The Dayton Jewish Observer, June 2020

Federation targets opening early childhood camp Junep.8 22 p. 3 David Moss designs Grace JCC After Meals in comic&book form

THE DAYTON Published by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton

June 2020 Sivan/Tammuz 5780 Vol. 24, No. 10

OBSERVER

The Miami Valley’s Jewish Monthly • Online at daytonjewishobserver.org

The Class of 2020

20th Dayton Jewish Film Fest goes

Celebrating our high school graduates

16

virtual

BMB

NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION U.S. POSTAGE PAID DAYTON, OHIO PERMIT NO. 59

Israel’s new govt. is its largest ever

4

Alex Kolomoisky/Pool

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Overnight camps canceling

Address Service Requested

Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton 525 Versailles Drive Dayton, OH 45459

9

Scene from Crescendo, Menemshe Films

DAYTON

JFS phases transportation back starting with medical appointments

Here for you during this COVID crisis, and always.

for people to visit residents in senior With the gradual reopening of the care facilities, JFS will host a Virtual state through the Responsible Restart Mitzvah Mission June 11 and 12.

Ohio plan and the Stay Safe Ohio order “We’ll reach out to the Jewish comfrom Ohio’s Department of Health, Jewmunity for partners — we’re formally ish Family Services reopened its transpartnered with PJ Library and portation service the week of the JCC — to have children May 18 for medical appointmake cards that we will ments only. collect,” Feiner said. “We’re “We are slowly relaunchgoing to have drop boxes at ing transportation and it’s the Boonshoft CJCE on June going to be happening in 11 and 12, and someone will phases,” said Tara L. Feiner, be there with a box at the director of JFS, an agency of driveway where people can the Jewish Federation. drop off the cards the children Feiner estimates that JFS make, or they can mail them to won’t expand to offer transJFS Director us by the end of that week.” portation beyond medical Tara L. Feiner JFS will process the cards appointments until at least and mail them to Jewish resithe middle of June.

“We’ll have to see how that plays out dents at senior facilities.

Feiner added that JFS continues to ofbefore we add other things, and then fer its delivery service for takeout meals after that, we’re going to have beauty from Bernstein’s Fine Catering and appointments,” she said.

Shabbat in a Box meals offered through “And in July, we hope to go back to Chabad Women’s Circle. offering transportation for errands like For information on JFS programs, to groceries. If things go well and are movvolunteer to call seniors, or to receive ing quickly, we’ll go faster. If things are calls from a volunteer, leave a message taking longer and we need more time, for JFS at 937-401-1551. then we’ll adjust.”

— Marshall Weiss Because restrictions are still in place

Healthy snacks for first responders

Move-In Special Extended Through June 30, receive 20% off your rent.

We have independent living cottages and apartments, assisted living apartments and memory care apartments available.

Please contact Lisa Schindler at 937-529-2412 for details!

Temple Beth Or and Bernstein’s Fine Catering are partnering to provide healthy snack boxes to the staff of hospitals, nursing care facilities, firehouses, and police stations.

For each contribution of $10, Bernstein’s and the temple will prepare and deliver a box of fruits, cheeses, crudites, hummus, grilled pita, and dessert to

area first responders.

The program’s first delivery was sent to Kettering Hospital’s respite lounge at the beginning of May. A portion of the proceeds from the project will benefit Centerville Backpack Program.

To order boxes, call Temple Beth Or at 937-435-3400.

Temple Israel cancels 2020 We can all use a good laugh Jewish Cultural Festival The JCC will present Zoom Happy

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Temple Israel has canceled its Dayton Jewish Cultural Festival, which was scheduled for Aug. 9.

“The health and safety of our community is our top priority,” said Courtney Cummings, Temple Israel’s music and program director. She added that the temple will hold its Oy Vey 5K run/ walk in a virtual format. Oy Vey 5K traditionally kicks off the festival day.

Participants can register online and create a route in their own neighborhoods; all proceeds benefit the Temple Israel Social Action Fund. For more information, go to the congregation’s Facebook page: Temple Israel - Dayton, OH.

Hours at 7 p.m. on three Thursdays in June featuring comedians who have entertained JCC audiences over recent seasons.

Linda Belt will perform her standup on June 11, Karen Bergreen on June 18, and Karen Jaffe on June 25.

To register for these and other pro- Karen Jaffe grams presented by the JCC and the Jewish Federation and its agencies, go to jewishdayton.org/ virtual-community.

IN THIS ISSUE 5790 Denlinger Road • Dayton, Ohio 45426 • fvdayton.com

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A Bisel Kisel.......................................15

Obituaries.............................23

Family Education............................22

O p i n i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 0

Mr. Mazel...........................................14

Re l i g i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 1

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

DAYTON

By Marshall Weiss The Observer The Jewish Federation has set a target date of June 8 to open its JCC early childhood program and JCC summer camp, allowing staff the time to put in place all mandatory and best practices of the Ohio Department of Health’s Responsible Restart Ohio plan and Stay Safe Ohio order connected to the Covid-19 pandemic.

JCC Early Childhood Care & Education will resume its operations at the Boonshoft Center for Jewish Culture and Education in Centerville; JCC Camp Shalom will be held this summer at Temple Beth Or in Washington Township instead of at the CJCE campus.

Moving the camp will allow more children to attend amid the state’s social distancing requirements, Cathy Gardner, CEO of the Jewish Federation, said.

“Although we’re allowed to open June 1 for preschool and summer camp, an extra week to open them gives us a more reasonable amount of time to put in place all these new protocols and the required training to operate camp at a different site.”

Ohio Department of Health’s requirements for child care providers indicate there should be no more than six infants or

JCC

Federation targets opening JCC early childhood and camp June 8 with state mandates in place A JCC early childhood classroom at the Boonshoft CJCE in Centerville

toddlers in a classroom, with one teacher to no more than six children, and a maximum of nine older children in a class, with one teacher to no more than nine.

For youth day camps, the requirement is no more than nine children in a room, and one day camp staff member per nine school-age children.

The Federation will assign two teachers to each early childhood classroom, and two camp staff members to each room of campers.

Gardner said the camp’s move to Temple Beth Or will enable it to accommodate approximately 50 to 60 children over the summer, slightly down from Temple Beth Or

The JCC will hold its camp at Temple Beth Or in Washington Township this summer, providing space for more campers amid social distancing

Bark Mitzvah Boy Old Kveller, what advice do you have for the Class of 2020?

the 60 to 70 children enrolled in the camp over each of the past few summers.

“If we were to have camp at the CJCE, we could only have 27 kids because we only have three separate rooms,” she said.

“Temple Beth Or is unused over the summer. I called Rabbi Judy Chessin and she and her leadership were graciously enthusiastic about it. They have a playground, lots of classrooms, two separate areas for indoor activities, a lounge upstairs, a kitchen we can make kosher, gaga pits, basketball hoops. It allows for much better controlled social distancing and it’s close to our location.”

Federation can’t set a daily class schedule for early childhood until it determines how many children will be registered.

“We anticipate the number of parents who want their children in preschool will be less than what we had previously,” she said. “If not, we’ll have to alternate groups at different times.”

Ahead of Ohio’s preschool

From the editor’s desk

One word: SANITIZER.

OK

c O Menachem

As we make our way through this continuing season of the coronavirus, the old expression, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” resonates with both hope — and irritaMarshall tion. Anyway, when social distancing crossed paths with JCC staff and volWeiss unteers planning the 20th Anniversary Dayton Jewish Film Fest for June, the JCC told us, “Make popcorn, stay home, and watch the films virtually, for free.”

But we will have one night out with the Film Fest, from the safety of our cars. The JCC will screen the baseball documentary Heading Home: A Tale of Team Israel at The Dixie Twin Drive-In, Tuesday, June 9 at 9 p.m. (the gate opens at 8:30 p.m.)

It’s free and includes packaged snacks.

And if you need more entertainment, the JCC will present three Zoom Happy Hours on Thursday nights in June featuring stand-up comedians who’ve gone over with Dayton JCC audiences in recent years. Enjoy, and stay safe and well.

zations. closures, the Federation closed “We met with our Jewish the JCC’s early childhood program March 17. At the time, 105 Community Security Committee, and Federation’s operations children were in the program. director, Roger Apple, will coThe Federation has estabordinate the purchase lished a reentry task of masks, gloves, and force to look at all hand sanitizer,” Gardelements of resuming ner added. “We’ll buy its operations, includit in bulk and that way, ing human resources, we can help all of the finances, fundraising, Jewish organizations communications, sein the community.” curity, and its facility.

Regarding the rest The Federation task of Jewish Federation’s force includes legal, human resources, and Jewish Federation employees across its medical professionals. CEO Cathy Gardner agencies and departments, Gardner said they can Along with Ohio’s requirechoose to work from home. ments and best practices “There’s no reason to bring guidelines, the task force is everybody back into the buildrelying on detailed reopening ing if they can work from guidelines from Secure Comhome,” she said. “Most of us munity Network, the national security initiative of Jewish Fed- don’t have to be in the building right now. To ensure maximum erations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of social distancing, this will make Major American Jewish Organi- it safer.”

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After more than a year and 3 elections, Israel swears in a new government — its largest ever Alex Kolomoisky/Pool

THE DAYTON

OBSERVER daytonjewishobserver.org Editor and Publisher Marshall Weiss MWeiss@jfgd.net 937-610-1555 Contributors Scott Halasz, Rabbi Haviva Horvitz, Masha Kisel, Candace R. Kwiatek

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the halls of the Knesset after the swearing-in of the new government, May 17

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By Marcy Oster, JTA JERUSALEM — After over a year and three national elections, Israel’s new government was officially sworn in May 17.

The Knesset, Israel’s legislature, approved the government by a vote of 73 to 46. Thirty-six Cabinet ministers, the most ever, and 16 deputy ministers were also sworn in.

“The public wants a unity government, and that is what the public will get,” Benjamin Netanyahu, who remains prime minister, said in opening the Knesset session. He said the government would fight the coronavirus pandemic and get Israel’s economy back on track.

Netanyahu also called for the annexation of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, saying: “The time has come for anyone who believes in the justness of our rights in the land of Israel to join a government led by me to bring about a historic process together.”

The Likud Party’s Yariv Levin, formerly tourism minister, was approved as Knesset speaker with 71 votes. He replaces Benny Gantz, who resigned in order to become defense minister and prime minister-designate.

Under the coalition deal for the so-called emergency unity government, Netanyahu will remain in his position for the next year and a half and then be replaced for the same amount of time

by Gantz. Netanyahu said Gantz would become prime minister Nov. 17, 2021.

“The people told us to stop fighting and start working for them,” Gantz said, citing his “national responsibility” to form the unity government.

Gantz will open a vice prime minister’s office, in addition to his Knesset office and his office at the Defense Ministry, signaling that the new coalition could be a contentious one.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s corruption trial was scheduled to begin May 24.

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Observer Advisor Martin Gottlieb Published by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton Bruce Feldman President David Pierce Immediate Past Pres.

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Beverly Louis Secretary Dan Sweeny VP, Resource Dev. Mary Rita Weissman VP, Personnel/ Foundation Chair Cathy Gardner CEO The Dayton Jewish Observer, Vol. 24, No. 10. The Dayton Jewish Observer is published monthly by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton, a nonprofit corporation, 525 Versailles Dr., Dayton, OH 45459.

Views expressed by columnists, in readers’ letters, and in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of staff or layleaders of The Dayton Jewish Observer or the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton. Acceptance of advertising neither endorses advertisers nor guarantees kashrut.

The Dayton Jewish Observer Mission Statement To support, strengthen and champion the Dayton Jewish community by providing a forum and resource for Jewish community interests.

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Deep layoffs at Jewish Federations of North America, the organization tasked to help Jewish nonprofits through crisis with the changed world. Hillel to the coronavirus pandemic. staff changes. employees.

International, the umbrella But multiple sources familiar The coalition was formed, in JFNA serves as an umbrella part, to help laid-off employees organization for Jewish student organization for 146 Jewish with JFNA confirmed that the of Jewish organizations, includ- life centers on campus, laid off cuts ran deep, with as many as federations and 300 smaller or furloughed more than 20 per- “network” communities, ing federations, as 37 staff members laid cent of its staff in April. budgets tightened. off, out of a total staff which together employ around Local Jewish organizations But the same condisize of about 180 in 10,000 people, and distributes that rely on service fees have tions that imperil the United States and a total of $3 billion annually for local organizations are also been hit hard, such as one Israel. social services and educational Jewish community center that affecting the umbrella The news comes as programs in Israel and North group, according to the laid off all but two of its 178 the work of local federAmerica. letter. Fundraising is ations in gathering and challenging, and some distributing communal longstanding lines of funds is perhaps more work are not practical important than ever JFNA CEO Linda Weprin during the pandemic. but when its sources of & Pres. Eric Realtor/Broker “The usual ways we income — in the form Fingerhut Military Relocation Professional have built the financial support of dues from local federations for our work are not availas well as direct donations — LindaMWeprinRealty.com able to us right now,” wrote are imperiled by the financial Fingerhut and Wilf. “Missions, crisis. community events and even The letter stressed that the 2019 DABR Sales visits to our donors’ homes and umbrella organization would Leader Award continue to support local feder- offices are going to be severely of Distinction ations with fundraising as they limited for the near future.”

Fingerhut also announced acknowledged the difficulty of that he would take a temporary that work.

10 percent salary reduction and JFNA took on that effort just that seven senior leaders would six weeks prior, when it ancut their salaries by 5 percent. nounced that it would lead an According to the most recent emergency coalition to respond tax filing available, Fingerhut’s Licensed Real Estate Agent for 30+ Years predecessor, Gerrold Silverman, earned $634,849 in 2017.

JFNA’s layoffs come as other Assisting you every step of the way!

Jewish organizations begin to shed staff as they reckon be layoffs, according to The JewBy Marcy Oster, JTA ish Week report. On April 28, the The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism said it is affected staffers were told they were being laid off. laying off a portion of its staff An Independent Living Community AVAILABL The layoffs are part of a in a budget-cutting move.

E “We are redefining staff posi- broader strategic plan that NOW! includes bringing the United tions to align job descriptions and key performance indicators Synagogue’s operating budget into balance, The Jewish Week with the goals set forth in the reported. plan and, regrettably, we are Development of the plan, reducing our employee head known as the Roadmap to Stracount as of this morning,” a tegic Success and Operational letter April 28 from the USCJ’s Sustainability, began in January leadership said, according to 2018, according to the newspaa report in The New York Jewish per, which cited a letter it saw Week. from United Synagogue.

The extent of the reductions The plan, according to the at the umbrella organization letter, calls for more collaborafor some 600 Conservative tion among Conservative movesynagogues was not immediment organizations and for ately clear. United Synagogue • Spacious 2 Bedroom, 2 Bath Home United Synagogue to centralize has taken a financial hit in • 1,500 Square Feet recent years as the movement’s operations and other aspects of the organization. synagogues have shut down, • 24 Hour Emergency Assistance Rabbi Steven Wernick merged with other Conserva• Attached Garage • Security System stepped down at the end of last tive or Reform congregations, year as CEO, and the organiza• Maintenance Free Living or pulled out of the congregational group for practical, finan- tion has yet to name his successor. cial or ideological reasons.

A United Synagogue spokesIn 2015, United Synagogue sold its Manhattan condo space person said the changes would 2501 Keystone Club Drive result in “more of an emphasis to shore up its budget. on engagement, innovation and Dayton, OH 45439 • www.wcreekoh.com Staff members were told beSENIOR LIVING CAMPUS collaboration.” fore Passover that there would

By Shira Hanau, JTA The nonprofit organization leading an emergency coalition to coordinate the Jewish response to the pandemic-induced financial crisis has itself slashed its staff.

Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella group of communal fundraising and programming organizations across the country, announced layoffs and executive salary cuts in a message to board members and federation executives May 6.

“We need to redirect resources,” CEO Eric Fingerhut and chair Mark Wilf said in the message. “Accordingly, we have today implemented a plan to reduce the number of full-time employees at JFNA so that we can aggressively pursue the priority needs that have become clear during this emergency period.”

The letter did not specify how many staff members were laid off, or what they do at the organization, and a spokesperson declined to comment on the

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Conservative movement allows livestreaming on Shabbat and holidays during pandemic

By Josefin Dolsten, JTA The Conservative movement issued a ruling allowing congregations to livestream services on Shabbat and holidays during the coronavirus pandemic.

Noting the “unprecedented time” brought on by the virus, the movement’s Jewish law authorities voted May 13 to allow livestreaming with a number of caveats, including that the equipment be set up in advance or that a timer be used to avoid the active use of electricity on Shabbat and holidays.

The Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards adopted the ruling by a vote of 19 in favor, three against, and three abstentions.

The ruling, written by Rabbi Joshua Heller of Congregation B’nai Torah in Sandy Springs, Ga., notes that it is applicable to the current situation only and that “its conclusions will need to be reassessed as we transition to a ‘new normal.'”

The question of livestreaming on Shabbat and holidays had already been under debate within the movement prior to the pandemic.

“This question took on a dramatic new urgency as almost every synagogue in the world was forced to suspend in-person physical worship, and even as some begin to re-open, it is likely that it will be many

months before large groups can assemble together safely,” Heller wrote.

Heller also addressed concerns that allowing livestreaming could lead people to do other things prohibited on Shabbat or holidays.

“The wider intrusion of technology into Shabbat and Yom Tov worship will require greater fences to preserve the sanctity of the day,” he wrote. “It is a short step from watching services to emailing, online shopping, and other activities which violate the letter and spirit of the law.”

Traditionally, Conservative and Orthodox congregations have not allowed livestreaming on Shabbat or holidays as it violates the prohibition against using electricity.

However, some Conservative synagogues livestream anyway and more have started doing so since they were forced cancel in-person services due to the pandemic.

In March, leaders of the law committee issued a crisis declaration allowing the recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish with a prayer quorum, or minyan, convened online, saying that congregations that follow it “would have to use a multi-way link that allowed participants to see and hear each other.”

Union for Reform Judaism announces layoffs, furloughs THE COMPASSIONATE CARE AND CLINICAL COMPETENCE YOU DESERVE Independent Living • Assisted Living • Rehabilitation Skilled Nursing • Short Term Stays

By Shira Hanau, JTA Two weeks after announcing the cancelation of its summer programs in the United States and Israel, the Union for Reform Judaism announced staff layoffs May 13.

Approximately 60 full-time employees, constituting 20 percent of the organization’s staff, were laid off. The organization also implemented a temporary pay reduction between 3 to 16 percent which began in April. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform URJ President Judaism, took a 16 percent pay cut as did the rest of the executive team. Rick Jacobs In an email to staff, board members, and community leaders, Jacobs pinned the layoffs

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on the coronavirus pandemic, which has induced a sweeping financial crisis.

“The impact of Covid-19 on all of our revenue streams has been crushing, and we anticipate it will take several years to recover,” Jacobs wrote. “Consequently, our organization must get smaller.”

The layoffs go into effect June 30. Jacobs said the organization would also be furloughing additional employees. The furloughs, in which employees are not paid and do not work but are expected to return, would last from June 1 to Aug 31, he said.

The Union for Reform Judaism is the umbrella organization for the Reform movement in North America. The organization provides program support and leadership development to synagogues and oversees the movement’s summer camps, youth groups, and social justice work.

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THE WORLD

Jewish crowdfunding sites meet their moment, raising millions of dollars for coronavirus victims

By Ben Harris, JTA After the coronavirus killed Lipa Friedrich, a 39-year-old bus driver from Monsey, N.Y., in March, his wife and 11 children were left without a breadwinner.

But within days of the launch of an online fundraiser to benefit the Orthodox Jewish family, the Friedrich family faced a dramatically different financial picture. The campaign has netted more than $1 million, most within the first 48 hours, and another fundraiser brought in even more.

“We didn’t expect that we will reach such an amount,” said Shlomo Spitzer, who organized the larger campaign for the Friedrich family. “But obviously the vibe was very good.

People got very involved.”

Spitzer created the campaign through DryveUp, one of several platforms used by Orthodox Jews to crowdfund for community members in crisis. While the platforms have existed for years, the coronavirus pandemic has made clear how powerful they are for generating massive amounts of donations from a relatively small community even at a time of economic upheaval.

“I’m not surprised — it has been tried and proven over and over and over again,” Moshe Hecht, the chief innovation officer at Charidy, another fundraising site, said. “I am surprised that it’s still working in this environment, where people are holding onto their wallets and seemingly so frugal.”

The fundraising drives take place on a handful of crowdfunding websites that mainly serve Orthodox clients. Campaigns often feature glossy ads, emotionally overwrought copy and dramatic videos, and they are often heavily promoted on Orthodox websites that closely track coronavirus deaths in the community. Often, they manage to raise six-figure sums within days.

Donors have chipped in nearly $850,000 via the Chesed Fund for Yerachmiel “Rick” Beilis, a 52-year-old father of four from Chicago who died of the coronavirus on April 4.

In barely two weeks, 5,000 donors used Kupat Ha’ir to give over $250,000 to support the widow and nine unmarried children of Rabbi Chaim

ics, sharp copywriting, and in many cases, professionally produced videos. One coronavirus campaign, for Hatzolah of Williamsburg, opens with a camera dropped from a drone onto the streets of Brooklyn and then cuts quickly among shots of masked paramedics darting from ambulances as dramatic music swells in the background.

The campaign has raised over $2 million.

“We’re extremely hands on,” Hecht said. “It’s what sets us apart.”

Charidy makes money by taking a cut of funds raised on the platform, though Hecht says campaigns for individual coronavirus victims rely on a tip model in which donors agree to voluntarily pay a bit more to support the site. To date, the site has raised $3.3 million for individual coronavirus victims and another $30 million for Jewish organizations responding to the coronavirus crisis, according to Hecht.

Organizers say raising substantial sums on crowdfunding sites takes work. The $1 million Friedrich campaign relied on over 200 people who each agreed to raise a portion of the overall target. Spitzer supplied them with graphics and messages to post on Facebook and in WhatsApp groups, and fielded their questions at all hours of the day.

“It’s not so easy like it looks,” Spitzer said. You have to work very hard. It’s a 24-hour job.”

quadrupled in the last month.

“Entire cities have stepped up to care for specific members who have passed away. And the broader Jewish community as a whole has also stepped up incredibly to assist individuals they have never heard of before.”

In late March, a campaign went live on the Chesed Fund for Nachman Morgan, a longtime teacher at Toras Emes Academy in Los Angeles who had died of Covid-19. Malkiel A campaign for coronavirus victim Lipa Friedrich on the website Gradon, the campaign’s orDryveup.com has already raised over $1 million ganizer, said he hasn’t spent Aharon Turchin, a 48-year-old a dime promoting it, relying digital marketing materials. yeshiva head from Bnei Brak, solely on word of mouth.

“This tragedy has shaken Israel, who died of the coronavi- us to the core,” reads a camEven so, the campaign is still rus in April. drawing donations, creeping paign on behalf of Baila Rivka And a Charidy campaign on Mertzbach, a mother of 11 from up past $193,000 in mid May on behalf of Yochanan Hochauser, Monsey who died of the corona- the strength of donations from a British father of 12 who died about 1,450 donors — an avervirus. “The children have been of the coronavirus in April, has left shattered, lost, and bereft of age gift of about $133. raised more than $830,000 from their mother’s love and warm “When we set out the camabout 7,600 donors. paign, we set up an initial goal care. ‘How will we survive “You have to attribute it to of $150,000, thinking that would the excruciating pain of living how people are brought up without Mommy?’ her family is be a nice dream,” Gradon said. and their values,” said Yossi “And we were at $150,000 in the weeping.”

Klein, the founder of DryveUp. first day pretty much.”

The Chesed Fund, another “Everybody’s cutting back on The ability of crowdfunding popular crowdfunding site certain stuff now. No one is aimed at the Orthodox, charges websites to raise fast cash for splurging. But for essentials, victims of tragedies was first nothing to raise money on its they’re still spending. So if demonstrated in the Jewish platform and offers a more they’re brought up that charity world in 2015, when Charidy stripped-down service, though is essential, they still give.” helped raise over $900,000 in its campaigns still routinely Dryveup emerged from a just days for the family of Nadiv raise hundreds of thousands of marketing firm, Click and Mar- dollars in days. Over $9 million Kehaty, a 30-year-old father of ket, that Klein founded a decade overall has been raised on the four who died suddenly of an ago. The site charges a flat rate apparent heart attack. site for coronavirus victims. to clients in exchange for a Like Dryveup, Charidy pro“I think it all speaks to the range of fundraising services, vides a range of marketing and power of community,” said including graphic design, ad promotional services and hosts Avi Kehat, the site’s founder, creation, video production and campaigns with slick graphwho says traffic to the site has

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

PAGE 7

THE WORLD

‘Rogue’ minyans and divided ranks: Orthodox rabbis are increasingly split over safety of communal prayer “I feel duty-bound to inform Kaddish. But Orthodox practice

By Shira Hanau, JTA people that I am not supportive does not allow technology on When the coronavirus of the letter,” one of the rabbis Shabbat or virtual minyans, pandemic first descended on precluding observant Jews from wrote, according to the Clevethe United States in March, the land Jewish News.

Orthodox rabbis of Dallas shut- fulfilling the religious obligaLeaders of a synagogue in tered their synagogues together tions that form the rhythms of Deerfield Beach, Fla., have sent daily Orthodox life. in a remarkable show of unity. a letter to congregants sharply Rabbis ruled that staying In April, as the governor of criticizing those who gathTexas began reopening the state, home to prevent the spread of disease was a higher obligation ered for services in what they the rabbis banded together deemed “rogue minyanim.” than praying communally duragain, telling their congregants “This level of raw chutzpah ing the pandemic’s early days, that they all would keep their when it ravaged Orthodox com- and dangerous Sofek Pikuach synagogues closed.

But now, as the nation’s lock- munities in New York and New Nefashos cannot be tolerated,” said the synagogue leaders, usJersey. But as time has worn on down enters its third month, ing a Hebrew phrase meaning and other local communities their compact has frayed. In possible danger to human life. mid-May, the rabbis announced have not experienced the same The letter warned that particicrisis, rabbis have faced presthat going forward, each pants in these minyans would sure from their constituents to synagogue would decide on its be denied honors at the synaown when to resume in-person allow minyans to resume with gogue whenever it reopened. added safeguards. services.

And the Rabbini“The Orthodox RabSpencer Platt/Getty Images cal Council of Bergen binate of Dallas have County, home to collectively decided a number of large that each shul will Modern Orthodox open at a time and in a communities, released way that is best suited a letter May 13 saying for its physical plant outdoor minyans and congregation,” the “absolutely cannot rabbis wrote in a statetake place now.” The ment published May northern New Jersey 14. “Please note that group was the first whenever your shul to issue unified rules opens and in which during the pandemic, form, one thing will be shutting down all common to all shuls synagogues under its — the reopening will purview on March be gradual, methodical 12 as it became clear and, in the initial stages that an outbreak in it will, sadly, need to be quite different from A Chasidic man prays on his balcony in Brooklyn, April 25 the New York City area was spreading within the Also in mid-May, major when we all prayed together.” community.

Orthodox groups issued two The letter offered the latest Perhaps nowhere has the sets of guidance that urged evidence for an emerging realfracture been more pronounced a slow, careful return to inity: Two months after abruptly than in areas of Long Island person prayer services. One set ceasing all communal prayer, where haredi and Modern Orof guidelines, from the more Orthodox communities across thodox Jews live side by side on liberal Orthodox Union, took the United States are increasthe same tree-lined blocks. a firmer stand than the other, ingly divided over when and A local synagogue that confrom the haredi organization how to resume this centerpiece tinued to meet for services stood Agudath Israel, against resumof Jewish life. out so much that a prominent In Dallas, community leaders ing outdoor services immedirabbi denounced its leader by ately. But both groups left final are essentially agreeing to disname in a fiery lecture on Zoom agree about whether it is safe to decisions about reopening to just before Passover. local rabbis and health officials. come back to synagogue. But in Rabbi Hershel Billet of the The result has been tension other places — including New Young Israel of Woodmere within Orthodox communities, York’s suburban Long Island, called the rabbi who allowed with advocates of devising a Florida and Ohio — rabbis are the prayer service a “danger pathway back to communal openly sparring over whether prayer clashing with those who to the entire community” and to permit outdoor minyans, or promised to personally try to small-scale prayer services held say it’s too soon, and too risky, “run this man out of the comto reconvene. on porches and lawns. munity.”

In Cleveland, an Orthodox That Orthodox communities Later that month, a group of rabbinical association anare eager to get back to prayer 57 rabbis from the Five Towns nounced May 12 that “block services is not surprising. Nonand Far Rockaway signed a letcaptains” could begin organizOrthodox synagogues have ter urging against gathering for ing outdoor minyans that conadded online Shabbat services and begun allowing prayer quo- formed to distancing guidelines. outdoor services.

That was three weeks ago.

It faced swift opposition from rums to form over Zoom, enBut by the middle of May, severabling those who’ve lost a loved other Orthodox rabbis in the al rabbis have begun cautiously area. one to recite the Mourner’s

PAGE 8

approving the practice under narrow circumstances.

The split in this community has fallen along loose ideological lines, with rabbis aligned more closely with the haredi community, often described as ultra-Orthodox, allowing the outdoor minyans while those in the Modern Orthodox camp continue to oppose them.

But there have been some exceptions where the distinctions blur between parts of the Orthodox community.

Rabbis Eytan Feiner and Motti Neuberger of The White Shul, a synagogue in Far Rockaway affiliated with the more modern Orthodox Union, sent a letter to congregants allowing outdoor minyans to proceed with restrictions in place.

The letter advised congregants that the minyans could only be held if each family remained on its own property and maintained at least 6 feet of distance from anyone outside his own household.

“Only OUTDOOR Minyanim are permitted,” they wrote.

Rabbi Zalman Wolowik, director of the Chabad of the Five Towns in Cedarhurst, sent a similar letter to his congregation after previously prohibiting outdoor minyans. But Wolowik said that he had not participated in such a minyan himself because his house is not situated in a way that would allow it.

“If they can do it right, everybody on their own property … kudos to them if they can do it

safely,” said Wolowik, noting that many people are not able to participate in the minyans if they don’t live close to enough people who can participate. “I am their best example — I can’t do it and so I don’t do it.”

But the guidance issued by the Orthodox Union and Rabbinical Council of America cautioned that even carefully regulated outdoor services could spin out of control.

“Care must be taken to ensure that this not become a freefor-all,” the guidance said.

One Long Island rabbi who had recently allowed the outdoor minyans wrote to his congregants May 14 warning that his permission would be revoked if the rules for running the minyan were broken.

“I am sad to say that a number of people have called to tell me that the guidelines have already been broken in several ways,” Rabbi Yaakov Feitman of Kehillas Bais Yehudah Tzvi wrote.

It was that possibility that the rules would be broken that led Modern Orthodox rabbis in the community to oppose the practice.

“In theory, one can create a minyan today that doesn’t pose risk,” Rabbi Dr. Aaron Glatt, a rabbi at two synagogues in the area, including Billet’s, and the chief of Infectious Diseases at Mount Sinai South Nassau Hospital, said. “But the question is can that theory be translated into reality.”

Limited religious services may be allowed

by Shavuot, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo says

By Philissa Cramer, JTA Jews in New York State may be able to gather legally for small-scale religious services during the next holiday, Shavuot. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in his daily coronavirus briefing May 17 that his office planned to release guidance the following week about what New Yorkers can do over Memorial Day weekend and beyond. Shavuot, which is traditionally celebrated with all-night study, begins three days later on May 28.

“Can we find a way to do a ceremony — a New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo religious ceremony, or a ceremony that honors Memorial Day? I think we can,” Cuomo said, responding to a question specifically about observance outside of New York City. He said services would be limited in size and would require social distancing to be practiced.

Religious services have been barred since mid-March, when Cuomo issued an executive order prohibiting gatherings of any size in a bid to slow the coronavirus’ spread. Recently, as the number of new cases have slowed, rabbis on Long Island have been openly sparring over whether to permit in-person prayer services.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

THE WORLD

With hope fading & regulations tightening, more overnight Jewish camps set to cancel

Testing availability is still far from widespread.

And the virus is still spreading.

“Even if the state lets us open, we might not open,” said Mitchell Cohen, director of the National Ramah Commission, which coordinates 10 camps but does not dictate policy for them.

“Most of the things that we were hoping would change over the course of the last several weeks have not changed.”

If camps do end up closing, some are worried not only about 2020 but also about 2021.

Because camp tuition finances a large portion of

By Ben Sales, JTA camps’ annual budget, a canceled summer can At the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak, mean a huge revenue gap. Camp Ramah in New and as recently as a couple weeks ago, some England wrote in a notice to parents May 13 that Jewish camps had hoped they could run for part it spends half of its $6.3 million budget during of the summer. For a growing number of camps, the 10 months away from camp on recruitment, that hope now appears to be vanishing. maintenance, programs and other preparations Two Conservative Ramah camps look likely for the summer. If it has to refund tuition, it will to cancel their sessions this year. And two state face a $1.3 million budget shortfall, which it governments — Georgia and Connecticut — called “devastating.” have, for now, prohibited overnight camps from Ramah in California is facing similar budget running in their states. Each state is home to woes. Its executive director, Rabbi Joe Menashe, several Jewish camps.

While neither of the RaRamah in California said the camp is “facing a net multimillion-dollar shortfall.” mah camps — in Wisconsin It’s giving parents guidance and California — is ready to on how to either request a reofficially confirm that it will fund of their tuition or donate be canceling, both sounded part or all of it to camp. dismal notes.

“It’s a tough world out “I think the tea leaves are there and we’re not the only out there to be read,” said ones that need,” Menashe Jacob Cytryn, the executive said. “As we’re all learning director of Ramah in Wisconday to day, there’s a lot of sin, which plans to announce uncertainty. I certainly am opits decision for the summer On the beach with Camp Ramah in timistic and banking on being in the coming days. “None California at camp next summer…but of the things that were the source of optimism have come to fruition...We’re I’m mindful that nobody really knows exactly what that will look like.” still holding out on our own timetable with the In Connecticut and Georgia, the two states that small possibility that we would make a decision said overnight camps likely will not be able to to open for at least part of the summer.” open this summer, day camps will be permitted An email to campers’ families from Ramah in with restrictions and social distancing measures.

California’s leadership May 10 said “we canThe Connecticut order changes the equation not open camp in mid-June or run our summer for one of the only Jewish camps to boldly prosessions as scheduled,” though it is holding claim, publicly, that it planned to open this sumout hope for an abbreviated session later in the mer. Camp Chomeish, a girls’ overnight camp summer and will make a final announcement by run by a Chabad-ordained rabbi and his wife, June 2. The camp is the largest Ramah, serving was planning on welcoming campers, provided 1,300 campers per summer. In addition, Ramah they quarantined beforehand, played in groups in Canada announced May 11 that it will be canceling its first session, from late June to mid-July, no larger than 10, had their temperature taken daily, and washed hands often, per state regulaand said it was “increasingly clear that being tions. able to open camp at all this summer is unlikely “If the state says go, we go,” Chomeish co…” Other Ramah camps have likewise already founder Rabbi Sholom Ber Stock said. Now that canceled the first half of their summers. the state has apparently said “stop,” the camp is More than 20 Jewish summer camps, a bulreevaluating its options. wark of the American Jewish experience for two “We will be in touch with the appropriate months a year, have already said they can’t run authority and will act accordingly, nothing to disthis year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. That cuss now,” Chaya Stock, the camp’s co-founder, includes 15 camps run by the Union for Reform said. (According to Chabad spokesman Motti Judaism, as well as one Ramah, in Georgia, and Seligson, Chomeish is not part of the national an assortment of independent camps and those Chabad camp network, and Stock is not recogrun by local Jewish community centers. nized by the global Chabad movement.)

The remaining others are still trying to project The 300 camps in Chabad’s official internationsome sliver of optimism that some kind of sumal network, all called Gan Israel, are still waiting mer will still happen, somehow. But even that for official guidance before making an announcepossibility appears to be disappearing. Weeks ment. The camps serve 60,000 campers. ago, camps were counting on detailed guide“If camp is physically not able to open, we’re lines from the Centers for Disease Control and looking at options to interact with campers in Prevention that have yet to materialize, though a tangible way because that’s the whole idea of a version was recently leaked that would limit camp,” said Rabbi Yitzchok Kahan, who runs a attendance at any camps that open to children Camp Gan Israel in southern New Jersey. “Even who live in the area. if you just drive by my house and all the kids “There’s been just a tremendous lack of naare wearing camp T-shirts and do a camp wave tional leadership that would either enable us to for us, that’s (equal to) sitting five hours at the open or that would help all the camps to stand computer.” together,” Cytryn said.

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

PAGE 9

OPINION

Zoom Judaism helps us in crisis.

Parenting teens in a time of crisis But we can’t let it replace building a stronger Jewish home.

By Dr. Betsy Stone ejewishphilanthropy.com We’re all in crisis right now.

Between managing work and home, facing the loss of summer camps and the diminishment of services, worrying about cutbacks in our offices, trying to teach and work and parent and manage our own feelings, Covid-19 has brought out the best and the worst in us. We are hopeful and exhausted and despairing and blessed — all at once.

And so are our kids. All of them are regressing, whether it’s impulsivity, or explosions that are awfully reminiscent of 2-year-old tantrums, or simply sitting in their rooms with the door closed and the music blasting. Moody or excited, full of energy or depleted. Or, more likely, cycling between extremes.

How do we help them? First, we need to begin to understand them. Teen brains vacillate between feelings and thoughts.

It’s difficult for them to think logically when they’re upset.

You know, when your child is upset or angry or sad or scared, it’s really hard to talk them down. Many of us, adults and kids alike, are spending lots of time emotionally wrought.

Most of the time, adult conversations are mutual, with back and forth. I say something and you respond, maybe adding a personal story or opinion. We expect our teens to be able to do the same. They can, when they’re in their thinking brains.

But when they’re in their feeling brains, this is almost impossible. When teens struggle, they need to vent. They need to work their feelings out of their bodies — through physical activity for some, through emotional expression for some. And much of the emotional expression is repetitive, simply because the feelings are repetitive. This can be exhausting for the listener.

When we’re worn out by the needs of others, we have lots of ways we shut them down.

We make statements of false empathy.

I know how you feel…

Why don’t you…

Have you thought about…

How can I help…

All of these (and more) are ways we tell other people to stop sharing. What kids hear is simple; Stop. Shut up. I can’t listen to this any longer.

The problem is, our kids aren’t ready yet. They haven’t vented enough to burn the anxiety out of their bodies.

What they need from us, what only we can offer them, is to be heard. I have no doubt that one of the greatest gifts I can offer to anyone is the gift of my presence in their pain.

Witnessing is holy work. It says I can manage myself until you can manage yourself. And don’t shame them for their feelings.

Many of us use shame to try to control ourselves, by reminding ourselves that others have it worse. That may be true, but it doesn’t help when I feel lousy.

I’m entitled to feel lousy.

I’m not suggesting that being present is enough. Only that it’s all we have when emotions run high. When emotions are lower, we can model the struggle. Talk about having had a rough day.

Talk about what you’re doing to manage yourself, whether its exercise or eating or crafts. Normalize that this is difficult and challenging — and that you’re not getting it right a lot of the time. Let that be acceptable to you — and it’s more likely to be acceptable to your children.

And look for changes. Is your child sleeping more? Less? More angry? More numb? If you’re concerned about your child — concerned that they’re having more difficulty than seems “normal,” reach out. Get help. Don’t expect them to be pain-free; expect this to hurt. Be prepared to assess the level of pain and respond.

This is a time when we need to face our own limitations. I can’t be excellent at parenting, at work and at isolation. I can forgive myself for the days, the frequent days, when I just manage. I can admit that it hurts, and I can listen to the pain of others. To me, witnessing is both holy and a demonstration of love.

Retired Psychologist Dr. Betsy S. Stone is an adjunct lecturer at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

So, what do you think?

PAGE 10

By Avigayil Halpern Adapting Jewish rituals to fit our tech-dependent, socially distanced times has been a daunting task. These moves, from Zoom seders to online minyanim and shiva calls, reflect the remarkable commitment of a diverse range of Jewish communities to continuing their shared goals of prayer, Torah study, community building, and accessibility for those who otherwise would struggle to participate.

But these offerings fail in a basic way: Jews are living their lives at home right now. We can’t simply translate public, communal Judaism to the internet — Jewish organizations and leadership ought to move beyond simply putting their typical offerings online.

Rather they must focus on providing resources to empower Jews to develop and enrich the parts of Jewish life that start in the home.

This moment offers the Jewish community an opportunity to reconnect with home Jewish practice, and build something new and generative that can outlast the current crisis.

Judaism has always begun — and been centered — at home. In the past two centuries, Judaism in many communities has taken the shape of the Protestant version: clergy-led public religious worship. And as the bulk of American Judaism has moved toward gender egalitarianism, the public rituals that once were reserved for men have also been opened to all, but home practices that were considered the domain of women — and in many Orthodox communities still are — have been marginalized.

Kabbalat Shabbat, for example, is framed as a central piece of the Shabbat experience,

These possibilities can only enhance Jewish life once it is communal again. After all, the Jewish community is composed of millions of Jewish individuals.

These homecentered efforts are at risk of focusing on a “traditional” picture of the Jewish nuclear family. But instead they should be targeted most toward people living alone or not with others “doing Jewish.”

Any effort at creating intentional, personal Judaism must ensure we’re not neglecting those most while spending a Friday afterisolated, and these resources noon cooking Shabbat dinner is can be most impactful for those seen as burdensome at best, a without even the Jewish context necessary requisite for Shabbat of others around them. but not a valuable practice on This pandemic is a perfect its own terms. opportunity to rethink what This is a moment for Jewish religion should be and simultacommunities to rediscover what neously widen access to parts of it feels like for Shabbat to be a our tradition that have been lost day not defined by clergy in the or dismissed. synagogue, but a nourishing As a female rabbinical day that is restful and defined student who studies and prays by oneg, physical pleasure that in egalitarian spaces, cleaning creates a spiritual environment. my apartment and cooking for We should talk about prepar- Shabbat on Friday is no less ing the home for Shabbat on important to my Shabbat than Friday so that when the sun going to shul or preparing a sets, the day feels new and dvar Torah (sermon) is. genuinely restful.

The solo prayer habits I We should encourage people developed growing up in an to dress up for Shabbat to honor Orthodoxy that didn’t encourthe day rather than to look apage me to be at shul are at the propriate at shul. core of my davening practice.

We should offer guidance to Egalitarianism has opened help people get real meaning up wide swaths of Judaism’s and sustenance from the embeauty and power to so many bodied delights of Shabbat.

Jewish people, but its work is These are all practices that incomplete. can coexist with any level of All Jews deserve to be emobservance, and can enrich and powered to access the elements sustain Jewish practice even of Judaism that are centered once we return to shul. at home or that take place in Daily prayer, too, is also ripe private. This can sustain us now for reevaluation. What if synaand make our communities gogues offered classes in how even stronger once we are able to navigate the prayer book to come together. independently? What if organizations offered how-to guides Avigayil Halpern is studying for with tips for developing focus rabbinic ordination at the Hadar and consistency in solo prayer? Institute in New York.

Send letters (350 words max.) to The Dayton Jewish Observer, 525 Versailles Dr., Dayton, OH 45459 • MWeiss@jfgd.net

Views expressed by columnists, in readers’ letters, and in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the opinion of staff or layleaders of The Dayton Jewish Observer or the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

OPINION

Hillel is usually a happy, vibrant space. Now we need to help students process their grief.

RELIGION

Note: Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are not publishing worship service schedules this month. For the latest information, check with the organizations below via their websites, Facebook pages, and by calling them directly.

How will our children remember these times?

Zoom service and say

By Rabbi Haviva Horvitz GRANDPA: "Yes, I Kaddish. In addition, Temple Beth Sholom, was." my family has been Middletown CHILD: "Wow. That The word commencement is a gathering via Zoom must have been horweekly for Havdalah noun, which is defined as a berible, Grandpa. We were

By Rabbi Jonah Geffen ginning or a start. It is also used ever since. It has been learning about that at Never in a million years did a wonderful way for when referencing a ceremony school this week. They I ever consider that my work me to stay in touch in which degrees or diplomas told us about how all the would look like it does today. with family in New are conferred on graduating schools had closed. And When the Covid-19 pandemic students. Doesn’t that seem York, New Jersey, and moms and dads couldn't hit, our vibrant Jewish commu- contradictory?

Oregon. go to work so they didn't nity on campus transitioned to I began to wonder: Rabbi Haviva Horvitz have as much money to Those who are graduating a virtual Hillel. We moved our Why didn’t we do and their families celebrate do nice things. cohort-based learning programs what has been completed; yet this sooner? I hope we can conThey said that you weren't alonline and increased our prestinue long after the crisis is over. lowed to go and visit your friends the focus of the word is on the ence on Instagram. We added There is talk of the “new nor- and family and couldn't go out new beginning it represents. virtual yoga, pre-Pesach cleanmal” and how once everything anywhere. They told us that the ing, virtual programs for Yom is reopened and we all go back, shops and stores ran out of lots of Hashoah and Yom Ha’atzmaut. it won’t be like it was before. things so you didn't have much Hunter Hillel staff, where I Someone on the radio rebread, and flour, and toilet rolls.

This year, due to the panserve as senior Jewish educacently compared it to after 9/11. They said that summer holidays demic, nothing is normal. With tor and campus rabbi, reached Prior to those terror attacks and were cancelled. social distancing and other out to dozens of students each the subsequent “Shoe Bomber,” And they told us about all those restrictions, there will be no day. What we quickly realized thousands of people that got very dancing at prom and no big cer- no one would imagine we’d was that the most engaging emonies. Everything for seniors have to take our shoes off at the sick and who died. They explained programming in the world airport or wouldn’t be able to how hard all the doctors and nurses will seem anti-climactic. wouldn’t match up to the grief go all the way to the gate to wel- and all essential workers worked, However, graduation is a that students were feeling. come someone. Now, it is simand that lots of them died, too. beginning. How we respond to Death has become a routine ply understood. What becomes That must have been so horrible, these unusual circumstances is part of Hillel students’ young what will mold the character of important with this new normal Grandpa!" lives. On campus, we would see future generations. is perspective and attitude.

GRANDPA: "Well, that is all them, talk to them and know So let us find ways to stay correct. And I know that because I Don’t get me wrong; cerwhat they were experiencing connected, be positive about read about it when I was older. emonies are very important day to day. what has been accomplished, But to tell you the truth, I in Judaism. From bris/baby Now, in order to be sure and find ways to make everyremember it differently... namings, to Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, we are there for our students, one appreciate that the commuI remember playing in the garto weddings, to funerals, the we text, email and call them nity is here to help. den for hours with Mom and Dad community gathers daily. Too often they share that for every lifecycle How we respond As they say, we are and having picnics outside and lots to these unusual all in this together. of barbecues. they’ve lost a loved one to coro- ceremony. navirus — but that us reaching Here is a piece I I remember making things and This year, all circumstances is out to them means so much. found online and fishing with my Dad and baking these observances what will mold To date, New York City has wanted to share. It with my Mom. have been chalthe character had over 191,073 confirmed may be a simplisI remember making forts and lenging. But we cases of Covid-19. Over 16,000 tic prediction of learning how to do handstands and have found ways to of future have died. This is the new realhow things will be backflips. I remember having qualshow support for generations. ity of New York City. We are the times of loss and remembered, but ity time with my family. part of the United States hardest celebrate times of it encourages us to I remember Mom's favorite hit by the virus, and for Hunter joy from a distance. We have make the most of our time now. words becoming, 'Hey, I've got an Hillel students, the implications connected by “car parades” and idea...' rather than, 'Maybe later or of Covid-19 are heartbreakingly Zoom gatherings.

CHILD: "How old are you, tomorrow, I'm a bit busy.' personal.

Grandpa?"

I remember making our own The first yahrzeit for my faWe heard this a few weeks GRANDPA: "I'm 81, dear." bread and pastry. I remember havther fell during the beginning of ago from a dedicated and brilCHILD: "So does that mean ing movie night three or four times these difficult times. Although liant former student. She was you were alive during the coronaa week instead of just one. not the same, it was comfortHunter Hillel president and she ing that I was able to attend a virus?"

It was a horrible time for lots of crushed it. She graduated last people, you are right.

May, and we took our picture But I remember it differently." together outside Madison Remember how our children will Square Garden — she in her remember these times. gown and adorned cap, me in Be in control of the memories my Hunter Hillel T-shirt. they are creating right now, so that Shabbat Torah She got her degree and through all the awful headlines and Candle Portions moved on with her adult life. emotional stories for so many that Lightings She checked in not to let us they will come to read in future know about a new job or accepyears, they can remember the happy June 6, Naso (Num. 4:21-7:89) June 5: 8:44 p.m. tance to medical school; not to times.

— Author unknown tell us she was getting married.

June 13, Behalotecha (Num. 8:1-12:16) June 12: 8:47 p.m.

No, she wrote because all four May we all share positive June 20, Shelach (Num. 13:1-15:41) June 19: 8:50 p.m. of her grandparents have been memories in the future and may we all be healthy and safe.

Continued on Page 23 June 27, Korach (Num. 16:1-18:32) June 26: 8:51 p.m.

CONGREGATIONS Beth Abraham Synagogue Conservative Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg Cantor/Dir. of Ed. & Programming Andrea Raizen 305 Sugar Camp Circle, Oakwood. 937-293-9520.

BethAbrahamDayton.org

Perspectives

Beth Jacob Congregation Traditional Rabbi Leibel Agar 7020 N. Main St., Dayton. 937-2742149. BethJacobCong.org Temple Anshe Emeth Reform 320 Caldwell St., Piqua.

Contact Steve Shuchat, 937-7262116, AnsheEmeth@gmail.com. ansheemeth.org Temple Beth Or Reform Rabbi Judy Chessin 5275 Marshall Rd., Wash. Twp. 937-435-3400. templebethor.com Temple Beth Sholom Reform Rabbi Haviva Horvitz See Web site for schedule.

610 Gladys Dr., Middletown.

513-422-8313. thetemplebethsholom.com Temple Israel Reform Senior Rabbi Karen Bodney-Halasz Rabbi/Educator Tina Sobo 130 Riverside Dr., Dayton.

937-496-0050. tidayton.org Temple Sholom Reform Rabbi Cary Kozberg 2424 N. Limestone St., Springfield. 937-399-1231. templesholomoh.com

ADDITIONAL SERVICES

June • Sivan/Tammuz

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

Chabad of Greater Dayton Rabbi Nochum Mangel Associate Rabbi Shmuel Klatzkin Youth & Prog. Dir. Rabbi Levi Simon, Teen & Young Adult Prog.

Dir. Rabbi Elchonon Chaikin.

2001 Far Hills Ave. 937-643-0770. www.chabaddayton.com Yellow Springs Havurah Independent Antioch College Rockford Chapel.

Contact Len Kramer, 937-572-4840 or len2654@gmail.com.

PAGE 11

June JEWISH FEDERATION of GREATER DAYTON & ITS AGENCIES

UPCOMING EVENTS Connect with us! Check out our Virtual Events, there's something every week — and more!

For more information, check out our calendar at jewishdayton.org.

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JCRC Jewish Community Relations Council

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS

JCRC Virtual Conversation Series: Antisemitism: Educate–Advocate–Act Wednesday, July 8 @ 7-8 PM Join JCRC for a Community Conversation discussion from the May 20th viewing of “Viral: Antisemitism and its Four Mutations.“ This event will be a panel discussion with state and local leaders and will facilitate the Jewish Community Relations Council's strategic plan to EDUCATE-ADVOCATE-ACT towards the growing threat of Antisemitism.

Check the calendar on JewishDayton.org for Zoom registration!

PAGE 12

Monday, June 1 @ NOON – Project DAWN - Learn how to save a life with Narcan Tuesday, June 2 @ 7PM – Fiddler on the Zoom with Cantor Jenna Greenberg Wednesday, June 3 @ NOON – Technology & the Independent You : What is Social Media and Do I Really Need it?

June 4 through 8 – Film Fest Stream >> Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles Tuesday, June 9 @ 9PM – Film Fest Opening Night Heading Home: A Tale of Team Israel at the Dixie Drive-in Wednesday, June 10 @ 7PM – Heading Home Discussion with Marc Katz Thursday, June 11 @ 3-5PM – Mitzvah Mission drop off items Thursday, June 11 @ 7PM – JCC Happy Hour with Comedian Linda Belt Friday, June 12 @ 9-11AM – Mitzvah Mission drop off items June 12 through 15 – Film Fest Stream >> The Keeper June 16 through 17 – Film Fest Stream >> Crescendo Wednesday, June 17 @ 7PM – Crescendo Discussion with Dr. Sam Dorf Thursday, June 18 @ 7PM – JCC Happy Hour with Comedian Karen Bergreen Friday, June 19 @ 10:30AM – JCC Book Club via Zoom June 19 through 22 – Film Fest Stream >> Prosecuting Evil Monday, June 22 @ 7PM – Prosecuting Evil Discussion with Dr. Marcy L. Paul June 23 through 24 – Film Fest Stream >> Tel Aviv on Fire Wednesday, June 24 @ 7PM – Tel Aviv on Fire Discussion with Dr. Marcy L. Paul Thursday, June 25 @ 7PM – JCC Happy Hour with Comedian Karen Jaffe June 26 through 29 – Film Fest Stream >> Those Who Remained Monday, June 29 @ NOON – Those Who Remained Discussion with film director Barnabas Toth June 30 through July 2 – Film Fest Stream >> Love in Suspenders

mitzvah

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mission

Calling all kids! Draw a picture and connect with a senior in our community!

The Jewish value of chesed reminds us to share kindness with our family, friends, and neighbors. By voulnteering for this JFS Mitzvah Mission, you are giving with chesed in mind.

Drop off Dates @ the Boonshoft CJCE : June 11 3-5PM, June 12 9-11AM OR mail to the CJCE ATTN JFS by June 12. Coloring page ideas available online at jewishdayton.org/virtual-community.

& THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

June JEWISH FEDERATION of GREATER DAYTON & ITS AGENCIES

Monday, June 1 @ 12 NOON – Project DAWN

JFS VIRTUAL EVENTS ARE HERE FOR YOU!

Want to learn how to save a life? Join us and learn how to recognize the signs and symptoms of overdose and when and how to administer intranasal naloxone (Narcan). LaTania Jackson, Community Education Specialist, from Samaritan Behavioral Health, Inc. will provide the Project DAWN (Deaths Avoided With Naloxone) training via Zoom webinar. All participants will receive a take-home naloxone kit by mail after participating in the session. Registration is required. Register online at jewishdayton.org.

Wednesday, June 3 @ 12 NOON – Technology and the Independent You: What is Social Media and do I Really Need it?

Marianne Bailey, “The Senior Tutor,” presents What is Social Media and Do I Really Need it? via ZOOM webinar, the third and final session in the JFS Technology & The Independent You series. Remember, if you attend all sessions, you will be entered into a raffle to win an Amazon Echo and a 1 hour in home session to help set it up!

JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES of GREATER DAYTON

New: If you attend two out of the three sessions, you will be entered into a raffle to win a virtual, 30 minute mini session with the presenter. Register online at jewishdayton.org.

Laugh along with the JCC Thursdays @ 7PM via Zoom during the month of June! Register online at jewishdayton.org.

June 11 with Linda Belt June 18 with Karen Bergreen

June 25 with Karen Jaffe

Legacies, Tributes, & Memorials FEDERATION

LINDA RUCHMAN FUND IN MEMORY OF › Benjamin Landey Julie Ruchman JEWISH GENEALOGY & HISTORY FUND IN MEMORY OF › Sandy Schoemann Sam Dorf and Masha Kisel Michael Arbagi Debbie and Kevin Mattis Leonor and Martin Arbagi Janice Maharam

There is hope in the future

THE RESILIENCE SCHOLARSHIP FUND IN MEMORY OF › Dan Weckstein Alexander and Ramona Jane Pearl

Would you like to honor or memorialize someone in your life, all while making a meaningful impact on the Jewish community?

Consider making a donation to a Jewish Foundation of Greater Dayton Fund. Tribute and memorial donations can be made for a variety of reasons.

Contact us at 937-610-1555 for more information.

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER of GREATER DAYTON

JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES of GREATER DAYTON

JEWISH FEDERATION of GREATER DAYTON

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

TEMPLE BETH OR

&

JEWISH FOUNDATION of GREATER DAYTON

PAGE 13

They graduated Hillel Academy in 2014.

Now, they graduate high school.

Mazel Tov to the Class of 2020!

Ethan Zappin Excited to attend EmbryRiddle Aeronautical University to study unmanned aerial systems, and looking forward to racing rally cars this summer.

Sammy Caruso Excited to be a Wolverine! Ready for The Game, amazing food, meeting new friends.

Go Blue!

Rikki Mangel Looking forward to furthering my Jewish studies in Israel for a year.

Jordan Vandersluis Excited to spend a gap year in Israel, being with people who share my passions, and making friends from different places before attending The Ohio State University.

THE MARVELOUS MR. MAZEL Sammy Caruso showed the importance of donating blood by using his creativity — and his veins.

The recent Oakwood High School graduate was one of five $1,000 scholarship winners in the 2020 Community Blood Center/Vectren Lead The Way Scholarship competition.

Sammy, the son of Patty and Michael Caruso, created a recruitment video to encourage students to donate at Oakwood’s Dec. 5, 2019 blood drive.

His creative inspiration came from the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. He borrowed the show’s theme music and opening title sequence that scans a map of the Seven Kingdoms. Sammy’s video mapped the steps a blood donation follows from donor to patient.

Scott Halasz Then he took it a step further. “I donated blood for the first time following the making of this video because I was encouraged by all the people I talked to,” he explained to the CBC. “I wanted other students to hear their stories and understand how a little bit can go a long way.”

A key inspiration for Sammy was his interview with chemistry teacher and blood donor Anthony Rainsberger, who talks about his wife receiving platelet transfusions after chemotherapy treatments.

“I made a video to put on the announcements at school that was to encourage and teach students the importance of donating blood and how it has impacted people personally,” Sammy said.

Nina Jacobs Excited to immerse myself in the Ohio University community, meet new friends and further my education.

Edin German Looking forward to game days at The Ohio State University.

INNOVAtheatre’s production of Newsies will have some familiar names in the cast. Avi Gilbert will play Romeo, while Chava and Zeke Gilbert will be in the Newsies ensemble. Their parents are Rachel and Dr. Heath Gilbert. Casey Weckstein, daughter of Kellie and the late Daniel Weckstein, will play Wilhemina and will also perform in the ensemble. The show is slated to run in late August. It’s being directed by Richard Lee Waldeck, who has directed several JCC Children’s Theatre productions.

Morgan Grover, daughter of Renee and Matt Rosensweet, was elected president of NFTY-OV for a one-year term.

It’s graduation season, which means it’s time to recognize our kids who have received undergraduate and graduate degrees. Send me information about your college graduates so I can include in upcoming columns.

Rachel Taylor graduated cum laude from Rochester Institute of Technology with a bachelor of science degree in environmental science. One of Rachel’s key projects while at RIT was helping local communities combat invasive species in the Finger Lakes region of New York. She also worked on helping boost the bee populations around New York state roadways. Rachel’s parents are Shara and Steve Taylor.

Julian Caruso graduated from Miami University and will head to Loyola Law School. While at MU, she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, an honorary society of college and university undergraduates whose members are elected on the basis of high academic achievement. Julian is the daughter of Patty and Michael Caruso.

Aaron Pfeiffer, son of Marsha and Terry Pfeiffer, graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in finance and a minor in real estate.

Sami Adler, daughter of Kim and Steve Adler, graduated from Miami University with a degree in communication and international studies. She will head to Washington, D.C. for a yearlong fellowship.

Grant Halasz graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a degree in Judaic studies. Grant is the son of Teri and Dr. Michael Halasz, and my nephew.

And now to brag about myself a little. I was named best columnist in the Ohio Associated Press Media Editor’s Annual Writing Contest. My papers, the Xenia Daily Gazette and Fairborn Daily Herald, are in the largest contest division, which has papers with a circulation of up to 7,999.

Send your announcements to scotthalasz1@ gmail.com.

Are you reading this?

So is the entire Jewish community.

Now accepting K-6 applications for the 2020-2021 school year. daytonhillel.org • 937.277.8966 • dkmecoli@daytonhillel.org PAGE 14

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

A BISEL KISEL

An immovable feast: Mukbang during the Covid-19 pandemic Mukbang is not as porny as it sounds, although this genre of online entertainment is almost equally voyeuristic. Originating on South Korean television in 2010, the term is a composite of the words meokneun (to eat) and bangsong (broadcast). It has turned into a global YouTube phenomenon where muk-

never dreamed of eating an entire cake with their hands cast the first stone.

Although I enjoy these videos, I wonder whether it is morally wrong to do so? Is this media ethically fit for consumption?

My personal attraction to the spectacle of gastronomic immoderation goes back to my childhood. Although my family never starved, we did experience food insecurity in the late Masha years of the Soviet Union and Kisel during our HIAS-sponsored journey to the United States.

In the late 1980s, Soviet store shelves emptied of many luxury bangers eat massive quantities items like sweets. I would pore of food while chatting about over photos of desserts in cooktheir day.

In its westernized version, the books and reread the foodie chapters in my favorite Astrid mukbang genre overlaps with other kinds of popular watching Lindgren books, drooling over the pepparkator cookies in Pippi experiences.

Some are of the ASMR (audio Longstocking, and all the cakes and jams from Karlsson-on-thesensory meridian response) Roof. variety, with an emphasis on After we left slurping, chewing and soft talkSoviet Ukraine, ing in between bites. we traveled Others are a subgenre of through Austrian fitspo (fitness inspiration), and Italian HIAS where buff spartans enjoy an checkpoints — all-out cheat day after months the lands of Kindof lean proteins and veggies. er eggs and Nutella. We continMany mukbang videos are ued to shop cautiously, fearful thinly-veiled product placethat the allowance we received ments, intended to elicit cravwould run out. I felt taken care ings for mega-corporate proof, but I was constantly hungry cessed junk. and craving the frivolous novelAnd thousands of viewers, ties we rarely bought. myself included, watch these Coming to America was akin videos as a way to participate in to winning a golden ticket to a guilty pleasure without compromising health or conscience. Willy Wonka’s factory. Like all émigrés in the late ‘80s, we disIt might seem like a strange pastime, but let them who have covered the frugal joys of Aldi

way before it was cool. We plundered the aisles, filling our cart with Swiss cake rolls, Crunch bars, and tubs of off-brand icecream. Little Debbie never stood a chance.

I had a huge growth spurt the summer of 1989 and like some mukbangers of today, I ate with abandon without gaining weight.

It was only when I started Jewish school that I realized that food could be a source of embarrassment. My family couldn’t grasp the concept of “milk days” and “meat days” in the school’s kosher cafeteria.

Exiled to the treyf (nonKosher) table, I became best friends with the other Russian kids, all of us greedily chowing down our beef kotletky (Russian meatballs) with American cheese slices.

Of course, pre-teen body shaming followed. I quickly fell into the ranks of girls who eat a “lo-fat” yogurt for lunch at school and come home to feed on the unsuspecting contents of their fridge like some famished predator.

Is this media ethically fit for consumption?

But I think the appeal and shame of gluttony is more complex than issues surrounding body image, especially now.

Since we’ve entered the age of the 21st-century Covid-19 pandemic, some Americans are witnessing bare shelves and disruptions in the food supply for the first time in their lives (unfortunately, for many, food insecurity is nothing new).

Those lucky enough to afford food are venturing to the store less often to minimize risk of exposure and possibly rationing their weekly provisions.

I asked Rabbi Josh Ginsberg of Beth Abraham Synagogue how gluttony is perceived in Judaism and he explained that while it isn’t a fundamental sin, “gluttony is viewed as a personal failing or a social transgression.”

The historical reason for this is likely that overindulgence was deemed socially repugnant during times of scarcity.

Indeed, watching mukbanger Katina Eats Kilos consume 11 pounds of Mexican food for her 2020 Cinco de Mayo video already feels like an obnoxious vestige of some distant gilded age. There is tone-deafness in

this excess that brings to mind hoarding and food waste.

If we think of kosher as a term that considers the ethical consequences of our appetites, then is mukbang “fit to eat” in the current moment or should it be relegated to the treyf table with other sordid media?

Is it an exploitation of the eater, or is the sponsorship money a good earning opportunity, arguably less demeaning than other ways to make a buck on the internet during an economic recession?

Does it encourage disordered eating at a time of extreme stress or prevent it by simulating binging?

Judging by the comments on the videos, many viewers eat the perennial lo-fat yogurt while watching someone devour dozens of donuts.

I still haven’t resolved for myself whether it’s right or wrong to gorge by proxy, but I am certain that virtual experiences will continue to replace our real-world vices in the new reality of the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond.

Masha Kisel is a lecturer in English at the University of Dayton.

New weekly podcast

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Marshall Weiss

Grab a cup of coffee and listen to The Dayton Jewish Observer’s editor & publisher read an update of the week’s Jewish news from around the world — and in our backyard.

Just search for ‘The Dayton Jewish Observer’ in Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, or your favorite podcast app and subscribe! Or listen on the web at https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/the-dayton-jewish-observer.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

PAGE 15

Temple Beth Or

congratulates all of our

“Smarties” in the

Class of 2020 We honor our learners, thank our teachers, and celebrate our graduates.

The Class of 2020 Celebrating our high school graduates

Samuel G. Caruso

Parents: Patty & Michael Caruso Grandparents: Donna & the late Yale Holt, Joan Stark and the late Gerald Caruso School: Oakwood Activities: Lobbying, Organizing, Marching Band, Speech & Debate, OMUN, Principal, Student Teacher Advisory Board, Teen Advisory Board, BBYO, Student Court Volunteering: Delegate to Democratic National Convention for Ohio 10th District, Campaign Manager for Adrienne Draper for Englewood City Council, Organized Public Outreach Coordinator for John McManus for State Rep, Intern for Russ Joseph Honors: High Honor Roll, National Honor Society, Buckeye Boys State, TedX Dayton Youth Speaker, Recipient of Montgomery County Youth Leadership Award, Community Blood Bank Award Congregation: Temple Israel After Graduation: University of Michigan

Rachel (Ray) Crafton

Parents: Connie & Billie Crafton Grandparents: Judy Douglas, Thomas Cadwaller, Cathy Crafton School: Beavercreek Activities: NFTY Volunteering: TIDY President Congregation: Temple Israel After Graduation: Sinclair Community College

Julia Freeman

Special thanks to our Makor and Hebrew School teachers who have worked tirelessly and creatively to keep our students engaged and learning through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our young people and all the people of our Temple community are lucky to have you to pass on the traditions of the Torah!

Temple Beth Or 5275 Marshall Road Dayton, Ohio 45429 www.templebethor.com 937-435-3400

Today...and for Generations PAGE 16

Parents: Heidi & Jonathan Freeman Grandparents: Bella and the late Dr. M.J. Freeman, Deanna and the late John Breidenbach School: Miami Valley Activities: Spanish Honors Society Co-President, Assistant Coach for Middle School Girls Lacrosse Team, Varsity Lacrosse, Power of the Pen, Sinai Scholar, MVS EC Classroom Teaching Assistant Volunteering: East End Miracle Makers, Rebuilding Dayton Congregation: Temple Israel After Graduation: Wake Forest University, Health & Exercise Science

John John Groger

Parents: Dr. Kaili Fan & Dr. Richard Groger Grandparents: Myrna & the late Herbert Groger, Guangqi Zhu & the late Dachun Fan School: Miami Valley Activities: Quiz Bowl Team Captain, History Bee & Bowl, Dayton Philharmonic Youth Orchestra Violinist, GrogerRanks.com co-founder (national ranking service for high school Quiz Bowls, hosts online forums & tournaments) Volunteering: Giving Strings Honors: National Merit Finalist After Graduation: Columbia University, Astrophysics

Maddy Gruenberg

Parents: Angela & Mark Gruenberg Grandparents: Susan & Jonas Gruenberg, the late Clare & Charles Sturkey School: Centerville Activities: Dance Team, Destination Imagination, Theatre Onstage & Backstage Volunteering: Theatre Club President, Trick or Treat Canned Goods Collection Honors: Theatre, Destination Imagination Global Finals 2016 Congregation: Temple Beth Or After Graduation: Wright State University, Biochemistry

Nina Jacobs

Parents: Shari Jacobs & Mitchell Jacobs Grandparents: Bobbi Hartsog, the late Karen & Victor Jacobs, the late Sarah Pavlofsky School: Miami Valley Activities: USY, Camp Wise, Sinai Scholars Volunteering: Feast of Giving, Breastwishes Foundation, Peace of Mind, Mid-Ohio Food Bank Congregation: Beth Jacob, Chabad After Graduation: Ohio University

Joel Kaplan

Parents: Danna & Rich Kaplan Grandparents: Carol Rubenstein, Elaine Kaplan School: Centerville Activities: Career Tech Education Program Culinary Arts & Restaurant Management, Mock Trial, NFTY-OV, BBYO, BOTY, Competitive Gamer, Freelance Graphic Designer in Training Volunteering: J-Serve Congregation: Temple Beth Or After Graduation: Kent State University College of Communication & Information, Visual Communication Design Major

Rikki Mangel

Parents: Devorah & Rabbi Nochum Mangel Grandparents: Rabbi & Mrs. Mangel, Rabbi & Mrs. Smetana School: Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh Girls School Activities: Reading, listening to music, hanging out, baking with friends, spending time with nieces and nephews Volunteering: Friendship Circle, help out at children’s programs Honors: Honor Roll Congregation: Chabad After Graduation: A year at a seminary in Israel

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

Daniel Mogilevsky

Parents: Margarita & Pavel Mogilevsky Grandparent: Janna Galperin School: Beavercreek Activities: Powerlifting, Computer Science Teaching Assistant at Wright State, Wright State Improv Troupe Volunteering: Cleanup after tornadoes Honors: Salesforce Administrator Certification, National Merit Commended Scholar, Wright State Dean’s List Highest Honor, IPL Powerlifting 2019 World Championships First Place, Junior Division Congregation: Chabad After Graduation: Wright State University and working full-time as Salesforce Administrator

Jordan Elyse Poch

Parents: Eric & Sheri Poch Grandparents: Honore & the late Col. Richard Poch, Phyllis Froug, Ronald Froug, the late Gloria Kobrin-Froug School: Weiss High School, Pflugerville, Texas Activities: Varsity Choir, Piano & Voice Lessons, University Interscholastic League Texas State Solo-Ensemble Competitions, Texas HOSA-Future Health Professionals Participation & Competition, Student-Athlete Volunteering: J-Serve, Litzor Chapter of BBYO, Austin Animal Center Honors: National Honor Society, Best Female Junior Choir Member After Graduation: University of Texas, Austin, Neuroscience

Abigail Zied

The Class of 2020

Parents: Dr. Dena MasonZied & Eric Zied Grandparents: Renee Mason & the late Howard Mason, Marcia & Ernest Zied School: Springboro Activities: Childcare Provider at Ohio Sports Academy, Camp Shalom Counselor, Madricha at Temple Israel, Varsity Winter Guard, Recreational Soccer, Girl Scouts, Photo Club, Hiking Club, Book Club, Art Club, SADD Volunteering: Decorating graves at Dayton National Cemetery and Riverview (Temple Israel) Cemetery, Jewish Cultural Festival, Teen Mentoring at Springboro High School Honors: Silver Award - Girl Scouts of Western Ohio, Academic Achievement Award - Kent State University Congregation: Temple Israel After Graduation: Kent State University, Child Psychology

Celebrating our high school graduates Miriam Sutch

Parents: Robyn Angel & Dan Sutch Grandparent: Jerome Angel School: Oakwood Activities: GSA, French Club, Guitar, Multimedia Arts, Theatre Honors: Honor’s Diploma Congregation: Temple Israel After Graduation: Miami University

Natalie Rose Taylor

Parents: Shara & Steve Taylor Grandparents: Frances & the late Stanley Levine, Sue & Gary Taylor School: Centerville Activities: Destination Imagination (10 years), Girl Scouts (11 years), Artist, CHS Technical Theatre Program, NFTY, BBYO Volunteering: Boonshoft Museum of Discovery Honors: Two Honorable Mentions in Miami Valley Regional Scholastic Art Awards Congregation: Temple Beth Or After Graduation: Sarah Lawrence College, History and Art

Jordan Vandersluis

Parents: Marci & Dr. Joel Vanderslus School: Miami Valley Activities: USY, CTeen, Theatre, Lacrosse, Basketball Volunteering: Chabad, Sensory Sundays at The Boonshoft Museum of Discovery, United Rehabilitation Services Honors: President of MVS Thespian Honors Society, Outstanding Performance Theatre Awards from MVS Congregations: Chabad & Beth Abraham After Graduation: Gap year in Israel & then The Ohio State University

Adina Haviva Weiss

Parents: Donna & Marshall Weiss Grandparents: The late Evelyn & Dr. Louis Barnett, the late Pearl Weiss, the late Norman Weiss School: Miami Valley Activities: Spanish Honors Society Co-President, Assistant Coach for Middle School Girls Lacrosse Team, Student Community Service Board, Sinai Scholar, Private Tutor Volunteering: East End Miracle Makers Honors: Dayton LaSertoma Youth Service Award representing MVS Congregations: Beth Abraham & Chabad After Graduation: Denison University, Global Commerce

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

PAGE 17

How Fiddler on the Roof Heading Home: Team Israel’s made it to the stage Magic Carpet Ride AP/Courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Samuel Goldwyn Films

By Curt Schleier, JTA Instinctively, director-choreographer Jerome Robbins (né Rabinowitz) knew the musical that he was preparing for Broadway was something far greater than just the story of a Jewish family facing persecution in czarist Russia.

So at one of his early meetings with the creatives behind the Backstage opening night of Fiddler on the Roof at the Imperial project, he made clear Theater in New York, Sept. 22, 1964 (L to R): Maria Karnilova, the route he intended Tanya Everett, Zero Mostel, Julia Migenes, Joanna Merlin to take them on: Fiddler on the Roof touched on many themes, he edly said. It wasn’t until the late Harold said, but at its core it was about tradiPrince signed on to produce that the play tion. achieved any momentum.

And thus was born one of the great Even then, success was not assured. opening numbers in the history of musi- Reviews following an out-of-town opencal theatre and the groundwork for one ing in Detroit were uniformly negative. of the most important and popular plays Even after substantial changes, The New ever. It opened in September 1964 and York Times’ influential critic at the time, became the longest-running Broadway Walter Kerr, offered a tepid review after musical of the time. It ran for a decade, its Broadway debut. spawned five Broadway revivals and has But the next day, there were lines been performed everywhere from Vienna around the block. to Mexico City to Reykjavík, Iceland.

The film is replete with fascinating The 2019 documentary Fiddler: Miracle anecdotes about the process: how star of Miracles digs into the show’s origin Zero Mostel and Robbins feuded because story and much more. the latter named names before the House Filmmaker Max Lewkowicz expertly Un-American Activities Committee; how combines archival footage Robbins attending a Chawith interviews of show sidic wedding provided the participants from over the inspiration for the wedding years to weave a story that dance scene; how the play is at once heart-warming, was initially intended to be entertaining, informative, called Tevye until someone and in some ways, eye saw Marc Chagall’s painting opening.

The Fiddler and renamed the Ironically, considering play as a tribute to him. its subsequent success, There have been at least Fiddler had a rocky start. A two books written about friend gave lyricist Sheldon Fiddler — but while both Harnick a copy of the book share many of these anecWandering Stars by Sholem dotes, neither can satisfacAleichem. Harnick thought torily describe the gleam in it would make a great musical, and forthe eyes, the smiles on the faces, and the warded the book to his writing partner pride in the voices of the dozens of acJerry Bock who agreed and in turn sent it tors interviewed here who have played a to playwright Joseph Stein. part in the Fiddler phenomenon.

Stein, however, didn’t believe it would Lin Manuel-Miranda, who is interwork as a musical. Instead, he suggested viewed in the film, first performed in another Aleichem work, Tevye the Dairya Fiddler production in 6th grade. He man, a book of stories that his father had was so enchanted by the experience, he read to him in the original Yiddish. and his entire wedding party rehearsed Though it had the backing of the and choreographed the song L’Chaim three award-winning Broadway pros, it as a surprise for his bride, Vanessa. The was still far from a sure thing. Producperformance went viral. ers were wary, afraid it was too JewHarnick remembers attending an early ish. “What do I do once we run out of Tokyo performance and being asked: Hadassah benefits?” is what one alleg“Do they understand it in America? It’s so Japanese.”

Although there are no overt politiThe JCC Film Fest presents the cal references, ties to the current spike documentary Fiddler: Miracle of in antisemitism and hate seem obvious.

Miracles free online June 4-8. To watch, As Danny Burstein, who played Tevye go to jewishdayton.org/program/daytonin the last Broadway revival, notes: “As jewish-film-festival. You can also sign up long as human beings exist and continue for a Zoom program with Cantor Jenna to have troubles, Fiddler on the Roof will Greenberg featuring Broadway songs with be there.” a Jewish twist at 7 p.m., Tuesday, June 2.

PAGE 18

Doc examines ‘miracle’ of World Baseball Classic

Margo Sugarman

Team Israel stands for Hatikvah at World Baseball Classic qualifying game in Brooklyn

By Jonathan Mark The New York Jewish Week The 2018 documentary, Heading Home, about Team Israel’s Joe Hardy-like ride through victory after victory in the Major League’s 2017 World Baseball Classic, is a sports documentary, of course, but a love story all the more. As unlikely as their on-field success, even more unlikely was the Jewish and Zionist pride that percolated among the American-born players who, when first recruited, had only the most tenuous ties to anything Jewish, let alone to Israel, the country they were representing.

And yet, before every game, when Team Israel lined up along the foul line for the national anthems, all the players removed their baseball caps only to reveal a yarmulke on every head. First base coach Nate Fish said matter of factly, “This is what we do. We represent a Jewish country. We cover our heads.”

Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel was produced by Fred Wilpon, the Jewish owner of the Mets, and directed

by Seth Kramer, Daniel A. Miller and Jeremy Newberger, all with roots in Young Judea. The directors had earned two Emmy nominations for their PBS documentaries, Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans and The Trial of Adolf Eichmann.

All but two players for Team Israel were American Jews, but according to the tournament’s “heritage” rule, players could represent a country if they had at least one grandparent from that country, or if the player would be eligible for citizenship (as all Jews are through Israel’s Law of Return). Team Israel’s catcher Ryan Lavarnway, who played for the Red Sox in the 2013 World Series, couldn’t help but think of the Nazi mischling law that defined a Jew by even one grandparent. “Two generations ago,” said Lavarnway in the film, “the way this team was put together would have meant that we were being killed...For us to be able to stand up here and have the Israel flag and Jewish star hanging in the stadium, it (means) we’re here.”

Israel was not the only team using the heritage loophole. In 2012’s tournament, there was only one Spanish-born player playing for Spain, and Team Italy had coaches and players like Mike Piazza and Brandon Nimmo of the Mets.

Israel’s closest thing to a star was Jason Marquis, who won 124 games over 15 years, as well as starting a World Series game in 2004. The preponderance of American players greatly upset one Cuban journalist who, after Israel defeated Cuba, is shown grilling Team Israel’s manager, Jerry Weinstein, a former coach for the Colorado Rockies.

Said the Cuban, “Israel has not properly recruited a team of its country...(It’s) a team that should represent Israel but actually represents the United States.”

Manager Weinstein kept his cool but answered firmly: “Well, I don’t agree with that. All our guys qualify under the ‘heritage’ rules...We’re Team Israel and make no mistake about that.”

Later, Weinstein adds, “it’s just Cuba’s face-saver (so they can say), ‘We didn’t lose to Israel…’ That’s B.S. You lost to Israel, brother.”

Between rounds, philanthropist Sheldon Adelson lent his private plane to take several of the players to Israel, to better understand the country they were representing. The players went to sessions about the peace process, experienced the fun house of Tel Aviv, and then went to Jerusalem’s Western Wall. Josh Zeid, who pitched for the Astros, said, “I wrote a note and just started talking. I was just talking to God...I wasn’t asking Him for things, I was just telling Him things.”

The JCC Film Fest plans to present the documentary Heading Home: A Tale of Team Israel at 9 p.m., Tuesday, June 9 at The Dixie Twin Drive-In, 6201 N. Dixie Dr., Dayton. The program is free and includes bagged snacks. R.S.V.P. to jewishdayton.org/program/daytonjewish-film-festival. If the drive-in screening is cancelled, the film will be available for free online viewing.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

an island of misfit toys. (Some With a trip to Yad Vashem, of us) spent years in the Big Team Israel’s Ike Davis, who once hit 32 homers for the Mets, Leagues but felt unappreciated in this game…We have spoke about growing up with been kicked around our entire intermarried parents, a Baptist careers. We know what it’s like “redneck” father, former Yankees pitcher Ron Davis, and his to be doubted. We’re not gonna be intimidated.” mom, Millie, a Jewish guitarOne of Israel’s best journeyplaying “hippie...No wonder men was Cody Decker, who they got divorced.” Davis tried criss-crossed America playing to fill in a family tree. “On my for such minor league teams as father’s side I had six, seven the Missions, Chihuahuas, Sea generations; on my mom’s side Dogs, Storm Chasers, Isotopes, there were, like, three people.

Fifty-Ones, Rumble Ponies, and …She said, ‘that’s what haplately the Reno Aces. In his only pened during the Holocaust. big-league shot, he went hitless Most of the family didn’t make in 11 at-bats for the Padres in it.’”

Said Davis, “Not really being 2015, with one run-batted-in.

It was Decker who brought a around a lot of Jewish people, I life-sized, bearded, tallis-wear(didn’t) know how much Israel ing plush toy Mensch on the meant to me. So coming here is Bench into the dugout before really cool, to dive in and learn every game, and into every a lot more about my history.” press conference. Asked by reSeveral players said they porters who the Mensch on the were proud to “wear Israel Bench was, Decker said with across my chest.” Winning the a straight face, “my manager, first round in Brooklyn, said Jerry Weinstein.”

Zeid, “was the first time that I But Decker was completely felt I won, really won, because serious when he put on his blue it’s not about…any of our and white jersey. “It looked like careers, it’s about something the Israeli flag,” bigger.”

Menemsha Films he said. “All I Baseball kept thinking didn’t leave to myself was, him much room how proud my for a Jewish grandfather life, he thought, would have but that was been to see then: “Baseball this.” kind of took me In Tokyo, the away, and now film captures it’s bringing me Israel’s equipback.” ment manager The smart saying Kaddish money put the in the dugout odds against Israel at 200-1. Cody Decker with his Mensch on for his father’s a Bench mascot for Team Israel yahrzeit, anIn a 16-team swered with amens. tournament, they were ranked Before the game on Purim, a 41st in the world. They were parchment Megillah was chantcalled a team of “has-beens ed, right there in the dugout, and never-will-bes.” ESPN the players banging away when compared Team Israel to the hearing Haman’s name. In the Jamaican bobsled team. They top of the ninth, as Israel was made it as far as the third of beating “international power” four rounds. Maybe the smart money wasn’t so smart. As Zeid (said the TV announcer) Cuba 4-1, the film’s soundtrack put it, “You tell people they featured the Megillah being have no chance? (Israel) will chanted softly, the camera cutgive them one helluva fight.” ting between the parchment The film ignores how New and the turf. The TV announcer York Jews doubted Team Israel was beside himself: “Israel as much as anyone. Even with again! Can you believe it? This the first round being played in magic carpet ride continues for the Brooklyn Cyclones’ beautiIsrael.” ful stadium, with no Shabbos Then the carpet ride ended. conflicts, Israel’s three “home Eliminated by Japan, Zeid said, games” averaged only 2,600 “We wanted to keep it going… fans, less than half of what the To a man, we are so proud to Cyclones normally draw. have represented Israel, our Team Israel beat baseball heritage and American Jews.” heavyweights Cuba, South Davis mused after the loss: Korea, China, Taipei, and a Netherlands team starring Didi “That’s the great thing about Israel. If you have Jewish famGregorius of the New York ily and Jewish blood…you feel Yankees, despite Team Israel’s it’s actually like home. I think roster being mostly journeythat’s what (we were) here for, men. Team Israel’s infielder to find that.”

Ty Kelly said, “This team is

In Crescendo, Israeli-Palestinian orchestra struggles to get in tune Menemsha Films/Oliver Oppitz Photography

Peter Simonischek as conductor Eduard Sporck in Crescendo by filmmaker Dror Zahav

By Rich Tenorio Times of Israel In a historic Austrian chalet, young Israeli and Palestinian classical musicians rehearse for a peace concert under the direction of their German maestro, Eduard Sporck.

They have been living and practicing here to separate themselves from the day-to-day tension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet their sessions here have been tense as well — Sporck led an attempt at group therapy that devolved into shouts of “terrorist!” and “murderer!” But now, performing Vivaldi, the orchestra seems to be coalescing.

Even the two top violinists, Palestinian Layla and Israeli Ron, who have had numerous antagonistic exchanges, are moving toward detente.

As the strings work toward a crescendo, Ron plays with his eyes closed and Layla casts him a meaningful glance.

This is a scene from the new German film Crescendo, directed

by Israeli-German filmmaker Dror Zahavi. The exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an orchestral perspective features both Israelis and Palestinians in its cast.

The JCC Film Fest presents the feature film Crescendo free online June 16-17. To watch, go to jewishdayton.org/ program/dayton-jewish-filmfestival. You can also sign up for a Zoom discussion of the film with UD Assoc. Prof. of Musicology Sam Dorf at 7 p.m., Wednesday, June 17.

from Argentina and in 2008 was granted Palestinian citizenship in addition to his Israeli citizenship, Maestro Sporck is trying to overcome a dark family past as the son of Nazi mass murderers.

A key scene has Sporck discuss his family background with his orchestra. He reveals that while they have been in Austria, he has visited an elderly woman who prevented young Sporck from being shot by the people who killed his parents.

“There were times in my life when I hated her for it,” he tells the orchestra. “It would be easier if I had been shot together with my parents.”

“The greatest hate between people is Jews and Germans,” Zahavi said. Yet, he added, “it can be an example for overcoming. When you’re in a very conflicted state, you think you can’t overcome it. That’s why we made him like this. I think it’s very important sometimes to explain, especially to young people born into the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and sometimes have no more hope that it can be solved, to show one day that there are more, bigger conflicts that can be solved.”

Some of Zahavi’s past work has also addressed the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, such as For My Father in 2008, in which a Palestinian suicide bomber learns to connect with his intended targets as friends. He said that he filmed Crescendo a year and a half before the opening of the American embassy Continued on next page

“I’m amazed by the response it’s getting,” Zahavi said in a phone interview. “In every film festival spotlight, we got an award,” including in Ludwigshafen, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Berlin Jewish Film Festival, and in Warsaw.

In each of the film’s first four screenings, Zahavi said, it was shown before audiences of 1,200, for a total of about 5,000.

“People were standing for ovations of 10 minutes,” he said.

“I’m not exaggerating.”

Its story is fictional, yet there is precedent for real-life orchestras comprised of both Israelis and Palestinians. Perhaps the best-known is the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra that was started by conductor Daniel Barenboim and the late Palestinian academic Edward Said.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t think there are any similarities between Sporck and Barenboim,” Zahavi said, adding that there are multiple Jewish-Arab orchestras in the world.

Yet, he said, “of course the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra of Daniel Barenboim is an inspiration for me,” and added that of its various counterparts, “it’s true his orchestra is the most famous.”

Through a spokesperson, Barenboim declined to comment for this article.

Zahavi noted there are significant differences between Barenboim and Sporck, who is played by acclaimed Austrian actor Peter Simonischek, whose previous films include Toni Erdmann and The Interpreter.

Unlike Barenboim, who is

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

PAGE 19

Crescendo

Continued from previous page in Jerusalem, but added that for the Israeli-Palestinian cast “there were always some political issues that influenced persons from the two groups, for sure.”

Sporck stresses coexistence in the film.

“Israelis and Palestinians, they can live together,” he tells them. “It’s possible. Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but it is possible if you work at it. Not your children, not your grandchildren. You have to do it.”

Zahavi notes another difference between veteran conductor Barenboim and Sporck, who “just gets the mission to create this orchestra for only one concert.” But that one concert entails a herculean amount of effort.

It’s shown in the difficulties encountered by Layla (Sabrina Amali), who lives in the West Bank city of Qalqilya. Layla must practice in an environment affected by confrontations between Palestinian protestors and Israel Defense Forces personnel.

In what Zahavi describes as a Palestinian practice, she smells an onion to keep practicing during tear-gas strikes. When she brings her instrument to a checkpoint en route to an audition in Tel Aviv, she is rudely interrogated by a female IDF service member who cannot understand why she has a violin case.

At the audition, Layla encounters racist behavior from Ron (Daniel Donskoy), who recommends members of his chamber ensemble — “Israelis who look like Arabs” — who could be used by the maestro instead of Palestinians.

There are also some encouraging signs. Layla is chosen over Ron as concertmaster, and an improbable friendship blossoms between two of the younger musicians, Palestinian clarinet player Omar (Mehdi Meskar) and Israeli French horn player Shira (Eyan Pinkovich). Yet Ron stirs up fellow Israeli musicians to protest Layla’s leadership role, and a rehearsal becomes a shouting match of alternating calls of “Jerusalem!” and “AlQuds!”

No matter what the different ensemble members call the city, the entire group relocates to Austria, where Sporck expects them not only to perform together, but also to live together.

In addition to the rehearsals, he holds therapeutic sessions that Zahavi says have real-life parallels.

The director said his team did a lot of research for these therapy sessions and spoke with

PAGE 20

neurologists and psychiatrists.

“There are methods of therapy that are not for individuals but groups — Jews and Nazis, for examples, homosexuals and homophobes. You don’t treat one person but you treat the groups.”

He said that many cast members were seared by the scene in which they confront each other across a room.

“I asked them to curse, to blame the other side with killing the families, ask them to tell the other side they hate them,” he recalled. “A lot of them started crying. Two fainted. One said, ‘I can’t say, I don’t want to say I hate Arabs. I don’t hate Arabs.

I won’t say it.’ She was getting hysterical. I explained to her that if she says she hates Arabs, it doesn’t mean she personally hates Arabs. She was just a character in the film.”

“Some very heavy conflicts came out,” Zahavi said. “There were some very bad, difficult moments there. It was an occasion I will never forget.”

Yet after this dramatic confrontation, things seem to get easier. Layla explains her family narrative of exile in the wake of the 1948 War of Independence.

Sporck details his parents’ war crimes at Buchenwald.

Omar and Shira cement their friendship in another group therapy session: After a call for someone to try on the other side’s headgear, Omar volunteers to wear a kipah, while Shira dons a hijab. A romance develops with a sweet scene in a swimming pool.

“You know, when you are 16, the story is innocence,” Zahavi said. “The fact their first kiss is underwater means, also, another dimension, another world. It’s not in the real world… It is our trying to show how things could have been.”

But as the group moves towards coexistence, the specter of the conflict continues to loom over them.

Zahavi hopes his film will reverberate not only with audiences, but also with the IsraeliPalestinian cast.

“In spite of the suspicion that existed at the beginning, they found each other, very quickly — I won’t say friends, I don’t think there are any connections of friendship between them now, I don’t know — but I think all of them took a very strong message with them,” Zahavi said. “They will carry the fact that Palestinians and Jews were, for something like seven or eight weeks together, living together.”

“Maybe,” he said, “they will know it is possible to live together, if you have an aim, if you just ignore the difficulties.”

Robin Utrecht/Vertical Entertainment

Ben Ferencz shines the light of law in Prosecuting Evil Ben Ferencz in the documentary Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz

By Michael Fox Special To The Observer Benjamin Ferencz was the lead prosecutor in the Nuremberg trial of 24 officers who led the Einsatzgruppen (mobile SS extermination squads) that murdered more than a million Jews and other “enemies of the state” in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.

Just 27 when he tried the case, Ferencz obtained a full slate of convictions including death sentences for chief defendant Otto Ohlendorf and several other commanders.

The lifelong human-rights lawyer finally gets the spotlight to himself in the feature-length documentary Prosecuting Evil: The Extraordinary World of Ben Ferencz.

Simply sitting in a chair, recounting his life story in a pin-striped suit with red pocket square, this nonagenarian commands our attention.

Canadian director Barry Avrich, whose credits include The Last Mogul, a documentary about the late Hollywood agent and macher Lew Wasserman, takes the conservative route of assembling archival photos and footage and a couple interview subjects to augment his subject’s testimony.

It’s not a bad strategy when you have a figure as riveting as The JCC Film Fest presents the documentary Prosecuting Evil free online June 19-22. To watch, go to jewishdayton.org/program/ dayton-jewish-film-festival. You can also sign up for a Zoom discussion of the film with Jewish Community Relations Council Director Marcy L. Paul at 7 p.m., Monday, June 22.

Ferencz.

He was born in Romania in 1920 and his family immigrated to the United States within the year.

A straight-shooting product of Hell’s Kitchen and City College of New York, he augmented his Yiddish and English with the French that he taught himself from Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux movies at the local cinema.

Ferencz was interested in juvenile delinquency and crime prevention, and did so well on his criminal law exams that Harvard Law School gave him a full scholarship.

He found a government program that paid him a stipend as the assistant to a criminology professor who, when World War II began, started researching and writing about war crimes.

We infer that Ferencz had uncommon intelligence and initiative, and his frustration after Pearl Harbor at the Army’s inability — because of his diminutive size — to see a use for his exceptional skills is palpable.

His time finally came when he was appointed a war crimes investigator with carte blanche to enter the concentration camps and collect evidence.

Ferencz recounts this dramatic and pivotal period in his life with incredible recall and, on occasion, welling emotion that forces him to pause.

The camps are as vivid to him as they were 70-plus years ago, and he succeeds in putting us

there with him.

His training and experience brought him to the attention of Telford Taylor, the assistant (and eventual successor) to chief counsel and prosecutor of the Nazi high command, Robert Jackson.

Ferencz was instrumental in the dozen trials (including the Einsatzgruppen trial he spearheaded) that followed.

He stayed in Germany with his wife and children to lead the reclamation of Jewish property for a non-governmental organization.

The story of how Ferencz persuaded the German government to agree to maintain Jewish cemeteries in perpetuity provides one of the film’s emotional peaks.

Upon his return to the States, Ferencz reunited with Taylor and took cases in the areas of civil rights and human rights law before those terms were invented.

Ferencz went on to play a pivotal role, across three-plus decades, in establishing the International Criminal Court at The Hague (in 2002).

It’s a manifestation of Ferencz’s philosophy for ending bloodshed.

“The only way out of this,” he declares, “is law, not war.”

If it’s still unclear what kind of man we’re talking about, one of his sons recalls that his dad began every dinner for years with the question, “What have you done for mankind today?”

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

Soap-opera comedy ignites Tel Aviv on Fire

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By Michael Fox Special To The Observer Palestinian writer-director Sameh Zoabi achieves something altogether remarkable with his second feature film, particularly at this moment in time: He finds humor in the tattered relationship between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The whole idea of Tel Aviv on Fire is that we have more in common than we want to admit,” Zoabi said in an interview last year before his movie screened with the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. “We have to break these stereotypes and talk about what’s in common between us and not what divides us. Let’s remind people how humanity can prevail, in times where the politics of post-Oslo is, ‘Let’s dehumanize the other to be able to survive.’ I want to do the opposite.”

Tel Aviv on Fire centers on an underachiever, Salam, a gofer on his uncle’s hit Palestinian soap opera. Through a barely plausible combination of chance, chutzpah and desperation, the schlemiel is elevated to writer.

Then he runs afoul of the Israeli commander at the checkpoint he crosses every day, whose wife is a loyal fan of the show.

Salam has to use every iota of guile and cleverness to navigate the opposing agendas that he’s caught between — and to win The JCC Film Fest presents the feature film Tel Aviv on Fire free online June 23-24. To watch, go to jewishdayton.org/program/ dayton-jewish-film-festival. You can also sign up for a Zoom discussion of the film with Jewish Community Relations Council Director Marcy L. Paul at 7 p.m., Wednesday, June 24.

back the heart of a woman he had dumped. (Even while he’s landing political jokes, Zoabi cheerfully seizes every opportunity to lampoon conventions of both soap operas and movies.)

A sharp, insightful and winning comedy that juxtaposes the delicious absurdity of melodrama with the real-life absurdity of the occupation, Tel Aviv on Fire was, curiously enough, Luxembourg’s official submission for the Oscar for International Feature Film.

One of nine children, Zoabi grew up in a village outside of Nazareth where people went to his grandfather’s barber shop for his humorous stories as much as for a haircut.

“In general, my village is very funny,” Zoabi, 44, relates.

“That’s maybe why comedy has become very easy for me, because I grew up in a place where they don’t take anything seriously.”

Zoabi studied at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University in New York, where he discovered the need for Palestinian stories. Returning to Israel, he made a short film, Be Quiet, in 2005 and his feature debut, Man Without a Cell Phone, in 2010.

Zoabi’s experience of receiving government funding was the genesis of Tel Aviv on Fire.

“You take money from the Israelis, so suddenly you are watched immediately,” he explains. “Israelis are making sure you are not becoming too Palestinian for them. And the Palestinians are watching: ‘He took money, maybe he’s a sellout, he’s doing a comedy.’”

After presenting Tel Aviv on Fire at several international festivals last fall and winter, Zoabi debuted the film in Haifa to an

Israeli audience and in Nazareth to Palestinian moviegoers.

It was equally well received by both groups, which didn’t surprise him. But he did have an epiphany.

“All the screenings led to this moment,” Zoabi declares.

“Finally I understood: People are fed up. People are fed up of the reality that exists, which is managing the occupation. “(The film) reminds people of the possibility that used to exist, the feeling that we can be normal people and just get along.

I think that’s a fantasy that existed among the Israelis, that we can eat hummus together in Damascus one day. But they aren’t able to see the occupation as a major reason for that not to happen.”

It’s a measure of Zoabi’s skill that the current-events commentary in Tel Aviv on Fire goes down easily for Israelis, Palestinians, and American Jews across the political spectrum.

The means to that success, in large measure, is Salam’s evolution of necessity from hapless underdog to diplomatic savant.

“I’m attracted to people who don’t wake up knowing what they really want,” Zoabi says. “I think they’re more inspirational for me than black and white (characters). Actually, people who know exactly what they want terrify me. You can’t be so certain all the time.”

Zoabi grew up in a milieu of group interaction and lots of soap operas, because those were the only two channels the family had. He wasn’t exposed to art, theatre, and film until his late teens.

“I always say I’m not an artist, really. “I’m probably a barber of a new era in my family.”

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

PAGE 21

JEWISH FAMILY EDUCATION

A heritage of education Our Dual Heritage

In January 2019, journalist Tim Alper reported that a Seoul preschool had recently added to its curriculum a traditional Talmudic learning style known as chavruta, paired learning.

“Children listen to stories from the Talmud and then

Candace R. Kwiatek embark on chavruta-style peer discussions,” he wrote. The school’s principal explained, “We wanted to find a fun, lively classroom activity that would promote creativity, but also help with moral education. Chavruta seems to tick all of these boxes.”

In a 2011 Israeli television interview, the South Korean ambassador to Israel noted that Talmud study had become a mandatory part of his country’s public school curriculum.

“We were very curious about the high academic achievements of the Jews,” he told the television host. Political

scientist Dr. Chaibong Hahm echoed this sentiment, telling reporter Ross Arbes, “Koreans are obsessed with education, and we have this stereotypical view of Jews as the model of academic excellence.”

Even in its one-volume Korean versions for children and adults, Arbes observes, “the Talmud has come to embody this stereotype.”

Do Jews represent academic excellence? Using the Nobel Prize as a standard, they do.

Jews are 0.2 percent of the world population but have won 23 percent of the Nobel Prizes, 206 out of just over 900 awarded. Statistically, Jews should have won two.

Do Jews represent high academic achievement? According to the 2016 Pew research study, Religion and Education Around the World, Jews who identify as religiously Jewish have on average well over 13 years of formal education, the highest in the world. Even outside the United States and Israel, Jews achieve significantly higher levels of education than their fellow citizens.

What is the secret to Jews’

educational success? Is it really alike, so they should learn and remember (Deut. 31:10-13). the Talmud?

Alongside the written Torah, According to Brandeis hisan oral tradition developed to tory professor Jonathan Sarna, explain how the command“It is no surprise that Jews ments were to be carried out. are the most educated of the The earliest explications by world’s religious groups. Jews have long respected learning as Moses, then by the Levites, and scribes were eventually written a value.” down as the Mishnah, later The Jewish devotion to expanded upon by sages and education began at Sinai with rabbis in the Gemarah. Eventuthe receiving of the Torah, also ally these two oral traditions known as the Written Law. of debates, legal opinions, and From that moment, learnstories were combined into the ing was linked to the Divine. multi-volume Talmud.

Its purpose was to refine one’s As the Jewish people became own character, to foster good increasingly dispersed, they relationships, to build good maintained families and communities, and to Jewish education their devotion to education understand the started out as by establishing world and one’s schools, instituta balance of purpose in it. ing compulsory The primary the spiritual, education for setting for eduintellectual, children and encation was the gaging in adult home, as reflect- and practical learning. ed in the Shema, The result was “You are to teach inextricably a nearly uni(these things) connected versal literacy diligently to your that was unparchildren, and are to the Divine. alleled in the to speak of them ancient world. While the Torah while sitting in your house and Talmud were the backbone and while walking on the way, of Jewish education, secular when you lie down and when learning was not ignored. After you rise up (Deut. 6:6-7; 11:18all, the Talmud itself man19).” dated that parents teach their Education became a pubchildren to swim, meaning lic affair during the fall Feast life skills, and to prepare their of Booths, Sukkot, when the children for work by training Torah was read aloud to all the them for a trade.

Israelites, adults and children Jewish education started out as a balance of the spiritual, intellectual, and practical inextricably connected to the Divine.

America’s early educational history also began with the Bible. Viewed primarily as the source of religious understanding and transcendent values, it was read and taught at home.

As a consequence, literacy

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rates were high in colonial America. Most colonists could therefore analyze the written content of the free press and America’s founding documents on their own rather than being told what to think.

The Bible played a central role in the founding of the colonial colleges, and spurred the development of public schools and compulsory education. It was also the textbook for moral character and thereby good citizenship, as John Adams wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

While the nature of Jewish education has remained essentially the same, American education has changed over time.

The spiritual and moral have been isolated from the intellectual and practical. Education has become erratic, directed by ever-changing trends in education, society, politics, and culture.

It has turned from independent learning to spoon-feeding, from experience-driven to answer-driven, and from thinking to feeling.

Perhaps the South Koreans are on to something. It might not be enough to value education. The Talmud’s secret may be found in its approach to education: it is a pursuit.

The Talmud isn’t simply a compendium of learning; it’s the dramatization of the pursuit of learning through questioning, discussing, challenging, offering opinions, debating, arguing, interpreting, and relating stories, all tempered by respect for minority and majority views alike. Jews approach education like life: pursuing, not acquiescing.

Literature to share David and the Philistine Woman by Paul Boorstin. What happened before David met Goliath on the battlefield? A master storyteller, Boorstin stays true to the biblical text and historical setting while enriching the epic of David’s path from shepherd to giant-slayer with exciting drama, unexpected insights, and vivid characters, including a mysterious but pivotal Philistine woman. A mesmerizing and unforgettable tale.

The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani. Half Hindu and half Muslim, 12-year-old Nisha has her life turned upside down when her family becomes refugees following the 1947 split of India into majority Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India. This heartbreaking yet hopeful tale of their journey and of finding one’s place in the world is powerfully shared through Nisha’s diary letters to the mother she lost as a young girl. Masterful storytelling, compelling characters, and a unique historical setting make this teen selection a worthy adult read as well. Highly recommended.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

My kid’s Jewish summer camp is canceled. Now what?

By Andrea Beck, Kveller My family is in mourning.

We have moved past bickering and we have now retreated to separate rooms. My husband is hiding in the master bedroom, doing his best to stay out of the way. The dog and I are in the guest room, where I’m feeling a sense of panic. What will this summer hold?

Our 12-year-old daughter is in the kitchen. She spent the previous hour crying in her room. The hour before that she spent calling and texting her camp friends — those same friends she’s been looking forward to seeing all year.

The Union of Reform Judaism summer camps announced that they will not have onsite camps this summer. Covid-19 has caused so much loss, and has changed things in so many ways, and perhaps, deep down,

we were expecting this. But after weeks of stay-at-home orders and distance learning, sleepaway camp was our last hope of normal, a bit of childhood utopia in these truly dystopian times.

I understand the gravity and wisdom of this decision. After all, when up to 18 kids and perhaps three counselors are crammed into cabins — with bunk beds lined up like library stacks, to say nothing of communal bathrooms shared by dozens of girls — social distancing is impossible. Risking the health or life of any of these kids, their counselors or the staff is unimaginable.

But for my daughter and her

Helping students process grief Continued from Page 11 sick with Covid-19, and one just died.

The family has no idea how they are going to be able to pay for the funeral, and asked if we could help them defray the costs.

For many of our students, we are the conduit to a network of agencies that can assist them in their time of need.

We are constantly collecting resources and pushing information out to our students.

We directed her to the Hebrew Free Burial Association.

For all of us, “alone” has new meaning now. Imagine how alone you might feel if you were 19 and three of your grandparents died last week.

Our existing training and programs haven’t equipped us to support this need, so we are educating ourselves about how to work with young adults who are bereaved.

Last summer, we enhanced our caring work through inclusivity training. This summer our training will be centered around grief counseling.

So many of our students have suffered loss in the same way at the same time, but they are not the same people. Some will want to mark their losses as a community and mourn together, while others’ needs will be more subtle and individual.

We must be prepared to meet each student where they are by continuing our near-

constant individual student outreach and by deepening our commitment to relationshipcentered events and educational programs.

And we must accomplish this without losing the celebration that is the unique lifecycle moment of college: by providing the space and opportunity (virtual or physical) for our young adults to hang out, share music, play games.

A few weeks ago, I returned to campus; it was desolate.

Empty halls and classrooms, escalators still running but with no people to move. Is this what it will look like next year?

At this point, there is no way to know. What we do know is that whether in-person or virtually, this fall we will welcome thousands of students who are suffering immensely. They will be grieving lost family, lost jobs, and a lost sense of a clear future.

Our first responsibility is to meet them, talk to them, discern their physical and mental health needs and do everything we can to fulfill them. In this moment, that means ramping up grief training for those working with young adults — something that would not have been a top priority in the past but absolutely must be in the future.

Rabbi Jonah Geffen is senior Jewish educator and campus rabbi at Hunter College Hillel.

friends, this loss is profound and hard to comprehend. Summer camp is her home for one precious month each year. It’s where she feels a sense of community, independence, and a level of belonging and acceptance she can’t find at her secular middle school here in the Midwest.

Our daughter waits 11 months each year to go to Goldman Union Camp Institute in suburban Indianapolis, about a two-hour drive from us. The countdown begins the minute we pick her up on the last day of the session, when she greets us tearyeyed and taller.

When we explain to other parents at our daughter’s school that she goes to sleepaway camp for a month, they are dumbfounded as to why we would choose to be away from her. To the mom who invariably says to me in a self-righteous tone, “I love my kids too much to be away from them for a month,” I reply, “I love mine enough to know that this is the best choice I can make for her. I will miss her terribly, but she is happy and growing as a person at camp.” That usually ends with one of us walking away and thinking the other one is a crappy mother.

My other tactic is to explain that summer camp is a Jewish cultural thing. I give them a synopsis of the camp movement, which usually causes their eyes to glaze over. In short, my summary goes like this: The Jewish summer camp movement was first started for

immigrant children who lived in the cities so that they could have a chance to spend time in the country and, as a bonus, become more Americanized. Later camps became a place to instill a-back-to-the land Zionism.

Now they are a place where kids experience a month, living a life with their peers that is inspired by Jewish values, ritual, and rhythms.

This instills pride in Jewish identity and comfort with Jewish ritual. Our rabbi, whom I have known since I was a GUCI camper and he was a counselor — is on staff, too. And since my daughter loves camp, it is a win all around.

So much has changed since we reserved a spot in her cabin and filled out the necessary paperwork last fall.

All the previously held expectations have disappeared.

This summer won’t be punctuated by the anticipation and the packing, the letters sent and received, the photos examined on the camp website for signs of life, or the trips my husband and I take together.

There will be no Shabbat walks, no stories of bonfires, no color war or bunk night.

Instead, we will be at home wondering how much normal we will ever regain. We will spend the summer hoping that next year she’ll be at GUCI. In the meantime, I have offered to create camp memories at home: We can build a bonfire in the backyard, I say, and we’ll tell stories and sing songs. I suggest we cook camp staples, like pizza bagels, Friday night roast chicken and chocolate pie, knowing full well that it can’t taste quite the same as when you are 12, tired, and hungry.

I’ve volunteered my parents to host Camp Nana and Bubbie.

So far, my daughter is unimpressed. But, hey, she’s 12 — maybe that’s a small sign of normalcy, after all.

OBITUARY Cyrile “Cissy” Ellison, age 88 of Kettering, passed away May 8 at Kettering Medical Center. She was preceded in death by her beloved husband of 55 years, Herman “Curly” Ellison; parents, Sidney and Fanny Gressel; sister, Selma Chernikoff and brothers, Yale and Philip Gressel. Mrs. Ellison is survived by her sons and daughters-in-law: Jay and Pam Ellison of Highland Park, Il.; Lee and Susie Ellison of Portland, Ore.; David and Ciema Salem Ellison of Los Gatos, Calif.; Gary and Mary Ellison of San Mateo, Calif.; grandchildren: Sara (Ari) Scharg; Samantha (Matt) Savin; Erin (Matt) Berberich; Emily, Abram and Sydney Ellison; great-grandchildren: Ella, Ethan, Mary, Mollie and William; many other relatives and friends and her beloved dog, Louie. Mrs. Ellison was happiest among family and friends and lived life with joy, love and zest. Known for being the life of any gathering, Mrs. Ellison left a lasting impression wherever she went.

She loved reading, music, art, the theatre, and The Ohio State Buckeyes. Mrs. Ellison retired from administration at Stivers School for the Arts and was a long-time member of Beth Abraham Synagogue and Hadassah. A Celebration of Mrs. Ellison’s life will be announced at a future date.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Beth Abraham Synagogue Ritual Fund in her memory.

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • JUNE 2020

For Both Locations Call 937-275-7434

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DAYTON JEWISH

Join us for an exciting experience this year for our 20th anniversary Jewish Film Festival! We’re going VIRTUAL, you can watch from the comfort of your couch! Check our website for a listing of guest speakers and streamed events, including Zoom interactive discussion sessions!

SNEAK PEEK! FIDDLER: MIRACLE OF MIRACLES Available online June 4 - 8 The origin story behind one of Broadway’s most beloved musicals, Fiddler on The Roof, and its creative roots in early 1960s New York, when “tradition” was on the wane as gender roles, sexuality, race relations and religion were evolving.

Tuesday, June 2 @ 7PM Join us for Fiddler on the Zoom with Cantor Jenna Greenberg for a virtual adventure down Broadway, with a Jewish twist! As we continue our social distancing, feel free to play the Pajama Game, as we Brigazoom through some of the great musical theater hits. Anyone Can Whistle or sing along.

OPENING NIGHT Tuesday, June 9 – Heading Home: A Tale of Team Israel 9PM @ The Dixie Twin Drive-In (6201 N Dixie Dr, Dayton, OH 45414) June 10 @ 7PM Zoom discussion with Marc Katz

Friday, June 19 through Monday, June 22 – Prosecuting Evil (Available Online) June 22 @ 7PM Zoom discussion with Marcy L. Paul, PhD Tuesday, June 23 through Wednesday, June 24 – Tel Aviv on Fire (Available Online) June 24 @ 7PM Zoom discussion with Marcy L. Paul, PhD

Friday, June 12 through Monday, June 15 – The Keeper Available Online

Friday, June 26 through Monday, June 29 – Those Who Remained (Available Online)

Tuesday, June 16 through Wednesday, June 17 – Crescendo (Available Online) June 17 @ 7PM Zoom discussion with Dr. Sam Dorf

June 29 @ NOON Zoom discussion with film director Barnabas Toth

Tuesday, June 30 through Thursday, July 2 – Love in Suspenders (Available Online)

NOT SURE HOW TO CONNECT TO YOUR TV?*

NOT SURE HOW TO WATCH? • Computer or Laptop/iPad • TV

* For more specific instruction, visit our website jewishdayton.org

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Connect to your TV with an HDMI cable Connect with your BlueTooth Connect with a VGA cable Use a game console or Internet TV box

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