are hurt while people tions that expressed concern about students feeling are cleaning blood and body parts 4,400 miles away, unsafe in the face of chalk also recently revoked the is beyond entitlement and privilege; it’s pathological. 2-month-old charter of Emory’s J Street U chapter.

To be fair, according to The Emory Wheel, the The dispute is at best a bureaucratic snafu but student newspaper, only about 40 of some 14,000 has the stench of an effort to stop or slow down a students swarmed into the university administragroup for its political positions. tion building to demand action: denunciation of (At least one Emory student gets it: Wheel Trump; a manhunt for the mad chalker; and, while Editor-in-Chief Zak Hudak wrote a column in supthey were at it, more diversity in hiring. port of free speech. “If we shut down the opposition,” It would be easy to dismiss the whole mess as he wrote, “we lose our purpose as a university.”) a few activist types with nothing better to do — a I’m not a big J Street fan. I’m not a big Donald protester is going to protest — except for the reTrump fan. I am a big fan of a free society in which sponse from Emory President James Wagner and the the supporters of both can express their opinions student government. and have them judged in the bright light of the marWagner, who is retiring and thus has the ketplace of ideas. freedom to say and do what is right, unlike peers Hysteria and efforts to silence views we don’t who have cowered in the face of minority student like undermine the quest for safe spaces such efforts protests the past two years, sent out a universitywide are said to support, and they produce the kind of email Tuesday, March 22, to appease the protesters. society where bombings are accepted as the new It included a statement that the chalk art representnormal. ■

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

OPINION

No Need for Nazis in Political Debates

I

n the mid-1970s, Professor Gilmour occasionally wore a Nehru jacket and, behind his back, was called “H. Rap,” referencing his liberal politics with the name of a black power activist.

Some days I amused myself in the back of his class by thumbing through copies of William F. Buckley’s National Review that were piled on a bookcase shelf, an exercise in simultaneously considering multiple points of view.

One lesson that Professor Gilmour imparted to his students in American politics was that constraints prevent the president of the United States from veering too far to the left or the right, from going off the rails.

(Mind you, this was as the nation recovered from the trauma of Richard Nixon’s resignation, his administration disgraced by its abuse of legal processes in the Watergate burglary cover-up.)

Think of these constraints as the bumpers that prevent a bowling ball from rolling into the gutter. Moral considerations aside, the most obvious constraints are the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Congress passes laws (and can override presidential vetoes) and controls the purse. The courts, ultimately the Supreme Court of the United States, determine whether laws or presidential actions meet a test of legality based on interpretation of the Constitution.

There is much a president can do on his/her own. In addition to vetoes, presidents from both parties have

employed executive orders and signing statements. As commanders in chief, presidents have sent American troops into harm’s way with or without congressional approval.

Professor Gilmour’s lesson echoes through the years as pundits, politicians and the public wonder aloud how a President Donald Trump might behave in office.

In large measure because of comments by (but not limited to) candidate Trump, political discourse in this country has veered toward the vulgar.

I am repulsed by the labeling of Mexican immigrants as rapists, calls for police patrols to target neighborhoods of American Muslims, and comments about women that have sent many to look up the dictionary definition of a misogynist.

And we’re still seven months from Election Day. Which brings me to Godwin’s Law. In the mid-1980s, “when the Internet was still a pup,” author and lawyer-to-be Mike Godwin posited that as an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference to Hitler or Nazis nears certainty.

On a Jewish news website, in the comments after an article on Trump’s appearance before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, I found Jews calling other Jews “kapos,” evoking an

ugly aspect of the Holocaust. A kapo was a Jew who organized regulation of other Jews in concentration camps for the benefit of Nazi overseers.

Think about this. In 2016, a Jew uses a term that accuses another Jew of complicity in Nazi atrocities to make an argument about an election for president of the United States.

I have compared online comment sections to graffiti on bathroom walls, displays of bravery and wit by people unwilling to sign their work.

The applications of Godwin’s Law this campaign season have plumbed such depths.

Two years ago, journalist and author Kurt Eichenwald wrote the following in an essay for Vanity Fair: “It is hard to fully comprehend the magnitude of the Nazi death camps and their impact on the lives of untold

millions. But, even so, there are a few things I can say for certain: the Nazis, and the Holocaust they brought were nothing like Obamacare. Or the national debt. Or political correctness. Or criticism of economic inequality. Or the Tea Party. Or the Internal Revenue Service. Or the Obama administration.

Or the Bush administration. Or any of the other masses of infinitesimal flotsam spewed up in self-pitying and hysterical analogies by vulgarians with more mouth than brain.”

By all means, debate the issues to the nth degree and argue the merits and demerits of candidates for public office, but leave out the Nazi and Hitler references. There is plenty that can be said without invoking that incomprehensible horror.

Enough.

Please. ■

Letter To The Editor

collection donated by the collector’s children, and I continued to buy old haggadot in Israel and send them to him. Last year, since I am close friends with the artist David Moss, I decided to purchase a copy of his haggadah and send it to Graham. I believe that now that this haggadah collection has been revealed, the collection will grow to 1,000 volumes — especially because I hope Atlantans and Emory alumni will give Graham their old haggadot.

In 1869 the Atlanta Constitution had a nice article about Passover as it was celebrated at The Temple. An early haggadah used in Atlanta was the 1883 edition of the Lieberman Haggadah, which contains the first illustrations drawn by an American, H. Senor. The best-known image is of the four sons,

in which the wicked son wearing “Chicago duds” is smoking and raising his hand in strident fashion.

From the beginning of his rabbinate in December 1910 at Shearith Israel, Rabbi Tobias Geffen, my grandfather, did the following before Pesach.

He bought people’s chametz, and copies of those lists are to be found at the American Jewish Historical Society.

He oversaw milking of cows around Atlanta so there would be Pesadik milk.

On Shabbat HaGadol, just as he had learned at the Slobodka yeshiva in Lithuania in the 1890s, he gave a major halachic address that was advertised at Ahavath Achim and at Jewish-owned stores. Even in the difficult Leo Frank years, he spoke on Shabbat HaGadol in 1914 and 1915. Fortunately, he wrote

those addresses from the years 1913 to 1917 in a Blue Horse (Montag) notebook. His great-grandson Rabbi Etan Geffen of Tekoa has that notebook.

Lastly, my grandparents were real American patriots. In World War I they held large sederim for soldiers in their home on Hunter Street, and during World War II they invited soldiers, airmen and other personnel to their home on Washington Street for Pesach.

It was at their home on Washington Street in 1946 that I attended my first Atlanta seder. My father, the late Louis Geffen, a judge advocate for 6½ years in the U.S. Army, finally returned from Japan in March 1946.

What a great Jewish city Atlanta is, and Emory adds so very much.

— Rabbi David Geffen, Jerusalem 11

Thank you for using Dr. M. Patrick Graham’s article about the haggadah exhibit at the Pitts Library (“Haggadot Come Home to Emory,” March 18).

When I met him over a decade ago, I was impressed by his friendship, librarianship and intellectual pursuits, which have made the Pitts Library, with 600,000 volumes, the third-largest theological library in North America.

After a few conversations, I made the decision to give him the haggadot I possessed. As the last 10 years have passed, he received a wonderful large

By Dave Schechter dschechter@atljewishtimes.com

Cartoon by Daryl Cagle, CagleCartoons.com

There are ways to make a point without resorting to Nazi imagery.

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Emory’s an Atlanta Gem

From Where I Sit

AJT

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

OPINION

Autism and the IDF

I

received a call from my wife and her class at Atlanta Jewish Academy. My wife teaches Judaics in the M’silot program for special education.

Sometimes, when her students ask a particularly deep question, she puts her phone on speaker mode and calls me for an “Ask the Rabbi” session for her class.

Let me ask you the question they put to me: During the 10 Plagues, the animals of the Egyptians were killed.

Why did animals have to suffer for the freedom of the Jews?

It’s a good question, is it not? I never thought of it, and I don’t recall it being asked by the commentaries. I called one of my mentors and asked him how I should answer those 9-yearolds. He gave me a long, philosophical answer — one that certainly would be over the heads of a class of 9-year-olds.

My approach would be to show them the text in the Torah (Exodus 9:3-19) that tells us Moses had warned Pharaoh and the Egyptians that any animals left in the fields would be killed. The ones that were killed,

therefore, were killed because of the Egyptians’ negligence and lack of faith because they were left in the field.

It’s a good point; however, it doesn’t fully answer the question of

Guest Column

By Rabbi Mark Hillel Kunis

why animals suffered for the freedom of the Jews. They didn’t ask to be left in the fields.

My point for now is that too often society thinks less of those who learn differently — those who are different.

Here we have a class of 9-year-olds who learn differently who stumped the rabbi and his mentor!

In the recent Torah reading for Vayera, when G-d tells Moses (Exodus 6:11-12), “Come speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he send the children of Israel from his land,” Moses responds, “The children of Israel have not listened to me, so how will Pharaoh

Something for Everyone Look for these upcoming special sections in your Atlanta Jewish Times: April 8 — Home & Garden April 15 — Health & Wellness/ Passover Recipes April 22 — Passover

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

April 29 — Yom HaShoah

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To advertise in these or any other issues, call 404-883-2130.

Send story ideas to mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com.

listen to me when I have a speech impediment?”

Yes, Moses wasn’t perfect, so G-d appointed his brother, Aaron, to be his spokesman, and they became an effective team. Moses had a disability that was significant to the task at hand. But he had a crucial contribution to make nevertheless — to lead the Jewish people through the Exodus, the giving of the Torah at Sinai and 40 years in the desert to the Promised Land.

I recently read an inspirational Atlantic article about a special unit in the Israel Defense Forces: Unit 9900, staffed mostly by soldiers with autism.

These soldiers are given specific tasks that autistic young adults are better at than are other soldiers. Can you imagine what it does for their selfesteem? It gives them a sense of meaning and allows them to participate in military service like their peers.

Unit 9900 highlights the idea that no one can do everything. Each person can make a unique contribution just like Moses and Aaron. The IDF enables these young adults to gain independence and thrive — perhaps for the first time — outside their homes. They learn to deal with everyday challenges such as navigating the bus system, as well as specific challenges like keeping classified information. The development of this unit has become a source of great pride for Israel.

The idea was born on the lawn.

Two dozen middle-aged men had come in February 2011 to comfort Dror and Yehudit Rotenberg, who had lost their son in Gaza. The men all knew one another well. They served together in the paratrooper brigade in the 1970s.

Rather than rehash old war stories, they talked about their lives. One shared that he had two sons, 14 and 16: The older was deaf, and both were autistic. He described the difficulty of realizing when his child was 2 that his son was on the autistic spectrum and would never be like his peers.

He said that as his sons approached adulthood, one of the most daunting challenges the family faced was the narrow and bleak horizon for high school graduates with autism.

While their peers left for the army, autistic teens stayed home. He called the phenomenon “bloody 21.”

Raising a child who has special needs is never easy. The anticipation of “bloody 21” only increases the pain of inadequacy these young adults feel.

This cruel twist of fate is being challenged by the IDF, thanks to the initiative of those veterans of that

paratrooper brigade, with programs such as Great in Uniform and Ro’im Rachok (Seeing Into the Future) to integrate young people with disabilities into the army for three-year stints.

For some participants, this basic training marks the first time they’ve been away from home. It allows young men and women who feel like failures to join the IDF, contribute and give of themselves like everyone else.

According to Rechav’am base commander Motti Dayan, the IDF special needs soldiers are “a part of us.

They are an inseparable part of our unit. They eat with us in the mess hall, work with us on everything.”

They repair protective kits and work in the storehouses and kitchens, and some are part of Unit 9900.

With the approach of World Autism Awareness Day on Saturday, April 2, let me tell you about Unit 9900.

For eight hours a day, 21-yearold Corporal E — his name must be withheld under IDF protocol — sits in front of multiple computer screens, scanning high-resolution satellite images for suspicious objects or movements. As a decoder of Israel’s complex battlegrounds, he has been critical in preventing the loss of soldiers’ lives in several situations.

Combing through each millimeter of a location from various angles would be impossibly tedious for many, but E, on the autism spectrum, says the job is relaxing, “like a hobby.”

Unit 9900 is an opportunity to harness the skills that often come with autism: extraordinary capacities for visual thinking and attention to detail, both of which are crucial to the highly specialized task of aerial analysis.

Other tracks train candidates to be army electricians to deal with devices like night vision goggles or optics technicians who work with binoculars.

E plans to apply to stay in the IDF. But regardless of how long they stay, these autistic young adults depend on the connections and skills they build in the army to help them achieve independence once they leave. Military service in Israel is often the best pathway to a good job, especially in Israel’s booming high-tech sector.

Moses and Aaron teach us that we each have a unique contribution to make. The IDF programs for autistic young adults demonstrate this in a most amazing way. I’m so proud of them, and you should be too. ■ Rabbi Kunis is the spiritual leader of Congregation Shaarei Shamayim.

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

ISRAEL NEWS

Israel Pride: Good News From Our Jewish Home Belgians use Israeli tech to register as “safe.” Facebook activated its Safety Check app to help people let friends and family know they were safe after the deadly bombings in Belgium. The social network’s tool was developed at the Tel Aviv headquarters of Facebook Israel. Some 4.1 million people used the app after the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris.

Treatment for pulmonary arterial hypertension. Herzliya-based startup SoniVie has a novel system for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, a progressive and fatal illness with no current cure. SoniVie has successfully completed the first two procedures for its first-in-human multicenter clinical trial.

Diagnosing thyroid cancer. Rehovot-based Rosetta Genomics has announced that its RosettaGX Reveal diagnostic test for thyroid cancer is approved for use in all 50 U.S. states.

How to cope with stress. Researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed tests to highlight the different rates people recover from stress. The study can help people to train themselves to relax. It also may lead to a blood test that can diagnose undue stress and help with the recovery process.

first American rice grower to use Israeli drip irrigation. The Conaway Preservation Group is partnering with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev’s Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research and Tel Aviv-based Netafim.

Soft wheels for cars. Tel Aviv-based SoftWheel is bringing its innovative automatic suspension system to the automobile sector. That means no flat tires because the SoftWheel system uses a rigid tire that is not filled with air. At the AIPAC Policy Conference, SoftWheel demonstrated the company’s Acrobat wheelchair and revealed its ambitious automotive plans.

Israel Photo of the Week: Renaissance Woman Photo by Shmulik Almany

Almost limitless communication. Tel Aviv-based startup SkyFi is developing a network of 60 nano-satellites to cover the globe and enable any type of communication between two points — telephone, digital, even television. It will also provide Internet access to some 4 billion people in rural areas without wired or wireless connections.

Compiled courtesy of verygoodnewsisrael. blogspot.com and other news sources.

Lori Palatnik, the founding director of the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project, helps announce a partnership between her organization and Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs to bring 5,600 women from 26 countries to Israel for nine-day trips that will inspire them as family and community leaders to make a greater impact. The $12.5 million expansion of JWRP’s Momentum Israel experiences, which have changed lives for women in Atlanta and around the world since 2009, was announced during the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington on Monday night, March 21. The initiative this year and next will target women in Jewish communities facing increased threats of anti-Semitism and economic hardship, including Argentina, Cuba, former Soviet republics, France, the United States and Canada. “This historic agreement allows us to continue to build a global movement united in the mission of empowering women to change the world through Jewish values,” Palatnik said. “Our philosophy from the beginning has always been: Inspire a woman, you inspire a family. Inspire enough families, you can change a community. Inspire enough communities, you can change the world. This partnership is key to making this a reality.”

Inclusive treks. Israel’s Paratrek organizes hiking trips and outdoor adventures for people with physical challenges by using wheelchairs with oversize wheels, mountain bike tires and a harness that enables them to be pulled like a rickshaw. Paratrek’s slogan: “Where there’s a wheel, there’s a way!”

A baby stroller for wheelchair users.

Dana Yichye-Shwachman, a designer with Israel’s Jonathan Bar-Or Industrial Design, has developed Easy Stroll, an aluminum attachment to a wheelchair’s footboard that latches on to a baby stroller. She is extending the prototype to fit a variety of wheelchairs and strollers.

U.S. ranch to grow rice with Israeli irrigation. The 17,000-acre Conaway Ranch in Woodland, Calif., will be the

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Singing across divisions. Simply Sing is a Jerusalem-based project that has Jews and Arabs meeting every few weeks for an evening of musical performances and singing. Some 250 people attended the latest event at Jerusalem’s Museum of Islamic Art, which featured three Jewish and three Arab musicians.

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www.atlantajewishtimes.com

LOCAL NEWS

Successful Study Day

By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com

G

M

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ore than 100 people turned out on a rainy Sunday afternoon, March 27, to join members of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association for three hours of study sessions as eclectic as the rabbis teaching them.

The 22 sessions at the ARA’s Yom Iyun (Day of Torah Study), organized

by Pam Rosenthal, were led by Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox and Sephardi rabbis on topics ranging from healthy, holy eating to guns and self-defense. The hard part was choosing just one of the seven or eight classes available during each learning block at the Weber School.

My only regret in my selections — “Sephardic Jews: Not Just Rice on Passover” with Congregation Or VeShalom Rabbi Hayyim Kassorla, “Who Wrote the Torah?” with Congregation Beth Shalom Rabbi Mark Zimmerman and “It’s Never Too Late to Study Torah: The Legacy of Rabbi Akiva” with Young Israel of Toco Hills Rabbi Adam Starr — was that I missed the opportunity to learn with some of the bright female rabbis in town. Maybe next time.

There should be a next time much sooner than next spring. During a brief wrap-up gathering in the Weber cafeteria, attendees were nearly unanimous in supporting the suggestion that the ARA should hold such days of study two, three or more times a year.

Here are a few snippets from the classes I attended, each with about 12 to 15 other students: • While we Ashkenazi Jews tend to think of our Sephardi cousins in terms of their cuisine and to a lesser extent their language, Rabbi Kassorla argued that their most important distinguishing characteristic is their approach to Jewish law. (That’s with the rabbi’s caveat that it’s wrong to portray anything as the Sephardi way because the culture is so diverse, based on geographic origin.)

Rabbi Kassorla said the Sephardi approach to Jewish law is to look in a person’s eyes first, then turn to the books. Thus, for example, even though halacha seems clear that a husband should not be in the room where his wife is delivering a baby, Rabbi David Halevy ruled that it could be the right thing to do in this modern age if the absence of her husband would cause the mother-to-be extreme stress.

Rabbi Kassorla pointed out that 14 Sephardi Jews don’t have the rigid de-

AJT

Deal: Georgia Lacks Reason for H.B. 757

Rabbi Hayyim Kassorla

nominations of Ashkenazim because of the desire to be flexible within the limits of Jewish law.

“This approach to Judaism is in great danger,” he said, but it’s also needed now more than ever to extend a welcoming path to the Jewish future.

• Rabbi Zimmerman didn’t deny the divinity of the Torah but did argue that the content makes it impossible to believe that Moses received all five books intact at Mount Sinai. He noted that the Torah says Moses came down the mountain with two tablets, not lengthy scrolls, and that Samuel’s resistance to choosing a king makes no sense if the people could have turned to the Deuteronomy we have today to provide support for an earthly monarch.

“The whole process of Torah is more complicated than we think,” the rabbi said.

That process also is not new, going back to when the early rabbis recognized that revelation at Sinai included an oral as well as a written Torah and used that double revelation to justify such non-Torah innovations as lighting Shabbat candles over the objections of the literalist Karaites.

• Rabbi Starr not only delved into the fascinating life of Rabbi Akiva — who the Talmud indicates didn’t even know the alef-bet when he started studying with his 6-year-old son in the ancient equivalent of kindergarten — but also drew a parallel between Rabbi Akiva’s brutal death at the hands of the Romans and the terrorist-caused death of Rav Eitam Henkin.

Rabbi Akiva was a Torah scholar so great that even Moses couldn’t keep up with him, according to one midrash, but his reward was to be flayed alive. Rav Henkin at age 30 had already achieved impressive scholarship, including demonstrating how the different stories of Akiva’s early life form a cohesive whole, but his reward was to be gunned down with his wife while driving last Sukkot.

“Sometimes we just don’t have the answers,” Rabbi Starr said. ■

ov. Nathan Deal brought this round of the battle over religious liberty legislation to an unexpectedly early end Monday, March 28, when he announced that he will veto House Bill 757, the Free Exercise Protection Act. “Our actions on H.B. 757 are not just about protecting the faith-based community or providing a businessfriendly climate for job growth in Georgia. This is about the character of our state and the character of its people,” Deal said at a news conference.

The bill — a compilation of several proposals that had developed the past several years in response to the push for same-sex marriage — had the support of conservative Christian organizations, which argued that it was necessary to protect people from being forced to act against their First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

Opponents argued that the bill was nothing less than an effort to mark LGBT people as second-class citizens subject to discrimination and would also open other groups, such as single mothers, divorced people and those having sex out of wedlock, to the denial of services and to discrimination in hiring. Many Atlanta rabbis declared opposition to H.B. 757 or its predecessors the past two legislative sessions; none publicly supported the bill.

The legislation emerged from backroom negotiations Wednesday, March 16, and quickly won approval from the House and Senate on the 37th day of the 40-day legislative session.

While insisting that he would not sign anything he thought would allow discrimination in Georgia, Deal also said he was pleasantly surprised that any kind of compromise passed.

Deal had until May 3 to decide whether to sign the bill, but H.B. 757 already was having an impact on the state: The governor’s office said two economic development prospects dropped Georgia from consideration because of the measure.

Companies that have made Georgia a hotbed of film and TV production vowed to abandon the state if H.B. 757 became law. Conventions booked for Atlanta threatened to move. Atlanta’s professional sports teams opposed the bill, and the NFL said the measure could hurt the city’s chances of hosting a Super Bowl. Many high-tech companies declared their opposition to H.B. 757, as did such business organizations

as the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the Buckhead Coalition and Georgia Prospers (a consortium including such giants as Delta Air Lines, Google, Home Depot and Coca-Cola).

Deal said he did not appreciate the threats from bill opponents or the insults hurled at him by proponents who feared a veto. “The people of Georgia deserve a leader who will made sound judgments based on solid reasons that are not inflamed by emotion.”

The governor focused on the principles at play. He said the freedom of religion is best left to the protection of the U.S. Constitution, as Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson recently argued, and any effort to legislate enhancements to the First Amendment could lead to discrimination through inclusions or omissions, regardless of intentions.

He said that risk is too great to take, especially because “I can find no examples that any of the things this bill seeks to protect us against have ever occurred in Georgia.”

Incidents in other states in which people were punished for not providing services to same-sex weddings resulted from state legislation that doesn’t exist in Georgia, Deal said. That comment does raise doubts about any efforts to enact civil rights or public accommodation legislation in Georgia.

“Georgia is a welcoming state filled with warm, friendly and loving people.

Our cities and countryside are populated with people who worship G-d in a myriad of ways and in very diverse settings. Our people work side by side without regard to the color of our skin or the religion we adhere to,” Deal said.

“We are working to make life better for our families and our communities.

That is the character of Georgia. I intend to do my part to keep it that way.”

The votes for passage March 16 were largely along party lines, with members of Deal’s Republican Party in favor and Democrats opposed, but 10 Republicans voted no, enough to prevent the House from overturning the veto if they stand fast. Still, some state senators called for a special session to try to override the veto.

If the veto stands, as they almost always do in Georgia, the religious liberty battle is likely to resume next year with a new General Assembly that is guaranteed to have Republican majorities, based on candidate qualifying for the legislative elections. ■

FINANCE

By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com

T

he Georgia General Assembly passed Senate Bill 327 before adjourning for the year, joining the national trend of state legislatures taking action against the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The bill, introduced by Sen. Judson Hill (R-Marietta) and shepherded in the House by Rep. David Clark (R-Buford), cleared the House on a 96-70 vote on Tuesday, March 22, in a weaker form than the Senate approved Feb. 26. With time running out on the final day of the session March 24, the Senate accepted the House version on a 41-8 vote.

(The legislature’s website lists the House vote as 95-71 with Rep. Michele Henson voting no, but the Stone Mountain Democrat, the only Jew in the House, said she corrected her vote to yes and has asked to have the House journal reflect that change, thus making the count 96-70. “My support for Israel is firm and unwavering,” she said.)

“Israel welcomes and appreciates the spirit and language of this bill, which is against boycotting Israel via the BDS movement,” said Ambassador Judith Varnai Shorer, Israel’s consul general to the Southeast. “The entire BDS movement is an anti-Semitic act for the delegitimization of Israel. BDS aims to take advantage of criticism against Israel and works against Israel’s very survival and well-being.”

According to Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the BDS movement and opposes state legislation in response, at least 14 state legislatures this year have considered bills or resolutions opposed to BDS. The Israel Project, which supports such measures, said six other states have passed anti-BDS legislation, as opposed to resolutions, including neighboring Florida and South Carolina.

Georgia’s legislation is stronger than some proposals because it includes “Israeli-controlled territories.”

But the bill awaiting Gov. Nathan Deal’s signature is weaker than Hill’s original version because the House State Properties Committee deleted the phrase “including all of its subdivisions and instrumentalities.”

Thus, the final legislation applies to state contracts only; Hill’s version would have covered local governments.

“I strongly opposed that change,” the senator said, but he chose to accept

the House version rather than let the session end without passing something.

The bill requires any potential state vendor to certify in a contract worth at least $1,000 that Sen. Judson Hill it does not boycott Israel or companies that do business with Israel.

Hill emphasized that there is no investigative element: The vendor simply states in a binding contract that it is not a boycotter.

A strong backer of Israel because Genesis 12:3 states that those who support Israel will be blessed and those who oppose it will be cursed, Hill said he introduced the bill as a proactive move to prevent the BDS movement from making inroads into Georgia.

The Israel Project praised the legislation’s passage. “The U.S.-Israel relationship is based on shared values, and opposing bigotry in all its forms is fundamental to the people of both nations,” said Jacob Milner, TIP’s Midwest regional director and senior policy analyst. “As I have seen over the past several months working on this effort, Georgians don’t want their state supporting the anti-Semitic BDS efforts, and that’s why the legislature voted to prevent this insidious movement from gaining a foothold here.”

Still, the vote in the House was much closer than in the Senate. Hill said the opposition to the bill reflected opposition to Israel and came after some pro-Palestinian speakers criticized the legislation during its House committee hearing.

The senator, who is unopposed for re-election, plans to revisit the measure next session. “I won’t stop. I’m very happy and thankful that we got this portion passed with a tight vote in the House,” Hill said. “I expect the governor to be fully supportive and intend to come back to have it also apply to counties and municipalities.”

He also intends to try again to pass a constitutional amendment barring Georgia’s retirement funds from being invested in ways that benefit state sponsors of terrorism. Such a measure, designed to permanently restore an expired ban on financial dealings with Iran, stalled this session. ■

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Legislature Approves Weakened Anti-BDS Bill

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FINANCE

Conexx Women Offers Lessons in Startups

By Tova Norman

W

hen Shannon Pierce came up with the idea for CareCam Health Systems, she was working as a critical care nurse and had no training in starting a business. The Clemson graduate just saw a problem and wanted to fix it.

“In our family, we weren’t allowed to complain without offering a solution,” Pierce said.

Her solution turned into a patent, an “invisible platform” that “connects patients to their providers and insurance companies through mobile health care technologies to improve the overall care experience.”

Soon she was raising money for her new company, starting at $10,000 and going up into the millions.

“I was just hitting milestones and each time just trying to make it bigger and better,” Pierce said.

She will speak alongside Audrey Jacobs at the second Conexx Women event, “Startups — New Opportunities for Women,” on Thursday, April 7.

“The event is all about offering an effective networking opportunity for our professional women, as well as sharing new ways to connect with Israeli companies,” said Orna Sharon, the development coordinator at Conexx. “The event is an introduction to the many business and investment

opportunities our women can find in Israel.”

While Pierce can speak to the experience of starting from the ground up, Jacobs has the experience with financing.

The vice president of OurCrowd, an Israeli equity funding platform, Jacobs works “to enable individual investors around the world to have access where they’ve never had access before — to be able to invest directly into vetted startups, primarily from Israel.”

The OurCrowd platform also allows entrepreneurs to access funding and strengthen their global network.

Jacobs assists investors and entrepreneurs.

She helps entrepreneurs get investors interested. “What is the other side looking for? What is going to compel an investor to invest in you? How are you going to tell your story, and what part of your story do you need to tell?”

For investors, she explains the importance of focusing on their purpose: making money.

“You are looking to get a return on your investment,” she said, explaining that sometimes people overlook bad investments because of exciting ideas or inspiring purposes.

Her goal is to make sure everyone goes in with an “incredible amount of confidence.”

That will be important for women

who attend the Conexx trip to Israel in November.

On the trip, Sharon said, “women participants will connect with likeminded Israeli women leaders in technology startups, professionals and business owners.”

However, Jacobs said gender does not play a role in investing.

“It doesn’t matter if an investor or entrepreneur is a woman,” she said.

“If you have some type of gender bias, you’re only limiting yourself.”

Pierce agreed, explaining that she often avoided women’s events in the past.

“I wanted to be where the smartest people were, male or female,” she said.

But Pierce decided to speak at this event because Conexx is such a great organization. She is not Jewish, but she found Conexx because of her connection to Israeli technology companies.

“You don’t have to be Jewish to be a part of” Conexx, she said. “You can want access and want your company to have access to the best and brightest technologies.”

Jacobs, on the other hand, has been connected to Conexx since she started at OurCrowd as the first American employee of the Israeli company.

“They’re one of the most strategic and active chambers in the U.S.,” she said of Conexx. “They had a great reputation.”

Life Insurance to Meet Women’s Needs

W

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

hen few meaningful jobs were open to women, little life insurance was written on women except by those professional life insurance agents who understood the economic loss if the wife/mother were to leave the scene.

To bring home an understanding of the value of the wife/mother, the agent would prepare a list of the duties she performed, the number of hours each week allocated to those duties, and the hourly rate for those duties. The total might have exceeded the take-home pay of the breadwinner.

That has not changed in households where the wife fills the old role.

But now the primary breadwinner often is the woman, demanding meaningful amounts of life insurance.

These women need key-person 16 policies, partnership buy-sell policies

AJT

or stock redemption policies in corporations, estate tax plans that cover

Guest Column

By Mayer Smith

the anticipated taxes, and living and irrevocable trusts.

A tried and true way of determining a realistic amount of coverage is to assume that a machine legally produces the money made by the breadwinner. The same taxes and other deductions are subtracted. The question: “For how much would you insure the machine if you could not work and the machine is not replaceable?”

The usual answers go sky-high, but the correct answer is “the presentday value of all your future earnings.”

The number will still be impressive, often calling for a blend of whole life insurance and term. People with high incomes might choose all whole life; others with low or beginning incomes will have to start with all term insurance that later can be converted to the best products available without additional underwriting qualifications.

A major factor is that the probability of suffering a disability lasting 90 days or more is three times as great as the probability of dying before age 65. Many of these episodes last a year or more; some are permanent.

This is where the disability waiver of premium on whole life policies comes into play. Not only are premiums waived if a disability lasts six months or more, but also the cash value continues to grow, as does the protection on participating policies from mutual companies, whose premiums per $1,000 of coverage are higher than those from stock companies

Jacobs also understands the significance of connecting Israeli and U.S. businesses and investors. She often speaks on behalf of Israeli startups to investors around the world.

“I am passionate about telling Israel’s story as a light unto the nations,” Jacobs said, referring to the many startups that have changed the world.

Most of her 60 to 100 speaking engagements a year are to non-Jewish crowds, but Jacobs said she has never heard anything negative about Israel.

“You can’t argue with saving lives, producing more crops to feed the hungry, and creating technology that makes the world safer,” she said. “It’s just the reality of Israel, and it’s a story that not everybody tells.”

The story of business opportunities in Israel is what Conexx is all about.

“Considering that 50 percent of small-business owners are women,” Sharon said, “it is important for us to empower them to recognize the value of Startup Nation.” ■ What: Conexx Women event on startups Where: Carter’s, Suite 1800, 3438 Peachtree Road, Buckhead When: 5:30 p.m. Thursday, April 7 Admission: $20 for members of Conexx and partner organizations, $30 for nonmembers; osharon@ conexx.org

but whose dividends provide greater returns in later years.

A major factor favoring mutual policies is that today’s dividend projections are based on the lowest interest assumptions in 80 years. Dividends should be greater as interest rates rise, and mortality costs should be lower because of advances in medicine.

Also, many life insurance companies permit portions of the death benefit in whole life policies to be used for long-term care, reducing the need for long-term-care insurance.

So today’s women have much to consider when determining how much and what kind of insurance is best.

While the initial outlay might be a strain, it will become a smaller part of the budget as your income grows.

It will also provide a smugness about how smart you were to look ahead. ■ Mayer Smith can be reached at 404725-4841 myfriendmayer@gmail.com.

FINANCE The Jewish Educational Loan Fund has named Marianne Daniels Garber as its board president for 2016-17. Having served as the president in 200405, she becomes the first person to serve two terms in the post for JELF. An Atlanta native, Garber attended Washington University in St. Louis for her bachelor’s degree and Georgia State Uni- Marianne Daniels versity for gradu- Garber is the first two-time JELF ate school. She got board president. involved with JELF in 1972 when her father-in-law, Al Garber, introduced her to the organization.

Al Garber and his sisters, Freda Goldstein Karp and Janet Nadel, were all raised in the Hebrew Orphans’ Home, a JELF predecessor. Garber attributed his success in life to JELF’s enabling him to attend college — one of the key reasons his daughter-inlaw initially became passionate about JELF’s mission of helping Jewish students get higher education.

Marianne Garber has a doctorate in reading and psycholinguistics and is in private practice at the Behavioral Institute of Atlanta. She specializes in diagnosing and treating attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities.

With her husband, clinical psychologist Stephen Garber, and Robyn Spizman Gerson, Marianne Garber is the co-author of “Good Behavior” (St. Martin’s), “Monsters Under the Bed and Other Childhood Fears (Villard Books),” “If Your Child Is Hyperactive, Inattentive, Impulsive, Distractible: Helping the A.D.D. Child” (Random House), and “Beyond Ritalin” (Villard Books).

She and Gerson also co-authored 12 instructional books for elementary school teachers. Garber has taught at the elementary, middle and college levels and has been an educational consultant for children, families and schools for more than 30 years.

Garber and her husband, lifelong members of Ahavath Achim Synagogue, were the first leaders of AA’s Arnovitz Leadership Institute. Through the years she has been an active board member, committee chair and volunteer at AA. The Garbers have four adult children and two grandchildren.

She is on the board of Ahava Early Learning Center at AA and is a trustee of the Jewish Women’s Fund of Atlanta. She has been on the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival’s film evaluation committee for several years and co-chairs the

festival’s education task force.

JELF provides no-interest loans as last-dollar financing for Jewish postsecondary students who live in Georgia, Florida, the Carolinas or Virginia.

Applications for loans for next school year are due April 30. To get more information or apply, visit www.jelf.org.

35 Years With a Bank

Bank of America recently recognized Andrea Feinstein for working for the company for 35 years.

Feinstein began her career at C&S National Bank as a teller. She is now an associate vice president and senior credit support associate.

“Andrea is a nurturing person who helps her whole office succeed,” said Anthony Hilliard, Feinstein’s manager.

“On behalf of Bank of America, I thank Andrea for her decades of hard work and dedication to our customers and company.”

Feinstein, a member of Congregation B’nai Israel in Fayetteville, volunteers with Bank of America’s charitable efforts, such as Habitat for Humanity home builds and the annual United Way shoebox fundraiser.

“What I enjoy most about working for Bank of America is mingling with people every day,” she said. “I enjoy working with a variety of individuals and using my experience to show the younger employees how to succeed.”

She offered some advice for the millennial generation. “My parents always told me to give the effort to receive your wages. Give 110 percent and always give more than you get back.”

Feinstein also recommended staying with one company for the long term. “My job has gone away a couple of times, and there has always been something for me here.”

SXSW Success for Nowak

Benjamin Nowak of Vinings, a Temple Sinai member, was a runnerup in the recent South by Southwest ReleaseIt Competition in Austin, Texas, with the multicamera smartphone production studio CinaMaker.

CinaMaker was one of 10 finalists selected from hundreds of entries in the SXSW Interactive competition for the product or service most likely to succeed in the marketplace.

CinaMaker is a mobile app for iOS and Android that enables up to four devices to work together to shoot and edit multiangle video. The company also sells a two-phone app for 3D video.

“We were proud to be at SXSW representing the creativity and ingenuity of Atlanta’s Jewish community,” said Nowak, who founded the company.

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APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Garber Again Head of JELF

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LOCAL NEWS

Sea Lions Return; Dolphin Show Refreshed

T

o commemorate 10 years as one of the top tourist destinations in the Southeast, the Georgia Aquarium has launched a new dolphin presentation and added a sea lion experience.

The AT&T Dolphin Celebration and SunTrust Pier 225 sea lion gallery were scheduled to open to the public Thursday, March 31 (after the AJT went to press), along with a renovated 4D theater featuring a “Happy Feet”themed show and several new touch pools throughout the downtown facility.

The Georgia Aquarium “has brought the ocean to the city of Atlanta and provided a huge economic impact to the rejuvenation of downtown Atlanta,” aquarium Chairman and CEO Mike Leven said. “This would not have been possible without the generous gift from Bernie and Billi Marcus, and we celebrate that and all the things we’ve achieved as we commemorate our 10th anniversary.”

Before ending its session Wednesday, March 23, the Georgia Senate honored the aquarium for its 10th anniversary. “The aquarium is a powerful

economic force for metro Atlanta and our state,” said Sen. Brandon Beach (RAlpharetta). “It is a great influence on the city of Atlanta and the downtown area around Centennial Olympic Park.”

The aquarium housed sea lions from 2006 to 2010, but when the original AT&T Dolphin Tales presentation was added in 2011, the sea lion habitat was removed to make space. Those sea lions were sent to the marine habitat at Atlantis in the Bahamas.

In March 2015, the Georgia Aquarium rescued two sea lion pups from California and brought them to Atlanta after rehabilitation at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif.

Neptune and Jupiter, who were named by fans of the aquarium, will serve as ambassadors to educate the public on the challenges sea lions face in the oceans, including dwindling food sources.

The two pups join four other rescued sea lions that were judged to be not releasable.

“We’re very excited to premiere our new California sea lion exhibit and presentation … and inspire guests about this amazing species,” Leven said.

The new AT&T Dolphin Celebration highlights new behaviors among the bottlenose dolphins.

Sea lions are performing at the Georgia Aquarium for the first time since 2010.

The new AT&T Dolphin Celebration focuses on the beauty, grace, athleticism and intelligence of bottlenose dolphins, as demonstrated through a variety of new behaviors.

“We hope every guest takes away a deeper understanding and connection to these magnificent animals after experiencing AT&T Dolphin Celebration,” said Lisa Mignogna, the director of zoological operations and dolphin training at the aquarium. “This highenergy educational demonstration

highlights the relationships we have developed with each dolphin and the training processes that help us provide exceptional care every day.”

The original Dolphin Tales completed its five-year run Jan. 3 after 4,618 shows.

Opened in November 2005, the Georgia Aquarium is the largest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere. It attracts more than 2 million visitors annually, 60 percent of whom come from out of state. ■

$100M in Marcus Gifts

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

H

AJT 18

ome Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus’ Marcus Foundation committed to $100 million in health care donations in Atlanta and Israel in less than three weeks.

During the American Friends of Magen David Adom’s annual community event in Boca Raton, Fla., on Feb. 29, the Atlanta-based foundation’s $25 million gift to MDA was announced.

It’s the largest donation ever to the 86-year-old ambulance, disaster relief and blood services agency, Israel’s equivalent to the Red Cross.

“MDA ensures that the people of Israel have a secure blood supply — the blood they need when they need it,” Marcus said. MDA supplies 97 percent of the civilian blood in Israel and all of the IDF’s blood.

The gift will be used to build the Marcus National Blood Services Center in Ramla, a larger, better-protected, centrally located replacement for a 29-year-old blood center in Tel HaShomer that is vulnerable to rocket fire from Gaza and to earthquakes.

The new center will house state-ofthe-art labs and blood-processing units in a secure, partially underground complex with sophisticated ventilation systems in case of chemical attack.

AFMDA has now raised $72 million toward the $115 million target for the blood center.

“We are overwhelmingly indebted to the Marcus Foundation for their remarkable generosity,” AFMDA CEO David Frankel said.

Bernie and Billi Marcus received the Humanitarian of the Year award at the dinner at which the gift was announced, the Boca-Delray Community Event, which had its largest crowd ever with more than 350 attendees.

In addition to the Marcus gift, the event raised about $1.5 million, including sponsorships for several rooms at the new blood center and one mobile intensive care unit ambulance.

(The Marcuses are the parents of AJT Publisher Michael A. Morris.)

On March 18, Piedmont Healthcare announced a $75 million gift from the Marcus Foundation for the growth of the Piedmont Heart Institute and the expansion of Piedmont’s Buckhead campus with the establishment of the Marcus Heart and Vascular Center.

In 2012, the Marcus Foundation gave $20 million to establish the Marcus Heart Valve Center at Piedmont.

The $75 million gift will help kick off a larger capital campaign. ■

LOCAL NEWS

A Bubbe for Athens

Marilyn Gootman is baking up a better Jewish community

By Rebecca McCarthy

F

Baking is one of Marilyn Gootman’s talents.

free books to Jewish children.

This year she helped host a Chanukah celebration at UGA Hillel that brought 35 parents and 38 children to celebrate with students.

Grants from the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and the Schusterman Family Foundation helped with a Purim project to engage Jews who weren’t affiliated with the community.

“She has her own children and grandchildren to worry about, and yet she treats us all as though she’s the mother and grandmother we need in Athens,” said Cahnmann-Taylor, a professor of language and literacy in UGA’s College of Education. “Everyone is welcome at her table.”

A small Schusterman grant led to a specially catered Rosh Hashanah dinner for PJ Library parents at The National, an award-winning Athens restaurant. Those parents then planned an Israeli beer-tasting party.

Some 25 families are involved in Family Fun Shabbat dinners, made possible by a grant from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation. There have been challah baking workshops — the congregation boasts excellent bakers, including Gootman — and make-andtake workshops, at which people create challah covers, Kiddush cups and candlesticks. Such workshops feed into multifamily dinners in private homes “so people can see the beauty of celebrating Shabbat,” Gootman said.

In her spare time, Gootman has written “The Joys of Parenting: Insight and Wisdom From the Jewish Tradition” with Dr. Maurice Elias and Heather Schwartz Allen. It will be published this fall by Behrman House.

“Someone has to take the lead with young families,” she said. “I decided that at this point in my life, I would do it.” ■

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

rom tot Shabbat services to Israeli beer tastings, Marilyn Gootman keeps finding ways to build community at Athens’ Congregation Children of Israel. She has helped attract members and has helped families with young children link up with others to find friends and fellowship.

“I’m amazed at her diligence in creating activities for people to participate in,” Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor said. “She thinks outside the box and lets people know there’s more than one way to be Jewish in Athens. And she does things in a personal way.”

Gootman was a professor of early childhood education at the University of Georgia’s College of Education. She grew up in a Conservative congregation and earned undergraduate degrees from Simmons College and Boston Hebrew College, a master’s in Jewish education from Brandeis University, and a doctorate from UGA in early childhood education and educational psychology.

She moved to Athens in the 1970s with her husband, Elliot, a Harvard-educated mathematician who joined the UGA math department.

As a professor, Gootman wrote “When a Friend Dies: A Book for Teens About Grieving and Healing” after watching one of her three children struggle with a friend’s death. The book has an introduction by another famous Athenian, R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe.

Gootman’s advocacy for children, parents and teachers has led to appearances on CNN and interviews on radio in the United States and Canada.

After leaving UGA, she took a job with Jewish Educational Services, which became the Center for Jewish Education and Experience, and commuted to Atlanta. She taught in the master’s degree program, “and I loved it,” she said. She also served as the coordinator for distance learning. Students earned a master’s from Siegal College of Judaic Studies in Cleveland.

Eventually, the traffic on Interstate 285 and Ga. 316 did her in, and Gootman left CJEe. She began focusing her talents on engaging Jewish families, children and students in Athens.

She secured a matching grant from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation that helped fund the PJ Library at her synagogue — making Athens first in Georgia with the program providing

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LOCAL NEWS

A Life in Focus

Photographer Conrad Jacobson is a self-made man

By R.M. Grossblatt

I

n the early 1950s, when he was a Marine, Conrad Jacobson shot an amateur photo of President Dwight Eisenhower. Memorial Day 2014, he took a professional photo of President Barack Obama.

“I’ve always had a camera,” the selftaught photographer said in the sunny living room of his high-rise apartment in Buckhead. “It’s something I liked.”

On the walls of his apartment are photos of landscapes and wild animals and a copy of his first professional photo, a cover for Vogue magazine. Also displayed are the artworks of others, especially his late wife.

Born in Manhattan, Jacobson attended public schools and Hebrew classes after school. He wanted to become a cantor. But at 13 he felt he couldn’t compete with a sibling, and he quit school. An introvert who stuttered, the young Jacobson finally felt free. “I could go to sleep when I wanted to,” he said, “and get up when I wanted to.”

But Jacobson wasn’t the kind to stay in bed long. He found work as a prop boy in a theater, starting at 8 a.m.

One morning he got up at 6 and walked to 66 and 67th streets to the Manhattan Riding Club. He saw horses being groomed and exercised and asked if he could get on one. The groomers let him, and for a year, from 6 to 7:45 a.m., they taught him to ride. Each morning Jacobson carried them six steaming cups of coffee in a cardboard container to show his appreciation.

One morning, a man “6½ feet tall and 4 feet wide” to the eyes of the teenager walked into the stable and asked, “What are you doing on my horse?” The stable owner was ready to fire the head groomer, so Jacobson took the blame

Photo by Conrad Jacobson

This is a detail from a photo taken to promote Barry Taratoot’s free concert at Steinway Pianos in Alpharetta at 3 p.m. Sunday, April 3.

and saved the groomer his job.

“Get down off that horse and come into my office,” the owner said.

He tested Jacobson’s horseback riding and jumping skills and gave him permission to exercise the horses and hang out. Actor Basil Rathbone, famous for portraying Sherlock Holmes, requested that Jacobson teach his daughter how to ride. But the young equestrian said he couldn’t teach anyone because he stumbled over words.

Rathbone cured him of his stuttering. Among other techniques, he told Jacobson to think of what he wanted to say as a message running across his forehead like the words moving across the top of a Times Square building.

“I still see those words on my forehead before I speak,” Jacobson said clearly.

By this time, Jacobson’s mother had persuaded him to return to school.

Because his sister was in the theater, he enrolled in the New School of Social

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Research Dramatics Workshop. Harry Belafonte, Rod Steiger and Tony Curtis are some of the actors who attended with him. Jacobson, tall for his age, was the youngest but looked older: 17 or 18.

One of his first walk-on parts was in the play “What Price Glory” on Broadway. At every rehearsal, he said his line perfectly: “Sir, sir, the English are coming over the hill now.”

On opening night, when he saw the audience peering at him, all he could say was “Sir, sir.”

Realizing what was happening, actor Burgess Meredith said, “Are you telling me that the enemy is coming?”

Jacobson nodded.

After the show, the director told Jacobson not to come to the cast party or show up for more performances. Meredith piped up that he thought if he said the line, it would be better, but he realized that it wasn’t. The director gave Jacobson another chance, and backstage the teenager hugged Meredith.

Jacobson had other jobs before becoming a photographer. He was a coach for the U.S. equestrian team, owned a cafe and led a family business making wax paper.

That company was started in the late 1800s by a grandfather he never met. The grandfather and a partner owned a box company and were using paraffin wax to seal the ends. As Jacobson tells the story, sheets of newspaper fell into the wax one night, and the partners hung the wax-covered sheets up to dry, then threw them out. The butcher downstairs found the sheets and asked for more to wrap meat. So the partners started making wax paper.

At 55, Jacobson retired from wax paper. Around that time, his mother died. She had owned an antiques store in Fort Lee, N.J.; Jacobson turned it into a photo studio with track lighting. A real estate woman asked, “What do you know about photography?”

“Not much,” he said, “but I’m going to learn.” And he did.

He formed a partnership with Don Hunstein, who for years led the photography department for CBS Records.

Hunstein set up shoots in the Fort Lee studio, and Jacobson wrote down everything he saw. After 10 or 12 times, Jacobson could set up shoots himself.

Among other assignments, they photographed medical equipment, art, jewelry, and album covers for Neil Diamond, Tony Bennett and Doris Day. On his own, he was the model photographer for companies such as

Photos by R.M. Grossblatt

Conrad Jacobson shot this Vogue cover.

Conrad Jacobson sits near some of his nature photos in his Buckhead apartment.

Conrad Jacobson has Israeli Deputy Consul General Ron Brummer in his viewfinder during the monthly Cafe Europa for Holocaust survivors at Congregation Beth Jacob.

Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren and for wineries in California. National Geographic Magazine saw some of his travel photos and published them; four of them made the cover. His photos have also been published in Reader’s Digest.

Two years ago, Jacobson moved from Napa Valley to Atlanta to be near his grown grandchildren. He does commercial photography and recently shot a photo of Barry Taratoot for a concert for Steinway Piano on Sunday, April 3.

As a volunteer, Jacobson took photos for Jewish Family & Career Services’ Cafe Europa, of the sanctuary and stained glass windows at The Temple, and of First Presbyterian Church. He also volunteers for One Good Deed.

“I’m here to help whoever needs me,” he said.

He didn’t become a cantor, but Conrad Jacobson, who quit school at 13, became a mensch. ■

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

ARTS

Jewish Music Festival Closes on a High Note The seventh annual spring festival of the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival reached the crescendo of three weekends of music with a rollicking sold-out Purim concert featuring Jaffa Road and A-WA on Saturday night, March 26, at Terminal West. The night before a teen

battle of the bands officially closed the festival, AJMF7 attendees young and old danced the night away to the two bands’ eclectic stylings in a true testament to the power of music. The 2016 spring festival had a 20 percent increase in attendance from last year. ■ Outgoing festival board President Bram Bessoff and Aviva Chernick lead the crowd in Havdalah while board Vice President Becky Herring holds the candle high.

Photos by David R. Cohen

Playing to a packed house at Terminal West, Jaffa Road kicks off the AJMF7 main event.

Jaffa Road’s Aviva Chernick inspires the crowd with positive vibes all night.

Andrew Levison of Mag-nificent instant photo magnets hustles to take photos of concertgoers.

The three sisters from southern Israel who make up A-WA close out the show with their catchy, Yemenite-inspired folk electronica beats.

“You can learn public health anywhere.

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After the show, Atlanta Jewish Music Festival Executive Director Russell Gottschalk points down the street to the location of the official after-party at Five Seasons Brewing in West Midtown.

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APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

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AJT 21

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

ARTS

Shoyer Freshens Up Passover Favorites

By Leah R. Harrison

J

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

ust in time to liberate us from an overabundance of matzah meal and tired Passover recipes, Paula Shoyer is appearing at a Page From the Book Festival of the Marcus Jewish Community Center event Sunday, April 10.

With a limited-availability master cooking class in the Kuniansky Family Kitchen at 3 p.m. and an author talk and book signing at 7:30 p.m., the chef

AJT 22

will present “The New Passover Menu,” her recipe and guide book of innovative, creative and healthy takes on Passover cooking and holiday standards.

Shoyer’s book includes menus and recipes for two full seders, as well as meals, including breakfast and lunch, for all eight days of Passover with beautiful photographs.

The book offers helpful menus for Shabbat and yom tov meals during Pesach. It has recipes with inter-

national flair and variations on traditions, including gefilte fish and matzah balls, as well as charoset and Passover granola.

At the front is Paula Shoyer aims a section on “The for simplicity, Passover Panespecially in her try” (including a holiday recipes. handy guide of cooking and baking substitutes), “Preparing for Passover” and “The Seder.”

The book has a chapter on the challenge of breakfast and closes with an extensive selection of desserts that will make you feel you are not suffering enough. As stated on the cover page, Shoyer wants you to feel “freedom from Passover food oppression.”

Shoyer comes from the Washington, D.C., area with impressive credentials. A Paris Ritz Escoffier-trained pastry chef, she is a renowned author, teacher, TV and radio personality, and consultant on modern kosher food and baking, including special-requirement cooking. She is also the mother of four children with “a lot of hungry people to feed” in her kosher household.

Shoyer was modifying a soup and preparing other items for Shabbat when we spoke recently. She said recipes often “require way too many ingredients and way too many pots and pans, and I don’t have enough time for that, so I’m basically shortcutting.” She added that simple recipes are her focus.

“I want people to make the recipes.

I want people to be successful at them, and I don’t want people to be put off by recipes that have too many steps,” Shoyer said. She has worked over time to simplify techniques and create “recipes that are not that fancy but just happen to look beautiful and look a little more complicated than they actually are.”

Shoyer said simplifying is especially important for Passover. “You have so much work to do to just seat a table for 25 and go shopping for all the things you want to make, so I wanted to make the recipes really accessible.”

To that end, she emphasizes the

use of ingredients that are already in her refrigerator.

Shoyer said cookbook writers and restaurant chefs today have to be sensitive to people on special diets. For her two most recent books, “everything is labeled gluten-free, nut-free, vegan, so whatever diet you’re on, you’ll find something.”

The request for a holiday-specific book came from her publisher because stores and chains were looking for a “really nice, contemporary Passover cookbook.” Because her basic food sensibility is healthy, with an emphasis on vegetables, Shoyer was a logical choice to offer her take on Passover cooking.

If her variations on traditional matzah balls aren’t enough, Shoyer offers a new and healthy option: Chicken Soup With Chicken Meatballs and Zucchini. Made with ground chicken, the chicken meatball is gluten-free “and is healthier than your classic matzah ball,” Shoyer said, “so I try to take something traditional and make it healthier and more interesting.”

That recipe fits with her effort to minimize the use of matzah meal and to offer fresh, lighter recipes to counter the idea that Passover brings “heavy, tasteless, leaden food.”

Shoyer said she is especially proud of this book, not only because of its practical organization and beautiful photography, but also because it contains recipes she makes for her family and for Shabbat all the time. She said the carefully structured menus help make planning for Passover easier, and she craftily suggested that “The New Passover Menu” makes an excellent hostess gift for the holiday. ■

The New Passover Menu

By Paula Shoyer Sterling Epicure, 160 pages, $24.95

Who: Chef Paula Shoyer What: Master cooking class at 3 p.m.; book talk and signing at 7:30 p.m.

When: Sunday, April 10 Where: Marcus Jewish Community Center, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody Admission: $65 for JCC members and $80 for nonmembers for both events and a copy of “The New Passover Menu” or $10 for members and $15 for nonmembers for the book talk

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

ARTS

Beatles, Dylan to Visually Rock Roswell

By Kevin Madigan kmadigan@atljewishtimes.com

A

AJT: Did you know Martin?

Glaser: I met him a couple of times. He was a pretty good guy. I didn’t know him well, but everybody liked him. That speaks volumes.

Bob Dylan’s contributions to the exhibit include “Dad’s Restaurant,” “Lakeside Cabin” and “Man on a Bridge in a Brown Coat.”

these prints in a bag and signed them.

He was a line drawer. He had tremendous humor in his drawing. He idolized (James) Thurber, who was an illustrator; he liked Al Hirschfeld. People will get a kick out of seeing that.

Then we go to Paul, who’s completely different. He’s an abstract expressionist, like Willem de Kooning.

He likes (Mark) Rothko, Sol LeWitt. He takes scenery, and in his own creative mind he makes that work. So you’ll see Paul, who many think, “Oh, he’s just a pop songwriter,” but his artwork is pretty deep and thoughtful.

Ringo is totally a pop artist, loves colors. It looks like the ’60s, and he does peace signs, and he’s done images of himself. He’s been compared to pop artists like (Keith) Haring and Warhol, but recently he’s been doing stencils, and that’s been compared to Banksy. I think people will love that.

And finally, George, who had enough sense to know he couldn’t paint. He had a friend, Keith West, a musician who had, like, one hit. George did a book called “Songs by George Harrison,” and he asked Keith to illustrate “Piggies,” “Taxman” and “Here Comes the Sun,” which were then released as lithographs. So it’s really Keith West’s interpretation of the songs, but it’s authorized and signed by George.

AJT: What’s your art background?

Glaser: I was in the art business in the early 1980s. I sold traditional art, Country French Home Located AJT: What about Dylan? whatever was the trend at the time, but on Over 2.5 Private Acres!

Glaser: Dylan has been a prolific this is a passion of mine. I’m fortunate painter for 50 years. He painted the covto have become friendly with musier of “Self Portrait” and The Band’s first cians, and I believe they have a talent album. He took lessons from a master that far exceeds them just writing a in Brooklyn, and when he travels, he song.

AJT: Tell us about the exhibition.

Glaser: First, we’ll start with the Beatles. I’ve always been a huge fan, as millions of people are, but most don’t get to see the visual side of these musicians, and I find that extremely interesting. Lennon did the “Bag One” series in 1969, which is the only artwork released in his lifetime. He put

What: “The Art of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison & Bob Dylan”

has his sketchbook with him, and he’s always sketching scenes. His management has allowed us to show a handful of Bob’s original paintings as well as his prints. It’s a view of the world through Dylan’s eyes.

“Red Bandana” reflects Ringo Starr’s popart sensibility.

AJT: You sound like you enjoy your job.

Glaser: This is kind of new for us.

We’ve never gone out with the Beatles and Bob Dylan together. We’re hoping that the enthusiasm is there. I’ve done traveling shows but nothing of this magnitude. It’s not about money. If people come out and appreciate the art and comment on it, I’m thrilled. ■

Paul McCartney painted “Chief Rug” in 1994.

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n art lover with established ties to the rock music world is coming to town with an exhibition titled “The Art of Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, George Harrison & Bob Dylan.”

Neal Glaser, 61, a New Yorker based in Philadelphia, will present the collection at Roswell’s Ann Jackson Gallery, and all the pieces will be for sale.

Included are paintings and lithographs by three of the four Beatles: McCartney, Starr and Lennon. The late Harrison’s contribution is a set of song illustrations conceived by musician Keith West and signed by Harrison.

Lennon, killed in 1980, was a student at the Liverpool College of Art in his youth and presented the “Bag One” series to wife Yoko Ono as a wedding present. The sketches were first displayed in London in January 1970 and were seized by police because of their erotic content. They are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art and part of the Roswell show.

Bob Dylan’s artwork has only recently been made available in the United States, though he has exhibited in Europe for many years. “I’m pretty much interested in people, histories, myth and portraits — people of all stripes,” Dylan said in a press release.

The AJT spoke to Glaser the same day that Beatles producer George Martin’s death was announced.

AJT 23

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

EDUCATION

AJA Cracks Code

Student team is competing in safe physics challenge in Israel

By Cole Seidner

F

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

ive students from the Atlanta Jewish Academy Upper School are heading to Israel to complete Tuesday and Wednesday, April 5 and 6, in a real-life application of physics against fellow Jewish students from the North America, Europe and Israel.

The challenge posed by the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Shalheveth

AJT 24

Frazier International Physics Tournament is to use physics principles to create a safe with an uncrackable locking mechanism and to crack the safes of other teams. The goal is to encourage students to pursue science in college and beyond by letting them test their knowledge in a fun and practical way.

This science, technology, engineering and mathematics program forced the AJA team to use physics such as

the Chladni sound experiment and to apply solutions that give hints on how to open the safe.

“This is about using as many physics concepts as possible, not pins” as a household safe uses, said senior Jesse Cann, a Congregation Beth Jacob Photo courtesy of Jonah Queen member who is part Atlanta Jewish Academy students (from left) Daniella Sokol, of the AJA team.

Joshua Bland, Jesse Cann and Jonathan Bashary prepare for Joining Cann on the physics challenge. Not pictured is team member Maia Dori. the team are seniors room theories to a real problem.

Maia Dori (Congregation Ariel) and They have used an elective period Daniella Sokol (Young Israel of Toco on Tuesdays to try to figure out how to Hills) and juniors Jonathan Bashary get the safe operating properly. and Joshua Bland (both from CongreIn Rehovot, Israel, the group will gation Beth Tefillah). meet with other American teams and They have carved out a few hours a will work to crack other teams’ safes by week from academic schedules already applying physics concepts. They’ll get stretched by visiting colleges, taking to know possible future physicists and standardized tests and filling out apengineers from other countries. plications for their futures to work on Jonah Queen, AJA’s STEM coordithe puzzle-based safe since January. It’s nator and the coach of the team, said an opportunity for them to apply classthe school got involved with the Weizmann program as a way to combine science with Israel while connecting with the advanced physics curriculum.

“We raised $100,000 to get these kids to Israel,” he said. “We get to watch these kids grow. Some of them were quite shy, but the focus of something hands-on like the STEM program allowed them to learn leadership skills.”

In addition to scientific concepts, the project has taught collaboration.

“When we first started, we all came up with our own ideas,” Maia said. “We presented it to each other and worked together to figure out first of all how we can make a flow of events. It can’t just be one separate thing; one thing has to lead to another. It’s a chain, but also what best physics components and creative components could make it complex.”

Besides competing in the tournament, the AJA students will visit the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta’s partnership city of Yokneam.

“We haven’t been practicing how to crack other safes. But we’ve watched videos of previous tournaments,” Joshua said.

“We don’t really know what to expect, but we have seen videos of the safes,” Jonathan said. “And we think it’ll be a challenge, but I think well be able to do it.” ■

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

EDUCATION

The Karate Kids

Davis Academy twins train with sumo champ

F

ollowing in their older sister’s footsteps, Davis Academy fifthgraders Matan and Ori Gal started karate classes in kindergarten. The 11-year-old twin brothers tried sports such as baseball and basketball but discovered that karate packed the perfect punch — one that recently carried them all the way to Japan.

“I’m determined to do karate for life,” said Ori, a brown/black belt. “My sister told us to try it, and we just knew it was our favorite.”

While they spend their days apart at school, the fraternal twins share four afternoons a week in karate at the dojo. The boys practice with Mits Uchida, the founder of the U.S. Taido Karate School in Norcross, along with several schoolmates from Davis.

U.S. Taido focuses on individual achievement rather than competition. Students learn to accomplish goals while working cooperatively with teachers. Colored belts indicate the level a student has mastered; after reaching the black belt, students gain degrees.

Last fall Uchida received an invitation to a sumo tournament in Japan.

Six fifth- to ninth-graders were invited to fly to Japan to study with Yokozuna Hakuho, sumo’s grand champion wrestler, and compete in the Hakuho-Hai tournament.

When invited to the all-expenses-paid trip to Japan, Matan and Ori couldn’t say no.

More than 1,000 students from around the world, including Mongolia, China and South Korea, attend Hakuho-Hai each year. The six kids from U.S. Taido were the only Americans.

After training for three months, Matan and Ori embarked with their father, Ziv Gal, for the weeklong trip of a lifetime in late January. They flew on what Matan recalled as one very long flight to Tokyo and quickly discovered that Hakuho and his tournament are famous — they were followed by TV camera crews for days.

Dalit Gal, the mother of the boys, said: “They were treated like they were so important. It was a very big deal.

They were greeted at the airport, and Hakuho cooked them lunch. It was truly an honor.”

Matan and Ori trained with the Mongolian-born Hakuho, who holds

the Guinness World Records record for most sumo bouts won in a year and has a record 33 championship titles.

“The thing I will always remember is training with a world champ,” Matan said. “I hope I can go back to Japan one day.”

One thing that struck Ori about Tokyo was the cleanliness. “The streets were extremely clean. There wasn’t one speck of trash. We even saw people cleaning out the trash cans.”

Matan focused on the food. “We ate a different kind of sushi there. We drank green tea, which is a green powder that you add to water. There was a

dessert made of fish, but I didn’t try it.”

The boys are international travelers who have visited Israel, Italy and Mexico. Now that Matan and Ori have added Japan to their passport stamps, they’re ready for another escapade. This one will be closer to home: Dalit said the next karate adventure is in Florida. ■

Matan and Ori Gal train with Mits Uchida at the U.S. Taido Karate School.

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

By Logan C. Ritchie lritchie@atljewishtimes.com

AJT 25

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

EDUCATION

i

torah Fun SHEMINI 5776 SHABBAT parah

On the 8th day of the inauguration of the Tabernacle, Moshe told Aharon and his sons to bring the offerings that were commanded by HaShem. HaShem sends a fire to consume the offerings. Moshe and Aharon go into the Tent of Meeting and then come out and bless all the people.

HaShem’s glory comes to fill the Tabernacle.

Aharon’s two older sons, Nadav and Avihu brought an offering that they were not commanded to bring and they were consumed by a fire. Aharon is silent after this tragedy. HaShem gives the laws of kosher animals. Land animals are kosher if they have split hooves and chew their cud. Fish are kosher if they have fins and scales. HaShem gives a list of specific birds and locusts which are kosher. Some of the laws of making vessels kosher and ritual purity are given.The Jewish people are told to be holy because HaShem is holy. The Jewish people have to know which animals can be eaten so that they can make the right choices.

spot the difference Which one is different?

Hint: Kosher Fish

SALMON

FLUKE

TUNA

BLUEFISH

MARLIN

FLOUNDER

CROSSWORD Complete the crossword by translating each Hebrew

WORD FIND

Can you discover the Secret Message? Find and circle the bold, italicized words from the Torah summary in the Word Find. Write the unused Word Find letters in the spaces below to spell the Secret Message.

Good luck!

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A H A R O N H K O

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APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

7

AJT 26

ACROSS 2. ‫( יין‬10:9) 3. ‫( יום‬10:19) 5. ‫( ארבע‬11:20) 6. ‫( איל‬9:4) 7. ‫( טהר‬11:47) DOWN 1. ‫( הבדיל‬11:47) 2. ‫( מים‬11:10) 4. ‫( קדש‬10:13)

H O

L

Y C A M A T

D

A W

S O K R

Y H

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R B

SECRET MESSAGE

______ ___ ____ ____ _ ____ ______

gematria

A fish is kosher if it has fins and ______

‫קעג‬ + ‫רכז‬

word into English. Use the parsha reference for help.

1

L O R

‫ס‬ x‫ה‬

‫ת‬ ÷‫ד‬

‫ק‬ x‫א‬ ‫ק‬

‫רי‬ +‫צ‬

‫א ב ג ד ה ו ז ח ט י כ ל מ נ ס ע פ צ ק ר ש ת‬ 400 300 200 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10

9

WORD CMRLESAB

8

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1

(scramble)

UYETKR

NIECCKH

WCO

AFOUBLF

ERED

HEPSE

Hint: Kosher Animals

CANDLELIGHTING IN JERUSALEM 6:19P.M. weekly chinuch podcast - OVER 100 posted! parsha + chinuch < 5 minutes www.thefamousabba.com/podcasts

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Check your answers at: www.thefamousabba.com/shemini

EDUCATION

OBITUARIES

Jacob Levkowicz, American Jewish Committee’s first assistant director of campus affairs, speaks about campus antiSemitism at the Weber School on March 20.

Hard Truth on Campus: No End to Anti-Semitism

By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

“T

here is no better time to be a Jew,” Jacob Levkowicz told parents and students during a discussion about “Unpacking AntiSemitism on Campus” at the Weber School on Sunday, March 20.

As part of an initiative to raise awareness about anti-Semitism on college campuses, American Jewish Committee and community partners such as BBYO and Hillels of Georgia held the dialogue, revolving around three points: the community’s overall concern about people in conflict zones; the complications involved in being proIsrael; and the vast amount of misinformation projected within the media.

Joining Levkowicz, AJC’s first assistant director of campus affairs, as a speaker was Ken Stein, who teaches political science, Middle Eastern history and Israeli studies at Emory University and leads its Institute for the Study of Modern Israel.

Before holding breakout sessions, Levkowicz outlined the evening by highlighting three key issues that foster anti-Semitism at colleges: boycott, divestment and sanctions resolutions presented within student governments; student leaders who are gradually drifting away from Jewish organizations; and the steady decline of millennials’ commitment to Israel.

Joining that unholy trinity to make Jewish students more susceptible to anti-Semitism than ever are the disruption of pro-Israel events on campus and academic associations that are adopting boycott resolutions.

But where there is a will, there is a way, and thanks to resources such as AJC, Jewish students also have never been better equipped to face such challenges.

For the breakout sessions, the audience was divided into the students, who accompanied Levkowicz to the library, and the parents, who remained

with Stein.

Levkowicz wasted no time in getting the conversation started. He asked the students to relay some of the daily challenges they face as Jews. Their answers included the choice between personal identity and social issues and an overall frustration with the media’s portrayal of Israel.

Others were more concerned about speaking against professors who challenge their beliefs and the common misconceptions outsiders have about the Palestinian-Israeli dispute.

Levkowicz asked the students to close their eyes and think of Israel for 20 seconds. After reopening their eyes, they were each asked to define Israel in one word. Common responses included “protected,” “home,” “family,” “engaged,” “controversial,” “culture,” “diverse,” “community” and “misunderstood.”

Levkowicz then asked the students to perform the same task for the word “Jewish.” Terms such as “patriotic,” “connections,” “supported” and “family values” emerged.

The students concluded that whatever their beliefs, there will always be narratives that conflict with their ideology.

Whether through stereotypes, reconsideration of support for Israel, or the BDS movement’s connection to college campuses, anti-Semitism will remain an obstacle.

Abby Schwartz, who is a senior at the Galloway School, said it is important to discuss controversial topics such as Israel. She views dialogue as a way to help students disagree with their peers in a constructive way.

After the breakout session, Levkowicz reunited the students with their parents and re-emphasized AJC’s role as a resource for Jewish students. He encouraged them to keep building coalitions with various organizations and held them accountable as the next wave of Jewish leaders who will combat anti-Semitism. ■

Sid Cojac’s Lessons

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id Cojac, the much-loved “Mayor of Main Street” at the Marcus Jewish Community Center, died March 17 at the age of 102. When he was born in 1913, the federal income tax had just been introduced, and Henry Ford had just invented the modern automobile assembly line.

Sid grew up in the Great Depression and experienced all the upheavals of one of the most tumultuous centuries in history. Along the way he became a poster boy for longevity and transformed how he lived his life into an art form.

Until the very end he astonished almost everyone he met with the wit, energy and mental clarity of a man half his age. It was as though at some point he had simply stopped aging.

He taught me, and I am sure he taught many who knew him, the most profound of lessons: how to live a long life of compassion and understanding powerfully and with meaning.

Here are a few of the other lessons about life I learned from Sid Cojac: • Advancing age can be less a burden to others than an inspiration to them, and wisdom and dignity come with the aging process that sometimes even those of advancing years have difficulty comprehending.

• Age is just a number; you determine your real age by how you approach life each day.

Sid approached each day as a gift, one more day to make a difference in the world, in his own inimitable way, in the lives of his family, his friends, his community at Huntcliff Summit, and the more informal community he presided over at the Marcus JCC. Contributing to others, contributing to their happiness, sometimes over his own, kept him young to the end.

Until very recently he drove his own car several times a week to a dedicated parking spot at the Marcus JCC. Tacked on the car’s dash was a copy of the code he lived by, the Ten Commandments.

When he was well into his 90s, he started a pair of discussion groups for the community center’s seniors and was a constant and provocative participant. He introduced the game of pickleball to the gym crowd there and was a senior national gold medalist in the sport at the age of 87.

On his 100th birthday I had the privilege of being able to conduct a public conversation with Sid at the

party his family gave at the big diner on Roswell Road. What I remember most about that evening was how much love was in that packed room.

I looked out over that crowd

Guest Column

By Bob Bahr

sitting shoulder to shoulder, and I saw only a wave of affection rising up and over the man. What I learned from him that night was that the love you give to others, freely and without thought of reward, comes back to you more times than you can count.

I also learned as I sat with that small dynamo of a man that no matter what the doctors tell you, your health and well-being, your survival itself, are in your own hands. We live not just by the strength of each heartbeat, but also by the strength of something much more important: the resiliency and indomitability of the human soul.

By sheer will and determination, Sid survived life-threatening illnesses, almost too numerous to count, that would have ended the lives of lesser men. In so doing he taught others that they could survive as well.

Perhaps it is only fitting that we said farewell to Sid as we began another spring, a time in which we renew the world and ourselves, just as Sid had done so many times.

I learned from him that no matter what has occurred in your life the previous day or week or year, every day is a new day to be shaped and wrestled with and given meaning by what you do with the opportunity life presents each sunrise. What he did with each day was to leave the world, a world he didn’t always agree with, better than he had found it the day before.

Finally, I learned from him that the most effective way to teach the most important lessons life offers us is by being an example. To teach by being the lessons you teach — by being the life you aspire to.

The great scientist Albert Einstein, who was almost as smart about life as Sid Cojac, once said: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”

Sid lived his life as the miracle it 27 was. ■ APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Photo by Sarah Moosazadeh

AJT

OBITUARIES

Sidney Cojac 102, Sandy Springs

Sidney Cojac, born November 1913 in Harlem, N.Y., son of Rose and Harry, brother to three sisters and three brothers, husband to Elaine Jacobus Cojac and Edith Zones Cojac, died on Thursday, March 17, 2016, in Atlanta.

At 23 years old he started his own printing business, COJAC Press, renamed Imperial Printing, in Astoria, N.Y., followed by a relocation to Garden City Park, N.Y., and Charlotte, N.C. Sid was a founding member of Suburban Temple in Wantagh, N.Y. He was a member of Temple Beth El in Charlotte and Temple Beth Tikvah in Roswell. He was a frequent guest at Congregation Etz Chaim, Temple Emanu-El and Congregation Gesher L’Torah to join his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Sid was given the honorary name of “Mayor of Main Street” at the Marcus Jewish Community Center. He is famous for bringing pickleball to the Marcus JCC. The mayor of Dunwoody presented him with a key to the city on his 100th birthday.

Sid loved sports, as a spectator and participant. At 84 years old he became the national senior singles tennis Olympic gold medal champion. He claims his opponents never moved to get the ball.

Sid was respected for facilitating monthly current event groups at his Huntcliff independent residence.

Sid had a true zest for life. Up until his last breath he was current on the events of the day. He leaves a legacy of “always looking forward” to his daughter, Roni Cojac Mintz (Alan); his son, Stuart Cojac (Lynne); and grandchildren Margot, Andrew, Amy and Jaime and their spouses, Greg, Leslie and Marc. A bonus in life: great-grandchildren Eli, Ryan, Mori, Ayla, Jason and Ethan.

There are people who will miss Sid for his wisdom, quick wit and spark. However, those who call him Dad, Grandpa or Great-Grandpa will cherish his love and life forever.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to MJCCA/Mature Adult Programs, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, GA 30338, or Temple Beth El/Cojac Mintz Summer Camp Fund for Children, 5101 Providence Road, Charlotte, NC 28220.

Maria Dziewinski 91, Atlanta

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

Maria Geitler Dziewinski, born Jan. 16, 1925, in Krakow, Poland, died Tuesday, March 22, 2016, at home, surrounded by loving family.

Maria, daughter of Szymon (Simon) and Razsel (Rosalyn) (nee Rosenzweig), survived the Holocaust. In 1939, at the age of 14, she, her parents, sister Sonia and brother Poldek were forced into the ghetto in Krakow. Because of her small, delicate hands (as she liked to say), she was forced to work in a garment repair factory, mending German uniforms. All the workers were women, working from daylight until it was too dark to see, then sleeping by their worktables on the floor. When the operation was closed down, the Nazi captain made them stand next to their worktables while he walked behind them, shooting every other woman in the back of the head. The survivors were sent back to the ghetto.

In winter 1941, the Nazis rounded up Maria, Sonia and their family and put them on a truck to Plaszow, the concentration camp nearest Krakow. Germans “selected” workers to one line and those not deemed capable or suitable of work to another line. Maria was directed to one line, her mother, father, brother and sister to the other line. In the tumult of the night, she grabbed her sister into her line. They never saw their mother, father or brother again, and it is presumed they were sent to a death camp.

Maria and Sonia survived the Krakow-Plaszow camp, working at various sites. Sometimes they were forced to break rocks and headstones from the Jewish cemeteries into gravel to be used on roadwork. (Much of this time is documented 28 at the www.ushmm.org website, as well as Wikipedia. Plaszow is the camp de-

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www.atlantajewishtimes.com picted in “Schindler’s List,” which Maria and her beloved husband, Herman, both agreed was very accurate and truthful.)

Herman Dziewinski, of blessed memory, and Maria met at Plaszow. He was working in the stables and soldiers’ kitchens. Because of his position, he was able to sneak food to Maria and many others, which would have been punishable by death if he had been discovered. Maria and Herman fell in love there and pledged to meet at the end of the war if they survived.

In winter 1944, Maria and Sonia were sent to Auschwitz. Once again, they were chosen for the work line rather than the gas chambers. Maria’s registration number, tattooed on her arm, is A27373, as documented by the records still available at Auschwitz. Conditions were even worse than Plaszow, with a horrible lack of hygiene and threat of starvation. In late 1944 Maria and Sonia were sent to Sudetenland and worked in a munitions factory. They were liberated there in early 1945.

Maria began her search for Herman; they reunited and fled west and were sent to a displaced persons camp near Munich. There they married and reunited with remaining family, and in July 1946, their first child, Erna, was born. They lived in Germany until 1949 when, through the auspices of the American Jewish Federation, they were able to come to the United States. Maria, Herman and Erna sailed into Boston Harbor in October 1949 on the SS General Hersey.

They soon settled in Atlanta and were helped in many ways by many Jewish Atlantans with lodging, work, language and possessions. Rosie (Rosalyn) was born in April 1950 at Crawford Long Hospital. Herman began working as a butcher and counterman in a small grocery store. Maria was at his side every day, running the front of the store, keeping the books and taking care of customers.

Over time, with tremendous effort, they saved enough to buy the store, Herman’s Market on Magnolia Street.

Their continued hard work and devotion led them to some wise and some lucky investments in real estate in the growing city of Atlanta. Maria and Herman started investing with other survivors and then with family who moved to Atlanta with their help. They were proud to be a part of the tremendous growth of Atlanta and to help other new immigrant families and survivors. Susan was born in December 1953. Maria was proud that she “went to Emory” for her ESL classes.

She and Erna learned English from ESL, TV and movies. Maria wanted to be as American as possible, did not want her children to learn other languages at home, and insisted they speak English.

She volunteered at Grady Hospital for more than 25 years, receiving many plaques and awards of appreciation. She was generous with Hadassah, Ahavath Achim Synagogue (was a member of the sisterhood), Hemshech, the Jewish Federation and Yad Vashem, remembering the help and assistance she received. A fashionable lady, she loved to shop, dress up for special occasions and dress her girls.

Maria and Herman were founding members of Hemshech, the local Holocaust survivors association, and helped to fund the Holocaust memorial at Greenwood Cemetery. One of the first such structures in the United States, it is a National Historic Site. This memorial was so important to Maria, as the only place in the world her parents and brother are memorialized.

Maria was blessed with and devoted to her grandsons, Brian Block (Sara Spinner-Block) and Adam Kolotilin, who survive her now, as well as great-grandsons Nathan and Jacob Block. She is survived by her daughters, Erna Schneiderman (Alan), Rosie Meyers (Tony Gonzalez) and Susan.

Herman passed away in 1997, but Maria was lucky in love once again. Her constant and devoted companion since 2000, Ferman Jay of blessed memory, was a mainstay in her life, and her family is extremely grateful for his continued love and devotion. Maria loved Ferman very much. His family has also been so important to her: Gregory and Jan Jay and their children, Jared and Rachel. Having little family left after the war, Maria loved to see her nieces and nephews and their children: Paul (Anne) Beckman, Roman (Diane) DeVille, Erna (Larry) Martino.

Maria was beautifully cared for and supported by her caregivers, Una, Francilia J.N.-Charles, and longtime friend and angel Louise Hutchinson Easley. Louise’s constant companionship extended Maria’s good days so much more. Their devotion and care are indescribable; the family is eternally grateful.

Maria was reticent for many years to talk about her experiences in the camps.

The terrible, unlivable conditions made every minute a horror. Maria lived with a great fear that the Nazis or some other threat would pull her back to the chaos of her early life. For so long, she was afraid to register as a survivor (they might come and finish the job), lest she come to someone’s attention.

A graveside service was held at Arlington Memorial Park on Friday, March 25. Sign the online guestbook at www.edressler.com. In lieu of flowers, donations

may be made to the Atlanta Memorial Fund of Eternal Life-Hemshech for Holocaust Education (1440 Spring St. NE, Atlanta, GA 30309), Ahavath Achim Synagogue, (600 Peachtree Battle Ave. NW, Atlanta, GA 30327), Weinstein Hospice (3150 Howell Mill Road NW, Atlanta, GA 30327) or the charity of one’s choice. The family will sit shiva at The Piedmont, 650 Phipps Blvd., Atlanta, GA 30326. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Barbara Freiman Lisker 84, Atlanta

Barbara Freiman Lisker, age 84, of Atlanta passed away Thursday, March 24, 2016, surrounded by family and friends.

She was predeceased by her parents, Sam and Fanny Freiman of blessed memory. Survivors include her loving husband of 57 years, Arthur Lisker; daughter Susan Lisker Brochin, Atlanta; daughter and son-in-law Leslie Lisker Lopp and David; grandchildren Micah, Cara, Shayna and Lindsey; and other beloved family and friends.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Weinstein Hospice. Sign the online guestbook at www. edressler.com. A graveside service was held Sunday, March 27, at Arlington Memorial Park with Rabbis Mark Kunis and Mark Zimmerman officiating. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Philip Okun 72, Douglasville

Dr. Philip Okun, 72, of Douglasville passed away peacefully Friday, March 25, 2016, at home.

Born in Richmond, Va., to Cantor Morris and Helen Okun, he lived there until graduating from the University of Richmond and the Medical College of Virginia before moving to Kansas City to complete his medical internship at the University of Kansas, where he met his first wife and mother of his children. He later enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed as a major in San Antonio before moving to Atlanta to complete his medical residency at Emory University; he remained in Atlanta throughout his life.

Phil was profoundly committed to the values and practices of Conservative Judaism instilled in him by his parents and grandparents, especially in regards to serving the Jewish communities in which they’ve lived.

His grandfather Adolph Katchko was a cantor at Congregation Ansche Chesed in New York whose influence is still felt in American cantorial liturgy. His father, Morris, was the cantor at Temple Beth-El in Richmond, and his mother, Helen (née Katchko), was the temple’s senior choir director. Both of them served for more than 40 years. He remained very close to his sister, Judith, and regularly traveled between Atlanta and Richmond to participate in High Holiday services at Temple Beth-El, which included leading overflow and alternative services between 1960 and 2015 with his sister and in later years with her son, Michael Belinkie.

Phil was equally passionate about his professional life as a child psychiatrist at numerous hospitals and clinics, as well as his own private practices in Atlanta.

He worked tirelessly to help abused children overcome their traumas and become well-adjusted individuals. However, nothing gave Phil more joy than spending time with his family. He regularly spoke to and visited his adult children and their families in St. Louis and Los Angeles. He eagerly looked forward to annual trips to Hilton Head Island, S.C., to relax with his children, granddaughter, sister, brotherin-law and nephews.

He is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Judith and Louis Belinkie; son Joel Okun; daughter and son-in-law Sherry and Derek Rudnak; and granddaughter Maggie Okun. Sign the online guestbook at www.edressler.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the charity of your choice. Funeral services were held Monday, March 28, in Richmond at Temple Beth-El. Interment followed at Beth-El Cemetery. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

SIMCHAS

Engagement Schmals-Longino Estelle and Fred Schmal­ heiser of Buffalo, N.Y., announce the engagement of their daughter, Shellie Schmals, to Andrew Longino, son of Linda and John Longino of Decatur.

Shellie graduated from Daemen College with a bachelor of arts in history and government and holds a master’s in higher education from the State University of New York at Buffalo and an M.B.A. in leadership development from Brenau University in Atlanta. Shellie is currently the program manager at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival and produces retro-style events around town that include her fiancé’s band, Andrew and the Disapyramids.

A June wedding is planned in Buffalo, with a July reception in Atlanta at Star Bar in Little 5 Points. ■

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

OBITUARIES

AJT 29

CLOSING THOUGHTS OBITUARIES – MAY THEIR MEMORIES BE A BLESSING

How Old Do You Have to Be?

S

APRIL 1 ▪ 2016

o I get an email from my middle sister, Maggie. You may recall my sharing with you that at our last sister reunion, my middle sister would not change her birth order.

She insisted on staying the middle sister. Whereas Joycie had no problem becoming the oldest, and I of course chose to be the youngest.

So far, it has worked out quite well for me.

Receiving emails from Mag is not unusual, in and of itself. Emails and telephone visits are my sisters’ ways of ensuring we are in touch — one of our ways of preserving the precious bond with which we’ve been blessed and which we lovingly nurture, a bond that could not be diminished by the challenge geographical distance offers.

Did I mention that Joycie, after 30-plus years on the West Coast, has finally decided the threat of her beloved California sliding into the ocean, or the threat of mudslides, forest fires and earthquakes, was becoming too much?

Yes, I am thrilled to report that my Joycie is moving back to the East Coast: Manhattan, here I come.

All three of us are now in the same time zone. Amazing.

We have begun planning this year’s sister reunion. June in New York. Perhaps the theater. Perhaps long walks breathing in the smells, checking out the sights and listening to the distinct sounds of our teen years. Every neighborhood with its defining name and personality. Chelsea, SoHo, the Village, Tribeca, the East Village, China Town, the West Side, the East Side, to name just a few. Perhaps we’ll indulge ourselves in a drive to the Bronx and the neighborhood of our childhood.

“How old could I have been before I realized that the water marks that streaked down my dirty lower arms was not a cool thing?”

This question is the first sentence of the email I received from my middle sister.

The next sentence read: “Or, for that matter … How old were we before we could select a shirt from Cordays for Dad’s bday?”

These may seem like easy questions, but consider for a moment the implications. Think of all the “how old do we have to be/how old were we” 30 questions this could raise.

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How old were we when we started the tradition of buying Mother’s Day cards for Daddy to give to Mommy?

How old were we when we realized the squiggles on paper were letters of an alphabet that make up the structure of a words that could open the world to us? How old were we when we stopped

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

CROSSWORD “Removal of Tref”

By Yoni Glatt, koshercrosswords@gmail.com Difficulty Level: Easy

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ACROSS 1. It surrounds one having a shvitz 6. “The Way We ___” 10. Moonves’ CBS dramas 14. 17-Across walks down it 15. Islamic version of a rabbi 16. Tent 17. One who might stand to the side of the chuppah 18. *It’s next to Bernie Sanders state 20. Magneto played on a glass one 22. Made like Ross and Rachel in Vegas 23. Word Bubbe might repeat before “your skin and bones” 24. Gunk not to be used for lighting Shabbat candles 25. Graynor and Miri Ben26. Disobey Saul or David 27. *Land linked to Robin Hood 31. Lauren (Cohan) on “The Walking Dead” 34. Rabbi Sacks before he was a lord 35. ___ Nidre 36. Reuben and Saul were part of his 11 37. Son of Noah, or the tref removed from this puzzle 38. One way to meet a potential spouse 40. See 43-Across 41. Words before “in Adam” 42. Ball or bat mitzvah 43. *Largest city in 41-Across 46. With 54-Down, he directed “Get Hard” 47. Paul Rudd’s tiny friends in the Marvel Universe 48. Do the Jerusalem Marathon 49. Shacharit times, for short 52. European city where Herzl was originally buried 55. Wondrous Israeli

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saying “fruck” and began using the word as it was intended — “truck”?

How old would we have been when we first realized boys express themselves differently from girls, and the punch you received on your arm was a punch of endearment?

Let us girls not forget the age we were when we finally understood what our moms meant when they kept insisting we cross our legs when wearing a skirt. When makeup was to enhance our beauty, not hide it behind enough makeup to make a clown cringe.

When did we finally acknowledge that not remembering our birthday parties in no way indicated that our families did not care enough to make them for us?

I remember one of my most beloved birthday gifts.

My mom had a friend named Lilly From Paris. Yes, that was her name.

We also had Lilly Jerry, Lilly Zelman and Lilly the Roiteh (redhead).

When Lilly From Paris returned to the Bronx after her trip to Paris, she brought me the most beautiful two-story dollhouse you can imagine.

Included in this gift to beat all gifts were the doll people and their furniture (after all, you can’t live in a home devoid of personality).

I painted rugs on the floor of the bedrooms and the living room. I sewed curtains for the kitchen window and drapes for the other windows.

I am wondering, as I tell you about my gift, if this was the beginning of my love affair with home décor and sewing. Did my dollhouse inform my decision to live in a house when I grew up, as opposed to an apartment?

Back to the question of age, or is it a question of maturity? How old do we have to be before we are ready to divulge our true age?

How old indeed! ■

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32. Rights org. Dershowitz is a member of 33. One might be shifted biking in the Jerusalem hills 34. *Jewish hands 37. Witches in Polanski’s “Macbeth” 38. *“The Firm” author 39. Beit follower 41. One might be taken after a spicy cholent 42. Neshama DOWN 44. What Brad Ausmus 1. Elaine tried it to get does for the Tigers the stink from her hair on 45. Masada Guest House “Seinfeld” and Mitzpe Ramon Hostel, 2. Part of a summer fast e.g.

3. ___ Chayil 46. Last names of Lilith 4. Brews that might be Sternin’s former in-laws on drunk on Purim, but not “Frasier” Passover 49. Increase, as a Maccabi 5. *Rodgers musical lead partner 6. Carmel or Golan Heights 50. 55-Across was one 51. Billy Joel’s “That’s Not 7. It’s the truth Her ___” 8. How lox is eaten 52. Kosher overseers 9. Title for Nero or Titus 10. Title for one of Walters’ 53. “Young Frankenstein” woman women on “The View” 54. See 46-Across 11. Jonah was thrown off 55. Rowlands in Woody one Allen’s “Another Woman” 12. “Able was ___” 56. Rachel, to Judah 13. Downhill transport on 58. Motek (term of Hermon endearment, for short) 19. A high one on a skirt might not be considered tzniut 21. How the IDF is meant to LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION keep Israel E S S A F I F A A S K E D 25. ___ L E H I U S E R R A I S E Zemirot F L A P R E M A U L N A E 26. Org. for M E N A C H E M B E G I N Spielberg E S A U E P A 28. Hebrew for A C A C I A N T H A T S C L O R I S “essence” M O S H E S H A R E T T 29. Memo M A S A E R E E T T A (often found Y I T Z H A K R A B I N in a Talmud’s R E D A B A outer margins) T R U E A S S T A M S A C R E D 30. Show with H E B B I B I N E T A N Y A H U Rachel Berry G L A M A R A M 31. It was east S T O N E S E T I N A V I H O R D E of Israel; now A M N O N T E E M S T E M it’s in Utah actress 57. *Purim treat 59. Like Esau 60. Samuel cut his head off 61. Actress Skye 62. Info for Mossad 63. Niels Bohr, e.g.

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