Northern Hills Synagogue Deborah E. Lipstadt speaks at JCRC annual meeting to commemorate 50th on Jewish identity anniversary Fifty years ago, a group of young Jewish families who had moved into the Finneytown section of Springfield Township began meeting for social and religious activities. They formed the Northern Hills Jewish Couples Club, which became the Northern Hills Jewish Community. To better meet their needs they formed a synagogue, holding their first service on July 8, 1960 at the Keystone Savings and Loan building. From this service grew what is today known as Northern Hills Synagogue - Congregation B’nai Avraham. As part of a year of celebration, a special commemorative service will be held on Friday evening, June 25 at 6 p.m., followed by Shabbat dinner.
As part of the service and program, congregants who joined in the early days and members of multi-generational families will speak about their experiences and recollections. The Northern Hills Synagogue choir will participate in the service. The 50th anniversary celebration will conclude with a scholar-in-residence weekend Nov. 19-21, featuring Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. Rabbi Artson is one of the leading scholars in the Conservative movement, and one of its most sought after speakers. NHS on page 20
CINCINNATI — Before a crowd of over 200 people gathered at the Mayerson JCC for the 2010 JCRC annual meeting on June 8, Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt— acclaimed author and the Dorot Associate Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta— addressed the issues of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism as factors in Jewish identity. Dr. Lipstadt— a historical consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum— began by revealing to the audience that she herself had experienced a kind of turning point in her own feelings about the question of Jewish identity and how it is tied to anti-Semitic and anti-Israel senti-
ments, and she made an articulate case for how the Jewish community could respond in a more strategic way to these challenges. Lipstadt was chosen by the JCRC for her ability to provide a 360-degree view of the issues associated with her keynote topic. As an organization whose mission is dedicated to protecting Jewish security, outgoing JCRC president Arna Poupko Fisher believed it would be necessary to hear from a bona fide expert – not just on the threats from antiSemitism and anti-Israelism alone, but also about how addressing those challenges makes us grow and evolve as a people. LIPSTADT on page 20
Visiting the family of the Hamas terrorist who tried to kill my wife by David E.H. Gershon Jewish Telegraphic Agency PITTSBURGH, Pa. (JTA) — What should I buy for the children of the Hamas terrorist who tried to kill my wife? I’m sorry, some context is needed. Let me explain. In the summer of 2002 Hamas, targeting both Israelis and Americans, struck a cafeteria at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The blast, triggered by an innocuous-looking backpack, threw my wife, Jamie, across the bloodstreaked linoleum floor and killed the two friends with whom she was sitting. Years later, after returning to the United States, I embarked on a psychological journey that led to
eastern Jerusalem and the childhood home of the terrorist who set everything in motion. Not out of revenge. Out of desperation. It was never my intention to become a reconciler, to become one of those victims intent on meeting with the perpetrator. In truth, after the bombing — as Jamie was tortured by doctors treating the burns that covered portions of her body — I refused to face what had occurred at Hebrew University. In my mind it remained passive and impersonal, as though it was the inevitable consequence of some larger political struggle. It was safer that way. “Nobody tried to kill her,” I thought to myself. “It just happened.”
David E.H. Gershon, whose wife was injured in a 2002 bombing, visited the bomber’s family in eastern Jerusalem in a quest for closure and understanding.
This is the thought to which I clung as we rebuilt our lives in the United States, lives full of therapy sessions and mangled recollections. None of which allowed me to move on, to move beyond what had occurred. I was a mess. Then, one evening, while digging through archived news clips, engaged in a desperate attempt to overcome the terrorist attack by understanding it fully, I learned his name: Mohammad Odeh. And suddenly he was human, this murderer. And then I found something strange in an Associated Press article on Odeh’s capture by Israeli police in 2002: Odeh told investigators he was sorry for what he had done since so many people died in the university attack. Upon reading, I thought, “This is
a misquote, a typo.” Hamas terrorists are not remorseful. They are not sorry. They are programmed to hate. They are robotic, marching, guns raised in the air, faces wrapped by folds of dark cotton, chanting their drone-like mantras: Death to Israel. Death to the Zionists. May the martyrs be praised. And I knew one thing: I needed to learn if this was true, if Odeh had indeed expressed remorse. So this is the story: Five years after the bombing, I found myself slack-jawed in a Jerusalem Toys “R” Us looking at plastic squirt guns and Hebrew-talking Elmo figures thinking, “What do I buy for the children of the man who tried to kill my wife?”
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CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE
DINING OUT
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VISITING on page 19
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