AI2010_10_28

Rabbi Terlinchamp Big Brothers/Big Community to be installed at Sisters celebrates welcomes opening Temple Sholom 100th anniversary of new mikveh Temple Sholom invites the Cincinnati community to participate in a gala weekend celebrating Rabbi Miriam Terlinchamp’s formal installation, which will be held during a special Shabbat service on Friday, Nov. 12 at 7 p.m.

As part of its outreach effort, Temple Sholom will also stream this service live on its website.

Rabbi Terlinchamp joined Temple Sholom on July 1 after being ordained in

Rabbi Miriam Terlinchamp

TERLINCHAMP on page 19

Big Brothers/Big Sisters Association, the oldest Big Brother program in the area and a charter member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, celebrates its 100th anniversary on Nov. 17 at the Mayerson Jewish Community Center.

The celebration begins with a 6 p.m. reception followed by the program and dessert. The evening will be filled with fond memories, old friends, great food and entertainment.

Dietary laws are observed.

“Founded as a Jewish Agency in 1910, Big Brothers/Big Sisters Association has been serving the needs of our children for 100 years. The anniversary celebration will be a wonderful way to celebrate the agency’s rich history and the many relationships forged over the years,” said Jennifer Adut, executive director.

Honorary event chairs are Zell Schulman, Hank Schneider and Betty Goldberg—all longtime supporters of the agency.

Sally Korkin and Gerry Korkin are chairing the event.

By Nicole Simon Assistant Editor On Oct. 24, the community celebrated the official opening of the Cincinnati Community Mikveh on Section Road in Amberley Village. A large crowd attended, including a number of members of the mikveh’s all female board of directors, to welcome the long-awaited replacement of the mikveh in Roselawn. The facility is available to the entire Jewish community.

Haviva Randolph, president of the Mikveh Society, opened the ceremony, noting the obstacles that were overcome during the six years it took to turn the mikveh from a dream into reality.

Yehudis Klafter, the Mikveh Society’s past president, pointed out how wonderful it was now having “a beautiful, MIKVEH on page 20

Do Jews not give in recession? Jewish Where the Jews rank on the Philanthropy 400 charities do poorly in annual list

By Jacob Berkman Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — While economists say the recession ended more than a year ago, you wouldn’t know it to look at Jewish nonprofits.

In an annual list released Monday by The Chronicle of Philanthropy of the top 400 nonprofits in the United States, fund raising at the country’s largest Jewish charities had declined by an average of 18.5 percent in 2009 — nearly twice as much as the list as a whole, which showed a fundraising decline of 10 percent.

CHARITIES on page 22

Courtesy of Deborah Camiel

As the recession ends, will mega-donors like Sheldon Adelson re-up their Jewish giving?

NEW YORK (JTA) — These are the Jewish organizations that made it to the Chronicle’s Philanthropy 400, with their ranking on the list, fundraising totals for 2009 and percentage increase or decrease from 2008 to 2009: • 45. Jewish Federations of North America $320,252,000 (-19.6%) • 74. American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee $223,971,020 (-8.5%) • 117. UJA-Federation of New York $159,684,000 (-10.1%) • 135. Jewish Communal Fund (New York) $142,872,382 (-52.3%) • 147. JUF-Jewish Federations of Chicago $133,494,791 (-15.1%) • 176. Yeshiva University

$111,124,401 (-39.2%) • 227. Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston $84,954,290 (-21.1%) • 243. Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America $78,841,469 (-7.9%) • 244. Brandeis University (Waltham, Mass.) $78,172,000 (-12.6%) • 264. Birthright Israel Foundation $71,369,840 (+46.8%) • 269. American Friends of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology $69,012,794 (+1.8) • 271. Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles $68,575,000 (-23.0%) RANK on page 19

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010 20 CHESHVAN, 5771 CINCINNATI, OHIO LIGHT CANDLES AT 6:24 SHABBAT ENDS 7:23 VOL. 157 • NO. 14 $2.00

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Unifying factor in 2010 election: Never before

Hitler exhibit opens in Berlin, with Jewish applause

Cedar Village Eight Over Eighty Honorees

Diners are guests of honor at Oriental Wok

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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

Vocolot, Hirschhorn perform at Adath Israel

Andi Levenson, Shana Levy, Linda Hirschhorn, Julia Bordenaro, Liz Stuart, Rabbi Wise, Alex and Aaron Levenson, Mitch Cohen

By LeeAnne Galioto Assistant Editor Adath Israel hosted Cantor Linda Hirschhorn, Vocolot and a community chorus this past week.

Hirschhorn and the chorus led Kabbalat Shabbat services. On Sunday, Vocolot joined Hirschhorn and the community chorus for a concert that was free and open to the public. Both events were held at

Adath Israel’s sanctuary and about 200 people attended the concert.

Vocolot performed a stunning set of pieces written and arranged mostly by Hirschhorn herself.

Performing a cappella, the women sang a variety of styles, including folk, jazz and cantorial music, and texts were sung in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Arabic and Ladino. It was clear that the members of Vocolot (Hirschhorn, Julia

Bordenaro, Shana Levy and Liz Stuart) have sung together for a long time. Their harmonies were tight and the transitions seamless.

They performed as a true ensemble and communicated well with each other and with the audience.

Hirschhorn was in town beginning the week before the Friday night services and she worked for many hours with the community chorus. The chorus also sang a capella, and Hirschhorn composed all the pieces. During the week of workshops Hirschhorn helped teach her songs and molded the group from individual singers to a cohesive and blended choir.

At the Friday night services, the chorus performed “Maariv Aravim,” which was the first time it was ever sung during a service and only the second time Hirschhorn had heard it performed since she wrote it. This weekend was also the premiere of her song, “Mi Chamocha.”

The 24 members of the chorus represented Adath Israel, Northern Hills Synagogue, Beth Adam and other congregations. An additional seven people attended the workshops without singing at the concert or services.

Hirschhorn and Vocolot was the first program sponsored by the new Michael M. Levenson Music fund.

Education programs at NHS Northern Hills SynagogueCongregation B’nai Avraham presents a stimulating schedule of adult education programs for the coming year. Classes include Talmud study, Siddur Hebrew, literature study, a monthly HaZak program and Friday night events.

The year commenced with a Friday night Shabbat dinner on Oct. 22 featuring Eastern European cuisine. Shabbat dinners featuring Yemeni and Greek cuisine are planned for later in the year. The Friday night events will host a variety of speakers and will take place every other month.

On Sunday, Oct. 31, from 1 to 3 p.m., Northern Hills will sponsor an outing to the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education. This will include a tour of the acclaimed Mapping Our Tears exhibit.

The highlight of the year will be a scholar-in-residence weekend, Nov. 19–21, featuring Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson. The week-

end is part of the congregation’s 50th anniversary celebration.

Rabbi Artson is Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles and one of the most sought after speakers in the Conservative movement.

Artson will discuss a wide variety of topics, including what he has learned about Judaism and life through his son’s autism and performing conversions to Judaism in Uganda. On Nov. 21 Artson will lead a special session for 5th, 6th and 7th graders at the Kehilla School for Creative Jewish Education, the joint religious school Northern Hills operates with Congregation Ohav Shalom.

A special Jan. 9 program will feature a showing of the movie “The Tribe,” a film about Jewish identity in America, followed by an interactive discussion and study session about Jewish identity.

NHS on page 19

NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING OF MEMBERS To: Members of Big Brothers/Big Sisters Association of Cincinnati A special meeting of Members of BIG BROTHERS/ BIG SISTERS ASSOCIATION OF CINCINNATI (“Association”) is hereby called by the President under the authority of Section 1702.42 of the Ohio Revised Code.

The meeting shall be held at the offices of Mayerson Jewish Community Center, 8485 Ridge Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236, on November 17, 2010 at 6:00 o’clock p.m. The nature of the business to be transacted is to vote on the proposed merger of the Association with and into Jewish Family Service of the Cincinnati Area.

To attend the special meeting, please call Jennifer at 761-3200.

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DIVE party at Newport Aquarium

By Nicole Simon Assistant Editor This past Saturday, young Jewish professionals gathered in northern Kentucky for one of the largest get-to-togethers assembled by the Access group. On Oct. 23, the Newport Aquarium housed DIVE—In the Deep—party, for Jewish people aged 21-35.

The meeting was made as a place where at least 215 (mostly) Jewish young people—some students, and others in the local workforce—could relax and meet and greet inside the Aquarium’s unique ambience offered by the Jellyfish

Gallery and the Shark tunnel. The crowd enjoyed catching up with friends and meeting people they had seen at other social gatherings while glowing jellyfish floated by in the gallery and the sharks and rays swam overhead in the tunnel.

In addition, there was dancing in the Theatre room, which also offered an extensive window into the aquarium’s sea life, and if one wanted to get even closer, there was a petting station where the guests could touch starfish and a Horseshoe Crab, a creature reputed to be older than the dinosaurs.

“I loved the In the Deep party —not only was it a great way to

have fun with my friends, but having the party at the Aquarium, one of my favorite places in Cincinnati, was really cool,” noted DIVE participant, Andrea Nadel.

“It was a great mix of casual and formal, and it felt like ‘Night at the Museum’ but with fish, which was awesome.”

In addition to a raffle, contributions were collected for the WAVE Foundation—an organization that rescues Gulf of Mexico sea life affected by last summer’s oil spill.

For some, this being their first event, the hope was that the large crowd would have offered a more welcoming atmosphere. “I thought

it would be easier to meet people,” noted Deborah Miller. In the end, there were enough friendly people and former classmates who swayed her and others to return to upcoming events.

“I thought it was a great party,” noted Jonas Kirk-Bowman. “I really like the innovation and inspiration that’s coming from the organizers to come up with these events.”

“I thought DIVE was the event of the year!” thought student, Ari Boxman. “Getting to meet up with friends, see incredible sea creatures and dance all night was fantastic! I hope this becomes an annual event!”

Rockdale’s Mitzvah Palooza III on Nov. 14 As the great recession rolls on, many in our community are still down–or going down–from the historic collapse of our economy.

Worse, the victims of the recession are not alone. Sharing their plight are those who are always in need; the elderly, the ill, the disabled and those for whom poverty is a way of life. All of these people need help.

It is for them that Rockdale Temple is throwing a huge party, a palooza, to channel participants’ collective desire to make the world better into a day of mitzvot.

Mitzvah Palooza III will be held Sunday, Nov. 14.

In broad outline, the day begins

at 9:30 a.m. with a light breakfast at Rockdale Temple followed by a social action fair from 10 a.m. until lunch at noon. Then from 1 until 4 p.m., mitzvot will be performed in the community through a number of specific projects.

More specifically, the social action fair offers two clusters of sessions, each one an hour long. In the first cluster, from 10 - 11 a.m., there is a presentation from the Interfaith Hospitality Network—an organization that works with the homeless—which runs concurrent with a presentation by three guest speakers on eating for better health and a better environment.

Then from 11 to noon, one session discusses the matter of immigration from a Jewish perspective and the other, running at the same time, considers the prospect of something unexpected happening to a loved one.

There is a great need for nonperishable food, and all participants are asked to donate some.

Donations of books for children and adolescents are also encouraged.

For those who can knit, there is a knitting circle at the temple that will produce lap blankets for the ill and baby hats for newborns.

Meanwhile, other volunteers can join a crew that will beautify the

Rockdale grounds.

The artists in the community are urged to consider a group who will make Shabbat cards for Jewish Hospital patients, while the clerically talented can help address and send wallet-size crisis cards.

Projects at sites other than Rockdale include: bingo at Cedar Village in Mason, sorting donations at “Crayons to Computers” in Bond Hill and assisting the disabled at Halom House in Blue Ash. For more information on this event, or other mitzvah opportunities for year-round giving, call Rockdale Temple or go to their website.

Global Day of Jewish Learning events On Sunday, Nov. 7, over 300 Jewish communities across six continents will unite in celebration of Global Day of Jewish Learning, the first worldwide, trans-denominational and nondenominational event devoted to Jewish learning. On this special day, Jews will come together to celebrate their shared heritage through events and programs inspired by the Talmud.

In honor of this communityfocused world-wide event, the Mayerson Jewish Community Center will offer a broad array of free “Global Day” programs for all ages on Nov. 7. A special Talmud completion ceremony will be broadcast live from Jerusalem as well.

At 10:30 a.m., the JCC and Jewish Family Service will host a program presented by PJ Library featuring entertaining stories, music, and activities for families with children, ages 5 and younger.

This includes play-time in the JCC’s new “PJ Patch,” an indoor playground located next to the J Café.

At 1 p.m., Rabbi Matthew Kraus, director of undergraduate studies and the UC Department of Judaic Studies, will present his keynote address, “How to

Understand Torah in the TwentyFirst Century: Translating the Talmud from Rashi to Steinsaltz.”

Following this presentation, the Mayerson JCC will air a live broadcast at 2 p.m. of renowned Israeli scholar, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, as he completes his 45-year quest to translate the Talmud, one of the central Jewish texts for almost 2,000 years.

The date for the Global Day of Jewish Learning was chosen to coincide with Steinsaltz’s completion of his modern translation and commentary on the Talmud, a monumental task he began in 1965 at age 27.

Steinsaltz’s Talmud is used around the world. Rabbinical students at Cincinnati’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) utilize this Talmud translation as a reference for their daily course study and in congregational student teaching sessions.

“Rabbi Steinsaltz’s Talmud commentary and translation is a truly historic achievement, which is why so many Jewish communities from every corner of the world are excited to be involved,” said Ilan Kaufthal, Global Day chair.

Also on Nov. 7, the JCC will offer several free Jewish learning work-

shops for adults and teens (ages 13+). At 2:30 p.m., attendees can choose to attend one of four sessions.

Options include: “Antisemitism in the 21st Century: Actual Threats or Unfounded Rhetoric” (Dr. Michael G. Rapp, executive director emeritus of JCRC and faculty member at the UC Department of Judaic Studies and Xavier University); “Playing Hide and Seek with God in His Orchard: Ancient and Modern Mystical Quests” (Rabbi Haim O. Rechnitzer, PhD, associate professor of Jewish thought at HUC-JIR); “Power and Leadership: The Jewish Striving toward Fairness, Inclusion and a New Social Order” (Arna Poupko Fisher, faculty member at the UC Department of Judaic Studies and the Wexner Heritage Foundation); and “ShalOM Yoga: Combining the wisdom of Judaism with the discipline of yoga” (Lori Reidel, registered yoga teacher).

A second set of four workshops are available at the JCC at 3:30 p.m.

These options include: “Jewish Women Salons: Changing the Self, Changing History” (Gila Safran Naveh, Ph.D., department head at UC Department of Judaic Studies, and The Jewish Foundation of

Cincinnati Chair); “Love & Sexuality: What Judaism has to Say” (Chris Kraus, JD, MTS, and visiting professor of Jewish education at HUC-JIR); “Myths, Monsters, and Minstrels: the Mystery of Jewish Music Revealed” (Cantor Yvon F. Shore, director of liturgical arts & music at HUC-JIR); and “Taking A Stand: Leadership Amid Controversy in Community Relations” (Brian Jaffee, director of JCRC).

For more information or to make a reservation for Global Day of Jewish Learning at the Mayerson JCC, contact Rabbi Shena Potter Jaffee at the JCC. This world-wide event is celebrated locally in partnership with the Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson JCC on the Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati Campus, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, University of Cincinnati-Department of Judaic Studies, Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, Florence Melton Adult Mini School, Adath Israel Congregation, Congregation B’Nai Tzedek, Congregation Beth Israel, Northern Hills Synagogue, Congregation Ohav Shalom, Rockdale Temple, Temple Sholom, Valley Temple and Wise Temple.

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by Isaac M.Wise VOL. 157 • NO. 14 Thursday, October 28, 2010 20 Cheshvan, 5771 Shabbat begins Fri, 6:24 p.m.

Shabbat ends Sat, 7:23 p.m.

THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE CO., PUBLISHERS 18 WEST NINTH STREET, SUITE 2 CINCINNATI, OHIO 45202-2037 PHONE: (513) 621-3145 FAX: (513) 621-3744 publisher@americanisraelite.com editor@americanisraelite.com articles@americanisraelite.com production@americanisraelite.com HENRY C. SEGAL Editor & Publisher 1930-1985 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher BARBARA L. MORGENSTERN Senior Writer LEEANNE GALIOTO NICOLE SIMON Assistant Editors ALEXIA KADISH Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor STEPHANIE DAVIS-NOVAK Fashion Editor MARILYN GALE Dining Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM RABBI A. JAMES RUDIN RABBI AVI SHAFRAN Contributing Writers LEV LOKSHIN JANE KARLSBERG Staff Photographers PATTY YOUKILIS Advertising Sales JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager ALLISON CHANDLER Office Manager

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JLI to offer Medicine and Morals course The Goldstein Family Learning Academy will present Medicine and Morals: Your Jewish Guide Through Life’s Tough Decisions. The six-session course from the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute will start during the week of Nov. 8.

Do you know anyone who’s been in the hospital with a serious ailment? Or perhaps you’ve had a relative who required advanced medical care? One of the most challenging things is making tough medical decisions.

There are so many conflicting issues and motives in modern medicine: Cost of care vs. life expectancy; procedure risks vs. the quality of life desired for the patient – oftentimes the hospital and medical staff are at odds with each other!

Rabbi Yisroel Mangel of the Chabad Jewish Center will conduct the six course sessions. Three time options will be offered: Thursdays, 9:30–11 a.m., beginning on Nov. 11, or Mondays

7:30-9 p.m., beginning on Nov. 15, both at the Chabad Jewish Center, and on Thursdays a lunchtime special from noon to 1 p.m. at Wood and Laming LLP, in downtown Cincinnati beginning on Nov. 11.

The six lessons will include Choosing Life: The Obligation to Seek Healing; Flesh of My Flesh: Organ Transplants in Jewish Law; Rolling the Dice: Risky and Experimental Treatments; New Beginnings: The Ethics of Reproductive Technologies; With You In Mind: Ethical Treatment of the Mentally Disabled; Secret Code: Genetics and the Ethics of Patient Confidentiality.

“As medicine advances and life expectancy increases, almost all of us will encounter an ethical dilemma in dealing with our own health or that of a loved one,” said Rabbi Yisroel Mangel. “But Jewish law creatively draws analogies with ancient paradigms to provide guidance through the maze of

medical decision-making.”

Each lesson is packed with lively discussion on relevant medical ethics issues. Students will look at contemporary case studies and compare secular and Jewish approaches to dealing with the issues. Students will walk away with a profound appreciation of how Torah’s age-old teachings hold deep insight into the most modern of medical dilemmas.

Plus, this course is accredited to offer both CME and CLE professional credits for medical or legal professionals.

Like all JLI programs, Medicine and Morals: Your Jewish Guide Through Life’s Tough Decisions is designed to appeal to people at all levels of Jewish knowledge, including those without any prior experience or background in Jewish learning. All JLI courses are open to the public, and attendees need not be affiliated with a particular synagogue, temple, or other house of worship.

The American Israelite is currently seeking a

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HUC receives scholarship grant During a 135th anniversary gala event on Oct. 24, Hebrew Union College president, David Ellenson, announced that the Society for Classical Reform Judaism (SCRJ) has awarded a five-year grant in the amount of $500,000 to the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. This grant is given with the support of the Edward and Wilhelmina Ackerman Foundation and will support rabbinical students on the Cincinnati campus with scholarships, prize essay awards, a Student Travel Fund and an annual SCRJ Institute.

“We are grateful to the Society for Classical Reform Judaism and the Ackerman Foundation for their generous commitment to sustaining HUC-JIR’s pluralism and openness to all views,” said Rabbi Kenneth Ehrlich, dean of HUCJIR’s Cincinnati campus.

Rabbi Howard A. Berman, SCRJ executive director, will deliver a presentation to the Senior Seminar course on the Cincinnati campus, and will meet with all interested students on the Cincinnati, Los Angeles and New York campuses as part of the grant. Classical Reform Judaism, its history, thought and liturgical expressions, will be included in core and elective courses in the Rabbinical School on the Cincinnati campus and the School of Sacred Music on the New York campus and in campus co-curricu-

lar activities and programs.

Rabbinical and cantorial students will be provided with resource materials, including the Union Prayer Book – Sinai Edition, books, journals, liturgical and musical materials, including the classics of Reform thought and liturgy in specially produced reprints of out-of-print titles.

Rabbi Berman noted, “Since its founding in 2008, the Society has been committed to the building of a collegial relationship with HUCJIR in order to sustain the historic principles and worship traditions of Classical Reform Judaism as core values in its teaching and practice.

The SCRJ affirms the broad inclusive, universal ideals of the Classical Reform tradition, which have a unique role to play in reaching a new generation of younger Jews today, including the increasing numbers of interfaith families within the Reform Movement. We are very excited to have this opportunity to share our vision with a new generation of rabbis, and to support them in rediscovering and reaffirming the heritage we all share as Reform Jews.”

Over the past two years, HUCJIR has invited the SCRJ to meet with students at the Cincinnati and New York campuses and to participate in the annual Senior Seminar with rabbinical and cantorial students completing their studies and approaching ordination/investiture. This past year, the SCRJ ini-

tiated its scholarship program in Cincinnati through awards to five students for their reflective essays on their understandings and connection to Classical Reform Judaism.

You can also send your resume to publisher@americanisraelite.com

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Trick or treat: Seeking a sign from Houdini

By Edmon J. Rodman Jewish Telegraphic Agency LOS ANGELES (JTA) — On Halloween, the anniversary of his death, Harry Houdini will be back on stage.

The Jewish Museum in New York is opening a new exhibition, “Houdini: Art and Magic,” on Oct. 29, and curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport says the entrance gallery will feature a replica stage projecting a life-size image of the great Jewish magician performing his water torture act.

It’s a new way to keep alive the memory of Houdini, joining an annual seance that seeks to contact the daring escape artist and a graveside ceremony for a man who was called “The World’s Handcuff King and Prison Breaker” and the “Justly World-Famous Self-Liberator.”

Born Ehrich Weiss in Budapest, Hungary, in 1874, Houdini was the son of a rabbi who immigrated with his family to Wisconsin in 1878.

“Coming to America, Houdini’s family faced a lot of the same issues that other Jewish immigrants faced, including anti-Semitism,” said Rapaport.

“I never was ashamed to acknowledge that I was a Jew, and never will be,” Houdini is quoted as writing to a friend in the show’s sepia-toned and well-documented catalog.

According to the exhibition

wall text written by Rapaport, his escapes “had particular resonance for those who sought liberation from political, ethnic, or religious persecution.”

Generally considered among the most famous magicians ever, Houdini died on Oct. 31, 1926, probably as a result of appendicitis compounded by a blow to the stomach.

“He really was involved with the new media of this time. He was a savvy marketer,” said Rapaport while taking a short break from installing the more than 160 objects, including advertising posters and broadsides that Houdini used to promote his shows.

Also on display will be works by artists influenced by Houdini and magic apparatus he made famous: handcuffs, shackles, a straitjacket, a milk can and a packing trunk, as well as a re-creation of the famous Water Torture Cell.

Included, too, are everyday objects like those used in the East India Needle Threading Trick, where Houdini would swallow needles and thread before slowly pulling the line from his mouth with the needles threaded on it.

As for Oct. 31, Rapaport doesn’t expect anything unusual to happen.

“You’ll be the first one to know,” the curator quipped.

The Jewish Museum also will be presenting a panel discussion titled “Conjuring Houdini in the

Popular Imagination.” Dorothy Dietrich, a magician who has appeared on stage and TV, will be among the panelists.

Dietrich’s Houdini-related expectations for Oct. 31? She’ll be waiting for a sign.

“At 1:26 p.m., the time when Houdini died, a group will sit around a table and join hands,” said Dietrich, who will function as the medium at a seance run by the Harry Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pa., where she is codirector.

At the given moment, Dietrich will begin the seance by saying, “Houdini, if you are here, give us a sign.”

“Houdini said that if he can’t escape from the other side, then no one can,” said Dietrich, who is known for having duplicated many of Houdini’s famous escapes.

In recounting the history of the Houdini seance, Scranton museum co-director Dick Brookz explains that for 10 years after Houdini’s death, the magician’s wife, Bess, would hold a seance on Oct. 31.

Once she stopped, the tradition was passed on to others.

“Houdini spent his life debunking charlatans, exposing them on a regular basis,” Brookz said.

Ever fearful that frauds would take advantage of his death, untimely or otherwise, Houdini provided his wife with a code to authenticate his return.

Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections

It’s not a mikveh: Houdini being lowered upside down into the Water Torture Cell, c. 1913.

“The code was based on ‘Rosabelle Believe,’” Brookz related. “It was the name of a popular song of the time.”

The museum’s seance will be open to the public for a fee.

“People can also try and contact Houdini that day, and e-mail us with a report,” Brookz said.

The museum’s website advises “No kooks please, this is a serious seance test and seance tribute.”

After Halloween, another participant on The Jewish Museum’s panel discussion, magician George Schindler will be among several magicians paying their respects at Houdini’s grave at the Machpelah Cemetery in the Queens borough of New York City. Houdini is interred there in a bronze casket created for his buried-alive stunt.

Schindler, the dean of the Society of American Magicians, and the others at the cemetery will be remembering Houdini at a ceremony that includes Hebrew prayer.

“We used to perform the ceremony on Halloween, but it became too much of a zoo,” he said. “So we moved it to the Hebrew date of his death. This year the dates coincide, so we are doing it on the day he was buried, Nov. 4.”

Schindler and members of his society informally take care of the Houdini grave site.

“We clean it up, clearing it of playing cards, handcuffs, coins,” he said.

Schindler noted that in the “broken wand ceremony” the magicians hold for Houdini, the wand, broken in the silence of the cemetery, symbolizes the magician’s death.

Houdini was concerned for the welfare of other magicians and performers, Schindler said, and toward that end he started an organization to help them and the Red Cross.

Rabbis’ Sons, as it was called, raised $8,000 to aid the Red Cross, according to a 1918 edition of The New York Times. Among its members: Al Jolson and Irving Berlin.

“Upon his death, his wife, Bess, left $1,000 to the magicians’ society for a Houdini Fund,” Schindler said.

“The fund, now around $300,000, is used to support magicians who have fallen ill or who have been injured. It covers expenses not normally covered by insurance like wheelchairs, nurses and comfort assistance.”

Schindler recalled one last way of remembering Houdini.

“At the graveside ceremony a rabbi is present,” he said. “We say Kaddish.”

Edmon J. Rodman is a JTA columnist who writes on Jewish life from Los Angeles.

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Unifying factor in 2010 election: Never before

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — Talk to veteran campaign watchers about this year’s congressional races, and within seconds they will tell you that they’ve never before seen elections quite like these.

“We’ve never seen a cycle where there’s been this many races this close to an election and you don’t know how it’s going to come out,” said Joy Malkus, the research director at the Chicago-based Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs, or JACPAC, a group that directs funding to candidates who are pro-Israel and moderate on social issues. “And I’ve been doing this since 1982.”

Ben Chouake, president of NORPAC, a New Jersey-based, proIsrael political action committee, agreed.

“This one has taken twists and turns that surprise almost all of us that follow these events,” he said.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in all the years I’ve been doing this—in my lifetime.”

Despite the unfamiliarity of the terrain, the rules of the Jewish fundraising road remain the same: Stick with your friends and get to know unknowns as fast as possible.

In fact, the only change might be to append a “more-so”: There are many more friends at risk, and there are a lot more unknowns. An antiincumbent surge already has had an impact in the primaries, ousting a clutch of incumbents in the Senate, where races generally are much more expensive than in the House of Representatives.

“The thing that has created the greatest demand for money in the pro-Israel world are all these open Senate seats,” said Lonny Kaplan, a veteran pro-Israel giver who is based in Philadelphia’s New Jersey suburbs and a past president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

A greater demand and, according to insiders, a surprisingly greater supply considering the economy’s narrow straits. Matt Brooks, who directs the Republican Jewish Coalition, said he has never seen money flowing like this in a nonpresidential election year.

“This is the largest effort our leaders have made in a midterm— ever,” he said.

Here are some races to watch in this very watchable season: Endangered incumbents: The triumvirate A number of pro-Israel incumbents are at risk in the Senate. Some already have or are almost being written off, among them U.S. Sens.

Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wis.).

Others at risk are rallying in the final weeks and have attracted a late burst of pro-Israel attention, including Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Reid, the majority leader, is facing a tough challenge from Sharron Angle, the Tea Party-backed Republican challenger. Reid is considered critical by the pro-Israel community because he has taken the lead in helping to shepherd through Iran sanctions legislation. He’s also seen as having advanced pro-Israel defenses, most recently in a letter with his Republican counterpart, Sen. Mitch McConnel (R-Ky.), pressing President Obama to designate the Turkish group behind the Gaza Strip aid flotilla as terrorist.

If Reid goes, and if the Senate changes hands, its pro-Israel cast is not likely to change: McConnell is also solidly pro-Israel, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), perhaps the chamber’s most stalwart Israel defender (and a Jew from Brooklyn), likely would replace Reid.

Yet pro-Israel insiders say it remains a priority to keep in place a party leader who has been a proven champion of Israel.

“I’ve worked very hard for Harry Reid’s campaign, and the proIsrael community has been very very supportive of him,” Kaplan said. “It’s a very tough race. From my perspective we have a very friendly incumbent—it’s not hard to pick a side there.”

Boxer, a Jewish candidate who is facing former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, is likewise considered important because of the recent trend among liberal Democrats to question Israeli policies.

“She’s very liberal but also a leader,” said a donor who is close to top Democrats and did not want to be further identified. “She puts her name on pro-Israel legislation.”

Getting to know you: the Tea Partiers Reid’s race is also considered critical also because he is facing Angle, who like most of the candidates backed by the Tea Party movement is friendly to Israel but also seeks budget cuts across the board.

That makes her anathema to groups like JACPAC that are concerned about social services.

The Tea Party also makes some pro-Israel conservatives nervous because some in the movement want to slash foreign funding, although they have promised to work out a way to maintain funding for Israel.

Some say that reveals a misunderstanding of the holistic nature of foreign aid: If aid is cut across the board, it signals an isolationism that can only harm Israel in the long run even if it benefits from short-term exceptions.

“The pro-Israel community has the challenge of keeping up foreign aid overall” if Tea Party candidates score major successes, said an insider associated with AIPAC. That effort to keep up foreign aid already is under way, and pro-Israel insiders report warm conversations with Angle in addition to Mike Lee, the Republican candidate in Utah whose Tea Party insurgency unseated longtime incumbent GOP Sen. Bob Bennett, and Ken Buck, who is challenging Colorado’s Bennet.

Other Tea Party candidates have kept their distance from the proIsrael community. They include Senate hopefuls Joe Miller, a Republican who is leading in Alaska, and Rand Paul in Kentucky.

Paul’s association with his father, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (RTexas), whose isolationist polices have resulted in one of the worst pro-Israel records in the House, as well as the younger Paul’s reluctance to parry outside of his inner circle, have conferred upon his opponent, Democrat Jack Conway, the rare status of favored pro-Israel candidate in an open race. The proIsrael donor community as a rule attempts to split the difference in such races, not wishing to alienate either side.

“Conway has great position papers on all of our issues—Israel, [reproductive] choice and separation of church and state,” JACPAC’s Malkus said. “Rand Paul is not good on any of our issues.”

Courtesy of Brian Finifter

Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is facing a tough TeaParty challenger in Sharron Angle.

Unlikely challenges to incumbents—and unlikely incumbent House Democrats facing challenging races across the country fall into two categories: Those who just months ago were seen as sure bets, and those who beat the odds to win in 2006 and 2008, when Democrats scored victories over a weakened Republican Party. In 2008, those underdog Democrats were buoyed by voters enthusiastic about presidential candidate Barack Obama.

A typical candidate who used to be seen as safe but now is in jeopardy is Rep. Ron Klein (D-Fla.), who defeated his current opponent, Republican Allen West, by 10

points in 2008. Klein has strongly supported Israel in a heavily Jewish district that includes patches of Broward and Palm Beach counties.

West, however, has posed a formidable challenge this time, in part by linking Klein to a president perceived as less friendly to Israel than his predecessors, and in part because of anxieties among retirees over reports that Obama’s health care reform will suck funds from to Medicare, the government-funded insurance plan for retirees. An African-American Iraq war veteran, West also has an Achilles’ heel: Most recently he was associated with a biker gang that does not admit Jews or blacks as members.

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NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

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Despite pressure, Pete Seeger won’t cancel participation in Israeli-organized peace rally

By Sue Fishkoff Jewish Telegraphis Agency SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — No one tells Pete Seeger what to do.

At 91, the iconic folk singer has penned hundreds of protest songs, railing against everything from the Vietnam War to global warming. He was blacklisted in the 1950s, he slept under the stars with striking farmers and he still reads the Communist “People’s World” — along with The New York Times, of course.

Yet despite his opposition to Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza, Seeger refuses to heed calls to boycott an upcoming peace event organized by an Israeli institution.

In recent weeks, Seeger has rejected calls by individuals and organizations demanding that he cancel his participation in “With Earth and Each Other: A Virtual Rally for a Better Middle East,” an online event promoting peace through cross-border cooperation and scheduled for a Nov. 14 global broadcast.

“My religion is that the world will not survive without dialogue,” Seeger told JTA in an interview from his home in Beacon, N.Y. “I would say to the Israelis and the Palestinians, if you

think it’s terrible now, just think ahead 50 years to when the world blows itself up. It will get worse unless you learn how to turn the world around peacefully.”

Seeger was invited to perform for the online peace rally by event organizers Friends of the Arava Institute, the North American fundraising arm of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The institute works with Arab and Jewish leaders to solve the region’s environmental challenges cooperatively.

Thirty other organizations have signed on to the event, ranging from Peace Child Israel to the Jewish National Fund.

Actor Mandy Patinkin will emcee an event that will feature group viewings organized around the world from San Francisco to Bonn, Germany.

Activists from the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement have been pushing Seeger to cancel, posting open letters to him on their websites.

Seeger says he’s going forward and already has recorded two songs: “Od Yavo Shalom” (Hebrew for “Peace Will Yet Come”) and a Lebanese song in Arabic performed with alumni of the Arava Institute. And he may break into song spontaneously

Courtesy of Michael Hardgrove

Folk singer Pete Seeger, in green, records a song at his home in Beacon, N.Y. in May 2010 for an Israeli-organized peace rally. He is accompanied by Walker Rumpf on guitar and Arava Institute for Environmental Studies alumni Zack Korenstein and Sarah Schuldenfrei. (Michael Hardgrove)

during the live broadcast, too.

That doesn’t mean that he supports Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, Seeger says; quite the contrary.

He is a longtime donor to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, an organization that became so critical of Israel that it was dropped by the New Israel Fund years ago, and readily decries what he calls “monstrous”

Israeli military actions against Palestinian civilians.

Seeger made his first trip to Israel in 1964 with his wife and children, and spent time on several kibbutzim, where he recalls being “impressed by the energy.”

He visited again right before the June 1967 Six-Day War, performing the hit song “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena” before a crowd of tens of thousands in Tel Aviv. “Tzena,”

which he recorded in 1950 with The Weavers, remains the only Hebrewlanguage song to make it to the top of the U.S. music charts.

Right before that trip, Seeger stopped off in Lebanon.

“I was told not to mention I was going to Israel the next week or I might not make it,” he said. “I hadn’t realized how serious the situation was.”

Things “have gone from bad to worse” in the Middle East, says Seeger, who notes that he rarely travels anymore except for occasional trips to New York City.

Holding up the example of the Montgomery bus boycott as the key to ending racial segregation in the American South, Seeger says he does not oppose nonviolent efforts, including an economic boycott, to end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But standing in the way of promoting dialogue makes no sense, he said.

“I understand why someone would want to boycott a place financially, but I don’t understand why you would boycott dialogue,” Seeger said. “The world will not be here in 50 years unless we learn how to communicate with each other nonviolently.”

The online peace rally, which begins at 1p.m. EST on Nov. 14, presents itself as nonpolitical.

Not wild about Wilders? Populists’ anti-Islam message has European Jewish leaders worried

By Toby Axelrod Jewish Telegraphic Agency BERLIN (JTA) — Geert Wilders, the rock star of European politics, is riding the crest of a populist tsunami.

As the pro-Israel founder of Holland’s Party of Freedom lets loose recently in Berlin, shouting that Islam is a threat to Germany’s identity, democracy and prosperity, his audience of 500 reacts with an evangelical zeal, offering big-time applause and standing ovations.

“Stand by the side of those who are threatened by Islam, like the State of Israel and its Jewish citizens,” he exhorts the crowd.

This isn’t a Jewish event, though a guest speaker is former Israeli Knesset member Eli Cohen of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party.

Ethnic Germans comprise much of the crowd Oct. 2 at the Hotel Berlin. Their chief bugaboo?

The failure of Muslims to fit in to mainstream society.

Someone, in this case Wilders,

has allowed them to vent their frustration (critics would say racist views). And for the crowd, having an Israeli join them seems to make things more kosher, as the anti-immigrant rhetoric has been associated typically with far-right extremists.

Wilders’ dismissal of “so-called ‘Islamophobia,’” as he calls it, also supports those who say the real problem is Muslim anti-Semitism.

In recent weeks several populist parties — including Wilders’ — have gained parliamentary seats or ministry positions in European countries. Even mainstream leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel have decided to weigh in on “the Muslim integration problem.”

Pure politics, critics say.

So why are so many Jewish leaders in Europe not wild about Wilders and his ilk?

Populists “want a Sweden for the Swedes, France for the French and Jews to Israel,” says Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary general of the European Jewish Congress.

Courtesy of Toby Axelrod

Populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders gets a standing ovation from a Berlin audience, Oct. 2, 2010.

“Islamism certainly is a danger to the Jews and to Western democracy,” offers Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. “The way to fight [Islamists] is not, however, to demonize and ostra-

cize all Muslims.”

Ron van der Wieken, the chairman of Amsterdam’s liberal Jewish congregation, says that “perhaps more Jews support Wilders than they openly admit,” but “when his party fiercely

opposes halal slaughter, kosher butchering will not exist much longer as well. And if headscarves would be forbidden, how about yarmulkes? And circumcision?”

In Germany, emotions also run high over another purveyor of populism, author Thilo Sarrazin, who was fired from the board of the German Central Bank because of his comments about Muslim inferiority and Jewish superiority.

Jewish leaders condemned Sarrazin’s remarks, but some Germans on the street, including some Jews, seem more forgiving.

Meanwhile his book, “Germany Undoes Itself,” is a major best-seller.

“His analysis of the socio-political situation in Berlin is 110 percent correct,” retiree Georg Potzies, 64, says at Bleiberg’s kosher dairy restaurant here. “A large part of the Muslims — and he never said all of them — have no interest in integration. Just open your eyes in Berlin and you will see it.”

As for the supposedly higher Jewish IQ, “I found that very good,” Potzies adds, laughing.

INTERNATIONAL

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

9

Hitler exhibit opens in Berlin, with Jewish applause

Courtesy of Sebastian Ahlers, from the private collection of Rainer Graefe

The playing cards game “Führer Quartet,” Berlin, after 1934.

Courtesy of Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Scherl

Women working on small busts of Adolf Hitler, 1937.

By Toby Axelrod Jewish Telegraphic Agency BERLIN (JTA) — The image of Hitler is still arresting, 65 years after his suicide and the end of World War II. Now the German Historical Museum has dedicated an exhibit to the fascination Hitler held for the “Volk,” the ordinary German citizen.

It marks the first time a German museum has ventured into such territory, and the curators say they have taken great care to avoid glorifying the man behind the Third Reich, which in Germany would not only be distasteful but illegal.

Controversial though it is for some, the exhibit has been welcomed by the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The council’s secretary general, Stephan Kramer, said he thought the timing was right, given today’s political climate.

“Especially the lower-middle classes are susceptible to wanting to be led,” he said, and politicians are “instrumentalizing their fears.”

Kramer said the exhibition “is dealing seriously with the issue, and I don’t think there is a danger of any form of glorification.”

“Hitler and the Germans,” which opened Oct. 15 in Berlin and runs through Feb. 6, includes posters, artifacts and other contemporary propaganda illuminating the complex interaction between the public and their “Fuhrer,” or leader.

Objects are arranged in three chronological and thematic chapters, focusing on the socio-political conditions, forms and consequences of Hitler’s rise to power.

The propaganda messages on display are countered by images that convey the reality of what was happening. Exhibit items were set up in a nearly 1,300-square-yard exhibition hall in ways to discourage neo-Nazis from taking heroic photos of themselves near images of Hitler.

The exhibit opens only days after a new study by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation showed that some 10 percent of Germans still wish they had a Fuhrer to tell them what to do during these hard economic times.

“My idea, my wish, is to explain these historical events so that people know the dangers which are caused by irrational mass movements,” curator HansUlrich Thamer told JTA. The “fascination [with Hitler] was caused by very modern technical methods, with movies and microphones and so on,” Thamer said. “People at this time thought it was very modern.”

Though it does not focus extensively on the genocide of the Jews, the exhibit “shows the persecution of German and European Jewry as one of the results of the rhetoric and ideology of the ‘Volksgemeinschaft,’ ” – the Nazi concept of a so-called Aryan racial community, Thamer added.

A sign reading “Jews are unwel-

come in our town” is one of the items on display.

Illustrating the growth of the Fuhrer movement and the Nazi party, posters place Hitler alongside examples of “perfect”

German specimens, past and present.

There are also items that were never meant to be seen by the public, such as Hitler’s secret memo regarding the so-called euthanasia program in which physically or mentally disabled citizens, whose lives were deemed unworthy by the state, were murdered in gas chambers.

Hitler, Austrian by birth, started off as an uremarkable soldier and rose to become the head of the National Socialist Party.

Jailed after his attempted putsch in 1923, he wrote his notorious autobiographical polemic “Mein Kampf” in prison and emerged as a

popular figure. He became chancellor in January 1933 and soon amassed dictatorial powers.

Twelve years later, with 6 million European Jews murdered, tens of millions of European and Soviet soldiers slaughtered in battle, and many German cities lying in ruins, Hitler continued his anti-Semitic rants in his last will and testament, charging his followers to resist “the universal poisoners of all peoples, international Jewry.”

Today, the spot above Hitler’s former bunker, where he killed Eva Braun and himself, is marked by a small sign. It’s a few steps from the national Holocaust memorial.

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ISRAEL

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Six decades on, American olim — some now American again — reunite on kibbutz

By Dina Kraft Jewish Telegraphic Agency KIBBUTZ GALON, Israel (JTA) — In 1952, a 20-year-old with bright blue eyes who had never seen much of life outside of the Bronx, N.Y., mounted a kibbutz tractor armed with a rifle to plow wheat and sorghum fields bordering the Gaza Strip.

Saul Adelson would live in Israel for eight years before returning to the United States for good.

“I don’t regret a minute of my time here, but events took my life back to the States,” Adelson said last week as he walked down a rock-strewn path on Kibbutz Galon, which he first visited in his youth. Back then it wasn’t much more than a collection of sheds and spindly trees on a windswept hill.

Two of his closest friends with whom he grew up in the socialist Zionist movement Hashomer Hatzair, and with whom he immigrated to Israel, still live on the kibbutz. Last week they came together there along with some 100 others, including spouses, for a 60th reunion of their North American aliyah group, called Garin Aliyah Zion. Garin is Hebrew for seed.

“It was an extraordinary period, right after World War II, and American Jews were waking up to the reality of the Holocaust,” said Yitzhak Greenfield, 78, who lost relatives to the Nazis.

In Hashomer Hatzair, he said, “we were educated for aliyah.”

Not just any aliyah: They were specifically indoctrinated with the message that life in the kibbutz was the only way to synthesize the socialist and Zionist visions of the movement.

Members met at movement meetings in places like Montreal, Los Angeles, Chicago and the Bronx, where Yudi Tishler, 77, recalls movement gatherings being held in a bare attic with only a couple of Israeli flags for decoration.

For those that agreed to make the leap to Israel, their first stop en route was an agricultural training farm in Hightstown, N.J. Several months later — after learning how to milk cows and grow vegetables — these American Jewish teenagers were off to encounter the real thing in Israel.

They left behind often-devastated parents, many of whom were themselves immigrants from Europe who could not fathom their children leaving the comforts of North America, for which they had worked so hard, in exchange for a hardscrabble life in the newly established Jewish state.

To get here, they traveled on freighter ships across the Atlantic

Courtesy of Ted Friedgut

Former Hashomer Hatzair North American youth group members who now live in the Washington area gather at a reunion in Kibbutz Galon, October 2010.

Courtesy of Ted Friedgut

Members of an aliyah group from the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement from Toronto, Montreal and Detroit at a summer camp in 1949, not long before many of them would immigrate to Israel.

before crossing the Mediterranean and docking in Haifa.

“There was an atmosphere then when we arrived in the country — a spirit of young life with a purpose that has remained with us our whole lives,” said Ariel Hurwitz, 78, one of Adelson’s good friends.

Soon after Hurwitz arrived in Israel six decades ago, this kibbutz in the foothills of the Judean mountain range has been his home.

The lives of the group’s members — or “chaverim,” as they still refer to each other — took divergent paths. Of the more than 100 members of the Hashomer Hatzair group who made aliyah, approximately half remain in Israel today.

While Hurwitz was working in the kibbutz cow sheds and serving in a paratrooper unit of the nascent Israeli army — he still has the shrapnel wounds he suffered in 1955 during an Egyptian bombardment of the southern border

— Adelson was back in New York, where he eventually started a career in architecture.

Still, the bonds among members have remained remarkably close.

A group of five families from the group who live in the Washington area have been meeting for a Shabbat meal every month for the past 35 years.

“We were together for five years 65 years ago, so what keeps us so close? It’s a feeling more intense than that of being fellow alumnae of a school,” said Hurwitz, who helped organize the reunion.

“It’s the values we developed in the movement both in regards to Judaism and humanitarian principles. Wherever we are today, we are all involved in Jewish life and our communities.”

Hurwitz eventually became a teacher, earning a doctorate in Jewish history. Many in the group went on to gain prominence:

Among those attending the reunion were a New York state lawmaker, scientists and professors.

Dina Feur, who was in the aliyah group but also moved back to the States, said her experience made her a lifelong Zionist — and visitor to Israel.

“It tied us to Judaism and to Israel. We came back here all the time,” Feur said.

She had joined the movement as an 11-year-old girl in Brooklyn.

Like the others, she would wear the movement’s blue bandana wrapped around her shirt collar to meetings.

Today Feur has bobbed gray hair and rimless glasses. With her husband, she lived in Israel for 11 years before returning to study in the United States. It was supposed to be for five years, but it turned into the rest of their lives when her husband could not find work in Israel as a geologist. They have a son and grandchildren living in Israel.

When he first arrived in Israel, Greenberg, a painter, remembers riding a truck along the dusty unpaved roads to Kibbutz Galon, where he lived for several years before eventually settling in Ein Karem, outside of Jerusalem.

“It was wonderful because I knew we were starting a new life,” he said. “We were building a new world.”

The demands of a difficult, intensely communal and doctrinaire ideology eventually drove many of them away, sometimes straining relations for years between members who stayed on kibbutz and those who left.

Tishler, a musician who had left Kibbutz Galon and another Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz soon afterward, still smarts at the memory of her kibbutz friends not contacting her to send condolences after her first husband died. She was pregnant with twins at the time.

“You were totally ostracized when you left the kibbutz,” said Tishler, who eventually remarried and settled in New York. She became a musicology professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary before returning to live in Israel in her retirement, joining her twin daughters who had made aliyah.

As the ideological fervor of the early years waned, connections and friendships were re-established. Now, over slices at the Kibbutz Galon pizzeria, the grayhaired chaverim looked back on a changed world.

“It was the right decision and the right time in my life,” said Greenfield, who came to Israel at 19 and never left. “I felt like I could do all sorts of things in America, but I preferred to do them here.”

Israel Briefs Soldiers wouldn’t allow aid, flotilla participants tell panel JERUSALEM (JTA) — Two Arab-Israel passengers on a Gazabound Turkish flotilla testified that Israeli soldiers did not allow injured passengers to receive medical attention.

The two passengers, who failed to appear before the Turkel Commission after being subpoenaed last week, testified Monday before the panel investigating the flotilla incident.

Arab-Israeli lawmaker Hanin Zoabi of the Arab Balad Party, who also participated in the May 31 flotilla that was intercepted by the Israeli Navy, leading to the death of nine passengers on one of the ships, attended the hearing but was not asked to speak. Her participation in the flotilla sparked calls from Israeli lawmakers to have her ejected from the Knesset.

Muhammad Zidan, head of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, told the commission that soldiers who boarded the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara refused to allow treatment for the wounded boat passengers for at least an hour, despite the intercession of Zoabi.

The men refused to name the organizers of the flotilla, saying they were invited to join by a nonpolitical human rights group in Gaza that was connected to the Free Gaza Movement.

The men testified several hours after opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who said that “In the absence of a peace process, with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians unclear, Turkey was able to fill a political vacuum by engineering provocations.” She defended Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza.

Mortar shells hit southern Israel JERUSALEM (JTA) — Five mortar shells were fired from Gaza at southern Israel.

The shells, fired Monday, did not cause any damage or injury.

Two of the shells landed in Israeli territory and three landed on the Gaza side of the border fence.

On Sunday, three shells launched from Gaza landed in southern Israel.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

SOCIAL LIFE

Cedar Village Eight Over Eighty Honorees

11

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Miriam and Wilbur Cohen and Family

Lynne and Bob Kanter and their family

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

Edith Kaffeman Yehudit bat B’racha

Murray Kirschner Chaim Meir ben Basha

Daniel Eliyahu Daniel ben Tikvah

Roma Kaltman Ruchama bat Perl

Ravid Sulam Ravid Chaya bat Ayelet

Mel Fisher Moshe ben Hinda

Pepa Kaufman Perel Tova bat Sima Sora

Edward Ziv Raphael Eliezer Aharon ben Esther Enya

12

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

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Cedar Village Eight Over Eighty Honorees

(Front) Florence Lieberman, Florence Zaret, Lou Nidich, Sue Ransohoff; (Back) Wilbur Cohen, Bob Kanter, Dave Jacobson, Dick Weiland

Marianne, Paul, and Lou Nidich

Dr. Steve Zaret, Florence Zaret

Dave and Flo Jacobson

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

Dr. Irv Silverstein, Florence Lieberman, Janet Steinberg

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

Miriam Cohen, Sue Ransohoff, Sally Korkin

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14

DINING OUT

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Diners are guests of honor at Oriental Wok

By Marilyn Gale Dining Editor

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Backs beware, no longer does one need to stay at home with the heating pad or ice pack. Enjoy authentic Chinese food in comfort. Pillows are everywhere at upscale Oriental Wok, opened just one year in its new location in Hyde Park in the Regency building, on the corner of Dana and Madison Road. Place one of those colorful silk pillows behind your back and dine graciously.

I met with lovely Susannah Wong at the end of a typical lunch time at Oriental Wok. In one room, a local business was having an early happy hour. Other areas were bustling with people enjoying the many lunch specialties.

Wong had just finished meeting with a family to schedule a rehearsal dinner. She confided to me that the clients were from Hong Kong. I recognized this as another sign as to the authenticity and the quality of the ethnic food.

Good was an understatement.

Oriental Wok was terrific—flavorful, varied, having many choices for all appetites. This is a family business. The menu includes pictures of the Wong family spread across the bottom of the multiple pages. Susannah Wong is the daughter of Michael and Helen Wong and the proud proprietor of Oriental Wok in Hyde Park.

The Wong family history is a tale of coming to America, using simple, honest hardworking values, and finding the pot of gold— though I think that might be an Irish metaphor.

Wong told me that in Chinese, the word “America” means beautiful country, but it takes two to create such success. Success would not have happened by itself. The hardworking entrepreneur Mike Wong instilled timeless values into the work ethic and Tristate residents reaped the tasty benefits of his vision.

Wong and her family arrived in America 33 years ago. She was 8. Recalling the restaurant as playing a huge part in her life, Wong quickly added that her parents didn’t want her and her sister to go into the family business. Wong

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Michael and Helen Wong are the gracious hosts at Oriental Wok.

has an MBA from Xavier University. But Wong was beguiled by the hospitality industry, seeing it as part of her family and her culture where gracious dining extended to the guests, “A passion for eating and dining is very much a part of Hong Kong culture. All of dad’s customers were part of our family,” said Wong.

Wong and her family bring a dedication to guests, a commitment to quality, and have passion for their work. When she was a teenager and busing tables, her father asked her who was her boss.

“You dad,” said Wong.

“No,” said her father. “The customer is your boss; without them, you’re nothing.”

Wong told me that the oldest Oriental Wok was one of the first Chinese restaurants in Northern Kentucky, opening in 1977.

“Father always dreamed of coming to America; he escaped the Communist regime in China in his youth and traveled to Hong Kong.

His friend who was a cook in Cincinnati was in town for a visit at that time. The friend encouraged my father to come and work in his boss’ new restaurant, The Dragon Inn. My parents were dreaming of something bigger; dad was a salesman, and had never cooked. Mom was a piano teacher in Hong Kong. Craving adventure (call it brave, even daring),

Michael and Helen Wong got a visiting visa, and Dad started working as a cook at Dragon Inn. But Michael Wong had dreams of owning a restaurant. So out of respect for his bosses, he went far away from Cincinnati so he wouldn’t compete with them directly.” Thank goodness he didn’t go too far for Queen City diners, as across the river and now in the heart of the urban area are short roads to travel for authentic Chinese food. The Oriental Wok restaurant on Buttermilk Pike in Northern Kentucky has capacity for seating 400 guests.

Wong shared many family stories during the interview. But as this is a dining review, I must focus on the food. It was delicious. I tasted specially ordered crispy skin whole chicken, fit for a feast in its shiny golden brown appearance, fragrant with the crunchy coating from salt,pepper and five- spice marinades, large enough to satisfy four hungry appetites. The eggplant dish served with the poultry was warm, sweet and purple in color, a lovely visual contrast with the chicken.

Oriental Wok’s menu is large, consisting of seven pages. There are many choices, having a range of spice from mild to hot. I enjoyed a robust stir-fry of fresh salmon and vegetables in a black bean-garlic sauce ($17) bursting with bright green asparagus as

well as other traditional Chinese vegetables and served with brown rice. My dining companion chose Sesame Chicken ($14), a healthy portion; crisp, tangy, full of fresh vegetables and large enough to take home extra.

Prices start in the $12 range for vegetarian entrees, up to $24 for the Oriental Wok filet, with many prices in between for seafood, poultry and noodle dishes. There is a children’s menu ($6) with sensible Chinese style dishes—food the children will actually eat, such as sweet and sour chicken and fried rice. For your sweet tooth, mango custard ($6), toasted coconut bread pudding ($6.50) and chocolate mousse ($7) should satisfy even the most Westernized palate.

The Oriental Wok is offering an Emperor’s Tasting Table on Nov. 4, 2010. This multi-course dinner for the adventurous gourmand is $60 per guest, $25 more with wine/spirits pairing, and promises to be a banquet fit for Chinese royalty.

Please join the Wong family and dine authentically in Chinese comfort and style. You will certainly be treated as honored guests. Oriental Wok is open for both lunch and dinner.

Oriental Wok 2444 Madison Road Cincinnati, Ohio 45208

DINING OUT

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

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Johnny Chan 2 11296 Montgomery Rd The Shops at Harper’s Point 489-2388 • 489-3616 (fx) K.T.’s Barbecue & Deli 8501 Reading Rd Reading 761-0200 Kanak India Restaurant 10040B Montgomery Rd Montgomery 793-6800 Local 127 127 W. 4th St Cincinnati 721-1345 Marx Hot Bagels 9701 Kenwood Rd Blue Ash 891-5542 Mecklenburg Gardens 302 E. University Ave Clifton 221-5353 Noce’s Pizzeria 9797 Montgomery Rd Cincinnati 791-0900 Oriental Wok 2444 Madison Rd Hyde Park 871-6888 Parkers Blue Ash Grill 4200 Cooper Rd Blue Ash 891-8300

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OPINION

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We’re all rescued miners

The regularity with which we are granted new life each day dulls us, regrettably, to the indescribable import of the fact.

That is only human nature, what Emerson alluded to when he wrote: “If the stars would appear but one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the City of G-d.”

Those events, along with the loss of 29 miners in the collapse of a West Virginia mine in April, and that of nine other American miners in eight accidents since, have served, no doubt, to cause countless people to imagine what it must be like to be confined thousands of feet below the earth’s surface, physically separated from loved ones—indeed, from the entire world.

And it was surely a rare individual who, following the recent drama in Chile, didn’t picture himself shut into a tight, dark capsule as it wound its way through the stone and earth separating the

mine from civilization. And, then, emerging, finally, wonderfully, into the light and fresh air, into the presence of family and friends; laying eyes again on familiar things, the sun, the sky, the faces (leave aside the book deals).

Imagine the immeasurable gratitude that would well up in any human heart at such a moment.

And then consider that each of us undergoes a similar experience each and every day.

We wake up in the morning.

It’s not only the fact that in sleep we are unconscious, not in control, or that people can and do die in their sleep; or even that sleep, like death, is insistent, and will only allow itself to be postponed so long. The rabbis of the Talmud said something more; they considered sleep itself to be a virtual microcosm of death – “one sixtieth” of it, in their turn of phrase and thought.

The regularity with which we are granted new life each day dulls us, regrettably, to the indescribable import of the fact. That is only human nature, what Emerson alluded to when he wrote: “If the stars would appear but one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the City of G-d.”

But recognized or not, the import is there all the same, and demands every sensitive soul’s attention. And that is why, while all too many of us awaken each day with grumbling about the speed with which morning arrived, Jewish tradition mandates that a Jew’s first words upon awakening in the morning are to be those of the short “Modeh Ani” prayer of gratitude. It is one of the first things observant Jewish parents teach their young children.

“I gratefully acknowledge You,” the prayer goes, “living and eternal King, for having returned my soul to me with compassion.

Abundant is Your faithfulness.”

Few of us, thankfully, will ever experience anything like what the trapped miners in Chile underwent. But all of us can benefit from thinking about those men, and consciously, pointedly, relating their experience and feelings to what we do in fact undergo each and every day, as we pull ourselves from unconsciousness and dark into awareness and light.

Our gratitude should be boundless.

Rabbi Avi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.

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

Dear Editor, American Jewish Committee welcomes the conviction in a federal court of four men who had planned to bomb two Jewish institutions in New York City and a nearby military airbase.

AJC commends law enforcement for apprehending terrorists even before they commit violence. Homegrown terrorism is a threat that the U.S. must monitor and confront.

In May 2009, the New York Police Department and FBI arrested James Cromitie, Laguerre Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams, who had plotted to bomb the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx, and also attack military planes at an Air National Guard base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh, N.Y. Three of the men, who converted to Islam while serving in prison for other crimes, are U.S.

citizens. The fourth is Haitian.

All could face life in prison.

AJC established a Department of Middle East and International Terrorism in 1999 to gather, interpret, and disseminate open source intelligence. It is the only department of its kind within the Jewish organizational world.

Sincerely, John M. Stein President, AJC Cincinnati

Have something on your mind?

Write a letter to the editor and let your voice be heard.

Send your letter by e-mail:

editor@ americanisraelite.com

T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: CHAYEI SARAH (BRAISHITH 23:1—25:30) 1. Did Isaac go with Eliezer to Charan to find a wife? a.) Yes b.) No

meet Rivka after he got to Charan? a.) Immeadiately b.) Only after he met with her family first c.) He was introduced to the entire family first

2. How did Eliezer commit himself to the mission of finding a wife for Isaac? a.) He took an oath b.) He fasted three days and three nights before going c.) He would forego luxuries

4. Did Avrohom have children other than Isaac and Ishmael? a.) Yes b.) No

3. How long did it take Eliezer to for success in his mission. As he finished his prayer, Rivka came to the well.

4. A 25:1-4 5. A 25:12-18 The Torah lists Ishmael's 12 sons with a description of their lives

The death this past week of 37 miners in central China—for those who were aware of the disaster—presented a tragic counterpoint to the enthralling rescue of the 33 Chilean miners that took place mere days earlier.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

5. Is Ishmael mentioned in the Parsha? a.) Yes b.) No Answers 1. B 24:6 2. A 24:9 3. A 24:10-15 Eliezer arrived at Charan towards evening, at the time when Rivka would go to draw water from a well. He prayed to Hashem

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Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

JEWISH LIFE

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

Sedra of the Week

By Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT CHAYE SARAH • GENESIS 23: 1 - 25: 18

Efrat, Israel - “And Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother. He married Rebecca, she became his wife, he loved her, and so Isaac was comforted after his mother” (Genesis 24:67).

The Biblical portion of Hayei Sarah features two main stories: the burial of Sarah (Chapter 23) and the search for a wife for Isaac (Chapter 24). What connects these stories? Furthermore, two of the Torah portions which deal with death—this portion and the portion describing the death of Jacob —have names which express “life”: Hayei Sarah and Vayehi.

Why is this?

The simplest explanation is that the motif which unites both parts of our portion is the ideal of hessed—loving-kindness. Our sages have taught that “care for the dead is the truest form of loving-kindness, since it is given without any expectation of repayment” (Rashi to Genesis 47:29), and Abraham spares neither effort nor funds to acquire a burial plot for his beloved wife. Hessed also plays a central role in the selection of a wife for Isaac—the heir to the covenantal patrimony. Eliezer, entrusted with this delicate mission by his master Abraham, stands by a well and stipulates that the young woman who draws water for him and also offers to draw water for his camels will be the one designated by God for Isaac (Genesis 24: 12-14). Hence it is hessed which must direct an individual from marriage to grave.

I believe there is an even deeper meaning which informs both stories, and which also requires, and expresses, hessed. The Midrash connects the name Rivkah (Rebecca/RVKH) with hakever (hkvr), literally “the grave,” which is Rivkah spelled backwards. And if the reader finds the link between this name and that word a bit startling, I would remind you that throughout the Tractate Nidda, the word kever (literally grave) is used as a synonym for womb (rehem)! What is the connection between “grave” and “womb,” which seem to relate to opposite life experiences?

As soon as the search for a wife for Isaac is concluded, the Bible records: “And Isaac brought her (Rebecca) into the tent of Sarah his mother. and so Isaac was comforted after his mother” (Gen.

24:67). Rashi cites a famous midrash, “‘And he brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother,’ and behold she became the image of Sarah his mother, that is to say she became Sarah his mother: for as long as Sarah was alive, a light remained burning from Sabbath eve to Sabbath eve, a blessing was to be found in the dough, and the Divine cloud remained attached over the tent; once Sarah died, all these ceased, and when Rebecca arrived, they all returned” (Bereishit Raba 60: 16).

The three “gifts” initially brought by Sarah and continued

by Rebecca express the three commandments specifically directed to married women: the commandment to kindle the Sabbath lights (an illumination which speaks of familial peace), the commandment of halla (which the matriarchs extended to mean an “open house” of hospitality) and the commandment of nidda and mikve (which leads to family purity and stability). Each of these expresses the loving kindness of giving of oneself to others, to one’s family and to one’s spouse.

And of course the merging of the personalities of Sarah and Rebecca expresses the continuity of generations, the Jewish ideal of children maintaining the values and lifestyle of their forebears.

In a profound sense, the future is predicated upon the past; it is the “graves” of our ancestors which inspire the lives of their progeny, and grandchildren who

bear the names and ideals of their forebears. Now we can understand why these Biblical portions which seem to be dealing with death are actually announcing continued life into a glorious future of redemption.

God promised Abraham that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed (Gen. 12:3); however, the blessing will only be fulfilled through the progeny who have been influenced by his teachings and deeds. As Abraham’s tent was blessed through Sarah, Isaac’s tent was blessed through Rebecca.

And so Jacob/Israel summons his children to his deathbed so that he may reveal “what will befall them in the end of days” (Gen. 49:1).

Although, he doesn’t specifically prophesy, he does bless and define his sons, each of whom is to develop into a tribe. He also singles out Judah, from whom the scepter of majesty shall not depart until the period of redemptive peace, when Israel will become the gathering place for all nations (Gen. 49:10). This is the meaning of our praise in the Amida prayer to the God “who performs acts of loving-kindness, the possessor of everything, who remembers the loving-kindness of the ancestors, and brings redemption to the children of their children for the sake of His Name with love.”

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

3100 LONGMEADOW LANE • CINCINNATI, OH 45236 791-1330 • www.templesholom.net Miriam Terlinchamp, Rabbi Marcy Ziek, President Gerry H. Walter, Rabbi Emeritus October 29 8:00 pm Shabbat Evening Service

November 5 6:30 pm Sholom Unplugged Musical Shabbat and Light Dinner

October 30 10:30 am Shabbat Morning Service

November 6 10:30 am Shabbat Morning Service Samantha Ziegler Bat Mitzvah

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JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

Jewz in the Newz

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist SPLITSVILLE OR THE “ANTI-SIMCHA” ITEM My prior two columns were “simcha-esque,” with reports on the marriage of actor DAVID SCHWIMMER to his British sweetie, ZOE BUCKMAN—and actor SETH ROGEN’s engagement to his long-time girlfriend, filmmaker LAUREN MILLER. Maybe Halloween spooks are involved—but right on the heels of these happy events—the news of the break-up of three celebrity couples hit the media. Maybe the saddest break-up is that of actress JESSALYN GILSIG, 39 (“Glee,” “Boston Public”) and her husband of almost six years, producer BOBBY SALOMON, also 39.

They met at their Montreal high school, where they briefly dated.

Gilsig once said that Salomon was the “cool guy” in their high school and quarterback of the football team. The couple met again when Salomon moved to Hollywood in 2002 and they rekindled their romance. They wed in a Jewish ceremony in 2005 and had a daughter in 2006.

Salomon and Gilsig are both very good looking and they were a strikingly attractive couple. Add in the story of their high school romance and reunion in Hollywood—and you have most of the elements of many romantic movies. However, their marriage foundered in mid-2009 for reasons the couple have tastefully chosen to keep private. They separated just about the same time that Gilsig began appearing in a co-starring role (Terri Schuester) on “Glee.”

On Oct. 15, a gossip website that trolls court filings, dug-out the fact that Gilsig had filed for divorce in early September.

Getting far more publicity was the divorce filing (made public on Oct. 14) of superstar singer Christina Aguilera, 29. In 2005, Aguilera wed her boyfriend of three years, music producer/manager JORDAN BRATMAN, 33, in a lavish Jewish wedding. In 2008, they had a son, MAX LIRON BRATMAN. Max’s bris got a lot of publicity, as did the fact that People magazine paid $1.5 million for the first pics of the baby.

On the surface, they seemed a bit mismatched: Aguilera is famously “hot” and Bratman is quite homely. Still, for a long time they presented themselves as the picture of domestic bliss and there were even hints that the singer would convert to Judaism. I always had a gut feeling, nonetheless, that the long-term survival of the marriage was a long-shot.

The third season of the Bravo cable series, “Millionaire Matchmaker,” began on Oct. 19.

This season, the show has moved from Los Angeles to New York, but the premise remains the same— matchmaker PATTI STANGER, 49, brings together wealthy single guys, interested in getting married, with “quality” beautiful women.

The show, now, might be sub-titled: “Those who can do; those who can’t...teach.”

Why? Because Stanger, who has never been married, just broke-up with her fiancé, businessman ANDY FRIEDMAN. In July 2009, Stanger would tell any reporter who would listen that Friedman had just given her a fourcarat engagement ring, one carat for each year they dated. The ring was delivered by a black swan named Raymond. (No word whether Raymond was enlisted to return the ring.)

TV MILESTONES The death of TOM BOSLEY, age 83, on Oct. 10, was noted in most Jewish and secular papers.

Bosley was best known for playing the father, Howard Cunningham, on the hit TV series, “Happy Days.” Although he wasn’t particularly observant, Bosley once proudly noted that his great-grandfather was “the chief Orthodox rabbi of Chicago.”

“Happy Days” holds the record, by the way, for the most Jewish actors in lead parts of any TV series—Bosley; HENRY WINKLER (“the Fonz”); DON MOST (Ralph Malph); and ANSON WILLIAMS (“Potsie”). Not often noted is the connection between “Happy Days” and “The Andy Griffith Show.” Not only were they, respectively, the top “family” sitcoms of the ‘70s and ‘60s, they shared some cast members—Ron Howard played Bosley’s son, Richie, in “Days” and Andy Griffith’s son, Opie. Actor Jack Dodson played Ralph’s father on “Days” and county clerk Howard Sprague on “Andy Griffith.”

This fall marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of “The Andy Griffith Show.” The “hidden Jewish history” of the show is found in interviews with the late AARON RUBEN, who co-created the series and wrote or co-wrote almost all the episodes during its early and best seasons. Ruben once explained that he took Talmudic stories, Jewish folk tales, and Yiddish proverbs and turned them into the pearls of Southern wisdom for Sheriff Andy to say. Equally able to “do Southern” was the late, Bronx-raised actor HOWARD MORRIS. He was hilarious in a recurring role as the rock throwing hillbilly Ernest T. Bass.

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FROM THE PAGES 100 Years Ago Mrs. Bernhard Bettman gave an afternoon reception in honor of Mrs. Adeline Thurnauer. Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. Mock, Miss Amy Sachs and Mr. and Mrs. Max Stern are at French Lick Springs.

In honor of Simchath Torah, Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Ornstein treated the inmates of the Jewish Home to cigars and candy.

Mark A. Bohm, aged thirty-nine years, a native of this city, and a member of one of the oldest Jewish

families in Cincinnati, died suddenly on Tuesday afternoon. Mr. Bohm is survived by his widow (Helen Troy), his daughter, Gertrude, nine years old; one brother, Harry A., and two sisters, Mrs. Sol Krouse and Mrs. E.I. Stricker.

Miss Minnie Wachtel, of 1318 Locust Street, Walnut Hills, and Coby Bloch, son of Mrs. Julia and the late Joseph Bloch, of Sedalia, Mo., were married Tuesday evening at in the grand assembly

room at the Sinton Hotel by Rabbi Grossmann. An elaborate wedding dinner was served to 70 guests and members of both families, and many toasts were given in response to the call of the master of ceremonies, C.C. Lawson, of Sedalia.

Herman J. Bloch, brother, acted as groomsman, while the bride was unattended during the ceremony.

After a short honeymoon Mr. and Mrs. Bloch will make their home in Sedalia. — October 27, 1910

75 Years Ago Mrs. Hannah Shott, 69, of 3551 Bogart Avenue, was injured fatally when she fell from the roof of her home Monday, October 28th. She was taken immediately to the Jewish Hospital, where she succumbed. She fell while sweeping leaves.

Mrs. Shott was the widow of Samuel Shott, former president of Kleeman Furniture Co., who died nine years ago. Mrs. Shott is survived by two sons, Edgar and Arthur Shott, and a daughter, Mrs. E.W. Wise.

Dr. Boris Podolsky is a new member of the faculty of the University of Cincinnati. He is assistant professor of mathematical physics in the graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Podolsky is a native of Russia and recently has been collaborating with Dr. Albert Einstein at the institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J. Avondale District, Troop No. 96, of the Boy Scouts, had a dads’ and lads’ weenie roast last week in Sharon Woods.

Troop No. 11 met Friday, Oct. 18th, under Ralph Bloom, leader of the Moose patrol.

Mrs. Sidney Weil, president of the Avondale PTA, has called upon the full resources of the organization to support the school tax levy and bond issue at the coming election. Several hundred women have volunteered for an extensive campaign in which every home in Avondale will be contacted to familiarize voters with the importance of the issue.— October 31, 1935

50 Years Ago Dr. Louis Sommer, 3195 N. Farmcrest Drive, Amberley Village, passed away Wednesday, Oct. 19. He was 62 years old.

Survivors include his wife, Edna; his daughter, Doris; his son Dr. Louis L. Sommer, and his sister, Mrs. Jack Karpf, Miami Beach.

A native of Harrodsburg, Ky., Dr. Sommer was a member of the staff of Jewish Hospital, Cincinnati Academy of Medicine, American College of Physicians, Wise

Temple and Losantiville Country Club. He also was a director of the Aragon Building and Loan Co., Clifton.

Charles Hochstadter, 3649 Jeffrey Court, Sagamore Heights, passed away Sunday, Oct. 23.

Survivors include his wife, Mrs. Elizabeth Drucker Hochstadter; his daughter, Mrs. Jerry D. Goldstein; and one grandson Robert D. Goldstein, all of Cincinnati.

Adath Israel Congregation reelected Dr. A.W. Brown president Sunday, October 9.

Also re-elected were Jay Goldberg, first vice-president; Mose Murcus, second vice-president; Dr. Joseph Katz, third vicepresident; Saul Kirschner, recording secretary; Robert Greenfield, financial; Leon Pastor, treasurer; William Misrach, warden; Louis I. Neman, assistant warden.— October 27, 1960

25 Years Ago Philip M. Meyers Jr., 1986 Jewish Welfare Fund general campaign chairman, announced that James Miller and Dr. Jeffrey Zipkin will cochair the Acharai Division. Acharai, which in Hebrew means, “Follow Me,” was formed to meet the needs of young professionals and executives in the Jewish community.

Mr. Miller, partner and portfolio manager at Bartlett & Co., serves as vice-chairman of the American Jewish Committee and is a former

board member of the Cincinnati Ballet and Children’s Psychiatric Center. Dr. Zipkin, a urologist, is on the board of Golf Manor Synagogue, the Jewish Community Relations Council and Yavneh Day School.

Dr. and Mrs. Edward Loftspring (Ina Zimpleman) announce the birth of a son, Andrew Charles, Oct 18.

Drew has a sister, Blair Alyse.

Maternal grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Peter Zimpelman. Paternal grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Harris

K. Loftspring.

Mrs. Pearl Frankel of Monsey, N.Y., passed away Oct.19.

She is survived by her husband, Rabbi Joshua Frankel; sons, Naftali Frankel, of Cincinnati, and Rabbi Reuven Frankel of Deerfield, Mich.; daughters, Esther Davis and Yaffa Flitterman of New York, and Debbie Friend of California; a sister; 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren; and many nieces and nephews in Jerusalem. — October 31, 1985

10 Years Ago Karla Goldman will discuss her latest book, “Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism,” at Rockdale Temple Friday, Nov. 3. The program is jointly sponsored by Rockdale and the American Jewish Committee.

Rick and Karen (Crall) Pollack announce the birth of a daughter Rou Ella, Sept 20.

Rou has a sister, Nicole Elizabeth.

Maternal grandparents are Mrs.

Nancy Schneider of Shelby, Ohio, and Ron Crall of Greenwich, Ohio.

Paternal grandparents are Don and Bernice Pollack.

Alfred M. Steinberg, age 70, died on Oct. 8, 2000 after a long illness.

Mr. Steinberg was involved in the family business, Steinberg’s Clothing, for many years. He had a 40-year career in the furniture industry as well.

He will be missed by his wife,

Letty; his children, David Steinberg, Terri Allen, Pamela Tiemeyer, Michele Harris and Michelle Stern; his grandchildren, Jeffrey and Audrey Allen, Lindsey Tiemeyer, Justin and Tess Harris and Olivia and Anna Stern; his brother, Howard Steinberg; and his sisters, Eleanor Sherman and Eileen Magenheim.

He was predeceased by his brother, Marvin Steinberg. He is survived by many nephews and nieces as well.

—October 26, 2000

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

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TERLINCHAMP from page 1 May from HUC-JIR Los Angeles.

She holds a B.A. with honors in Studio Art and Religious Studies from Scripps College in Claremont, Calif.

Prior to her ordination, Rabbi Terlinchamp served at Temple De Hirsch Sinai, in Seattle, Wash., as the rabbinic intern for four years.

She also served as a student rabbi at Congregation Beth El in Santa Maria, Calif. She also held two year-long chaplaincy internships in the Los Angeles area—at L.A. County Men’s Central Jail as well as at The Jewish Home for the Aging.

Rabbi Terlinchamp has emphasized a dedication to service throughout her rabbinical education: in 2006 she was awarded the Jason Huebsch Award for Excellence in Community Service, given to one first-year student annually.

Rabbi Terlinchamp will be installed by prominent Rabbi Richard Levy, who is Rabbi of Campus Synagogue and Director of Spiritual Growth at the Los Angeles campus of HUC-JIR. RANK from page 1

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 Jewish War Veterans (513) 459-0111 • jwv.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

SENIOR SERVICES

• 278. Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco $66,311,991 (-44.3%) • 289. Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit $63,889,600 (-19.4%) • 296. The Associated Jewish Federation of Baltimore $62,297,511 (+10.5%) • 314. Anti-Defamation League $58,963,791 (-13.6%) • 322. Federation of Jewish NHS from page 3 A spring program will feature Gary Kenzer, the director of Honest Reporting, to discuss how Israel is viewed in the media. Also in the spring, on April 10, Northern Hills will conduct a Passover food workshop, featuring how to make matzah from scratch and Passover food recipes.

Northern Hills Siddur Hebrew class takes place on Mondays at 2 p.m., and the monthly HaZaK pro-

Rabbi Levy served a two-year term as the president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and was the architect of the Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism, the “Pittsburgh Principles,” which overwhelmingly passed at the May 1999 CCAR Convention.

Temple Sholom will continue its celebration weekend with a Saturday morning service co-officiated by Rabbis Levy and Terlinchamp at 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 13.

The Temple will then hold a gala dinner dance on Nov. 13 starting at 6:30 p.m. to continue the installation weekend celebration.

On Saturday, Rabbi Levy will hold a special scholar-in-residence lecture at 10:30 a.m. at Temple Sholom, preceded by a 10 a.m. continental breakfast. Rabbi Levy will be lecturing on “Spirituality and the Changing Face of Prayer in Reform Judaism.” Everyone is welcome to attend.

More information regarding the installation weekend is available on the Temple website, and in addition, please feel free to call the office.

Communities of the CIS $55,291,282 (-13.6%) • 355. Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland 49,873,859 (-14.7%) • 362. Jewish National Fund $48,343,847 (+8.8%) • 365. Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles $48,053,000 (-12.4%) • 366. P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds $47,995,288 (-35.1%) • 372. Friends of The Israel Defense Forces $46,721,080 (-21.3%) gram, geared to seniors, features speakers and musical programs.

“I am very excited about the variety of adult education programs we are offering this year.” said Tracy Weisberger, director of education and programming.

“Our intention is to make them interactive so adults can participate actively in their own learning. Each year we like to try new ways to grab the interest of our adult learners with a variety of interests.”

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FASHION/BUSINESS

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Making spring’s trends work for you now Fashionably Late

By Stephanie Davis-Novak Fashion Editor It’s hard to think about spring when you haven’t even bought your Halloween candy yet.

However, most of the major spring 2011 fashion shows took place within the past month, predicting the trends you’ll see in stores soon.

Knowing what will be in style next spring can help you understand what to shop for now, to help you stretch your fashion budget.

Overall, looks were feminine, but not overly “girly.” There were

MIKVEH from page 1 safe, professionally done mikveh” in the area. The new mikveh has qualities that are spalike in nature, and also offers more privacy as well.

Appointments for use will be made online, a more private entrance off of Farm Acres Drive is available, and an employed attendant is available to assist the womens’ using of the mikveh.

Phyllis Sewell of the Jewish Foundation noted how the mikveh on Kenova Avenue was

florals in many designers’ collections, such as Dolce & Gabbana and Nanette Lepore, but there was also a lot of bold pattern-mixing.

Lines and silhouettes were typically clean, even minimalistic.

Hemlines were mostly kneelength or lower.

One of next spring’s big looks will be sophisticated ‘70s glamour.

Think high-waisted trousers, elegant blouses, draping and luxurious fabrics. Maxi dresses and widelegged jumpsuits were on the runways from Marc Jacobs and Yves Saint Laurent. Full-legged pants were also prominent, much to the delight of those women who have been patiently waiting for the skinny jeans trend to disappear. To make this trend work for you and your money, as you are buying trousers this fall and winter, you might want to steer toward a fluid, wider-cut trouser.

In keeping with the ‘70s glamour theme of the spring 2011 collections, metallics will also be a out of date, and how this new one was “warm and welcoming” in contrast. In addition, Sewell also gave to the mikveh the Foundation’s remaining monetary pledge. The pledge originally was given in increments, which would have continued into next year.

“You cannot have a first class community, without a first class community mikveh,” noted Brett Caller, president of the Jewish Federation, who also asked for rain needed for the facility. The building houses two mikvehs.

trend to watch. Elie Tahari and Armani were just a few of the designers who used gold or silver boldly in their pieces. Some

designers, such as Balmain, used metallics for very minimalistic pieces, which made for an interesting contrast. While gold cocktail dresses and silver pants aren’t for everyone, this is definitely a trend that can be adapted to individual tastes. For example, pair a gold blouse or tank with one of this season’s chunky sweaters to give your outfit instant glamour. For another subtle way to work metallics into your wardrobe now, look for a blazer or a simple skirt with metallic thread woven into the fabric.

While most of the runway looks for spring 2011 were more romantic in nature, there were still some biker elements in some of the designers’ collections, particularly Burberry. The motorcycle jackets that are very on-trend this fall and winter will still be current early next year. Look for biker jackets that have zippers on the sleeves and quilted details. “Biker chic” also extends beyond the basic jackets to leather pants and skirts. Again,

look for more modern details such as quilting if you’re shopping for these pieces now to carry the looks through spring. While leather pants will not work at the office unless you are employed in a very creative field, the newer leather skirts with lower hemlines can be toned down when paired with crisp, conservative pieces.

Many of the spring 2011 menswear collections, such as Dolce & Gabbana, had a classic “prepster” feel to them with pieces like casual, tailored blazers and knitwear. Also, be aware that you will begin seeing slightly looser suit trousers in the spring, which is a shift away from the fitted looks that have been the trend. The colors for spring were very bold: menswear from Jil Sanders and Moschino both incorporated very bright colors layered upon each other. As you shop this winter, keep these trends in mind so that your new pieces keep on working into spring.

Currently the women are using the men’s mikveh due to the lack of rain these past few months, while the men are still going to the Kenova Avenue location.

In her closing words, Haviva Randolph noted: “Here we are! After years of talking about the need for a new mikveh for the Cincinnati community, followed by years of building the facility, soon you will see what was accomplished within these doors…and yet, without you – without our entire community in all of its vibrancy,

this building is nothing more than a fantastic shell; an opportunity.

It falls to us now to begin breathing life into this building.”

Following her speech, Jon Chaiken, vice-mayor of Amberley Village, proclaimed the mikveh’s addition to the community. The crowd applauded as the ribbon was cut, and the mikveh was open for all.

According to Rabbi Hanan Balk, the Beit Din (rabbinical court) of Cincinnati, which includes himself, and two other local rabbis, will maintain rab-

binic oversight regarding the mikveh. They will “ensure the halachic (legal) aspects in terms of its ritual requirements are fulfilled.”

A mikveh is needed in a community for the Biblical rituals required of married women and how they must be spiritually clean to be with their husbands.

In addition, those converting to Judaism must be immersed in a mikveh in order to become a Jew. A bride and bridegroom are also expected to use a mikveh before their wedding day.

A Kenneth Cole metallic tunic (a spring 2011 trend) and a chunky Kenneth Cole sweater (trend this fall/winter), pieces that work together now that will keep working in spring.

The new Cincinnati mikveh

By LeeAnne Galioto Assistant Editor The layout of the Cincinnati Community Mikveh from the parking lot to the journey through the building seems well thought out and organized. Privacy measures begin before you even enter the building. Women are instructed to use the driveway off of Farm Acres Drive to a small parking lot hidden by the building. The men enter from the Section Road entrance to a large parking lot at the base of the building.

The building is divided between the men’s side and women’s side, and the doors connecting the two sides remain locked while the mikveh is in use by men and women. Privacy is further protected by the strategic location of the entrances and exits.

Once inside, the men’s and the women’s sides radiate different

atmospheres. The focus on the men’s side seems to be on saving time, while the feeling on the women’s side is more relaxed.

The men’s side features an open layout locker room. The layout is so open that only a glass wall and door separates the men’s preparation area from their immersion pool.

The men’s immersion room at the previous mikveh on Kenova Avenue was completely private, and some men had a tendency to linger, which created problems during busy times. To help prevent this, they installed a glass wall at the new mikveh so men can see whether the immersion pool is in use, but now the room is too exposed. Before the new mikveh is in full use, it would be helpful for them to install a curtain, vertical blinds or tint the windows to restore some privacy to the men’s immersion pool.

The men’s side also has a specially built room for the beit din to stand during immersions for conversion.

The women’s side feels more luxurious with large, individual preparation rooms. Each room has plenty of space to prepare physically and mentally for immersion.

Decorated with soothing colors, each of the four rooms features a large mirror and dressing table.

The rooms for the immersion pools are also comforting with light blue and tan tile. The room for the women features special windows which allow for complete privacy while letting in some natural light.

Both pools are filtered, chlorinated and heated to between 96 and 100 degrees. While each immersion pool uses a combination of rainwater and tap water, due to the dry weather, only the rainwater reservoirs for the men’s side are full.

A new immersion pool at the Cincinnati Community Mikveh.

AUTOS

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2010

21

2010 Jaguar XK boasts design, performance

2010 Jaguar XK

The 2010 Jaguar XK offers great performance without sacrificing luxury or charm while being less expensive than its competition. The exterior features aggressive styling details and the inside exudes luxury.

Aluminum construction allows both the XK and XKR versions of the car to feel more agile and precise than previous models.

The 2010 XK features Jaguar Drive Control, which provides the driver with three different modes to alter the car’s response through throttle response, shift speed and suspension settings.

The 2010 XK also features adjustable suspension with adaptive dampers. This was designed to maximize ride comfort and handling depending on driving conditions. Also new is an electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential.

The XK has the unique rotarystyle gear selector first introduced in the XF. Upon ignition, by the push of a button, this gear selector knob elegantly rises out of the center console.

The XK and XKR are both available as a coupe or a convertible. Bi-xenon headlights, 19-inch alloy wheels, front and rear parking sensors, keyless ignition/entry, leather upholstery, poweradjustable front seats, a heated power tilt-and-telescoping steering wheel, heated and cooled front seats and automatic dual-zone climate control all come standard.

The XK also features posh standards like a touchscreen control interface, Bluetooth, a navigation system and a Bowers & Wilkins premium surround-sound system with in-dash six-CD changer, satellite radio and USB audio interface.

The convertible models feature a power-retractable soft top and power rear windows. The roof takes a mere 18 seconds to lower.

The XKR features adaptive headlights, adaptive cruise control and HD radio, and these items are optional on the XK. The XKR also comes with a supercharged engine, different 19-inch wheels, bigger brakes, and unique interior and exterior trim. Different interior

veneers and 20-inch wheels are optional on both the XK and XKR. Safety equipment includes dual-stage chest airbags and seatmounted side airbags, antilock disc brakes with brake assist, stability and traction control. The convertible has pop-up rollover hoops; aluminum roll bars deploy when an imminent rollover is detected.

The XK’s rear parking meter is quite advanced. Rather than just giving a series of beeps, the radarbased system actually displays a visual representation of an object.

It shows the distance of the object from the rear bumper and its relative lateral position to the car.

The XK also features an Automatic Speed Limiter. The driver can set a speed with the cruise control and then press a button that prevents the car from exceeding the speed.

The 2010 XK and XKR both have new engines. They are both naturally aspirated and supercharged versions of a new directinjected 5.0-liter V8.

The 2010 XK boasts 385 horsepower and 380 lb-ft of torque. The XKR has been upgraded to 510 horsepower and 461 lb-ft of torque for 2010. The rear wheels are powered by a six-speed automatic transmission with manual shift control.

EPA estimates for the base coupe are 16 mpg city and 24 mpg highway and the base convertible performs 16 mpg city and 22 mpg highway. Both XKR body styles are just slightly less at 15 and 22 mpg.

The interior of the XK departs from the traditional Jaguar look, with a modern dashboard design and aluminum trim in place of wood. The 2010 interior received an upgrade with more surfaces in the cabin covered in contraststitched leather.

The XK is available in two solid and 11 metallic exterior paint colors. Convertible models also offer the choice of four standard top colors: black, blue, beige and dark gray. Three special order colors are also available: burgundy, dark green and dark brown.

The Jaguar XK starts at $82,150.

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OBITUARIES

DEATH NOTICES KURESMAN, Betty, age 92, died on October 20, 2010; 12 Cheshvan, 5771.

SORG, Jean D., age 80, died on October 21, 2010; 13 Cheshvan, 5771.

OBITUARIES JAFFE, Margery Margery (née Blum) Jaffe, age 81, passed away on October 16, 2010. She was the beloved wife of Dr. Murray Jaffe; devoted mother of Emily and John Adams of Succasunna, N.J., Meg and Peter Ash of Atlanta, Ga., and Dan and Ky Jaffe of Columbus, Ohio; dear twin sister of David and Margot Blum of Owings Mills, Md.; and loving grandmother of Mark and Elizabeth Adams, David and Marcia Ash, and Lauren, Josh, and Kristin Jaffe.

Mrs. Jaffe grew up in Baltimore and graduated from Vassar College, majoring in child development. Shortly after graduation, she met her life companion, Murray Jaffe, with whom she was married to for over 59 years.

During their life in Cincinnati, Mrs. Jaffe devoted her time not only to her husband and three children but also to her passion for helping preschool children from disadvantaged backgrounds. She was a founder and a CHARITIES from page 1 Twenty-two Jewish organizations made the Philanthropy 400, which ranks the country’s 400 largest nonprofits by the size of their fundraising totals.

Only two Jewish charities ranked among the top 100 earners in 2009, with the Jewish Federations of North America and its overseas partner, the American Jewish Joint Distribution

Margery Jaffe

long-serving chairperson of the board of trustees of 4C for Children. She also was instrumental in founding the Apple Tree Day Care Center. After Dr. Jaffe’s retirement, the couple divided their time between Cincinnati and their home in Charleston, S.C. She will be deeply missed by her entire family and her many cherished friends.

Memorial contributions may be made to 4C for Children, 1924 Dana Ave., Cincinnati, Ohio 45207; 513-221-0033.

WEINER, Charles Charles Weiner, a prominent Cincinnati attorney for 50 years, past president and co-founder of the American Art Society of Cincinnati, patron of the arts and past president of UC Hillel, passed away October 12, 2010.

Mr. Weiner was born November 3, 1931 in Brooklyn, N.Y. A son of immigrants, he Committee, ranking 45 and 78, respectively.

Some of the country’s largest Jewish charities took significant hits. Hadassah was down 7.9 percent to $78 million; the JDC fell 8.5 percent to $224 million; Yeshiva University dropped nearly 40 percent to $111 million; and Brandeis University was down 12.6 percent to $78 million. On the other hand, the Birthright Israel Foundation rose 46.8 percent to

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attended Erasmus Hall High School where he graduated with a scholarship to Indiana University in 1949. Chuck, as he was known, played baseball in Brooklyn on a team sponsored by Rocky Graziano. The management of that team helped place him at Indiana University, where he continued to play ball and enrolled in the ROTC program.

In his junior year, Mr. Weiner declared law as his major. Since he was ranked in the upper 10 percent of his class, he was granted early enrollment into Indiana University’s School of Law. During that year, at Indiana University’s Hillel House, Mr. Weiner met a young freshman by the name of Patricia Bartel, whom he would later marry and share 55 wonderful years. The couple was married at Congregation Ohav Shalom (Patricia’s family had been members for three generations) in June 1955, by Rabbi Bernard Greenfield.

Upon graduation, Mr. Weiner served in the U.S. Air Force as a JAG officer. After his service was completed, the Weiners returned to Cincinnati where Mr. Weiner practiced law. He became partner in the firm Marks, Goldsmith, and Weiner and continued practicing for the next 50 years as a corporate attorney. Among his many clients were Dr. Albert Sabin, J. Ralph Corbett, and Nutone/Scovil.

Mr. Weiner had a passion for art history and spent many lunch hours visiting Lou Spiegel, a relative and local Cincinnati artist.

Together they discussed the history of Cincinnati’s Golden Age of Art. As with many of Mr. Weiner’s interests, knowing was never enough. He began studying and mastering art history. This interest became a passion and his library today includes well over 1,000 read and studied books on art.

Along with his lifelong friend, Dr. Kenneth Kreines, the two formed a group dedicated to promoting local interest in American Art. This group later became known as The American Art Society of Cincinnati. Both men served as presidents of the Art Society. Art acquisition was always a treasure hunt in Mr. Weiner’s mind. Having a welltrained eye for paintings, along with his knowledge of art and artists, enabled him to spot diamonds in the rough. He began his own collection of art. When his law practice took him to other cities, no trip was complete without a visit to the cities’ local museums.

Lack of wall space and their need to share their passion of art with others led the Weiners to open The Patricia Weiner Gallery in Montgomery in the late 1980s.

The gallery started off not with the intention of selling their art, but rather to share and discuss art with those friends and patrons coming in to seek and share knowledge over a cup of coffee.

Fortunately, the unplanned success of the gallery forced the Weiners to increase their acquisitions and move to a larger location on Montgomery Road. Upon

his official retirement from law, Mr. and Mrs. Weiner traveled together on acquisition vacations.

Throughout this period of their lives, Mr. Weiner never lost his love of baseball. Together with his wife, both true Cincinnati Reds fans, they were season ticket holders for over 40 years. They faithfully attended almost every home game.

Mr. Weiner’s love of art and his dedication to his clients took a backseat only to his love of family. He was the beloved husband of Patricia (Bartel) Weiner; devoted father of Terry Weiner Brodof, Ellen Miller Shuler, and Diane Weiner (Kevin) Kagarise; dear brother of Bernice “Bobbie” and Harold Winkler, and brotherin-law of Barbara Bartel Lefkowitz; loving grandfather of Matthew & Lauren Brodof, Eliza & Abigail Miller and Megan & Molly Kagarise; and is also survived by loving nieces and nephews.

Chuck Weiner’s life story would not be complete without mention of his ability to laugh and the glow of his smile. His warmth and humor was translated throughout all of his life’s endeavors. His impact on the community will be missed.

Funeral services have been held. Memorial contributions can be made to Congregation Ohav Shalom, 8100 Cornell Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45249; 513489-3399, or to the Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202; 513-721-2787.

just over $71 million.

It seems that 2009 was an especially hard year for the Jewish federation system.

The Chronicle’s accounting of the 147-federation system is always a bit tricky, as some of the largest federations are counted by themselves and not with the rest of the system.

According to the Chronicle’s survey, the JFNA brought in $320,252,000 in 2009, a 19.6 percent drop from the previous year (when it was known as the UJC, for United Jewish Communities).

All but one of the top federations on the list, which were counted separately, showed significant declines. The UJA-Federation of New York was down 10 percent to $159.7 million, JUF-Jewish Federation of Chicago was down 15 percent to $133.5 million and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston was down 21 percent to about $85 million.

Only the Associated Jewish Federation of Baltimore saw an increase, gaining 10 percent to reach $62 million.

But the JFNA says the numbers for the federations are not as

bad as the report may seem.

Looking at the federation system’s campaign as a whole, and including the larger federations, the 2009 annual campaign stood at $938 million, a 10 percent drop from 2008’s $1.04 billion campaign and more in line with the national averages for declines.

In total, according to the JFNA, the federations took in $2 billion in 2009 when counting all of their assets, including endowments and foundations such as the Jewish Communal Fund of New York.

This year, the federations are ahead of the 2009 pace, as they have taken in $747 million in 2010, a 3.4 percent increase over the same period of last year.

“There is a cautious optimism,” a JFNA spokesman said. “I don’t think anyone thinks we are out of the woods or that everything is great. But there is a feeling that people have really responded and stepped up to the plate, especially given that nonprofits and charities continue to be down. Our surveys have shown that there is a trust in the federation movement.”

On the positive side, two Jewish organizations were new to this year’s list of the top 400:

American Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and the Jewish National Fund. On the other side, two Jewish organizations dropped off the list: the Jewish Community Foundation of San Diego and the United Jewish Communities of MetroWest, N.J., both of which made the top 400 for 2008 thanks to significant one-time gifts.

This marks the 20th year that the Chronicle has conducted the survey. It provided an opportunity to see how top charities have evolved since 1991 and how donor interests may have changed.

In general, the largest charities have stayed relatively stable.

Some 228 charities made the list in both 1991 and 2010, and they increased their mean fundraising by 228 percent. When adjusted for inflation, they raised 81 percent more in real dollars last year than they did two decades ago. And the largest of the large have fared well, according to the Chronicle: Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Catholic Charities USA, the Salvation Army and the Y (formerly YMCA) stayed in the list’s top 20, with each group at least tripling the amount raised over the two decades.

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