Atlanta Jewish Times, Vol. XCII No. 50, December 22, 2017

VOL. XCII NO. 50 WWW.ATLANTAJEWISHTIMES.COM

DECEMBER 22, 2017 | 4 TEVET 5778

Olens Quits At Kennesaw

The only Jewish politician elected in a statewide partisan election in Georgia barely made it past his first anniversary as the president of Kennesaw State University before announcing his departure.

East Cobb resident and Congregation Etz Chaim member Sam Olens resigned from his first job in academia Thursday, Dec. 14, effective Feb. 15. He’ll collect his salary through the end of June unless he takes another job before then.

“I have decided that new leadership will be required for KSU to fully realize its potential,” Olens wrote in a statement emailed to the university community.

Olens resigned as attorney general, apparently ending his political career, and started the KSU job Nov. 1, 2016, amid controversy because of his lack of college experience and the absence of other candidates. Some students also protested because Olens led Georgia into legal cases opposing same-sex marriage.

“The role of the president is now very different than it was 10 or 20 years ago. I think they’ll get to know me; I’ll get to know them,” Olens told the AJT shortly after his hiring was announced.

But his handling of five cheerleaders’ national anthem protest marked the beginning of his end at KSU even as he was installed as president in October. ■

Photos by Eli Gray

Above: Rabbi Yale New, Ben Massey, Emily Hanover and Rabbi Isser New bask in the light of the menorah before tipoff of the Hawks’ home game against the Heat.

Far left: Rabbi Isser New of Chabad of Georgia and Congregation Beth Tefillah welcomes the crowd to Jewish Heritage Night at Philips Arena.

Left: Sporting his Hebrew Atlanta Hawks T-shirt and watched

by Hawks representative Emily Hanover, Ben Massey has the honor of the lighting the menorah at midcourt.

Hawks Hot on Chanukah

The Atlanta Hawks aren’t going to the playoffs this season, mired as they are in last place in the Eastern Conference. If only every night could be Chanukah.

The Hawks hosted Jewish Heritage Night with Chabad during the Festival of Lights for the fifth year Monday night, Dec. 18, and for the fourth time they walked off the court as winners. The Hawks got only their seventh win in 30 games, knocking off the Miami Heat, 110-104. They got their customary lift from the pregame lighting of a giant menorah at half court even though the previous day’s blackout at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport prevented local rapper Sammy K from delivering his planned performance. See more Chanukah celebrations on Pages 15-17. ■

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BACK IN 2018

This is the 50th and last issue of the Atlanta Jewish Times for 2017. Although the print staff is taking off the last week of the year, look for fresh news at atlantajewishtimes.com. We’ll return to print with a special camp section Jan. 5.

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DECEMBER 22 â–ª 2017

MA TOVU

Straddling the Fence her needs. After all, what are friends for?

Over the next few weeks, I tried my best to be supportive. I listened to the endless barrage of complaints and tearful renditions.

“I’m here for you, Laura,” I assured her.

At the same time, I determined to remain impartial. After all, just

Shared Spirit Moderated By Rachel Stein rachels83@gmail.com

because Bob and Laura couldn’t get along, did that mean Lenny and I had to take sides and, in so doing, lose our other friend?

Following my heart, I made a call and invited Bob for a Shabbat meal.

“I’d love to come,” he said.

Knowing that word travels fast in our insular community, I figured I should just be upfront with Laura.

“YOU DID WHAT?” Laura demanded, her eyes flashing. “After everything I shared with you? All the abuse, the venom, the suffering he inflicted all these years? How could you invite him?”

“I guess — well, I just thought …”

“I thought you were my friend,” she said.

The picture was clear. We had to make a choice. We, too, would have to divorce Bob if I wanted to remain Laura’s friend.

In true toddler style, I wanted to throw myself on the ground and thrash my arms and legs. It simply wasn’t fair.

In most cases, there are two valid sides — unless real abuse was perpetrated, physical and/or verbal.

How do you feel about this situation? Have you ever encountered something similar? Is it possible to straddle both sides of the fence, even when a divorce isn’t amicable, and remain friends with both sides?

I welcome your input as I continue to be a friend to Laura, yet my heart aches. I want to be there for Bob, too. Must he lose his wife, his home and family life, and his friends? ■ Please respond to rachels83@gmail. com to have your suggestions printed in the next column. Here’s hoping you had a joyous Chanukah and wishing you a happy, healthy winter break.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Longstanding traditions add zest and flavor to life. So it was with a sense of excitement that I drove to Broadway Cafe for my usual celebration with Laura, my dear friend, on her birthday. Somehow, every time we met over our salads and soups for our biannual lunch date (we went for my birthday, too), we rued the fast pace of life.

“We should really do this more often,” we chorused, chuckling.

But this time was different, and a lightning bolt of shock sliced through me when she told me her news.

“Bob and I are getting divorced.”

“What?” I exploded, eliciting curious stares from fellow patrons.

“Shhh.” Laura put a finger to her lips. “Sorry. But you heard right.”

The bottom of my world had just dropped out, and I was free-falling into a gaping chasm. How could it be?

Lenny and I had known Laura and Bob for 20 years. They had always presented as a smiling, devoted, happy couple. We had shared many a Shabbat meal in their home, as they had in ours.

Our children went to the same schools, and we shared the joys and challenges of raising our families together. When the time came for our children to get married, Laura and Bob opened their beautiful home repeatedly to host our engagement parties and Sheva Brachot (the seven wedding blessings).

Bob and Laura seemed perfectly synchronized, perfectly happy — the quintessential couple.

I shook my head and inhaled a spoon of soup. But the flavor was gone.

“This has been going on for years,” Laura said. She regaled me with hairraising stories of Bob’s narcissism. I felt like I was seated in front of a horror movie that I was being forced to attend, and tears sprang to my eyes.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

My pain and disillusionment were intense. I felt betrayed. Laura and I had always been so close, yet how could it be that I didn’t know anything about her real life?

“I couldn’t,” she said. “Don’t you get it? You and Lenny are the best couple. I didn’t want to appear pitiful.”

I didn’t really understand. To me, friendship equals sharing and honest communication. But I tried to shelve my feelings and focus on Laura and

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CALENDAR

CANDLE-LIGHTING TIMES

THROUGH DEC. 31

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MICHAEL A. MORRIS

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ADVERTISING

Vayigash Friday, Dec. 22, light candles at 5:15 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 23, Shabbat ends at 6:15 p.m.

Vayechi Friday, Dec. 29, light candles at 5:19 p.m.

Saturday, Dec. 30, Shabbat ends at 6:19 p.m.

Shemot Friday, Jan. 5, light candles at 5:25 p.m.

Saturday, Jan. 6, Shabbat ends at 6:24 p.m.

JELF exhibit. The Jewish Educational Loan Fund’s history is featured in “The Legacy of the Hebrew Orphans’ Home” at the Breman, 1440 Spring St., Midtown. Admission is $12 for adults, $8 for seniors, $6 for students and educators, and $4 for children 3 to 6; thebreman­. org or 678-222-3700.

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THURSDAY, DEC. 21

Fox Theatre tour. The Breman Museum leads a historic Jewish tour of the Fox, 600 Peachtree St., Midtown, at 10 a.m. Tickets are $15 for Breman members, $23 for others; tiny.cc/9m3jpy.

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Contributors This Week RABBI JUDITH BEINER RACHEL FAYNE RABBI DAVID GEFFEN YONI GLATT JORDAN GORFINKEL ELI GRAY LEAH R. HARRISON MARCIA CALLER JAFFE TOVA NORMAN RABBI JORDAN OTTENSTEIN LOGAN C. RITCHIE EDDIE SAMUELS EUGEN SCHOENFELD RABBI RON SEGAL TERRY SEGAL RACHEL STEIN PATRICE WORTHY

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DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

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Established 1925 as The Southern Israelite Phone: (404) 883-2130 www.atlantajewishtimes.com THE ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES (ISSN# 0892-33451) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY SOUTHERN ISRAELITE, LLC 270 Carpenter Drive, Suite 320, Atlanta, GA 30328 © 2017 ATLANTA JEWISH TIMES Printed by Walton Press Inc. MEMBER Conexx: America Israel Business Connector American Jewish Press Association Sandy Springs/Perimeter Chamber of Commerce Please send all photos, stories and editorial content to: submissions@atljewishtimes.com

At Pooh Corner. The Atlanta Jewish Academy Lower School, 5200 Northland Drive, Sandy Springs, presents “Winnie the Pooh Kids” at 2 p.m. at its oneg. Free; atljewishacademy.org.

Memorial gathering. Kollel Ner Hamizrach, 1858 LaVista Road, Toco Hills, offers words of inspiration in memory of legendary Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, who died Dec. 12 at age 104 in Israel, at 8 p.m. Free; www.kollelnh.org.

MONDAY, DEC. 25

Family fun day. The Marcus JCC, 5242 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, offers Christmas-alternative activities and entertainment from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Free; atlantajcc.org or 678-812-3861.

SUNDAY, JAN. 7

Genetic screening. JScreen holds a screening event from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. The test is $49; register in advance at jscreen.org (coupon code MJCCA18).

Barney info. The Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody, holds an information session for Camp Barney Medintz at 1 p.m. Free; www.campbarney. org/open-houses.

Corrections & Clarifications

• The Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta chose not to make a statement in response to President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital because “we have people on both sides of this fence,” not because of internal disputes over how to respond as stated in an article Dec. 15.

• The name of Beth Horwitz was misspelled in a column about foster care in the Dec. 15 issue.

• The amount of money the Jewish Educational Loan Fund raised at its annual meeting was incorrect in an article Dec. 15; JELF raised about $213,000. Also, the article should have specified that JELF lent $1,000,046 to 273 students this year and should not have referenced a 30-mile radius around Atlanta for the five-state agency.

Gozapalooza, Matzo Ball Set for Christmas Eve Two events stand out as Jewish alternatives to movies and Chinese food on Christmas Eve, Sunday night, Dec. 24 — one for young professionals, the other for people over 35.

After switching venues three times, the fourth annual Gozapalooza will be held from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. at the Westside Cultural Arts Center in West Midtown. Other venues had issues with Christmas Eve staffing and Sunday night alcohol regulations.

Atlanta-based Goza Tequila is hosting the event, joined by second-year cosponsors David Shapiro, a Realtor, and the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival.

Goza founders Adam Hirsch and Jacob Gluck said the party began because of their desire to create something exciting and different for young Jewish people on Christmas Eve. Partial proceeds from the event will go to the young adult division of Jewish National Fund in Atlanta, JNFuture.

“Not only are we a company local

to Atlanta, but we have received so much support from the Atlanta Jewish community over the years,” Hirsch said.

“It’s nice to enhance the community experience and give back to JNFuture.”

Tickets to the 21-and-up event, available at www.gozapalooza.com, cost $20 and include one Goza drink. Goza swag, including T-shirts, hats and shot glasses, will be given away. Mag-nificent will provide photo magnets.

More than 600 people attended at Park Tavern in 2016, and organizers expect a similar number this year.

For those seeking a slightly more mature crowd, Atlanta Jewish Singles is holding the Matzo Ball for singles 35 and older from 8 to 11 p.m. at Hudson Grille in Sandy Springs.

Tickets are $12 in advance at tiny. cc/322jpy, with a free membership to Meetup (www.meetup.com) required.

Or you can get in for $20 at the door.

Admission covers snacks (chips and salsa, pretzel bites, brownies, cookies) while they last in a private room with a cash bar.

Find more events and submit items for our online and print calendars at the Atlanta Jewish Connector, www.atlantajewishconnector.com.

Remember When

10 Years Ago Dec. 21, 2007 ■ Congregation Or VeShalom Rabbi Hayyim Kassorla and his son Yosef were among some 600 Jews who celebrated Chanukah at the White House on Dec. 10 with President George W. Bush, the first president to hold an annual White House Chanukah party.

■ The bar mitzvah ceremony of Aaron Ragans of Lawrence­ ville, son of Lee and Ginger Ragans, was held Saturday, Sept. 1, at Killian Hall.

25 Years Ago Dec. 18, 1992 ■ Local and national Jewish groups are being asked to complain to the Israeli government about a proposed law that

would bar entry to Israel to HIV-positive immigrants and foreign workers. The law matches a U.S. law that “everyone agrees is a stupid law,” HIV-positive activist Neil Rosen of San Francisco said. Israeli Consul General David Akov said there’s no reason to think Israel will adopt the proposal.

■ Beth Ann and I.J. Rosenberg announce the birth of their twin daughters, Ashley Fayth and Lindsey Brooke.

50 Years Ago Dec. 22, 1967 ■ The Southern Region of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization will hear Georgia Lt. Gov. George T. Smith address a body of 300 teenagers from Georgia and South Carolina on the topic of “If Not Now, When? If Not Us, Who?” during the BBYO convention at the Towne House Hotel in Augusta from Dec. 25 to 29. The convention theme is “Let’s Hear It for Mankind.”

ISRAEL NEWS

Gov. Nathan Deal led more than 200 people, from diplomats to law enforcement officials, in celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange on Nov. 7 at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta in Midtown.

“GILEE, with its peer-to-peer training partnerships during the last 25 years, has improved law enforcement in Georgia by encouraging camaraderie and the exchange of meaningful and helpful information,” Deal said.

He said he and his wife, Sandra, who played host to GILEE’s 20th anniversary gala at the Governor’s Mansion in 2012, are honored that Atlanta is the home of the nonprofit organization, founded and led by Georgia State University's Robbie Friedmann.

“GILEE embodies the values and mission of Georgia State University: teaching, scholarship and service,” college President Mark Becker said in recorded remarks. “GILEE has become the go-to source for public safety matters.”

Friedmann launched GILEE in 1992 to enhance executive development and international cooperation in law enforcement, initially to protect Atlanta’s visitors during the 1996 Olympic Games. Friedmann is now a professor emeritus at Georgia State’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies as well as GILEE’s founding director.

GILEE has played a part in Olympic security throughout the past two decades, including the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, although it is not involved in the 2018 Winter Olympics in February in South Korea.

“We thought GILEE was over after the 1996 Olympics because we’d achieved our mission,” Friedmann said.

“We then opened statewide and nationwide due to tremendous demand.

GILEE is an amazing opportunity to make a difference as our graduates provide better service to the communities they serve.”

Perry Brickman, who was honored with former Dante’s Down the Hatch owner Dante Stephenson for longtime support of GILEE, recalled meeting with Friedmann 25 years ago as the Atlanta Jewish Federation president.

“He was asking for the Federation’s support,” Brickman said. “This meeting led to providing the seed money to kick-start GILEE.” GILEE focuses on enhancing security through international cooperation and public safety training. GILEE has carried out more than 440 programs and produced 1,500 graduates of its an-

nual peer-to-peer training program.

More than 31,000 law enforcement officers, corporate security personnel and community leaders have participated in over 200 GILEE special briefings. GILEE works with more than 25 states and more than 25 countries.

GILEE takes law enforcement leaders to Israel for intensive tours and training each year. The visiting officers learn about surveillance techniques, high-tech equipment and terrorism prevention, among other areas, while Israeli law enforcement learns more about how to respond to and prevent more traditional crimes.

Col. Yitzhak Almog, the Israel Police attaché to North America, emphasized the “mutual benefits of the relationship,” and Col. Mark McDonough, the Georgia public safety commissioner, said, “In law enforcement, you can’t go to a better training ground than to the state of Israel.”

“The sharing of information, for those who have a common purpose like good law enforcement, stronger communities and safe streets, is essentially important, as law enforcement works hand in hand with the private sector and with government to see to it that its citizens are protected,” Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson said in recorded remarks.

Republican Sen. David Perdue and Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus also recorded video comments.

Marcus said he and former Secretary of State George Schultz happened to meet one of the delegations in Israel a few years ago, and Schultz “was astounded by this program and thought it should be done in every state of the Union.”

The speakers at the celebration included Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Vernon Keenan, a member of GILEE’s first counterterrorism training delegation to Israel in 1993.

“GILEE, the finest public safety leadership course in the United States, has taught me this: There is a true brotherhood of the badge across the U.S. and across countries. We want to serve and protect. We are honored to have GILEE in the state of Georgia,” Keenan said.

LaGrange Police Chief Louis Dekmar, who is the president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said: “One invaluable experience of GILEE training is its adherence to and respect for civil rights and the U.S. Constitution. You don’t sacrifice civil liberty for safety.” ■

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Big Guns Honor GILEE

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ISRAEL NEWS

Israel Pride: Good News From Our Jewish Home Biking without borders. All 24 members of the Israel Cycling Academy national bike team wear the same blackblue-and-white uniform designed by Israeli pop star Ivri Lider. Yet the teammates hail from 16 countries and include five Jews, one Muslim, one Druze and 18 Christians. The nonprofit Israel Cycling Academy was founded in December 2014. Its founders, members and support staffers earned the designation of Peres Center Ambassadors for Peace on Nov. 16 at a ceremony in Jaffa. Eight members, including at least one Israeli, will compete in May’s three-week Giro d’Italia, which will roll through Israel for the first time.

committed to bold action on climate change. The 92 cities participating have more than 650 million residents. Tel Aviv’s sustainability initiatives include a tree-planting effort, the expansion of green areas to cover 20 percent of the city’s land, the removal of contaminating vehicles from the roads and educational efforts in schools.

Easy way to Tel Aviv. Low-cost British airline easyJet will fly from Tel Aviv to three French cities in 2018. Tickets are available on the company’s website for flights to Lyon starting March 29, to Bordeaux starting April 28 and to Nice starting June 5. EasyJet has flown to Paris since March 2015.

Royal wedding dress. American actress and future British royal Meghan Markle may choose an Israeli designer for the dress she’ll wear when she marries Prince Harry in May. The rumors began when news broke that Israeli designer Inbal Dror had been approached by the royal family to provide a sketch of a potential dress for Markle. Dror, who began making wedding dresses in 2014, favors sensual red-carpet glamor, with plunging necklines and figure-

Tackling climate change. Tel Aviv has joined 91 other cities in the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, which is

Christmas in Jerusalem. Under Israeli sovereignty, people of all faiths in Jerusalem have freedom of worship, and Christians get a bonus: free Christmas trees from the municipality. This year’s tree distribution was scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 21, at the Jaffa Gate.

hugging, handwoven dresses. In 2016, pop diva Beyonce wore a sheer, highnecked, white-lace Dror bridal gown to the Grammy Awards.

Patch for pregnancy. A study led by a Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researcher and published in Australia has found that it’s safer for pregnant smokers to use nicotine replacement therapy to try to kick the habit than to keep smoking. “Smoking during pregnancy is the most significant, preventable risk factor for poor maternal and infant health outcomes,” said Yael Bar-Zeev, the head of the BGU Center for Smoking Cessation and Prevention, who is a doctoral candidate at the University of Newcastle in Australia.

IDF civilian tech. The Israeli army is gearing up for the future by adapting technologies from the civilian world — from artificial intelligence to telecommunications to virtual reality.

Technology will play a huge part in the battlefield of the future, said the head of the Israel Defense Forces’ Lotem C4i technological division, a brigadier general who can be identified only Yehoshua Hankin, born Dec. 26, 1864, becomes one of the most prominent purchasers of land for Jewish settlements in the land of Israel.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Today in Israeli History

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Items provided by the Center for Israel Education (www.israeled.org), where you can find more details.

Dec. 22, 1948: In a cable to the State Department, U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Julius Holmes recounts British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s concerns that “within five years, Israel may be a Communist state,” based on heavy immigration to Israel from European countries behind the Iron Curtain.

Dec. 23, 1789: After the first phase of the French Revolution and the Aug. 26, 1789, Declaration of the Rights of Man, the French National Assembly debates the issue of rights for Jews for three days but reaches no conclusion.

Dec. 24, 1969: Israeli sailors working for a fake shipping company set up by the Mossad sail out of Cherbourg, France, with five Sa’ar class warships for which Israel had contracted in the mid-1960s but which France refused to

by the Hebrew letter Resh, at a news briefing to unveil the division’s latest innovations. Earlier this year, the IDF launched a smartphone developed in collaboration with Motorola. The phone not only revolutionizes communications, but also allows a flattening of the chain of command. At border crossings, the IDF has installed facial recognition technology to make it easier for Palestinians to work in Israel.

Tennis rescue. Joel Atkin, a student of United Hatzalah’s NREMT training program in Jerusalem, helped resuscitate an older man who had collapsed near where Atkin was playing tennis.

Noticing the commotion, he supervised CPR, provided ventilation and used a defibrillator to get a pulse. Atkin, a young grandfather, is taking the course with his adult son. The patient regained consciousness after receiving the first shock from a defibrillator at the tennis center. He was fully conscious and talking with Atkin two days later in the hospital.

Compiled courtesy of israel21c.org, timesofisrael­.com and other sources. deliver after the 1967 war sparked an arms embargo. Israeli teams are sent to France to work in shipyards as part of the operation. The missile ships arrive in Haifa a week later.

Dec. 25, 1918: Anwar Sadat is born into a family of 13 children in Mit Abu al-Kum, Egypt. Sadat is a member of the Free Officers movement, which overthrows Egypt’s monarchy in 1952.

As Egypt’s president, he signs a historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979.

Dec. 26, 1864: Yehoshua Hankin, one of the most distinguished land purchasers of the Yishuv (Jewish settlements in Palestine), is born in Ukraine in 1864. Hankin makes aliyah to Israel with his father in 1882.

Dec. 27, 2008: Israel launches Operation Cast Lead to stop rocket launches from the Gaza Strip into Israeli civilian areas after nearly 12,000 are fired from Gaza over eight years.

Dec. 28, 1917: British Gen. Edmund Allenby, who liberated Jerusalem less than three weeks earlier, appoints Ronald Storrs its military governor.

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ISRAEL NEWS

Project TEN Fosters Jewish-Arab Understanding

By Patrice Worthy

Leah Weingast spent five months working at Kibbutz Harduf, a major producer of organic produce.

Leah Weingast says her time at Kibbutz Harduf has made her more patient and calmer.

many of the villagers have met a Jew or a non-Israeli Jew. Ilana Frankel, the director of North American recruitment, said those meetings foster dialogue about coexistence.

Frankel holds a master’s in conflict resolution and mediation and spent years working with Palestinians.

She did the same work in the army and said it is fulfilling to train more Jewish social activists.

“Most Jews and non-Jews don’t

know this kind of community exists in Israel,” Frankel said.

Most of the organic produce in Israel is grown at Kibbutz Harduf, and many of the volunteers and villagers work together to sustain the farmland.

At-risk youths who have been kicked out of their homes get an opportunity to work in a positive environment.

Volunteers are welcomed and are invited to weddings and other celebrations to get to know the people and cul-

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DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

When Leah Weingast moved to Israel for five months this past year, the experience transformed her in unimaginable ways. The former Vassar College student was a part of Project TEN, a program established through the Jewish Agency for Israel that allows people ages 20 to 35 to volunteer at centers in Mexico, Israel, Ghana, Uganda and South Africa.

Dubbed “the Jewish Peace Corps,” Project TEN (Tikkun Empowerment Network) frames the experience through service-oriented programs that nurture the next generation of social activists.

Project TEN isn’t going to change the world, but all the participants can take something away from the cultural exchange. For example, farmers in Africa have increased their harvest by 20 percent.

“There is a real need for what we’re doing,” said Founder Nir Lahav.

Weingast lived in a kibbutz in Harduf, where she worked with Bedouin and other Arab communities. The interactions with Arabs changed her perception of Israel, she said. “I went to Israel at age 12 and visited, but I really don’t think I understood Israel until I got back from doing the TEN program.”

She lived communally in a forest and taught English to third-, fifth- and sixth-grade Muslim Bedouins. When she wasn’t teaching, she did odd jobs to help maintain the living space. The experience was a far cry from her comfortable home on Long Island, but she said it made a noticeable difference on how she engages with the world.

“My family said I was different,” Weingast said. “The biggest thing I noticed is I was able to see the big picture, which made me more patient, calm and more likely to seek out volunteer opportunities.”

She now is doing research on posttraumatic stress disorder in women at the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Atlanta.

Lahav said he developed the program after living in Rwanda and witnessing how life there affected him and his family.

“It changes many people’s lives when they volunteer and help others,” Lahav said. “We live with 20 percent Arabs in Israel, and very few us know Arab communities, and very few of them know the Israeli community.”

When the volunteers go to Kaabiya, a Bedouin village, it is the first time

ture. Weingast said the generosity of the community was unparalleled and opened her eyes to what is going on in Israel.

“I couldn’t believe how warm and welcoming they were without knowing me, my language or background,” Weingast said. “You can’t characterize an Arab in one way, and you can’t characterize a certain population of people in one way. I see people as people.”

Viewing the world from a new perspective is a typical result of participation in Project TEN. Frankel said that when most people complete the program, they want to discuss their lifechanging experiences.

“They don’t know how kind Israeli Arabs are despite what they’ve been taught,” Frankel said.

Twenty percent of participants move to Israel permanently or extend their stay, Lahav said.

“It gives them the opportunity to contemplate their identity and what drives others to help,” he said. “When you’re far away from home, it’s easier to look inside yourself.” ■

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ISRAEL NEWS

Our Patriarch Fought With the Jewish Legion

By Rabbi David Geffen

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Abe Simon was born in Russia and moved to the United States in 1911. He was a young, sprightly teen who lived in Brooklyn, where his brother had moved into the St. Johns Hotel. His other brother moved to Columbia, S.C. The Simon brothers were orphans; their two sisters remained in Russia.

Abe was a committed Zionist, participating in activities at the Jewish Educational Alliance on the East Side of New York. His love for Eretz Yisrael was so deep that he knew, even in his teens, that somehow he would reach the Holy Land.

Abe wanted to join the U.S. Army in 1917 and go to Europe to fight under Gen. John J. Pershing, but at his draft board in Brooklyn, where several hundred Jewish boys entered the Army, Abe was turned down for being too young.

Disappointed, Abe read circulars in Yiddish of the need for volunteers to join a Jewish army. He signed up at the office on 42nd Street in Manhattan to become a member of Britain’s Jewish Legion, under the command of Gen.

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Abe Simon, shown during his service in Tiberias, not only fought in Palestine during World War I, but he also bought land there.

Abe Simon (middle of the back row) and other members of the 39th Fusiliers take a break from the fighting at Megiddo in 1918.

John Henry Patterson of Britain and his deputy, Zeev Jabotinsky.

By now Abe had grown to almost 6 feet. From some surviving photos, we can see his muscles rippling. Part of the first group to arrive in Windsor, Ontario, for training, he joined more than 1,800 Jewish men from Canada and the United States who had enlisted.

A month later, enlistees David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben Zvi arrived. “Turkish exiles,” they had been

living in New York for three years.

They underwent intensive training for two months: learning to fire a weapon with accuracy, learning to crawl with a weapon in hand, experiencing a simulation of the Sinai sands and being schooled to follow the commands of British officers.

They then took a ship to Plymouth, England, for additional preparation before shipping out to Alexandria, Egypt, where they caught a train to the battlefront in the Jordan Valley.

The soldiers came from all parts of the United States and Canada. Jabotinsky left us a national accounting of the 5,000 participants in the Jewish Legion, officially known as the 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st and 42nd Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers: 34 percent from the United States, 30 percent from Palestine, 28 percent from England, 6 percent from Canada and 1 percent from Argentina.

These units arrived in the Jordan Valley in early 1918 and led the fighting at Megiddo and against other Ottoman strongholds.

Unfortunately, the British gave permission for the units to be formed only after the Balfour Declaration was issued in November 1917, so they arrived two months after Gen. Edmund Allenby took Jerusalem. Allenby’s force included English Jews, who helped the Jews of Jerusalem after the city fell.

An American Jewish soldier who arrived in the fall of 1917 to fight with the British was Harry Rosenblatt, who died at age 101 and had an obituary in The New York Times. He was special because he marched under Allenby’s command into Jerusalem on Dec. 11, 1917.

“What was meaningful to the Jews,” he recalled, “was the sight of Allenby walking into the city. He wanted to pay the city its proper due.”

Abe Simon served with all his

heart and soul in the battles at Megiddo and other locales in the northern part of the country. He wrote his brother Hyman and stressed “how wonderful it was to have Judean soil in Jews’ hands even though the British were the overseers.”

The most important Zionist act Abe performed was the purchase of karka (land) in what became Herzliya Pituach. Unfortunately, he died in 1949 in his early 50s, so he never could fulfill his dream of aliyah with his family.

After he returned to America in 1920, he lived in Brooklyn and was active in Yiddisher summer camps.

Moving to Atlanta in 1927 to be with cousins, he received their aid to open a ladies ready-to-wear shop in Spartanburg, S.C., called Saul’s, named after his Atlanta family.

In 1928 on a visit to family, Abe met Lottie Geffen, 28, the oldest child of Rabbi and Mrs. Tobias Geffen, the senior Orthodox rabbi of Atlanta. They courted between Spartanburg and Atlanta through Yiddish love letters, which have been preserved.

Abe and Lottie married in 1930.

They had two children, Harold and Phyllis (of blessed memory), and were active in their synagogue.

During World War II, the United States built an Army training camp outside Spartanburg called Camp Croft, where many Jewish enlistees and draftees underwent basic training.

Lottie and Abe Simon led local efforts to provide food and hospitality at the camp and in the city.

When Abe died, his Jewish Legion service was not included in his obituary, nor was it etched into his stone in Southwest Atlanta’s Greenwood Cemetery, where he is buried.

We descendants of Abe’s have been motivated by his fighting and pioneering spirit to make aliyah during the past half-century. Of the 145 descendants of Lottie and Abe’s brothers and sisters who have made aliyah, many have served as tank commanders, others in intelligence units, and the newest is in the Israeli navy. Several have been in Nahal units; others have educated people so they can enter the Israeli army.

Several nephews have served as doctors and attorneys, and one was called up for the Persian Gulf War. Having just observed the centennial of Allenby’s liberation of Jerusalem on Dec. 11, we salute all members of the Jewish Legion and especially our ancestor Abe Simon z”l. ■

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DECEMBER 22 â–ª 2017

OPINION

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

Our View

Hezbollah Near

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

We are only two years into the Iran nuclear deal.

We could be a decade from knowing whether President Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy accomplishment succeeded in diverting the most misanthropic regime south of Moscow from developing nuclear weapons. But thanks to investigative reporting by Politico, we know another piece of the price the Obama administration paid to secure the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

It wasn’t enough for the United States to let Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad continue to slaughter Syrians despite crossing Obama’s red line of chemical weapons, or to allow Iranian troops to establish a presence on Arab territory wedged strategically between Israel and Turkey, or to watch in silence as Iran kept working on ballistic missiles (the better to deploy those theoretical nukes), or to make a separate, cash-heavy deal to win the release of Americans who never should have been held by Iran in the first place, or to resist sanctions to punish support of terrorists and rebels destabilizing the Middle East and beyond.

According to Politico, senior Obama administration officials also ensured that a long-term Drug Enforcement Administration operation, Project Cassandra, would never damage its target: Hezbollah, which has diversified the past decade to add drug trafficking and other criminal enterprises to its terrorism and stockpiling of weapons for its next war against Israel.

The problem isn’t that Hezbollah has found more ways to cause mayhem or that its criminal activities are pumping $1 billion a year into its war chest, but that Hezbollah is smuggling cocaine and other drugs into the United States and laundering its money here.

Hezbollah is directly hurting Americans.

The DEA spent eight years gathering evidence, putting the pieces together and making drug connections from high Hezbollah officials to top Iranians, Syrians, Colombians and Venezuelans. But when it was time to seek indictments or extraditions, the Obama administration stood in the way, apparently to prevent any irritations with Iran.

A former career Treasury Department official, Katherine Bauer, wrote in testimony to Congress in February that Hezbollah investigations “were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.”

Bauer noted an arrest in Atlanta in October 2015 of a Hezbollah operative looking to buy cocaine and weapons and said such arrests have been made around the world since then. It’s not news that Hezbollah is packed with people who relish the opportunity to wreak havoc, but the Politico report is eyeopening about how its tentacles have reached into the United States.

The Obama administration decided not to try to break up the Hezbollah criminal network, and perhaps that was the right call. Maybe the diplomatic opening with Iran was worth letting Hezbollah run wild. Maybe Hezbollah will find drug- and gun-running to be so lucrative that its leaders will give up terrorism and the dream of wiping Israel off the map.

But maybe not. What’s clear is that the final ledger on the Iran deal will include more blood and vio10 lence than we could have imagined two years ago. ■

Cartoon by Bob Englehart, CagleCartoons.com

The More Things Changed in 2017 No one can deny 2017 was different from 2016.

One positive was the emergence of some muchLast December the U.N. Security Council voted needed female leadership in Jewish Atlanta, from to condemn all Israeli construction east of the 1949 Lauren Menis, Danielle Cohen, Lisa Freedman and cease-fire line as the main obstacle to peace. That Hildee Isaacs at AIAAS to new Anti-Defamation 14-0 decision reinforced U.N. agencies’ insistence League Regional Director Allison Goodman-Padilla. that the older, eastern side of Jerusalem, including They joined such leaders as Federation Chief the Temple Mount and Western Wall, had nothing Impact Officer Jodi Lox Mansbach, Marcus JCC Chief to do with Jews or Israel. The United States boldly Program & Innovation Officer Amanda Abrams abstained. and InterfaithFamily/Atlanta Director Rabbi Malka This December, we’ve seen a U.S. veto of a SePacker-Monroe working within our community and curity Council resolution Interfaith Community viewing the United States Initiatives Executive Direcas the great obstacle to a tor Judy Marx, Creating Editor’s Notebook two-state solution because Connected Communities

By Michael Jacobs of President Donald Executive Director Amy mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com Trump’s stubborn refusal Zeide and The Packaged to ignore the reality that JeGood founder Sally Munrusalem is Israel’s capital. dell reaching out to make Sure, the U.N. measure still portrayed JeruAtlanta better for Jews and everyone else. salem’s Old City as purely Arab and still held the It’s a shame none of them participated in the Palestinians blameless for the failures of the peace panel discussion at what was otherwise one of the process. And the resolution again got 14 votes. But at most hopeful events of the year, the end-of-August least Israel took second billing as the Little Satan to Federation awards ceremony that expanded to the United States’ Great Satan. involve the Marcus JCC, Jewish Family & Career SerYes, 2017 was the year the world stopped directvices and Jewish Home Life Communities and drew ing all its venom at Israel as a proxy for the United attendees across denominational lines.

States and started directing all its venom at the It was a year when the nation focused on Jewish United States as a proxy for Israel.

Atlanta. The Central Conference of American Rabbis, It’s also a year when more people used Israel as the Jewish Funders Network, The Collaboratory, the an excuse to attack Jews and when more people felt National Council of Jewish Women and the United comfortable openly attacking Jews just for being Jews. Synagogue of Conservative Judaism held conventions Remember, Davis Academy moms were inspired here, and the most expensive congressional race in to launch the Atlanta Initiative Against AntiU.S. history featured Jewish Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Semitism in March. That was before we saw local district cutting through the heart of Jewish Atlanta. students make swastikas out of plastic cups, baked Jewish Atlanta might be left to its own devices in goods and dewy grass, among other expressions of 2018, when we hope to see the results of Federation’s hate and ignorance. It was before Holocaust denier Front Porch initiative, including a big January misDavid Irving came to town and inspired a devotee to sion to Israel involving dozens of organizations. scribble a swastika on a dinner menu.

On the other hand, the 6th Congressional DisIt was before the debate over Confederate trict will go to the polls again. At least we can count monuments gave Klansmen and neo-Nazis an excuse on the cycles of the calendar: Purim and Passover in to go on the attack in Charlottesville, terrorizing a the spring, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot Jewish congregation, chanting “Jews will not replace in the fall, and Chanukah and offensive U.N. resoluus” and costing a young woman her life. tions to end the secular year. ■

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

OPINION

The Jewish People Must Be Indivisible isolation of Jews. Zionism did not believe in rejecting the outside world.

For example, many sages proposed that Jews merited redemption from Egyptian slavery because they kept themselves separate from the Egyptian world.

The Munkacser rebbe frequently lectured that Jewish life outside the

One Man’s Opinion

By Eugen Schoenfeld

shtetl is impossible. The continuity of Jewish existence was possible only if Jews maintained a separation between the holy and the profane. That is why Hasidic Jews opposed exchanging Yiddish, a secular language, for Hebrew, the holy language (lashon hakodesh).

To my dismay, the same sort of baseless hatred made its way from Europe to Israel, where it became a dominant feature of politics.

Change is a constant of existence.

One of the consequences of change is the dominance of heterogeneity, especially in religious beliefs. Judaism will never be a single belief system.

So if Israel insists on rejecting religious heterogeneity and maintaining an air of hostility, can it survive as a nation? How can Israel seek peace with its neighbors when it cannot eliminate intra-Jewish hostility?

When I was liberated from the Holocaust, I sought answers to the question I directed to my father after I was beaten my first day in Birkenau: How can we create a peaceful coexistence among diverse ethnic and religious groups who must live together?

To my sadness, I must add a similar question: Can Judaism exist if we do not resolve intra-Jewish hostilities?

Do we no longer believe in klal Yisrael, the unity of the Jewish people?

There is no room within Judaism for the hostility that exists between Orthodox, especially Hasidic, and non-Orthodox Jews. Isn’t it time for us to reject the unproductive squabble and teach the unity that is one of the Torah’s dominant moral ideals?

On 36 occasions the Torah teaches us about the need of peaceful coexistence with the stranger. How much more should this principle govern coexistence among ourselves?

My brother Benjamin (z”l) was killed in Birkenau. In the last two years before the Holocaust, we squabbled as brothers often do. To keep peace in the home, my mother interfered, telling me, “Tuli, you are the oldest. You are smart. Give in a little to your brother.”

My mother came from a small village and had a sixth-grade education, but she knew how to keep the peace — through accommodation. You give a little, I give a little, and there’s peace.

The Catholic Church seemed to understand this principle, which led to the adoption of the principle of ecumenism at the Second Vatican Council. Perhaps we can borrow from the church and bring equity and peace among the variant forms of Judaism. Perhaps, with good will, we can re-establish our commitment to klal Yisrael and become again governed by the ideal of one united and indivisible people. ■

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DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

I believe the following event took place on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat before Pesach, when Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapiro, the Munkacser rebbe, honored us, members of the Beth HaMidrash HaGadol (House of the Great Study), by leading the service.

While he stood in front of the three-tiered Holy Ark, wherein hundreds of Torahs rested, two Hasidic disciples in fur hats and silk caftans began throwing rotten eggs at him.

The congregation was stunned. The two men were disciples of the Szatmarer rebbe from Szatmar in Romania. The remnants of the eggs were washed from the wall the next day, but the stain remained — a stain I henceforth called the “stain of shame.”

This shameful act reflected sinat chinam, a baseless hatred. The sages considered such hatred to be so grievous a sin that they blamed the destruction of the Second Temple and Jerusalem on such hatred between Kamtza and Bar Kamtza.

The Munkacser and Szatmarer sects were hostile to each other because of competition for status and disciples, but they shared an overriding hostility toward the rising movement of Zionism, which they considered to be the destroyer of Judaism.

My uncle was the Munkacser rebbe’s physician and asked him to be the mohel at the bris of his son, my cousin. I was 9. I was proud of my curly payot (ear locks), wore my tzitzit untucked and visible, and covered my head with a proper cap, not a kippah.

The rebbe invited me to eat a piece of chicken from his plate, bestowing on me the great honor of eating sherayim (leftovers). I was the envy of most of his adult disciples.

He asked what I was studying, and I said I was about to start the study of the Mishnah. He was pleased.

But when I said I was attending the Hebrew elementary school, he pulled away his plate and turned his back. He considered me to be a Zionist and an apikoros, a denier of Judaism.

His hostility focused on Zionism’s denial of the belief in the Messiah, whom the rebbe saw as the only one with the right to rebuild the nation and the Temple. But he also had a personal reason: Zionism rejected shtetl life, where Judaism could hold its old form.

Zionism denied the principle of assey seyag laTorah, creating a fence around the Torah, tantamount to the

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OPINION

Remember to Learn From Shammai’s Example factions and segments of the Jewish community. Two thousand years later, it tragically seems as if the arrogance of certainty is once again engendering unnecessary divisiveness and ugliness within our community.

And so, an invitation to all on the cusp of this new calendar year to let the model of discourse and debate reflected within our textual tradition serve as a source of inspiration for us today.

How might each of us allow more space for differences of opinion in our community as well?

We need not, nor will we, agree on every issue. However, when we stop to consider the fact that we know the perspectives of Shammai as well as those of Hillel, perhaps we can also respectfully and graciously remember to make room for others in our conversations and debates.

Wishing all a prosperous, healthy and peaceful 2018. ■

less consternation within Jewish organizations. However, as I have heard in uplifting sermons and read in inspiring articles, one has to separate the message from the messenger.

It may be a good time to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Arab regimes are busy with internal conflicts or the threat of Iran. The reconciliation moves between Fatah and Hamas have ground to a halt. The move sends a signal to Palestinian leaders that decades of uncritical American acceptance of their intransigence is drawing to an end. Of course, it may still be exploited

by Arab leaders as a pretext for some major attack, but so far it has not.

Rather than castigating the move, Jewish organizations should be educating their fellow Jews and the broader public about history and Jewish connections to Jerusalem. What is now called East Jerusalem, or the Old City, had an overwhelming Jewish majority from when population counts were first taken in the 1840s all the way to the 1920s, when many Jews were driven out after a series of Arab attacks that killed over 130 Jews.

The remaining Jews were killed or expelled by the Jordanian army in 1948.

All Jewish synagogues in the Old City were smashed, and Jewish tombstones were used for paving. Jews could not visit their holy sites when the Old City was under Jordanian control.

In contrast, all faiths have had access to their holy sites since 1967.

One might see all this violence as recent and the result of a clash of nationalist and religious claims, but that too is simplistic. There is a widespread myth that Jews were relatively well treated under Arab and Ottoman rule.

However, Christian and Jewish European travelers in the 18th and 19th centuries wrote of the shocking conditions imposed on Jews in the Holy Land, of their suffering under restrictions that made it impossible for them to buy property in East Jerusalem, of their stoic acceptance of pogroms and constant humiliation.

Islam’s hostility to Jews dates to its founding.

It is counterproductive to ignore this history when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has given a speech in Istanbul that denies any Jewish connections to the land, and Palestinian officials deny on television that there ever was a temple in Jerusalem.

It makes no sense to say, “Don’t do anything that affects the peace process,” when there is no peace process because Palestinian leaders reject any process that would end the conflict and allow a permanent Israel. Decades of appeasement have only exacerbated Palestinian extremism.

— Doron Lubinsky, Sandy Springs

U.S. Should Not Be Neutral

in this instance, nor that in each of the Hillel-Shammai debates, of which there were hundreds, halacha always favored Hillel’s positions.

Rather, of particular significance is the fact that, despite Hillel’s promi-

Letters To The Editor

Courage in Embassy Move

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

nence, the Talmud is still intentional in preserving Shammai’s point of view and lifting up his voice as well.

So while one perspective ultimately prevailed as the enduring religious practice, the Talmud — in every rabbinic debate, in fact — illustrates powerfully that space must be reserved for contrasting points of view to be heard and honored.

Would that this were the nature of debate within our Jewish community and world today.

Unlike the disputes between our

sages of old, it has become increasingly clear — especially around matters of consequence, such as Israel, social justice, politics, etc. — that many are simply unable to make room for opinions that differ from their own.

In today’s contentious and polarized climate, the idea that an intelligent, thoughtful individual could somehow reach a different conclusion is no longer tenable.

Express a perspective that differs from people who insist their point of view is the only acceptable one, and a likely result will be an email inbox inundated with vitriolic messages, shared articles and blog posts pointing out the fallacy of your position — and, sadly, displays of lashon hara as well.

We learn in the Midrash that the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E. as a result of sinat chinam (baseless hatred) among the various

Though Chanukah is over, a Talmudic passage related to the holiday (BT Shabbat) provides us with an important lesson that extends well beyond the Festival of Lights.

The message is timely and, if taken to heart, might inspire more gracious and accepting behavior as we prepare for 2018.

The passage is one in which first century rabbinic sages Hillel and Shammai debate the proper way to kindle the lights of Chanukah.

Shammai argues that one should start with a fully lighted menorah on the first night of the festival and reduce the number of lights by one each evening to correspond with the number of days remaining.

Hillel proposes just the opposite — the manner in which we light today — maintaining that we should add a candle each night as we only increase in matters of holiness.

Pertinent to this column, though, is not that Hillel’s opinion prevailed

The moving of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem shows the Arabs, the Palestinians and the world that Jerusalem is the Jewish capital of Israel. It is a move to force the Palestinians to come to the peace table with the government of Israel if Palestinians want to survive. It shows the courage of President Donald Trump and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to tell the world that Israel under the Likud government is correct in its policies regarding the Palestinians.

It shows that Trump is unafraid to tell the Arabs and the world that their policy of antagonism toward Israel has been wrong and stupid.

What will happen in the Arab world as a result of this pronouncement? Hopefully, nothing.

Cooler heads from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Egypt and the Maghreb will prevail with G-d’s help.

— Philip Wendkos, Rockville, Md.

History Backs Recognition

No doubt if it had been a different president recognizing Jerusalem as 12 Israel’s capital, there might have been

From the ARA

By Rabbi Ron Segal

Rabbi Ron Segal is the senior rabbi at Temple Sinai.

I must disagree with Harold Kirtz (“U.S. Recognition of Israel’s Capital Ill-Timed,” Dec. 15). The United States should not maintain a neutral stance while Israel has offered peace plans, even ceded land, and the Palestinians have steadfastly refused to negotiate.

While the Palestinians are using President Donald Trump’s recognition of Israel’s right to designate her own capital as an excuse for violence, the fact is that there has been violence all along.

Having the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv did not prevent hijackings of airliners, bombings of pizzerias and seders, the lobbing of missiles at Israeli population centers, the ramming of cars into crowds at bus stops, stabbings, etc.

I think Trump intended his action as a message to the Palestinians that America will no longer tolerate their intransigence. I hope America will urge the Palestinian leaders to turn their attention from trying to destroy Israel toward building the infrastructure needed for a viable state, one in which their people, even if descended from Arabs who fled Arab-initiated wars against Israel, will be helped to become productive citizens, willing to coexist peacefully with the nation-state of the Jews.

— Toby F. Block, Atlanta

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OPINION

It’s All Right to Cry the body. My formal study of crying began with the theory that emotional tears play a precise and central role in helping restore the chemical balance of the body by excreting substances produced by the body in response to

From the ARA

By Rabbi Judith Beiner

stress. … Our studies on the chemical composition of tears have revealed that tears contain higher concentrations of manganese.”

Our discomfort with our emotions leads us to hold them in. According to Frey, crying is one of the ways our bodies find their equilibrium, making us feel better.

Not crying, or refusing to give expression to our feelings, can be injurious to our health.

Our ancestor Joseph got this message.

In Parashat Vayigash, the Torah portion to be read at Saturday services Dec. 23, Judah pleads with Joseph to free their brother Benjamin and offers himself as a replacement. Joseph is so

moved by Judah’s request that he reveals himself to his brothers, forgives them for selling him into slavery and takes steps to reunite the family in Egypt.

Judah initiates the reconciliation when vayigash — he drew near to Joseph. A midrash notes that Judah drew close both physically and emotionally in that step. He had grown from the conniving, jealous man of his younger days into a mature leader, a voice of compassion and an advocate of shalom bayit (peace at home) (Genesis Rabbah).

The text is explicit in describing Joseph’s feelings: “His sobs were so loud” (Genesis 45:2) and “He embraced his brother Benjamin around the neck and wept” (Genesis 45:14).

I’ve always been impressed by how Joseph didn’t hold back his tears.

Here he was, one of the most powerful men in Egypt, and he didn’t feel the need to “stay strong.”

Instead, he let it all out, and in doing so he communicated to his brothers that he forgave them for their

Enjoy Every Day as a Divine Gift Now that we are nearing the end of December and the secular year, I find myself hearing over and over again some version of the sentiment that many of us are thankful that 2017 is almost over.

I seem to recall hearing the same thing a year ago as 2016 was coming to a close.

It is understandable why, at the end of each year, people seem to rejoice in its closing. As we look back on the past year, we find a number of things to be disappointed or worried about: the political divide in this country, widening gaps between many sections of the Diaspora community and the state of Israel, the rising wave of anti-Semitism and racism, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, just to name a few.

Many of us also have personal reasons to want this year to end. We may have received bad news or experienced the loss of a loved one.

With the upcoming year, there is

always a hope for the future, a hope for new dreams and visions, and a hope that the new year will be better

View From Up North

By Rabbi Jordan Ottenstein

than the one we are leaving.

While I don’t want to put a damper on the festivities of New Year’s Eve, unless we change our viewpoint, 2018 will include many of the same issues as 2017. The new year will still have the divisions, the fear, the animosity and the anxiety.

However, if we turn to our sacred texts and to our sacred tradition, we have the tools to view each new day, not only each new year, as a gift from G-d, something to be treasured.

We read in the Book of Psalms, “Zeh hayom asah HaShem, nagilah v’nism’cha vo.” This is the day G-d has made; let us be glad and rejoice upon it

(Psalms 118:24).

Those seven simple Hebrew words can be our new mantra, our new way of looking at the world. Each day is a gift; each day is valuable. When we can change our viewpoint to understand and acknowledge that each day is one made by G-d, we can truly value each day.

There will still be challenges, there will still be struggles, and there will still be moments of grief. But rather than look at the year as a whole, with 365 days of potential for good and bad, we should remember that, as Charles Strouse and Martin Charnin taught us through the voice of a young red-headed orphan, “the sun will come out tomorrow,” and we should be thankful when it happens.

As 2017 comes to a close, I wish all of you a happy new year and, more important, a happy today and happy tomorrow. ■ Rabbi Jordan Ottenstein serves as the senior rabbi of Congregation Dor Tamid in Johns Creek.

mistreatment of him.

By Judah’s drawing near/approaching Joseph as he did, the door for reconciliation was opened.

I cry often. And I frequently make other people cry.

I am not depressed or ill, nor am I known to inflict cruelty upon others.

In my work as the Jewish Family & Career Services community chaplain, I visit those experiencing illness and decline on a daily basis. I frequently recite the mishebeirach for healing, after which the patient or a family member is often moved to tears.

I am aware that they may be experiencing pain, fear or sadness or perhaps are grappling with a horrible diagnosis or facing an unknown period of treatment. So the tears make sense.

Lots of folks are embarrassed or apologetic for their outburst, but I see it as a good sign. They are giving needed expression to pent-up emotions and communicating the fullness of their humanity.

Science, the Torah and Rosey Grier all tell us that it’s alright to cry.

May we heed these words. ■ Rabbi Judith Beiner is the JF&CS community chaplain.

From the Blogs

The community conversation is always active at blogs.timesofisrael.com/ atlanta-jewish-times. Visit to sign up for your own AJT blog or to add your comments to posts. Recent excerpts: • Rabbi Marc H. Wilson, “The Messiah of Eighth Avenue” — “The Messiah’s festering sores are the inevitable result of … the willful dismantling of health care, education and social welfare, the framing of a system in which prosperity is financed by the victimization of those whose burden is already unbearable.”

• Nandita Godbole, “Belonging: Prayer Beads and Shared Tables” — “I am discovering a personal desire to remain intrigued and willing to accepting other people, religions and lifestyles in ‘our’ fold, as acknowledgement of our shared condition: humanity. Because prejudice in any form harbors the seeds of discord, mistrust and hatred.”

Write to Us

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Those of us of a certain age will remember Rosey Grier, the pro football defensive lineman known for his penchant for needlepoint.

His large size and reputation on the field made him ideal to perform a song on the “Free to Be You and Me” children’s album, titled “It’s Alright to Cry.” It’s alright to cry, crying gets the sad out of you Raindrops from your eyes, it might make you feel better.

Grier’s song gives the listeners (children and adults) permission to cry and to express our emotions.

I wish more people would heed these words.

Crying is a natural response to stress, sadness, fear and the like. It provides both a physical and an emotional release, after which one does tend to feel better.

There is some science behind the notion that shedding tears of emotion is essential to health.

In the 1985 book “Crying: The Mystery of Tears,” biochemist William H. Frey teaches: “Emotional tearing may be similar to the other excretory processes, which remove waste products or toxic materials from

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Ra’anana is taking the idea of the Startup Nation to a new level this school year with a special startup incubator in the heart of the affluent Israeli city.

Twenty youths who have been part of the city’s mentoring program have been turned loose in the municipalityowned industrial park to launch their own company to fill whatever market niche they envision and are getting all the support they need to make it a success.

It’s an idea that could encompass Atlanta teenagers.

That youth startup was one of the programs two representatives of Ra’anana — Roee Dinovich, the head of the Ra’anana Business Administration and the industrial park, and Tamar Knimach, the manager of the city’s youth advancement agency — talked about as possible areas of cooperation between their city and Atlanta, which are linked through the Sister Cities International program.

Dinovich and Knimach visited Atlanta from Sept. 6 to 8 for a special international business development summit Atlanta hosted. Ra’anana and 11 other Atlanta sister and partner cities participated.

Both Atlanta and Ra’anana, which have been sisters since 2001, have embraced the concept of global municipal partnerships. Atlanta has 17 sister cities; Ra’anana, which has a population of about 71,000, has roughly two dozen sisters.

“This cross-pollination between cities has been a priority of my administration from Day 1,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed said at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights during a reception launching the September summit.

When he joined a Conexx-organized mission to Israel in 2015, he made a point of visiting Ra’anana and its mayor, Ze’ev Bielski, the former head of the Jewish Agency for Israel.

The relationship between the cities has been nurtured by the Atlan-

ta-Ra’anana Sister City Committee, chaired by Arnold Heller, and the cities have natural affinities in the areas of innovation, medical technology and the cyber world.

Reed said Atlanta’s global partnerships have strengthened its entrepreneurial and innovative business culture, and while he didn’t single out Ra’anana, it epitomizes Israel’s startup drive.

Through translator Rena Kahn, a member of Heller’s committee, Dinovich explained that Ra’anana is home to 600 startup companies, 400 of which launched within the past three years.

It also hosts such tech giants as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, NCR, Texas Instruments and Amdocs.

Part of the reason Dinovich and Knimach attended the Atlanta summit was to look for business opportunities in both directions: openings for Ra’anana companies to enter the U.S. market through Atlanta partners and Atlanta companies interested in launching efforts in Israel.

“They hope that Atlanta will also look at them as a place of development to do business with us,” Dinovich said.

But although business is a key part of the relationship, it involves more.

Kahn has brought Ra’anana musicians to Atlanta for cultural connections, for example, and Ra’anana is the first Israeli city to participate in the Daffodil Project, an effort of Atlanta-based Am Yisrael Chai to plant 1.5 million daffodils around the world in memory of the children slain in the Holocaust.

The possibility of Atlantans joining or copying the youth startup, whose launch was more than a month away when Dinovich and Knimach visited, is another way the cities could work together.

The Atlanta-Ra’anana Sister City Committee (www.atlsistercities.org/raanana­) welcomes ideas and members from the community to help maximize the cooperation and innovation Reed envisions for the sisterly relationship. ■

CHANUKAH

Photos by Eli Gray

George Heart’s collection shows that a chanukiah can be made out of almost anything.

Avi and Ahava Heart hold their Legion of Merit citations after a presentation by Post 112 commander Robert Max.

George Heart reads “Hanukkah at Valley Forge” to the social crowd.

Rabbi Karmi Ingber provides the entertainment for Post 112.

By Eli Gray Gen. George Washington was walking through the cold and gloom of Valley Forge in December 1777 when he came upon a lone soldier lighting two candles. The soldier is Jewish and tells the commander of the Continental Army about Chanukah and the rebel Maccabees’ triumph over a great empire, and the story inspires Washington to carry on.

That meeting by the fires of Valley Forge might not be any more historical than the story of Washington and the cherry tree, but it’s entertaining and appealing.

So retired Lt. Col. George Heart shared the version of the story in Stephen Krensky’s “Hanukkah at Valley Forge” during Jewish War Veterans Post 112’s first semiformal Chanukah

social Sunday morning, Dec. 17, at Berman Commons.

Post 112 supplemented the usual kosher bagel buffet at its monthly meetings with sufganiyot and latkes, and Heart displayed his collection of military-themed chanukiot, the oldest of which was fashioned from a U.S. militia sword in 1849.

Retired Maj. Robert Max, the post commander, presented the Legion of Merit award to siblings Ahava and Avi Heart for their volunteer work with Post 112, including its recent visit to Fort Benning for a Sunday Shacharit service and Kiddush.

Providing music for the social was Rabbi Karmi Ingber of The Kehilla in Sandy Springs, invited by Berman Commons chaplain Fred Glusman.

Rabbi Ingber played his guitar and shared some Chanukah thoughts. ■

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

A Uniform Holiday

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www.atlantajewishtimes.com

CHANUKAH

Chanukah Around Atlanta

Congregation Beth Tefillah Rabbi Isser New flings a handful of chocolate gelt from the top of a Sandy Springs Fire Department ladder truck at Heritage Sandy Springs on Dec. 14.

As much as any Jewish holiday, Chanukah is about public celebration, and Atlanta synagogues and organizations find many ways in many places to put their joy on display and share a few fried foods. The rain Sunday, Dec. 17, and the freezing cold for a couple of nights before that dampened some of the festivities, and the AJT couldn’t be everywhere throughout the Festival of Lights. Nevertheless, here’s a celebratory selection. See more photos at atlantajewishtimes.com. And if we missed your Chanukah event in this gallery, please send photos to editor@atljewishtimes.com; if we get enough, we’ll do another gallery Jan. 5. ■

Chabad of North Fulton Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz lights the Avalon chanukiah on the second night Dec. 13.

The addition of a soft menorah turns the holiday sled at Avalon into a place for a Chanukah photo opportunity for Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz on Dec. 13.

Photos by Eli Gray (Beth Jacob, Young Israel, Chabad Intown), Eddie Samuels (Dor Tamid), Michael Jacobs (Beth Tefillah), Scenesations Photography’s Brad Covert (Avalon) and Ann Marie Quill (Brookhaven)

Light Up Brookhaven, delayed two weeks by weather until Dec. 13, brings some Chanukah cheer to Blackburn Park.

Children face a maze during the Chanukah carnival inside Young Israel of Toco Hills on Dec. 17.

The grill master keeps busy at the Congregation Dor Tamid party Dec. 17.

Rabbi Ilan and Miriam Feldman deal with a trivia question at Congregation Beth Jacob’s Chanukah trivia night Dec. 14.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Modern Maccabees fling a few pies to defeat the Greeks at Young Israel of Toco Hills on Dec. 17.

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Rainy weather disrupts Chabad Intown’s plans but doesn’t stop the fun, including face painting, Dec. 17.

Smiles are common at Congregation Beth Tefillah’s Chanukah celebration Dec. 14 at Heritage Sandy Springs.

Whether it’s a bounce house or an escape room, kids are having fun at Congregation Dor Tamid’s Chanukah party Dec. 17.

Rabbis Dov Foxbrunner and Yitzchok Tendler lead the trivia contest at Congregation Beth Jacob on Dec. 14.

Sunmoon Pie’s Michael Levine has a walking dreidel for accompaniment while Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman watches at Chabad Intown on Dec. 17.

An open bar and a tasting from the new kosher restaurant Formaggio Mio enhance trivia night at Congregation Beth Jacob on Dec. 14.

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CHANUKAH

Sandy Springs City Council member Andy Bauman lights the candle for the third night during Congregation Beth Tefillah’s celebration at Heritage Sandy Springs on Dec. 14.

It’s not supersize, but Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman has a good-looking indoor chanukiah to light at Chabad Intown on Dec. 17.

A firefighter makes it rain chocolate gelt for Chabad Intown on Dec. 17.

Chabad of North Fulton calls on some young helpers to lead the blessings before the menorah lighting at Avalon on Dec. 13.

Boys compete to extinguish the candles first during the carnival before the menorah lighting at Heritage Sandy Springs on Dec. 14.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Congregation Dor Tamid’s Chanukah party provides an opportunity for children to make their own menorahs Dec. 17. The fun also is for a good cause: raising money for Hurricane Harvey victims in Houston.

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LIFESTYLE

Even Kangaroos Like This Computer Engineer Gabe Enslein, 29, is a software engineer, but you also can find him working as an improv actor at shows around the city.

In his short five years in Atlanta, Gabe has become a regular at The Temple’s monthly young adult service, The Well, and he attends other Jewish-affiliated events around the metro area. We think Gabe is Such a Catch, so let him tell you a little about himself.

5. What are some things that are most important in your life?

My passion for fine arts keeps me grounded and finding ways to stay sane in a world seemingly more crazed by the day. Acting onstage, playing music or attending events will always

Such a Catch

By Rachel Fayne

1. What are you looking for in a partner?

I’m looking for someone who is supportive and respectful of my life and goals and has an equal amount of motivation to pursue theirs. I think it’s important to remember we are both people with our own interests and goals so that a healthy balance exists in a relationship. It’s my opinion that you shouldn’t have to change who you are to be in a relationship.

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2. What do you think or have been told are your best qualities?

I’ve been told that I’m very silly and that most animals (kangaroos included) warm up to me unusually well, so that always wins brownie points.

3. How do you spend your spare time?

I spend my spare time learning, practicing or adventuring whenever I can. If it’s traveling, practicing drums, software magic or self-help books, I’m always learning.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

4. What is your guilty pleasure?

Chipmunk techno music. It’s mind-numbing and hysterical at the same time.

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If you’re interested in this Catch or want to be featured as a Catch yourself, email editor@atljewishtimes.com.

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HISTORY

From the Caliph’s Adviser to Freedom in Livorno in southern Italy the emperor wanted to forcibly convert to Christianity.

He spent years trying to communicate with the Khazars, who lived

The Sephardic Corner

By Mariana Montiel

north of the Black Sea, believing that they were one of the lost tribes. Later he learned they had converted to Judaism. He maintained communication, though, and informed them about the Jews in the West, although shortly after they were defeated and eliminated.

Now we will talk about a Se­phar­ dic community formed after the expulsion, Livorno (Leghorn) in Italy. Sephardim arrived because of the edict La Livornina, promulgated by Ferdinando I of Medici in 1593, which created the free ports of Pisa and Livorno.

Parts of the edict were radical for the time. For example, Ferdinando promised to “free you as people, to free your merchandise, clothing and families, your Hebrew books or those printed in other languages or handwritten. We guarantee that during the period stipulated no Inquisition, reconnaissance visit, denouncement or accusation will be made against you or your families, even when in the past you have lived outside of our domain as Christians or pretending to be so.”

The Jews in Livorno opened their first printing house 1650 and published in Solitreo (a cursive form of Ladino or Judeoespañol using the Hebrew alphabet).

The Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century reached an economic and cultural development in Livorno that was rarely equaled in other Jewish communities. They could practice Judaism without fear of the Inquisition, study and obtain university degrees, own real estate, and live in any part of the city (there was no ghetto).

They could enter and leave the city at will, print books, and carry out justice autonomously in quarrels between Jews. The Jews of Livorno became commercial intermediaries between Levante, Italy, and northern Europe and were guaranteed diplomatic protection in the exterior.

Thanks to the edict, the Sephardic community of Livorno became one of the most important centers of Juda-

John of Gorze, the ambassador of Otto I, arrives at the court of Caliph Abd-arRahman III, where Hasdai ibn Shaprut helps welcome the diplomat, in an 1885 painting by Dionisio Baixeras Verdaguer.

ism, explaining the influence of the Livornesi-Jewish presence in the Mediterranean. Sephardic merchants were active in coral, spices and medicines, introduced soap making, and installed looms for silk and wool weaving.

Livorno grew to be Italy’s biggest Jewish community by the 18th century, a total of 10 percent of the city’s population. The climate of tolerance and freedom made Livorno famous for the continued existence of a Jewish community for more than three centuries.

The Livornesi Jews used many languages: Hebrew was the sacred language, and, until the Napoleonic era,

they used Portuguese for official community acts and in commerce. Spanish was the language of literary texts, and Italian was used with the surrounding society. They also spoke Bagito or Bagitto, a mixed Jewish-Livornesi language based on Italian but with other components, including Yiddish.

By 1700, this community’s fame was such that rabbis from the East and West came to study at the Talmudic academies. Rabbis such as Malachi’ Accoen, Abram Isaac Castello, Jacob Sasportas, David Nieto, Chaim Josef David Azulai, Israel Costa and Elia Benamozegh studied in Livorno.

There also was an influx of poor Jews, usually from Central Europe, who searched for better conditions.

Famous Livornesi Sephardic Jews include painters Serafino De Tivoli and Amedeo Modigliani, educator Sansone Uzielli, comedian Sabatino Lopez, writer Alessandro D’Ancona, and mathematician Federigo Enriques. ■ The Sephardic Corner is a monthly contribution of Congregation Or VeShalom to the greater Jewish community.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

In keeping with our Sephardic Corner format, first we will talk about a historical figure of Jewish Spain before the expulsion, then we will tell a story about a post-expulsion Sephardic community.

Hasdai ibn Shaprut was born in Jaén, Spain, in approximately 915 (his 1,100th birthday was celebrated in Jaén in 2015).

Hasdai studied Hebrew, Arabic and Latin and was fluent in the period’s incipient Spanish.

Usually only high-ranking Christian ecclesiastic authorities knew Latin.

He also studied medicine and was the physician for Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III in Cordoba. Though he never received the title of grand vizier (prime minister), he handled foreign affairs.

He established alliances between the caliphate of Cordoba and foreign powers and received foreign diplomats.

When Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII brought a codex of the botanical works of the Greek physician Dioscorides as a gift to the court, Hasdai translated the work to Arabic.

Hasdai became indispensable to the caliph. When the German king Otto I sent a diplomatic mission, led

by John of Gorze, in 956, the caliph was afraid that the king’s letter would have words that could be offensive to Islam.

He gave Hasdai the task of revising the letter to remove all offensive content.

John of Gorze said he had “never seen a man with such a keen intellect.”

Hasdai maintained relations with several of the rabbinical schools of the Middle East, such as Sura and Pumbedita. He fomented rabbinical studies in Cordoba by naming Moses ben Hanoch from Sura as the director of a yeshiva, contributing to an independence of Western Jewish thinking from Babylonian influence.

Difficulties arose between the Spanish kingdoms of León and Navarra. Sancho I of León was overthrown by followers of his cousin Ordoño IV. Thanks to Hasdai, Sancho’s grandmother Queen Toda of Navarra approached the caliph for help in recapturing the throne for her grandson.

Sancho, whose obesity did not allow him to ride a horse — essential for a leader — was cured by Hasdai of his paralyzing condition. Eventually Sancho was restored, and the caliph received 10 castles as compensation.

Hasdai intervened before Helena, daughter of Byzantine Emperor Romano I, to defend a Jewish community

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EDUCATION

TDSA Opens Child Safety Program to All

By Tova Norman Students, faculty and staff at Torah Day School of Atlanta will participate Jan. 8 and 9 in the Safety Kid Program, a child abuse prevention program created and facilitated by Magen Yeladim Child Safety Institute in Los Angeles.

Parents and educators from across metro Atlanta are invited to hear Magen Yeladim’s director and founder, Debbie Fox, speak at 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 8, at Congregation Beth Jacob.

Fox, a licensed clinical social worker, will speak on the topic “Protecting our Children.” The presentation will include child safety tips for the home, public places and camp, as well as baby-sitting tips.

Malka Landman, the resource learning director at TDSA, and her family are helping to sponsor the program, along with Beth Jacob and Young Israel of Toco Hills, in memory of Landman’s mother-in-law, Gila Landman.

“Child safety was of tremendous importance to her,” Landman said.

“She would give of her time and energy in every possible way to help children,

so we thought this was a wonderful way to honor her memory.”

The program is designed to meet the needs of Jewish students.

“We’ve never had a program like this in the Atlanta area,” Landman said. “We wanted to help bring this to parents and anyone who has anything to do with children.”

Such programs will help keep children safe from abuse, she said. “Education and awareness is protection.”

Reports of sexual abuse are making headlines daily. According to the World Health Organization, one in five women and one in 13 men report having been sexually abused as children. Atlanta is a hub for child sex trafficking.

Batsheva Gelbtuch, a Torah Day School parent, former school guidance counselor and licensed clinical social worker, was part of the initial planning committee of past and present TDSA parents. She emphasized the importance of this program.

“The only way to stop this epidemic is to educate and empower students and parents,” Gelbtuch said.

No demographic is immune to the

problem of abuse.

“It’s not any different in any community,” Gelbtuch said. “Humans are humans.”

And education is the key to protecting children. “We can save people’s lives, literally,” Gelbtuch said, pointing out that victims’ lives are affected in so many ways — physically, emotionally and psychologically. “We can really prevent so much hurt for so many people.”

Rebekah Silverman, the nurse at TDSA, said this training is like many types of safety education schools provide, such as fire and bicycle safety.

“It needs to be discussed but also followed up and reviewed on a regular basis,” she said.

Silverman acknowledged that sexual abuse is a topic much more difficult than bicycle helmets for educators and parents to discuss with children.

“That’s another reason why we are so excited about this program,” she said. “It’s practical and honest but still calm and reassuring.”

Silverman said the program uses a pneumonic device to help children, parents and educators remember how

to create safe environments: A, ask for help; B, bring a friend; C, check before; D, do tell; E, explore the Internet safely.

“It’s not just how to anticipate danger, but also how to take proactive precautions,” Silverman said. “It takes a whole community to foster a safe environment for our children.”

For that reason, Landman hopes parents will join the workshop Jan. 8.

“We are opening up to the community at large in order to share this incredibly valuable service with more people, so that we can help provide awareness and education and help more children,” she said. “There is nothing more important than the safety of our children. … I can’t imagine anything more important than this.” ■ What: Safety Kid Program Who: Debbie Fox, Magen Yeladim director Where: Congregation Beth Jacob’s Heritage Hall, 1855 LaVista Road, Toco Hills When: 7:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 8 Cost: Free; RSVPs requested to RSVP@ torahday.org

Davis Academy sixth-graders show the bookmarks they received from Russia.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Davis 6th-Graders Bookmark Cultures

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The International Association of School Librarianship’s Bookmark Exchange Project is exposing Davis Academy sixth-graders to student life in Portugal, Romania, Hungary and Russia.

The students exchange bookmarks and letters with assigned partner schools. The Davis students learn about different customs and teach their international peers about their background and the English language.

The project is an avenue through

which Davis sixth-graders identify with students around the globe.

“Our world has become globally connected. It has become more important that we help our students to understand there is no ‘us’ and ‘them.’ There is only we,” sixth-grade language arts and digital studio teacher Missy Stein said about why she selected the program. “Students in other countries with other cultures are just that — students, people, human. As we get to know one another as individuals, we see that only by working on the human level can we hope to change the world.” ■

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

LOCAL NEWS

Europe Struggles to Understand, Accept Islam European attitudes toward Islam are shifting regarding the religion’s compatibility with democracy, its future in Europe and the refugee crisis.

Islam in Europe was discussed in great detail at the American Jewish Committee university luncheon with the American Council on Germany on Monday, Dec. 11.

Alexander Görlach spoke from a German context. He is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and holds a doctorate in comparative religion from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.

Görlach said that the discussion on Islam has changed the past two years and that negative attitudes have spread to central European countries such as Poland, Hungary and Slovenia.

“The approval rate … and survey results regarding whether people want a Muslim as their neighbor has plummeted in a sense,” he said.

National constitutions affect Islam’s integration.

“There are different traditions

Alexander Görlach describes Islam in Europe at an American Jewish Committee lunch with the American Council on Germany on Dec. 11.

regarding how European nations publicly and politically deem religion, whether to invoke G-d and which G-d that would be, and although propositions have alluded to a Judeo-Christian G-d, this has inevitably left Islam out,” Görlach said.

Some Europeans highlight the religious heritage of countries, but that approach also excludes Islam, Görlach said. “It’s highly debatable to what degree Islam played a role in European history, but in terms of policymaking nowadays, the term Judeo-Christian is very often used to clearly indicate that it’s all but Muslim.”

Görlach said the quest for a European identity influences views on Islam and on immigration and affects what people face when they move to another country. “It’s clear to my understanding that Europe has a Christian past. It also has a Christian present, but … what makes us so Christian?

A majority of the Christians today live in the Americas, and a majority of Muslims on the other hand do not live in Arab countries.”

The relationship between politics and religion is particularly significant for Islam in Germany, Görlach said.

“If you get the state’s recognition as a religious community, you have the possibility to send clergy into the military, into hospitals, and the right to fund your own schools. … These privileges are asserted to several religious communities in Germany — the Protestants, the Catholics and the Jewish community — but not to Muslims.”

German law reflects a Christian context, so what you need for recognition as a religious community is a list of members, a set of beliefs and guaranteed sustainability in the sense that

religion will not go away in a year, Görlach said. Islam lacks the necessary hierarchy.

Görlach said European attitudes toward Islam also shifted in 2015 after German Chancellor Angela Merkel began philosophizing about borders in the 21st century and agreed to accept 1 million Syrian refugees.

“This was a game-changer … and also sparked the alt-right movement in Germany,” he said.

A rash of New Year’s Eve sexual assaults blamed on immigrants in Cologne did nothing to make the debate on Islam go away.

“To relentlessly speak of Islam as one entity is not helpful when you try to raise real questions or try to integrate a group from another culture or religious background as part of your society,” Görlach said. “For the largest part, European countries such as Spain, Greece and Portugal had to learn the hard way what democracy was. … The framework helped change their scope and rhetoric. … Why would we deny this capability to the religion of Islam?” ■

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

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www.atlantajewishtimes.com

LOCAL NEWS Spinrad Leaving Temple

Rabbi David Spinrad is leaving The Temple after five years as part of the rabbinical team so he can pursue a position as a senior rabbi, the synagogue announced Dec. 13.

Rabbi David Rabbi Spinrad, who Spinrad will remain with The Temple until the end of June, said in the announcement that he has an incredible opportunity, but leaving Atlanta is bittersweet.

“In every way, my years at The Temple have been a dream come true,” he said.

Rabbi Spinrad has helped deepen the congregation’s work on social justice issues, including child sex trafficking, and he founded the monthly Shabbat service for young adults, The Well.

The Temple will celebrate the Spinrad family at a Shabbat in the spring.

Temple Executive Vice President Janet Lavine is leading the committee searching for his replacement.

Shearith Israel to Install Rabbi Kaiman on Jan. 20

Congregation Shearith Israel will officially install Rabbi Ari Kaiman during Shabbat morning services Jan. 20 during a weekend of celebration.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, the dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, where Rabbi Kaiman was ordained, and vice president of American Jewish University in Los Angeles, will be the scholar in residence at Shearith Israel that weekend.

After a Kabbalat Shabbat service and community dinner Jan. 19, Rabbis Artson and Kaiman will lead a learning session titled “Ayeh Makom K’vodo — Where is God’s Place?”

A learning session after the morning service and a Kiddush luncheon

Jan. 20 will address the question “Who Needs Synagogues?”

“Rock the Shtetl,” a celebration the night of Jan. 20, will include a kosher Lower East Side gourmet dinner from the General Muir and entertainment by the Old Fourth Ward Afro Klezmer Band at Emory’s Miller Ward Alumni House, 815 Houston Mill Road.

Reservations are required by Jan. 9 for the Friday night dinner ($36 each or $18 for children under 13) and the Saturday night party ($150 each or $75 for those under 40).

Visit shearithisrael.com/installationweekend to get more information and register, call 404-873-1743, or email reception@shearithisrael.com.

Bright Smiles at Ben Massell

Four families with patients who go to Jewish Family & Career Services’ Ben Massell Dental Clinic and five families who volunteer with the JF&CS FITS: Families Inspired to Serve program got together for the fourth annual FITS Ben Massell Clinic holiday party Sunday, Dec. 10.

The families played bingo and holiday word games, created crafts and gifts, and shared snacks.

FITS provides fun, low-commitment, hands-on opportunities for kids and their parents to volunteer in impactful ways. Ben Massell serves up to 4,000 patients a year, with 150 dentists volunteering to provide $4.2 million worth of services.

Photos by Logan C. Ritchie

From ORT to JNF

Sandy Springs resident Evan Alberhasky has left ORT Atlanta and moved half a mile up Roswell Road to become a campaign executive with Jewish National Fund.

“I know our donors Evan and those who meet Alberhasky him will enjoy working with Evan, and I look forward to him having the chance to support our growth in the region,” said Beth Gluck, JNF’s executive director of greater Atlanta. “Evan brings to Jewish National Fund the exact skills and personal values that will add to our success in connecting Atlanta donors to Israel’s future. I am thrilled to welcome him to our team.”

Alberhasky, who was a regional campaign associate with ORT, previously worked at the Jewish Theological Seminary and volunteers with Am Yisrael Chai. He and his wife, Marina, who works at Temple Emanu-El, have an infant daughter, Katherine.

“Jewish National Fund has an incredible history and was instrumental in the foundation of the modern

state of Israel,” Alberhasky said. “Having lived in Israel for 2½ years, I feel a strong connection to the country, its people and its future. In joining JNF, I’m excited to become part of a team committed to ensuring Israel’s security and prosperity by forging ties with the Atlanta Jewish community.”

Metulla Installs Board

Hadassah Greater Atlanta’s Metulla Group installed its 2018 board members at a luncheon Sunday, Dec. 3.

Assisted by Michele Weiner Merbaum, Linda Hakerem emceed the ceremony recognizing each new member and detailing the specifics of the board role and its importance to the Hadassah organization.

Each new member was given a mirror and instructed to look into it. As the women looked at their own images, Hakerem explained that Hadassah’s strength is the strength of each person.

Outgoing President Nancy Schwartz spoke about the group’s 2017 accomplishments, including increased fundraising and increased Chai Society membership, and she was given a handcrafted menorah to thank her for her work.

The Metulla Group’s board includes President Anita Otero, co-Treasurers Sydelle Silberman and Anita Walters, co-Vice Presidents for Membership Linda Lieberman and Terry Nordin, co-Vice Presidents of Fundraising Gail Golden and Gayle Kranz, Vice President for Levels of Giving Elva Rosner, coVice Presidents of Programming Sandye Charlop-Geller and Pam Kowan, Vice President of Communications and Marketing Helen Scherrer-Diamond, Vice President of Education Livia Sklar, Vice President of Advocacy Judy Roseman, Recording Secretary Nancy Ulbricht, and Parliamentarian Nancy Schwartz.

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LOCAL NEWS

Reform Movement Fights for Israeli Awareness Debates about Israel’s relationship with the Diaspora, Israeli pluralism and the Reform movement’s ability to draw people have grown heated this year.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government angered non-Orthodox Jews outside Israel by suspending an agreement on an egalitarian space at the Western Wall and pushing legislation to strengthen ultra-Orthodox authority over conversions.

Rabbi Josh Weinberg, the president of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, addressed the status of religious pluralism at an American Jewish Committee program, “Being Jewish in the Jewish State — Religious Equality in Israel Today,” Thursday, Dec. 14, at Temple Sinai.

What Americans know as Reform, Conservative or liberal Judaism is unrecognizable to most Israelis, so the Reform movement invites Israelis to the United States, Rabbi Weinberg said.

“We are helping to bring Israelis and shlichim to our summer camps, synagogues and youth movements so they

Rabbi Josh Weinberg says Israel’s Haredim are “experiencing tremendous tumult.”

can say, ‘Oh, wow, this is actually nice.’ ” But religion and politics mix in Israel. Rabbi Weinberg cited the example of Yaakov Litzman, who resigned as health minister in November over the issue of trains running on Shabbat, something his rebbe from the Gur Hasidic sect said was non-negotiable.

The ultra-Orthodox are crucial for Netanyahu to hold his coalition’s slim Knesset majority, Rabbi Weinberg said.

“Sometimes we like to think that everything the Haredim do is related to us. It’s not. The Haredim are also experiencing tremendous tumult right now,” he said.

Rabbi Weinberg said the government’s decision about the Kotel “came down to three things: whether there would be signage, a joint entrance and an administrative body made up of Reform, Conservative … representatives to

coordinate the running of this spot, because that would in fact be the first time ever in history the state of Israel would officially recognize non-Orthodox Jews for anything publicly and officially.”

Dec. 25 will mark the end of a sixmonth review period for legislation to put all Israeli conversions under the authority of the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate. “I think that the conversion bill affects more Jews than the Kotel,” Rabbi Weinberg said. “The issues of civil marriage and divorce affect more Israelis and more Jews than the Kotel.”

If the Reform movement had not responded loudly about the Kotel, other important issues would have received less attention, he said. “We made some strong statements and got some op-eds in the newspapers, but that’s unlikely going to move the government. … What we need is a much bigger plan. What we need is to essentially grow the Reform movement by leaps and bounds, and what we need is essentially a campaign for religious equality in Israel.”

The Union for Reform Judaism is asking all 900 of its congregations to join this campaign, Rabbi Weinberg said. The Reform movement has 100

on board, including Temple Sinai. The money being raised is going toward building more Reform communities.

“What we’ve noticed in Israel is that when we build it, they will come, and in addition to the 50 congregations on the ground this past Yom Kippur, the movement had 65 minyanim around the country,” he said. “What we’ve found is that Israelis are hungry for this because they are waking up to the reality that having a Jewish state does not necessarily mean having a Jewish community or having a Jewish identity.”

The Reform movement also is working its legal and political channels, Rabbi Weinberg said.

The event came eight days after President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but that decision wasn’t part of Rabbi Weinberg’s focus. Asked about the decision and the URJ’s critical response, he said: “I think it’s about time that the world recognized that. Would I like it to come with a bit more of a plan, like what do we mean by Jerusalem, what is the East vs. the West? Those are all details that are very important and need to be worked out.” ■

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

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Thinking Big While Going Green

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Judy and Allen Lipis took their time in creating a custom, energyefficient house in the Toco Hills area.

Using Jerusalem-like stone on the exterior and interior, the home sparkles with natural light, Jewishly observant touches and sustainability.

Judy and Allen’s backgrounds lend themselves to this efficiency and precision.

Judy is a retired middle school science teacher who reigns over her garden and dotes over her grandchildren.

Allen, who has a degree from the University of Pennsylvania in operations research, made his mark as a pioneer the technology of electronic banking.

He was transferred to Atlanta in 1971 by Citibank on loan to Georgia Tech for one year. He stayed on to consult with the five major banks on payment systems on the implementation of the Automated Clearing House and the study of debit cards before they existed. Much of Allen’s genius in automation is in use today at the Federal Reserve System and for Social Security electronic payments.

Allen, now retired, serves on the boards of two companies: one in the beer industry, the other in movie production. He also writes a monthly column for the AJT. Judy, retired in 2002, took pride in motivating Atlanta Jewish Academy students in all areas of science. She said, “Middles-schoolers were just at the right age to be creative as youngsters, but armed with the logic and tools that come with a bit of age and experience.”

Jaffe: What are some of the unusual features of your house?

Allen: We used white limestone from Austin, Texas, that looks like Jerusalem stone on the entire exterior and the interior, as well as the garage, lots of windows, including clerestory windows (122 in total) at the roofline, three French doors on the front of house, three at the back of house and three on the garage behind the house — all in line with each other.

Jaffe: What makes the house environmentally special?

Allen: We have a geothermal HVAC system, an end-grain mesquite floor for the kitchen and the great room, end-grain Douglas fir flooring 24 for all bedrooms and offices. This

flooring from Oregon is the crosscut from the circular part of the tree, composed of 4-inch squares which show the rings, with each square looking different.

The geothermal system required drilling down 200 feet into the ground, where it is 57 to 60 degrees. During the winter, it absorbs heat stored in the ground through the water that circulates in its underground loop.

Chai-Style Homes

By Marcia Caller Jaffe mjaffe@atljewishtimes.com

This heat is carried to the groundsource heat pumps, where it’s concentrated and sent as warm, comfortable air throughout our home. During the summer, the system absorbs heat from our home and transfers it to the underground loop, where it is absorbed by the cooler earth. The geothermal heat pump uses the cool water returning from the ground to create cool, dehumidified air conditioning. We have no compressor, and this saves money.

Jaffe: How would you describe the layout?

Allen: The garage is behind the house, which creates a private courtyard. We have a pergola designed to serve as a sukkah and pervious pavers for the entire driveway. The front entrance makes a statement with three sets of steps in line with our French doors. The overall house design fits the style of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Jaffe: What was unique about your workforce?

Allen: We made every effort to employ Jewish subcontractors: Aardvark (electrician), Peyton Alexander (garage door, gutters and rain chain), Arts & Laminates’ Israel Peljovich (custom cabinets) and Trevor Jackson (Taj Mahal countertops). We used Black Tie Builders (Shimon Afrah and David Behdadnia) to implement the project, designed by Stephen Flanagan.

Steve Flanagan (architect): There are a number of unique elements to the home. The big idea was to create an architectural expression that both reflected the Lipises’ gracious personalities and was simultaneously a contemporary expression of Jewish traditions that are interwoven in their lives. One of the keys was having the

A entire roof float just above the walls on a thin band of clerestory glass, as a kippah similar to the one that lightly rests on a Jewish man’s head. Allen and Judy wanted a low-maintenance exterior, so I used a Jerusalem stone look, coupled with a lot of glass to blur the boundaries and allow light in and views out. The main idea was to create a courtyard, a space in between the house and the garage where Judy could garden and where the rest of the house could face as a precious jewel at the heart of their home.

Israel Peljovich: I used white maple throughout. The kitchen is unbelievable with self-closing cabinets, a unique spice rack and clever pop-ups, like the heavy mixer that Judy doesn’t have to bend over to lift.

Judy, who is an avid knitter, wanted a place to store her yarns. We designed a beehive matrix with hexagons that lines her study wall.

The master bedroom has a swiveling leather headboard and cabinets, a bookcase, nightstands and dressers

that were stained and lacquer-finished to match the floor.

Jaffe: Were there any snags along the way?

Judy: With windows at the roof, we needed a steel structure instead of wood to hold up the roof. Initially, the steel was not perfectly lined up, so several uprights had to be moved. We also didn’t know how much stone to buy and eventually had three deliveries of stone from Texas. In the end, after two years, three months, 22 days (but who’s counting?), we have a gorgeous home that we love and are thankful for the professionalism that the workers provided.

Jaffe: Your home was recently on the Hadassah Tour of Kitchens.

It is built to last and shine on as an example of modernity and practicality.

Allen: Building your own home can be an awesome challenge and a marvelous reward. I liked the process, but Judy preferred the result. ■

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HOME

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A: The welcoming foyer has a sparkling charcoal slate floor.

B: The house glows at night, showcasing three sets of steps in line with French doors in the Frank Lloyd Wright-style design.

C: The kitchen has custom cabinets made of Canadian maple and wood flooring composed of squares crosscut from Oregon trees to show the rings. Each square is unique.

D: Allen and Judy Lipis enjoy the harvest of their vegetable and herb garden.

E: The kitchen houses a separate wall where prayers can be placed, shadowing the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

F: The placement of the garage in back creates a private courtyard behind the house.

Architect Steve Flanagan says he used glass to allow maximum light and views.

G: The Lipis house has many sustainable features, including a geothermal system, special insulation and argon-filled glass.

H: The dining room hosts many holiday and Shabbat dinners. The stone, used inside and outside, is from Texas and is meant to be similar to Jerusalem stone.

I: The master bedroom has stained shelving and a swiveling leather headboard by Israel Peljovich.

J: Custom-lighted cases line the living room.

DECEMBER 22 â–Ş 2017

Photos by Stephen Flanagan, Studio One Architecture except where noted Photos D, E, J by Marcia Caller Jaffe

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OBITUARIES

Lee Bachman Atlanta, 88

Lee Gilner Bachman of Atlanta died Tuesday, Dec. 12, 2017, at the age of 88.

She was the daughter of Jennie Glazer Gilner and granddaughter of Morris and Annie Glazer. She graduated from Girls’ High School in Atlanta and attended the University of Tennessee. Lee married Gilbert Bachman in 1950, and they raised their five children in Atlanta. The couple moved to Boca Raton, Fla., after their children were grown. Lee was known for her sweet and kind nature. Her love and devotion to her family were beyond measure, and her proudest legacy is undoubtedly her children, 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, who will eternally cherish her memory and her loving and caring manner.

Lee is survived by her husband of 67 years, Gilbert Bachman; their children, Dr. David Bachman (Marjorie Rath) of Mount Pleasant, S.C., Jeff Bachman (Anne), Glenn Bachman and Carol Bachman-Dlin of Atlanta, and Barbara Bachman Barnes (Matthew) of Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.; and her grandchildren, Daniel Bachman, Mark Bachman, Kate Bachman, Laura Bachman Andrews, Jennifer Bachman Miller (Jonathan), Stuart Bachman Winborne (Blanton), Kathryn Bachman Cagle (Michael), Taylor Bachman, Reese Bachman, Yeshai Dlin (Sarah), Oren Dlin, Ronen Dlin and Raviv Dlin. She is also survived by great-grandchildren Brooklyn Andrews, Katherine Andrews, Whitley Cagle, Elliott Dlin, Laura Dlin, Charlie Miller, Gray Winborne and Parker Winborne.

Lee and Gil were members of Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Atlanta. Lee and Gil’s commitment and generosity benefited many charitable organizations.

Sign the online guestbook at dresslerjewishfunerals.com. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions in Lee’s memory be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, PO Box 96011, Washington, DC 20090-6011, www.alz.org, 800272-3900. A graveside service was held at Greenwood Cemetery on Friday, Dec. 15.

Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Herbert S. Goldstein

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

93, Marietta

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Herbert S. Goldstein, age 93, of Marietta died Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017 (10 Kislev 5778).

Services were held Thursday, Nov. 30, at Greenwood Cemetery with Rabbi Neil Sandler officiating.

Herbert S. Goldstein was born Dec. 1, 1923, in Marietta. He went to Keith Elementary School, then Waterman Elementary School, and he graduated from Marietta High School in 1943. He grew up in the family clothing business and opened his first store in 1938 at 15 East Park Square, Marietta, when he was 15.

After school, Herbert operated his store until it merged in 1941 with his father’s store, which he took over in 1946 when he returned from service after World War II. He also traveled around Georgia and Copper Hill, Tenn., wholesaling general merchandise to other stores with his brother Joe. During the war he served for 33 months in the Seabees, 113th Battalion, Company C, Platoon 5.

He married Mary Ellen Stewart of Statesboro on Jan. 31, 1954, at Ahavath Achim Synagogue on 10th Street in Atlanta. In 1953 he focused the family business and renamed it Goldstein’s Men’s and Boys’ Shop. It was incorporated in 1960. While in the retail business, he also invested in real estate, buying his first property around 1946. He was a large holder of property in downtown Marietta and renovated many buildings. Herbert last closed the family retail operation in January 2006. He also enjoyed traveling (taking the family on annual cruises starting in 1999), helping businesses around the square, and spending time with his eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was a Mason and a Shriner. He was a lifelong, active member of Ahavath Achim Synagogue.

Herbert was preceded in death by his parents, Philip and Rose Goldstein; brothers William Goldstein (wife Betty) and Joseph Goldstein (wife Francis); and sisters Dorothy Goldstein (husband Joe) and Sara Taitz (husband Manny). He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Mary; his daughters, Susan Goldstein and Paula Goldstein Shea; his sons, Jacob Goldstein and Philip M. Goldstein and Philip’s wife, Elise; eight grandchildren, Rachel Dodd (husband Eric), Joshua Avren (wife

OBITUARIES Meredith), Jonathan Avren, Nathan Shea (wife Sonja), Daniel Shea, Joseph Goldstein, David Goldstein and Matthew Goldstein; and six great-grandchildren, Amber Brooks, Donovan Brooks, Brooklyn Avren, Deacon Avren, Avren Dodd and William Dodd; his sister, Eleanor Cohen; and many nieces and nephews. Memorial donations may be made to the Ahavath Achim Synagogue Birthday Breakfast Fund, to the Dementia Society of America and/or to the American Cancer Society.

Mary Sturt 103, Dunwoody

Mary Greenberg Sturt, age 103, of Dunwoody died Sunday, Dec. 17, 2017.

She was born in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass., a small town north of Boston.

After completing a degree at Salem Teachers College, she moved to Washington, D.C., to live with her older sister and brother-in-law. She briefly did temp work as a secretary for the government, then held a job teaching business classes in public school for about 10 years.

After getting married, she helped her husband with his business for a number of years. She had one child and was married for almost 66 years. She was an avid reader, enjoyed playing bridge and tennis, and was a gourmet cook. Family was very important to her, and she went back to Massachusetts to visit every summer for almost 70 years. After her husband’s death in 2010, she moved to Atlanta to live with her daughter and son-in-law.

She is survived by her daughter, Lisa Sturt, son-in-law, Raymond Boorstin, and granddaughter, Abigail Boorstin Kirk.

Sign the online guestbook at dresslerjewishfunerals.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Weinstein Hospice (www.weinsteinhospice. com) or Congregation Beth Shalom (www.bethshalom.net). A graveside service was held Tuesday, Dec. 19, at North Atlanta Memorial Park in Dunwoody. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Robert Wender 85, Atlanta

Robert Cristol Wender, 85, a native of Atlanta, passed away peacefully Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2017.

He was born Aug. 21, 1932, to Freda and Max Wender, both of blessed memory. He was preceded in death by a son, Mitchel, and a brother, Donald.

Robert is survived by his loving wife of 58 years, Lorraine; a son, David; a daughter, Sheri Chambless (Pace); granddaughters Marnie and Frankie Chambless (Harold); grandson Liam; and brother Bill (Lois).

Sign the online guestbook at dresslerjewishfunerals.com. Graveside services were held Thursday, Dec. 7, at Greenwood Cemetery with Rabbi Neil Sandler officiating. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Ahavath Achim Synagogue, www.aasynagogue.org. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Harold Juter, 73, on Dec. 9.

Karen Kaufman, 59, of Milford, Conn., sister of Congregation Beth Shalom member Warren Hinds, on Dec. 11.

Samuel Malever, 89, of Ocala, Fla., father of Temple Sinai members Greg Malever and Allison Malever and of Joy Malever, on Dec. 10.

Leslie Myers on Dec. 1.

Lenora Norris, 66, of Atlanta, wife of Bill Norris and mother of Fay Ann Sherris and Josh Norris, on Dec. 8.

Susan Sikora, 76, of Dallas, Texas, husband of David Sikora and mother of Temple Sinai member Adam Sikora, Mitchell Sikora and Staci Sikora Oliff, on Dec. 7.

Albert Thumann, 75, husband of Adriana Thumann and father of Brian Thumann, on Dec. 10.

Benjamin Wertheimer, 95, of Atlanta, father of Mindy Wertheimer and Howard Wertheimer, on Dec. 15.

Obituaries in the AJT are written and paid for by the families; contact Associate Publisher Kaylene Ladinsky at kaylene@atljewishtimes.com or 404-883-2130, ext.

100, for details about submission, rates and payments. Death notices, which provide basic details, are free and run as space is available; send submissions to editor@ atljewishtimes.com.

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Death Notices

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ARTS

Rabbi Bortz’s Silence Leads to Self-Healing

By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com Rabbi Analia Bortz lost her voice while she took prescription painkillers after a running accident four years ago, and that experience led her on a journey of self-healing that she recounts in her new book, “The Voice of Silence.”

Doctors advised Rabbi Bortz, a physician herself, to have surgery, but she refused. Instead, she adopted experimental exercises and enrolled in a silent retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirt in Conyers.

Rabbi Bortz recalled entering the Catholic Trappist monastery exactly 20 years after she was ordained as the first female rabbi in Latin America and on the yahrzeit of her father.

The Congregation Or Hadash rabbi discovered the monastery online after searching for silent retreats in Georgia and deciding that Holy Spirit was the right fit for her because it served vegetarian food.

A running accident led Rabbi Analia Bortz down the path to writing “The Voice of Silence.

“I thought it would be a wonderful way to explore something new,” she said.

During her retreat Rabbi Bortz uncovered the meaning of silence, and she said she decided to write about what she learned. “It was an emotional, spiritual and sacred experience for me, and I wanted to capture every moment.”

Rabbi Bortz stopped writing for a while, but she realized that writing

could help heal her after her mother died two years ago. “I decided to share my journey to help people who are facing immobility or a difficult moment in their life.”

Everyone struggles with vulnerabilities, Rabbi Bortz said. “We sometimes mask ourselves when we cross a stage of life, which makes it difficult to express how we feel, but silence is not the absence of dialogue and can be filled with sounds.”

The title of her book relates to biblical characters and to men and women who have said a lot through their silence, Rabbi Bortz said. She also relates the title to the first dialogue between man and G-d, which is presented as an open question: Where are you?

“There are many answers to the question; however, the question also represents an open dialogue where one can physically be in one place but spiritually in another or at the same place both physically and emotionally,” she said.

Rose

Rabbi Bortz hopes that every reader will take something different from the book and that each chapter will speak to people in special ways.

“A lot of people have approached me and said they were in need to hear something like this from a rabbi or that reading the book finally allowed them to mourn,” she said. “Sometimes people have a lot of broken pieces in their heart and don’t know how to fix it, but it’s important to not skip any steps to overcome life’s challenges.” ■

The Voice of Silence

By Rabbi Analia Bortz Westbow, 130 pages, $11.99

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DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

Envision a World Of Goodness in Tevet

DECEMBER 22 ▪ 2017

Rosh Chodesh Tevet began Monday, Dec. 18. The month of Tevet is about rectifying our sight. The task is to correct our vision, align our perspective, and amend the way in which we look at things, both inwardly and outwardly, in equal measure. We are urged to wrestle with the evil eye.

The Hebrew letter this month is ayin, meaning eye. The letter looks like two eyes joined together at the base. There is an X-shaped structure formed at the point below the brain that is the optic chiasma. There the two optic nerves cross each other. It’s in this center that visual impulses are received and interpreted.

The two eyes of the letter aren’t symmetrical or aligned. What a metaphor for how our internal and external vision can be out of balance.

The world seems filled with violence, disregard for human life, and lack of integrity and honor, as if there’s a blindness to Hashem’s watchful presence.

We’re required to look inward at ourselves, our thoughts and our behaviors.

Do we stand in judgment, blame others, speak unkind words or spread the energy of gossip and hatred?

Then we look outward to others and the world. When we observe imbalances, negativity or injustice, do we turn a blind eye, or take some positive action? Do we feel powerless to change the world?

We must see our way through the fog.

Astrologically, this new moon arrives at what is called the galactic counterpoint. It’s a major transition point, a time of endings and completions of a five-year cycle.

Think about what you’ve focused on or wrestled with the past five years.

The pieces are about to fall into place.

This is the perfect time to look with one eye to the past and to understand ourselves through the lens of how we have met the challenges of the world, how we’ve responded to stress, how we have embraced or rejected love, and how much or little we have been inclusive of Hashem, our teachings and our traditions.

The other eye looks to the future, which is about to shift into high gear 30 when Saturn enters the sign of Capri-

corn in January. We’ve been moving toward change and stepping into the mission of our soul, the reason we are here on Earth at this time in these sets of circumstances.

As we look, as if with a magnify-

CROSSWORD

Dr. Terry Segal tsegal@atljewishtimes.com

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ing glass, we see the boundaries we must draw around ourselves. Who supports and encourages our lives and dreams, and who does not? Who may have served a major role in our lives yet has completed a connection with us, meaning it is time to part ways?

There is a vision of old systems and organizations crumbling, which brings the feeling that we have never been told the truth or that so much has been hidden from us.

It’s as if we’ve been stumbling around in the dark, and now suddenly the light switch has been flipped on.

It’s so bright, though, and we’re not used to it and want to squint and shut our eyes.

It’s going to take some time to adjust.

We mustn’t suffer from myopia going forward. That would result in a lack of creative vision, imagination and insight. It’s a nearsightedness that focuses only on the negativity of our world.

It’s our job to invalidate or nullify the evil eye and take its power away.

We can no longer pretend there is no evil at all or ignore it, and we must do our part to develop the eye that is focused on good. That’s where the inner vision of trusting ourselves, responding with grace, integrity, selfsupport and love, is vital. We look to Hashem to guide us.

Meditation focus: Quiet yourself and lift your eyes toward the heavens. Now imagine yourself up in an airplane, high above, as Hashem’s co-pilot, surveying all that’s below you.

See how the puzzle pieces fit, and notice which ones of yours are missing.

What needs to be reined in or diminished and what needs to be magnified? Observe your own good and evil eyes and develop a clear picture of your vision, corrected. ■

“Jews in the News”

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

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New Moon Meditations

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ACROSS 1. Cocoon covering 5. United hub, briefly 8. “The Simpsons” voice man Hank 14. Soothing ointment 15. Daughter of Zelophehad in the Bible 16. Mexican competitor of 10-Down 17. Breakout movie star of 2017 19. Kind of big balloon 20. The NHL Ducks, on scoreboards 21. Rapper Nissim often does them, essentially 23. Large “Blazing Saddles” character 24. In 2017 Mark Zuckerberg replaced him as the world’s richest Jew 26. Harbor high hopes 29. Domino’s or Big Apple output 30. This might be a frustrating one 31. Elizabeth who plays an Avenger (Scarlet Witch) 33. Home of “Homeland,” for short 36. Jew who made the most headlines in 2017, unfortunately 40. Visual palindrome 41. Blades of a windmill 42. Synonym for 40-Across 43. Wrestler Flair and musician Ocasek 44. Same old bar orders 46. Jew given a truly monumental task by his father-in-law in 2017 51. Clean, as a flash drive 52. Like MySpace 53. ___ Misérables, film with Sacha Baron Cohen

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56. Gomez sarcastically called a “college grad” by Joan Rivers 58. Broadway’s breakout star of 2017 60. Take off hockey skates 61. “Light” moshav outside Jerusalem 62. Establishment start?

63. Looks 64. Meas. for Jamie Geller or Susie Fishbein 65. 2017, e.g.

be 31. Admits 32. Stan celebrating his 95th on Dec. 28 33. Genesis creator?

34. Actor Jonah 35. Bills in America, but not Israel 37. Fingerprints or DNA 38. Chatter; slang 39. Many a summer option from BBYO and NCSY 43. Close again, as a Ziploc bag DOWN 44. Release a chin strap 1. “Star Wars,” e.g.

45. Ooze like honey 2. Israeli hero Ramon 46. The most famous Jew of 3. “Copacabana” girl all time 4. HE’BREW 47. “___ you a little short for 5. Make like the Jewish a storm trooper?” (Carrie people Fisher) 6. Potential beau 48. Exchange between Sela 7. Like a shabby Shabbat and Nadal shirt 49. Shoe like a clog 8. Brother, in Israel 50. Sophs. and jrs.

9. Attachment for closeups 53. Lois created by Jerry 10. Stella ___ Siegel 11. Brownish horses 54. James of jazz 12. “Hello. My name is ___ 55. Mix (the chicken soup) Montoya. You killed my father. 57. Two-time loser to D.D.E. Prepare to die.”

59. Not ordained 13. Brother of Miriam 18. Month with a megillah LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION reading S T R U T M F A C I D E R 22. Blood P I A N O A R M A D O R E poisoning R A C H M O N E S T I M E D 24. “Ray A R E B A G S B E N Donovan” actor Y A R D K O H E N G A D O L Schreiber I F I L A O A G E A G R E A T M I R A C L E 25. Legal claim T R U E L E S I F H E on a property H A P P E N E D T H E R E 26. Need I V E Z I P E S E aspirin, maybe V I L D E C H A Y A E Y I N 27. Kill like I R E M A T S A N A Samson R E H A B C U R S E S H A M A R E N A U S O A L O N E 28. What a H A D A G D E N M O O E D sacrifice must 1

2

3

4

5

6

14 17

8

9

11

12

13

26

27

28

29

32

33

53

54

19

21

23

24 30

22

25

31

34

35

38

36

37

39

41

40

42

44

43

45

47

60

61

10

16

18

20

59

7

15

46

48

49

55

56

50

51

57

62

58

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

52

31

DECEMBER 22 â–ª 2017

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DECEMBER 22 â–ª 2017