Atlanta Jewish Times, Vol. XCII No. 43, November 3, 2017 by Atlanta Jewish Times

FINANCE, PAGES 17-21 RIGHT SIZE

Ameris Bank has grown into the third-biggest bank with HQ in Georgia. Page 17

VOL. XCII NO. 43

RIGHT GUY

Birthright’s biggest Atlanta booster, Doug Ross, is being honored for his work. Page 18

RIGHT PLACE

Aprio CEO Richard Kopelman buys bonds to express his lifelong love of Israel. Page 20

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AJC Honoree: Don’t Ignore Those Without Hope Larry Gellerstedt III received American Jewish Committee’s National Human Relations Award for the example he has provided Atlanta of a business leader working for the civic good, but people left his honor dinner Monday night, Oct. 30, talking about the history lessons he applied to an America forgetting how to engage in civil discourse. AJC Atlanta gathered more than 500 people at the Loews Atlanta Hotel in Midtown to recognize the Cousins Properties CEO and chairman, who with his current company and with his family’s former business, Beers Construction, played a part in building, owning and/or managing corporate headquarters, iconic skyscrapers, and Turner Field, the Georgia Dome and Philips Arena. He has been in Atlanta commercial real estate so long, Woodruff Foundation President Russell Hardin joked, that some of his buildings are being torn down and replaced. He helped bring together Scottish Rite and Egleston to form Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and has served and often led many Atlanta boards and institutions. United Distributors CEO Doug Hertz, a lifelong friend, said Gellerstedt makes a habit of doing the right thing, from pushing the Westminster Schools a quarter-century ago to allow non-Christians to work as faculty and serve on the board to persuading state lawmakers to

Photos by Michael Jacobs

Larry Gellerstedt III (right) accepts the AJC National Human Relations Award from last year’s winner, Jim Hannan, an executive vice president with Koch Industries.

oppose religious liberty legislation that could be used to shield discrimination. His National Human Relations Award Dinner raised more money for AJC than any of its 42 annual predecessors, AJC Atlanta President Melanie Nelkin said, and he became the first secondgeneration winner 27 years after his mother, Mary, received the award. In accepting the honor, Gellerstedt said he is an avid student of history, reading all he could find for decades on Europe from just before World War I until the start of World War II to understand “how a developed, relatively well-educated, Western nation could allow a failed artist to take them and ultimately the

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United Distributors CEO Doug Hertz says the honoree is motivated by a desire to do the right thing.

world hostage.” He doesn’t have the answer, but Gellerstedt said two essential factors stand out. First, a significant portion of the population must have given up hope for a better life. Second, when prejudice emerges as a quick answer for such hopelessness, it spreads unchecked. The Nazis preached hate, and they weren’t “called out in a vacuum of hope.” “By the time those that could call it out got the courage to call it out, it was too late, and the world paid a price,” Gellerstedt said. He assured the audience that he was not comparing the United States to Nazi Germany, but he warned that a loss of

INSIDE Candle Lighting �� 4 Israel News ��6 Opinion ��10 Politics ��12 Education �� 27 Arts ��32 Obituaries ��34 Marketplace ��36 Crossword ��38

hope and continuing complacency could make hate groups tough to confront in five or 10 years. Americans must pay attention now to a population expressing hate and prejudice “because they’ve lost hope,” Gellerstedt said. “Just screaming back doesn’t provide a ladder of hope. But solutions require time, and time when you’re in despair is very hard to trust.” Just as important, he said, “we have to fight the forces that want to offer hate and prejudice as a solution to the pain. So we have to pay attention to the pain, but we also have to have the courage to call things out that aren’t comfortable in our daily lives to call out.” ■

TIME TO VOTE

See what Atlanta mayoral candidates had to say about issues of race and equality at Ahavath Achim, and check out some of the Jewish candidates on municipal ballots Nov. 7. Pages 12-14

NOVEMBER 3 â&#x2013;ª 2017

MA TOVU

Fighting the Myth Of the Perfect Child I am often asked to explain how we can be expected to emulate individuals whose behavior was not as we might hope. The ancient rabbinic literature went to great lengths to explain away the imperfections; I see things differ-

Taking Root By Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder rabbiruth@gmail.com

ently. I see the flaws of our forefathers and mothers as a reminder that in the Jewish view of the world our mistakes need not define us completely, that we can be open about our failures, that we can learn from our challenges to move forward on another path. The vision of perfection, in Judaism, is attainable only by G-d. And to imagine our children as G-d-like in this regard is to do them a disservice. It is to set them up for a lifetime of disappointment when reality fails, as it so often does, to live up to the hype. Moreover, children who know themselves to be less than perfect in a world of perfect may feel themselves less worthy or valued. When teens are told — implicitly or explicitly — to hide their imperfections, it can make them shy to reach out and find the help or support they need. As I watch my daughter and her friends slog through the expectations of the college application process, I wish for more space not only for the messiness of life, but also for the process of learning and growth. One of her junior classmates was recently lamenting how the adults had stopped asking about class content or personal interests and were focusing exclusively on college hopes and dreams. I am not naive enough to think I can challenge the broader educational system or the impact of social media. But I will keep telling the stories of ancient, imperfect heroes as well as my own challenges. Because outside the constructed world of Facebook and the Common App, there is no such thing as the perfect child. ■

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

The complications of the social media era have recently taken on new meaning for me because my daughter is now a junior in high school and thinking about college, and plans for college mean taking the falsely perfect world of Facebook to a whole new level. On Facebook all children are perfect. Parents and grandparents post photos of smiling kids with rarely a hair out of place or a stain on a shirt. There are school plays, basketball games won, proms and driver’s licenses. There are not meltdowns about having to practice lines, the winless team, parties to which one was not invited, broken hearts or underage hangovers. As in Garrison Keillor’s fictional land of Lake Wobegon, on Facebook all the children are above average. In many ways, learning to navigate the highly curated, filtered and staged world of social media is the perfect training for applying for college. After all, what is a college essay or résumé other than a highly curated and filtered version of a life staged for an admissions officer to read? And while I understand the need to present one’s best self when applying for college, as these two elements of modern teen life come together, they promote with fierce power a vision of adulthood in which perfection is desirable and possible. And that worries me greatly. I believe in excellence. I believe in putting in effort. But excellence is not the same as perfection, and even the best effort won’t allow a person to sidestep errors. Not only are they inevitable, but they are essential to the very process of learning and growing that college represents and are in many ways the hallmark of a life lived fully. Taking away the room to flail or fail means taking away the exploration that may be the key to unlocking the next big step or possibility. The heroes of Jewish tradition were all flawed individuals. Abraham trusted in G-d but at times to a fault. Moses had an anger management problem. Miriam could be a bit sharptongued.

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Contributors This Week ARLENE APPELROUTH PAULA BAROFF YONI GLATT JORDAN GORFINKEL LEAH R. HARRISON KEVIN C. MADIGAN LOGAN C. RITCHIE CADY SCHULMAN TERRY SEGAL RACHEL STEIN RICH WALTER PATRICE WORTHY MCKENZIE WREN

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COMMUNITY LIAISON

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.

THURSDAY, NOV. 2

Anti-Semitism briefing. The Anti-Defamation League holds its Community of Respect Briefing and Reception with the presentation of the Abe Goldstein Human Relations Award to Marist School teacher Brendan Murphy and a discussion among keynote speaker Rabbi Francine Roston of Whitefish, Mont., GBI Director Vernon Keenan and ADL Regional Director Allison Padilla-Goodman at 7 p.m. at the St. Regis Hotel, 88 W. Paces Ferry Road, Buckhead. Minimum donation of $100 to the ADL annual campaign; atlanta.adl. org/cor2017/register or 404-262-3470.

FRIDAY, NOV. 3

Shabbat 360. YJP Intown Atlanta, Birthright Israel Alumni Atlanta Network, Ahavath Achim Synagogue, OneTable, Marcus JCC Young Adults and The Temple hold a young-adult Shabbat dinner, starting with happy hour at 6:30 p.m., at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., Midtown. Tickets are $40; www. facebook.com/events/115545315802412.

SATURDAY, NOV. 4

Book Festival. It opens with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer at 8:15 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets, including a copy of “The Court and the World,” are $30 for JCC members, $35 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival.

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NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

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MOMProm. Jewish Moms of Atlanta holds a ladies-only gala to benefit the Jewish Fertility Foundation at 8:30 p.m.

CANDLE-LIGHTING TIMES

Vayeira Friday, Nov. 3, light candles at 6:25 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4, Shabbat ends at 7:20 p.m. Chaye Sarah Friday, Nov. 10, light candles at 5:19 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, Shabbat ends at 6:15 p.m.

Corrections & Clarifications

Sam Olens and his family moved to New Jersey to live with an aunt and uncle after his mother died when he was 5. An Oct. 27 column about Olens was incorrect about the chronology. at Spring Hall, 7130 Buford Highway, Doraville. Tickets are $50 in advance, $60 at the door; momprom2017.com.

SUNDAY, NOV. 5

Being a mensch. Rabbi Isser Dovid Silverman speaks about what Jewish tradition says about being an ethical, moral person at 10 a.m. at the Cobb Jewish Academy at Chabad of Cobb, 4450 Lower Roswell Road, East Cobb. Admission is $10; www.cobbjewishacademy.org. Balfour Declaration. The Center for Israel Education’s Rich Walter speaks about the British declaration’s centennial at 10 a.m. at the monthly Men’s Club brunch at Congregation Beth Shalom, 5303 Winters Chapel Road, Dunwoody. The cost is $7; 770-399-5300 or www.bethshalomatlanta.org. Book Festival. Glenn Frankel speaks about “High Noon” at noon at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc. org/bookfestival. Listening forum. The Jewish Federation holds a Front Porch forum on the needs in Jewish Atlanta at 1 p.m. at Temple Beth Tikvah, 9955 Coleman Road, Roswell. Free; the-front-porch@ jewishatlanta.org or 404-870-1617.

Art afternoon. Young couples spend an afternoon at the High Museum, 1280 Peachtree St., Midtown, and have drinks and appetizers nearby with the Marcus JCC. Admission is $60 per couple; www.atlantajcc.org or 678-8123972 (Stacie Graff). Book Festival. Gail Saltz (“The Power of Different”) and Dylan Dickson (“Why Can’t I Read?”) speak at 3 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc. org/bookfestival. Marriage advice. New York marriage coach Devorah Kigel speaks to women on “Making a Good Marriage Great” at 3:30 p.m. at the Wheatley home, 5273 Glenridge Drive, Sandy Springs. Admission is $15; www.devorahkigel.com. Poker night. Congregation Beth Shalom, 5303 Winters Chapel Road, Dunwoody, holds a Texas hold’em tournament, including beer, soft drinks and snacks for players. Entry is a $20 donation; capitalcitymgt@gmail.com or 770-597-2066 (Steve Kaufman). Book Festival. Walter Isaacson speaks about “Leonardo da Vinci” at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $18 for

Send items for the calendar to submissions@atljewishtimes.com. Find more events at atlantajewishtimes.com/events-calendar.

Remember When

10 Years Ago Nov. 2, 2007 ■ Ramah Darom has appointed Geoffrey Menkowitz as the director of Camp Ramah Darom, replacing the founding director, Rabbi Loren Sykes, who left at the end of September after 11 years. Menkowitz served as the camp’s assistant director from 2002 to 2004 and most recently led Hillel’s Joseph Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Learning. ■ Daryl and Kim Dollinger of Dunwoody announce the birth of a son, Nathan Law, on June 30, 2007. 25 Years Ago Oct. 30, 1992 ■ The first Atlanta Reform Workshop on Social Action, to be held Sunday, Nov. 1, at The Temple, is an effort by the

local Reform congregations to attract new blood to address such new social issues as AIDS, hunger and homelessness. “Fortunately, we don’t have to worry about Soviet Jewry anymore or Ethiopian Jewry,” said a Temple Sinai member. ■ The bat mitzvah celebration of Elise Diane Moore of Atlanta, daughter of Jim and Faye “Jimi” Moore, took place at 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24, at Ahavath Achim Synagogue. 50 Years Ago Nov. 3, 1967 ■ The largest group of American Jewish communal leaders in the history of the United Jewish Appeal, nearly 550 men and women from 80 cities, has returned from the UJA’s 13th annual study mission to Israel. The Atlanta delegation included Dr. and Mrs. Marvin Goldstein, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cuba, Mr. and Mrs. Max London, Mr. and Mrs. Robert Rothberg, Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Lipson, Mrs. Harry Sunshine, Sam Rothberg, and Max Kuniansky.

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CALENDAR

MONDAY, NOV. 6

Book Festival. Adam Piore (“The Body Builders”) and Bonnie Richman (“The Gene Machine”) speak at noon at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc. org/bookfestival. Book Festival. Steve Dorff (“I Wrote That One, Too”) speaks and performs some music at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $15 for JCC members, $20 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/ bookfestival.

TUESDAY, NOV. 7

Book Festival. Jamie Brenner (“The Forever Summer”) and Marilyn Simon Rothstein (“Lift and Separate”) speak at noon at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www. atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Book Festival. Harry Maziar (“Story Selling”) speaks with Marcus JCC CEO Jared Powers at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Free; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Rothschild Memorial Lecture. Northeastern University’s Dov Waxman speaks on “American Jews and Israel: From Consensus to Conflict” in the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies lecture at 7:30 p.m. at the Oxford Presentation Auditorium, 311 Oxford Road Building, 1390 Oxford Road, Emory University. Free; www.js.emory.edu. Painting for women. Chabad of North Fulton, 10180 Jones Bridge Road, Alpharetta, hosts a women’s night out with painting at 8 p.m. Admission is $20 (RSVP by Nov. 3); www.chabadnf. org or 770-410-9000.

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 8

Mommy & Me/Babyccino. Chabad of North Fulton, 10180 Jones Bridge Road, Alpharetta, holds a class for children up to 2½ years old and their mothers at 10:30 a.m. Free (registration required); hs@chabadnf.com or 770-410-9000. Book Festival. Lisa Lillien (“Hungry Girl Clean & Hungry Obsessed!”) speaks at noon at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $15 for JCC members, $20 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Listening forum. The Jewish Federa-

tion holds an open forum on the needs in Jewish Atlanta as part of its Front Porch initiative at 6:30 p.m. at a private home in Johns Creek. Free; RSVP to thefront-porch@jewishatlanta.org or 404870-1617 for the address. Book Festival. Jeff Rossen (“Rossen to the Rescue”) speaks at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $15 for JCC members, $20 for others; www.atlantajcc. org/bookfestival.

THURSDAY, NOV. 9

Book Festival. Buckhead Coalition President Sam Massell and his authorized biographer, Charles McNair (“Play It Again, Sam”), speak at 10 a.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Free; www.atlantajcc.org/ bookfestival. Book Festival. Patricia Bernstein (“Ten Dollars to Hate”) speaks at 12:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Israel Bonds dinner. Rabbi Daniel Gordis is the speaker as Israel Bonds Atlanta honors Richard Kopelman with the Star of David Award at 6 p.m. at the InterContinental Buckhead, 3315 Peachtree Road. Tickets are $160 (people 35 and younger may invest $54 in bonds instead); conta.cc/2xgkCJW.

SATURDAY, NOV. 11

Book Festival. Reza Aslan (“G-d: A Human History”) speaks at 8 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $18 for JCC members, $25 for others; www.atlantajcc. org/bookfestival.

SUNDAY, NOV. 12

Book Festival. Steven J. Ross (“Hitler in Los Angeles”) and Peter Eisner (“Mac Arthur’s Spies”) speak at noon at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc. org/bookfestival. Book Festival. Michael Bar-Zohar (“Phoenix”) speaks about Shimon Peres at 3:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Film screening. Congregation Beth Shalom, 5303 Winters Chapel Road, Dunwoody, shows “No Place on Earth,” about Jews who hid in caves, at 7 p.m. Free (RSVP by Nov. 9); bethshalomatlanta.org/mini-movie-festival. Book Festival. Sarge (“Black Boychik”)

speaks at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $15 for JCC members, $20 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival.

MONDAY, NOV. 13

Book Festival. Pamela Sampson and Holocaust survivor Henry Gallant (“No Reply”) speak at 10 a.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Free; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Book Festival. Pam Jenoff (“The Orphan’s Tale”) and Mark Sullivan (“Beneath a Scarlet Sky”) speak at 12:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www. atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Art after school. The Jewish Arts Zone for kindergartners through fifth-graders meets at 4:30 p.m. at Chabad of North Fulton, 10180 Jones Bridge Road, Alpharetta. Admission is $10; www. chabadnf.org/jaz or 770-410-9000. Book Festival. Joy Mangano speaks at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $18 for JCC members, $25 for others; www. atlantajcc.org/bookfestival.

Kristallnacht commemoration. Alexandra Zapruder is the featured speaker at the annual program at the Besser Holocaust Memorial Garden at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Free; www.atlantajcc.org. Book Festival. Alexandra Zapruder (“Twenty-Six Seconds”) speaks at 7:30 p.m. at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $15 for JCC members, $20 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival.

FRIDAY, NOV. 10

Book Festival. Marie Benedict (“The Other Einstein”) and Jane Healey (“The Saturday Evening Girls Club”) speak at noon at the Marcus JCC, 5342 Tilly Mill Road, Dunwoody. Tickets are $10 for JCC members, $15 for others; www.atlantajcc.org/bookfestival. Shabbat and beer. The Marcus JCC’s Young Adults group gathers at Sweetwater Brewery, 195 Ottley Drive, Buckhead, for Shabbat Shabrew at 8 p.m. Admission is $30; www.atlantajcc.org or 678-812-3972.

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

JCC members, $25 for others; www. atlantajcc.org/bookfestival.

ISRAEL NEWS

Israel Pride: Good News From Our Jewish Home Fewer heart disease deaths. Israel has seen a 50 percent decrease in mortality from heart disease the past 15 years. In 2000, 20 percent of patients died within one month of their first heart attack. In 2016 it was just 7.5 percent. Folding car. A new vision for urban transportation was set to be unveiled at the fifth annual International Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Summit, held Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, in Tel Aviv. The made-inIsrael City Transformer is an electric smart car whose wheelbase folds in at the push of a button to fit into a motorcycle parking space. City Transformer is touted as the first vehicle of its kind. With the wheelbase folded in, the basic two-seat vehicle shrinks from about 5 feet to 3.2 feet wide. The 7.7-foot length matches a motorcycle parking spot. The car will be engineered to go up to 56 mph in drive mode and about 30 mph in parking mode as the narrowed car is maneuvering into a spot.

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Autonomous highway. Israel has opened a 1.5-kilometer (0.9 mile) stretch of Road 531 north of Herzliya for two months exclusively for five companies to test their technology for autonomous cars. The five companies are Nexar, which has developed a dashboard camera app connected to the cloud that provides warnings; General Motors Israel, which is trying out the autonomous car it has developed; Mobileye, recently acquired by Intel, which is testing several innovations; Innoviz, which is experimenting with its LiDAR remote sensing solutions; and Argus Cyber Security, which is testing anti-hacking measures.

Fast lane to autonomous driving. Rehovot-based Cognata has developed a deep learning simulation engine to enable manufacturers of autonomous cars to test thousands of scenarios based on various geographic locations and driver behaviors, including sharing the road with other users. The virtual test drives with Cognata can save years of testing and validation. The world’s top doc. Israel Medical Association Chairman Leonid Eidelman has been elected the president of the World Medical Association, an umbrella body representing national medical associations, with more than 9 million members around the world.

DNA bridge wins award. Be’er Sheva’s High-Tech Park Bridge was the winner in the long span category of the triannual Footbridge Awards at the Footbridge 2017 conference in Berlin. The 80-yard bridge, in the shape of a double helix, is also known as the DNA or spectacles bridge. Another unicorn. Herzliya-based SolarEdge Technologies, the world’s largest provider of solar power optimization units, has celebrated a financial milestone. The company has tripled its stock value in less than a year, and with a valuation of $1.2 billion, it joins Israel’s growing number of unicorn companies (worth over $1 billion). Amazon R&D centers. Online shopping giant Amazon plans to set up research and development centers with 100 staffers in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Amazon wants to improve its Alexa Voice Shopping system, which allows shoppers to speak their orders into a machine rather than type them into a computer. Amazon is seeking scientists, developers, engineers and production managers for the new locations. Victories on and off the mat. Tal Flicker won a gold medal in the 145-pound class at the Abu Dhabi Grand Slam judo tournament Thursday, Oct. 26, as Israel continues to show its world-class strength in the sport. But because Israeli symbols are banned in the Arab emirate and the tournament organizers refused to play “Hatikvah,” Flicker had to sing the Israeli anthem himself while standing on the gold-medal stand under an International Judo Federation flag. United Arab Emirates officials apologized after the tournament for UAE athletes’ refusal to shake hands with Israelis. The talk of the town. Chrissie Hynde opened The Pretenders’ Tel Aviv gig by waving a giant Israeli flag and ended it by declaring the crowd to be “the best audience in the world.” After a nearly two-hour show at a packed Menora Mivtachim arena, Hynde had an even bigger compliment for Israel. A vegetarian and veteran animal rights activist, she pronounced the state to be one of the world’s leaders in animal rights. Compiled courtesy of verygoodnewsisrael. blogspot.com, timesofisrael.com, globes. co.il and other sources.

ISRAEL NEWS

Today in Israeli History

Items provided by the Center for Israel Education (www.israeled.org), where you can find more details. Nov. 3, 1878: Petah Tikvah, whose name means Gateway of Hope and which today is Israel’s fifth-largest city, is established by a group of religious Jews wishing to leave Jerusalem and establish an agricultural moshav. Nov. 4, 1995: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, a prominent actor in virtually all of Israel’s modern history, is assassinated by Yigal Amir after a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Nov. 5, 1933: In a speech marking the opening of the 1933-34 academic year, Judah Magnes, the president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, outlines an expansion plan for the university. His plan includes the creation

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Maccabi Tel Aviv plays American all-stars at Yankee Stadium during an 11-game U.S. tour in 1936.

of 14 positions to accommodate Jewish professors ousted by Nazi-led Germany. Nov. 6, 1884: Delegates convene in Katowice (now in southern Poland) for the first gathering of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. The conference pledges to support settlement of the land of Israel. Nov. 7, 1944: Hannah Senesh (Szenes), a poet and Haganah fighter who parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe to rescue Jews and was captured in June, is executed by a Hungarian firing squad in a Budapest prison courtyard after months of torture. Nov. 8, 1936: Playing the final match of an 11-game American tour, Maccabi Tel Aviv FC loses 4-1 to an American all-star team at Yankee Stadium in front of 20,000 spectators. The tour raised money for Polish Jews. Nov. 9, 1952: Chaim Weizmann, a leader of the Zionist movement and the first president of the modern state of Israel, dies at his home in Rehovot after a yearlong illness.

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ISRAEL NEWS

Atlanta Celebrated Balfour Declaration in 1917 Nov. 2 marks the centennial of the Balfour Declaration, the British document that, for the first time in modern history, promised the Jewish people a homeland in Eretz Yisrael — then known as Palestine. What did world Jewry do when this letter from Sir Arthur Balfour to Lionel Rothschild became public? There were so many events connected with that moment, but an Atlanta story should be remembered. Living in Atlanta after arriving from Jerusalem in 1915 was Abraham Amato, a Sephardic Jew born on Rhodes. He had spent almost 15 years in Jerusalem, where he married and had two children. When the crisis of World War I arrived, Amato was able to leave Jerusalem because he had a foreign passport. He joined family in Atlanta. His Jerusalem-born wife and children did not have foreign passports. Amato thought he could quickly arrange for them to come to Atlanta. But when fighting broke out in the Middle East, that was not possible. In Jerusalem the Jews suffered greatly from lack of food.

The American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, arranged for a ship to take American Jews out of the war zone and secretly transferred money sent from the United States to the American consul in Jerusalem, who distributed it to the local Jews, who were suffering terribly.

Guest Column By Rabbi David Geffen

Before returning to Amato in Atlanta, we need to understand how the Balfour Declaration came into being. Chaim Weizmann lived in England and was a leading Zionist figure in the years after Theodor Herzl’s death in 1904. He also was a scientist who developed a process for producing the acetone needed for explosives. There are other reasons why Weizmann was so well liked in England, but acetone seems the most important. The discussion in the British Cabinet about proclaiming a Jewish homeland began in the spring of 1917. As Gen. Edmund Allenby led British

troops to victory after victory against the Turks, British leaders felt that the fall of Palestine would be the perfect time to proclaim a Jewish homeland. British Foreign There were Secretary Arthur Balfour Cabinet members who opposed such an act, however, because of Britain’s friendship with the Arabs. Recently, Rabbi Stuart Geller of Jerusalem again pointed out the importance of Justice Louis Brandeis in this process. Weizmann sent him a draft of the declaration, and the justice made a few suggestions. Brandeis’ key role, however, was convincing President Woodrow Wilson that such a declaration should be issued. When Wilson was in England in the fall of 1917, he suggested that it was time for the British to make a statement about the Jewish presence.

The British agreed, and on Nov. 2, 1917, the document was made public. In Atlanta, a communitywide celebration was held at the Jewish Educational Alliance. The rabbis from Ahavath Achim Synagogue and Congregation Shearith Israel participated. Amato was still waiting. After significant battle victories, including the capture of Be’er Sheva by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on Oct. 31, Allenby walked into Jerusalem on Dec. 11, 1917, to show respect for this special metropolis. On the front page of the Atlanta Constitution the next day was a story about how Amato could now bring his family to Atlanta. It took a few years to get visas. When the family arrived, Congregation Or VeShalom held a celebration. The son, David Amato, rose to become an American consul in Mexico. The Balfour Declaration and the Allenby victory gave the Amatos their chance for American freedom. ■

Text of the Declaration His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

Tensions Rise Over Women in Public Spaces

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

On Wednesday, Oct. 25, unusual vandalism took place in Jerusalem. On a large banner ad that displayed the cast of the popular Israeli satire “Eretz Nehederet,” all the female cast members’ faces had been torn off. What the deputy mayor of Jerusalem called the work of extremist Jews represents a greater tension. For decades, ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel have loudly protested secular definitions of how males and females should act and be seen in public. In the late 1950s, when secular, socialist values dominated Israeli culture and society, ultra-Orthodox dissent over men and women sharing public spaces was prominent. In a famous case, the ultra-Orthodox community protested a public swimming pool in Jerusalem that allowed men and women to swim together. The rabbinate removed kosher seals from hotels owned by the pool’s builders, and massive protest marches were staged in Jerusalem. 8 In an early solution to the loud

minority’s views, the pool was sold to kibbutzim associated with the Histadrut (Israeli labor federation).

Guest Column By Eli Sperling

As time passed and the ultraOrthodox community in Israel grew (today roughly 11 percent of Israel’s population), tensions over this issue increased. Ultra-Orthodox groups in Jerusalem and surrounding communities became more boisterously opposed to secular understandings of women in public spaces. In a 2011 case, Naama Margolese, an 8-year-old Modern Orthodox girl,

was regularly berated in the streets of her town, Beit Shemesh. According to reports, ultra-Orthodox men would spit on her and call her a prostitute because her modest dress did not align with their stricter standards of modesty for women and girls. Naama’s story highlighted religious conflicts in certain sections of Beit Shemesh; the story sparked widespread outrage. These conflicts included signs asking women to dress modestly and walk on the other side of the street from certain synagogues, and a movement to separate men and women on public transit was born. Religious frictions in Beit Shemesh are emblematic of an increase of such cases throughout Israel. According to Israel’s National Economic Council, the ultra-Orthodox population will increase to 20 percent

Further Reading • www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/world/middleeast/israeli-girl-at-center-of-tensionover-religious-extremism.html. • www.jta.org/1958/07/21/archive/disputed-jerusalem-swimming-pool-for-mixedbathing-sold-to-kibbutzim. • www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.819240.

Photo by Oliver Fitoussi

The faces of the female cast members of the TV show “Eretz Nehederet” are vandalized in Jerusalem.

the next 20 years. The strains between this population and the rest of Israeli society will inevitably increase. As virulent tension between the ultra-Orthodox and the rest of Israeli society rises, it is imperative for Israelis of all religious stripes to narrow the secular-religious divide. It threatens the societal fabric of the Jewish state more than the 1950s’ feared but unrealized divide between Jews of Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern origins. ■ Eli Sperling is the Israel specialist and assistant program coordinator for the Center for Israel Education (www. israeled.org).

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Handling Hate

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

The white supremacists, white nationalists, neoNazis, Klansmen and others who gather for White Lives Matters demonstrations had their biggest day since the August violence in Charlottesville when they gathered Saturday, Oct. 28, in middle Tennessee — and, quite simply, they failed. The estimated 200 who turned out for a midday rally in Shelbyville — roughly a four-hour drive from Stone Mountain, where the Klan was reborn in 1915 — represented the largest white supremacist demonstration since Charlottesville, according to the AntiDefamation League. But they faced at least twice as many counterprotesters, who made clever use of loudspeakers broadcasting such classics as Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech to drown out whatever was being said at the rally across the street. The numbers were even more lopsided in the day’s second rally site, Mufreesboro, where The Tennessean counted no more than 15 white supremacists at any time before organizers canceled the rally. Between 800 and 1,000 counterprotesters were there to greet them, according to city officials, who screened everyone trying to attend either rally in Murfreesboro’s central square. Such security measures at both sites — screening for weapons and other banned items, establishing separate gathering areas for each side and maintaining the space between them — prevented both the haters and the haters of the haters from sparking the violence and chaos too many extremists seem to thrive on. Both sides got to express their views, no matter how unpleasant, and both sides had the chance to hear the opposing viewpoint, no matter how loud and angry. But no one was hurt at the rallies, and the only arrest was a young counterprotester in Shelbyville who was a little too determined to take his message into the midst of the other side. As near as we can tell, the police and municipal officials in both Tennessee cities were the stars of the day, demonstrating how to handle the nuisance of a rally for hate without an escalation from words to violence and without abridging people’s rights to assemble and speak. The people of middle Tennessee also deserve praise for making it clear that the hatemongers were not wanted without descending to their level. As a result, the White Lives Matter demonstrators were exposed as people with little to say. They don’t rally to attempt meaningful dialogue or persuasive arguments. They’re looking for a fight — either a physical one, as happened in Charlottesville, or a legal one, giving them the chance to play the victims and claim oppression if their First Amendment rights are in any way abridged. Force them to use their words and their mental reservoirs soon run dry, leaving them nothing to do but go home. We’re sure more of these rallies will be staged, perhaps here in Georgia, but Shelbyville and Murfreesboro show that we have nothing to be afraid of. Let the prophets of hate step into the light and expose themselves, and the rest of us can enjoy the show 10 from a safe distance when they slither away. ■

Cartoon by Bob Englehart, CagleCartoons.com

Where Education Falls Short about the incidents of harassment and anti-SemiEducation is the key to fighting anti-Semitism tism involving a range of age groups at public and and other forms of discriminatory hate. private schools in the Atlanta area. The culprits were That’s what we’re always told, and that was one young, but they probably couldn’t remember a time of the takeaway messages from the annual Catholicwhen they didn’t know and learn with Jews. Jewish event held by American Jewish Committee I kept thinking of Richard Spencer, the white and the Archdiocese of Atlanta on Thursday night, separatist and supremacist who loves to chase Oct. 26, complete with an appropriate quotation headlines by holding lectures at public universities from Martin Luther King Jr. to indicate the wisdom around the nation. Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared of this common bit of wisdom. a state of emergency when The heart of the Spencer recently spoke at “Repairing the World: Unthe University of Florida, derstanding Our Shared Editor’s Notebook and his next target appears Responsibility” event at to be the University of CinThe Temple was a discusBy Michael Jacobs cinnati (although not until sion period within each mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com after the Southern Jewish table. Sure enough, educaHistorical Society holds its tion was touted as one of annual meeting in the city the key cures for prejudice Nov. 3 to 5). and hate during the talk among the four Jews and Spencer’s education includes the University of four Catholics at my table. Virginia, the University of Chicago and Duke UniHate melts away once people get to know each versity, and he has lived and studied among many other. It’s ignorance — the kind that allows some people different from him. For him, familiarity Christians to grow up believing that Jews have horns might not have bred contempt, but it certainly did and that prevents some Jews from recognizing that Catholics, Lutherans and Southern Baptists don’t see not give birth to tolerance. There’s no way to know how many Richard themselves as generic “Christians” who all get along — that leads people to rally under Klan and neo-Nazi Spencers — people who seem immune to educational eye-opening — exist among the groups and banners and attack people with any differences. individuals obsessed with hating others, but it’s wise In some cases, of course, that’s true. People in to assume he’s not unique. For them, getting to know rural areas who have never met a Catholic, let alone us doesn’t solve anything. a Jew or a Muslim, can allow their imaginations to That mystery is at the root of my frustration run wild with all the worst stereotypes and wind up with the annual Catholic-Jewish event, held in the convinced that the unknown others are dangerous spirit of Nostra Aetate (the Vatican document in 1965 and worthy of hate. that cleared the way for Catholic acceptance of Jews), For such people, those with some degree of and with other interfaith events. They’re wonderisolation and homogeneity in their surroundings, ful opportunities for learning, for dialogue, for education could indeed be the best medicine for the confronting society’s ills and for feeling good about disease of hatred. “Look, no horns here, and don’t ourselves for doing something. believe what you hear about weekly meetings of the But if education or familiarity is the key weapon global Jewish cabal. Our Control the World Media against hate, how do we wield it? How do we reach Committee gets together only once a year, and we beyond those open-minded enough to attend such spend most of the time complaining about what a events? bad investment newspapers are.” And how do we explain Richard Spencer? ■ But throughout our table discussion, I thought

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School Anti-Semitism As a Teachable Moment Parents and educators look for “teachable moments,” when circumstances present an opportunity to impart wisdom or suggest a better course of action. These moments often are the result of actions that are regrettable, misguided or sometimes just plain stupefying. In recent months, local examples have included: • Teenagers from a private school playing a version of beer pong called Jews vs. Nazis, with cups arranged as a star of David and a swastika. This became known when the organizer posted a photo online. (Yes, beer pong is a thing; look it up online.) • Another private school put Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle” in German) on a summer reading list. It was done with the best of intentions, to help young people learn how groups such as the Nazis come to power. • A public middle school teacher asked students to create a mascot — give it a name and provide a “colorful illustration” — for the Nazi Party. This was not part of the recommended Holocaust curriculum. • At a public high school, mock valentines with anti-Semitic slogans were distributed online. Though the first impulse often is to punish (and sometimes punishment is meted out; the beer pong game resulted in five suspensions and one expulsion), these occasions also offer the chance to educate and to mentor. This is where the Atlanta Initiative Against Anti-Semitism has found its teachable moment. When last heard from, AIAAS (a mouthful of an acronym) was an upstart, a dozen day school moms and a small army of volunteers who, from scratch, organized a meeting in March at which some 225 people discussed anti-Semitism in Atlanta. AIAAS is back, planning a Nov. 8, invitation-only meeting, once again hosted by Temple Emanu-El, to focus on a priority expressed by participants in that first session: anti-Semitism and hate activity in schools. The meeting has its own acronym: TASK (Tackling Anti-Semitism for Our Kids). “We don’t want to get out the pitchforks. We want to increase dialogue about it,” said Lauren Menis, who credits fellow AIAAS co-founders Danielle Cohen and Lisa Freedman for

their detail-oriented planning. There is something ironic about a meeting on anti-Semitism in schools being planned by parents whose children attend Jewish day schools, where such incidents are, well, unlikely. The Anti-Defamation League reports that anti-Semitism is increasing

From Where I Sit By Dave Schechter dschechter@atljewishtimes.com

in the nation’s schools. “I worry about the impact of anti-Semitic language and conduct on non-Jewish students who know very little about Jews and Judaism, and may not even know a Jewish person. I worry that years of hearing degrading language and stereotypes about Jews will infect them with bias,” an educational consultant wrote in a Boston Globe op-ed. AIAAS has invited administrators and staff from public school districts — Atlanta Public Schools, DeKalb County, Fulton County, Gwinnett County, along with the Decatur and Marietta districts — as well as private schools, Jewish congregations, Jewish and non-Jewish advocacy organizations, and other groups that combat various forms of hate. A resource fair afterward will make available to educators materials from about a dozen organizations on best practices for teaching about the Holocaust, combating anti-Semitism, and instilling tolerance and compassion in children. The meeting will be closed to the media, an accommodation to speakers (not being publicly identified in advance) who are not seeking attention. “We have gotten so many confidential emails from parents or posts on our Facebook page about incidents that have happened at schools. And they don’t know what to do,” Menis said, adding that some parents don’t go public “because it sets their kids up to be victims even more.” In some instances, parents have moved their children to other schools, Menis said. You rarely know when a teachable moment will happen, but give AIAAS a gold star for preparation. ■

Aman for Mayor Is Atlanta’s Best Choice

The upcoming election for the obligation to participate in this year’s 60th mayor of Atlanta may prove to be election to ensure that Atlanta’s next a watershed moment in the history of mayor is one who reflects the values this city. and purpose of our vibrant commuThere is much at stake for Atlanta nity, coupled with a mandate to uplift over the next several years. Residents humanity while showing compassion of Atlanta have the responsibility to for all. We need a mayor who looks learn what crucial issues lay ahead, after the least of these and leads with understand where the candidates Special Column stand, get out the vote and ensure the By Michael Morris best candidate is and Eric Hartz elected. michael@atljewishtimes.com In our opinion, Peter Aman is clearly the best choice. As the former a conscience, one who is a protector as chief operating officer for the city well as a leader. of Atlanta in 2010 and 2011 under Peter is Presbyterian, and his wife, Mayor Kasim Reed and as a pro-bono Lisa, is Jewish. Their children are being consultant to Mayor Shirley Franklin, brought up in the Jewish tradition. As Peter is experienced and impeccably parents, Peter and Lisa are instilling qualified to lead Atlanta. the values of public and community The next mayor and City Council service in their children, just as their will have two once-in-a-generation parents taught them. opportunities. One is to allocate and Their family history, family dyspend almost $14 billion on our city’s namics and love of community speak infrastructure. The second is a comvolumes about the kind of public plete rezoning of the city. servant and leader Peter has been and Both will drive density in resiwill continue to be. dential and commercial zones as well Peter shares our community’s as determine where people will live values of serving the greater good. We, and work for generations to come. and many others, trust him to get afTogether, the rezoning and tax dollar fordable housing right, ensure quality allocation, effectively, fairly and honeducation for our children, make sure estly, will shape Atlanta for the next transportation works for all Atlanta, 50 years. including those who travel through Atlanta residents have an obligaand visit here, and ensure that our tion to their families, the community public safety needs are met and that at large and future generations to get those public safety resources are efthis election right and vote for the ficiently provided. candidate who can best lead Atlanta at Peter’s focus on humanity and this moment and capitalize on these social justice inherently guides his opportunities with the most clarity platform to become the next mayor of and experience. Atlanta, and that platform is one he The Jewish community in Atlanta can and will successfully execute. has roots that go back to the midWe want to see Peter continue the 1800s, when you could count on two incredible work he started during his hands the number of Jews in the city. time in city government. He has the During Reconstruction, Jews were will and the skill to continue to make migrating to this city from Europe and Atlanta the greatest city in the world building businesses from the ground and one that works in the best interest up, contributing to the economic of all its citizens. engine that helped propel Atlanta to Please vote for Peter Aman as where we are now. Atlanta’s next mayor Tuesday, Nov. 7. ■ Our communities, schools, synagogues, businesses and citizens matter Michael Morris is the owner and as we, too, played key roles in buildpublisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. ing this city under decades of strong Eric Hartz is the former president of TemAfrican-American mayoral leadership. ple Sinai and is the president of Nexus We are a community rooted in Fuels, as well as the treasurer of the Peter action, faith and ethics with a comAman for Atlanta Mayor campaign. 11 passion for humanity. It is our moral NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

OPINION

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POLITICS

Mayoral Candidates See City Failing to Fulfill Legacy By Patrice Worthy Seven Atlanta mayoral candidates — Ceasar Mitchell, John Eaves, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Cathy Woolard, Mary Norwood, Peter Aman and Kwanza Hall — faced questions about race and social justice at an American Jewish Committee-organized forum Tuesday, Oct. 24, at Ahavath Achim Synagogue. Moderated by Bill Nigut, a producer at Georgia Public Broadcasting and former Anti-Defamation League regional director, the forum aimed to shed light on issues important to the Jewish community and the sponsors of the forum. Questions pertained to immigrant dreamers, an increase in hate crimes, expansion of the police force and retention of officers, and Black Lives Matter. AJC Atlanta Regional Director Dov Wilker called the event “the most diverse mayoral forum” in reference to the audience. A forum on race and social justice is important because of the work AJC does with non-Jewish and immigrant communities, Wilker said.

The seven candidates at the forum plus former state Sen. Vincent Fort are running to replace Mayor Kasim Reed, who is ineligible to run for a third consecutive term. If, as expected, no candidate in the nonpartisan voting wins a majority Tuesday, Nov. 7, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held Dec. 5. Asked about immigration and efforts by the Trump administration to roll back the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, every candidate spoke in support of Atlanta protecting dreamers. Hall, a former city councilman for District 2, said he reintroduced city legislation to provide more support for the dreamers by allowing only judicial warrants and prohibiting nonjudicial warrants. The legislation passed a couple of weeks ago. “If someone is riding down the street, they can say they look like they’re undocumented; we can go arrest them. It’s not fair, it’s not right, and it’s not what our city is known for,” Hall said. “We have a welcoming

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platform, but we have to reaffirm these things sometimes.” Eaves, a former chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and a member of The Temple, met with the Obama administration in December to talk about sanctuary cities. Eaves said Atlanta has an opportunity to reaffirm that the largest city in the state is welcoming for people of all backgrounds. “In the county government we instituted a racial profiling accounting system where all police officers have to document and report arrests on a quarterly basis,” Eaves said. “This was designed to minimize any sort of racial profiling, particularly among people who are undocumented.” The image of Atlanta as the “city too busy to hate” was challenged with a question about whether the city remains true to its civil rights movement legacy. Aman, who served as the city’s chief operating officer under Mayor Kasim Reed, said Atlanta is pushing out the people “who built the city.” He said 40 percent of children in Atlanta are born into poverty, and 80 percent of black children are born into areas of concentrated poverty. The next mayor needs to address those impoverished areas. “There’s too much wealth and indifference for us to keep getting away with that,” he said. Bottoms, the City Council member for District 11, said “city too busy to hate” is just a slogan. “We have to look at Atlanta and our history in standing up in the face of what’s not popular,” she said. When asked whether she would allow alt-right groups to march or protest in Atlanta, the lawyer and former judge pro hoc in Fulton County State Court said a Nazi group “should not be allowed to (march) if there is truly a risk to safety of the general public.” Mitchell, the current Atlanta City Council president and a lawyer, said the city must embrace everyone’s First Amendment rights. “If Nazis want to march down Peachtree Street, they can have it,” Mitchell said. “The one thing we’re not going to do is authorize a march that creates the imminent likelihood of violence.” The next mayor will have the task of leading the city’s economic growth while balancing a demographic shift that includes growing populations of immigrants and whites.

Even though Atlanta has chosen a black mayor in every election since Maynard Jackson defeated the city’s only Jewish mayor, Sam Massell, in 1973, the city’s African-American population seems to be on the fringes of progress in Atlanta. Hall’s District 2 is the most diverse in the city, including the most impoverished and some of the wealthiest people in Atlanta. The former city councilman said the next mayor must “break up the status quo” while maintaining the ability to bring different people together. Cathy Woolard, a former City Council president, criticized Atlanta’s slow progress toward overcoming income inequality and embracing diversity, saying, “We’re the city too busy to commit.” Atlanta gets a lot of credit for its history, she said, but it must do better at committing quickly to values rooted in civil rights. “When we had religious exemption bills in our General Assembly, it took three years for the business community to arrive. … That’s not what I would call a stellar record,” Woolard said. “Atlanta is the No. 1 city for income inequality, and, because of that, we should be the No. 1 city with the most creative and comprehensive solutions to solve income inequality in the future.” Income inequality in Atlanta directly affects certain areas of the city with high concentrations of blight and poverty, said Mary Norwood, an atlarge City Council member who is leading the polls for the mayoral election. Norwood was criticized after a mayoral forum hosted by radio station V-103 for saying she does not support Trump. Norwood said she was misrepresented. She said she wants to see everyone in Atlanta prosper. Atlanta must see growth in every neighborhood to overcome its current problems, she said, and she focused on the area southwest of Bolton Road, including the neighborhood of Bankhead, for economic development. “We need to get rid of the blight and redo zoning and repurpose the abandoned buildings in a thoughtful way because people still live in some of those homes,” Norwood said. “We need job opportunities, job training and to connect better with technical colleges. We had a job program for young people, and I want to bring that back. We have the resources to do it.” ■

NOVEMBER 3 â&#x2013;ª 2017

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POLITICS

Jewish Candidates Compete for City Offices Jewish candidates are on the ballot in municipal elections around metro Atlanta on Tuesday, Nov. 7. Among those the AJT is aware of who are in contested races (in America, fortunately, no one must disclose religious affiliations to run for political office, so there could be others we don’t know about): • John Eaves (www.eavesforatlanta.com), the former Fulton County Board of Commissioners chairman and a Temple member, is trying to become the second Jewish mayor in Atlanta history, joining Sam Massell. All he has to overcome is a deep field of experienced, well-known candidates who have held prominent city positions or other elected offices — Keisha Lance Bottoms, Ceasar Mitchell, Kwanza Hall, Mary Norwood, Vincent Fort, Cathy Woolard, Peter Aman, Rohit Ammanamanchi and Glenn Wrightson. (Aman is not Jewish, but his wife and children are.) A runoff between the top two vote-getters will be held Dec. 5 if no one wins a majority. • Mike Bodker (www.mikebodker. com), a Chabad of North Fulton member and the only mayor Johns Creek has known since its incorporation in 2006, is running for re-election against businessman Alex Marchetti (alexmarchetti.com), who attends the same church, St. Brigid Catholic, as City Council member Lenny Zaprowski. • Matthew Tyser (www.TyserFor-

Matthew Tyser is seeking an open seat on the Roswell City Council.

Mike Bodker is seeking reelection as Johns Creek mayor.

Roswell.com), a certified public accountant and member of Congregation Gesher L’Torah with his wife, Susan, is running for the open Post 5 seat on the Roswell City Council against small-business man and Navy veteran Keith Goeke (keith4roswell.com). “The increase in property taxes this past summer helped me realize that my financial experience is truly needed in government,” Tyser said. “I regularly deal with purchasing and procurement in my career, and I will use those same skills to negotiate win after win for our taxpayers.” He said traffic is a priority issue. • Jody Reichel (www.vote4jody. com), a real estate investor who has been a leader as a volunteer at the Davis Academy, North Springs Charter High School and Jewish Family & Career Services, is running for the District 4 City Council seat in Sandy Springs against

John Eaves hopes to be Atlanta’s second Jewish mayor.

Le’Dor Milteer (www.ledorfordistrict4. com) in the only contested election in the city. (Temple Sinai member Andy Bauman, for example, is uncontested for re-election to the City Council from District 6.) Milteer gained notoriety after early voting began Oct. 16 when she had to admit including a fake quote in a press release about her endorsement by the Georgia Stonewall Democrats. • In Dunwoody, Joe Hirsch (www. dunwoodyjoe.com) in District 1 and Bobby Zuckman (www.facebook. com/bobbyzuckman) in District 2 are challenging City Council incumbents. Hirsch, a former TV journalist and teacher known for city activism and comments at council meetings, is running against Pam Tallmadge (pam4dunwoodyga.us). Zuckman, a technology consultant and political newcomer, is taking on Jim Riticher (riticher.com). In addition, a notable Jewish new-

Jody Reichel has one opponent for a Sandy Springs City Council seat.

comer who is unopposed on a municipal ballot is Joseph Goldstein in Marietta’s Ward 7. Goldstein, a 2014 University of Georgia graduate who got his law degree from UGA this year, is succeeding his father on the Marietta City Council, where Philip Goldstein has served since 1980. The Goldstein family has lived and worked in Marietta for more than a century and has some of the most valuable holdings of commercial property in the city. Looking ahead to the state elections in 2018, declared Jewish candidates already include AJT 40 Under 40 member Lindy Miller for public service commissioner, Cindy Zeldin for insurance commissioner, and Michael Wilensky for state House District 79, where Dunwoody Republican Tom Taylor has announced he will not seek re-election. ■

Abel Challenges Handel in 6th Congressional District

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Temple Sinai member Kevin Abel announced his Democratic campaign for Congress in Georgia’s 6th District early Thursday, Oct. 26. In announcing his 2018 run, Abel said he wants to work across political lines to find solutions for health care, immigration, Social Security, climate change, campaign finance and the national debt. “I am committed to engaging earnestly with members of both parties to find the common ground for which we Americans so deeply yearn,” said Abel, the co-founder with his wife, Cindy, of Alpharetta-based IT consulting firm Abel Solutions. He has been active in support for refugees, rising to vice chair on the board of New American Pathways and leading efforts at Temple Sinai to aid an Atlanta-area refugee family. He also has served on the boards of the Carter 14 Center, the Arthritis Foundation’s

Georgia Chapter, the Davis Academy, the Metro Atlanta Chamber and the Technology Association of Georgia. Cindy Abel served as Hands Kevin Abel On Atlanta’s interim CEO in 2016, and the Abels received the organization’s Changemakers of the Year award this year. Abel joins former CBS 46 news anchor Bobby Kaple in launching Democratic challenges to Republican Rep. Karen Handel, who was elected June 20 to fill the congressional seat Tom Price vacated when he became President Donald Trump’s health and human services secretary. Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Democrat who finished first in the open primary for the seat in April and received about

48 percent of the vote in the runoff against Handel, recently moved into the 6th District in Brookhaven. Living outside the district was an issue for him in the special election. Ossoff has not said whether he will run again in 2018. Abel said he moved into the district, which Republicans have won in every congressional election since 1978, when he and Cindy bought their first house in Alpharetta after marrying in March 1992. They have raised three children. Abel, a native of South Africa, immigrated with his family to Texas when he was 14. He graduated from the University of Texas. He moved to the Atlanta area in 1990. “I came to America as an immigrant. I received an incredible public education. I started my own business. I have a beautiful wife and three lovely

children. I have truly lived the American dream,” Abel said in his announcement. “But while my family and I have enjoyed the American dream, this beacon of hope and opportunity has been eroded. Our national political arena has devolved into a perpetual shouting match; anger and acrimony dominate our national dialogue.” He added: “My candidacy represents an effort to rekindle the spirit of public faith in government. We the people — the voters, Americans — deserve better in our elected officials. But it begins and ends with us. We need to vote for the candidate we want in government, not for the least distasteful person our party puts on the ballot. I want this election to be about putting America back on course, about ensuring that our children and grandchildren and future new Americans can aspire, as I have, to realize the American dream.” ■

NOVEMBER 3 â&#x2013;ª 2017

POLITICS

Frustrated Perdue Cites Washington Successes

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com

Sen. David Perdue spoke of perverse and insidious obstacles to change in Washington, scary threats overseas from the likes of North Korea and Iran, and the dangerous seductions of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ socialism while speaking with the Republican Jewish Coalition for more than an hour Sunday, Oct. 29, at the Sheraton Atlanta Perimeter North Hotel in Sandy Springs. “We aren’t as bold and confident in what we’re doing as we ought to be,” the first-term Georgia Republican said in sharing the frustration of his audience at the failures of the Republicanled Congress and Republican President Donald Trump to fulfill campaign promises ranging from repealing and replacing Obamacare to moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He said the rare Republican control of the House, Senate and White House has been stymied by rules. Some are the Senate’s, such as a requirement from 1975 to get 60 votes to end a debate and a James Madisonwritten mandate for 30 hours of Senate debate before action. The latter rule, part of the original six pages of rules for the Senate, came from a time when it took weeks for senators to travel to Philadelphia but makes no sense when we deal in nanoseconds, Perdue said. Others belong to the Republican Caucus, such as a seniority system that prevents revoking the committee chairmanships of the three GOP senators who blocked health care legislation. As a result, he said, the Democrats have had an easy time blocking legislation and presidential nominations, with the notable exception of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. “I don’t think we have been tough enough on this perverse blocking of Congress,” Perdue said. Still, the senator offered good news from the first nine months of the Trump administration that he said people haven’t heard about because of the news media and because of failures of Republican communications, including the president’s misuse of his heavily followed Twitter account. The achievements, Perdue said, include the addition of 1.6 million jobs, soaring consumer and CEO confidence, a 66 percent drop in illegal crossings of the Mexican border, the reversal of

860 regulations, and the beginning of “draining the swamp” by passing legislation that allows the veterans affairs secretary to fire bad employees. Plus, “Hillary Rodham Clinton is not president.” Perdue, who like Trump ran an outsider’s campaign and defeated experienced politicians in 2014, was an early supporter of candidate Trump’s, and the senator offered examples of resulting closeness to the president despite a lack of seniority. He said he has been to the White House a lot, has been repeatedly referenced by Trump in group meetings, and has been used as a driver on issues such as immigration and tax reform. Perdue also said he had a private dinner Monday, Oct. 23, at Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner’s house. Speaking the day before special counsel Robert Mueller announced the first charges in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Perdue said Trump began the year with four items on his 2017 checklist: get Gorsuch confirmed; fix health care; undo oppressive regulations; and reform the tax code. The president has had one win, one loss and one partial success, while the fourth item, the tax code, is now the focus. Perdue expressed determination and optimism regarding tax reform and said the record-high stock market reflects the same optimism. The first step is to set a minimal tax for businesses to repatriate an estimated $3 trillion in overseas profits. The second step is to cut the corporate tax rate from an “insidious” 35 percent to no more than 20 percent. Then Congress can tackle individual income taxes. He said those changes are necessary to boost anemic economic growth, the only way to solve the national debt of $20 trillion and rising. In one of several swipes at Sanders, Perdue mocked his plan for “Medicare for all” because it would cost $3.2 trillion a year, just below the current annual federal revenues of $3.6 trillion. And while half of Americans pay no income taxes now, “Bernie kills me” by calling for the United States to be more like Sweden, where everyone pays at an average rate of 54 percent. Still, Perdue said, 75 percent of University of Georgia faculty members who made donations to 2016 presidential candidates gave to Sanders. “It’s why Bernie is so dangerous.” ■

FINANCE

Other Banks’ Failures Lift Ameris Into Atlanta By David R. Cohen david@atljewishtimes.com

AJT: Ameris is a regional bank, so how do you compete with some of the larger banks around the country? Tesler: Our strategic advantage is that we act like a community bank, but we have the wherewithal to compete with larger banks. We have a lot of the products and services that a larger bank has. I think where we really strive to be is someone that can treat every customer like a private banking customer but with expertise from all different disciplines of banking. AJT: How much more would you like to expand as a bank? Tesler: I think our goal is to grow within our footprint and possibly within a few others, but our goal here is to develop a more robust banking operation in Atlanta. We’ve been here almost six years, and we got here by taking over some failed banks during the downturn. We kind of consolidated that into an operation that allowed us to create a springboard to be a commercial bank. AJT: What do you think the future holds for bank branches? Tesler: From the branch side, I think the challenge is always going to be technology is going to make branches less and less appealing. However, there is a segment of the community that needs those branches, so I don’t see the death of the branch being that imminent. I also don’t see the need for a bank to come in and expand its branch network to where 20 or 30 years down the road it would become obsolete.

Michael Tesler has been with Ameris Bank since 2012.

AJT: How has the banking industry changed since the big financial crisis in 2008? Tesler: For the most part, it’s more stable. Hopefully everyone learned a valuable lesson about extending terms and structures on loans that didn’t quite fit. I don’t really see systemically the problems that were in the banking industry before and also just in the general economy. Obviously now in Atlanta you can look out any window and see cranes everywhere, but there’s a lot of growth here. We’re cautiously optimistic that things are going to continue, and even if we have a downturn, the effects of that won’t be anywhere near where they were back then. AJT: If there is anything we should worry about, what is it? Tesler: The student loan situation is really concerning because I don’t know at what point that will start affecting people’s purchasing habits. There’s a lot of people buying homes again, but some of it is Wall Street and private-equity-type money. So it may be inflating some of the pricing on homes, and I don’t know what’s going to happen if they can’t get the returns that they would like to. AJT: The Equifax data breach is still fresh on everyone’s mind. Do you have any tips for online security? Tesler: I think everybody is a little too loose with their information. We’re always willing to give out our emails, our birth dates on social media. There’s a lot of things that people can use to piece together your information. People have their dogs’ names on Facebook, and then they turn around and use that as their passwords. We just remind people that they need to keep changing their passwords. Overall, the thing we’ve been trying to let people know is that the first line of defense is you. ■

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Atlanta native Michael Tesler is the Atlanta market president of Ameris Bank, a midsize regional bank with annual revenue of $295 million that serves customers in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee. Ameris Bank was founded in 1971 and is based in Moultrie. After the financial crisis of 2008, Ameris acquired several small regional banks in the Southeast, helping it become the third-largest bank with headquarters in Georgia. Tesler, who attended the Solomon Schechter School (now the Epstein School), has been with Ameris since 2012.

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FINANCE

Birthright Foundation to Honor Top Booster Ross By April Basler abasler@atljewishtimes.com The Birthright Israel Foundation will honor Doug Ross at its annual Atlanta event Monday night, Nov. 6, at the St. Regis Hotel. The foundation raises money in the United States to support Birthright Israel, which provides a free 10-day trip to Israel to more than 48,000 young Jewish adults annually. The goal is to ensure that the gift of Birthright Israel strengthens Jewish continuity and provides even more Jews with a direct connection to Israel for years to come. Ross is considered the No. 1 booster for Birthright in Atlanta. He has chaired the Birthright Israel Atlanta Leadership Council the past five years and served on the Birthright Israel Foundation’s national board for three years. Ross is also the Atlanta chair of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and serves on AIPAC’s national council. Professionally, he is a financial adviser for a team at Morgan Stanley called Vantage Wealth Management. Though not a native of Atlanta, the

Doug Ross, shown during an appearance at the Jewish Breakfast Club in April 2016, says many of the Jewish community’s future leaders and benefactors will be Birthright alumni.

University of North Carolina graduate moved to the city about 25 years ago and considers Atlanta to be his adopted hometown. According to his Birthright colleagues, he is deserving of the foundation’s honor. Georgia Aquarium Chairman and CEO Mike Leven, a co-chair of the Nov. 6 event and fellow member of the Birthright Israel Foundation national board, said about Ross: “He’s been very special

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Danny Danon has gained unprecedented leadership roles at the United Nations while consistently fighting back against unequal treatment of Israel.

to Birthright in Atlanta. He’s been the single biggest supporter of Birthright, not only from a financial standpoint, but from a work standpoint. He’s put together the teams. He did a great job a couple of years ago and raised a ton of money and honored some people. It was about time that he got rewarded for his work by being honored. Doug’s been around Atlanta for a long time. He’s a big Israel supporter.” Carole-Ann Levine is the vice president of Southeastern Region of the Birthright Israel Foundation. She and Ross become involved with the foundation around the same time. She shared her memory of why Ross wanted to chair the Atlanta Leadership Council. “He was delighted to take on the role because he was the chair for AIPAC at the same time. He has a tremendous love for Israel. He was very excited to take on this role head-on — to take on the chairmanship,” Levine said. “Doug exemplifies leadership in every way. We spent the first summer learning together exactly what his role would be. He said to me, ‘This is something I believe so strongly in. Don’t worry, I’m there for you. I’m there to build the Birthright Israel community in Atlanta. I’ll give all of my time to it,’ which he did. And we began by building a council and developing a group of leaders. He opened my eyes to what a leader can accomplish.” Helping define a leader, Levine said, are “the three W’s”: work, wealth and wisdom. To be a great leader, she said, you must have two of the three.

“Doug Ross fulfills all three,” Levine said. “He’s a go-getter. He knows how to raise money, and he knows how to tell a story about the importance of the program that will get to your heart and your soul. He’s a very wise man. You put that all together, and you have a fantastic leader. When you find someone that has all three, you grab them, because that’s unusual.” Jessica Katz Yonatan is the associate regional director in Atlanta for the Birthright Israel Foundation. She has been in her position since mid-2016 and has worked directly with Ross. She explained why Ross was chosen as the honoree for the Atlanta event. “There’s no one more deserving of this honor. He deserves to be recognized from the community for his work,” she said. “There aren’t many leaders like Doug that focus so much time and energy on the organization and are volunteering to lead. He’s an incredible guy.” Ross said he has devoted time and energy to the Birthright Israel Foundation because of how the Birthright Israel experience affects young members of the Jewish community. “Birthright Israel is not just another Jewish or pro-Israel organization. The numbers and the impact of the experience for now 600,000 young Jews from 66 countries over the past 18 years are measurable and profound,” Ross said. “We want to do everything in our power to bring this experience to as

What: Birthright Israel Foundation annual Atlanta event Who: Honoree Doug Ross and keynote speaker Danny Danon

PERSONAL – COMMERICAL – LIFE – HEALTH DISABILITY – LONG TERM CARE Serving our community’s needs for over 50 years

Where: St. Regis Hotel, 88 W. Paces Ferry Road, Buckhead When: 6 p.m. Monday, Nov. 6 Tickets: $118; contact Jessica Katz Yonatan at jessica.yonatan@birthrightisrael.org or 770-378-9540.

many young Jews as possible from around the world. The impact of this experience has been so profound on so many people, year after year. Everybody that’s engaged with the organization, locally, nationally and in Israel, is committed to making sure that everybody between the ages of 18 to 26 who is Jewish has this very often life-changing experience.” Ross said it is important to support the Birthright Israel Foundation because the young people going on the Israel trips make up the Jewish future. Birthright Israel spends $3,000 for each person who takes the trip. “Supporting Birthright Israel Foundation and its mission is not just giving money to an organization. It is an investment in our collective Jewish future,” he said. “It’s an investment that has the greatest return over many years that has been measured by many criteria. Many of the future leaders and benefactors of the Jewish community and around the world are going to come from the ranks of Birthright Israel alumni. We’re giving tens and tens of thousands of young people the opportunity to grow as individuals, to grow as Jews and to grow as leaders.” Ross said he is deeply honored and humbled to be the honoree for this event. “The fact is that this is a labor of love for me, as it is for everybody who is part of this remarkable enterprise,” he said. “For me to be able to play a small role in doing what’s personally meaningful to me but also connecting with young people and their families here in Atlanta and bringing this experience into their lives is one the greatest honors of my life.” Between 500 and 600 people are expected to attend the event at 6 p.m. Nov. 6, which is a big fundraising event for the foundation in Atlanta. Ross will speak, and the keynote speaker will be Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations. Rachel Gerrol, a Birthright alumna and foundation board member, will share the story of her Birthright experience and her involvement with the organization. Leven will hold a conversation with Danon during the program. He said Danon, an outspoken and experienced Israeli politician, should be entertaining. “It’s going to be a memorable night, and we hope that we spread what Birthright Israel Foundation does throughout the community here in Atlanta,” Katz Yonatan said. “We want to make sure that more people know about the foundation.” ■

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

FINANCE

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FINANCE

Israel Bonds Award Highlights Love for Israel By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

For Richard Kopelman, supporting Israel came naturally while he was growing up in a Zionist home. Now he is being honored for that passion with the Israel Bonds Star of David Award. Although Kopelman’s father never traveled to Israel, he raised his children in the belief that it was imperative to support Israel. “I always remembered my grandparents buying Israel Bonds, and although I wasn’t really involved, maybe buying a bond here and there, they turned out to be a great investment and were the only bonds which stood during the economic downturn,” Kopelman said. It was not until seven years ago that Kopelman became more involved in Israel Bonds after receiving a call from the executive director of the Southeast bonds office, Bradley Young, to join him on a young leadership mission to Israel involving 20 people from around the country. Although Kopelman first turned the offer down because of plans to travel with Rabbi Joshua Heller, the mission’s itinerary changed his mind. Since the trip, Kopelman has continued to support Israel Bonds and the Jewish state. “I support Israel in general because my personal belief is that a strong Israel provides for a strong Jewish life and continuity globally,” he said. Family ties also play a role. His grandfather was one of 13 children and survived the Holocaust with two siblings. Kopelman said no one knows what happened to the rest of the family. Although Kopelman realizes the honor means his friends are inviting people to the Israel Bonds annual gala dinner Thursday, Nov. 9, “the award not only gives me an opportunity to speak about Israel Bonds to friends, family and colleagues, but also reconnect individuals that may have given in the past or are not as familiar with the nonprofit.” He added: “Israel Bonds are very easy to apply for and give us an opportunity to reconnect people to the organization every time there is a mitzvah.” Young said the Star of David Award, one of Israel Bonds’ highest awards for lay leaders, recognizes people who represent the best of Jew20 ish Atlanta and everything the com-

Conexx Golf Tournament Honors Grant

A cold, windy morning turned into a cool, breezy afternoon at the Standard Club on Monday, Oct. 30, for the fourth annual Conexx golf tournament, which honored Adrian Grant, a partner at Carr, Riggs & Ingram. All proceeds of the tournament, which used a shamble format, benefited Conexx and its charitable affiliate, the American Israel Educational Institute. The foursome of Chuck Ganz, Jonathan Ganz, Alan Cohen and Bob Wilensky took first place in gross score, and the foursome of Maurice Rosenbaum, Larry Stouman, David Kusiel and Lee Estroff won for net score. Cameron Fash was recognized for the longest drive, and Patrick Estes won the closest-to-the-pin contest. ■

Aprio CEO Richard Kopelman will receive the 2017 Israel Bonds Star of David Award.

munity has to offer. “Richard certainly falls into that category,” he said. “He has had a lifelong devotion to the state of Israel, is an extremely hardworking and well-respected individual, and has risen to the top of his profession. And despite the time he has devoted to his family and work, he has always made significant time for the community and for Israel.” In addition to involvement with Israel Bonds and AIPAC, Kopelman participates in the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta’s annual campaigns, contributes to the Weber School and is a member of Congregation B’nai Torah. He joined accounting firm Aprio 26 years ago. He rose to run the manufacturing and distribution practice, and he became the managing partner and CEO five years ago. Along the way Kopelman also founded Next Generation Manufacturing, a nonprofit that aims to create manufacturing in Georgia on a business rather than political platform, and he has spent time in financial technology and insurance. “We look forward to honoring Richard and having him be a part of the Jewish community for years to come,” Young said. Art Katz, the Israel Bonds council chairman for the Southeast, said: “The award represents an individual’s commitment to the state of Israel and the preservation of Israel Bonds. Richard is a mover and shaker in the Atlanta community, and he and his family are not only committed to Israel, but also represent how we would like to see others in the community carry themselves in support for Israel and Israel Bonds.” ■

Chuck Ganz, Jonathan Ganz, Alan Cohen and Bob Wilensky take home first place in gross score.

Conexx Chairman Benjamin Fink explains the shamble format to golfers at the tournament.

Who: Richard Kopelman What: Israel Bonds annual gala Where: InterContinental Buckhead Atlanta, 3315 Peachtree Road, Buckhead When: 6p.m. Thursday, Nov. 9 Tickets: $160 (those 35 and younger can make a $54 bond investment instead); atlanta@israelbonds.com or 404-817-3500

Tournament honoree Adrian Grant addresses golfers at the post-match reception.

NOVEMBER 3 â&#x2013;ª 2017

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LOCAL NEWS

IDF Reservists Urge Weber Rams to Stand for Israel By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

While one grew up in a secular Jewish family in Las Vegas, the other lives in Tel Aviv, but together Joey and Eden are among six teams of two Israel Defense Forces reservists who are touring the United States through Nov. 5 as part of StandWithUs’ ninth Israeli Soldiers Tour. Among other Georgia stops, the two reservists, whose last names are being withheld for their protection, visited the Weber School’s Rams for Israel club Thursday, Oct. 26, to share their stories of life in Israel and the IDF. Eden served as a social welfare officer in the IDF for 3½ years and assisted soldiers with social, financial and economic needs. She also was in charge of officers’ basic and professional training. She recounted the story of a soldier who could no longer support his family while doing his mandatory military service. Eden entered the soldier’s threeroom apartment, which housed 13 people and had a trash-strewn staircase

Eden and Joey speak to students in Rams for Israel at the Weber School about living in Israel and serving in the IDF.

leading to a storefront. “I can only imagine what that soldier felt as I have never really experienced it, but try to understand that you are 18 years old and you can no longer help your family because you have to go serve your country,” she said. Eden said the IDF looks after soldiers, however, and deposited money directly into the family’s bank account

Joey speaks about his experiences at the University of Arizona before enlisting in the IDF.

to provide support. “When we think of soldiers, we think of violence and somebody who protects their country, but it’s actually much more than that,” she said. “I think we should keep in mind that the Israeli army is composed of different populations of Israeli society, including Bedouins, Druze, Muslims and Christians, and we need to help all of them with their needs.” Eden now works for Intel and volunteers once a week with 180 Degrees, an organization that helps people with disabilities through sports. Although she is a reservist, Eden understands the complexities of an Israeli soldier’s life. “Soldiers are human. They want peace,” she said. “There is no better reward than to defend our country, but if we had a choice, I can assure you, and speak on behalf of all of my friends, that we would prefer having peace.” Eden also said Americans need to recognize how the U.S. and Israeli militaries complement each other. “The U.S. and Israel are fighting the same battles and have the same enemies, and everybody is needed, meaning you are true soldiers and are on the front lines of advocating for Israel. … You don’t need to be in the Israeli army to defend the country.” Joey spoke with his mother about joining the Israeli army after he returned from a March of the Living trip while in high school. But it was not until he graduated from the University of Arizona that he enlisted in the IDF’s Paratroopers Brigade as a lone soldier. Joey was stationed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and took part in Operation Brother’s Keeper in June 2014. Before Joey enlisted in the IDF,

however, Israel experienced a day in November 2012 that he will never forget. “Hamas fired over 100 rockets into Israel, and I just remember thinking to myself, ‘What is the difference between me and the rest of the Jewish people who are defending Israel?’ ” Afterward, Joey contacted an IDF recruiter. Another incident occurred on his kibbutz near the Gaza Strip while he was on leave from the army. He heard loud noises outside his room one night and received a text message from the head of security of the kibbutz, asking him to lock the doors and to aim his gun at the door. When Joey turned on the news later, he discovered that Hamas had tried to infiltrate Israel by digging tunnels, and his kibbutz was among the first attacked. “This is the reality people near the Gaza Strip live with. It’s a sad reality, but if there is one thing I would share, it is that it’s not how you defend Israel. It’s that you are,” Joey said. He now works for StandWithUs in Jerusalem and often meets people from Weber. He does not encourage everyone to join the IDF, even though it was the right decision for him, but he does urge students to support Israel. “The army isn’t for everyone, but just being an activist for Israel is important,” he said. Rams for Israel founder Aaron Gordon spoke about the importance of the program, which helps promote Israel advocacy. “The organization is meant to educate students on different aspects of Israel which are important to them, to help them find what is meaningful about the Jewish state and help foster a connection with Israel,” he said. ■

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LOCAL NEWS

Israel Advocacy Now Top Battle for Ex-Soldier Defending Israel’s right to exist is just as important off the battlefield as on it for former Israel Defense Forces special forces soldier Ran Bar-Yoshafat. The deputy director of the Kohelet Policy Forum spoke to a group of young professionals about anti-Semitism on college campuses, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, and how people can strengthen their support for Israel during a Friends of the IDF young leadership program Tuesday, Oct. 24, at Southbound. As Bar-Yoshafat’s employment came to an end at Camp Barney Medintz in 2006, he left the United States to serve in the Second Lebanon War. In battle his brigade lost nine men, including three from anti-tank missiles. It was Bar-Yoshafat’s experiences during the Second Intifada, however, and his involvement with nonprofit organizations that led him to pursue Israel advocacy. To gain a better understanding of the issues affecting Israel, Bar-Yoshafat met with diplomatic delegations and participated in advocacy organizations. “I was surprised to hear that in other places in the world, people saw me as the bad guy, which for me came as a complete shock,” he said. “In my view, serving in the IDF was the most morally correct thing to do. I was protecting Jews, Muslims and Christians from terrorists, yet for some reason people saw me as the aggressor.” After earning a law degree from Hebrew University, Bar-Yoshafat went on a six-month tour of the United States, visiting college campuses and promoting Israel. He spoke to about 45,000 students. “It was a very meaningful time for me because I was trying to not only protect Israel on the battlefield, but on college campuses,” he said. While presenting his lectures, however, Bar-Yoshafat discovered that students did not mention specific policies or issues about Israel, but its right to exist. That’s when he began using basic advocacy while focusing on demonization, delegitimization and double standards to determine whether someone was offering legitimate criticism of Israel or using modern anti-Semitism. He found common examples within the BDS movement. Bar-Yoshafat said the main issue on college campuses regarding Israel

Ran Bar-Yoshafat speaks to FIDF young professionals about strengthening America’s support for Israel on Oct. 24 at Southbound.

is how the undecided 70 percent of students are influenced. “You are going to have 5 percent to 15 percent of individuals who hate or support Israel no matter what, but what I am concerned about is the 70 percent. It’s like a trend. The fight against Israel has become

more important.” In addition to anti-Semitism on college campuses, Bar-Yoshafat spoke about media coverage of terror attacks and the effects on Israel. “For me, this is very problematic because it places Israel in a situation which will make it very difficult for the country to retaliate when it’s under attack.” Turning his attention to the United States and President Donald Trump, Bar-Yoshafat said: “Most Israelis are optimistic about the new administration and believe the U.S. and Israel share the same democratic values. However, world Jewry imposes a bigger concern. We are worried about assimilation,

that American Jews are apathetic toward Israel and that the fastest-growing organization for Israel is Jewish Voice for Peace, which according to the Anti-Defamation League is an antiSemitic organization.” After his campus tour, Bar-Yoshafat said, statistics from college surveys indicate that support for Israel rose about 20 percent while anti-Israel events are decreasing and pro-Israel events are increasing. But he said the best form of Israel advocacy is to visit Israel and have Israelis travel abroad. “We are not at the promised land yet, but we are getting there.” ■

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

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LOCAL NEWS

Housing Segregation Traced to Government By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Segregation and government policies have a long history in the United States. Although laws are supposed to prevent the separation of whites and people of color, federal, state and local policies have continued to put some people at a disadvantage, said Economic Policy Institute research associate Richard Rothstein, who addresses the topic in his latest book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” Rothstein, who spoke at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum on Tuesday, Oct. 24, talked to the AJT about the ideology behind segregation, unfair housing and challenges posed through government policies. He said government-imposed policies perpetuated racial segregation that went back to slavery through a caste system that was never removed. “If you look at the time period before Brown vs. Board of Education, the school system clearly violated the Constitution for 50 years before the

law was passed,” Rothstein said. “The same applies with other forms of segregation in Atlanta and elsewhere with buses, restaurants, hotels or Richard Rothstein recently appeared water fountains. at the Jimmy Carter These were all Presidential Library violations of and Museum to the Constitution discuss segregation. but were practiced nonetheless by the government.” Housing policies are another example of government-imposed segregation, he said. Atlanta and other urban areas used to have countless integrated neighborhoods. “We would be surprised if went back in time and looked at the samples of integration, as most workers had jobs in the city and had to live close enough to walk to work.” He mentioned the Flats, an integrated neighborhood until the federal government demolished the housing to build a segregated community.

“The African-American families who were displaced as a result of the demolition had to find housing elsewhere, and although a separate project was built for them years later, the area was now segregated,” Rothstein said. He said the Federal House Administration long enforced unfair policies to get builders to develop white suburbs. Rothstein used Levittown, N.Y., as an example. After building 1,700 homes with no buyers, William Levitt approached the federal government to obtain loan guarantees. Once he got the guarantees, he was told that they were conditional on clauses being included in the deeds to prohibit the sale of the homes to African-Americans. “This was open segregation and just as implicit and unconstitutional as the restaurants, fountains, or the buses and schools prior to 1954,” Rothstein said. The purpose was to segregate metropolitan areas using the FHA’s underwriting manual, which was distributed to appraisers across the country to determine whether developers were eligible for FHA guarantees. “The manuals explicitly said de-

velopments could not be approved for guarantees if they possessed incompatible racial elements,” Rothstein said. “The policies passed down by the federal government were explicit and were not created for any other purpose than segregation.” As a result, African-Americans moved into segregated urban neighborhoods with limited housing and fewer public services, Rothstein said. “These areas have deterred whites from moving into them and left a stigma that African-Americans are slum dwellers, which has also reinforced their desires to not live among them — not understanding that the slum conditions were not characteristics of the people but a result of government policies,” he said. “Those homes that whites purchased with the help of government support in the early 1940’s and ’50s, for example, for $100,000, gained a tremendous amount of equity over the next generation, gaining millions of dollars, … and are responsible for much of the inequality that exists.” He said African-Americans average 60 percent of the income of whites and 7 percent of the accumulated wealth. “Wealth is the main contributor to economic security. That enormous difference … is entirely attributable to unfair housing policies.” Rothstein also attributes police shootings such as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 to governmental policies. “These kinds of police confrontations would not have existed if the concentration of AfricanAmericans were not in tiny neighborhoods with no access to jobs and little hope for the future,” he said. “The police occupy the neighborhoods like a colonial force, and the young men act out in frustration, so you have a tinderbox in places like this, but only because they are segregated neighborhoods.” According to Rothstein, people can help implement change by becoming aware of biased government policies. “The first thing individuals need to know is to learn about them,” Rothstein said. “The subtitle of the book is ‘a forgotten history of how our government segregated America.’ … We’ve all forgotten about it, and before we can remedy it, we have to understand that segregation did not happen by accident but as a result of very explicit government policies.” ■ The Color of Law By Richard Rothstein

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LOCAL NEWS

Stopping Terrorism Starts With Understanding Responding to terrorism involves a clear understanding of the perpetrators, ideological shifts in the Middle East and other developments in the region, the founding director of GILEE, Robbie Friedmann, explained during the annual Paul and Beverly Radow Lecture at Kennesaw State University on Wednesday, Oct. 25. Friedmann, whose Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange is based at Georgia State University, offered three ways terrorists use to solve conflicts: nonviolence through hate, violence through terror, and retaliation from the victim using either. “For example, diplomacy may have an outcome that may lead to hate, and that hate may lead to terror and cause what we know in military language as asymmetrical warfare, not through tanks and weapons against equal powers, but by a single person or a group of individuals who create havoc because of their ability to do so,” he said. Terrorism can be divided into terrorist-inspired activities and terroristinitiated activities, the latter referring to attacks such as 9/11, Friedmann said. “It’s mental illness, attitude problems, loneliness or depression — that’s the image the media portrays,” he said. “However, law enforcement and politicians are reluctant to call it a terrorist event because it may have political ramifications.” A perpetrator can target someone with nonviolent hate, which leads to vilification and demonization, followed by dehumanization, incitement and inevitably a plot to kill. “This is exactly what the Nazis did against the Jews,” Friedmann said. “They defined the Jews as subhumans and came to the implication and conclusion that if they are such, it is legitimate to exterminate them. However, the danger is that incitement legitimizes hate-based ideology, which leads to violence.” He said terrorism includes wars as well as events that make the news. Although conflicts in the Middle East date back at least to the 1916 SykesPicot Agreement, in which Britain and France carved up the post-Ottoman region, “the threats are now different because Iran is seen as a danger not only to Israel and Saudi Arabia, but to Jordan and is perceived to control large chunks of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon,” Friedmann said. “Iran is a major power that has its hands everywhere and the

Robbie Friedmann discusses the perpetrators of terrorism during the Paul and Beverly Radow Lecture at Kennesaw State University on Oct. 25.

ability to disrupt the region.” He said it’s a mistake to overlook conflicts among Muslims and among Arabs. “Suffice it to say there have been more Muslim victims of war and Muslim terrorism than any other part of the world.” Friedman noted the more than 600,000 people killed in Syria’s civil war since 2011. He emphasized that Islamic radicals and fundamentalists do not compose a majority of the Muslim population. “I’m not sure if we can talk about the majority of the Muslims because there are about 1.5 billion Muslims, or a quarter of the world’s population, and

to suggest that a Muslim in the Middle East is the same as a Muslim in Malaysia, India or China is simply wrong.” He said Osama bin Laden’s legacy among jihadis is the idea that “oil is a perishable commodity which the Arab world has, and when in 200 to 300 years it is no longer available, no one will have it, including the West, which will destruct itself.” Islamic State, an offshoot of AlQaeda, dreams of a world caliphate, Friedmann said. “Although they may not be doing well militarily, the ideology is still there.” While religion plays a role in terrorism, Friedmann suggests that anyone who knows anything about theology or religion should avoid that debate. “I’m not sure most of us understand our religion well enough and doubt we would understand the religion of others,” he said. “It’s simply not a small tactic.” Friedmann also spoke about global aspirations among countries and tectonic shifts in today’s world order. He noted that Bin laden called for a caliphate from Andalusia to the Phil-

ippines because Spain represented a golden era of Islam. He said the West’s preoccupation with Iraq and the Palestinians often diverts attention from strategic goals involving Muslim regimes, such as Iran. Between 2010 and 2017 there were about 30 terror attacks, said Friedmann, who believes that incitement is a key factor. “We do not have a red card for terrorism,” he said, using a soccer analogy. “We somehow live with it, and I think that we are missing the goal against terrorism. Just because I am not armed and I don’t know how to fight does not mean I do not pose a threat. I think that is an area of legitimacy, which needs to be questioned.” He added, “I think it’s fair to say that terrorism begins with the indoctrination of hate” and requires a counterterrorism response, “which does not mean more machine guns and better security, but may be necessary to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure, to cope with the terrorism ecosystem and show zero tolerance toward indoctrination that causes it to thrive.” ■

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com

LOCAL NEWS

Catholics and Jews Lead Quest to Repair the World By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com

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The concept of tikkun olam (repairing the world) is familiar to Jewish people, but Atlanta’s Catholic archbishop pointed out two challenges in undertaking that task. First, Archbishop Wilton Gregory said, some people don’t recognize that the world is broken, so they resist any changes to make it better. More serious, though, is that “some people think change is the brokenness” and thus want to go backward and undo progress. The archbishop presented that conflict Thursday, Oct. 26, at “Repairing the World: Understanding Our Shared Responsibility,” the third annual commemoration of the Catholic Church’s 1965 Nostra Aetate declaration held by the archdiocese and American Jewish Committee at The Temple. That 1965 statement apologized for church antiSemitism and cleared the way for cooperation and understanding between the two oldest monotheistic religions. Repairing the world together is “a theme we needed to explore,” said Paula Gwynn Grant, the communications director for the archdiocese. The global theme drew a wider range of religions, including representatives of Muslims and evangelical Protestants, meeting what AJC representative Steve Berman cited as three urgent needs in America today: civility, morality and tolerance. Anti-Semitism in America was thought to be a part of the past, Berman said, but incidents rose by a third in 2016, then spiked by 86 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to statistics collected by the Anti-Defamation League. “Unfortunately, our job is not done,” he said. People must work together to combat hate because when one group is targeted by prejudice, everyone suffers. “We want and cherish civility, and our diversity makes us stronger,” Berman said. Race and ethnicity joined religion as topics of discussion. Carmen Coya-van Duijn, a Catholic Latina born in Brooklyn and married to a man from the Netherlands, said her children don’t want to speak Spanish because it makes them feel ostracized. And members of the church’s Dominican order, in which she is a lay

leader, didn’t want native Spanish speakers to learn church teachings in Spanish, even though the order itself was founded by a Spaniard. She said that coming through imRabbi Scott Colbert migration after an international flight into New York, two agents (neither of them white) treated her, the native, as a foreigner, while her husband with the Dutch accent breezed through. “Let’s have a courageous conversation, and don’t leave it here,” she told attendees. “Take it out in the world.” Alan Cross, a Southern Baptist minister who works with immigrants in the Southeast, said too many people fail to understand sacrificial love toward their neighbors, and they tend to push their own way of life onto others. That attitude toward others comes across as racism. “Is there not much more that unites us than divides us?” said Temple Emanu-El Rabbi Emeritus Scott Colbert, who explained that “neighbor” should be a moral concept, not a geographical term. He said that regardless of whether people in trouble are Muslims, Jews, Christians, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, immigrants or the children of immigrants, “their problems are our problems.” He acknowledged the lack of easy solutions to the many complex issues, but, echoing Pirke Avot, he said that beginning to seek answers is a holy duty. Like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Marin Luther King Jr., “what we are doing is sacred.” He emphasized the prophetic role of speaking the truth to power and cited the shared Abrahamic heritage of the faiths represented in the room. Gregory also called for looking toward the example of Abraham but took an even more expansive view of the repair challenge, calling the entire planet a shared home for people of all faiths, who are all still looking for the promised land. He acknowledged that the hundreds of people in the room with him aren’t the ones who need convincing. “We’re preaching to the choir,” Gregory said of the crowd at the interfaith evening, “but even the choir needs practice.” ■

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EDUCATION

Emory Lecture to Focus on Divide Over Israel By Bob Bahr

“Trouble in the Tribe” author Dov Waxman is speaking free at Emory.

and a leader of the liberal New Israel Fund take on Israel’s religious right at a Conservative synagogue in Dunwoody. Increasingly, too, there are deep divisions within the American Jewish community over political parties. In support of his argument, Waxman cited the fact that the 2013 Pew survey found that 57 percent of Orthodox Jews identified with or leaned toward the Republican Party, compared with 16 percent of other Jews. But in the 2016 presidential election, 70 percent of all Jews not only supported the Democratic candidate, but also were among the most dependably Democratic voters in the country. For Eric Goldstein, who is the di-

Waxman will tackle that question at a noon lunch Tuesday, Nov. 7, before his lecture that night. He’ll speak to an audience of guests from Emory and the community at large about “American Jewish Politics in the Trump Era: Some Early Observations.” According to the Tam Institute, Waxman will address at the lunch, among other questions, the Jewish community’s response to Donald Trump’s presidency and how Jews are reacting to the emergence of the alt-right, white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The main lecture that night is named in memory of Rabbi Jacob Rothschild, who was the senior rabbi at The Temple from 1946 until his death in 1973. Early in his career here, he faced congregants and others in Atlanta who were divided over support for Israel. ■

Who: Dov Waxman What: Rothschild Memorial Lecture on “American Jews and Israel: From Consensus to Conflict” Where: Oxford Presentation Auditorium, 311 Oxford Road Building, 1390 Oxford Road, Emory University When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 7 Admission: Free to all, with free parking in the Fishburne garage; www.js.emory.edu

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This year’s Rothschild Memorial Lecture at Emory University will wade into the controversy over the reported erosion of support for the state of Israel among American Jews, particularly those who are under age 30. The lecture, the ninth in the yearly series, will be delivered by Dov Waxman, a professor of political science, international affairs and Israel studies at Northeastern University in Boston. His topic, “American Jews and Israel: From Consensus to Conflict,” is based in part on his book “Trouble in the Tribe — The American Jewish Conflict Over Israel,” published last year by the Princeton University Press. In the book, he maintains that “there is a major divide in the American Jewish community between religious conservatives and secular liberals” that is growing and “poses a severe challenge to the future cohesion of the American Jewish community.” Which is not to say AIPAC is having difficulty raising the tens of millions of dollars from its many supporters to finance one of the most effective lobbying operations in Washington. Nor are many American Jews who are members of the organizations that support Israel canceling travel to Jerusalem, and any criticism in America of Israeli government policy is still met by an almost instantaneous avalanche of support for the Jewish state. Nonetheless, for all its apparent success, Israel is increasingly irrelevant in their lives of the vast majority of young American Jews. In the 2013 Pew survey, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on Birthright tours of Israel and other such programs, less than a third (30 percent) of young non-Orthodox American Jews thought that “caring about Israel is essential to being Jewish.” Waxman writes that “it is important not to exaggerate the depth and extent of divisions among American Jews. … Disagreements over Israeli policies in the territories and the proper relationship between synagogue and state in the Jewish state go on and on and become increasingly bitter.” It is not just Israel that increasingly divides America’s Jews. There is sharp disagreement over American domestic and foreign policies as well. In Atlanta, for example, one could in the past six weeks hear a Conservative rabbi in East Cobb criticizing the far left during a High Holiday sermon

rector of Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, which sponsors the annual Rothschild Lecture, there appears to be a definite shift in American Jewish public opinion. Goldstein, a distinguished scholar of American Judaism in his own right, said the shift is a “key development in American Jewish culture.” He said it raises “other questions of what it means for Jews to live in a pluralistic society where different segments of society approach certain issues with different concerns in different ways.” Goldstein said: “America is becoming more polarized around a whole series of issues. So, too, is the Jewish community. So the question is, what does the larger political culture and the political divide mean for the Jewish community?”

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EDUCATION

School Puts Priority on Jewish Excitement By Sarah Moosazadeh sarah@atljewishtimes.com To create an engaging, exciting and relevant experience for Jewish children is one of the main goals of the Atlanta Scholars Kollel’s Morningside Sunday Experience, says the head of the new Sunday school for preschoolers through eighth-graders, Rabbi Mayer Freedman. Before joining the kollel and becoming Congregation Anshi S’fard’s spiritual leader in 2015, Rabbi Freedman taught at a religious day school in Phoenix while fulfilling his rabbinical duties and directing Vaad Hakashruth’s outreach programs. It was not long after moving to Atlanta that Rabbi Freedman realized that most Jewish families were not sending their children to Jewish day schools or any other Jewish educational programs. The kollel ran events such as Chanukah and Sukkot parties for community members, but the organization sought to establish consistent programing. “We want to provide an option for families who wish to engage in Judaism but may otherwise not have an opportunity to do so because of expenses,

Community members take part in opening week festivities at the Morningside Sunday Experience’s kickoff event and open house.

Morah Danielle teaches the aleph-bet at the Morningside Sunday Experience.

the model of the school or perhaps not living close enough,” Rabbi Freedman said. He said he hopes to set the Morningside Sunday Experience apart from other religious schools by avoiding a school-like atmosphere. “We want to be more of a tent than a school. Of course, our goal is to teach kids Hebrew and how to observe Jewish laws, but I’d say the bigger goal is to get children excited about Judaism.” Although Rabbi Freedman believes that religious schools are successful in teaching about Judaism, he said they are not always successful in getting children excited about Judaism. “Even if we don’t teach the children much but excite them about the religion, they will remain in our sphere and allow us to influence them.”

His Sunday school is nondenominational and includes children from different demographics. It meets for two hours most Sundays during the school year at Anshi, 1324 N. Highland Ave., with one hour focused on Hebrew and the other on Judaics. Rabbi Freedman intends to organize community events at the Morningside Sunday Experience, including a Chanukah party, a Purim costume contest, a pre-Passover model seder, and a Lag B’Omer bonfire and barbecue. Rabbi Freedman hopes that pupils will find Judaism engaging and will search it out wherever they are in life. “We want the kids to learn how to read and write Hebrew and have a basic understanding of Judaism and Jewish values, but we also want them enthu-

siastic about the Torah’s narratives in the 21st century.” Rabbi Freedman said the community’s response has been tremendous since the Morningside Sunday Experience launched Sunday, Sept. 10. “We have had a lot of interest and will have around 10 children this year, including two groups composed of children from inside and outside the neighborhood.” He added, “We have a family that drives from Douglasville every week, which may be that child’s only connection to Judaism.” The kollel is subsidizing the program, and Rabbi Freedman will speak with any parents who can’t afford the $200 tuition. “Part of our goal is to make it extremely inexpensive so there is no hinderance or barriers for a parent of the child.” ■

3 Israel Fellows Hope to Triple Impact on Campus By Paula Baroff

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Hillels of Georgia has three Israel fellows stationed on college campuses, two more than during last school year. Ana Sazonov, Omer Zimmerman and Nitzan Ben Eliyahu are in charge of Israel programming on campus and act as representatives of Israel for college students. The yearlong process of becoming an Israel fellow through the Jewish Agency for Israel is intense, Sazonov said. The three went through months of tests and group dynamic exercises to see how they would react under pressure and would work with others. Once they passed, the new Israel fellows interviewed with multiple campuses until they were finally placed where their personalities fit the best. Sazonov is at Emory. “I represent a closure for the Jewish Agency,” she said, referring to the assistance her family got from the agency in moving to Israel from Ukraine. 28 “Basically, right now I’m returning

back what the Jewish Agency gave me.” Sazonov worked in various fields before taking on the challenge of bringing Israel to campus. “I got to the Ana Sazonov point where I didn’t do anything meaningful with my life. I wanted to change and do something meaningful,” she said, “To have this huge impact on the students … it’s very meaningful and empowering, for them and for me.” With Sazonov at Emory, Zimmerman handles the rest of the Atlantaarea college campuses, including Georgia Tech, Georgia State University and Kennesaw State University. He also had experience with the Jewish Agency, having been placed at a summer camp in Florida when he was 17. Before he started college for political science and communications degrees, he worked on Birthright trips as a medic and security guard. “I decided

I want to work with those kind of people all the time,” he said about young American Jews. “I think I have the knowledge to give them what they need.” Omer He hopes to enZimmerman gage as many students as he can and to hold more events and programs related to Israel. Ben Eliyahu is the University of Georgia’s full-time fellow. She spent her Israeli military service doing social welfare, then earned her degree from Tel Aviv University in social work. She said that at UGA she aims to share her personal story with the students. “I want to have the chance to share the experience of the conflict and the complicated situation in Israel as a person who grew up in it, so that Jews around the world will have information other than what they see in the media,” she said, addressing criticisms of Israel. “I see the Israel fellows as an op-

portunity to pass on the values on which I was brought up to Jews that only know Israel from afar.” All three Israel fellows said it will take a little while to Nitzan Ben adjust to college life. Eliyahu One of the biggest challenges is getting inside the minds of American college students to relate to them. “It’s so different from the college life in Israel,” Ben Eliyahu said. “I had no idea before what Greek life is.” “We make them ask questions. Make them think. We are here to hear them and hear their opinions and challenge them,” Sazonov said. Having more Israel fellows in Georgia means more opportunities to work with the community, and the three urge anyone to contact them through the Jewish Agency or Hillel. “It’s great to wake up in the morning with a smile and do something you love,” Sazonov said. ■

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EDUCATION

Day School Crucial to Identity for My Kids and Me are learning to speak, read and write Hebrew from native Israelis. They’re gaining more than a language; they’re getting a strong connection to the Jewish homeland. They’re learning the origins of Jewish traditions and living them daily. At their school, each grade has a special milestone celebration. In

Guest Column By Stephanie Rubel

kindergarten, they learn about the meaning of their Hebrew names. In first grade, they each receive their own personalized siddur (prayer book). Parents are tasked with decorating fabric siddur covers for their children. Some find artistic crafters on Etsy to design the covers. Others harness whatever artistic ability they have and pour their hearts and souls into the project. The day of my son David’s celebration, he came home practically unwilling to let go of his new siddur. I had decorated one side of the cover with a Tree of Life made from musical notes and instruments, representing his talent and passion. On the other side is the Star of David, which David called “my star” when he was in preschool. Inside, members of our family wrote him notes of love and encouragement. That day, he asked his dad to put sticky tabs on all the pages with prayers he knew, such as Modeh Ani, the Shema and the Kiddush. Seeing my child so happy to have his own siddur while knowing I had a part in making that special for him was one of the most joyous experiences of my life. It wasn’t just David; all the children were glowing with pride as they looked at their new siddurim. I don’t have a comparable experience from my youth except for my bat mitzvah. I can’t imagine having been excited to receive a siddur at age 7. I can’t recall being particularly proud of my Hebrew name. But now I see how meaningful these experiences can be. Meanwhile, my anxieties about Jewish day school proved to be unfounded. I was worried about its homogeneity and my children being isolated from other religious, ethnic and

racial groups. But my kids don’t live in a Jewish bubble, and their school provides high-quality, accelerated secular academics as well as Judaics. My kids participate in community sports leagues and other extracurricular activities with diverse participants, including on Saturdays, and they have close Jewish and non-Jewish friends. At the same time, my children can answer our non-Jewish neighbors’ questions about our Shabbat traditions and holiday celebrations. Most important, when they interact with the wider community, they are unabashedly proud of their Jewishness. They see many different levels of Jewish observance, and they are learning to respect diversity within Judaism and outside it. This year, my 9-year-old daughter’s soccer coach decided to add an extra, voluntary practice session on Friday evenings. But we have Shabbat dinner together every Friday night, and my daughter, the only Jew on the team, wasn’t happy. We talked about how much she loves her teammates and her com-

mitment to the team, and we talked about how we make it a priority to be together every Shabbat for dinner. She considered the situation and asked whether we could do soccer drills at home on Friday afternoons so she also could get in the extra practice without sacrificing our Shabbat ritual. I know it won’t always be easy, but we’re off to a good start. I recognize that day school is not for everyone and that all day schools are not the same. But I can honestly say that I’m envious of my children’s Jewish education. My kids will never meet their great-grandparents who survived the Holocaust. They will never meet their great-grandparents who survived the attempted annihilation of our people. But they will truly know what it means to be Jewish, as I now understand what it means to “raise my children Jewish.” ■ Stephanie Rubel and her husband, Josh, have three children, Talia, David and Isaac, who attend the Epstein School. She works as a public health program evaluation consultant.

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My Jewish identity has never been about what I learned in school. I’m the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, and my Jewish identity was shaped by my family history and my mother’s insistence on the importance of preserving Jewry in the Diaspora. I married a Jew and always planned to raise my kids Jewish. I also always assumed that, like me, my children would go to public school and get their formal Jewish education from supplementary Hebrew school and maybe the Jewish Community Center, a Jewish summer camp or a youth group. In truth, though, I never loved the idea of Hebrew school. As a child, I found it to be a waste of time. Yes, I learned enough to be comfortable at High Holiday services and observe some of the better-known Jewish holidays, like Chanukah. I memorized a Torah portion for my bat mitzvah and learned to read and write Hebrew. But I can barely speak any Hebrew, and when my mother-in-law gave us a basket of fruit and snacks at Purim, I had no idea that it was called mishloach manot or that it was one of the key traditions of Purim. I often felt envious of my husband’s Judaism. He went to Jewish day school, could speak Hebrew, and understood the meaning behind traditions such as eating cheesecake on Shavuot or hearing the shofar during the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah. My Jewish literacy, by comparison, felt superficial. That bothered me. So when our kids reached school age, I began to question my vision for their Jewish education. I wasn’t looking for them to be more religious, but I did want to give them a Jewish foundation they’d find meaningful — and inspire them to nurture and sustain their own Jewish identities throughout their lives. So my husband and I made a choice that, at the time, felt radical to me: We enrolled them in a Jewish day school, the Epstein School — a Conservative, bilingual Hebrew/English school. It was one of the best decisions we ever made. My children — third-generation descendants of Holocaust survivors —

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East Cobb Grounds Enrich Country French Estate Cheryl and Warren Alifeld hired Marshall Veal in 2001 to build their 7,500-square-foot, custom-designed home in East Cobb. Interior designer/artist Cheryl said: “It took us two years, but we watched them lay every stone. The grounds really sold Warren on this property. We love the view of the national forest and the 2-plus acres that ramble to Owl Creek on a direct path to the Chattahoochee River.” The house itself is a work of art. Dramatically high ceilings and a spiral-staircased foyer reliably predict what’s inside: a sprawling, open, uncorked, panoramic, Parisian vision of an artist with handcrafted statements in luxurious but not fussy exuberance. It is thoughtful but relaxing, romantic but organized — what one expects from a designer in her own home. Take the tour with Cheryl.

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Jaffe: How would you describe your home’s style? What mood do you want to create? Alifeld: We wanted space for our children and grandchildren in a country French setting. We live mostly on the main floor. Upstairs are three more bedroom suites, and downstairs is built like a mountain house with a lodge rec room area with natural river rock, billiard table and fireplace. My interior design motivation in the kitchen was this antique stove with a peacock design from my parents’ home. They collected antiques and had a stove in every room.

Jaffe: What are some of the unusual features of your home? Alifeld: The view of the outside — we added the cantilever decks after much thought. It’s relaxing to sit out here with morning coffee and gaze out in privacy. My favorite room is the library because books are my best friends. I painted the Spanish dancer, “El Jaleo,” over the mantel. I especially like the floral, jeweltoned velvet fabric on the sofa in here. I had the adjacent dining room chandelier reverse hand-painted (by an artist at the Scott Antique Markets) to match the lush rose pattern. My son is a glass artist in California, and we display his pieces in the dining room along with our Judaica. Jaffe: You are a fine artist. How

would you describe your training and passion? Alifeld: Growing up in Joplin, Mo., my parents made sure that I had private art lessons. As a base, I learned in the style of the Old Masters. I tend to paint women because they are just outright prettier than men (laughing). It varies, like this real-life cowboy just sitting on a bench in Montana reading the newspaper about a rodeo that has the poster of it right behind him. I call these spontaneous inspirations my

Chai-Style Homes By Marcia Caller Jaffe mjaffe@atljewishtimes.com

Norman Rockwell moments. In Atlanta I had gallery space at Tula on Bennett Street and now paint at the Chastain Arts Center. We have a very lively Friday art group. My most special paintings are the ones I did of our grandchildren swimming and diving for sand dollars near our Bonita Springs, Fla., home, displayed in the living room. I don’t rush to finish a painting. I often observe them midway and continue to build upon it, like this pearl-draped model. And don’t ask me how long it takes to complete a portrait (laughing) because it takes a lifetime. I am a former a member of the National Color Marketing Group, which is highly regarded as the forecaster of color palettes and trending for major industries like paint, carpet and even selecting interiors for the transportation industry. My interior design career spans 40 years in residential and commercial projects in Sandy Springs and Buckhead. My designs were published in newspapers, magazines and on television. Jaffe: Describe the pencil drawing you did as a tribute to Warren’s German roots. Alifeld: My husband was adopted out of Nazi Germany (1936) as a young infant. I did this elaborate still-life as a tribute to his home village, Bad Driburg. I started with a still-life drawing and added in various symbols: chanukiah, edelweiss, a European stein, “Brahms’ Lullaby,” “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl (Warren’s favorite) and “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”

B Jaffe: Who are your favorite artists? Alifeld: John Singer Sargent was recognized in the late 20th century as a leading Edwardian-era luxury portrait artist. It was said that Jewish women gave him a lift by hiring him early on in his career. I don’t collect art by who did it. I buy things that I am attracted to. I have to really be drawn to the piece. That being said, I like a variety of mediums. In the master bath are male and female, life-sized metal body casts. In the master sitting room we have an original antique poster for Capri perfume called “Carthusia” (circa 1890). I adore its use of color and whimsy. Jaffe: You maintain two homes.

How does that work designwise? Alifeld: I strive to have different styles. I’m now working on a “she-she” salon, a lady’s room for all my femalethemed art in our condo. Having just sold this home, we are downsizing to a new one-level where we mixed in our more traditional pieces with contemporary. In Florida we have a more contemporary feel with traditional accents. I love light and brightness, and my colors are alabaster and sky blue. Jaffe: In the rec room, I see a sign that sums up your lighthearted side. Alifeld: Yes: “What if the hokey pokey really is what life’s all about?” I treasure each and every day. ■

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Photos by Duane Stork

A: The master bath has contrasting male and female metal casts of human torsos. B: The formal dining room houses the Alifelds’ Judaica collection and their son’s glass vessels. The light fixture was commissioned to match the library sofa’s velvet floral fabric. C: The lush streams and trails behind the house lead over Owl Creek to the Chattahoochee River. D: A visit to Montana inspired this painting of a rodeo cowboy, an example of what Cheryl Alifeld calls her Norman Rockwell moments. E: This Alifeld portrait, created with a live model, depicts royalty. F: Cheryl Alifeld’s horse painting hangs over a multicolored ceramic piece, mixing contemporary and traditional styles. G: Cheryl Alifeld holds “Sweet Symphony,” a drawing of a young musician for which she won a regional award at the Chastain Arts Center. In the background is one of her favorite paintings, “Bathing Beauties,” which she created of her grandchildren visiting in Florida. H: The library is Cheryl Alifeld’s favorite room. She painted Spanish dancer “El Jaleo” (inspired by a John Singer Sargent work) over the fireplace. I: Cheryl Alifeld created this evocative pencil drawing, capturing husband Warren’s German birthplace, Bad Driburg. J: Cheryl Alifeld designed her office off the kitchen around this antique stove from her parents’ home in Missouri, where they had a stove in every room.

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

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Sephardic Musician Brings World Treasures to OVS By David R. Cohen david@atljewishtimes.com Gerard Edery is one of the world’s foremost experts in the music of the Sephardic Diaspora. He’s also a master singer, storyteller and flamenco guitarist. Born in Casablanca and raised in New York and Paris, Edery is a citizen of the world who sings in 15 languages and speaks four fluently. Although he has performed since he was in his teens, it wasn’t until much later that Edery dug deeper into the cultural melting pot that is Sephardic music. In 2003, Edery released the “Sephardic Songbook,” which has become a resource for musicians around the world to explore the genre. On Saturday, Nov. 4, he will perform at Congregation Or VeShalom with singer Maria Krupoves, an interpreter of the folk songs of Central and Eastern Europe. They will present an ecumenical celebration of the origins of Christian and Jewish folk music. It will be Edery’s third time performing at Or VeShalom. Edery spoke with the AJT by phone from a tour stop in Warsaw. AJT: Tell us about your trip to Atlanta and what you’ll be doing. Edery: I’ll be an artist in residence

classical music and much more of this research and performing of my heritage. When I began doing this, there weren’t many people contemporizing the music like I was. I like to think I bring it to the modern age. World musician Gerard Edery is the artist in residence at Congregation Or VeShalom on Nov. 3 and 4.

again at Or VeShalom, so I’ll be co-leading the Shabbat services in the evening and on Saturday morning, and then on Saturday night I’ll be doing a fulllength concert. This time I’m performing with a longtime colleague from Lithuania, Maria Krupoves. She and I met a few years ago in New York, and we have created a program which covers a repertoire from all over the Middle East and Europe in about 10 languages. She has done the same thing with Eastern European music that I’ve done with Sephardic music. It’s a very rich, cross-cultural program. AJT: So how did you get back into playing and recording Sephardic music? Edery: I really started playing more Sephardic music around 1992, which was the 500-year anniversary of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. After that, I started to get calls for concerts, and I started doing less opera and

AJT: Why is Sephardic music so diverse? Edery: After the expulsion from Spain, there was a huge Diaspora. Everywhere Jews went, they left part of their culture there and influenced the host cultures. In turn, they were influenced by those cultures as well. So they absorbed musical styles and traditions and blended them with their own. So it becomes an incredibly rich panorama of styles, languages and poetic sensibilities. It’s an incredible repertoire that transcends time. AJT: You have training in jazz, flamenco, opera and classical music. How do you bring those styles together when you perform? Edery: When I try to describe my music, it’s difficult because it’s so broad. But I would say that I fuse many different elements together. All of these influences are part of who I am. I’m not going to do this music in a traditional way because I can’t. There are so many other musical influences that I need to express.

AJT: You’ve been performing for a long time. Can you talk about how you go about connecting with an audience? Edery: I’ve been a communicator all my life. It’s just one of my gifts. I want to relate to people, and I love to sing for people and to not only tell my stories, but to hear theirs as well. It’s about being able to communicate as well as being able to listen. The best artists in my opinion are the ones who listen to the audience on many different levels. AJT: Is there a message that you try to pass on when you perform? Edery: Respect for all people. Love. To make love and joy and happiness something you can communicate and make people feel. The message is one of peace and to bring some calm, loving energy into the world, which this music very much enables me to do. ■ Who: Gerard Edery and Maria Krupoves Where: Congregation Or VeShalom, 1681 North Druid Hills Road, Brookhaven When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 4 Tickets: $25 for members, $35 for nonmembers; orveshalom.org or 404633-1737

Sammy K lays down some rhymes during the Shabbat Project concert.

Rockin’ out of Shabbat

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Photos by Eli Gray and Russell Gottschalk Eitan Katz has some young assistants for the Havdalah service.

The Eitan Katz Band keeps the young men in front of the AJA stage dancing into the night.

The Shabbat Project continued an Atlanta tradition by closing the annual observance with a packed Havdalah concert at Atlanta Jewish Academy on Saturday night, Oct. 28. The Atlanta Jewish Music Festival-organized concert followed such communitywide events as the Great Big Challah Bake on Thursday night at the Marcus JCC and a Kiddush block party outside Congregation Beth Jacob midday Saturday, as well as events at individual synagogues, all in an effort to get everyone observing one Shabbat. The concert at AJA featured Atlanta hip-hop artist Sammy K and the Eitan Katz Band, which led the attendees at the free event in observing Havdalah. ■

Massell’s Song Never Gets Too Old to Play Again By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com Sam Massell didn’t need a biography to secure his place in Atlanta history. He’ll always be the city’s first Jewish mayor, and, depending on the results Nov. 7, could remain the last. It was 44 years ago that he lost a runoff for re-election to Maynard Jackson, marking Atlanta’s shift from a white-led to a black-led city government. Although Massell’s new authorized biography, “Play It Again, Sam: The Notable Life of Sam Massell,” makes the point from the start that he has thrived in four distinct careers, the man now often called the “mayor of Buckhead” wants to be sure that legacy of transition is remembered. “I wanted to pinpoint my legacy. I guess everybody wants to do that before they leave,” Massell said in an interview in his Buckhead Coalition office at Tower Place. When he took office in January 1970, Atlanta had no black department heads. Massell quickly corrected that, so people throughout the municipal government became accustomed to black people being the bosses of white people. Such vital if overdue transitional steps made it easy and peaceful for a black man to lead Atlanta by 1974. The book, written by Charles McNair, makes it clear Massell wanted and initially expected to serve two terms before Atlanta elected a black mayor, but the city’s demographics changed more quickly than he realized. The same black leaders who had been crucial to his win in 1969 abandoned him when they recognized they had the votes to elect one of their own, and Massell doesn’t blame them. “Of course I regret it, but I don’t think it was wrong. There shouldn’t have been any surprise,” he said. “The white people would do the same thing if they’d been without power for 125 years.” If there had been a second Massell term, he said, he would have added to such accomplishments as MARTA, the Omni arena and the first woman appointed to what is now the City Council by slashing government costs and spending only where it was needed it. “If you had the highest-paid police and highest-paid teachers for a decade, you would have the best city in the world,” he said. He planned to cut MARTA bus fares from 15 cents (already down from

60 cents) to zero. “I know it could be done. I know it should be done. That’s man’s fifth freedom: mobility.” That pivotal time in Atlanta history, including a desperate, end-of-campaign slogan (“Atlanta’s too young to die”) that Massell insists had no racial intent, is the surface appeal of the book. That’s why it has the intriguing cover line “Atlanta’s first minority mayor.” But it was a brief part of Massell’s 90 years, and much of the joy in “Play It Again, Sam” comes from the tales of the youthful Buddy Massell, who once manufactured counterfeit nickels (his father put a quick stop to that business) and had such a successful and diverse Coke stand on his Druid Hills street that the police shut him down. “I’ve been a workaholic from 9 to 90,” he said. He was a natural salesman, entrepreneur, organizer and hustler from the start, even though Massell said he was not popular, was not a particularly interested student and could have sold his military exploits as Sgt. Bilko skits on “The Phil Silvers Show.” The book includes mistakes and negative moments. Massell said McNair insisted on presenting the full picture, and after reading a magazine profile McNair wrote about him, the exmayor wanted him as his biographer. But it’s still a sunny, almost fawning portrait of Massell, which isn’t surprising: It’s hard to spend as much time with him as McNair did to write the book and not be captivated by him. That’s why Massell’s free appearance with McNair and Atlanta Journal-Constitution political reporter Jim Galloway at 10 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 9, should be one of the highlights of the Book Festival of the Marcus JCC. After all, his biography is just the beginning of his story. “I really could do a sequel,” he said. “I got a lot left out of the book.” ■

Play It Again, Sam

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BOOK FESTIVAL

By Charles McNair Mercer University Press, 230 pages, $29

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LOCAL NEWS Ecumenical Thanksgiving Temple Kol Emeth is hosting nearly 20 faith groups from Cobb, Cherokee and Fulton counties at the 13th annual Ecumenical Thanksgiving Celebration at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16. This year’s theme is “Dare to Do.” The event will spotlight the Center for Children and Young Adults, an interfaith initiative addressing the problem of homeless youths. “Today’s young people face a host of stressful demands and choices in a divisive, unsettled world,” Holy Trinity Lutheran’s Sharon Kane said. “It has been said that it takes a brave heart to choose right. You’ll hear how CCYA provides the tools for disadvantaged youth to make good choices and fosters the courage they need to dare to do.” The free program, open to all, will include reflections, music and humor from representatives of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and other faith communities. A reception afterward enables interfaith conversation. “Every year, every week and every hour, we have an abundance of choices to make. This program will give you hope and inspiration to dare to make the right choices for you, your family and our community, all wrapped up

with humor and music,” Kol Emeth member Hal Schlenger said. Noor Abbady of the Roswell Community Masjid called the service “the most unique, diverse, inclusive, colorful, humorous and flavorful Thanksgiving event in Atlanta.” Joining Kol Emeth at the service are the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, the Art of Living Foundation, the Baha’i Faith Center for Learning, the East Cobb Islamic Center, East Cobb United Methodist Church, Emerson Unitarian Universalist Congregation, the Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Interfaith Community Initiatives, the Islamic Center of Marietta (Al-Hedaya), Masjid Al-Muminum, Pilgrimage United Church of Christ, Roswell Community Masjid, the Sikh Educational Welfare Association, Gurudwara Sahib, St. Catherine’s Episcopal Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, Transfiguration Catholic Church and Unity North Atlanta Church. Kol Emeth is at 1415 Old Canton Road in East Cobb. If, as expected, the 900 seats fill up, the service will be livestreamed at the Mormon church three miles away at 3155 Trickum Road and online at bit.ly/TKEstream.

Blank a Change Maker

Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United owner Arthur Blank is among four people being honored Saturday night, Nov. 4, at the Islamic Speakers Bureau of Atlanta’s Change Makers Awards Gala at the Cobb Galleria. The awards celebrate people in the Atlanta area who help to make the city and state better places to live. Blank and former Georgia Tech professor Mokhtar Bazaraa are receiving Lifetime Achievement Awards. Episcopal Bishop Robert Wright is getting the Building Bridges Award. Sally Yates, who was fired as acting U.S. attorney general for refusing to enforce the first executive order President Donald Trump issued to halt immigration from some Muslim-majority nations, is being given the Courage Award. Bill Nigut, a senior executive producer for Georgia Public Broadcasting and a former Anti-Defamation League regional director, is the event’s emcee. Tickets are $175 for the black-tie gala, which starts at 6:30 p.m. Visit www.isbatlanta.org/gala.

Journal Honors Editor

The 20th annual volume of the Southern Jewish Historical Society’s

scholarly journal, Southern Jewish History, features a retrospective honoring its editor, Atlantan Mark Bauman. Drawing on interviews with authors and colleagues about Bauman’s impact on the field of Southern Jewish historical research, Steve Whitfield, professor emeritus of American civilization at Brandeis University, writes that Bauman’s role “in furthering the understanding of the Southern Jewish experience has been as incontestable as it has been inescapable.” Bauman, now a retired professor of history, has been the only editor and has reviewed every article since 1998. He pushed to have articles peerreviewed and for editorial board membership to be rotated to expand participation within the society. Whitfield’s article quotes journal contributors about Bauman’s influence on them and the study of Southern Jewish history. Scott Langston, a professor of religion at Texas Christian University, says Bauman “has cast a wide net in facilitating the research of others and making it available in the journal’s pages.” The journal is a benefit of society membership and available for purchase at www.jewishsouth.org.

OBITUARIES

Jeril Cohen Belleair Beach, Fla., 75

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

Jeril S. Cohen, 75, of Belleair Beach, Fla., passed away peacefully Friday, Oct. 20, 2017. She was the daughter of William Schwab and Frances Platz and widow of Bruce P. Cohen. She was a loving and devoted wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin and friend. He accomplishments included being a magazine editor, schoolteacher, real estate agent, law office manager, councilwoman and water aerobics instructor. Her passions included her family (especially her grandchildren), baking and traveling. Surviving are her children, Rob, Katja, Eric, Brandon, Anna, Seth, Ross and Chloe; her grandchildren, Alex, Jake and Ryan; a brother, Richard; and a sister, Mary. Her endless dedication to family and friends will be forever missed by the many who loved her. Funeral services were held Sunday, Oct. 22, at Serenity Funeral Home, 13401 Indian Rocks Road, Largo, Fla. Burial followed at Serenity Gardens. Condolences may be left at www.serenityfuneralhomelargo.com. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to Temple B’nai Israel in Clearwater, Fla.

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Stephen Freedman 75, Sandy Springs

Stephen L. Freedman passed away peacefully Saturday, Oct. 28, 2017, after a valiant fight against lung cancer. He was born July 27, 1942, in Providence, R.I., to Aurelia Freedman and Eugene Freedman, both of blessed memory. Stephen is survived by his wife of 51 years, Sharon; daughters Randi Meyer (Gary Meyer), Allison Freedman (Harry Horowitz) and Laura Freedman (Joel Gress); and five grandchildren, Jared, Jessica, Abbi, Koby and Alon. He is also survived by his sister, Ruth Kobrin (Lawrence

OBITUARIES Kobrin) of New York, N.Y., and numerous nieces and nephews. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University and Case Western Reserve University. Sign the online guestbook at dresslerjewishfunerals.com. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Lung Cancer Research Foundation (www.lungcancerresearchfoundation.org) or the charity of one’s choice. Graveside services were held Monday, Oct. 30, at Arlington Memorial Park. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Marianne Nieman 97, Atlanta

Marianne Goldstein Nieman passed away Monday, Oct. 16, 2017, in Atlanta, where she has lived since 1998. She was 97 years old. She was preceded in death by her husband of 48 years, Sol R. Nieman, and her son, Alan Joel Nieman. She is survived by her daughter, Susan Nieman Winner (Dr. Jonathan D. Winner); her daughter-in-law, Shirley Hebert Nieman; her brother, Donald Goldstein (Marilyn); six grandchildren, Michael Winner, Dr. David Winner (Robin), Jeffrey Winner (Julie), Amy Winner Kraus (Matthew Kraus), Jeremy Nieman (Paula) and Jennifer Gilbert; and 10 great-grandchildren, Miles, Jakob and Ava Kraus, Rachel and Max Winner, Betsy and Charlie Winner, and Ainsley, Mackensie and Darcy Nieman of the Chicago area. She will be fondly remembered by Todd, Heather, Jordyn and Riley Fenchel of the Chicago area and numerous nieces and nephews. Sign the online guestbook at dresslerjewishfunerals.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to Ian’s Friends Foundation, www.iansfriendsfoundation.com, for pediatric brain tumor research. Graveside services were held Wednesday, Oct. 18, at Shalom Memorial Park in Arlington Heights, Ill., with Rabbi Michael Davis officiating. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

Scott Selig

www.atlantajewishtimes.com of great proportion. Colorful pieces of personality, character, intuition, intellect, clothing and an abundance of inspiration were woven together over an adventure-filled and often trailblazing 47 years. Selig left a profound mark on those whose lives he touched directly and indirectly. For the more than 3,000 people who connected through the power of social networking, billboards, T-shirts, wristbands, videos and dedication to the ScottStrong movement that his illness ignited, his strength, courage and spirit will live on. It is no coincidence that as Scott learned of and shared his diagnosis of Stage 4 lung cancer in October 2016, the force of his determination to “die with cancer and not from cancer” would inspire loved ones and strangers alike to rally around a man who this time was the underdog. No coincidence, because it was Scott who was there for so many and who was accepting of all, regardless of their station in life. Through his early and visionary involvement and leadership at the Ron Clark Academy, his greatest communal passion, and during his board service at Camp Twin Lakes and at the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, Scott engaged with great conviction, an empathetic heart, quiet generosity and genuine humility. There is no underestimating Scott’s resolve to do what he could to make the lives of others, often strangers, better. Countless friends and a large family cherished Scott and loved him for his unique spirit, his independence and his authenticity. Their lives have been and will continue to be illuminated by the rich, colorful life that Scott Selig lived. Scott’s family includes his loving sons, Cooper and Sam, and their mother, Amy Selig; his parents, Steve and Linda Selig and Janet Selig and Jeff Bernstein; siblings Mindy and Dave Shoulberg, Blake and Stephanie Selig, Michael Shenk, Stacey and David Fisher, Mara and Justin Berman, and Bret Bernstein; nieces and nephews Carly, Jordan, Casey, McKenzie, Ansley, Parker, Zachary, Alison, Lindsay, Molly, Aaron, Justin, Ella, Avery, Davis, Max and Parker; and special friend Samantha Wexler. Sign the online guestbook at dresslerjewishfunerals.com. Memorial contributions to The Scott Selig Scholarship Fund at the Ron Clark Academy would be appreciated. Services were at The Temple, 1589 Peachtree St., Midtown, on Sunday, Oct. 29. Arrangements by Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care, 770-451-4999.

“The greatest gift a man possesses is the ability to work hard at something that is worth working hard for.” — Theodore Roosevelt Scott Selig found many opportunities worthy of his hard work during his lifetime. He served as executive vice president of Selig Enterprises and the driving force and president of the recently launched Selig Development, an arm of the nearly 100-year-old family-held real estate company. Scott was focusing on the future and growth of the business for his family, his colleagues and his community. During his 17-year tenure at Selig, Scott’s hard work, dedication and leadership have been noted and recognized throughout the business and civic community. Scott has served on the Atlanta Commercial Board of Realtors, Midtown Alliance, Buckhead Community Improvement District, Council for Quality Growth, City of Atlanta Workforce Development and Buckhead Coalition. Additionally, Scott chaired the City of Atlanta Technical Advisory Committee and has been an active member of YPO Southern 7 and the Gridiron Society of the University of Georgia. Scott’s impact on Atlanta and the entire region has been recognized numerous times through such awards as the State of Georgia Outstanding Citizen Recognition Award, Atlanta Business Chronicle’s 40 Under 40 to Watch, the Atlanta Commercial Realtors Presidents Award and, in 2016, the Realtor of the Year Award. Most recently, the Atlanta Business Chronicle recognized Selig as a Most Admired CEO. Earlier this year, the American Lung Association honored Scott as a Lung Force Hero in appreciation of his work as fundraiser and advocate for the research and treatment of lung cancer, the disease that led to his death on Friday, Oct. 27, 2017. Prior to his professional and civic life, Scott graduated from the Westminster Schools, Class of 1988. At the University of Arizona, Selig received an undergraduate degree in business administration and served as chapter president of Zeta Beta Tau. In 1995, Selig earned an M.B.A. from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business. Over the past week, as family and friends gathered at his home to say their goodbyes and to reminisce about their son, brother, father, friend, uncle, mentor and leader, one recurring theme seemed to dominate: Scott’s life was a mosaic

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

47, Atlanta

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BUSINESS Photos courtesy of the American Hotel

The inside of the American Hotel pays homage to the role it played in the civil rights movement as the first integrated hotel in downtown Atlanta.

The Fabulous Brass Masters Orchestra plays some classic tunes for guests at the dedication of the restored hotel.

Renovated American Hotel Reopens Downtown Atlanta’s first integrated hotel has been restored to its original glory and reopened under a former name. The American Hotel, operated by DoubleTree by Hilton, held a grand reopening ceremony Thursday, Oct. 26, to celebrate the recently completed retro renovation. Ahead of its time when it was opened in 1962 as the Americana Motor Hotel by Jewish brothers Irving and Marvin Goldstein, the hotel played an integral part in the civil rights movement and Atlanta sports

history as one of the requirements for bringing the Braves to Atlanta in 1966. A lawsuit from a Miami hotel led Marvin Goldstein to adopt the American Hotel name in the 1970s. The $16 million renovation of the 315-room hotel embraces midcentury modern furnishings and design paired with first-class service and amenities. Unusual room features include vintage minifridges and 1960s car-themed headboards. Outside, an Airstream trailer has been modified to serve as the poolside bar. ■

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CLOSING THOUGHTS

How to Live Longer

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

The other day I got on the Internet to watch TED Talks. There are thousands of outstanding talks, and I encourage you to listen to a few. You will be impressed and learn a lot. On TED Talks, I found Susan Pinker, who spoke on why certain people live longer. She found that the Italian island of Sardinia proportionally has more than six times as many centenarians as Europe and 10 times as many as North America. She presented a chart that indicated you will live longer according to the following: Clean air will help, but it has the lowest impact. Next lowest in impact is controlling hypertension, then not being lean or overweight, then exercise, then avoiding a cardiac event. While all those items can help a person live a little longer, the fifthhighest impact to live longer is to have a flu vaccine. Fourth is to stop serious drinking, and third is to stop smoking. The two biggest impacts are to have close relationships with other people and to have social interaction with at least three of them daily. You live longer by talking to lots of people face to face every day. You live longer with close personal relationships and face-to-face interactions. Those interactions are more important than exercising, eating well, and avoiding serious drinking and smoking. I thought about how I grew up and the social interactions I had over my life. When I was a young child, my parents stayed in touch with almost all my mother’s family. We belonged to a Cousins Club that met several times a year. I had many friends on the block I lived on, and we played games together. Over the years, my mother stayed in touch with family and kept me informed. When she was gone, my sister did that. My wife did that for her family and for our friends in Atlanta. And now my daughter is doing that using Facebook and the Internet. The women in my life stay in touch better than the men, and I am sure they will live longer because of it. This is one reason why women live longer than men. After our first year in Atlanta, we joined a synagogue, not just to stay in touch Jewishly, but also for social interaction. Our friends grew out of that synagogue. In business, I found 38 that relationships not only mattered,

but also were critical to my success. It wasn’t phone calls or emails, though important, but face-to-face discussions. I went to conferences not only to get smart, but also to meet people. People thought I was smarter when they heard my voice and saw my face instead of just reading my words. I could react to their concerns and their

CROSSWORD 2

21 24 27

35 39

40 43

ACROSS 1. Clark in Selznick’s “Gone With the Wind” 6. Kind of collar 10. The skinny 14. J.J. Abrams TV hit before “Lost” 15. Campus military org. 16. “America” singer Diamond 17. Miami locale where a lot of Jews go on vacation in January 19. Tennis player Dudi 20. Fringe benefit 21. Protectors of Isr. 22. ___ zarah (idol worship) 24. “Yikes!” 26. Fictional Reaper 27. One might happen before Passover? 33. Sacrificial animal 34. Added Jewish month 35. “Aladdin” parrot voiced by Gilbert Gottfried 37. Belonging to the first man 39. Impersonated 40. Malha and Azrieli Center, e.g. 41. Lima has its largest Jewish community 42. Earn a blessing? 44. Brillo rival 45. Some Israeli water? 48. Hélène considered the “French Anne Frank” 49. “You betcha” 50. “King Solomon’s Mines” expedition 53. “I’m ___ pay phone trying to call home” (Maroon 5) 55. Smoggy 59. Radiate (like light from the face of Moses) 60. One who would not eat

The Bottom Line

problems face to face better than any other way. Today, friends we have known for years meet monthly with Rabbi Michael Berger to hear him lecture on the Torah, and we attend empty-nester dinners. Many attendees live alone and come to have the social interaction they need. We go for the same reason, because our children have left to build their own families. Of course, we stay in touch with all of them and with our grandchildren. We need that interaction so much that we travel often to be with them. Connection gives meaning to our lives. We need social connection, not social isolation. I joined the Hebrew Order of David for social interaction with men, and I play Texas hold’em poker for enjoyment and social interaction. I didn’t realize that this could extend my life. Community is critical. All the Jewish holidays, as well as Shabbos, bring the community together. Holidays are for family and friends. Sukkot, the holiday that just occurred, is about the ingathering of people and celebrating together in a sukkah. A Passover seder is about the same ingathering. Loneliness will kill you. If you are depressed, the simple answer is to do something for someone else. Ask yourself how many people you will talk to face to face today. Being alone is not about being bored; it’s about having contact with people. And the evidence is that social interaction will extend your life. Talk face to face with at least three people today, and you just might live longer. The bottom line: Building your village is a matter of life and death. ■

“On a Diet”

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

By Allen H. Lipis

www.atlantajewishtimes.com

him 33. Skull___ (kippah) 36. CIA predecessor 38. “Dirty” Dead Sea treatments 40. Burger Ranch listing 42. Worked hard at 43. Ahmed who owns American Pharoah 46. Suffix with cash, cloth or hotel 47. Late writer Nora 50. Genesis creator? 51. ___-Ra (Egyptian god) 52. “Weapon” of Yuri Foreman or Floyd Mayweather 53. Got gray 54. Some shekel coins 56. Puts on YES or NBC 57. Actor Billy of “Titanic” 58. An Israeli online news source 61. Actress Green of “Casino Royale” 62. Blood-typing system

the meat of the Passover sacrifice 63. “Holy cow!” 64. Like the numbers 18 and 36 65. Matt Damon’s action franchise character 66. Paul Rudd’s tiny friends in the Marvel Universe 67. Danny Tanner and Phil Dunphy, on TV 68. Genesis, e.g. DOWN 1. Sound astonished 2. Ahava ingredient 3. ___ Chametz (burning) 4. Chanukah food 5. It’s a flame 6. Savage of “The Wonder Years” 7. Challah unit 8. Like Seinfeld’s “yada yada yada”; abbr. 9. Parshat ___ Mot 10. It keeps you up 11. Food or shelter, e.g. 12. Reebok or Naot alternative 13. Kind of korban 18. Rode around HaYarkon Park 23. Routing word 25. Ben Gurion F A S T data, briefly A C H A 26. Hang ___ T H E B 27. Connection A V E device L A N D E 28. In the A C D C know R O I L 29. Famously M E D A funny Gilda S N O R 30. A boy A getting his bris, G H E T e.g. L E V I O R E O 31. Chip dip 32. Ehud killed W O R N 1

14 17 20 24

25 27

LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION 5

55 60

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O U R

R O

O N

I R

N G S

E T

O S

R O

H A

S S

F 30

R G O

41 45

W A

O N

O S I

M E

D H

38 42

T W O

C H

E M

66 69

Chanukah ART CONTEST

We’re looking for a creative, colorful Chanukah illustration for the cover of the Atlanta Jewish Times’ Dec. 8 issue.

If you’re age 13 or under, send us your Chanukah-themed artwork by 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 27. Size: Standard 8.5” x 11” Materials: Anything that shows up bold and bright, such as crayons, markers or cut paper. We suggest taping your artwork to cardboard to protect it. Do not fold artwork. Digitally produced art is accepted. Artwork may be submitted as JPEG or PDF file. Age categories: 6 and under, 7 to 10, 11 to 13. To enter: Artwork must be mailed or delivered to the AJT office, 270 Carpenter Drive, Suite 320, Atlanta, GA 30328, ATTN: Art Contest; submitted through atlantajewishtimes.com; or emailed to editor@ atljewishtimes.com. (One entry per child, please.)

GRAND PRIZE $50 Gift certificate to Binders. Winner’s art may be the cover of the Dec. 23 AJT.

Each artwork must have an entry form attached to the back or filled out online. All fields must be filled out for a work to be eligible to win: first and last name of the artist; age; grade; school; home address; parents’ names; phone number; and email address

FIRST PRIZES $25 Gift certificate to Binders for each category (total of 4)

ALL ENTRANTS $5 Giftcertificate to Binders

Contest Sponsor

3330 Piedmont Rd. 404-237-6331

for each contest participant. Show copy of entry form at store to receive gift.

Entry Form - 2017 Chanukah Art Contest NAME (FIRST AND LAST)

Deadline: Monday, Nov. 27, at 5 p.m. PHONE

CITY

STATE

AGE

GRADE

PARENTS’ NAMES

SCHOOL

[ EMAIL:

ONE ENTRY PER CHILD, PLEASE 270 Carpenter Drive, Suite 320, Atlanta, GA 30328 www.atlantajewishtimes.com For additional entry forms call 404-883-2130 or look in future issues of the Jewish Times.

ZIP

] CHECK HERE IF DIGITALLY PRODUCED

NOVEMBER 3 ▪ 2017

ADDRESS

NOVEMBER 3 â&#x2013;ª 2017