The Dayton Jewish Observer, September 2020

Why Moss I came out to Grace my family High Holy David designs Afterduring Mealsthe in comic bookDays form p.p.24 22

THE DAYTON Published by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton

September 2020 Elul 5780/Tishri 5781 Vol. 25, No. 1

OBSERVER

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

A historic treaty

To a sweet & healthy

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New Year

JNS.org

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Federation’s new president

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By Marshall Weiss The Observer Dr. Heath Gilbert says his involvement in Dayton’s Jewish community comes from his genes.

“I was a little guy running around the old JCC in Trotwood,” says the secondgeneration optometrist, who was installed as president of the Jewish Federation during its virtual annual meeting, Aug. 13.

For as long as he can remember, his parents, Shirlee and Dr. Ron Gilbert, have been leaders in Jewish Dayton. Ron chaired the Jewish Community Relations Council and Shirlee was president of Temple Israel, chair of the JCC, and president of Hillel Academy’s PTO. They never missed making calls on Tzedakah Sundays, let alone any Federation-related event.

“As a teenager, we had BBYO and our own Tzedakah Sunday that we organized,” Heath recalls. “We made phone calls to other teenagers to make their pledges to the Federation’s annual campaign.”

Across three generations — Heath and his wife, Rachel, their four children, and Heath’s parents — the Gilberts have been involved with every department, program, and service of the Federation and its agencies, whether as layleaders or as customers.

Heath and Rachel even met through the Federation.

“We met in the hallways,” Heath says. “She was in another meeting and kind of looked, ‘Who’s that guy? There’s no ring on his finger.’ At that point, we were in that young, singles kind of thing that was going on. Rachel Firkins was working here at the time and Marc Jacob was here with the JCC. Behind the scenes they were trying to do a little matchmaking. They got us on a committee together.

And so here we are, four kids

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and 14 years later.”

In recent years, Heath has co-chaired the JCC’s annual Las Vegas Night fundraiser, has served as chair of the JCC board, and as an officer on the Federation board. He’s also past president of the Ohio Optometric Association and continues to serve on its board and several committees.

He and Ron were the first father and son in Ohio to serve as presidents of the association.

Heath says one of his highest priorities as Federation president is to encourage more collaboration among Jewish organizations across the Miami Valley.

“We are primary members of Temple Beth Or, we are secondary members of Temple Israel, we do things at Chabad and we go to Camp Gan Izzy, we go to the JCC camp, we’re friends with (Beth Abraham Synagogue’s) Rabbi Josh Ginsberg and Cantor Jenna Greenberg and their kids and have play dates, and when they have programs we like, we’ll go there,” Heath says.

“We’re friends with Jews across the community. Our community is so small. But there aren’t that many people who cross over. Some people are involved with the Federation and others are happy in their own

congregations, that’s where they feel fulfilled. But I hope to help bring our community organizations and the Federation together for more partnerships.”

He says that Hillel Academy Jewish day school — now on an enrollment upswing — is a treasure, with great potential to encourage more Jews to live here.

“I never realized until my kids started going there how Hillel helps with recruitment of Jewish families when they consider moving to the Dayton area,” he says. “Part of Jewish Dayton Dreams Big (Federation’s visioning project) is to recruit young Jewish families to come here to live and to work.

For a small Jewish community, we really do a lot. If you move to Dayton, if you’re new and you’re a Jew and want to be involved, you could be on every committee here and make an impact.

“It’s all about getting people to come to Dayton and stay in Dayton. Among the universities, hospital networks, and the base, we have attractive opportunities here.”

Heath says he loves “feeling the warmth” of his family’s involvement in so many aspects of Jewish life in Dayton.

“We live what we preach, basically.”

IN THIS ISSUE Fa m i l y E d u c a t i o n . . . . . . . 3 1 O b i t u a r i e s . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5 M r. M a ze l . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1 O p i n i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 6 N o s h e r. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 R e l i g i o n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

BreakTheFast_TDJO_10-19_Press_FINAL.pdf

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DAYTON

Plans as they stand, for now Organizations prep to safely, meaningfully navigate a busy fall amid the continuing pandemic.

All scenarios listed for schools and worship services here were up-to-date as of press time.

For the latest information, check with these organizations via their websites, Facebook pages or by contacting them directly.

By Marshall Weiss The Observer In any year, Jewish activities Hillel Academy hit overdrive the closer Septem- of Greater Dayton ber gets, with school openings, daytonhillel.org Dayton’s Jewish day school High Holy Days services, and opened Aug. 19 with the flurry of programits largest enrollming that comes with ment since it moved it. to Oakwood in 2010.

But with Covid-19 According to Hillel’s still a threat, local head of curriculum Jewish organizations and instruction, Kathy have reformulated Mecoli, 40 students their plans as best are enrolled this year they can to maximize from kindergarten safety and present through grade six in meaningful engagefour multi-age classment, knowing all can Rabbi Karen Bodney-Halasz rooms. Last year’s change by the day. enrollment was 34 students.

Temple Israel’s senior rabbi, Mecoli said a few of the Karen Bodney-Halasz, expressed a common wish among students are beginning the year with online instruction. local Jewish clergy. Of her con“Our Covid in-person plan gregation, she told The Observer has been reviewed she hopes area

by Montgomery Jews understand County Public the “high level of Health Departcare we have put ment and aligns into making these with ODH and services prayerful, guidance from timely, familiar, Public Health,” she and filled with added. kavod (respectful Most students honor).” are beginning the school year “This is not the High Holidays any of us would ever have with full days, five days a week.

“All will wear masks, have imagined or asked for,” she daily temperature checks, and noted, but added that “God and Torah are not bound by the maintain distance,” she said.

“Children will spend the day as walls of our synagogue.”

‘God and Torah are not bound by the walls of our synagogue.’

Bark Mitzvah Boy Forgive us, pardon us, and grant us atonement.

BMB

c O Menachem

a group, not intersecting with other classrooms. Of course, we continue to monitor both research findings and the infection rate.”

About Hillel’s increase in numbers this year, Mecoli said the school “had very positive responses from parents about our opening of school plan which they have shared with friends.

We have gained a few families who visited Hillel and liked what they saw as they were exploring an in-school option.”

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jewishdayton.org/program/ preschool JCC Director Jane Hochstein said its preschool program, based in Centerville, is maintaining the low ratios and state safety protocols it has had in place since it reopened in June.

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Are you reading this? So is the entire Jewish community.

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Beth Abraham Synagogue

590 Isaac Prugh Way 937.298.0594 694 Isaac Prugh Way 937.297.4300

bethabrahamdayton.org Dayton’s Conservative congregation, located in Oakwood, will conduct High Holy Days services remotely via livestreaming from the synagogue. Beth Abraham plans to allow individual congregants and families to sign up for times to come to the sanctuary between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and offer personal prayers before the Torah ark.

The synagogue will also distribute Machzors (High Holy Days prayer books) to members’ homes.

“We believe that our ability Continued on next page

From the editor’s desk Each year, when I set our High Holy Days greetings page, I notice patterns.

Sometimes, a family that submitted a greeting the year before will select the exact same wording from our list Marshall of several choices. Sometimes, it’s the Weiss same greeting for years. Does this speak to the wishes for the new year they see as most precious? And some years, a majority of those who send in greetings will somehow pick the very same greeting as each other. Do our greatest wishes for ourselves and others change based on the goingson of the world around us? This year brings a pattern too: most greetings wish for a healthy new year. This goes beyond the individual health concerns people have for themselves or loved ones as crises surge in our own lives. No one knows how long until the current pandemic will abate. But when it does, it will be hard to take for granted the best life brings our way. Wishing you all a sweet, safe, happy, and very healthy New Year.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

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HIGH HOLY DAYS All of us at the Lincoln Park Communities wish you well as you reflect on the passing year while celebrating hope for the future.

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DAYTON

Plans as they stand Continued from previous page to adapt to adverse circumstances, while holding on to what is most important, accounts for our enduring vitality as a people,” Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg and Beth Abraham President Mike Freed wrote in a message to members.

A minyan — a quorum of 10 Jewish adults — will be present in Beth Abraham’s building during the services, the minimum number of people required to present a Jewish public prayer service. Beth Abraham’s religious school will begin its sessions online.

Beth Jacob Congregation

bethjacobcong.org The Traditional synagogue, located in Harrison Township, plans to offer its full schedule of High Holy Days services in person, with socialdistancing guidelines in place.

Chabad of Greater Dayton

chabaddayton.com For High Holy Days services during the day, Chabad, located in Oakwood, will offer worshippers two options: socially-distanced services inside the building, and a shorter learner’s service outside, socially-distanced under a tent. Plans for evening services will depend on how many attend, and their preferences.

Temple Beth Or templebethor.com

Based in Washington Township, the Reform temple will offer virtual and parking-lot worship for all of its Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Its religious school also begins the year virtually.

Temple Israel tidayton.org

The Reform congregation located across the Great Miami River from downtown will offer virtual High Holy Days services and will begin its religious school virtually.

In advance of the High Holy Days, Temple Israel will also present its Rosh Hashanah DriveThru Experience, Thursday, Sept. 17 from 4 to 7 p.m. and Friday, Sept. 18 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

In a socially-distanced setting, participants can hear the blowing of the shofar, greet clergy, drop off items for the temple’s Yom Kippur Food Drive, perform Tashlich, receive goody bags for children, and pick up preordered Rosh Hashanah dinners from Bernstein’s Fine Catering and round challahs from Evan’s Bakery.

Temple Anshe Emeth ansheemeth.org

Shana Tova

Piqua’s Reform congregation, Temple Anshe Emeth, will present all of its services via Zoom, with outdoor services in a large park shelter in Piqua (masks required) on the first day of Rosh Hashanah and the day of Yom Kippur. The outdoor services are weather-dependent.

Temple Beth Sholom

templebethsholom.net

Middletown’s Reform temple will go virtual for the High Holy Days, and services have been condensed. “The rabbi, cantorial soloist, accompanist, and a tech guy will be the only individuals in the building,” Temple Beth Sholom’s Rabbi Haviva Horvitz told The Observer.

THE DAYTON

OBSERVER daytonjewishobserver.org Editor and Publisher Marshall Weiss MWeiss@jfgd.net 937-610-1555 Contributors Rabbi Leibel Agar, Scott Halasz, Candace R. Kwiatek Advertising Sales Executive Patty Caruso, plhc69@gmail.com Proofreader Rachel Haug Gilbert Billing Sheila Myers, SMyers@jfgd.net 937-610-1555 Observer Advisor Martin Gottlieb Published by the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton Heath Gilbert President Bruce Feldman Immediate Past Pres.

Mary Rita Weissman Pres. Elect/VP, Personnel/Foundation Chair Beverly Louis Secretary Neil Friedman Treasurer Dan Sweeny VP, Resource Development Cathy Gardner CEO The Dayton Jewish Observer, Vol. 25, No. 1. 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.

Goals • To encourage affiliation, involvement and communication.

• To provide announcements, news, opinions and analysis of local, national and international activities and issues affecting Jews and the Jewish community.

• To build community across institutional, organizational and denominational lines.

• To advance causes important to the strength of our Jewish community including support of Federation agencies, its annual campaign, synagogue affiliation, Jewish education and participation in Jewish and general community affairs.

• To provide an historic record of Dayton Jewish life.

The Dayton Jewish Observer

Yellow Springs Havurah

daytonhillel.org • 937.277.8966 dkmecoli@daytonhillel.org PAGE 4

len2654@gmail.com Len Kramer, who facilitates this Jewish prayer fellowship, said the group is still formulating its plans.

Please recycle this newspaper.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

DAYTON Hadassah culinary art therapy demo The Dayton Chapter of Hadassah will present the virtual program Every Bite Counts! featuring Julie Ohana, who will discuss using food in therapy, and healthy foods to boost the immune system, via Zoom at 2 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 13.

Ohana describes her cooking sessions as “Culinary Art Therapy,” using cooking as the means to communication and expression.

“Many of us have a difficult time opening up to strangers or even our closest family members or Julie Ohana colleagues,” she explains at her website, culinaryarttherapy.com. “When a person has the ability to relax and engage in something creative, fun, and inspiring, they have the ability to feel freer, more vulnerable, honest, and ready to connect.”

She’s been featured in The Washington Post and Psychology Today, and on CNBC and CNN Health.

Ohana received her master of social work degree from Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work in New York in 2004.

She lives in West Bloomfield, Mich. with her husband and their two children.

A Q&A will follow Ohana’s cooking demonstration. To register for this free event, email Julie Bloom at buckeyejlb@aol. com.

Virtual community Selichot service Clergy from area synagogues and temples and the Dayton Jewish Chorale will present a virtual community Selichot service at 8:45 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12. The chorale comprises singers from local Jewish congregations.

Selichot are penitential prayers offered prior to the High Holy Days. To register for the virtual program, go to Jewishdayton.org.

We Wish The Dayton Jewish Community A Very Happy New Year.

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

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‘So many hearts are overwhelmed with sorrow’ The Spanish flu of 1918-19 became one more palpable cause of worry and grief piled on top of the Great War. signed to duty at Pittsfield, Mass. by the government.

By Marshall Weiss, The Observer When Osness returned to Dayton three weeks later, Although The Dayton Daily News reported Oct. 5, 1918 that Dayton Health Commissioner Dr. A.O. Peters Dayton Jewish Life reported, “The time spent there in his effort to get the influenza epidemic under control has thought there was undue alarm about the Spanish proven quite fruitful.” influenza outbreak that had hit about 20 people locally, by Oct. 8, Dayton had 168 Comforting the boys reported cases. quarantined in the camps The same day, the Ohio Department of The spread of the Spanish flu pandemic Health laid out closure recommendations, in America was connected to the moveand Peters closed schools, houses of worment of soldiers across America and ship, and theaters. The next day, he closed Europe after the United States entered the saloons, soda fountains, and pool rooms.

Great War in 1917.

According to the University of Michigan Members of Dayton’s chapter of the Influenza Encyclopedia, Peters thought the Jewish Welfare Board — established here crest of the epidemic had passed, “that Dayin July 1918 to provide support for Jewish ton’s death rate slowly would return to norand non-Jewish soldiers stationed locally mal in the coming weeks.” As a precaution, — did their part to help soldiers confined though, he would keep closures in place for to their quarters under quarantine. another week to 10 days. But as adult cases “During the time that the Spanish infludecreased, children’s cases increased.

Dayton’s Dr. Abraham M. enza epidemic was at its height at the WilWhat we know about how the Jewish Osness helped fight the bur Wright and McCook Fields, the local community was affected by the pandemic pandemic in Boston branch of the Jewish Welfare Board did all here in 1918-19 comes to us mainly from the pages of The Dayton Jewish Life. Billed as “The First and in its power to aid in the fight against the epidemic and Only Jewish Paper in Dayton,” its editor and publisher to save the lives of the boys there,” Dayton Jewish Life reported Nov. 1, 1918. “Large quantities of ice cream, was Andrew Roth. The newspaper’s run was brief: crates of oranges and lemons were sent to the field.” from the end of 1917 to the end of 1918.

The paper also reported in that issue that two of the Roth may have started The Dayton Jewish Life to fatalities at Wright and McCook Fields were Jewish. leverage news stories coming out of the new Jewish “It is with grief and regrets to all and especially to Correspondence Bureau, which was reporting on conthose who knew them, that Benjamin Goldstein and ditions facing Jews in war-torn Europe. Its editor was Ray Goldstein, both of New York and not related, Jacob Landau, a 25-year-old journalist in The Hague.

The Jewish Correspondence Bureau was soon renamed passed into the great beyond.”

Dayton Jewish Life added that Benjamin Goldstein’s Jewish Telegraphic Agency. struggle was “hard but brief,” and Ray Goldstein The Dayton Jewish Life covered local news of the “fought a hard but losing battle for almost a week,” Spanish flu in an understated way: not with headline and that “his fight attracted the attention of the attenstories on the front page but in society items, news dants and his comrades, for no other fought so hard briefs, event listings, and a few unsigned editorials. and lost.”

The first Spanish flu item in The Dayton Jewish Life The Oct. 12, 1918 Dayton Daily News reported that appeared in its Oct. 11, 1918 issue: “Dr. A.M. Osness, Ray Goldstein’s father was at his side for 24 hours with offices in the U.B. Building, has been called East before he died. to help combat the Spanish influenza epidemic, which A Jewish soldier buried in Dayton who was likely a seems to have the hardest hold on Boston. On Thursday evening, Dr. Osness left for Boston to be gone until casualty of the Spanish flu was Army Private Ervin M. Welt. Born in Cromwell, Ind., Welt was a jeweler from the spread of the Spanish influenza is under control.”

Schenectady, N.Y. He was the husband of 23-year-old Born in Berdichen, Russia in 1864, Abraham M. OsLeah Jo Moskowitz, daughter of Dayton’s ness arrived in America in 1882 Sallie and Jacob Moskowitz. Leah’s father and settled in Dayton to learn the had made his wealth establishing Hungarcigar making trade, according to ian labor colonies in Dayton for Malleable Centennial Portrait and Biographical Iron Works and Barney and Smith Car Record of The City of Dayton and of Works.

Montgomery County, Ohio edited The Dayton Daily News reported in its Jan.

by Frank Conover and published 16, 1918 society column that Leah and Ervin in 1897. had married the night before in the MosOsness attended high school kowitz family home on Lexington Avenue. and a commercial college here.

“The bride’s gown was of silver cloth He received his medical degree in with draperies of silk tulle,” the Daily News 1894 from the College of Physinoted. “It was made short and the tulle veil cians and Surgeons in Chicago and fell just to the hem. The bodice was of pearl returned to Dayton to open his passementerie, and she carried Ascension practice. His wife, Anna K. Osness, lilies. Her costume was suited to her bruwould found Dayton’s chapter of nette beauty and she looked very sweet and Hadassah in 1925. girlish as she took her place to plight her The Dayton Daily News reported vows.”

Osness had volunteered as a Ervin enlisted in the army July 24, 1918. consulting physician and was as- Dayton Daily News, Oct. 12, 1918

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Happy New Year PAGE 6

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

DAYTON Marshall Weiss

against public gatherings on Nov. 2, 1918, though Spiritual reflections on the schools were still kept closed because of the higher pandemic and the war rate of flu among children. Youths under 16 were The Oct. 25, 1918 Dayton Jewish Life included two also prohibited from worship services, theatres, and unsigned editorials with themes of life and death, libraries. well past the High Holy Days, which had fallen in the Leaders of Dayton’s Talmud Torah, the Hebrew middle of September, before the epidemic hit Dayton. school of Beth Abraham and Beth Jacob synagogues, “In order to compensate for the discontinuance of lamented in the Nov. 1 Dayton Jewish Life that though public worship, in a number of communities, leaders its roster of students had doubled from the previous of respective houses of worship issued a call that the year, and Talmud Torah Superintendent S.B. Maximon members of their congregations should hold a home had brought an additional Hebrew teacher — Deboservice at the hour when the public services are usurah L. Abramson — from New York to Dayton, “the ally conducted...We wonder to what extent this old new term’s work, already in full swing, has been and beautiful custom of Israel was carried out. We interrupted by the quarantine.” wonder whether those of our people who have practiPeters ultimately opened the schools, only to close cally banished religion from their home, grasped the grade schools again, beginning Dec. 10, 1918 until the opportunity offered at this time, to make their homes new year because 20 percent of public school students sanctuaries unto God. We wonder whether this terrible scourge will cause them to see the need of giving JudaThe grave of Army Pvt. Ervin M. Welt at Riverview Cemetery, and 10 percent of parochial school students were absent; approximately five percent of students had the ism the chief place in their lives, in this time of storm decorated with a flag placed by Jewish War Veterans Post 587. Welt died Oct. 8, 1918 of pneumonia at Camp Sherman, flu and parents were afraid to send their children. and stress, of sickness and perchance death.” near Chillicothe, likely a complication of the Spanish flu.

The worst of the epidemic — according to Peters The second unsigned editorial told readers “It is and Dayton Director of Public Welfare Dr. Frank D. not how long we live, but how we live that counts...

He died of pneumonia — often a complication of the Garland in their 1919 report — hit the city between in these times, when so many hearts are overwhelmed Spanish flu — Oct. 8, 1918 at Camp Sherman, near October and December 1918, when 657 residents of with sorrow because of the loss of our dear ones, let Chillicothe. The 26-year-old private was buried at Dayton died from influenza or influenza-related pneu- them ponder deeply over the words of the prophet and Temple Israel’s Riverview Cemetery next to Sallie and monia. Forty-four more people died here in January they will find in them the thought that is healing and Jacob’s infant son, Joseph, who died in 1900.

1919. strengthening. The grief that looks down into the grave On Ervin’s gravestone is the Hebrew word mizpah, Even so, with the ban on public gatherings lifted, will then look up unto the heavens.” literally, watchtower. In Judaism, Dayton’s B’nai B’rith lodge was able to announce in According to the CDC, by the time the Spanish flu DDN mizpah signifies the emotional bond the Nov. 15 Dayton Jewish Life that its annual dance, had abated, it killed 50 million worldwide, with about between people who are separated. a Chanukah ball which had been scheduled for Nov. 675,000 deaths occurring in the United States.

About 17 years later, Leah, then 26, was a “sure thing.”

The Spanish flu had become one more cause of living in New York, married actor The Young Men’s De Hirsch Club, a Zionist orga- worry and grief piled on top of the Great War. Harry C. Bannister, the ex-husband nization, reported it held a meeting Nov. 10, its first B’nai Yeshurun’s Rabbi David Lefkowitz, who also of stage and screen star Ann Hardsince the epidemic closing orders. chaired Dayton’s Red Cross chapter, had put the Great ing.

“Many letters from De Hirshites who are in the War front and center in his Jewish New Year message According to the National Park service were read. This is a real treat to the members in the Sept. 7 Dayton Jewish Life, in those few weeks Service, approximately 5,686 cases of and at each meeting the recipient of letters brings before the Spanish flu’s arrival here: influenza were documented among them, and the entire attendance enjoy the contents “In all my 18 years of ministration in this commuCamp Sherman soldiers in 1918. Of which is always a message of good cheer.” nity, none has been as difficult, as full of work as this those, 1,777 of them died. NPS notes Temple Israel, then known as B’nai Yeshurun, an- last year...never was the community more severely that “43,000 U.S. soldiers, around half nounced that with the closing ban lifted, its children tried than during this selfsame period. And I have not of those who died in Europe during Leah Welt, the widow would begin attending classes again the following forgotten the flood, when I say this, with all its lurid of Ervin M. Welt the war, were killed by the influenza Sunday, and that “due to the closing order the plans horror and heavy losses. For month after month in virus and not by a mortal enemy in combat.” for a Chanukah entertainKnopf the last year, our fine young men have been called Another Jewish casualty with Dayton connections ment must be changed. As from their homes and loved ones, mothers with was Capt. Arthur Pereles, 30, who died at his home in yet nothing definite has palpitating hearts bade tearful farewells, and fathers, Montclair, N.J., Oct. 8, 1918. Born and raised in Dayton, been decided upon but the dry-eyed yet heartstricken, sent their sons to their he was the son of Marguerite and Morris Pereles, who children may expect a treat country’s service. owned the London Hat House. Arthur had done well as usual.”

“The entire community heart was constantly palpiin the importing business. He enlisted in the army after Yiddish theatre star Sara tating and fearing and yearning...Along with the rest the war broke out and became ill with the flu on Sept.

Adler performed in the of the citizens of Dayton, our Jewish people stood 30, 1918. Arthur was buried in Montclair, leaving his play Mothers of the World in the test of patriotism. They gave without stint. They wife and two children.

Dayton, Nov. 7 and “won gave their sons. At the present time, 88 Jewish men her audience so completeof Dayton are in the service, many of them enlisted. ly,” she presented two more Jewish Life society pages & news items Forty-one of these are overseas, some in England, Since it began publishing, Dayton Jewish Life included plays here over the next few Yiddish theatre star Sara Adler but most of them in France. Thirty-eight of the 88 are days: Without A Home, Nov. performed in Dayton after the from Congregation B’nai Yeshurun and the others announcements on its society page of who was ill and 11 and Broken Hearts, Nov. public gathering ban was lifted from Congregation House of Abraham and from who was recovering from illnesses, though it rarely 17. With the armistice in mentioned what those illnesses were. But with the Congregation House of Jacob. More men are being place Nov. 11, several playgoers missed Without A Home called every few weeks and before October we shall spread of the Spanish flu in Ohio in autumn 1918, a smattering of announcements began listing the Spanish to participate in Dayton’s peace celebration. have over 100 Jewish men from Dayton in the service.”

“Many people are prone to believe that the Madam flu and pneumonia as causes.

In the end, Ervin M. Welt and Arthur Pereles are Adler in their midst is not the real artist, feeling that The Nov. 1, 1918 Dayton Jewish Life, for example, the only known soldiers connected to Dayton’s Jewish announced that “Corporal Harry Feinberg stationed at Dayton’s Jewish community is not large enough to community to die as part of the Great War. There are Ohio State University is recovering from a severe attack warrant her coming here,” Dayton Jewish Life reported.

189 known World War I casualties from Dayton, 85 of “However the Madam wishes to give the Dayton of influenza and pneumonia.” which died from disease, mostly the Spanish flu. people a treat, realizing that such events as Jewish The same issue listed Herbert D. White, manager We don’t yet know how many of Dayton’s Jewish plays are rare delights here and for that reason she of Dayton Jewish Life, “confined to his home on Lawn civilians died as a result of the Spanish flu in 1918-19. has allowed herself to be urged into coming back for a Street, suffering from a slight attack of the Spanish At the present time, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, second and even third time.” influenza.” The Dec. 6, 1918 issue informed readers Public Health — Dayton and Montgomery County’s The Dayton Zionist District held a meeting at the that “The many friends of Mrs. Lester Kusworm will be Department of Vital Statistics is closed to the public for Wayne Avenue Market Hall Nov. 24 with 350 people in in-person research. grieved to learn that she is suffering from the popular attendance to celebrate the American and Allied victory malady, la grippe.” La Grippe was another term used Based on the total known deaths in Dayton’s Jewand the one-year anniversary of the Balfour Declarato describe the Spanish flu. ish community during that time frame, the number is In consultation with the Ohio Department of Health, tion, which declared Great Britain’s support for a Jewlikely fewer than 10. We’ll let you know what we find ish homeland in Palestine.

Dayton Health Commissioner Peters lifted restrictions when we obtain their death certificates.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

PAGE 7

THE REGION

Montgomery County Commissioner

Judy Dodge

Submitted

Chabad at Miami U. readies to open new home

Wishes the community a Happy New Year!

Paid for by the Committee to ReElect Dodge for Commissioner, Cathy Startzman, Treasurer, 998 Marycrest Lane, Dayton, OH 45429

Celebrate the Warmth of Traditional Judaism at Beth Jacob Synagogue for the High Holidays.

The rendering of the new Chabad at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio models on a small scale the architecture of Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn

By Tim Carlin Cleveland Jewish News Chabad at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio will move to a new, bigger space this fall. It’s renovating a former fraternity

house near the campus which it hopes will be ready by the High Holy Days.

The new space will include a library, kosher kitchen, shul, student lounge, and multipur-

High Holiday Services 2020/5781

Rabbi Leibel Agar

Rabbi Leibel Agar and Cantor Rami Isser will be leading us in prayers for the High Holidays.

Beth Jacob Congregation invites and encourages the community to join us for Inspirational High Holiday Traditional services.

Saturday, September 12

Selichot

Havdalah Service: 8:45 PM Selichot Service: 9 PM Friday, September 18

First Night Rosh Hashanah Minchah: 7:05 PM Candle Lighting: 7:22 PM Ma’ariv: 7:25 PM Saturday, September 19

Rosh Hashanah I

Morning Service: 8:30 AM Torah Service: 10:15 AM Rabbi’s Shiur: 6:30 PM Minchah: 7:30 PM Candle Lighting: 8:18 PM Ma’ariv: 8:20 PM Sunday, September 20

Rosh Hashanah II

Morning Service: 8:30 AM Torah Service: 10:15 AM Shofar: 11:30 AM Rabbi’s Shiur: 6:45 PM Tashlich/Minchah: 7:30 PM Ma’ariv/Havdalah: 8:15 PM

IN THE NEW YEAR Dinsmore attorneys are proud to serve Dayton’s Cantor Rami Isser

Saturday, September 26

Shabbat Shuvah

Morning Services: 9:30 AM Rabbi’s Shiur: 6:45 PM Mincha: 7:45 PM Ma’ariv: 8:05 PM followed

by Havdalah Sunday, September 27

Erev Yom Kippur—Kol Nidrei Mincha: 6:40 PM Candle Lighting/Fast Begins: 7:07 PM Kol Nidrei: 7:10 PM Monday, September 28

Yom Kippur

Morning Service: 9 AM Torah Service: 10:45 AM Yizkor: 12:15 PM Break: 3:15 PM Minchah: 5:15 PM Neilah: 6:40 PM Shofar: 8 PM Ma’ariv/Havdalah: 8:03 PM Please note: due to Covid-19, this schedule is subject to change.

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PAGE 8

legal needs and we support the vision of a prosperous and vibrant community in every season.

pose space.

“In short, Chabad took over a 6,000-square-foot fraternity home,” Chabad at Miami’s Rabbi Yossi Greenberg said. “And it’s being literally gutted, A to Z, everything will be nice, fresh and welcoming and beautiful to accommodate students and the activities for them here at Miami.”

The new Chabad house’s large yard will accommodate socially-distanced events this fall and throughout the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Chabad’s move comes because of an increase in membership over its first seven years at the university.

“An amazing problem — running out of space — has become a reality,” Greenberg said.

“Because of tremendous growth, our rental space was bursting at the seams.”

He added that he and his wife started Chabad at Miami out of their living room and dining room with a handful of students.

“And at this point during the holidays, we’re able to have over 100 people come through the door,” Greenberg said.

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HAPPY NEW YEAR! ADL’s Ohio Legal Assistance Project aims to ‘provide some form of justice’ FROM to victims of hate crimes sarily because you can never incredibly useful,” Pasch said.

By Bob Jacob undue the hate crime that Swatting is reporting a false Cleveland Jewish News occurred. But a civil remedy emergency at the home of a Victims of antisemitic or extremist hate or harassment in victim to prompt a law enforce- has the ability to provide some Ohio now have another avenue ment response, usually a SWAT form of justice, and maybe at times, some form of deterrent. for recourse, thanks to the Anti- team, to the residence.

Many civil cases are not settled Criminal courts are imDefamation League’s regional at trial, but they’re settled outportant, he said, though civil office in Cleveland. side of a courtroom. And when The launch of the Ohio Legal courts not only provide for you have that ability, it also almonetary settlement, but help Assistance Project allows viclows for things like mandatory in other ways. tims to use attorneys on a pro education and community ser“If there’s a specific target bono basis to seek civil litigavice, and all of those things that of a vandalism or tion. can be worked into any type of a specific target of “We view it as our settlement agreement. There’s a physical assault, job to ensure that the monetary part of settling that police report hate and bias does agreements, but there’s also the generates a criminot go unchecked,” non-monetary that could come nal investigation James Pasch, regional into play.” and then hopefully director of ADL said.

Victims can include indiin many cases, a His office services viduals, family members, criminal indictall of Ohio, West Virment and a criminal businesses or organizations that ginia, Kentucky, and have experienced harm. conviction, but western PennsylvaADL’s Ohio Legal Assistance victims of those nia. “Victims have Project will operate out of crimes also have a the ability to make themselves whole af- ADL Regional Director right to bring a civil ADL’s Cleveland office.

Cases the ADL may take remedy,” Pasch ter their experiences James Pasch said. “Victims often on are antisemitic vandalism, either on or offline, don’t bring civil cases either be- extremist-motivated violence, and they should have the right severe and pervasive harasscause they are unaware of their to pursue civil remedies. ment or stalking on or offline, ability to do so, or they’re not “On top of that, it’s also swatting, civil rights violations, crucial to send a message to the inclined to have to first go out and hire an attorney, so the idea defamation, and/or privacy perpetrators of the hate crimes violations. that their actions will not be tol- we are providing an opportu“Extremists are also taknity for them to pursue their erated and that the full extent ing advantage of Covid-19 to claims by matching them with of the law will be used.” spread their hateful ideologies an attorney on a pro bono basis The project was launched here in Ohio,” Pasch said. is significant. It’s at no cost to July 27 and was created Ohio residents interested the individual. through a collaboration bein learning more about the “Civil remedies have the tween the Cleveland and ADL program can visit cleveland. ability to try — you can never national offices. adl.org.

“When it comes to potential- make a victim whole necesly expanding out, our hope is to provide support to victims of hate crimes of extremism across the nation,” Pasch said. “We’re starting here in Ohio and we will see how things go. This is a first-of-its-kind ADL pilot, right here in Ohio.”

Pasch said Ohio was chosen because of a more than 150 percent rise in antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism, and harassment across the state; 53 percent of American adults now report experiencing some form of online harassment.

“There just comes a time when it’s incumbent upon all of us to take a step back and say, ‘What else can we do to help the victims of antisemitic acts, extremist attacks such as swatting and vandalism, and victims of assault for who they are?’ This is a tool that can be Paid for by: Committee to Re-elect Debbie Lieberman, Marty Moore, Treasurer, 3630 Berrywood Drive, Dayton, OH 45424

Montgomery County Commissioner Debbie Lieberman

Wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

May this year bring you and your family good health, happiness, prosperity, and peace.

PAID FOR BY FRIENDS OF RUSS JOSEPH, MATTHEW COX, TREASURER.

L’Shana Tova.

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Call for information 937-898-2761.

Order by September 14, 2020.

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Happy New Year from

Montgomery County Commissioner

Carolyn Rice

THE WORLD

Knesset member’s speech has Israelis fired up about political moderation

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By Marcy Oster, JTA An Israeli political tradition is the “maiden speech,” the first time a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, addresses her fellow lawmakers.

The maiden speech is usually treated as a sort of acceptance speech, where lawmakers talk about what brought them to the Knesset and thank their families and mentors. So when Tehila Friedman turned the tradition on its head Aug. 11, delivering what she said “might very well also be my closing speech,” Israelis sat up and listened.

Friedman, a small, soft-spoken woman who had not garnered much attention since entering the Knesset this summer as part of the Blue and White coalition, delivered a fiery call for “a principled center” at a time when Israel is riven by political polarization.

A Hebrew version of the speech has been viewed more than 1.5 million times, and a version with English subtitles is now also circulating widely.

Without mentioning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or any other contemporary politician Continued on Page 34

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Museum Open—Extended Through Sept. 13 THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

Wishing You a Sparkling New Year.

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Beth Abraham, Dayton’s only Conservative synagogue, is enthusiastically egalitarian and is affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

For a complete schedule of our programs, go to bethabrahamdayton.org.

THE WORLD

5 winners & 4 losers from the historic treaty between Israel & the UAE Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Home for the High Holidays.

President Trump announces the Israel-UAE agreement with (L to R) senior adviser Jared Kushner, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien, Aug. 13

Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg

Cantor Andrea Raizen

We wish everyone Shanah Tovah.

Here’s our virtual service schedule.

Community Selichot Service Sat., Sept. 12 at 8:45 p.m. virtual

Erev Rosh Hashanah

Fri., Sept. 18 at 6 p.m. on Zoom A time to wish one another Shanah Tovah.

First & Second Days Rosh Hashanah Sat., Sept. 19 & Sun., Sept. 20: 9:30 a.m. - noon via Livestream

Kol Nidrei, Erev Yom Kippur

Sun., Sept. 27 at 6:45 p.m. via Livestream

Yom Kippur

Mon., Sept. 28: 9:30 a.m. via Livestream Yizkor, Afternoon & Neilah services at 5:30 p.m.

For links to each service, please visit bethabrahamdayton.org or our Facebook page.

305 Sugar Camp Circle Dayton, Ohio 45409 www.bethabrahamdayton.org 937•293•9520 PAGE 12

By Ben Sales, JTA The treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is a big deal.

The agreement, announced Aug. 13 in a joint statement from the White House and called the Abraham Accord, means that Israel will now have diplomatic and economic relations with a country that had not recognized it.

In return for recognition and relations, Israel has pledged to suspend its ambitions to annex parts of the West Bank.

The UAE is a Muslim kingdom in the Persian Gulf made up of seven smaller entities, called emirates, with huge oil and natural gas reserves.

Its metropolis, Dubai, is a wealthy city known as a commercial center for the region.

The country borders Saudi Arabia and is only dozens of miles across the water from Iran. It has a tiny Jewish community.

It becomes only the third Arab nation to establish official ties with the Jewish state. In addition to trade, tourism, and other exchanges, the treaty means the two countries can collaborate on treatment for the coronavirus and countering the influence of Iran, a shared nemesis.

That makes Iran a likely loser in this deal. The dealmakers are, of course, likely winners.

Here’s our analysis of who stands to benefit from this historic accord — and who has been dealt a surprise setback.

by most or all of its neighbors. The nation has fought four major wars with coalitions of Arab states that pledged and failed to destroy it. Until Aug. 13, Israel had diplomatic relations with only two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan. The rest of the region, at least officially, continued not to recognize the Jewish state.

That changes now. Israel and Israelis can now openly trade with, meet with and travel to a third Arab country.

Another Arab embassy will open in Israel, and an Israeli flag will fly in that country. This also may open the door for other countries to follow suit.

Yes, the accord merely formalizes unofficial contacts between the two countries for years.

It doesn’t meaningfully change the contours of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And like every diplomatic deal, this one has many critics who say it carries risks and drawbacks for Israel and its future.

But the hope for peace in the Middle East is written into Israel’s founding documents. Israel and an Arab nation have taken another step in that direction.

The UAE becomes only the third Arab nation to establish official ties with the Jewish state.

Winner: The long view of Israeli history

Throughout its 72-year history, Israel has been at war with, or largely ignored

Winner: Benjamin Netanyahu

Israel’s prime minister has long argued that Israel can and should pursue diplomatic relations across the Middle East and the globe without making concessions to the Palestinians or withdrawing from territory.

For years, Israel’s allies and neighbors told him otherwise: that to make

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

THE WORLD

L’Shanah Tovah

Kobi Gideon/GPO

against him and his govpeace with the broader ernment’s coronavirus Middle East, first he policies. needed to reach an agreement on the future of the West Bank. The Winner: The United promise of relations with Arab Emirates the wider Arab world As far back as the was seen as a bargaining 1990s, the UAE has chip in Israeli-Palestinsought relations with ian talks.

Israel, and Israel and This accord proves the UAE have shared them wrong. The one military intelligence for big promise Netanyahu decades. made was to temporarily According to an exsuspend plans to annex tensive 2018 account in parts of the West Bank. the New Yorker, the counIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the In past diplomatic actry appreciated Israeli telephone with U.S. President Donald Trump & UAE cords, Israel has withdefense technology and Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Aug. 13 drawn from territory in has seen a shared threat exchange for peace. in Iran, which the UAE and other Gulf states The vow isn’t exactly a drastic change of oppose in part due to the Muslim Sunni-Shia plans for the longtime leader, as he had already divide. In January, the Emirati foreign minister pushed off annexation due to squeamishness published an op-ed in an Israeli paper, a major from the Trump administration regarding the symbolic step, and in June an Emirati plane carmove. rying aid for Palestinians landed in Israel.

Netanyahu also gets a boost domestically.

The deal promises both symbolic and tangible He has boasted that his experience and global benefits for the UAE, positioning the country as relationships put him in “another league” diplo- a diplomatic leader in the region. If others follow matically. suit in establishing formal relations with Israel, Now he enters an exclusive pantheon of the UAE can say it was the catalyst.

Israeli leaders who have signed a treaty with More immediately, it could mean an influx an Arab state, joining the ranks of the admired of Israeli tourists and money, as well as colMenachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin. laboration on medical and other research with a Finally, it’s another way that Netanyahu regional economic power as both countries fight can distract from his ongoing criminal trial for the pandemic.

Continued on Page 14 corruption and from the nightly street protests

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Israel’s emergency medical service has been on the front lines in the fight against coronavirus while also contending with terrorist attacks, car accidents, and other threats to Israeli lives.

But Magen David Adom is not government-funded.

Its 25,000 EMTs and paramedics, most of them volunteers, rely on support from people like you for the supplies and equipment they need to perform their lifesaving work.

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Keep the people of Israel strong this coming year.

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Wishing you a Historic very Happy treaty Rosh Hashanah! Continued from Page 13

Winner: Donald Trump

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Since his first presidential campaign, Trump has promised to deliver a peace deal for Israel, and has expended effort into reaching an Israeli-Palestinian accord, to no avail.

Although this isn’t the deal he initially wanted, now he can legitimately claim credit for helping achieve a historic Israeli treaty.

In Trumpspeak, this is a clear win. And it’s a boon for Jared Kushner, a top adviser and his son-in-law, who has succeeded here after failing to secure an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal and drawing criticism for his management of the coronavirus response.

It’s also helpful for Trump in an election year. In a campaign where Israel has come up repeatedly, Trump can position himself not just as a staunch ally of the Netanyahu government, but as a regional peacemaker.

It’s not likely to shift votes, though. Trump voters already see him as pro-Israel and probably haven’t changed their minds, while those who oppose the incumbent generally dislike him on issues that range far from the Middle East.

Winner: Liberal Zionists

Liberal Zionism is built on the idea that solving the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is Israel’s

THE WORLD most pressing diplomatic concern. This accord does not do that.

Yet liberal Zionist groups are celebrating the agreement.

After all, their long-term goal is an Israel at peace with its neighbors. This isn’t how they thought they would get there, but a treaty is still a treaty.

J Street, the largest liberal Zionist organization, said in a statement that the pact is “just the latest evidence that dialogue and diplomacy, rather than unilateral action and belligerence, are the route to long-term security.”

The suspension of annexation is also at least a temporary win for liberal Zionists, who have been bemoaning that such a move would mean the end of efforts toward a Palestinian state alongside Israel. For them, this is a temporary reprieve from that threat.

Loser: Liberal Zionists

Still, the accord is a major blow to the idea that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is Israel’s most pressing diplomatic concern. Liberal Zionists have warned that without sacrifices on the Palestinian issue, peace with other Arab countries is impossible.

Liberal Zionists have said, too, that continued West Bank occupation harms U.S.-Israel relations.

The UAE deal is a major blow to that idea. Occupation wasn’t an obstacle for the Trump administration, and apparently it’s not for the UAE, either.

Liberal Zionists have pro-

tested for more than a decade against Netanyahu and his policies. This is a major win for a man they desperately want to see lose.

The suspension of West Bank annexation isn’t a sure thing, either. Hours after the treaty was announced, Netanyahu said he still hasn’t given up on annexing parts of the West Bank. So the one concession Netanyahu appeared to have made on their issue might not even last.

Loser: The Palestinians

However tough of a pill this is to swallow for the Zionist left, it’s even more bitter for the Palestinians. Not only do they see their enemy sign another diplomatic accord without promising them anything, they also feel “sold out” by a country that was supposed to have their back, in the words of veteran Palestinian diplomat Hanan Ashrawi.

For decades, Arab countries united around the idea that Palestine must be liberated and Israel was not to be tolerated.

Decades ago, as Israel continually proved its staying power and made strides toward peace with the Palestinians, Arab states began seeking an accommodation with the Jewish state — as long as the Palestinian issue was solved.

The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative said that normalization with the Arab world would come only after Israel ended its occupation. Besides Egypt and Jordan, no Arab country bit at the offer of peace with Israel.

Now that has shifted. An

Experienced.

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Palestinians protest against the United Arab Emirates and Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in Jerusalem, Aug. 14

Arab country has normalized ties with Israel without any concession on the Palestinian issue. More may follow.

Palestinians face the prospect of watching their allies make peace with their enemy without gaining anything along the way and with the eyes of the world focused elsewhere.

Loser: The Israeli opposition

For a few moments over the course of 2019 and 2020, as Israelis voted in election after election, it appeared that Netanyahu, after a decade as prime minister, could be replaced by a center-left coalition.

That didn’t happen. But rising public anger over Netanyahu’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, as well as the criminal indictments he’s facing, have led to tens of thousands of

Israelis taking to the streets to protest him. Were he to call another election due to domestic concerns, polls showed his chances of staying in power were tenuous.

Now he could take the podium in triumph, announcing an achievement more often dreamed of on the left: a treaty with an Arab nation. If another election is afoot, he now has something positive to campaign on.

Loser: The settlers (or at least some of them) and their American supporters

Israel’s annexation plan was never overwhelmingly popular among Israeli West Bank settlers because many of them feared that it would bring along the establishment of a Palestinian state in the rest of the terri-

tory, albeit a fragmented one.

Still, for the past few months, Netanyahu was focused on the goal of making some of the territory officially part of Israel, a longstanding goal of many settlers.

Supporters of the settlements in the United States, from evangelical Christian Zionists to the Jewish community’s right wing, also cheered on the prime minister’s pledges to annex.

He said he was going to do so in July, but July came and went. Now the prospect seems even more distant.

Yes, Netanyahu said he would still deliver annexation.

But officially the process has been suspended, when two months ago it appeared to be imminent.

“They pulled a fast one on the settlers,” one settler mayor said.

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PAGE 15

OPINION

What I wish they taught us in Hebrew school

Israel. I wish I had learned more about the Jewish Diaspora. How has the Diaspora grown throughout history? What are all of the unique Jewish Diaspora populations that have formed? What languages did/ do they speak? What pressures have these populations faced and how were their respective cultures shaped?

How are these populations doing today?

In Hebrew school, I did hear and learn the terms Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi. We even briefly discussed Ethiopian Jews. I didn’t give these terms

By Samantha Tener much thought. But of course, these terms — these I received what I believe to be an average Jewish people — mean so much more. It wasn’t until I took a American Conservative synagogue education. I atdeep dive into Wikipedia’s page on the Jewish Diastended Jewish preschool, the full run of weekly, then biweekly Hebrew school, and completed Hebrew high pora that I learned about more specific cultures within these labels. Apparently there’s a large Bukharian Jewschool all the way through the rabbi’s confirmation ish population in New York, which is fascinating to me class. This was all at my synagogue outside of Philly, considering I had never even heard the term Bukharian with a predominantly Ashkenazi congregation in a predominantly Ashkenazi part of the Jewish Diaspora. before. There are “Mountain Jews” in the Caucasus of Persian Jewish origin. Who knew? Not me!

And, of course, I am of Ashkenazi descent (99.2 perCommunities like the Cochin Jews persisted in India cent, according to 23andMe).

What did these years of Jewish education teach me? for centuries. I certainly had no idea! After a combined 13 years of Jewish education, it’s all the more baffling I learned the fundamentals of Judaism: stories from that I’m just learning about these communities now the Torah and ancient Israel, holidays and their traditions, Jewish values, to read and write Hebrew (but not through some random clicks on Wikipedia.

Even when it came to my own Ashkenazi ancestors, to understand the meaning), and to decipher trope for I got a better picture of old-world Ashkenazi life from cantillation. I also learned about Zionism, the Holowatching Fiddler on the Roof than anything I learned at caust, the birth of the state of Israel, and modern-day my synagogue. I always wondered why, when reciting Israeli culture, providing some context for the past the Mourner’s Kaddish at services, my older relatives century of Jewish life. chanted, “Yisgadal v’yiskadash” while my peers and I appreciate what I learned, but Jews have been I said, “Yitgadal v’yitkadash.” It wasn’t until reading around for millennia. Why did I only learn about the Aaron Lansky’s book Outwitting History that I learned biblical and early post-biblical times, and then select topics from recent centuries? What happened to us dur- “Conservative congregations across the country ing all those years in between? Jews have been around changed from Ashkenazic to Sephardic Hebrew...to bring liturgical Hebrew in line with the spoken lanfor millennia and a lot of this time was not spent in

guage of the young state of Israel.” While I understand the decision to unify Jews of the Diaspora with the official language of Israel, my family came to the U.S. speaking Yiddish. Now that I am aware of it, I don’t love this erasure of Yiddishkeit. What else was omitted from my Jewish education?

Maybe if it were 1850, I’d be busy in the throes of shtetl life with very little knowledge or care for Jews outside of my personal community. But it’s 2020, and I live in the great American melting pot with a highspeed internet connection. My country’s Jewish population and my congregation may be predominantly White European Ashkenazim, but we have diverse Jews among us everywhere we look. We have the ability to connect with and learn about Bukharian Jews, Beta Israel, Moroccan Jews, Jews of color, and Jewish converts of different backgrounds.

There’s no reason we should have to embark on these Jewish studies on our own. Education on Jewish Diaspora cultures and the diversity of Jewish identities should be an integral part of formal Jewish education.

Without this, we are left in a state of ashkenormativity that is damaging to those who don’t fit a Eurocentric definition of being Jewish. By taking the time to learn about the different origins and customs of all Jewish backgrounds, we will end up united in a more holistic understanding of Judaism.

Personally, I am in awe of Jewish resilience. But I cannot properly understand or appreciate this resilience without seeing the full spectrum of the Jewish people. I wish my Jewish education could have at least tipped me off to all I was missing.

Samantha Tener is a biomedical graduate student in New York.

With UAE deal, will liberal Zionists stand on right side of history?

By David Suissa The forces of darkness in the Middle East are panicking.

One of the most powerful Arab countries in the world has made peace with the dreaded Zionist enemy.

For these forces of darkness, anything that challenges the demonization of the Jewish state is a disaster. In order for these regimes to survive, Israel must remain the irredeemable sinner, the evil oppressor of Palestinians, the Jewish invader who took over holy Muslim land.

This dark view of Israel has long been the mother’s milk sustaining the dictators of the region, keeping attention away from their own corruption, incompetence and oppression of their people.

The problem is that in the long run, any model based on lies and manufactured hatred is not sustainable. At some point, people wake up. People have to eat and make a living. People have to envision a better future.

This opens them up to other truths. The United Arab Emirates, in making a historic deal with Israel, woke up. In fact,

they woke up a while ago. The difference is that now, they’re telling the world and the people of the region: Israel is not our enemy. Israel doesn’t want to invade us. Israel has a lot to offer.

This is an earthquake, a call to Israel’s Arab neighbors to look to the future rather than the past. Emotions that dwell on the past, such as resentment and humiliation, are paralyzing.

Emotions that look forward, such as hope and optimism, are liberating.

But let’s not celebrate too soon. The past will not go down without a fight. Evil dictators of the region have one key interest — to stay in power. To do that they must keep alive the traditional view of Israel as the “great sinner” rather than the emerging one of a “great partner.”

It’s no surprise, then, that leaders of Iran, Turkey, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are freaking out over this latest deal. You can see them desperately clinging to their old model, accusing the UAE of “betraying” the Palestinian cause and aiming to

So, what do you think?

PAGE 16

isolate them while warning others not to follow suit.

These forces are panicking because the UAE has shattered the model of the Palestinian conflict as the key to progress in the Middle East. If anything, the conflict has been the biggest obstacle to progress, the ideal excuse for nations to stay stuck in the past.

Cunning Palestinian leaders have always understood the power they were given by other dictators. As long as they remained the poor victims and Israelis the evil oppressors, their power was secured. It was a regional con game, and most of the world was in on it, intentionally or not.

Many Jews were in on it, too.

Their genuine and heartfelt critiques of Israeli policies visà-vis the Palestinians were not received that way by Israel’s cynical enemies. Instead, they were seen as “Jewish reinforcement” for the Israel-bashing narrative that kept leaders on their thrones.

Even now, despite a historic agreement that gives new hope to the people of the region, you

can see liberal Zionist groups contorting themselves to keep the old model alive: “Yeah, this new deal is nice,” they’re saying, “but Israel must stop oppressing the Palestinians.”

Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, would be incredible. But relentlessly pressuring Israel while ignoring the lies, cynicism, and Jew-hatred on the other side hasn’t worked.

It has only fed the power games of corrupt leaders and failed both the Palestinian cause and the cause of peace.

Have you ever wondered why, decade after decade, as Palestinian leaders have flown around the globe in private jets complaining about Israel, the plight of their people has only gotten worse? They want you, they need you to believe it’s all Israel’s fault.

Now, that worldview has been shaken. The UAE’s courageous move to put the interests of its nation ahead of the interests of dishonest Palestinian leaders has opened a new door for real progress.

New truths and hard questions may be dawning in the

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

Arab world, such as: Have Palestinian leaders failed their own people? Have Arabs been lied to all these years about Israel? Is it true that Jews have a deep and biblical connection to the land and to Jerusalem? Can Arab nations indeed partner with Israel for a better future?

This new moment is a big test for American Jewry. If liberal Zionists allow their opposition to President Donald Trump to limit their support for a new direction that can transform the Middle East, they will fail both the Zionist and the Arab cause.

But if they tell Palestinian leaders they no longer have veto power over progress in the region and it’s time for them to negotiate in good faith; and if they encourage other Arab states to follow the UAE lead and make a seminal peace with Israel, well, they would endorse a major accomplishment of the Trump administration right before an election.

Like I said, quite a test.

David Suissa is editor-in-chief and publisher of Tribe Media Corp and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.

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 • SEPTEMBER 2020

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UPCOMING EVENTS Connect with us! Check out our events. For more information, check out our calendar at jewishdayton.org.

Thursday, September 10 @ 7:30PM Global Jewish Cuisine As we anticipate the end of our fast, there are a number of traditional dairy dishes that will fill our tables. In keeping with this theme, we will add a few Sephardi and Mizrahi selections.

Friday, September 11 @ 8:45AM - NOON Training Collaborative: Update on Trauma Interventions Saturday, September 12 @ 8:45PM Virtual Community Selichot Service A special program led by clergy from Dayton area synagogues along with the Dayton Jewish Chorale to usher in the High Holiday season.

Registration information available on Jewishdayton.org.

Wednesday, September 16 @ 1:30 - 2:15PM The National Kvell Want to learn how our local Federation plugs into a global network of impact? Get ready for a national Kvell with Federations across the country as we learn the impact the Federation movement has had on a national and global level since the crisis. And -- it wouldn't be a party without celebrity guests & special musical celebrations!

Wednesday, September 16 @ 7PM JFS Active Adults Trivia Night Join other members of your community as we gather for a game of 50’s & 60’s TRIVIA!

IMPORTANT DATES FOR NOVEMBER 3, 2020 GENERAL ELECTION • Now – Application for Absentee/Vote-by-Mail available on-line or by mail • Absentee applications will be mailed to all Ohio registered voters • Week of September 7 – Absentee/Vote-by-Mail ballot applications will be mailed out • September 8, 2020 – Voting begins for Overseas and Military • October 5, 2020 – Deadline to change address • October 5, 2020 – Deadline to register to vote • October 6, 2020 –Absentee/Vote-by-Mail begins • October 6, 2020 – Early-in-person voting begins • November 2, 2020 – Absentee/Vote-by-Mail ballots postmark deadline • November 2, 2020 – Early in-person voting ends at 2:00pm • November 3, 2020 – Election Day Polls open from 6:30am-7:30pm. Drop off for Absentee/Vote-by-Mail ballot to Board of Election Office by 7:30pm

ABSENTEE/VOTE-BY-MAIL

voteohio.gov For more information, visit jewishdayton.org/vote THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

PAGE 17

September JEWISH FEDERATION of GREATER DAYTON & ITS AGENCIES

Thank you for joining us for our 2020 Virtual Annual Meeting and to everyone who has shown their support to the 2020 Annual Campaign thus far. We couldn't do it without you!

Together, we are There is hope in the future

Because of you, we have raised over

57%

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER of GREATER DAY TON

JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES of GREATER DAYTON

JEWISH FEDERATION of GREATER DAYTON

TEMPLE BETH OR

of our Annual Campaign!

&

JEWISH FOUNDATION of GREATER DAYTON

Legacies, Tributes, & Memorials FEDERATION

UNITED JEWISH CAMPAIGN TALA ARNOVITZ FUND IN MEMORY OF › Dr. Clair Cox Beverly Saeks DOROTHY B. MOYER YOUNG LEADERSHIP FUND IN HONOR OF › Rochel Simon receiving the Dorothy B. Moyer Leadership Award The family of Dorothy B. Moyer LINDA RUCHMAN MEMORIAL FUND IN MEMORY OF › Vivian Bailes Marshall & Judy Ruchman

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JCC

JOAN & PETER WELLS CHILDREN’S YOUTH FUND IN HONOR OF › Speedy recovery of Hyla Weiskind Joan & Peter Wells HARRIS ABRAHAMS DJCC CHILDREN’S THEATRE FUND IN HONOR OF › The Bar Mitzvah of Be’eri Harel Jamie Pavlofsky CAROLE RABINOWITZ YOUTH JEWISH EXPERIENCE FUND IN MEMORY OF › Erika Garfunkel Beverly Louis

JFS

JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES IN MEMORY OF › Lorraine Kotler Don & Harriet Klass › Lee Shur Dee & Chuck Fried › James Stewart Claire & Oscar Soifer IN HONOR OF › The 90th birthday of Ruthe Meadow Beverly & Jeff Kantor

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.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

September JEWISH FEDERATION of GREATER DAYTON & ITS AGENCIES

GET TO KNOW YOUR PJ NEIGHBORS! Meet The Sobo Family How many kids are in your family?

2 (soon to be 3)

GLOBAL JEWISH CUISINE

What are their ages?

2.5, 4.5, and estimated due date end of October How did you get involved in PJ Library and how long have you been receiving books?

As a parent, since kiddo #1 got her first book after being born. From within the Jewish community, using donated books from others to teach, and also to read with our nieces/nephews.

What is your family’s favorite PJ Library book?

Tina: Something from Nothing.

Kids: Any of the bedtime books.

Matt: Uhhh I’d have to look at their shelf.

Do you have a funny or meaningful story about reading PJ Library books in your family?

Singing our Bedtime Shema book when the kids were babies.

What brought you to Dayton? How long have you lived here?

Temple Israel - started in 2016 (4 years ago)

Dr. Judy Chesen takes us on a journey of Global Jewish Cuisine surrounding the holidays!

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10 @ 7:30PM As we anticipate the end of our fast, there are a number of traditional dairy dishes that will fill our tables. In keeping with this theme, we will add a few Sephardi and Mizrahi selections.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1 @ 7:30PM We celebrate the abundance of food on the harvest festival of Sukkot. We will embrace the bounty through the enjoyment of stuffed foods.

Zoom registration available on jewishdayton.org

What do you love about Dayton?

Kids: That there are lots of parks.

Tina/Matt: The community is great and there is lots to do.

JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER of GREATER DAYTON

What are your family’s favorite TV shows or games?

Games: Pandemic and other co-operative games. Kids like Hide-and-Go Seek TV: We don't watch much, but have recently enjoyed watching Lego Masters and Nailed It as a family

LET'S DO A KNITZVAH!

If you’d like, share a creative way you’ve found to have fun throughout the past months Lots of video calls with our out-of-state family (which is all our extended family). Lots of playing in the backyard and getting weeds under control! And science experiments!

We want to learn about YOUR family! Our families are what makes the PJ Library program in Dayton so vibrant, and we want to showcase them! To participate, please contact Kate Elder, PJ Library Coordinator at kelder@jfgd.net

Pick up your knitting needles! Starting September 1, JFS is asking the community to join together for a Knitzvah! Items donated will be used for our annual Chanukah Outreach bags. A total of approximately 100 items are needed to meet our Knitzvah goal. We welcome your hand-knitted, crocheted, or sewn donations of: Hats, scarves, lap blankets, socks, face masks, or gloves to help make our Chanukah outreach extra special (and fuzzy!) this year.

Deadline for donations is November 18, 2020.

For questions or to schedule a drop off, please contact Theresa Clyburn at tclyburn@jfgd.net or 937-610-1555.

JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES of GREATER DAYTON

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

PAGE 19

VIRTUAL

Cultural Arts & Book Series is going VIRTUAL! Our Virtual Film Festival was such a hit, we’re excited to launch our Cultural Arts & Book Series Virtually!

Stay tuned for our Opening Night event in October – and our full lineup announcement that will span Fall 2020 through Spring 2021!

Register for special CABS email updates online at jewishdayton.org!

JCC CULTURAL ARTS PROGRAMMING IS MADE POSSIBLE BY COMMUNITY SUPPORTERS, COMMUNITY DONATIONS, OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH THE JEWISH BOOK COUNCIL. OUR JCC CULTURAL ARTS AND BOOK SERIES RECEIVES FUNDS FROM AN OHIO ARTS COUNCIL SUSTAINABILITY GRANT.

PAGE 20

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

LIFECYCLES

THE MARVELOUS MR. MAZEL

Wishing You A Happy New Year.

Contributed

Shai Pollack Raskin Hallie and Matt Raskin of Columbus are pleased to announce the birth of their son Shai Pollack Raskin, born April 15. Shai, his brother Sander and sister Ayla are the grandchildren of Jody Pollack Blazar of Kettering, Andrew Blazar of Beavercreek, and Patti and Ken Raskin of Chicago. Great-grandmother is Ellen Siegel Pollack. Of blessed memory are greatgrandparents Shirley and Arthur Pollack, Sylvia and Mitchell Blazar, Stuart and Cissie Silver, Arlene Mann and Emanuel Raskin.

Ari Rose Voronov Myah and Mike Voronov of Chicago are pleased to announce the birth of their daughter Ari Rose Voronov, born June 13. Ari is the granddaughter of Jody Pollack Blazar of Kettering, Andrew Blazar of Beavercreek, and Ellen and Leonard Voronov of Chicago. Great-grandmother is Ellen Siegel Pollack. Of blessed memory are greatgrandparents Shirley and Arthur Pollack, Sylvia and Mitchell Blazar, Raisa and Isaak Grabarnik, and Maria and Joseph Voronov.

Send lifecycles to The Dayton Jewish Observer 525 Versailles Dr. Centerville, OH 45459 Email: MWeiss@jfgd.net.

There is a $12 charge to run a photo; please make checks payable to The Dayton Jewish Observer.

Jane and Dr. David Novick used Dayton MetroParks to help their daughter, Elana, regain strength after her recovery from Covid-19. Elana, who is developmentally-delayed and lives in a group home in a New York suburb, contracted Covid-19 in March. Jane went to New York at the end of March and quarantined with Elana Novick taking the MetroParks Elana until she was better; Trail Challenge she brought Elana back Neenah Ellis, WYSO’s general to Dayton to continue her manager from 2009 to 2019, is recovery. now the first executive director Looking for something to of The Eichelberger Center for help Elana regain her stamina Community Voices, which she and keep her healthy and began in 2010 as community busy while here, the Novicks training workshops. WYSO decided on the MetroParks and The Eichelberger Center Trail Challenge. Their first hike are divisions of the non-profit was June 12 at Cox Arboretum.

Miami Valley Media. “With this reorganization we will change the face of public media in the Dayton area,” Neenah said, Scott “with more local voices and Halasz more local stories.”

They finished July 31 at Eastwood MetroPark.

There were 19 hiking trails on the challenge. “It was a terrific family activity,” Jane said.

They even took on the 7.5-mile trail at Germantown MetroPark. “When she had Covid, she was unable to walk even five minutes without losing her breath. The trail challenge greatly improved Elana’s confidence regarding her balance.

Initially, she was somewhat fearful of the uneven surfaces. After a few trails, and the purchase of hiking poles, she was handling the inclines and declines, paths covered with tree roots, and other obstacles as if she never had a balance problem.”

Nearly 40 years after beginning his rabbinate in Dayton, Rabbi Larry Karol retired July 31 after nine years at Temple Beth-El in Las Cruces, N.M. Ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1981, Larry was hired by Temple Israel as an assistant rabbi. He spent three years here before moving to Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kan. He was there for 22 years, moved to Temple Israel in Dover, N.H., and then Temple Beth-El, where he has been named rabbi emeritus and the Las Cruces City Council declared June 25 Rabbi Larry Karol Day. Larry officiated for my Bar Mitzvah at Temple Israel a few months after my family moved to Dayton.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

Masha Kisel received honorable mention for Excellence in Commentary for her columns in The Dayton Jewish Observer as part of the American Jewish Press Association’s 2020 Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. The award was given for three columns Masha wrote for The Observer last year.

Mazel tov to these recent graduates: Hannah Sommer earned a master’s degree in environmental science from Miami University.

Sarah Abrams graduated from Ohio University.

THE SHOPS OF OAKWOOD 2316 FAR HILLS AVE DAYTON OH 45419

937-224-7673

WWW.THEFLOWERSHOPPE.COM

Shanah Tovah with a 2020 twist!

Congregation Anshe Emeth Reform Congregation in Piqua • Organized 1858 All are welcomed to services led by Rabbinic Intern Tzvia Rubens Photo: Mike Feinstein, longtime Anshe Emeth awesome shofar blower

• Friday, Sept. 18, 7:30 p.m. Erev Rosh Hashanah services via Zoom* • Saturday, Sept. 19, 10 a.m. Rosh Hashanah services outdoors in a large park shelter* in Piqua, masks required, also available via Zoom • Sunday, Sept. 27, 7:30 p.m. Kol Nidre service via Zoom* • Monday, Sept. 28, 10 a.m. Yom Kippur service outdoors in a large park shelter* in Piqua, masks required, also available by Zoom 4 p.m. Yizkor and afternoon service and short walk to Cedar Hill cemetery, also available by Zoom * Message ansheemeth@gmail.com for Zoom link or park location, close to I-75 in Piqua.

ansheemeth.org • ansheemeth@gmail.com • Like us on Facebook

L’Shanah Tovah.

Mark S. Feuer

Natalie Fishman graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in health sciences and a minor in Spanish.

Attorney at Law For your business & personal needs.

Emma Pickard graduated from Rhodes College.

Tax & Business Planning & Transactions Tax Controversies Employee Benefit Solutions

Joshua Segalewitz graduated from the University of Dayton with a bachelor of arts degree in human rights studies and sociology, and a French minor.

Joshua graduated summa cum laude and with University Honors with Distinction.

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP 40 North Main Street, Suite 1700 Dayton, Ohio 45423-1029 641-1735 mfeuer@taftlaw.com • www.taftlaw.com

Josh Self graduated from Wright State University.

Send your announcements to scotthalasz1@gmail.com.

Severe weather will change outdoor service to Zoom. Call or text Steve to confirm: 937-726-2116.

Contact Patty Caruso at plhc69@gmail.com to advertise in The Observer.

PAGE 21

RELIGION ‫ב״ה‬

Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

Chabad of Greater Dayton invites you to join us for

THE MOST ESSENTIAL SERVICES OF THEM ALL

Mustknow Rosh Hashanah words & phrases

PANDEMIC OR NOT JEWS WILL RECONNECT THIS HOLIDAY SEASON!

OUR HOLIDAY SCHEDULE: ROSH HASHANA | SEP 19-20 Evening Prayers (Sep18) ..................................... 7:45pm Full Indoor Prayers ......................................... 9:30am Children’s Program ....................................... 10:00am Outdoor Learners Tefillah ........... 10:30am-12:00pm *Shofar will be blown on Sunday in each group separately

TASHLICH & SHOFAR STATIONS | SEP 20 Children’s Tashlich ..................................4:00-5:00pm at Hills and Dales MetroPark at the DogWood Pavilion

Lincoln Park Pond ................................. 4:30-5:00pm Smith Gardens ........................................ 4:30-5:00pm

YOM KIPPUR | SEP 27-28 Kol Nidrei Full Indoor Prayers ........................................ 7:00pm Outdoor Learners Tefillah ................... 7:00-8:00pm Morning Services Indoor Prayers ............................................... 9:30am Outdoor Learners Tefillah .......... 10:30am-12:00pm Neilah Services Indoor Prayers ................................................ 6:00pm Please rsvp for your preferred options by visiting us at: ChabadDayton.com services are socially distanced | face masks required facilities sanitized between services

look out for our mobile-sukkah spreading the joy of sukkot all over dayton! (oct 5-9) Chabad of Greater Dayton | 937-643-0770 2001 Far Hills Avenue | ChabadDayton.com

PAGE 22

Rosalee Lamm (R) shows her daughters how to toss their pieces of bread into the water for Tashlich alongside their father, Toby Rzepka, at Jewell Falls, Portland, Maine

By My Jewish Learning Staff Here are important Hebrew words and terms you may encounter over the High Holy Days, which starts with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, on the evening of Sept. 18.

Shofar: Pronounced shoh-FAR or SHOH-far (rhymes with so far). The ram’s horn that is sounded during the month of Elul, on Rosh Hashanah and at the end of Yom Kippur. It is mentioned numerous times in the Bible in reference to its ceremonial use in the Temple and to its function as a signal horn of war.

Akedah: Pronounced ah-keh-DAH. Literally binding, the Akedah refers to the biblical story of the binding of Isaac, Tashlich: Pronounced TAHSH-likh. which is traditionally read on the second Literally cast away, Tashlich is a ceremony observed on the afternoon of day of Rosh Hashanah. the first day of Rosh Hashanah in which sins are symbolically cast away into a Chag sameach: Pronounced KHAG natural body of water. The term and sah-MAY-akh. Literally happy holiday, custom are derived from a verse in the a common greeting on Rosh Hashanah Book of Micah (7:19). and other Jewish holidays.

Elul: Pronounced el-OOL (oo as in food). The final month of the Jewish calendar, it is designated as a time of reflection, introspection, and repentance.

Chet: Pronounced KHET (short e). Sin or wrongdoing.

L’shanah tovah u’metukah: Pronounced l’shah-NAH toe-VAH ooh-meh-tooKAH. A Hebrew greeting for the High Holy Days season that means, for a good and sweet year.

Machzor: Pronounced MAHKH-zohr.

Literally cycle, the machzor is the special prayer book for the High Holy Days containing all the special High Holy Days liturgy.

Selichot: Pronounced slee-KHOTE. Literally forgivenesses, selichot are prayers for forgiveness. Selichot refers to two related types of penitential prayers. The first are the prayers that are customarily recited daily at morning services during the month of Elul. This is also the name of the service that takes place late at night on the Saturday preceding Rosh Hashanah and consists of a longer series of these penitential prayers.

Teshuvah: Pronounced tih-SHOOvuh. Literally return, teshuvah is often translated as repentance. It is one of the central themes and spiritual components of the High Holy Days.

Tishri: Pronounced TISH-ray. The first month of the Hebrew calendar, during which Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot all occur.

Tzom Kal: Pronounced TZOHM KAHL. This greeting for Yom Kippur (and other Jewish fast days) means an easy fast.

Unetaneh Tokef: Pronounced ooh-nuhTAH-neh TOH-keff. Literally we shall ascribe, a religious poem recited during the Musaf Amidah (additional service) that is meant to strike fear in us.

Yamim Noraim: Pronounced yahMEEM nohr-ah-EEM. Literally Days of Awe, it refers to the High Holy Days season. Sometimes it refers to the 10 days from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur, also known as the Aseret Yimei Teshuvah, or the 10 Days of Repentance.

Yom Tov: Pronounced YOHM TOHV or YON-tiff. A general term for major Jewish festivals.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

RELIGION

Note:

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, worship schedules have been adjusted and some services are offered virtually instead.

For the latest information, check with the organizations below via their websites, Facebook pages, and by calling them directly.

Awe & love: the dual nature of the season

By Rabbi Leibel Agar Beth Jacob Congregation To me, the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) have always been a time of both introspection and celebration.

The dual nature of the season seems to stir something inside us. It redirects our thinking, causing us to look inside our own souls with solemnity.

Perspectives At the same time, it brings feelings of joy and gladness, a yearning to celebrate with our friends and family. It can even generate a somewhat impish sense of humor.

On the one hand, the Yamim Noraim are a time of seriousness. It is the Day of Judgement and the Day of Atonement. The plaintive cry of the shofar tears at our hearts.

We stand before God and entreat Him to sign and seal us into the Book of Life, the Book of Health, and the Book of Prosperity. It is such a spiritual time, even people who do not normally attend services come to shul.

On the other hand, the holidays of Sukkot and Simchat Torah are all about fun. We march around the shul waving the lulav and etrog. We host sukkah parties for our friends and family.

On Simchat Torah, we throw candy at the Chatan Torah and the Chatan Bereshit (the Bride-

groom of the end Suddenly, we of the Torah and become focused the Bridegroom of on our spirithe beginning of tual selves. Either the Torah), then because we want we laugh as the God’s blessing or children scramble because we fear to collect as much God’s punishas they can hold. ment (or more How can one often, a combinaseason bring tion of both), our about so many level of obserdifferent (and vance increases. somewhat opWe begin doposite) emotions? ing mitzvot in Rabbi Leibel Agar It is this special earnest, focusing duality which I would like to on prayer, charity, and repenexamine with you. tance, for our sages of blessed In order to truly understand memory tell us that those three the Yamim Noraim, we must things “avert the severity of the pull back the fancy packaging decree.” and examine the essence.

Our connection to spirituality At its core, this season deepens and by the time Yom represents the basic human Kippur begins, we can feel the condition. Our lives are often presence of God inside of us. a struggle. We do our best to The bad news is that when earn a livelihood, we connect with God through spend time with yirah (awe) — or because we our children, and want the Divine Blessing for the enjoy quality mo- coming year — the feeling of ments with our God’s presence does not remain spouses. long. It generally lasts until the Unfortunately, end of Yom Kippur when, all since there are the Books having been sealed, only 24 hours in we zoom through Ma’ariv (the the day, we often evening service) in a fraction of downplay anoth- the time it normally takes and er relationship: rush home to eat. our relationship However, there is also with the Divine good news. Immediately on Presence. the heels of the yirah connecAt best, we connect with God tion, we are able to connect when we pray, and on Shabto God through ahavah (love): bat and holidays. At worst, we the holiday of Sukkot is here. barely connect with Him at all.

There is no worrisome Day Then, before we know it, of Judgement hanging over Rosh Hashanah and Yom our heads, just a holiday with Kippur roll around and we fun, family, and friends. are confronted by our lack of Our children bring home spirituality. The Days of Awe (or make) all sorts of decorahave arrived. tions for the Sukkah. We visit

The connection made through love and friendship stays within our souls throughout the year.

with friends and family.

Instead of the somber melodies of Avinu Malkeinu (Our Father Our King) and Unetaneh Tokef (Let us proclaim the mighty holiness), the walls of the shul echo with the joyous sounds of Hallel (Psalms).

Then, just when we thought things could not get any better, we have Simchat Torah: the dancing, singing, candythrowing holiday that is fun for parents and children alike.

It is this spiritual connection, the connection made through love and friendship, that stays within our souls throughout the year.

Clearly, while connecting to the Divine Presence through yirah is good, connecting to the Divine Presence through ahavah is, in the words of my 4-year-old niece Emily, “much more better.”

I would like to close with a blessing to us all. As we enter the Yamim Noraim of 5781, may the “Love Connection” reign supreme in our hearts, and may we draw closer to God through love, joy, and togetherness.

Wishing you all the most joyous of High Holy Day seasons and a ketivah v’chatima tovah, a good inscription and sealing in the Book of Life!

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 Beth Jacob Congregation Traditional Rabbi Leibel Agar Saturdays, 9:30 a.m.

7020 N. Main St., Dayton. 937-2742149. BethJacobCong.org Temple Anshe Emeth Reform Rabbinic Intern Tzvia Rubens 320 Caldwell St., Piqua.

Contact Steve Shuchat, 937-7262116, AnsheEmeth@gmail.com. ansheemeth.org Temple Beth Or Reform Rabbi Judy Chessin Asst. Rabbi/Educator Ben Azriel 5275 Marshall Rd., Wash. Twp. 937-435-3400. templebethor.com Temple Beth Sholom Reform Rabbi Haviva Horvitz 610 Gladys Dr., Middletown.

513-422-8313. templebethsholom.net 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 Fridays, 6 p.m.

2424 N. Limestone St., Springfield. 937-399-1231. templesholomoh.com

September • Elul/Tishri Candle Lightings

Torah Portions

Shabbat, Sept. 4: 7:44 p.m.

Shabbat, Sept. 11: 7:33 p.m.

Shabbat, Erev Rosh Hashanah Sept. 18: 7:21 p.m.

First Eve Rosh Hashanah Sept. 19: 8:18 p.m.

Shabbat, Sept. 25: 7:10 p.m.

Erev Yom Kippur Sept. 27: 7:44 p.m.

Sept. 5, Ki Tavo (Deut. 26:1-29:8) Sept. 12, Nitzavim-Vayelech (Deut. 29:9-31:30) Sept. 26, Haazinu (Deut. 32:1-52)

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

ADDITIONAL SERVICES

Rosh Hashanah

Yom Kippur

Sept. 19-20/1-2 Tishri Celebration of the beginning of the Jewish calendar year.

Begins the Days of Awe, a 10-day period of repentance and prayer that ends on Yom Kippur. Celebrated with festive meals, including apples dipped in honey.

Sept. 28/10 Tishri The holiest day on the Jewish calendar, marking the end of the Days of Awe, spent fasting and in prayer.

The sounding of the shofar, the ram’s horn, signals the end of the holiday.

Jewish New Year

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.

Beginner educational service Saturdays 9 a.m. adults, 10 a.m children. Sundays 9 a.m.

2001 Far Hills Ave. 937-643-0770. www.chabaddayton.com

Day of Atonement

Yellow Springs Havurah Independent Antioch College Rockford Chapel.

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

PAGE 23

Together but Apart

High Holy Days 5781 with Temple Beth Or

Temple Beth Or invites you to join us for the High Holy Days.

We offer virtual and parking lot services for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Erev Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 18 Streaming New Year Seder

Daytime Streaming Service LIVE Parking Lot Shofar Service Visit templebethor.com for service times & updates

Kol Nidre, Sept. 27 Streaming Service

Yom Kippur, Sept. 28

Daytime Streaming Service LIVE Parking Lot Family Service

Yizkor Streaming Service Ne’ilah and Break the Fast, Zoom Visit templebethor.com for service times & updates Temple Beth Or 5275 Marshall Road Dayton, Ohio 45429 www.templebethor.com 937-435-3400

Today...and for Generations PAGE 24

RELIGION Oxygen/Getty Images

Why I came out to my family during the High Holy Days I didn’t feel the perfect euphoria that

By Rakhel Silverman, Alma Lifetime movies promised me.

Last Rosh Hashanah, I snuck out of The High Holy Days are about makservices, escaped to the bathroom, and broke my no-technology practice to turn ing teshuvah, which means turning — a reorienting of yourself, moving toward on my phone.

God, turning toward what is holy inside No, I didn’t need to do something for of you, realigning with your values and work. I wasn’t checking my Instagram with the life path that you want, becomfeed. I was sending possibly the most important email I’d ever send in my life. ing the person that you want to be. I was not done with this process when I In this email, I told my father that I am realized I was queer four years ago, or queer and non-binary. I explained my when I changed my pronouns on Faceidentities, hoped he would accept me book last month, or when the sound of and asked him, in the spirit of the High the shofar marked the end of Yom KipHoly Days, to repent for his previous pur this year. I will constantly be comhomophobic and transphobic actions. ing to terms with my true self, unlearnWhy now? Why an impulsive email ing homophobia and transphobia on an from the Brown Hillel’s bathroom stall? endless journey to self-acceptance.

My discomfort for verbal confrontation It is challenging embracing my full aside, it is because something during self because my entire life I was told that that service moved me, and I felt that I my identities were not compatible. As I could not hide this part of myself any discovered that I was queer, my Jewish longer.

My decision to come out came during education taught me that homosexuality is a sin. As I fell in love with Judaism the rabbi’s sermon, when he spoke of and considered rabbinic school, my trathe importance of our relationships. He ditional upbringing told me talked about how human I am taking that people assigned female at beings, despite their pride, could not lead services cannot be independent, and this season birth or be rabbis. My politics were that we must embrace the vulnerability of needing oth- of teshuvah irreconcilable as well; as I felt compassion for Palestinians, ers. And I knew that despite my Jewish community told how uncomfortable I would to learn to me that they were not worthy feel by revealing this part of accept and of rights, dignity or humanity. myself and risking rejection, love myself It is a long and painful process I needed to openly be my of learning and unlearning as most authentic self in order I turn inward toward myself. to have genuine relationships with my The morning before Yom Kippur, I family. found myself at a very last-minute mikI soon received my father’s reply — a vah (ritual bath) immersion. I made the message of acceptance and unconditional love, everything a queer kid could appointment to mark my official coming out and the changing of my name from possibly ask for. Yet I did not feel the Rachel to its Hebrew pronunciation, relief that I had expected, which left me Rukh-el. disappointed, ashamed, and depressed.

In Judaism, changing your name Why wasn’t his email enough? gives you a new destiny (like Sarai beI realized I had the unrealistic excoming Sarah in the Torah). In choosing pectation of what “coming out” looks to go by my Hebrew name, I am honorlike, according to the media — where a ing my Jewish ancestry, personal history, tearful confession turns into rainbows, and the trans tradition of choosing a glitter, and champagne, as if the years new name. of trauma and harm no longer bother As I prepared to immerse, undressyou, as if you have achieved a perfect ing, scrubbing every inch of myself, level of self-acceptance and now your family perfectly accepts you, too. In real- taking off my signature ring and glasses, I listened to a playlist of Jewish moveity, coming out is a complex and often painful ongoing process of both internal ment songs — embracing my faith’s and external acceptance, which is why Continued on Page 29

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

RELIGION

L’Shanah Tovah!

They wanted to convert to Judaism, but the mikvahs were closed. So instead they went to summer camp.

By Josefin Dolstein, JTA of what would happen,” said should use the lake at camp,” On a typical summer day, Ibarra, who studied Judaism Linden said. hundreds of kids can be found through the Center for ConIn fact, the lake is used as a around the lake at Camp Raversion to Judaism at Town & mikvah by staff members durmah in the Berkshires splashVillage Synagogue, a Consering the summer who observe ing around in the water, taking vative congregation in Manhat- the laws of ritual purity, which swimming lessons, paddle tan. mandate that a woman needs boarding, and playing on giant Some students studying to immerse after menstruation inflatables. through the center had finished in order to resume sexual rela“The opposite of calm” is courses as early as April but tions. how the camp’s director, Rabbi were unable to finalize their Lake Ellis at Camp Ramah Ethan Linden, describes it. conversions due to the panturned out to be just what the But with the camp closed demic. Rabbi Laurence Sebert, rabbis wanted. The converts this summer due to the corona- who leads Town & Village immersed after meeting shorevirus, the lake found a differSynagogue, was struggling to side with a beit din, a rabbinient purpose in July: as a ritual find a solution one day while cal court that was made up of bath. Fifteen Jews by choice talking on Zoom with Rabbi Shaiman, Sebert, and camp immersed themselves there to Joel Shaiman, the conversion staff members. finalize their conversions.

“It was the perfect setContributed Clad in a mask, Linden ting for this transformalooked on from the dock tional moment for all of along with a lifeguard, these people,” Sebert said. another staff member, and “They had been waiting, two rabbis who traveled many of them for several from Manhattan and New months at least, and didn’t Jersey as the candidates think that it was going to waded into the water. One happen anytime soon.” by one they immersed A few adjustments were themselves fully, emerging made. Converts usuofficially as Jews. ally immerse naked and a “The outdoor aspect sheet is used for modesty, of it was the most magior rabbis stand behind a cal part because it was partition. so open and so free, and Since it was harder to so beautiful out there,” maintain privacy in an said Alexa Rae Ibarra, a open lake, however, they 29-year-old yoga instrucinstead wore loose clothtor. She had traveled to the Alexa Rae Ibarra immersed in the lake at Camp ing.

Berkshires with her long- Ramah in the Berkshires to complete her Attendance at a mikvah conversion to Judaism time boyfriend from the is limited typically to the Hamptons, where the couple rabbis and the convert, but center’s program coordinator. have been spending time dursince there was more space at Looking at his screen, Sebert ing the pandemic. could see the ocean in the back- the lake, the Jews by choice When Ibarra started studygot to bring along a few family ground behind Shaiman’s Jering for her conversion in Sepmembers or friends. Two even sey shore home. That sparked tember, she had assumed that a realization: Instead of using a brought their dogs. she would be immersing at an Ibarra said being able to traditional mikvah, they could indoor mikvah in New York bring her boyfriend, Justin, use a natural body of water, City, where she usually lives, made it even more special. which can be used as a ritual at its completion in June. After “I remember him being bath according to Jewish law. the conversion, she had plans behind me and thinking, ‘NoThe rabbis initially considto travel to Israel “to have the body, not anyone, will underered going to the Jersey shore, full experience.” stand or experience what we but after realizing it would be But as the coronavirus hard to find a private spot, they both have experienced today.’ started spreading widely in It was such a moment for both thought of Ramah.

New York in the spring, Ibarra Both have connections to the of us,” she said. realized things wouldn’t hapIt was such a positive experiupstate New York camp, which pen as she had planned. ence, the rabbis were consideris affiliated with the ConservaLike many other converts, ing bringing another group tive movement. They reached she found herself thrust into of converts to the Berkshires out to Linden, the camp direcuncertainty as some mikvahs before the end of summer. tor, who was on board. closed, while others did not “In some ways it was getting “The idea was, we have this allow more than one person to back to the ikar, the essence, of beautiful natural mikvah at come along to appointments, how we do this,” Shaiman said. camp, this beautiful lake, and as is necessary for conversions. obviously like most nonprofit “A mikvah in the city is really a “When things didn’t go to second-best alternative…Back Jewish summer camps this plan, I just remember being to nature is kind of the way it summer, we are not open this really, really sad and unsure was originally done.” summer and I said to them we

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

The Law Office of

Alan D. Gabel

937-222-5335 • alan.gabel@yahoo.com P.O. Box 1423, Dayton, Ohio 45401

Criminal Defense • DUI • Juvenille Cases

Vote Nov. 3 & Protect Democracy Happy New Year to the Jews of Dayton, Cincinnati, Azerbaijan, Macedonia, & Israel.

Stay Strong! Love!

Never Forget!

The Feldman, Moscowitz and Foster Families wish you a sweet New Year filled with good health and happiness.

937-222-4625 Are you reading this? So is the entire Jewish community.

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PAGE 25

welcoming in

5781

Braised Chicken with Dates

We join together online to usher in a new year filled with hope and love.

Visit tidayton.org for all of the details.

Month of Elul

Inspirational messages, poignant texts, and thoughtful reflections from our bimah team, straight to your inbox

Rosh Hashanah

A holiday sing-along, family service, and congregational service, along with a special “drive-by” event with food and goodies

Yom Kippur

Special Kol Nidre guest appearance, contemplative worship and healing services, supplemental educational sessions, and more

Anytime

Our rabbis and staff are just a phone call or email away, whenever you need us.

Temple Israel • www.tidayton.org • 937.496.0050 130 Riverside Drive, Dayton, OH 45405 A Reform Synagogue open to all who are interested in Judaism.

PAGE 26

In a difficult time, welcome the new year with this easy recipe

By Ronnie Fein, JTA Rosh Hashanah won’t be usual this year. Like many of you, my family won’t be getting together, so we’ll be setting the table for two, not 11. It’s disappointing because although we managed on Passover with a Zoom Seder, we figured all would be well by the High Holy Days.

But all isn’t well. It’s been difficult to shop, what with waiting in line to get in and having to wear a mask and push a shopping cart that stinks of Lysol. Or text with my Instacart shopper to pick out the right bananas.

I know I’m not the only person who can’t find all the grocery items I want (there isn’t a whole brisket to be had).

And the expense! Oy! But then I think about what makes Rosh Hashanah so extraordinary. About hearing the shofar blast (virtually from our synagogue), how it thrills us and calls us to think about the past year and consider our future. I’m grateful the holiday has come. I look forward to another year ahead.

On Rosh Hashanah we celebrate new beginnings, we pray for good health, joy, and prosperity.

We eat as best we can. For us this year, eating best means chicken.

Chicken is celebratory. It is also available, relatively inexpensive, easy to cook, and doesn’t take hours.

Best of all, chicken is mild, so it takes on all sorts of flavors from what you cook it with and how you season it. Is it any wonder that this lovable bird has been an enduring classic for Shabbat?

This chicken recipe includes leeks and dates, two of the symbolic ingredients for Rosh Hashanah. I’ll serve it with its savory pan juices over egg noodles and a green vegetable on the side.

Shanah tovah. Be well and stay safe.

Braised Chicken With Dates 1 cut up broiler-fryer chicken 2 Tbsp. olive oil 1 leek, chopped (1/2 to 3/4 cup chopped, or use one medium onion) 1 large clove garlic, chopped 2 tsp. tightly packed chopped fresh ginger 2 tsp. tightly packed grated fresh orange peel 1/4 tsp. Aleppo pepper (or use 2 pinches cayenne pepper) 1/8 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg Salt to taste 1/2 cup chicken stock 1/2 cup orange juice 6-8 whole pitted dates, preferably Medjool, cut in half Chopped chives or parsley for garnish 1. Rinse and dry the chicken and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat.

Cook the chicken a few pieces at a time until they are lightly browned, about eight minutes.

2. Remove the chicken to a dish and set aside. Add the leek, garlic, ginger, and orange peel to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, for about one minute.

Return the chicken to the pan and spoon the leek mixture on top. Sprinkle with the cayenne and nutmeg. Sprinkle with salt if desired.

3. Pour in the chicken stock and orange juice. Stir the liquid, cover the pan, and turn the heat to low-medium. Cook for 15 minutes. Add the dates and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes or until chicken is cooked through.

4. Place the chicken and dates in a serving dish. Boil the pan fluids over high heat for a minute or two to thicken the sauce slightly. Pour the sauce over the chicken and dates. Sprinkle with chopped chives or parsley. Makes four servings.

Ronnie Fein is author of The Modern Kosher Kitchen and Hip Kosher.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

Tannaz Sassooni

Beef Brisket for Your New Year’s Observance!

Persian UpsideDown Cake with Dates and Cardamom A sweet tribute to a Sephardic Rosh Hashanah tradition

By Tannaz Sassooni The Nosher As a kid in Hebrew school, I learned that my classmates would have apples and honey and round challah at Rosh Hashanah to bring in the Jewish New Year, and that was pretty much it when it came to food traditions.

But at home it was a different story.

As an Iranian Jew, Rosh Hashanah was an elaborate affair. We’d gather the extended family for the first two nights of the holiday, the first at my parents’ house, the second at my aunt’s.

Dining tables, coffee tables and folding tables would be lined up to make one long dinner table covered with tablecloths to accommodate a good 20 or so family members.

The table would be spread with platter after platter: mountains of saffron-laced basmati rice, crispy tahdig and flavorful stews — maybe a deep green stew of celery and lots of herbs, or a tomato-based eggplant stew, tangy with unripe grapes.

But before dinner, we’d (mostly) pause the loud chatter — a lively mix of Persian and English — for a full Sephardic Rosh Hashanah seder. Yes, there were apples and honey.

But we’d also have dates, beets, pomegranate seeds, slowcooked black-eyed peas and beef tongue, Persian leeks and fried zucchini, each with a sym-

bolic meaning and a blessing for the coming year.

This date upside-down cake takes the dates from my family’s Rosh Hashanah seder and pairs them with the two fragrant ingredients found in so many Persian sweets: cardamom and rosewater.

The cake’s batter uses buttermilk for a bit of tang and goes easy on the sugar to provide some balance for the topping: a super sweet combination of velvety dates in a rich butter caramel.

It’s a moist and aromatic dessert that pairs perfectly with a glass of ambercolored Persian tea.

For the date topping: 27 Medjool dates 6 Tbsp. butter, softened 1/2 cup brown sugar pinch of salt pinch of ground cardamom For the cake: 11/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan 2 tsp. baking powder 1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. ground cardamom 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened, plus more to grease pan 2/3 cup granulated sugar 2 large eggs 2 tsp. rose water 1/2 cup buttermilk 1. In a medium bowl, cover dates with hot water and soak for at least 20 minutes. Remove skin from dates, halve lengthwise and remove pits.

2. Preheat oven to 350 de-

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

grees.

3. Butter and flour the sides of a 9-inch round nonstick cake pan.

4. For the date topping, cream together butter, brown sugar, salt and cardamom until well combined.

Spread butter mixture evenly across the bottom of prepared pan. Arrange date halves over butter mixture in a pattern of concentric circles with their cut sides facing up.

5. To make the cake batter, whisk flour, baking powder, salt, and cardamom together in a medium bowl.

6. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar together until creamy and pale in color.

Add eggs one at a time, incorporating one fully before adding the next. Beat in rose water to fully incorporate.

7. With mixer on low speed, add one-third of flour mixture, mixing until just incorporated (do not over-beat).

Follow with half of buttermilk, then the second third of flour, the other half of buttermilk, then the remaining flour, mixing completely between each addition.

8. Spoon batter over arranged dates, spreading evenly and taking care not to jostle dates.

Bake cake in middle rack of oven 30-40 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

Cool cake in pan on a rack for about five minutes. Run a knife around edges of cake, then invert onto serving plate, replacing any dates that stick to pan.

9. Garnish with edible flowers, ground pistachios or dried rose petals. Serve warm or at room temperature. Serves eight.

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PAGE 27

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Meringuetopped apple pie bars eighth-inch cubes. Coat with lemon juice, then place into a pan over medium heat. Once apples start to boil, reduce to

By Dikla Frances For the meringue and toppings: a simmer and cook for three to The Nosher four minutes.

1/4 tsp. salt Looking for an innovative 2. Strain apples into a bowl, 4 large egg whites, room way to incorporate apples into leaving the liquid in the pan. temperature your Rosh Hashanah menu?

Add sugar and cinnamon to the 3/4 cup sugar Look no further than these meliquid and stir until the sugar 3/4 cup sliced toasted ringue-topped apple pie bars. dissolves. almonds With layers of buttery 3. Mix potato starch with pastry, cinnamonquarter cup water and add to For the short-crust scented apples and the pan. Once thickened, re-add dough: fluffy meringue, 1. In the bowl of apples, remove from heat and they’re sweet, a standing mixer, blend. Allow to cool until room toasty and sure temperature. beat butter, salt, to be a hit. The folcorn syrup, and lowing recipe has For the meringue: sugar for four to been reprinted 1. Place egg whites and salt five minutes until from One Sarcastic into the bowl of a standing mixlight and smooth.

Baker. er fitted with the whisk attach2. Scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl. On ment. Gradually increase speed For the short-crust dough: to high and beat until frothy. low speed, add the beaten egg.

1 cup unsalted butter, 2. Reduce speed to lowMix until fully incorporated. softened medium and slowly sprinkle in Add vanilla, then flour a half 1/2 tsp. salt sugar. cup at a time. Mix until you 1 Tbsp. light corn syrup 3. Return speed to high and have a soft, smooth dough. Do 1/2 cup sugar beat for four to five minutes not over-mix.

1 large egg, beaten until you have a shiny, strong 3. Wrap the dough in plastic 1 tsp. vanilla extract wrap and refrigerate overnight. meringue.

23/4 cups all-purpose flour Remove from the refrigerator 10 to 15 minutes before baking. To assemble: For the apple filling: 1. Preheat oven to 350 de3 large apples grees.

For the apple filling: 1 Tbsp. lemon juice 2. Line a 13-by-9 baking 1. Peel and slice apples into 1/2 cup sugar pan with parchment paper and grease the sides. Flatten short-crust dough evenly inside baking pan. Using a fork, prick it thoroughly. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes until the sides of the pastry are starting to lightly brown.

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Wishing You A Happy New Year 4. Evenly spread apple filling on top of baked dough and top it with meringue. Sprinkle with almonds.

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An innovative Rosh Hashanah dessert

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

7 tips for staying healthy during the Yom Kippur fast

Coming out

Larry Koester/Flickr

By Dr. Tzvi Dwolatzky My Jewish Learning There is a marked difference between the intended feeling of being uncomfortable with not eating or drinking for 25 hours and actually becoming ill as a result of not getting enough liquids and nutrients.

Yom Kippur not only requires emotional preparation, but physical preparation as well. A person can take several important steps before the holiday in order to achieve the best physical condition possible to perform better on Yom Kippur, which this year falls on the evening of Sept. 27.

Here are seven tips to prepare you for an easy fast:

Ask your physician if your health allows you to fast

Many chronic medical conditions, such as high blood pressure, heart disease or arthritis do not usually prevent you from fasting as long as your condition is stable.

This is usually the case for pregnant and nursing mothers as well. Clearly an acute illness accompanied by fever, vomiting or diarrhea will prevent you from fasting. Before going any further, you should check with your doctor whether your health allows you to fast.

Prepare early

At least a week before the fast, you should cut down on the daily amount of coffee and caffeinated beverages.

Also, take it easy with salty foods. Keep away from alcohol

Take it easy before and during the fast

Eat light before the fast, with small amounts of carbs, some protein and fruit like grapes

because it stimulates the loss of body water. The use of artificial sweeteners should also be kept to a minimum.

On the day before the fast, refrain from strenuous physical exercise. Don’t run around too much doing chores — spoil yourself and take it easy. Keep out of the hot sun and spend the day in cool surroundings as much as possible. This is certainly true on the day of the fast as well.

Have a light meal before the fast

When sitting down to the meal before the fast, a light meal is preferable. Eating extra amounts of food does not help to keep you going for 25 hours.

Drink a lot of liquids, Rather, eat small amounts of but don’t overdo it carbohydrates (bread, potato, It is very important to be well rice, pasta), some protein (fish, hydrated before the fast. For at chicken) and fruit (grapes and least two days before the fast, watermelon). Keep spices and make sure to drink adequate salt to a minimum. amounts of fluids. Remember that the healthiest thing to The break-fast meal drink is water. Keep a bottle of Go slow. Eat some carbs and water with you and note how drink some fluids. much you drink — about half a gallon is generally sufficient.

This article was printed with But don’t overdo it. Drinking permission from Rambam too much can wash out essenHealthCare Campus, a 1,000-bed tial salts from your body. academic hospital in Haifa, Israel.

been hurt in the past. But I want to open it.

Continued from Page 24 The High Holy Days remind history of social justice. When it us to forgive others as well as was time to immerse, I recited ourselves. Just as I need to be Mayyim Hayyim’s coming out gentle with myself, my father ceremony. I felt a powerful recdeserves his child to be gentle lamation of both Jewish tradiwith him. Things are not black tion and my identities. and white. My father is not Yet even with the serene mik- an innocent person — he has vah ceremony, something did said some pretty terrible things not feel right. I still felt unadabout my community. But he dressed resentloves me, and he ment toward my Just as I need is learning and Dad brewing in growing and tryto be gentle my chest. I did And just as with myself, my ing. not want to conI am taking this tact him. I did not father deserves season of teshuwant to tell him his child to be vah to learn to about my partner, accept and love gentle with him. myself and my or God forbid have him meet identities, I can this person. acknowledge the harm that he On Yom Kippur itself, I had has caused, but allow him to time to reflect on why exactly grow and change with me. things felt so wrong. I could That’s all I can ask for — and think of a million reasons: trau- it won’t come from a single ma, pain, wanting to see him email. It will come from both walk the walk before I could of us doing the hard work, and know whether to trust him. turning, together.

During the Torah service that morning, the rabbi called anyone for an aliyah up to the Torah who wanted to “expand their heart” this year, and I rose.

The beautiful, empowering part of Jewish tradition is that it is up to me when and how to forgive. It would be perfectly valid for me to want to retreat and harden my heart, as it has

Eat regular meals before the fast

It’s important to get your body into a routine before the fast. Make sure to eat regular meals on the days before the fast.

And don’t skip breakfast, which is probably the most important meal of the day. Keep away from very rich and spicy foods. And eat in moderation.

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PAGE 29

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

Wishing you the blessings of a good year

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

Good health & peace Suzanne & Norman Schneiderman

May the year ahead be blessed with good health & cheer Sue & Don Zulanch & Family Howard, Judy, Daniel, Pamela, Michael, Scott, Ellison, Oliver & Henry Abromowitz, Brent, Jill, Daria, Tzipora, Lyla & Vered Gutmann

Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year

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Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

Steve, Shara, Rachel & Natalie Taylor

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year Warren Wingate Wishing you a new year of health, happiness & peace Beverly Saeks & Family L’Shanah Tovah to Dayton Jewish Observer readers and those who Grew Up Jewish in the Miami Valley, Ohio Sumner “Sonny” & Pam Saeks & Family

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L’Shanah Tovah

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness & peace Paula Gessiness & Jay Holland May good health and happiness always be with you

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PAGE 30

Wishing the Dayton Jewish community a very happy, healthy New Year Cherie Rosenstein Beachwood, OH Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year

Cindy Pretekin & Jeff Froelich

Debbie & Tim Robertson & Family

We wish the Dayton Jewish community a very happy new year

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

May good health and happiness always be with you

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Happy Rosh Hashanah Harvey R. Tuck

Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year Louise Stein

Best wishes for a happy, healthy new year

Ellie & Bob Bernstein

Wishing you a new year of health, happiness and peace

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Best of health and happiness to you in the new year

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THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

JEWISH FAMILY EDUCATION

A heritage of wisdom

edged as the source of wisdom wisdom.

Long before modern psycho- and blessed as the grantor of wisdom. logical studies, the biblical text If wisdom is a Divine gift, it itself revealed a similar threecan’t be taught. And it can’t be level hierarchy of wisdom, learned by imitating God — as according to Canadian biblical we do when aspiring to God’s scholar Robert Scott.

“At one level it is intelligence ethical qualities — since wisdom isn’t an ethical quality, not or shrewdness,” he writes. “At Recent psychological studies the next it is good sense, sound even one of God’s 13 attributes.

God’s wisdom is a creative judgment, and moral underin the U.S. and Canada have quality, a tool used to fashion standing. A third level is the identified three types of wiscapacity to consider profounder the universe, as the Psalmist dom: practical (Ben Franklin), writes, “How manifold are Your problems of human life and philosophical (Socrates), and works, O Lord! In wisdom You destiny.” benevolent (Mother Theresa). have made AmeriResearchers found that them all (Psalm practical wisdom — insight into can rabbi 104:24).”

Kaufmann real-life issues and creativity Thus the Kohler conin addressing them — resogift of human nated most strongly with North densed this wisdom can hierarchy into a American study participants. only be actualsingle concept: This should come as no ized by using it “the mental surprise. From the time of the to know God’s early colonists, Americans have grasp which Creation and observes and been by necessity supremely thereby coming practical, creative, and solution- penetrates into to know God the nature of oriented. and the very things” and Until recently, their wisdom qualities we literature was the Bible, with its the artisticwish to emuTen Commandments for build- like ability to ing a healthy society and prov- masterfully act Detail of King Solomon engraving late.

by Gustave Doré, 1866 Proverbs erbs about accruing knowledge, in response.

He points out that wisdom’s 9:10 teaches, “The beginning mastering discipline, and being of wisdom is fear/awe of the innate, intuitive, and creative industrious.

Lord,” but Jewish wisdom is a Stories about human fallibil- nature suggests it is a Divine lifelong project, declares Rabbi gift rather than a learned skill. ity, tyranny and liberty, and Rami Shapiro.

In the biblical stories of Jothe Covenant at Sinai coupled Endless biblical verses sugseph, Bezalel, and Solomon, as with the Founders’ knowledge well as in Proverbs and Daniel, gest wisdom is acquired by the of history and governments inspired an innovative govern- God is specifically identified as observation of nature and of history as well as through study the source of wisdom. mental design: a constitutional and association with the wise.

So too in the Amidah, the republic.

Pirke Avot adds, “Who is wise?

Popular wisdom appeared in central prayer of the Jewish liturgy, in which God is acknowl- He who learns from everyone Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack, including the familiar adages, “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today, ” and “Beware of little expenses: A small leak will sink a big ship.”

Jack’s estate sale adventure was an exercise in practical wisdom. Knowledge, experience, moral perspective, good sense, creativity, and practicality have been the hallmarks of American

(4:1).” And, one might add, from everything under the sun.

In his Knowledge Doubling Curve concept, 20th-century inventor and futurist Richard Buckminster Fuller noted that before the 1900s, human knowledge doubled approximately every century. Ten years ago it was doubling every 13 months, and was predicted to soon double every 12 hours.

IBM reports that 90 percent of the information in the world today has been created in the last two years. We are bombarded by data, have access to more information, and have accumulated more knowledge than at any time in history. What we lack is wisdom.

“There’s no time or place in this digital age for introspection, learning from or listening to others, or understanding the lessons of the past,” observes conservative faith and foreign policy commentator Alan Dowd.

Worse, we’ve sidelined religion, jettisoned the wise elders, rewritten history, removed the pursuit of wisdom from institutions of higher learning, and removed the wisdom of objectivity from the media — all the institutions that inspired wisdom in the past.

“A culture that devours information while devaluing wisdom — a culture that disregards faith, history, and pillar institutions,” Dowd concludes, will eventually self-destruct.

Our Dual Heritage My father-in-law, Jack Kwiatek of blessed memory, loved to go to estate sales. At one such event he came across a blackened collection of small fluted cups. Nearby was an

Candace R. Kwiatek equally dingy genie bottle. A longtime chemist, Jack had an inkling about what might lie beneath the grime. He wisely purchased the entire collection for a reasonable sum, and with a bit of polish and a lot of effort, it emerged: a hand-etched pure silver set of wine cups and a decanter that we now enjoy each Passover.

Ask a child or an elderly person what wisdom is, and you may get the identical answer, “to know a lot,” researcher Marianna Pogosyan recently discovered.

But knowledge alone, as in information and skills, does not equal wisdom. Nor is wisdom synonymous with intelligence, the ability to understand and apply what has been learned.

Blogger J.W. Barlament quips, “Jeopardy! contestants are knowledgeable. Astrophysicists are intelligent.” But wisdom — described as the intuitive understanding of connections between things, insight, or good judgment that leads to right action — is something altogether different.

Literature to share Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction by Annalee Newitz. An American journalist and author on culture, science, and technology, Annalee Newitz begins this work with a fascinating historical overview of how life has survived multiple mass extinctions to date. She then speculates on how today’s scientific breakthroughs — from cyanobacteria to space elevators and more — will ensure human survival in the next global disaster. This is not a survival manual, but an immensely interesting and eye-opening work of popular science.

Anya and the Dragon by Sofiya Pasternack. Newly named as a Sydney Taylor Award Honor Book winner, this charming adventure tale for middle grades is funny, warm, and woven throughout with intriguing Russian Jewish folklore and cultural traditions. While not an epic worldwide quest, it’s a quick-paced tale of friendship, courage, imagination, funny lines, and just plain fun.

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Arts&Culture

How did Europe’s Jews cope with a 17th-century plague? that it was written by a woman, according to Rachel Greenblatt, a cultural historian specializing in the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe.

By Penny Schwartz, JTA “Glikl provides us with an unparBOSTON — More than 350 years alleled historical source, opening a ago, a plague took a deadly toll on window on the daily life, anxieties, Hamburg, Germany. As the High Holy petty rivalries, and stories of folk wisDays approached, fear and panic set in dom occupying the mental world of a and many of the city’s Jewish families woman who bore 14 children…while fled. partnering with her husband in a busiAmong them were Glikl and ness that grew from Hayyim Hamel, successful Jewtrade in second-hand ish merchants who left with their gemstones run by three young children, including two newlywed teenan 8-week-old daughter. En route agers to international to Hayyim’s parents, they spent money lending, time with relatives in Hanover, exchange of credit, where some locals came to and the margins of suspect their oldest daughter, mercantile court Jew 4-year-old Tsipor, was infected. society,” Greenblatt Despite their assurances that said. she wasn’t ill, Glikl and Hayyim Glikl began writwere forced to banish Tsipor and ing her memoir about her caregivers to another town two years after the and were only allowed to visit death of her husband from a distance. in 1689, initially as a “I will let any good father or way to console hermother judge for themselves how we self through sleepless nights. She was felt,” Glikl would later write in her 44 at the time and had eight unmarried memoir. “My husband, of blessed mem- children living with her along with a ory, stood in a corner, weeping and family business to manage. pleading, while I stood in a corner.”

“She turned to the pen for comfort In the midst of a viral pandemic that and self-therapy,” Greenblatt said. again is separating parents from their Over the course of seven chapters, children, Glikl’s poignant rendering Glikl weaves together her views of livof the family’s ordeal rings chillingly ing a Jewish life, running a household familiar. And English readers can apand managing the family business, all preciate it for themselves thanks to the of it embellished by stories and provfirst new English translation in nearly erbs. Through accounts of her extensive 60 years. travels, readers get a glimpse of how Glikl’s memoir is “fast-paced, enJewish communities responded to hisgrossing, deeply compassionate, and toric events. full of pathos,” said Her intended audience was her Leo Baeck Institute Sylvia Fuks Fried, descendants, to whom she wanted editorial director of to bequeath a sense of their Brandeis University identity and family history. But Press, the publisher of Turniansky has suggested that her Glikl: Memoirs 1691writer’s flair and literary choices 1719. “It’s an example make it clear that she sensed a of Glikl’s remarkable broader audience as well. skills as a writer. It’s In her introduction, Turniansky why it has such staying traces the complex publication hispower and why we are tory of Glikl’s memoir. The origireading it today.” nal handwritten version was not The new translation preserved, but two copies — one — 375 pages, with illusmade by a son and the other by a trations and meticulous Bertha Pappenheim, grandson — were passed down in a descendant of Glikl notes by Israel Prize the family for several generations, Hamel, poses as Glikl winner Chava Turnieventually finding a publisher in in this portrait ansky, a scholar of Yidthe late 19th century. dish literature and professor emerita at Since then, it has been translated into Hebrew University — was decades in German, Hebrew, and several English the making. It is based on Turniansky’s versions. But Greenblatt says those 2006 Hebrew-Yiddish version of the earlier versions were incomplete or memoir, which was originally written presented as biography and history, and in Old Yiddish, the vernacular language were not true to the original text. The among German-speaking Ashkenazi new publication, she said, introduces Jews in the early modern era. readers to Glikl’s authentic voice.

Glikl’s writing is a rare surviving “It’s readable and it’s elegant,” memoir from that period. Even rarer is Greenblatt said.

This 350-year-old memoir offers a glimpse.

THE DAYTON JEWISH OBSERVER • SEPTEMBER 2020

Arts&Culture

New children’s books to brighten the New Year

By Penny Schwartz, JTA BOSTON — Four new engaging books for kids usher in the Jewish New Year at a time when holiday traditions are being upended due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Having to deal with quarantine and perhaps school at home, families can take pleasure turning the pages of these crisp new reads.

This year’s crop features the latest in the popular Sammy Spider series that has delighted kids for years.

and fruits and lots of decorations,” Hillel said happily.

Sammy Spider's First Book of Prayers

Night Lights: A Sukkot Story

Sylvia A. Rouss; illustrated by Katherine Janus Kahn Kar-Ben Publishing; ages 3 to 8 Young kids are introduced to daily prayers like the Shema for going to sleep and to blessings for Shabbat and special occasions. Each blessing, explained in lively rhyming verse from the point of view of the friendly Sammy Spider, is written in Hebrew, transliteration and a simple English translation.

The blessings recited over Shabbat candles, wine, and challah are perfect for Rosh Hashanah, which begins this year on Shabbat. Kids will enjoy spotting Sammy Spider dangling from his web on the brightly colored pages that embellish the book.

Hillel Builds a House

Shoshana Lepon; illustrated by Angeles Ruiz Kar-Ben Publishing; ages 4 to 8 Meet Hillel, an enterprising young boy who loves building houses — in trees and even under the basement stairs. But on Jewish holidays, his inventive houses seem to get in everyone's way.

Finally, as Sukkot approaches, Hillel finds his groove. In his orange overalls, standing on a ladder, Hillel is gleeful as he helps his family build a sukkah, where they will eat their meals for seven days.

“Sukkot means hammers and nails and branches

Barbara Diamond Goldin; illustrated by Amberin Huq Kar-Ben Publishing; ages 4 to 8 At the beginning of Sukkot, a young boy named Daniel and his older sister, Naomi, get ready to camp out overnight in the family sukkah for the first time without their grandpa, who has a cold.

Readers will soon figure out that Daniel is a little anxious. There's no electricity, his sister teases him, so he can't have his night light. He brings his teddy bear, but in the shadows, Daniel imagines scary faces in the squashes that hang as decorations.

As the night grows darker, Naomi realizes she needs a little reassurance too. Looking up through the sukkah’s branches, the siblings see the glow of the star-filled sky and the bright full moon that coincides with Sukkot. Maybe their ancestors did have night lights in the desert, after all.

The sweet story will strike a chord with many kids who fear the dark. A holiday with ancient roots, Sukkot resonates with many issues of the day, Diamond Goldin observed, from its environmental and nature themes to a reminder of the plight of those who live in temporary shelters today, including refugees, a point she makes in her author’s note.

Night Lights was originally published 25 years ago.

The characters of the mother and sister are featured

more prominently in the new shorter refreshed text, Diamond Goldin said. Amberin Huq's new expressive illustrations glow with the golden hues of fall and glisten with the lights of the night.

Worse and Worse on Noah's Ark

Leslie Kimmelman; illustrated by Vivian Mineker Apples & Honey Press; ages 4 to 8 In this upbeat spin on the biblical story of Noah's Ark, award-winning author Leslie Kimmelman infuses a kid-friendly Jewish sense of humor. The story imagines how bad things can get when Noah and his family shelter through the biblical flood in the ark’s crowded quarters along with pairs of all their animal friends. The story of Noah is read aloud from the Torah in the synagogue two weeks after Simchat Torah.

In Worse and Worse, the animals get seasick, peacocks bicker with the zebras, and the skunks make quite a stink. As the troubles amass, Noah’s wife and sons complain, “Could things get any worse?” — a refrain that kids can repeat page after page.

Just when readers think the kvetching will never stop, Noah gets the crew working together to fix a leak that threatens them all. They begin to cooperate and care for each other.

Kids will dive in to Mineker's cartoon-like illustrations of zebras, parrots, growling lions, and sloths hanging upside down. An author's note prompts conversation about empathy.

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PAGE 33

Knesset speech ‘Jewish gravestones are fairer than royal palaces’ — Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin

S

ince the first recorded Jewish burial when Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah, the care of cemeteries has been an essential religious and social responsibility. The Torah records every aspect of Abraham’s negotiation to highlight his devotion to his lifelong mate and to make sure she had a dignified burial place that would be maintained in perpetuity.

Like Abraham, the creation of the Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Dayton has taken steps to ensure the sanctity, care and integrity of our three Jewish cemeteries. With your commitment and participation, families can rest assured that our sacred cemeteries will be preserved for generations to come.

As the High Holidays approach and we prepare for a Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur like none we’ve ever experienced, we may feel a special connection to those who have played a significant role in our lives. Let us set aside time to include them in our thoughts and prayers and may their memory be a blessing in our lives.

May the New Year be filled with peace, happiness and good health.

Continued from Page 10 by name, Friedman indicted that “trying to win” that has caused Israel to have three elections in the last year and a half.

During an 11-minute speech that spanned Jewish history, Friedman exhorted Israelis to consider the lesson of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the moderate leader who led the Jews of Jerusalem to safety and, ultimately, continued existence after the destruction of the Second Temple.

From Friedman’s speech: “Two thousand years have passed since Rabbi Yochanan. We came back to Jerusalem, we built a country. But right now, in the middle of a massive political crisis, we find ourselves once again in a frightening moment.

A terrible plague spreads wildly outside, and inside the same destructive desire to defeat each other, the same blindness, the same cancerous hatred that causes us to spend most of our energy in internal conflict. And again, like then, the reserves of trust are being burnt to the ground. We attack our institutions of government, we endanger in an unimaginably irresponsible way the very existence of this shared home...

“I am suggesting the formation of an alliance of the moderates: with all the forces from all the communities that understand the challenge called living together, to bring back the forces from the extremes that

‘...To bring back the forces from the extremes that ruin everybody’s lives and to build a shared center.’

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ruin everybody’s lives and to build a shared center.

“I speak in a gentle voice, I know, and you can be misled to think that my message is also calling to form a gentle and compromising center.

“But it’s the exact opposite. The center I’m talking about is a principled center, a zealot’s center, that’s not willing to comprise about its “centeredness.” About its responsibility for all of the residents of our country.

About the role that it plays for all those who really want to live together. It puts a limit on self-righteousness, a limit on selfishness. A center that is willing to sacrifice in the name of moderation and democracy, of a Judaism that makes place for others. A center that with its very being protects the rules that allow us to manage our differences without breaking us into pieces.”

Prior to entering politics, Friedman worked as an attorney and previously served as chair of Ne’emanei Torah Va’Avodah, a nonprofit organization in Israel that focuses on education research and policy in the Religious Zionist community.

Now, her speech has launched her to international prominence, much in the same way that former Knesset Member Ruth Calderon did when she used her maiden speech to deliver an impassioned defense of Jewish text study.

Friedman concluded, choked up with emotion, “These are the days of the Third Temple. And exactly like the two that preceded it, it’s fragile. It’s flammable. It cannot be taken for granted. Its stability is our responsibility. Its existence depends on us. This is on our watch.”

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OBITUARIES Sydelle Hamburg Balas passed away Aug. 3 at the age of 94. Mrs. Balas was born March 28, 1926 in Cleveland.

She graduated from Glenville High School (Cleveland) in 1944 and attended The Ohio State University. In 1950, she moved to Dayton.

Mrs. Balas retired from the Dayton Board of Education in 1988.

She was very active with Temple Israel in Dayton, where she taught Hebrew. She and her late husband, Larry Balas, were avid antiquers as well as world travelers.

They also enjoyed bowling and other sports. She will be forever remembered by her sons, Gary (Kay) Opper and Stephen (Sheila Barker) Opper;

granddaughters, Amy (Dawn) Opper-Scoville and Amanda Opper; great-granddaughters, Emily, Morgan, and Riley Opper-Scoville; nephew, George (Mari) Balas (Budapest, Hungary) and many cousins, nieces, nephews, and their families. Mrs. Balas was predeceased by her mother, May Hamburg Lubline; father, David Hamburg; stepfather, Maurice Lubline; husband, Larry Balas; son, David Opper; and former husband, Lincoln Opper. Interment was at Riverview Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice of Dayton or the charity of your choice.

L’Shanah Tovah.

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Emily A. November, age 79 of Englewood, passed away July 22. Mrs. November was born in Cincinnati, the daughter of Joseph and Florence Kaufman Marx. She was preceded in death by her husband, Philip B. November, and her daughter, Linda M. November. Mrs. November is survived by her daughter, Gail A. November of Troy, and son Alan H. (Amy Ringue) November of Ormond Beach, Fla.; grandchildren, Philip A. November, Eleanor November, and Christopher Ringue. Mrs. November loved fashion, going on cruises, and socializing with friends. Interment was at Riverview Cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice of the Miami Valley or a charity of your choice.

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Ohio’s Hospice of Dayton is proud to be accredited by the National Institute for Jewish Hospice

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 • SEPTEMBER 2020

Huber Heights Chapel 5844 Old Troy Pike

324 Wilmington Ave. Dayton 937.256.4490 1.800.653.4490 www.hospiceofdayton.org

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Wishing you a new year of good health and happiness.

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