DOWN BALLOT
Check out our advice for how to vote on the constitutional amendments. Page 10
DECISION ’16 JEWISH VOTE
For almost a century, the Democrats have had a lock on our support. Page 14
SAFE HARBOR
An expert panel explains how and why Amendment 2 would work. Page 20
Atlanta VOL. XCI NO. 43
WWW.ATLANTAJEWISHTIMES.COM
NOVEMBER 4, 2016 | 3 CHESHVAN 5777
Hadassah Launches Drive to Cure Cancer Macon Polls Draw Jewish Monitoring By Michael Jacobs mjacobs@atljewishtimes.com
The gala celebration of Hadassah’s 100th birthday in Atlanta featured at least one surprise: the start of the Israeli answer to the U.S. National Cancer Moonshot to cure cancer. The American initiative, announced by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address in January and led by Vice President Joe Biden, is a multipronged effort to make a decade’s worth of advances in five years, beginning with a down payment of $1 billion in public money. The response from the Start-Up Nation: a two-year campaign to raise $5.8 million in private money to build a Hadassah cancer research complex in Jerusalem, focused on advancing the immunology protocol developed by Hadassah oncologist Michal Lotem. The effort was announced by a surprise speaker at the Hadassah gala: Stewart Greenberg, a Florida man diagnosed with metastatic melanoma five years ago. As he recounted to the crowd Sunday night, Oct. 30, at the Grand Hyatt in Buckhead, the top American experts in skin cancer told him nothing could be done and he had only months to live. He joined a mission to Israel, thinking it would be his last chance to see the Holy Land, and while he was there, he got
CHAI TIMES
Supporters of Chabad of North Fulton are ready to celebrate 18 years of Rabbi Hirshy Minkowicz’s community building in the Alpharetta area. Page 22
In the closing moments of Hadassah Greater Atlanta’s centennial celebration Sunday night, Oct. 30, event co-chair Martha Jo Katz (left) and honoree Renée Rosenheck announce the winner of a door prize providing a stay at a luxury hotel in Israel. More from the gala, Page 9
Stewart Greenberg recounts how a Hadassah medical innovation saved his life after the top American experts on melanoma gave him only months to live. That was five years ago. Now Greenberg and his wife, Maggie, are leading the fundraising for Hadassah’s planned cancer research center.
an appointment to see Lotem, who had the lifesaving treatment. Two decades ago, she developed a way to use tumor cells to create a vaccine that spurs the patient’s immune system to destroy the malignant cells. That Greenberg is alive to lead the Hadassah fundraising drive to expand Lotem’s work is proof that her immunotherapy worked for him, with the help of booster shots to recharge his immune response every nine months. “I feel the civil war going on in my body” after each booster, Greenberg said. Unlike chemotherapy or radiation, immunotherapy doesn’t kill healthy cells. Greenberg also differentiated
Lotem’s vaccine approach from the focus on drugs in American immunotherapy. By moving the research from Lotem’s closet-size lab to a new building with five cutting-edge labs, cold rooms and other necessities, he said, Hadassah will be able to execute a plan to destroy other cancers and eventually to prevent them through the same immunization approach that all but eradicated polio and other diseases. “How wonderful would it be for us not to worry about cancer striking our loved ones?” Greenberg asked before giving the more than 400 people at the gala the chance to make the first donations to the cause. ■
MEMORIES
Moments in Time is capturing and organizing Jewish Atlanta history, personal story by personal story, and is hoping to help each of us do the same. Page 25
INSIDE
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As many as 50 members of The Temple will spend all or part of Election Day in Macon-Bibb County with a Reform-led effort to safeguard voting rights. This is the first presidential election since 1964 that Georgia hasn’t faced special Voting Rights Act scrutiny. Georgia also joined Kansas and Alabama in seeking permission (blocked in September by a federal appeals court) to require proof of citizenship from would-be voters registering by mail with a federal form. The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism’s Nitzavim voter protection and participation project, launched in mid-August with the NAACP, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law and others, has identified MaconBibb as a Georgia municipality where voting rights are particularly threatened. Macon-Bibb tried to move a polling place used by a high percentage of black voters to the Sheriff’s Office. Rabbi David Spinrad of The Temple said such seemingly colorblind steps can be used for racist ends. Moving a polling place out of a neighborhood can serve as a de facto poll tax by adding the expense of transportation and lost work time. He and at least two other Temple rabbis, Peter Berg and Loren Filson Lapidus, are going to Macon with their congregants to put in one or more shifts watching the polls after getting online training. A group from Temple Sinai also will be there, the RAC said, as will some Georgia State University students and Temple Kol Emeth member Blair Marks, the president of Women of Reform Judaism. “This is nonpartisan work,” Rabbi Spinrad said. “We just want people to have the vote and to be able to use it.” ■