AI2010_05_20

Jewish Federation annual meeting, May 25

Summer Camp at JCGC announces the J starts June 14 Memorial Day services, Walnut Hills Cemetery tour

CINCINNATI — The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati will hold its 113th Annual Meeting — “From Recovery to Growth” — on Tuesday, May 25, at 7 p.m. at the Mayerson Jewish Community Center.

The keynote speaker will be Doug Moormann, vice president of Economic Development at the Cincinnati USA Chamber of Commerce. Moormann — who traveled to Israel to attend The Jewish Agency for Israel’s (JAFI) B2B conference and Israel’s prestigious Globes Conference— will speak on the topic, “Fostering Local Business Growth Through Israel’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship.”

In his role as vice president of Economic Development, Moormann is responsible for approximately $5.5 million of the Chamber’s $14 + million budget. He leads a team of economic development professionals through the Cincinnati USA Partnership — the regional economic development

Since Summer Camp at the J is open to the public, many local children, ages 18 months through grade 8, can enjoy a unique summer camp experience starting Monday, June 14. The JCC summer camp schedule runs through August 20. There are various sessions: six weeks, three weeks, and one-week camps (all with extended day options), designed to accommodate busy families. Camps for children, ages 18 months – grade 3, are offered June 14 – July 23 as a 6-week session. Kids entering grades 4 – 8 can attend one or two sessions, June 14 – July 2 and July 6 – 23. All campers can participate in a broad range of oneweek specialty camps that run July 26 through Aug. 20.

This year’s weekly camp themes feature: the wild, wild west; spies and detectives; circus; Maccabiah games; and many others. Special guests include visits by the Amberley Village Fire Department, a Hamilton County Park Naturalist, the Israeli Scouts Caravan, and other surprise visitors. There are also all-camp Shabbat celebrations held at the end of each week.

Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati announced today that it will co-host, along with the Greater Cincinnati Board of Rabbis and The American Jewish Archives, a selfguided cemetery tour of its historic Walnut Hills location, on Sunday, May 30, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Participants will be provided with a booklet containing biographies and documents relating to more than 25 distinguished men and women who are buried in the cemetery, ranging from rabbis and scholars to veterans and politicians. A brief memorial service to honor all those buried in the cemetery will be held at 12:30 p.m.

JCGC is also pleased to announce that B’nai B’rith will hold their 67th annual Memorial Day Service at the Judge Robert S. Kraft Memorial Garden in the Covedale Cemetery,

MEETING on page 19

CAMP on page 20

JCGC on page 20

Unusual coalition gov’t leaves British Jews uncertain on policy

by Winston Pickett Jewish Telegraphic Agency LONDON (JTA) — With Britons uncertain of how the country’s first coalition government since World War II will go about governing, the country’s Jewish community appears to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government.

During the campaign, many Jews expressed alarm at Liberal Democratic positions on Israel.

Now party leader Nick Clegg, who last year called for a European arms boycott of Israel, is Britain’s deputy prime minister. And William Hague, the Conservative Party leader who during the 2006 Lebanon war called Israel’s mili-

tary response to Hezbollah’s attack “disproportionate,” is the new foreign minister.

What influence that will have on British foreign policy is, like much about the new government, a political unknown.

The new prime minister, David Cameron of the Conservative Party, has been a strong backer of Israel. It is one of the many issues on which the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have fundamental philosophical differences. Others include how to trim the country’s deficit and bring spending under control.

“With so much on the government’s plate, Israel — along with foreign policy in general — will be put way on the back burner,” said Robin Shepherd, foreign policy director of the Henry Jackson

British Prime Minister David Cameron, right, and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg during their first joint media conference, May 12, 2010.

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CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

DINING OUT

Jews recovering, pitching in following floods in Tennessee

Rolling with not so holy Chasidim

Wise Temple Brotherhood’s 2010 Chicken Soup Cook-Off

Izzy’s traditional sandwiches pack ‘em in at all hours

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Prime Minister’s Office

Society think tank and author of “Beyond the Pale: Europe’s Problem with Israel.”

“Given that both parties in the coalition will be preoccupied with the economy and that the Conservative Party has shown no real interest in the Middle East anyway, the British Foreign Office will find itself in an immensely powerful position to influence the direction of policy,” Shepherd said.

“In other words, the Arabist-oriented bureaucracy is likely to inherit a lot of power by default as top politicians attend to other matters.”

Candidates affiliated with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats said the Jews should not worry.

COALITION on page 20

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010 7 SIVAN, 5770 SHABBAT: FRI 8:31 – SAT 9:31 CINCINNATI, OHIO

VOL. 156 • NO. 43 SINGLE ISSUE PRICE $2.00

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THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

Mercaz graduation includes Nate Kaplan Memorial Award On Sunday, April 25, Mercaz Conservative Hebrew High School held its graduation ceremony.

Deborah Backman and Benjamin Lee were recipients of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s Nate Kaplan Award for outstanding Jewish studies.

In addition, seven graduates received an enriched diploma.

According to Dara Wood of Mercaz, the entire class was outstanding, particularly for attendance.

Deborah Backman is the daughter of Bonita Malit and David Backman and Benjamin Lee is the son of Matthew and Claire Lee. The 19 graduating seniors were from Adath Israel, B’nai Tzedek, Northern Hills and Ohav Shalom.

The ceremony was preceded by dinner and was emceed by Harry Meisner and Andrew Greenfield.

It began with a welcome and

opening blessing from Rabbi George Barnard followed by presentations by the graduates. Some spoke about their experience at Mercaz; some performed music.

Rabbis Irvin Wise and Eric Slaton closed the ceremony.

Said Wood of the graduates, “They proved to us that even with the hectic schedules that they keep that their Jewish education was an essential part of their lives and took priority over other things.”

Sex in the Shtetl: The Eastern European roots of the modern Jewish family Dr. Olga Litvak, the Rabbi Sally J. Priesand Visiting Fellow in Jewish Women’s Studies at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati, will present a lecture on “Sex in the Shtetl: The Eastern European Roots of the Modern Jewish Family” on Wednesday, May 26, at 7 p.m. at Mayerson Hall, located on HUCJIR’s campus.

The view of the Eastern European Jewish family as the bulwark of tradition against the incursions of the modern world is a much-beloved contemporary cliché. This lecture explores the social and cultural beginnings of the modern Jewish family in late imperial Russia, and will revisit classical imaginative treatments of Jewish family life such as

Dr. Litvak is a graduate of Columbia University and specializes in Eastern European and modern Jewish history.

Sholem-aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, Jabotinsky’s The Five and Agnon’s The Bridal Canopy.

Dr. Litvak is a graduate of Columbia University and specializes in Eastern European and modern Jewish history. She has written and lectured on a wide range of subjects related to the study of Russian Jewry, including urban violence, literary and artistic life, war, revolution and migration. Dr. Litvak currently serves as associate professor at Clark University and holds the Michael and Lisa Leffell Chair in Modern Jewish History.

HUC-JIR expresses its appreciation to the Women’s Rabbinic Network for its leadership in creating the Rabbi Sally J. Priesand Visiting Fellow in Jewish Women’s Studies.

Please RSVP for this event.

Jewish American Heritage Month going strong May is nearly over, and Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM) activities are in full swing across the nation. A few national stories are helping to raise awareness about JAHM in a big way.

On April 29, President Obama issued the 2010 presidential proclamation for Jewish American Heritage Month.

On May 5, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the keynote speaker at the ceremonial launch of the Jewish American Heritage Month government Web site held at the Library of Congress.

On May 27, President Obama and the first lady will host the

first-ever White House reception honoring Jewish American Heritage Month.

And today, Jewish astronaut Garrett Reisman carries the original 2006 presidential proclamation declaring May Jewish American Heritage Month to the International Space Station aboard the shuttle Atlantis. When the shuttle returns, Reisman will turn the document over to the National Museum of American Jewish History, where it will be proudly displayed.

The JAHM Web site now boasts more than 80 events and programs in 14 states and the District of Columbia. There is no question that there are many

other celebrations deserving attention. Looking ahead to 2011, we are determined to reach out to as many communities as possible to learn about programs, events and celebrations, and to offer suggestions, educational resources and ideas for promotion and publicity.

There are exciting plans for next year including a national writing contest, a Powerpoint presentation on Jewish American Heritage for use in schools, libraries and other venues, an expanded selection of posters for download, and a broader array of educational resources.

Enjoy the remainder of Jewish American Heritage Month!

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Yom Yerushalayim

Sixth grade Rockwern Academy students

Yom Yerushalayim — Jerusalem Day — is celebrated each year on the 28th day in the Hebrew month of Iyar. This year the seventh and eighth grades were in Jerusalem celebrating with the Israelis while the sixth grade class at Rockwern Academy led a program for grades 1-5.

The program, written by the students themselves, covered more than 3,000 years of history — from the time of Abraham and Jacob, to King David and ending with the emotional reuniting of Jerusalem by Israeli paratroopers in the Six Day War in 1967. The program also included a story told by the eight gates of the Old City. The multimedia celebration was enjoyed by all and Jerusalem Day now has a special meaning for students and teachers alike.

LET THERE BE LIGHT

The oldest English-Jewish weekly in America Founded July 15, 1854

by Isaac M.Wise VOL. 156 • NO. 43 Thursday, May 20, 2010 7 Sivan, 5770 Shabbat begins Fri, 8:31 p.m.

Shabbat ends Sat, 9:31 p.m.

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THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2010

Israel’s ambassador Michael B. Oren to deliver keynote address at Yeshiva University NEW YORK — Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael B. Oren, will deliver the keynote address at Yeshiva University’s (YU) 79th commencement ceremony at The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York City on Wednesday, May 26 at 11 a.m. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman (ID-CT) who was awarded an honorary doctorate from the university in 1989, will deliver the opening invocation and Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, spiritual leader of Cong. Kehilath Jeshurun, a 2008 honorary doctorate recipient, will present the closing benediction.

Each year, YU confers honorary doctorates upon individuals who have exemplified true leadership and philanthropic values. This year, President Richard M. Joel will confer an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree upon Ambassador Oren; Rabbi Moshe Gottesman, a respected Jewish educator will receive an Honorary Doctor of Divinity degree; Alfred Henry Moses, a philanthropist, communal leader and former U.S. ambassador to Romania will receive an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree; and Zygmunt Wilf, who serves on YU’s Board of Trustees and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Board of Overseers and is chairman of the Minnesota Vikings, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. Dr. Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, professor of social medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a renowned researcher, will be awarded the Presidential Medallion in recognition of her groundbreaking work in cardiovascular disease.

“Each individual we are honoring embodies our university’s principles and commitment to Jewish values and to innovative thinking that impacts the greater community,” said President Richard M. Joel. “It is our hope that our graduates will be uplifted and inspired by the magnitude of their accomplishments.”

More than 2,000 graduate students in the fields of law, medicine, social work, education, Jewish studies and psychology, as well as undergraduate students from Yeshiva College, Stern College for Women, and Sy Syms School of Business, will be awarded degrees.

A graduate of Princeton and Columbia, Ambassador Oren was formerly the Lady Davis Fellow of Hebrew University, a Moshe Dayan Fellow at Tel-Aviv University and

Michael B. Oren

the Distinguished Fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale and Georgetown.

Ambassador Oren has written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The New Republic, where he was a contributing editor. His two most recent books, “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present,” were both New York Times bestsellers.

Raised in New Jersey, where he was an activist in Zionist youth movements and a gold medal-winning athlete in the Maccabia Games, Ambassador Oren moved to Israel in the 1970s. He served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, in the paratroopers in the first Lebanon War, a liaison with the U.S. Sixth Fleet during the Gulf War and an IDF spokesman during the second Lebanon War and the Gaza operation in January 2009.

Ambassador Oren acted as an Israeli Emissary to Jewish refuseniks in the Soviet Union, as an advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations and as the government’s director of InterReligious Affairs. He has testified before Congress and briefed the White House on Middle Eastern affairs and has served as Israel’s ambassador since May 2009.

With a passion and commitment to transmit Torah values and educate future generations of Jewish children, Rabbi Moshe Gottesman has been a dedicated Jewish educator for 55 years. He served as dean of the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC) for 16 years with the philosophy that every child deserves a good education. He is the

founder of the Gottesman Learning Center for special needs children and a co-founder of CAHAL (Communities Acting to Heighten Awareness and Learning), a consortium of schools in Nassau County providing classes for developmentally challenged youth.

Ambassador Alfred H. Moses has had a distinguished career in public service spanning more than three decades. An attorney, he served as Special Advisor and Special Counsel to President Carter and in 1994 President Clinton appointed him Ambassador to Romania where he served for three years. In the 1970s, he represented the organized Jewish community in Romania in negotiations with the Ceausescu regime to facilitate the immigration of Romanian Jews to Israel. He has lectured extensively on European and Middle East issues with articles appearing in prestigious publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Jerusalem Post.

Ambassador Moses was elected four times as national president of The American Jewish Committee – the longest serving president in more than three decades.

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Kagan seen as brilliant and affable — and a mystery

by Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — Rabbi David Saperstein runs through a shopping list of superlatives on Elena Kagan — “self-evidently brilliant” and “steady, strategic and tactical” — before acknowledging that he doesn’t have much of a handle on what President Obama’s choice to fill a U.S. Supreme Court seat actually believes.

In the Jewish community Saperstein, the head of the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center, apparently is not alone.

Community reaction to Obama’s selection of Kagan, the U.S. solicitor general, is enthusiastic until officials consider what it is, exactly, she stands for.

Kagan, 50, has never been a judge — she would be the first Supreme Court justice without bench experience since 1974. It’s a biography the White House touts as refreshing, but also has the convenience of lacking a paper trail of opinions that could embarrass a nominee in Senate hearings.

“When someone’s a solicitor

general, it is really difficult to know what is their own position and what is the position of the state they are charged to represent,” Saperstein said.

A similar murkiness haunts how Kagan handles her Jewishness — she has alluded to it, but has not explicitly stated it since her nomination.

Her interlocutors in the Jewish community say Kagan is Jewish savvy, but they are hard pressed to come up with her own beliefs.

The White House strategy going into Senate hearings appears to be blame whatever controversy trails her on her employer, on her client — on anyone but Kagan herself.

The first such controversy to emerge since Obama announced the nomination Monday was Kagan’s defense, as dean of Harvard University’s Law School, of the campus practice of banning military recruitment through the main career office (veterans were allowed to recruit independently) because of the military’s discriminatory hiring policies on gays.

Kagan inherited the policy when she became dean in 2003, but she was not shy about agree-

ing with it. When the Bush administration in 2004 threatened to withdraw funding, she rescinded the ban, but wrote to the student body, according to the authoritative SCOTUS Blog, of “how much I regret making this exception to our anti-discrimination policy. I believe the military’s discriminatory employment policy is deeply wrong — both unwise and unjust. And this wrong tears at the fabric of our own community by denying an opportunity to some of our students that other of our students have.”

Such stirring defenses are absent from White House materials that have emerged on the matter.

Instead, the Obama administration is distributing an Op-Ed that appeared Tuesday in the conservative Wall Street Journal by her predecessor at Harvard Law, Robert Clark.

“As dean, Ms. Kagan basically followed a strategy toward military recruiting that was already in place,” Clark wrote, not mentioning her stated ideological investment in the matter.

KAGAN on page 21

Jews recovering, pitching in following floods in Tennessee

by Kathy Carlson Jewish Telegraphic Agency NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Jewish Observer) — Ruth Klar and Alicia Safdie knew they were lucky, safe and healthy amid the flood’s muddy wreckage. But the little things made them cry.

“My cookbooks are gone,” Klar said in her den at River Plantation, a large townhome condominium community in Bellevue, one of the areas of Nashville hardest hit by the May 1-2 floods. Stains on the wall marked the three feet the floodwaters reached, taking the cookbooks full of favorite Jewish foods.

A few hundred yards away at Safdie’s home, she and Eva Watler took a break from clean-up.

“I used to baby-sit her in this house,” said Watler, tearing up.

A few days earlier, Safdie had broken into tears when she realized she had no shoes; they were gone with the flood. Now she was sounding an optimistic note.

“We’re gonna be OK,” said Safdie, who was rescued, along with her mother and two guests, by boat.

Just a few days after the rains

The Jewish Observer

Flood victims sort through piles of clothing organized by gender and size by volunteers at the Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville.

finally quit, River Plantation offered up an eerie landscape. All types of vehicles lined the streets — visitors’ cars, workers’ trucks, church vans and dirt-crusted cars rendered useless by the flood.

Countless grayish mounds of dusty-smelling debris — sodden drywall, insulation, ruined tables, chairs, couches, books, toys, you name it — took over what used to be grassy front yards. The small

enclosed patios on the back side of the condos looked much the same.

“It was pretty surreal,” Rabbi Kliel Rose of West End Synagogue said. “I don’t know how else to describe it.”

Rose had gone door to door at River Plantation the day before, just talking to residents, Jewish or not.

FLOODS on page 21

First Independent Pictures

Danny Abeckaser, left, and Ari Graynor in “Holy Rollers.”

Rolling with not so holy Chasidim

by Amy Klein Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — Danny A. Abeckaser — or “Danny A.,” as he likes to be called — looks like your typical slick, smooth-talking Sephardic “playa” from Brooklyn.

He’s wearing a dark blue dinner jacket over a white V-neck T-shirt, showing a smidgen of his chest, where a gold chain and a white beaded necklace hang over low riding cross-stitched jeans held up by a leather belt that’s just the right hipster color amber.

With his slicked, gelled jet-black hair and thick uber-nerd-cool blackframed glasses, the 37-year-old night-club owner/actor-cum producer looks significantly different from Jackie Solomon, the sleazy Israeli-American drug lord/party boy he plays in the film “Holy Rollers,” which Abeckaser also conceived and produced in his first foray as a filmmaker.

If this sounds like blatant stereotyping, no worries, because this new, languid, low-budget indie feature revels in them.

The film tells the story of Brooklyn Chasidim who serve as drug mules to transport ecstasy from Europe to New York. The religious family talk is filled with schmaltz, using words like “gelt,” “bubbeleh” and “baruch Hashem,” and the other characters hurl epithets like “schvartze,” “goy” and “Polack,” or say things like “I never heard a Jew complain so much about making money.”

But for Abeckaser, “Holy Rollers” is simply a beautiful story that needed to be told. After he watched a documentary about Interpol and drugs that mentioned

the Chasidic mules, Abeckaser (“I’m not a writer”) hired writer Antonio Macia. They put together a fictional story of Shlomo “Sam” Gold (the convincingly confused Jesse Eisenberg from “Zombieland” and “Adventureland”), who loses his way after a match with a potential wife falls through and is duped into transporting drugs, which at first he thinks is “medicine for rich people.”

As it says at the end of the film, “Holy Rollers” is based on the real crimes of an Israeli drug ring in 1988-89 that was responsible for transporting more than 1 million pills using the Chasidic patsies, who stuff the drugs in their fur streimels and suitcases. (In real life, the Israeli ecstasy cartel continued for many more years, bringing more and more pills, with Chasidic and other mules.)

“I grew up in that community and I thought it was fascinating that people don’t know what it’s like,” Abeckaser told the audience at a screening at Soho House in New York City, which showed the film in conjunction with the Woodstock Film Festival (which will feature “Holy Rollers” and other Jewish films in the fall).

Abeckaser was born in Israel, the sixth of seven children of Moroccan parents who immigrated to America in 1980. He attended yeshiva for sixth and seventh grades, then switched to public school for the rest of junior high and high school.

“Everyone sees that this is a story that could happen to anyone,” Abeckasser says, mentioning Shlomo’s struggle with his family, who throws him out of the house when they find out he is involved ROLLING on page 22

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White House meets with rabbis Study of American Jews making its way to assuage concerns on Israel into Israel

by Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON (JTA) — If you tell the rabbis, they will spread the word.

That was the thinking behind two intimate White House meetings — the second of which took place on May 13 — with a carefully selected slate of 15 rabbis from across the country and representing the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative streams.

Jack Moline, a Conservative rabbi at Congregation Agudas Achim in Alexandria, Va., initiated the meetings after a talk he had with his friend Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, about the Obama administration’s perceived lack of friendliness toward Israel.

The two meetings, the first of which was held last month, were part of a charm offensive after relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments hit a low in early March, when Israel announced a major building start in eastern Jerusalem during a visit to Israel by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. The Obama administration wants Israel to freeze settlement in the West Bank and building in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently annexed.

In recent weeks, several highprofile Jewish communal figures have slammed the Obama administration over the intensity and public nature of its criticisms of Israeli actions on these fronts.

Some of the critics accused the White House of exerting much more pressure on Israel than the Palestinian Authority.

Moline said the rabbis, all of whom attended both of the meetings, were selected because of the high profiles they have in their communities, and because they had concerns about how the Obama administration was conducting Middle East policy — but they had not displayed outright hostility to the president.

“The rabbis who were in this group were chosen because they’re in touch with their different congregations in different parts of the country,” Moline said.

Not all the rabbis came away entirely mollified, but nonetheless they were impressed by the seriousness of the outreach.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg of the Orthodox Boca Raton Synagogue in Florida said he left the meeting still wondering if the administration is on the right track, but still “cautiously optimistic” because of the depth of commitment to

Israel he heard.

“I left with a clear impression that these individuals have a real passion about Israel,” even if he did not agree with them on tactics, Goldberg said. Their interlocutors at the two meetings were high level: Dennis Ross, who runs Obama’s Iran policy; Dan Shapiro, the deputy national security adviser who supervises policy for Israel and its neighbors; Susan Sher, the chief White House liaison to the Jewish community; and Emanuel.

“Among the rabbis there was a diversity of those who support the administration policies and feel the message hasn’t trickled down, and those who have problems with some of the policies,” Goldberg said. “But the universal message was you need to show more love, this is not how you treat family.”

Rabbi Stuart Weinblatt of B’nai Tzedek, a Conservative congregation in suburban Potomac, Md., said he felt it was especially incumbent upon the administration to explain its actions given the misgivings about Obama that had circulated in the Jewish community prior to his election in a rumor campaign driven by e-mail that described him as anti-Israel and sympathetic to Muslims.

“I even mentioned hesitantly the flurry of e-mails prior to the election that were widely circulated in the Jewish community,” he said. “This was one of the reasons there was concern, and this was why the concerns had to be allayed. The potential for that perception is out there already, and the recent actions didn’t contribute to dispelling that approach.”

The rabbis put questions to the group that ranged from the substantive to repetitions of rumors about the president and how he was perceived to have treated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu poorly during a visit to Washington in March.

The White House staffers answered the questions politely and with equanimity, Moline said.

“There was a lot of highlighting of the actual activities and policies of the administration,” Moline said — “and some frustration that” what the Obama administration has done for Israel “has not been comprehensively and accurately reported. They emphasized that whatever the messaging has been over the past year and a half, the policies have been in place.”

The officials emphasized, for instance, the closeness of the defense relationship. On May 13, as the rabbis were meeting with

the staffers, for instance, the Obama administration authorized $205 million on top of the annual $3 billion in defense assistance for Israel to complete its Iron Dome short-range missile defense system.

The administration officials “spent a considerable amount of time emphasizing that the United States is addressing Israel’s security concerns in a manner that [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud] Barak called better than at any previous time,” Moline reported.

The rabbis in attendance — whose congregations ranged from Florida, the Midwest, Las Vegas, the Northeast and the South — seemed receptive and took the message home.

“Our president is every bit as committed to Israel’s safety and security as any previous administration,” Rabbi Aaron Rubinger said in a May 8 Shabbat morning sermon at Congregation Ohev Shalom, a Conservative synagogue in Orlando, Fla. “I do not believe the president is abandoning Israel or has any intention of abandoning Israel.”

Rubinger seemed even more upbeat in an extensive interview with the Heritage Florida Jewish News after the second meeting.

The rabbi said he had gone into the first meeting “with grave concern that even the public perception of too much space between Israel and the U.S. might give a signal to Iran that the U.S. was not as committed to Israel’s security as previous administrations were.”

Now, Rubinger said, he was assuaged.

“We are mending and moving beyond this controversy,” he said.

Rubinger’s fellow Floridian Goldberg said his congregants needed to know more.

Goldberg said some rabbis accepted the White House staffers’ argument that until recently they had not communicated their message effectively.

Others, including Goldberg, thought that put too much weight on the message and not the substance of the policy.

“It’s easy to repeat the phrases ‘unbreakable bond’ and ‘shared values,’” he said. “We want to hear in no uncertain terms that Iran will not be allowed to go nuclear, that it’s great that the proximity talks” between Israel and the Palestinians “have started, but inevitably there will be an impasse, and when that happens, will they only apply pressure on Israel, or have they learned something? My community in Palm Beach County is confused and has questions but is seeking answers.”

by Dina Kraft Jewish Telegraphic Agency TEL AVIV, Israel (JTA) — The Jews of America may be the largest Jewish community in the Diaspora, but that does not mean Israeli schoolchildren learn much about them.

Sixty-two years after Israel’s founding, its school system still largely sticks to the Zionist trope that all Jews should live in Israel and those who do not at the very least should be actively engaged in helping support the Jewish state. In turn, there is scant study of contemporary Jewish life in America.

“The bottom line is that there is very little taught, if there is anything at all,” said Daniel Gross, a Hebrew University graduate student who has researched the topic.

But there is some change afoot.

Signaling the beginning of a shift in direction, 11th- and 12thgraders preparing for the national history matriculation exam this year for the first time were required to study a unit on American Jewry’s contribution to the Jewish people after the Holocaust.

Orna Katz-Atar, a high school history teacher who drew up the new curriculum for the Education Ministry, said that plans are under way to introduce a new unit on Israel and the Diaspora, with a focus on American Jewry, probably by the fall of 2012.

“We are in the process of building the curriculum, gathering material and teaching the teachers,” Katz-Atar said.

At a time when studies show a declining sense of kinship between American Jews and their Israeli counterparts, Israelis’ unfamiliarity with Diaspora Jewry is a subject of some concern in America. This lack of familiarity only exacerbates tensions over divisive IsraelDiaspora issues, such as the debate over who is a Jew. There is a feeling that members of the world’s two largest Jewish populations know less about each other with each passing generation.

Until this year, when and if the subject of American Jewry was taught at all in Israeli schools, it usually was within the context of the great wave of Jewish migration in the 19th century, the life of Jews in America between the world wars and what American Jews did to try to help their brethren during the Holocaust.

Policymakers feared that “showing a successful Diaspora might encourage emigration,” Gross said. “Another problem has

been how the religious schools would teach about Reform or Conservative Judaism, and how the topic might hurt the Zionist agenda.”

A 2005 report by the American Jewish Committee found that only 14 percent of Israeli teachers surveyed said they taught about Reform or Conservative Judaism in their schools in the previous three years.

While Israeli students are beginning now to study more about American Jewry, the focus remains on American Jews’ connection to Israeli history. In preparation for the history matriculation exam, Israeli students are taught about the aid American Jews provided at postwar DP camps, and the role American Jews played in helping lobby the White House to support Israel’s creation.

“I tell my students all the time that we and the American Jews are brothers,” Katz-Atar said. “It’s important that students understand that we did not do everything alone, that the Zionist project was assisted by the entire Jewish world.”

One place where Diaspora studies are taught differently is in Modiin, a rapidly growing city midway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. For the past five years, seventh-graders have been studying a course called “Friends Across the Sea” as part of a pilot program initiated by the Education Ministry, the TALI educational fund and the Jewish Agency for Israel.

In this new curriculum, students learn about the various Jewish religious denominations, the challenges of Jewish continuity and Diaspora concerns over intermarriage. A section on Jewish feminism includes the emergence of female rabbis.

The program’s backers want to bring the curriculum to public schools across Israel — and to translate it into English for study in American Jewish schools and into other languages for other Diaspora communities.

“I think it’s a result of changes in the 1990s, when increasing numbers of Israelis encountered the Jewish American community through organized delegations,” said Varda Rafael, an educator who helped coordinate the project. They “realized we can learn from each other — not copy each other, but inspire one another.”

Gross says the Israeli perception of American Jewry is changing, at least in academic circles.

STUDY on page 22

SOCIAL LIFE

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

WISE TEMPLE BROTHERHOOD’S 2010 CHICKEN SOUP COOK-OFF PHOTOS

CONTINUED ON PAGE

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A N N O U N C E M E N TS BIRTH lan & Bari (Levy) Rubenstein announce the birth of their twins born on Mother’s Day, May 9, 2010.

The Rubenstein twins have a sister Grace, and a brother Justin. Bari & Alan’s new son’s name is Samuel Chase, and their daughter is Alexis Rose.

The grandparents are Susan Levy of Hyde Park, and Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Rubenstein of Northbrook, Ill. The twins’ great-grandmothers are Mrs. Gerald Marco of Northbrook, Ill. and the late Ethel Jane Callner of Cincinnati.

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ABROAD ichael Mills of Adath Israel is among the American Jewish leaders who are traveling to Israel to attend the quadrennial World Zionist Congress in mid-June.

Mills will be participating on behalf of MERCAZ USA, the Zionist organization of the Conservative movement.

Mills has lived in Cincinnati since 1969 and is a retired Procter & Gamble manager.

He is married to Shirley and they have two children. His selection on the MERCAZ USA slate comes in recognition of his volunteer service in the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs.

The 36th World Zionist Congress comes 113 years after Theodore Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist movement, gathered about 200 Jewish leaders from around the world in Basel, Switzerland, to discuss the condition of the Jewish People. The delegates at the meeting decided to create the World Zionist Organization, which led the campaign that

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culminated in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

MERCAZ USA was founded more than 30 years ago. Its mission is to support religious pluralism in Israel and strengthen the connection between Israel and the Diaspora.

ELECTED icah E. Kamrass, a native of Cincinnati, was elected president of The Ohio State University’s Undergraduate Student Government. Election results were announced on Sunday, April 18, 2010 after two days of voting and a twoweek campaign. Kamrass was joined on his election ticket by Brad Pyle as Vice President, and 35 candidates for Student Senate, of whom 31 were elected. After building a strong campaign organization over many months’ time, the “We Are All Buckeyes” campaign team won by a margin of 55% to 41% of those voting in The Ohio State University’s 50,000 undergraduate student body.

Kamrass and Pyle received the second highest number of votes of any candidate in a contested election of undergraduate student government in the history of the school.

Kamrass, who was initiated as president on Sunday, May 2, 2010 begins a one-year term as president of the Undergraduate Student Government, with varied responsibilities of planning, advocacy for students within the campus administration, the Ohio Statehouse, development, and in other relevant areas. The Undergraduate Student Government is responsible for disbursement of nearly a $500,000 annual

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budget in student activities fees. Campaigning on a platform of transparency of operations, greater communication, advocacy and student safety, the Kamrass-Pyle “We Are All Buckeyes” team developed a multi-issue platform which they now hope to implement during their tenure. The newly elected undergraduate student president commented, “We are excited for the opportunity to serve the students of this great university. Ohio State is growing, navigating a changing economy, and transitioning from a quarter to a semester system. We have many areas in which we want to advocate for students during this exciting time of change, and we look forward to it.”

Micah Kamrass, a junior from Cincinnati, is a double major in the Honors Program in Political Science and Economics. He has served in the Undergraduate Student Senate, as the undergraduate representative to The Ohio State University Athletic Council, and a director in undergraduate student government cabinet. In addition, Kamrass has been rush-chairman, and just completed a year-long term as president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, Ohio State’s largest Jewish fraternity.

During that time, the fraternity’s membership nearly doubled and they won several national awards and OSU Greek Life awards. He is a 2007 graduate of Cincinnati’s Sycamore High School, and was involved in choral music there, as well as serving as president of the Reform Jewish movement’s five-state youth Region, NFTY-Ohio Valley. Micah is the son of Renee and Rabbi Lewis Kamrass of Cincinnati.

R E F UA H S H L E M A H Frieda Berger Fraida bat Raizel

Edith Kaffeman Yehudit bat B’racha

Andrea Lavine Chana Sara bat Esther Enya

Rozlyn Bleznick

Roma Kaltman Ruchama bat Perl

Alan Schwartzberg Avraham Pesach ben Mindel

Pepa Kaufman Perel Tova bat Sima Sora

Ravid Sulam Ravid Chaya bat Ayelet

Mina Kamkha Malka bat Baila

Edward Ziv Raphael Eliezer Aharon ben Esther Enya

Rachel Boymel Rochel bat Pesia Fruma Daniel Eliyahu Daniel ben Tikvah Mel Fisher Moshe ben Hinda

Murray Kirschner Chaim Meir ben Basha

12

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

WISE TEMPLE BROTHERHOOD’S 2010 CHICKEN SOUP COOK-OFF

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

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DINING OUT

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Izzy’s traditional sandwiches pack ‘em in at all hours

by Bob Wilhelmy Restaurant Reporter Want to turn the clock back decades? Want to go back before the advent of regimented, cookiecutter fast food sandwiches with all the appeal of a wet bath towel?

You can, you know. Go to Izzy’s! That’s Izzy’s Famous Corned Beef restaurants; nine of them now, scattered all over Greater Cincinnati.

The newest Izzy’s on Redbank Road in Madisonville is a freestanding location, featuring an al fresco dining area (pictured). Go there at lunch and you’ll find a madhouse of activity, but the service is speedy and the food is just plain good.

You’ll find people streaming in and out; a clattery, happy hubbub of diners chomping on sandwiches remarkable in size. They chew on dill pickles sour enough to pucker over; they fork on extra measures of kraut. They simply feast on sandwiches that hark to a time when eateries had personality and character, and eating in them was an experience.

Izzy’s army of sandwich makers and servers hustle to meet the needs of the crowd; marching through orders at double-time speed. They whip out sandwiches and assemble orders at a fever pitch; take-outs and dine-ins.

There is almost always activity at Izzy’s. And why? Because the food is good, the portions are generous, and most of all, I hope, because Izzy’s is a richly old fashioned way to satisfy one’s hunger.

Izzy’s has been doing just that in Cincinnati dating back to 1901, and a key reason is the quality of the food, according to John Geisen, head of what has grown into a local chain of stores since that first delicatessen opened its doors more than a century ago.

“We’re proud of the quality of our corned beef, for instance,” he said. A recent independent test/survey confirmed that quality. For restaurants offering corned beef as a sandwich item, Izzy’s tested 95% lean or better.

A member of the testing organization stated that: “…they (Izzy’s) are the leanest meats we’ve seen tested here (in the Cincinnati market).”

Geisen said the testing confirmed what he knew all along.

“We’re staying with tradition, making the same great corned beef sandwiches that Izzy’s has always been famous for; making the homemade tuna salad and all the rest; the soups and everything.”

“We’re proud of everything we put out there; we look for excellent quality in all areas, from the kraut to the pickles to the baked goods we serve our sandwiches

John Blanton, assistant manager of the Redbank Road Izzy’s store, sits before one of the giant sandwiches that are the signature of this iconic eatery that has been part of the Cincinnati dining scene for more than 100 years.

on,” he added.

Quality, of course, is essential.

But value is equally important in the sandwich and specialty market. Park yourself behind an Izzy’s

corned beef sandwich and you’ll see the value — piled high. It’s the size sandwich you could split with somebody if you wanted to, but more likely, you’ll want to eat the

whole thing yourself. It’s $6.50, and when one compares it to eats at other places, it becomes obvious that there’s a lot of good food for the money in an Izzy’s sandwich. And the beef is solid meat, not beef ground up and extended with fillers and additives that detract from nutritional value and wholesomeness.

When you go to Izzy’s, there are two items on the menu that you may wish to consider, in the event you can pass up a heaping Izzy’s corned beef sandwich. One is the all-beef salami sandwich. It features pesto, red onion and tomato on a sourdough roll, with the ubiquitous potato pancake, for $7.75.

The other is the boneless cod sandwich, which is served on rye.

The sandwich has been dubbed “The Codfather” of all fish sandwiches, and is considered “too good to be called fish.” It’s a 6ounce cut of cod loin, which then is battered with Izzy’s special and secret blend of seasonings. The cod is $7.20, and served only on Friday at most Izzy’s locations.

A variation on the Codfather theme is the Cadillac cod chunks entrée, which features three pieces of beer-battered boneless cod served with Izzy’s creamy cole slaw, for $8. It and the fish and salami sandwiches are served with a potato pancake or your choice of another side.

For a change of pace, try the new trio salad, with homemade chicken, tuna and egg salads, served on a bed of greens with tomatoes and club crackers. It’s $6.75.

And for those office lunch or dinner meetings, Izzy’s offers box lunches, sandwich trays, meat and cheese trays, and a whole lot more. These offerings are ideal for both business meetings and social gatherings.

Izzy’s restaurants operate on different schedules, depending on location. Call for hours of operation.

Izzy’s Famous Corned Beef Deli See location & phone list on opposite page.

DINING OUT

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

15 Dine-In / Take-Out / Delivery

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Mecklenburg Gardens 302 E. University Ave Clifton 221-5353

Ferrari’s Little Italy & Bakery 7677 Goff Terrace Madeira 272-2220

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OPINION

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Abraham H. Miller Guest Columnist Both sides of the anti-Israel divestiture movement were focused on at UC Berkeley on April 29. Proponents of divestiture were making their third attempt to get a resolution passed, this time by trying to override Student Senate President Will Smelko’s veto of an earlier successful effort. Sometime near five in the morning — after a heated, all-night discussion — the veto was sustained. For now, the divestiture movement had lost.

Even so, the divestiture movement showed both tactical and strategic ingenuity, and increasingly, its narrative of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is taking hold on campuses and in liberal churches: Israel’s settlements are the obstacles to peace. Palestinian violence is a reaction, if not a justified reaction, to Israeli settlements. If the settlements were removed, peace would break out tomorrow and two states would live in peace and harmony.

Of course this is unhistorical nonsense, promulgated by people who have interest not in a twostate solution but in finding an excuse to gain access to the public agenda and to oversimplify one of the most difficult conflicts on the planet.

In reality, divestiture is meaningless, and everyone knows it.

Divestiture, boycotts and sanctions against Israel are illegal.

Even the Arab League, which makes a lot of noise about its boycott, neither enforces nor practices it: the PA openly trades with Israel.

The Associated Students of the University of California at Berkeley hold no stock in General Electric, for example, or any of the other American companies that do business in Israel. More than 80 million shares of GE trade daily. If all the proponents of divestiture coordinated their sale of GE stock, they probably could affect the price of the stock for a few hours to a few days, suffer losses, and yield the upside to those on the other side of the trade. More than likely, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, known for his acumen in spotting bargains, would be there on the buying side — GE and Saudi Arabia just announced a major partnership for sustainable economic growth.

Three of the most commanding

spokespersons for divestiture were students from the Jewish group Kesher Enoshi, which repeatedly partners with the virulently antiZionist group Students for Justice in Palestine to produce events designed to delegitimize Israel.

Breaking the Silence is a group of Israeli soldiers that travels the world to speak about alleged Israeli war crimes. Although the accuracy and veracity of the group’s narrative has been challenged, it has been warmly welcomed at Berkeley’s Hillel.

Sponsored by the New Israel Fund, Breaking the Silence’s presentations are jointly publicized by Kesher Enoshi and Students for Justice in Palestine.

A Jewish student who comes to Berkeley finds an environment inside and outside of the classroom where Israel is blamed for the continuing impasse in the Middle East. Fully one-third of the Jewish studies program faculty signed a petition on behalf of the divestiture resolution. The antiZionist Kesher Enoshi is welcome at Berkeley’s Hillel, while the proZionist Tikvah students find Hillel to be a less than embracing environment. They have since moved their meetings to the more orthodox Chabad house.

Although Hillel’s mandate is to support Israel, Kesher Enoshi is still welcome even after some of its most prominent members played a leading role in mobilizing the campus for divestiture. After the failed divestiture vote, Kesher Enoshi members who sponsored the divestiture bill, along with their friends from Students for Justice in Palestine, showed up for Sabbath dinner at Hillel. The proIsraeli students left in disgust.

Edgar Bronfman will tell you in his fundraising letters that Hillel stands on the front lines in the fight to support Israel. But Hillel at Berkeley is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

A constant procession of Israelbashing spokespersons come through this area. Many of these, such as Dalit Baum of New Profile, or the members of Breaking the Silence, are sponsored by the New Israel Fund (NIF). The NIF officially denies that it supports boycotts, divestiture and sanctions, but has no problem supporting groups involved in the behavior: a distinction without a difference.

OPINION on page 22

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Do you have something to say? E-mail your letter to editor@americanisraelite.com

Dear Editor, Let’s see if I got this correctly. Many of us, at this point in time, maybe even most of us, believe Obama is moving us in the wrong direction. Some of us even believe he is a disaster. If it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, and smells like a duck it is probably a duck. Obama gives every indication that he despises the Capitalistic system that has made this nation great. He is following a far left liberal agenda.

Therefore, we believe Obama is a socialist or worse. Now according to Gerald Schwartz and Mrs. Robert Hayes this makes us racists. I have little use for Michael Savage, however, I think he may be on to something when he says Liberalism is a mental disorder. How else to explain associating our dislike for Obama’s policies with racism.

Were these two “unbiased” observers racist when they bad mouthed Condoleezza Rice, as I am sure they did many times?

Hayes even has us as bigots that also attack Muslims and Reform Jews because we recognize that all the terrorist’s attacks in recent years have been made by, what else, Radical Muslims.

We recognize that Radical Muslims are a small fraction of the Muslim population. We are, of course, uncertain where the majority of Muslims stand, they are largely silent. We withhold judgment of them until we know

where they stand. How Reform Jews got into her mix bewilders me. Is she projecting?

Jerome C. Liner Montgomery, OH Dear Editor, The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has invited Israel to become a member of the global organization. The 31 OECD member states also invited Estonia and Slovenia. AJC considers the invitation a recognition of Israel’s economic and technological strengths. Membership will further enhance Israel’s fruitful relations with other nations committed to democracy and market economies.

The official announcement of the new members will occur at the OECD’s annual ministerial council meeting in Paris, May 26-May 28.

Barbara Glueck Director, AJC Cincinnati Dear Editor, It was only a matter of time before my liberal friend, Gerald Schwartz pulled the old “race card” out of his pocket. This is true to form for liberals when they run out of facts. CRY RACISM, as loud as you can in an attempt

to make your adversaries cower in mortal fear. I do not suffer from “White Guilt.” Inferring that I am a racist because I choose to speak my piece is laughable and indicates that I have won the debate.

All across the country, defenders of Obama “the socialist” claim racism if you disagree with any Obama policy and they are unable to factually defend their position. Obama has nationalized the auto industry, banking industry, and now the health care delivery system.

Paul Glassman Deerfield Twp. Dear Editor, Commendations to The American Israelite for running the letters from all four: Paul Glassman, Garret Levy, Gerald Schwartz and Mrs. Robert Hayes, all filled with the vitriol which is reflective of the current state of U.S. politics.

“Unbridled loathing,” “complete lack of objectivity,” “hateful rhetoric” and worse harken back to the days of Moses leading his flock and how he, Aaron and Hashem dealt with discord in beliefs and practices among the traipsing Israelites.

It’s nothing new or unique to U.S. politics in the 21st Century.

Throughout world history, politics LETTERS on page 22

T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: NASO (BAMIDBAR 4:21—7:89) 1. Who were the “sons of Gershon”? a.) Grandchildren of Moshe b.) Family of Levites c.) A non Jewish group that attached themselves to the children of Israel 2. What were their duties? a.) To fight in the army b.) To work in the Mishkan c.) To help any project needed in the community 3. Who was the prince of the “sons of Gershon”? a.) Moshe b.) Aaron in the desert was the same as they supervised when the Mishkan was standing.

3. D 4:28 Itamar the son of Aaron supervised their work. The prince of Gershon was Elyasaf 3:24 4. A 4:49 5. C 7:13

Israel Divestiture Movement at UC Berkeley loses battle, but advances their war

c.) Itamar d.) None of the above 4. Who authorized the census of the Levites? a.) Hashem b.) Moshe c.) The leader of the Levites d.) the children of Israel requested it 5. What type of plate did each prince donate to the dedication of the Mishkan? a.) China (earthenware) b.) Gold c.) Silver d.) Glass Answers 1. B 4:22,46 2. B 4:24-26 Gershon was the first son of Levi. Still Kehot the 2nd son of Levi moved the holiest parts of the Mishkan and Gershon moved parts that were next: like the covers on the Tabernacle and the curtains. The term, “to work and to carry” means, that what they carried

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Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

JEWISH LIFE

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

17

Sedra of the Week

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARASHAT NASO

Love, Dreams and Responsibility So shall you bless the children of Israel: Say to them, ‘May the Lord bless you and keep you; May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; May the Lord lift His face towards (forgive) you and grant you peace.’ And they shall place My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them” (Numbers 6:22-27).

Efrat, Israel — What is the real meaning of love? And why is it that the Priest-Kohanim, the ministers of the Holy Temple and Torah teachers of the nation, must administer their priestly benediction “with love?” What has “love” to do with their specific leadership role?

In our Biblical portion, the Almighty tells Moses to command Aaron (the High Priest-Kohen) and his sons, “… So shall you bless the children of Israel: Say to them, ‘May the Lord bless you and keep you; May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; May the Lord lift His face towards (forgive) you and grant you peace.’ And they shall place My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them” (Numbers 6:22-27).

This priestly benediction was a regular part of the daily Temple service. To this very day, here in Israel, every morning during the repetition of the Amidah, the descendants of Aaron bestow this blessing upon the congregation.

Prior to blessing the congregation, the Priest-Kohanim recite the following benediction; “Blessed are You, O Lord our G-d, King of the Universe, who has sanctified us with the sanctity of Aaron, and commanded us to bestow a blessing upon His nation Israel with love.” What is the significance of these last two words, “with love?”

And if the Priest-Kohen does not feel love in his heart for every member of the congregation, does this disqualify his blessing?

A Midrash asks why the command to bless Israel is prefaced by the words “say to them.” It answers that this teaches that the Cantor, the representative of the congregation who repeats the Amidah for all the congregants, must say each word of the benediction, which is then repeated word by word by the Priest-Kohen

(Midrash Sifrei 6, 143).

Rashi points out that the Hebrew Amor (say) is vocalized with a Kametz, as in Zakhor (Remember the Sabbath day, Remember the day you came out of Egypt). This implies an active form of the verb, as in remembering the Sabbath by our weekly repetition of the Divine primordial week of creation in which we too actively work for six days and creatively rest on the Sabbath, or in our re-experiencing the Egyptian servitude and exodus on the seder night. Apparently, the KohenPriest must “actively” bless. Rashi adds that the Hebrew amor is spelled in the longest and fullest form possible, in order to teach us that the Priest-Kohen “must not bestow his blessing hastily but rather with intense concentration and with a full, loving heart” (Rashi, ad loc). There is even a French, Hassidic interpretation of the word which claims that the Hebrew amor is akin to the French amour, meaning with love!

Our G-d is a G-d of unconditional love, both before and after we sin, thus, the very opening of the Ten Commandments, G-d’s introduction to His Revelation of His laws, is “I am the Lord who took you out of the Land of Egypt, the House of bondage.” The Almighty is telling His nation that by taking them out of difficult straits of Egyptian slavery, He removed our pain thus demonstrating His love for us! It is almost as if he is explaining that His right to command them is based upon His having demonstrated His love for them.

A religious wedding ceremony is fundamentally a ritual acceptance of the mutual responsibilities of husband and wife. The marriage document, or Ketubah, is all about the groom’s financial obligations to his bride. And yet, our Talmudic Sages teach us that the young couple must love each other in order to get married, that the over-arching basis for every wedding ceremony is “You shall love your friend like yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). The nuptial blessings refer to bride and groom as “loving and beloved friends” (B.T. Kidushin, 41a). Our Sages are telling us that there can be no real love without the assumption of responsibility; when I declare my love for you, I must take a certain degree of responsibility for easing your life and sharing your challenges.

The Hassidic Rebbe, Reb Zushia told of how inspired he was by a marvelous conversation he overheard between two drunks at an

NUMBERS 4:21-7:89

inn. “I love you, Igor,” said one drunkard to the other. “You don’t love me,” said his friend. “I do love you,” protested the first. “You don’t love me,” insisted Igor. “How do you know that I don’t love you?” shouted the first in exasperation.

“Because you can’t tell me what hurts me,” answered Igor. “If you can’t tell me what hurts me, you can’t try to make it better. And if you don’t try to make it better, you certainly don’t love me.”

Love and responsibility are inextricably intertwined. Indeed, the very Hebrew word ahavah is based on the Aramaic word for giving. The Kohen-Priest who is a Jewish teacher and a Jewish leader, simultaneously functions as the agent of the Almighty and of the nation. He must take responsibility for his nation, he must attempt to “brand” them with Gd’s name, with G-d’s love, and with G-d’s justice. He must communicate with his nation, symbolized by the cantor or shaliah tzibbur, he must know what hurts his nation and what his nation needs, and then he must actively try to assuage that pain while raising the nation closer to the realm of the Divine. In short, he must love his people and take responsibility for them, as the benediction before the blessing explains so very well!

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Post Script The Sages of the Talmud ordained that at the time of the priestly benediction, the congregation should think of their dreams—individual and corporate —crying out “Master of the Universe, I am yours and my dreams are yours…” The Hebrew word dream, halom, has the same letters as hamal, love, compassion, as well as laham, fight, struggle, wage war. Dreams which continue to engage us when we are awake are dreams of love and passion, such as the return to Zion which was “as in a dream” (Psalms 126:1). Dreams, as loves, are the beginning of responsibility, a responsibility which often means struggle and even war. KohenTeachers must love their studentcongregants and take responsibility for them teaching them likewise to take responsibility for each other and for the dream. Only then will our dreams and G-d’s dreams be one dream: the perfection of the world, Tikkun Olam.

Shabbat Shalom Shlomo Riskin Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone Chief Rabbi — Efrat Israel

3100 LONGMEADOW LANE • CINCINNATI, OH 45236 791-1330 • www.templesholom.net Richard Shapiro, Interim Rabbi Marcy Ziek, President Gerry H. Walter, Rabbi Emeritus May 21 6:00 pm Shabbat Nosh 6:30 pm Shabbat Evening Service

May 22 10:30 am Shabbat Morning Service

Please contact the synagogue for any further information in regards to services for this week and times for next week.

18

JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

Jewz in the Newz

by Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist TIME FOR ELEVEN HEBREWS The May 10 issue of “Time” features their annual list of “the world’s 100 most influential people.” Most of the “100” are not influential in the sense of wielding great power. Rather, the magazine says it has sought out people “whose ideas, innovations, and actions are shaping our world.”

(This list, with brief essays about each person, is also on the Time Web site.)

Eleven Jewish persons are on the list, although only one is identified as Jewish in the issue. I actually enjoyed checking which of the 100 were Jewish — because as I did — I learned more about this very erudite eleven and thought to myself what remarkable conversations they could have if brought together at a dinner party!

“Car czar” RON BLOOM, 55, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) head DOMINQUE STRAUSS-KAHN, 62, are the two Jews among the 25 persons in Time’s “Leaders” category.

Bloom, who was strongly influenced by the Labor Zionist movement, worked as an investment banker before taking a big pay cut to work for the Steelworkers’ union. Time notes that his business/labor experience helped him work with all sides to broker the government rescue of Chrysler and GM. Strauss-Kahn has a similar background: he began as an economics professor and became a leading French Socialist party politician with strong ties to labor.

As France’s economics minister in the late ‘90s, he was able to institute very successful free market reforms because workers trusted him. Earlier this month, he was a key figure in crafting the economic package to “rescue” Greece.

Three Jews are found in Time’s “Artists” category: DAMON LINDELOF, 37, the co-creator and co-writer of ABC’s “Lost”; LEA MICHELE, 25, the star of “Glee,” the hit musical TV series; and fashion designer MARC JACOBS, 47. Time describes Michele as “wise, savvy, beautiful, gifted…and with perfect pitch.”

Jacobs is described as “someone who never follows trends…an intellectual who has an aesthetic like no other.” (Lindelof was born and raised in Teaneck and Michele grew-up in Tenafly).

Five Jews are in Time’s “Thinkers” category: EDNA FOA, 73, an Israeli clinical psychologist who teaches at the Univ. of Pennsylvania and is a leader in the treatment of post traumatic

stress disorder; JARON LANIER, 48, a computer scientist, composer and philosopher who was a pioneer in virtual reality technology; VICTOR PINCHUK, 49, a very powerful Ukrainian businessman whose philanthropies include AIDS awareness programs and Jewish communal institutions; MICHAEL POLLAN, 55, a leading critic of agribusiness and one of the most important champions of a diet based on healthy, unprocessed foods; and JAIME LERNER, 72, a Brazilian Jew whose parents came from Poland.

A trained architect, he transformed the city of Curitiba (pop. 1.5 million) during his time as mayor. He instituted cost-effective land use and mass transportation schemes that are now being copied all over the world.

Finally, in Time’s “Heroes” category there is actor BEN STILLER, 45. Robert DeNiro wrote about Stiller for Time, calling him: “A deeply comic spirit and a deeply kind spirit.” DeNiro described how Stiller has deftly used humor to raise funds for Haiti.

SHREK NOTES The fourth installment of the “Shrek” animated films, “Shrek Forever After: The Final Chapter,” opens on Friday, May 21. As the title implies, this is supposedly the last film in the “Shrek” series. (But don’t be surprised if someday the series is revived via a new sequel.)

It is no surprise that “Forever After” is joining the hot new trend and will be shown in 3-D in theaters equipped to show 3-D films.

The “Shrek” films are based on the 1990 illustrated children’s book “Shrek!” by WILLIAM STEIG (1907-2003). For most of his life, Steig was most famous for the thousands of cartoons he created for The New Yorker magazine.

In the 1960s, he tried his hand at children’s literature and he quickly became an acclaimed and best selling author of books for kids.

The huge success of the “Shrek” films has meant that he is now most associated with a character he created when he was 83. Steig drew on his Yiddish speaking roots when he wrote “Shrek!” The title character is an ogre and his name means “fear” or “terror” in Yiddish. (The Yiddish word is usually spelled “Shreck” when transliterated into English.)

Another major beneficiary of “Shrek” mania is singer/songwriter LEONARD COHEN, 74.

The use of his song, “Hallelujah,” in the first “Shrek” film made the tune very well known. In some places on the web it is referred to as “The Shrek Song.”

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

FROM THE PAGES 100 Years Ago The engagement of Miss Gertrude, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Abe Wise, to Mr. David N. Harteveld, of this city, has been announced.

Mr. Isadore Forst, of Louisville, was in the city last week to visit his son, Leo H., who has just been transferred to the Cincinnati Station of the Government Pure Food Department of Chemistry, in which he is assistant chemist. Mr. Forst, Sr. was recently president of the Louisville City Council.

The monthly meeting of the Young

People’s Jewish Consumptive Relief was held at Whittier Street SabbathSchool, May 17th. President Alexander Landesco presided. Harry J. Levi, president Cincinnati Lodge, B’nai B’rith, gave a short address with a strong and urgent appeal for the needs and good of the cause. Miss Blanche Rosenthal had charge of the following program: Mrs. Bennett, soprano; Miss Elinore Bain, contralto; Mr. Kaufman, baritone, and Miss Cora Kahn, reader. The evening was greatly enjoyed by all present.

The series of closing recitals by members of the class of 1910, Cincinnati School of Expression, was inaugurated last evening at Lyric Hall, when Miss Mannheimer presented her pupils, Miss Norma Seebode, Miss Dorothy Conrey, Miss Anita Lazaron, Miss Marie A. Smith, Miss Grace Fritz, Messrs. McMurphy, Streng and Sussdorf, and Miss Aurelia Huelsman, and Mrs. Minnie Belle Schaffner, pupils of Mr. Alfred Benton, in a most interesting program. — May 19, 1910

75 Years Ago Mrs. Bertha Goldsmith, 76, mother of Emmanuel and Jonas A. Goldsmith, president and treasurer, respectively, of the Goldsmith Stores Company, passed away May 15th, after an illness of one month.

She had been a resident of the Kaufman Hotel, 3725 Reading Road.

Her last days were passed at the home of Emmanuel Goldsmith, 711 Red Bud Avenue.

A native of this city, she was the widow of Louis G. Goldsmith, who

died 17 years ago. She was a member of Rockdale Temple and the Red Cross.

In a piano recital, Wednesday May 29th, at 8:15 p.m. at Baldwin’s, 142 W. Fourth Street, Gertrude Englander will present some of her pupils, as follows: Madeline Stricker, Eileen Sue Schwartz, June Stovenour, Grace Levine, Rita Clair Auer, Elaine Shapoff, Katherine Zimmerman, Evelyn W. Frank and Ruth Griszmer — the latter a pupil of Jessie Straus

Mayer. The public is invited.

Honored by election to A.O.A. national medical fraternity, are: Drs. Ben Felson, Martha Strashun and Felix Ittelman, seniors in the College of Medicine, University of Cincinnati, who will enter their internships at General Hospital in July. Dr. Felson is a brother of Louise Felson Pritz. Dr. Strashun is the son of Dr. and Mrs. Aaron Strashun. Dr. Ittelman is a former resident of New York City. — May 23, 1935

50 Years Ago Mrs. Justin Friedman is chairman of models for the Israel Fashions U.S.A. luncheon and style show, it was announced by Mrs. Robert L. Block, Jr., general chairman. The show, sponsored by the Women’s Division of Bonds for Israel, will take place June 16, at the Netherland Hilton.

Mrs. Friedman is a graduate of the University School and the University of Cincinnati College of Arts and Sciences. At the University she was active in Mummers, a dramatic group.

She is a former member of the board of the council of Jewish Women, is vicechairman of its program committee and has been active in its aid to the visually handicapped project.

James N. Heldman was elected president of the Jewish Vocational Service at its 20th annual meeting, May 18, in the Hotel Sheraton-Gibson.

The organization is financed chiefly by the Jewish Welfare Fund and is an affiliate of the Associated Jewish Agencies. Mr. Heldman succeeds

Robert N. Rosenthal, who served a two-year term. Also elected: Philip T. Cohen, vice president; Reuven J. Katz, vice president; Mrs. Ben Moskowitz, treasurer; Anthony Ach, secretary.

Morris Zafren, 4212 Red Bud Place, passed away Monday, May 9.

He is survived by: a daughter, Mrs. Ellis Rivkin, Cincinnati; two sons, Herbert C., Cincinnati and Frank, Arlington, Va.; two brothers, Jack and Nelech, Montreal, Can.; and eight grandchildren. — May 19, 1960

25 Years Ago Janet M. Makrauer, president and treasure of Amko Plastics was named Ohio’s Small Business Person of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA).

Mrs. Makrauer, co-founder of Amko Plastics, a manufacturer of drawstring and handle specialty plastic bags for retail stores and promotional packaging, was in competition with owners and executives from hundreds of other small companies across Ohio for the designation as

Small Business Person of the Year.

Mrs. Meredith S. LeBlond and Mr. Harlod R. LeBlond, Jr. announce the engagement of their daughter, Meredith, to James J. Friedman, son of Mrs. Justin Friedman and the late Mr. Friedman.

Meredith is the granddaughter of Mrs. Earl Stewart of Portsmouth, Va. and Mrs. Harold R. LeBlond of Cincinnati. James is the grandson of Mr. Samuel Huttenbauer, Sr. and the late Mrs. Huttenbauer and the late Mr.

Isadore Friedman.

Herbert (“Buddy”) Okrent of 10981 Bank Road passed away May 12.

He is survived by: his son, Edgar of St. Petersburg, Fla.; two brothers, Milton and Sam, both of Cincinnati; and several grandchildren.

Mr. Okrent was a member of Ohav Shalom Synagogue, Robert Burns Masonic Lodge, the Scottish Rite of Cincinnati and the Syrian Temple. — May 16, 1985

10 Years Ago Max “Red” Mitman, 91, passed away on May 3, 2000. Born in Lockland, Ohio, he was the husband of the late Hilda Moskowitz Mitman.

He is survived by his children, Rabbi Laslo and Judy Berkowits of Falls Church, Va.; Joan and Jerry Horwitz and Dennis and Susan Mitman of Cincinnati. Surviving grandchildren are: Julie and Peter Pagiolli of Clifton, Va.; Rabbi Alan and Debbie Litwak of Albany, N.Y.; Eileen and Ed Wolf of Redondo Beach, Calif.; David

Horwitz of Cincinnati; Amy Mitman of Boston, Mass.; and Todd Mitman of Atlanta, Ga. Mr. Mitman was the brother of the late Rebecca Brod, Dave Mitman, Mami Bin, Ida Appelblatt and Nathan Mitman.

The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati is proud to announce that the first annual Mesel Wieder Mensch Award will be presented to Rae Leah Levy. The Mensch Award winner will be honored at the 103rd Annual Meeting of the Jewish

Federation on May 23 at Cedar Village. The entire community is invited to honor Levy as part of the awards program.

Rae Levy has been a religious school and Hebrew teacher at Adath Israel for 50 years; she is a special educator with the Norwood City Schools and has been a teacher for Northern Hills Synagogue and Congregation Ohav Shalom. Levy continues her activities as dorm mother for RITSS. — May 18, 2000

CLASSIFIEDS

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc.

(513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Beth Tevilah Mikveh Society (513) 821-6679 Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7226 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 • camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 336-3183 • cedar-village.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Community Center (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org Jewish Community Relations Council (513) 985-1501 Jewish Family Service (513) 469-1188 • jfscinti.org Jewish Federation of Cincinnati (513) 985-1500 • shalomcincy.org Jewish Foundation (513) 792-2715 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 Jewish Vocational Service (513) 985-0515 • jvscinti.org Kesher (513) 766-3348 Plum Street Temple Historic Preservation Fund (513) 793-2556 The Center for Holocaust & Humanity Education (513) 487-3055 • holocaustandhumanity.org Vaad Hoier (513) 731-4671 Workum Summer Intern Program (513) 683-6670 • workum.org CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 335-5812 Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net Congregation Beth Adam (513) 985-0400 • bethadam.org Congregation B’nai Tikvah (513) 759-5356 • bnai-tikvah.org Congregation B’nai Tzedek (513) 984-3393 • bnaitzedek.us Congregation Ohav Shalom

(513) 489-3399 • ohavshalom.org Golf Manor Synagogue (513) 531-6654 • golfmanorsynagogue.org Isaac M. Wise Temple (513) 793-2556 • wisetemple.org Isaac Nathan Congregation (513) 841-9005 Kehilas B’nai Israel (513) 761-0769 Northern Hills Synagogue (513) 931-6038 • nhs-cba.org Rockdale Temple (513) 891-9900 • rockdaletemple.org Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com EDUCATION Chabad Blue Ash (513) 793-5200 • chabadba.com Cincinnati Community Kollel (513) 631-1118 • kollel.shul.net Cincinnati Hebrew Day School (513) 351-7777 • chds.shul.net HUC-JIR (513) 221-1875 • huc.edu JCC Early Childhood School (513) 793-2122 • mayersonjcc.org Mercaz High School (513) 792-5082 x104 • mercazhs.org Reform Jewish High School (513) 469-6406 • crjhs.org Regional Institute Torah & Secular Studies (513) 631-0083 Rockwern Academy (513) 984-3770 • rockwernacademy.org ORGANIZATIONS American Jewish Committee (513) 621-4020 • ajc.org American Friends of Magen David Adom (513) 521-1197 • afmda.org B’nai B’rith (513) 984-1999 Hadassah (513) 821-6157 • cincinnati-hadassah.org Jewish National Fund (513) 794-1300 • jnf.org NA’AMAT (513) 984-3805 • naamat.org National Council of Jewish Women (513) 891-9583 • ncjw.org State of Israel Bonds (513) 793-4440 • israelbonds.com Women’s American ORT (513) 985-1512 • ortamerica.org.org

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MEETING from page 1 initiative directed by the Chamber and designed to grow the regional economy through business attraction, job retention and marketing.

The partnership also works to accelerate growth in the region’s technology-based businesses and promote economic inclusion.

JAFI’s B2B conference was developed to foster reciprocal business connections between Israeli business leaders and those in the U.S. The B2B Conference was chaired this year by P&G Israel’s CEO, Sophie Blum.

Cincinnati was the only U.S. city whose delegation included official trade representation with the Chamber’s delegates — which included both Moormann and Steve Shifman, Chamber board member and Michelman Chemical CEO. As a result of their participation, the Cincinnati USA Chamber of Commerce has made a commitment to create strong multi-dimensional business relationships with Israeli businesses.

The initial goals for the 2010 Trade Mission included: Connecting leaders of Cincinnati’s Life Sciences and IT sectors with their Israeli counterparts.

Connecting Cincinnati entrepreneurs with Israeli venture capitalists and Israeli entrepreneurs with Cincinnati investors.

Highlighting Cincinnati’s specific areas of expertise, like innovative “Branding and Channel to Market.”

“Our participation is an interesting example of how our community, through the Jewish Federation and JCRC, is increasingly partnering with Cincinnati’s premiere civic institutions to enhance the quality of life in our region,” said Shep Englander,

513-531-9600 CEO of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. “The Federation is proud to partner with the Cincinnati USA Chamber of Commerce, as we have this year with the United Way, P&G and Children’s Hospital, to strengthen our region. I thank Beth Guttman and our leadership for encouraging the Federation to pursue these new strategic roles, which will position the Federation and our community for regional leadership in the years ahead.”

Also during the annual meeting, the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati will recognize PNC Bank for its generous support of the 2010 Community Campaign.

Awards will also be presented for outstanding volunteers and professionals.

Honorees include: Rabbi Yuval Kernerman — Harris K. and Alice F. Weston Sr. “Avodah” Award for outstanding Jewish Communal Professionals with 10 or more years of experience in the community.

Lindsey Wade — The Harris K. and Alice F. Weston Jr. “Avodah” Award for outstanding Jewish Communal Professionals with 10 or more years of experience in the community.

Fred Kanter — The Robert V. Goldstein “Volunteer-of-the-Year” Award for volunteer leadership that has made a significant impact on the Jewish Federation and on the Cincinnati Jewish community at large.

For more information, please contact Lisbeth Sperberg.

(The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati brings our community together to care for Jews in Cincinnati, in Israel, and around the world, and develops opportunities for each of us to embrace a Jewish life.)

20

BUSINESS

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Chesley named member of national lead counsel committee in case against Toyota Stanley M. Chesley of the Cincinnati-based law firm of Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley Co., L.P.A. has been appointed by the Honorable James V. Selna as a member of the national Lead Counsel Committee in the Toyota Multi-District Litigation.

“I am both humbled and honored that Judge Selna would entrust our firm with this great responsibility and opportunity to serve the millions of Toyota owners affected by the sudden acceleration problem. It will be a daunting challenge. But the other Court appointees are a dream team of lawyers, and working together I am sure we are up to the task before us.”

Stanley M. Chesley

JCGC from page 1 at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, May 30.

The service is in memory of the Jewish servicemen from the Greater Cincinnati area who made the ultimate sacrifice for our COALITION from page 1 “I don’t think the Jewish community has anything to fear,” said Robert Halfon, a Jew and prominent figure in Conservative Friends of Israel who won a parliamentary seat last week for the Conservatives representing Harlow, north of London.

Matthew Harris, a Liberal Democratic candidate in Hendon who finished third in a race won by the Conservative candidate, said, “I think British Jewry will be pleasantly surprised by this government, and particularly by the quality of the five Lib-Dem Cabinet ministers that will be taking up their posts.

Whether on faith, schools, security and even Israel, I think people will find the Lib-Dems and this coalition to be broadly supportive of Jewish interests.”

For the time being, official Jewish bodies made do with issuing pro forma statements congratulating the new government.

The country’s Jewish umbrella group, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, put out a statement saying it “warmly welcomes the new prime minister, David Cameron, and his coalition Conservative/Liberal Democrat government” and that it “looks forward to a constructive, fruitful working relationship with Mr. Cameron, his Cabinet and his wider team together with a continued, reg-

country.

JCGC is comprised of 22 Jewish cemeteries, almost all of the Jewish cemeteries in Cincinnati and Hamilton, Ohio.

JCGC represents the culmination of over 10 years of community

efforts to address the financial, succession, upkeep and other challenges facing many Jewish communities. Cincinnati is a leader nationally in creating this organizational model to take care of its cemeteries in perpetuity.

ular dialogue with politicians of all parties and key civil servants.”

Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, had no comment.

“As a strategic body, it is not our role to provide a running commentary on a government that has yet to finalize its Cabinet and set out key policies,” he told JTA. Leaders of various Jewish organizations are hoping the candidates’ pledges to the Jewish community, made in interviews with the country’s main Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Chronicle, will hold fast.

Both Clegg and Cameron promised support for security for the community. Clegg pledged to put 3,000 more police officers on the streets, and Cameron backed the funding of security around Jewish institutions, including schools.

Both candidates also said they backed changes to the current “universal jurisdiction” legislation, which allows British magistrates to issue arrest warrants for visiting foreign politicians and military staff.

The law has been used to target Israeli officials and soldiers for alleged war crimes, in some cases scaring away Israeli officials from visiting Britain.

Cameron and Clegg also have spoken out forcefully against antiSemitism.

As news of Britain’s new coalition government sank in, Jews also were trying to assess how the gov-

ernment’s priorities for cutting spending would affect domestic Jewish interests.

“It’s too early to know how a deficit reduction program will impact on funding for state-supported Jewish schools and social services,” said David Seidel, a community organizer in Brighton and a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. “Ditto for the final outcome of the new government’s policies generally, as well as whether the government can remain stable.”

In post-election analyses, it appeared that the Jewish community, like the rest of Britain, swung Conservative in last week’s vote.

In an analysis by the London Jewish Forum of 18 parliamentary constituencies, 40 percent of Jews voted Conservative, 37 percent voted Labor and 19 percent voted Liberal Democrat. That differed only slightly from the London-wide general vote, which went 34 percent Conservative, 37 percent Labor and 22 percent Liberal Democrat.

“This is a shift from a dominant Labor preference in years past and is something that is important to keep in mind on the local level where day-to-day Jewish interests are represented,” said the director of the London Jewish Forum, Alex Goldberg. “When faced with budgetary cutbacks promised by the new coalition government, grass-roots alliances are key.”

CAMP from page 1 In addition to providing a safe summer environment for children, all JCC camps are directed by professional staff who have had years of education and experience working with children. The unit heads, counselors and specialists are carefully screened, and are selected on the basis of their enthusiasm, compassion, experience and skills.

All camp staff participate in a full week of comprehensive staff training. Senior and junior counselors are assigned to each bunk, and directors oversee all activities.

Katie Karmel, JCC camp director, has a bachelor’s and master’s degree in recreation and more than 20 years of experience in recreational and day camp management. Denise Schnur, JCC Early Childhood School director, has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Early Childhood Education. She has more than 20 years of experience in day care and preschool settings, as both a director and an award-winning educational consultant.

Matt Miller, JCC assistant camp director (and nationally certified archery instructor), is also the JCC youth & family coordinator. Previously a teacher at the JCC Early Childhood School and Children’s Hospital, Miller received his degree from the UC College of Education.

Patty Simha, JCC camp program director, is a former teacher at the JCC Early Childhood School and at Rockdale Temple.

With many years of day camp OREN from page 5 Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf is a dedicated philanthropist, attorney, owner of the Minnesota Vikings and a real estate magnate. He serves on the YU Board of Trustees as well as the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Board of Overseers. A trustee of several family foundations, Mr. Wilf’s philanthropy includes supporting major Jewish educational, religious and healthcare concerns. He serves as a board member of the American Society for Yad Vashem, the Rabbinical College of America and as an advisory board member of the New York Law School, Center for Real Estate Studies.

Dr. Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology & Population Health and head of the Division of Epidemiology at YU’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She has been an investigator in groundbreaking clinical trials in hypertension and in cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Smoller was the Principal Investigator in the Women’s Health Initiative, a multi-center study including over 160,000 women.

She escaped the Holocaust with her

management experience, Simha will oversee daily Camp at the J activities and special events.

Mike Creemer is the JCC sports and recreation director and he has more than 20 years of experience in recreation and day camp programming. He is widely known as “Mr. Mike,” and will keep campers active this summer in his role as sports camp director.

Danny Meisterman, JCC youth and teen coordinator, will be the Camp at the J sports specialist.

There will be several new unit heads and specialists at Camp at the J. HUC Rabbinical student and current volunteer teacher in Jerusalem, Marc Kasten, will serve as unit head for the grades 4 – 8 trips camp. Before moving to Cincinnati, Kasten spent several years in Raleigh, N.C. leading youth activities at the Raleigh JCC and synagogues.

JCC Trailblazers camp, for grades K – 3, will be led by unit head Steven Snyderman. In addition to his experience as a JCC camp counselor and project leader at the Kent State Hillel (the largest Jewish campus organization in the world), Snyderman served as a U.S. Peace Corp volunteer in West Africa for the past two years.

Parents who enroll their children in Camp at the J will have an opportunity to meet the staff and their bunkmates on Sunday, June 13 at the Camp at the J “Meet and Greet” Open House, 10 a.m. – noon. There are still a few spaces open for Camp at the J. Contact the JCC or visit their Web site for more information. parents through the efforts of Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara and published a novel about World War II entitled, “Rachel and Aleks,” based on her family’s history.

Founded in 1886, Yeshiva University brings together the heritage of Western civilization and the ancient traditions of Jewish law and life. More than 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students study at YU’s four New York City campuses: the Wilf Campus, Israel Henry Beren Campus, Brookdale Center, and Jack and Pearl Resnick Campus.

YU’s three undergraduate schools –– Yeshiva College, Stern College for Women, and Sy Syms School of Business ––– offer a unique dual program comprised of Jewish studies and liberal arts courses. Its graduate and affiliate schools include Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology, Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, and Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. YU is ranked among the nation’s leading academic research institutions.

NEWS

THURSDAY, MAY 20, 2010

FLOODS from page 6 “The wonderful thing is the way the community is coming together for support,” the rabbi said. “It’s very powerful.”

Rose’s visit was just one example of the Jewish community responding to the flooding.

Jewish Nashville quickly joined together to rebuild waterlogged homes and resettle uprooted families after more than 13 inches of rain pounded Middle Tennessee over two wearying weekend days.

The Jewish community began mobilizing its post-flood relief efforts when Harry Baker, the sports and fitness director at the Gordon Jewish Community Center, fielded a phone call just as rains began slackening a bit. A nearby Red Cross shelter was overflowing, and 140 people needed a place to stay.

“Without hesitation we said, ‘Get them over here,’” Baker said.

Five minutes later, the Red Cross arrived and workers readied the JCC gym and auditorium. In the end, more than 500 individuals slept in the gymnasium on cots provided by the Red Cross. They also were served three meals a day, thanks to the generosity of local restaurants.

In addition to providing shelter to displaced individuals, the JCC operated a relief distribution center for several days, allowing flood victims to come and take items of need, such as food, clothes, toys, books, toiletries, cleaning supplies and much more.

It provided hundreds of individuals with items they needed to begin rebuilding.

Volunteers associated with the JCC staffed the relief center around the clock.

“The place looked like Macy’s — it was filled,” said the JCC’s executive director, Eric Goldstein, who had been out of town when the flooding first hit. Baker guided the first flood-relief efforts.

“I was glad that our Jewish campus was there for the community,” Goldstein said. “I was glad Harry was here to lead the project, and all of the staff pitched in.”

Initial help has reached Nashville quickly, from volunteers and donors. Jewish federations, including ones in San Antonio, Birmingham, Atlanta and southern Arizona, were quick to send food and donations. Day schools and preschools are collecting money, as are federations and congregations nationwide.

Congregations outside Nashville also may send members volunteering to help, said Steve Edelstein, executive director of

the Jewish Federation of Nashville.

“We are assessing needs with [Jewish Family Services] and for now are encouraging donations from Jewish communities across North America,” he said. “The impact will be long term, and we and the general community will need support.”

Nashville resident Fred Zimmerman, chair of the national emergency services committee of the Jewish Federations of North America, said the disaster relief process encompasses three parts: immediate rescue work, resettlement and efforts to boost emotional resilience.

“This is a long-term process,” he said.

The JFNA provided the local Jewish community with consultation, communications and fundraising assistance.

The community’s rabbis visited flood victims; three spent time at the Safdie home. On one visit, Sherith Israel Rabbi Saul Strosberg pulled up Klar’s soaked carpeting with another community member.

The Safdies’ story began at about 9 a.m. on a Sunday when rain crept into the first floor of their home. At first there were jokes about how they always wanted to replace the carpeting anyway, but the wisecracks soon stopped. In two hours, four feet of water inundated the first floor.

Alicia Safdie, her mother, Suzi Safdie, and her visiting cousin and his girlfriend went upstairs and stayed there until someone in a small boat rescued them that afternoon.

“We each packed a little bag,” hers with two favorite stuffed animals and two external hard drives from her computer, Alicia said.

They then climbed out the second-story window and down the side of the house, hanging onto woodwork, and into the boat. By that time the water outside was perhaps six feet high. Broken glass in a large downstairs window marks where the boat hit the house, and dark scuffs on the siding show where the four climbed down.

They threaded their way through newly formed “canals” between the subdivision buildings (“We’re bumping into buildings in the boat,” Alicia said). Once they reached safety in an unflooded part of the subdivision, Alicia’s uncle picked them up and took them in. She’s been keeping friends updated on Facebook.

Nearby, Ruth Klar talked with friends on her cell phone. She had lived in her house since 1986, when that section of River

Plantation was first built and when her late husband, Stanley, retired.

“He wanted to put the key in the door and walk away,” she said.

Klar was able to salvage many family keepsakes — wedding photos, original pastel artwork of her three sons as bar mitzvahs, framed immigration documents from two or three generations ago.

A mezuzah remained affixed to a doorjamb, and her mother’s antique mirror was untouched.

The floodwaters stopped just short of a stenciled family tree that Klar had painted on her kitchen wall. But everything below the water line was pretty much destroyed.

“My freezer out in the storage shed was turned upside down,” she said. Inside were 260 pounds of kosher meat.

And she won’t be able to use the now-soggy boxes of matzah she had put aside to make toffee brittle. Still, she and her son, Arthur, in from Knoxville, slogged through the next steps: a tetanus shot for him, FEMA aid applications for her.

The Safdies followed similar post-flood steps, with Suzi away from home to complete FEMA paperwork.

The bottom line, Alicia Safdie said, is they are here and they are safe. The rest, she added, is “all stuff, though. It can all be replaced.

KAGAN from page 6 Another debate pertains more closely to an issue that divides the Jewish community: federal funding for faith-based initiatives.

Kagan clerked for Thurgood Marshall in the late 1980s, and in a memorandum to the Supreme Court justice, she said there was no place for such funding.

In her Senate hearings last year for the solicitor general post, Kagan outright repudiated the position she had forcefully advanced in 1987.

It was “the dumbest thing I ever read,” she said. “I was a 27-yearold pipsqueak and I was working for an 80-year-old giant in the law and a person who — let us be frank — had very strong jurisprudential and legal views.”

Her defense was convenient — Marshall, of course, is long dead and unable to defend himself — and troubling to Saperstein, whose group joins the majority of Jewish organizations in opposing such funding.

“People aren’t quite sure what to make of that,” he said.

The Orthodox Union’s Washington director, Nathan Diament, on the other hand, knows just what to make of it — hay.

“As strong proponents of the ‘faith-based initiative,’ and appropriate government support for the work of religious organizations, we at the Orthodox Union find Ms. Kagan’s review and revision of her views encouraging,” he wrote on

21

his blog Tuesday.

Saperstein noted that the Religious Action Center — along with other Jewish civil liberties groups, like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee — is preparing questions for Kagan to be submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

RAC is soliciting questions from the public as well.

These groups have welcomed the nomination; the National Council of Jewish Women has endorsed Obama’s choice to replace John Paul Stevens, who is retiring at the age of 90 after serving the Supreme Court for 35 years.

NCJW president, Nancy Ratzan, cited Kagan’s affirmation during her solicitor general confirmation hearings of Roe v. Wade as established law protecting a woman’s right to an abortion, and her defense of federal campaign funding restrictions as solicitor general before the Supreme Court — a case the government lost.

“She gave us clarity as a champion for civil rights,” Ratzan said of Kagan. “We think she’s going to be a stellar justice.”

Other groups say that whatever she argued as solicitor general — or whatever she said in seeking the job representing the U.S. government before the high court — might be seen more as reflecting the will of her boss, Obama, and is not necessarily a sign of how she would function as one of the nine most unfettered deciders in the land.

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OBITUARIES

DEATH NOTICES SPIEVACK, Paula, age 59, died on May 7, 2010; 23 Iyar, 5770.

COHEN, Herbert, age 80, died on May 16, 2010; 3 Sivan, 5770.

STUDY from page 10 “In the past, Israelis would say of American Jewry that they chose not to be with us, but if they want to support us financially or politically that’s great,” he said. “But now there is the sense that maybe there is a need for greater Jewish pluralism in Israel.”

Israelis unhappy with the Orthodox monopoly on religious matters are beginning to look to American Jews for direction, Gross noted.

But among the general Israeli OPINION from page 16 Jewish students who come to Berkeley see a Hillel showcasing NIF-sponsored, Israel-bashing groups. They see fellow Jewish students from Kesher Enoshi supporting Students for Justice in Palestine and working for divestiture. They see one-third of the faculty of Jewish studies signing on to the divestiture petition. They see anti-Israel students like Avital Aboody recruiting LETTERS from page 16 is politics. Caesar did not massacre his victims and he was not assassinated because the Roman Senate was a house of fair-minded debate, filled with “objectivity.”

Of most concern, however, is the weakness of the Schwartz and Hayes arguments with accusation that all who disdain Obama do so because of his skin color. Hogwash. My position and that which a growing volume of increasingly “objective” Jews are now recognizing is just because a candidate is a Democrat does not mean he or she is good for our country, now or in the future, let alone “good for” or “a friend of” Jews or Israel. In the plea for “objectivity,” the first respondent should be the President of the United

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

in drugs. Shlomo cuts off his (fake-looking) sidecurls, removes his big black yarmulke and other black garb, and looks like, well, like Jesse Eisenberg.

Shlomo, now Sammy, is drawn

into the world of clubbing, Shabbat breaking and women (the inevitable blond hottie, played by Ari Graynor) — although he doesn’t fall as far as his friend Yosef (Justin Bartha from “The Hangover”), a real shyster who begins to take drugs and skim

money off the top from his boss, Jackie Solomon.

Why did Abeckaser give himself the role of the dim-witted Israeli boss, the third lead?

“I didn’t think I could pull off the Chasid thing,” Abeckaser says with the right accent because he’s

fluent in Hebrew.

“But I knew so many guys like Jackie, I’ve been around them.

Growing up Israeli, it’s not a hard character for me,” he says.

Besides, Abeckaser shrugs, “I always like to be the bad ass and not the good guy.”

population, most Israelis seem to have little or no concept about the lives of their American Jewish counterparts.

Yisrael Wolman, in a scouring Op-Ed last month in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot, mocked his fellow Israelis for being apathetic about American Jews.

“The American Jewish leadership is aging and is frightened by surveys of assimilation and low birth rates and is putting most energies into strengthening its own community,” Wolman wrote, “but this does not mean a parallel blind identification

with Israel. The tragedy is that for the average Israeli, it is as interesting as last year’s snowfall. Tens of thousands of Israelis fly to America each year to have a great time in Times Square, gamble in Las Vegas or hang out in Disney World. How many of them have visited a single Jewish institution or have met with American Jews of their own age?”

Rabbi Ed Rettig, acting director of the American Jewish Committee in Israel, says that American Jews do almost as bad a job of educating their children about Israel as Israel does in educating their youth about

American Jews.

“We in Israel, by not learning how American Jews think, lose in our capacity to engage in deep dialogue with them,” he said. Israelis pay for this ignorance, he noted.

“These are the same people from which we are asking for passionate advocacy within the American Jewish system, people whose own children we are sometimes disallowing as Jews. We are smacking around the people who love us most.”

Shlomi Ravid, co-director of the Jewish Peoplehood Hub, a start-up

that seeks to be a clearinghouse for peoplehood issues, says there is one key question.

“Are we a people who has a state, or a state that has a people?” he asked. “I would say for most Israelis it’s all about Israel, and the Jewish people are supposed to be a source of personnel, support and funding. There is a loss of a sense that the real client here is the Jewish people, and the state is a very important expression of the agenda of the people, but it’s not the soul.

That Jewish life matters and is important everywhere it exists.”

in Hillel and ending up with an NIF social justice fellowship in Israel.

They see the pro-Zionist activists go to the San Francisco Israeli consulate to warn about the divestiture movement and get met with indifference. They take courses in social sciences and humanities where the Palestinian narrative dominates.

They see the pro-Zionist students marginalized in numerous ways.

So what happens to these students? Some, like Avital Aboody,

actively move to the other side.

Others find the conflict not worthy of their time and energy, which is why the divestiture movement is so powerful despite the large number of nominally Jewish students on campus.

The divestiture movement lost the vote on campus, but it has won a more important victory than a symbolic vote for a policy that no one will implement. Through a mixture of Jewish apathy and leftist-Jewish

support for the Palestinian cause, the divestiture movement has further promoted the legitimacy of the Palestinian narrative, and the movement is actively siphoning off much of the Zionist future.

The movement is using the Jewish community resources at Hillel to do it, as a clueless Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman looks on.

It remains to be seen if the larger Jewish community will now awaken to the danger that confronts it.

But judging from past performance, Jewish organizations will continue to be mired in internecine conflict and denial, as the divestiture movement continues to strengthen and ultimately to achieve the symbolic victory it seeks.

States, then the Speaker of the House, then the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Why should voters be expected to behave with higher standards of intellectual integrity than the self-anointed “leaders” who win elections but not respect?

The history of The American Israelite, which I grew up reading every week, has proved to establish a foundation for journalistic courage by sharing sharp opinions as a tool for making people think, research and get involved. If anything, it deserves increased subscription and circulation, not cancellations.

As our growing number of Jewish non-liberals is apt to work for and say these days, “Next year in Washington.”

Dear Editor,

strong supporter of Jewish interests incidentally, requested a similar favor from RAC. RAC-URJ along with the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis, which also participated in the conference call) may jeopardize our synagogues’ tax-exempt status by violating the doctrine of separation of church and state.

Specifically, RAC-URJ, without disclosing their intentions to those who are required to fund their lobbying through dues leveled involuntarily on all Reform congregants, promoted a partisan poltical agenda through our religious institutions with the consent of many rabbis. Do not doubt that RACURJ plans to continue this process in the future, putting ultra-liberal political & social action goals ahead of Jewish concerns.

American Jewish interests are not best served by uncritical alignment with one political party or one ideology; President Obama’s recent intemperate attitude toward Israel attests to that. A far higher percentage of conservatives & Republican individuals (75%) and congressmen (95%) than liberals and Democratic individuals (50%) and congressmen (60%) support a strong Israel. Even the ultra-liberal president of URJ has recently stated that the first Jewish priority is a secure Israel above even social action. A more even-handed approach to American policy-mak-

ers would be far more beneficial for Jewish interests; recent polls suggest that American Jews are finally becoming dissatisfied with our treatment at the hands of liberals and the Democratic party which have taken us for granted far too long.

Our rabbis and lay leaders, both here and in Washington D.C., must reach out to all rather than a specific political faction. Our Jewish future depends on this. We must not be coerced by those with political, not specifically Jewish, agendas; write RAC and URJ; tell this lobbying group (really a political action committee) that their interference in our religious services and outright collaberation with certain political groups to the exclusion of others can’t be tolerated. If you do not agree with the approach they are using, withhold your dues to URJ until they make contributions to RAC voluntary; finally, bring your concerns to your rabbis and lay leaders.

If our rabbis and others wish to discuss political and social issues, they can easily arrange meetings for interested individuals to voluntarily attend and not co-opt religious services for these political activities.

Do not allow this injustice to continue!

ROLLING from page 10

George A. Makrauer The Villages, Florida

The unveiling of the monument for

Rae Leah Levy will be held Sunday, May 30, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. Rabbi Hanan Balk will be officiating. It will be held at the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Cemetery 2111 Anderson Ferry Road.

Family and friends are welcome.

During Rosh Hashonah/Yom Kippur last year, we Jews attending services across the nation were blindsided by our liberal rabbis who secretly had on August 18th a conference call with President Obama. This meeting was confirmed by myself both online and by discussions with local rabbis who were in attendance.

Nationwide, 1,100 rabbis heard him ask them to speak from the pulpit in support of health care reform. Therefore, in place of hearing about important Jewish issues such as our declining population, alienation among young Jews, antiZionism, anti-Semitism and Israel’s vulnerability, we were asked to support a partisan political agenda.

This manipulation by the Obama administration and our trusted rabbis was organized by the ultra-liberal Religious Action Committee of the Union of Reform Judaism (RAC-URJ); this lobbying group is independently funded yet receives money from each of us through our dues to URJ. In the past, Jewish groups interact with governmental agencies; however, RAC’s willingness to promote an obviously political goal takes the traditional interactions to new and unacceptable levels; imagine how RAC (to which most of us involuntarily belong) would have responded had our previous president, a

(Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science and a former head of the Intelligence Studies Section of the International Studies Association.)

John Feibel West Chester, Ohio

BOYMEL’S ADOPTED

By Rabbi Yisroel Mangel Sam and Rachel Boymel, both Holocaust survivors, have made a career out of supporting youth- and education-related initiatives that ensure Jewish continuity and which symbolically compensate for the childhood taken from them by the Shoah.

Rachel and Sam Boymel have made an impact on thousands of lives both worldwide and locally, whether as a successful entrepreneur or philanthropist, earning the respect of international leaders for his business acumen and his drive for Jewish education, building up State of Israel Bonds, or simply helping others who have experienced suffering.

displayed, a picture of the Boymel’s at the Yad LaBanim building. To give you an idea of their influence, when the Mayor Mr. Jacky Sabag heard that I was from Cincinnati and that I was in Naharia on a ‘fact-finding’ mission about the Boymel’s, he interrupted his busy schedule - meetings, phone calls, and emails - and invited me in to his office for a few minutes, just so he could share his appreciation and admiration for the Boymel’s.

Mr. Sabag explained that the Boymel’s’ relationship with Naharia goes back to the early 80s. They first established a scholarship fund for the city’s poor, so the children could get an education. During the Lebanon War, Naharia was showered with missiles.

In the midst of it all, the Mayor tells

While Boymel arrived in Cincinnati with just $7 in his pocket, he has today amassed a plethora of business and philanthropic concerns built on caring. He is the proud chairman of a network of state-of-the-art senior adult health care facilities that gives elders quality lives and top-notch staff, reacting to his personal Holocaust suffering with strength and granting to others the life and love taken away from so many by the Nazis in his youth. "G-d was good to me," he says. "The more you give; G-d gives you a lot more."

As young Sam and his family were being rounded up by the Nazis Sam’s mother told him "run, my son run! Don’t look back but always remember from where you came” Boymel remembers.

Someone once said we truly appreciate what we have only when seen through someone else’s eyes. That saying surely applies to the Boymels. Oh, we in Cincinnati think we know them. Who here has not been a recipient, directly or indirectly, of their generosity? What institution has not benefited from their kindness?

Their name is synonymous with tzedekah, and all of us in Cincinnati have benefited from their presence.

I thought I knew, to some degree, the extent of the Boymel's contributions. I knew, of course, that they donated elsewhere, that their civic and charitable involvement extended across the country, around the globe. I knew that Israel had a special place in their hearts, and in Israel itself they had “adopted” the city of Naharia.

But I wasn’t prepared for what I discovered on my recent trip to Israel. I made it a point, of course, to visit Naharia. Before I went, I called my friend and colleague, Rabbi Butman, director of Chabad Naharia. I explained I wanted to see, first-hand, the charitable work of the Boymel’s; honestly, I wasn’t sure how familiar Rabbi Butman was with their work.

His response promptly educated me: with a laugh he said of course he knew the Boymel’s. Everyone in Naharia knows the Boymel’s. The Boymel’s are like the father and mother of Naharia.

When I arrived I saw what he meant.

Entering City Hall, I saw, prominently

me, his phone rang - Sam was on the line asking what he could do to help.

“It was the concern of a real friend, the love of parents,” the Mayor said, his voice reflecting that stressful time, and the sense of relief and support he got just from hearing Sam on the other end.

Almost as an afterthought, the Mayor told me that a large check soon arrived, which went a long way in helping those stuck in shelters and, when it became safe, helping to begin the rebuilding process. I got the sense from the Mayor that no one in Naharia felt alone or abandoned, knowing Sam and Rachel were thinking about them, had taken a personal responsibility for them.

I was really surprised by what happened next. The Mayor asked his assistant to drive me around the city, to show me how first-hand their impact on the city. Our first stop was a busy intersection named, appropriately, Boymel Square. Dedicated in their honor, it daily reminds citizens of what Naharia owes the Boymel’s.

Next we went to Bet Yad LaBanim.

This multi-use facility fulfills a dream of both the city of Naharia and the Boymel’s. The city had long wanted a center that would serve the needs of many constituencies within the city.

The Boymel’s wanted to build a place that would be more than a memorial; they wanted to build something that would enable the past to generate the future. And so was born Bet Yad

CITY OF

LaBanim - literally, the House of the Hand to the Builders. How appropriate, for that’s what the Boymel’s did, literally, give a hand to the builders of Israel’s future.

There are tennis courts on the grounds of Yad LaBanim. The Boymel’s had them built. There’s a library at Yad LaBanim, dedicated by Rachel in honor of her brother, Yosel Czerkiewicz, another Holocaust survivor who was killed on the road between Eilat and Jerusalem, fighting for Israel’s independence. The library has a wealth of books on a variety of subjects, ranging from military treatises to literature to sforim, or sacred texts such as the Talmud, the Code of Jewish Law, etc. Yad LaBanim also houses a two hundred seat auditorium, used for cultural events such as lectures and concerts. There’s a park for the children to play and the adults to relax and walking trails for everyone.

The memorial chamber has a special feature: stone plates in which are carved the names of the brave soldiers who fell in all of Israel’s wars. In short, Yad LaBanim is not only an “ultimate” gift; it’s a testament to Jewish survival and a promise of a Jewish future.

My visit can be best summed up in the words of the Mayor: “The Boymel’s may live in Cincinnati, but their heart and love is felt so deeply by all of us in Naharia.” And when he described how the people of Naharia felt about the Boymel’s, he used words any one of us in Cincinnati might have used: The Boymel’s do all this kindness with a Jewish warm heart, with joy. They never make us feel that that we are recipients of kindness; rather, it is their privilege, their pleasure. The Boymel’s exemplify true Jewish living.

For the Boymel’s, it seems, the words of the song “My heart is in the east” is not just a song, but a reality. I always knew of their generosity and charity, of course, but seeing what they have done for Naharia, how much of their souls they have poured into that one city in Israel - that is a side of the Boymel’s we weren’t aware of, back home.

All I can say in conclusion is, we are truly blessed to have such generous people in our community. Thank you, Rachel and Sam, for not only making Cincinnati your home, but for making Cincinnati a home for Judaism.

The Boymel’s are longstanding supporters of the Chabad Jewish Center and major benefactors of the soon-bebuilt Boymel Education Center. The expansion of the Chabad Jewish Center will accommodate Chabad’s expanding educational facilities, community as well as social programming needs.

Sam Boymel's benevolent support of Israel has garnered him numerous honors, including the Gates of Jerusalem Medal, the Heritage Award, the Israel Peace Prize and a citation by the Disabled Veterans of Israel. He has also been inducted into the Prime Minister's Club and President's Club, and has received the Israel Appreciation Award for his Holocaust remembrance efforts.

(Center) The library plaque honoring Yosel Czerkiewicz, (Rachel Boymel’s brother) an inspiration and true hero of Israel; (Top-Bottom) Picture of the Boymel’s in Naharia’s Mayer Jacky Sabag office with Rabbi Yisroel Mangel; Putting the finishing touches on expansion of the Boymel Naharia Community Center; Beautiful Boymel Square in Downtown - Center City Naharia; Entrance to the innovative and beautiful Yad LaBanim Community Campus; Rabbi Yisroel Mangel at the entrance to the Yad LaBanim multi-purpose auditorium

NAHARIA