American Israelite, April 19, 2012

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Taking the guesswork out of the Jewish holidays for interfaith families

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Mercaz Hebrew High School graduation On Sunday, March 18, Mercaz Hebrew High School held its graduation ceremony. The senior class had six students representing Adath Israel Congregation, Northern Hills Congregation and Congregation Ohav Shalom. The evening began with a homemade dinner sponsored

by Rob and Dara Wood and family for graduates and their guests, as well as Mercaz students and families.

The graduation ceremony, with emcee Noah Yasgur, began with a welcome and opening blessing from Rabbi Eric Slaton and a Dvar Torah

by Rabbi George Barnard. The graduates then proceeded to present their part of the program. Sarah Wasniewski created the artwork for the cover of the printed graduation program as well as painted two pieces that she felt expressed her feelings as a Jewish young adult celebrating Shabbat. Louie Meisner spoke about the senior mitzvah project, collecting toiletries and personal items for the Jewish Family Service Kosher Food Pantry. The collection will be going on until the end of the Mercaz school year on May 3 and Louie encouraged families to donate. Angela Reiser and Elana Miller created a slide show with pictures from their years at Mercaz.

David Rosen wrote a poem that went along with one of the pictures that Sarah had painted of Solomon’s pillars. It was a beautifully written poem that ended as follows: “…Somewhere in our hearts Solomon’s pillars still stand Our generation grown Our lessons learned Carrying them with us as we take the next step.”

Elana Miller shared with the guests what her Mercaz experience had meant to her and what she had learned over the years. Elana wanted her speech to be different than the ones she had heard in the past, the ones that said, “...my parents said I had to go to Mercaz when I started, but I am glad that I went, and eventually I went because I wanted to, not because they said I had to.” She likened her experience

The graduating class of 2012

at Mercaz to the traditions she had created while there. One such tradition was her and a friend always sitting in the hall outside the snack room each week, sometimes the two of them, sometimes others joined, but it was a tradition that lasted five years for the two of them and one she looks back at fondly. Elana also said, “Looking back on Mercaz, I think of some really great classes with some of my favorite teachers, some fun projects and activities, but most of all I think about the friendships I, and all of my Senior class, have created here. I know that these friendships will continue to grow and strengthen throughout college, and one day when my future kids may or may not be complaining about going to Mercaz I will be an example for them about how Mercaz isn’t only about a Jewish education, it’s about Jewish connections and friendships.”

This year’s graduating class once again had many options of students to receive the Nate Kaplan Award presented by the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. While this was a smaller class in numbers, they

were a strong class that had bonded and made coming to Mercaz a priority. The student that won the award has had an amazing attitude for all five years he attended; he was a regular at the pre-Mercaz dinners, had great attendance and was an active participant in classes. He truly came each week with a smile on his face and ready to learn and have fun with his friends. Mercaz was pleased to present the Nate Kaplan Memorial Award for outstanding achievement in Jewish studies to Noah Yasgur, son of Howard and Diane Yasgur. Noah truly took advantage of what Mercaz had to offer both academically and socially. Their teacher, Brent Guttman, an HUC fourth year rabbinical student, also shared his hopes for the seniors. The ceremony came to a close as Rabbi Irvin Wise offered a closing prayer to the class.

These six students have shown that they, along with their families, are committed to continuing their Jewish education. They have come on Sunday nights during the school year each week for four and five years. They made it a priority in

their busy schedules to attend Mercaz, to continue what they started many years ago at religious school or Rockwern Academy.

They proved that even with their hectic schedules that their Jewish education was an essential part of their lives and took priority over other things.

To earn a graduation diploma from Mercaz the students must take at least one class in each of seven curricular areas and for an enriched diploma they must take three additional classes in two more curricular areas. Several of the graduates received an enriched diploma. It is also important to thank the parents of the graduates for their support and commitment as well. They recognize the importance of continuing Jewish education and have helped to make it a priority in their child’s life.

This is just the beginning for these graduates, a beginning to the Jewish education that hopefully will continue far beyond their days at Mercaz. The board of directors of Mercaz, the rabbis and educators wish the graduates all the best in their future endeavors.

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THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

JCC hosts acclaimed IDF Choir A one-time appearance of the internationally acclaimed Israel Defense Force (IDF) Choir will be part of the remembrance of Yom HaZikaron (Israel Memorial Day) and celebration of Yom HaAtzmaut (Israel Independence Day), Israel’s 64th anniversary, at the Mayerson JCC on Thursday evening, April 26.

Beginning at 5:30 p.m., an outdoor service in the courtyard of the JCC building will serve as a solemn remembrance of those lost in Israel’s wars and victims of terror. There will be a flag lowering, wreath laying, prayers, poems and songs by the Cincinnati Hebrew Day School boys’ choir. A Yom HaAtzmaut ceremony follows the service to mark the transition between the memorial and independence days. This ceremony will highlight Cincinnati’s many

connections to Israel with a flag and drum parade with Kulanu and Mercaz students, the Rockwern Academy girls’ and boys’ choirs, and a torch lighting ceremony.

The internationally famous IDF Choir highlights the celebration of Israel Independence Day with a free performance at the JCC. Several IDF military bands have been formed over the years since the establishment of Israel, and IDF bands present a youthful style of Israeli music. Songwriters and composers like Naomi Shemer, Haim Hefer, Yair Rosenblum and Yoram Tahar-Lev created Israeli music with a style that resonates with audiences. Between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, military bands multiplied, becoming popular with civilians and soldiers. IDF choir songs became

classics and are heard all year round, especially on Israeli memorial and independence days. One of the most popular IDF choirs that has performed all over the world will be at the JCC for this exclusive, one-time concert. Attendance is free and open to everyone.

In addition to the choir, this celebration includes activities for the whole family. Enjoy “A Taste of Kosher Cincinnati” food court with delicious Israeli, Indian and international food including sushi, bagels, chocolates, ice cream and other desserts. Children can play on free inflatables and free carnival games, and tweens can show their skills in a Ga-Ga (Israeli-style dodgeball) tournament. There will also be a teen party, shuk (Israelistyle market), the film, “Israel Inside,” and lots more.

JCC is first nationally accredited senior center in Cincinnati It’s a state-of-the-art facility, with a soundproof music room, well equipped art studio, large auditorium that seats 800, 10 exercise rooms, a full-size gym, indoor and outdoor walking tracks and swimming pools, a spa, aquatic center and a café. At first glance, this may seem like a description of a luxury resort and spa, but it’s actually all part of the Mayerson JCC’s Senior Center, the first and only one in Greater Cincinnati, and one of only 200 Senior Centers in the entire nation to be awarded the Council on Aging’s National Senior Center Accreditation from the National Institute of Senior Centers (NISC).

National accreditation is the highest possible certification that a senior center can receive. There are an estimated 15,000 senior centers nationwide, yet only 200 have met the high standards and rigorous guidelines necessary to qualify for this prestigious certification. The Mayerson JCC Senior Center had to pass nine standards of excellence set forth by an accreditation board, and undergo a three-day onsite peer review.

Over the years the JCC Senior Center has enjoyed extremely positive reviews from its constituents and their families. It has received funding from several foundations to start innovative, new programs, has gotten excellent audits, and its director, Tsipora Gottlieb was recognized as Greater Cincinnati’s Outstanding Leader in the Field of Aging.

“All the elements were in place and the time seemed right to begin working toward accreditation,” said Gottlieb of the year and a half process that culminated in the official accreditation this past January.

“I credit my phenomenal team who has worked hard to create a center of excellence in every sense

The JCC Senior Center earned the official status of National Accreditation and received a plaque in Washington, D.C. L-R: Accreditation Board Chairman Dianne Stone; JCC Assistant Director of Senior Adult Services Susan Bradley; JCC Director of Senior Adult Services Tsipora Gottlieb; and Mayerson JCC Peer Reviewer Sandi Johnson.

of the word and who are dedicated to innovative, state-of-the-art programming designed to enhance the quality of life for adults across a wide spectrum. From those looking down the road toward retirement, to those who have time on their hands but still want to keep their minds and bodies active, and those of advanced age who are struggling with the challenges that aging can bring, we view each of our constituents as unique individuals and strive to give them the best experience we can,” she added.

“I recommended the Mayerson JCC for accreditation due to its strong leadership and committed staff who serve as strong advocates for seniors,” explained Sandi Johnson, onsite peer reviewer.

“The staff is experienced and has

the opportunity to take advantage of ample training opportunities.

Five thousand square feet of the JCC is used by the Senior Center, which offers a great meals program with a wide range of dietary choices, an excellent transportation service, and an abundance of evidence-based programs.”

“Given the enormous passion and talent this team brings to their work, I’m not surprised at this recognition,” said Shep Englander, Chief Executive Officer of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati.

“This place is like a second home to me. I look forward to seeing my longtime friends there every day and enjoy making new friends.

The staff at the Mayerson JCC are like members of my own family,” added Ruth Stragevsky, frequent JCC Senior Center participant.

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items that came made me really eager to integrate these traditions into our lives,” she said. “These packages have made it so simple for us to start having a Passover Seder and weekly Shabbat dinners. In fact, the kids used to fight over who got to hold the kiddush cup that came in our Shabbat box, which inspired me to purchase another one so they could each have their own to hold!” she added.

“When I received my first New Traditions gift, my initial reaction was WOW! The package itself looked so exciting and what was inside completely exceeded my expectations!” exclaimed KatyBeth Trapp, who recently moved to Cincinnati with her boyfriend Justin. “My favorite items were the awesome silver wine cup and the how-to guides that described all of the Jewish holidays and traditions; but by far my most favorite gift of all was the Seder plate! I was in such disbelief that I was receiving such

their lives in the comfort of their own homes,” explained Julie Robenson, Fusion Family coordinator. “A lot of thought has gone into each of the items we put into the packages to make it as easy as possible for the recipients to incorporate a little bit, or a little bit more Judaism into their lives,” she added. “All our ads say ‘NO cost, NO kidding. NO strings attached!’ and we mean it! While we offer Fusion Family events designed to introduce interfaith families to others just like themselves, where they can learn more about Jewish customs, rituals and traditions and socialize with one another, not everyone who receives our gift boxes comes to these programs or takes part in other Jewish offerings in the community and that’s okay. We respect that everyone needs to participate in Jewish life on their own terms.”

New Traditions is a program of Fusion Family which was started four years ago by the Mayerson

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The American Israelite “LET THERE BE LIGHT” THE OLDEST ENGLISH-JEWISH WEEKLY IN AMERICA - EST. JULY 15, 1854

VOL. 158 • NO. 39 THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012 27 NISSAN 5772 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 8:03 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 9:04 PM 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 production@americanisraelite.com RABBI ISSAC M. WISE Founder, Editor, Publisher, 1854-1900 LEO WISE Editor & Publisher, 1900-1928 RABBI JONAH B. WISE Editor & Publisher, 1928-1930 HENRY C. SEGAL Editor & Publisher, 1930-1985 PHYLLIS R. SINGER Editor & General Manager, 1985-1999 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher BARBARA L. MORGENSTERN Senior Writer YEHOSHUA MIZRACHI NICOLE SIMON Assistant Editors ALEXIA KADISH Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor SONDRA KATKIN Dining Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR RABBI A. JAMES RUDIN ZELL SCHULMAN RABBI AVI SHAFRAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists LEV LOKSHIN JANE KARLSBERG Staff Photographers JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager MICHAEL MAZER Sales ERIN WYENANDT Office Manager e Oldest Eng Th

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Hundreds of interfaith families have begun celebrating Jewish holidays thanks to Fusion Family.

Foundation primarily to address the needs of those interfaith and conversionary families who were not affiliated with a congregation or other Jewish organization. “The less engaged the parents are in Jewish life, inside and outside of the home, the fewer opportunities their children will have to be exposed to any type of Jewish culture or tradition,” said Pam Saeks, director of Jewish Giving for The Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation. “As a result, these children will be at much greater risk of growing up with little or no Jewish identity. That’s why we felt it was important to take away as many hurdles to participation as possible and offer high quality events and resources. All at no cost, with no membership requirements and no questions asked,” she added.

“We have numerous stories of families who had never observed a Jewish holiday before who use the gifts from the New Traditions Toolkit packages, and/or attend our events, and then go on to celebrate Shabbat, Hanukkah and other holidays. Some end up joining the JCC, sending their children to Jewish preschools and/or camps, and there are some who have even become members of a congregation. And while we are thrilled that so many have increased the level of their Jewish engagement, we have no other goal than to give these families a chance to connect with one another and with Jewish life in a way that feels comfortable for them,” Saeks continued. “For some, attending Fusion Family events or making a recipe provided in one of the boxes is the only Jewish thing they do or may ever do for that matter. But that’s perfectly okay with us because before that, they weren’t doing anything Jewish at all!”

To sign up for the free New Traditions Toolkit Program and to learn more about Fusion Family events please consult the Community Directory in this issue for Fusion Family’s contact information. And for families in the Jewish community with children 12 and younger, in which one or both parents are Jewish, The Mayerson Foundation offers Shalom Family, which hosts the biggest events for young families in the Jewish community throughout the year and provides Shalom Baby Starter Kits for families in the Jewish community who have new babies. In addition, Shalom Baby recently started Sensory Sunday, free playgroups for families with babies (older siblings always welcome) in Mason which take place every other Sunday.

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wonderful gifts and information that educated me further on my boyfriend's amazing religion! I am 100 percent forever thankful and absolutely plan on using all of the items in the future!”

“We know that being part of a ‘blended’ family can have its share of challenges. That’s why we created this program. It’s the perfect way for interfaith or families in which one or both parents have converted to Judaism, to incorporate something Jewish into

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ditions really accessible,” said Katie Kleinman, who stumbled across a New Traditions advertisement in a local parenting magazine and immediately signed up for the program. “Because he grew up Jewish, my husband was baffled at my excitement upon receiving our first package since he took Judaism for granted having grown up with it. But I was really eager to learn more about his religion and culture, and seeing the beautiful gifts and other

ewish N h-J ew lis

“My husband always talks about the wonderful memories he has of Passover seders spent at his grandparents’ house when he was a kid, so I thought this year I would surprise him by putting one together at our house. However, knowing little if anything about Judaism myself, the ‘surprise’ was on me when I realized all that was involved,” said Christina Sachs. “I had no idea where to start, or where to get all the items necessary to make it happen. But just when I was about ready to scrap the whole idea, a box appeared on my doorstep with a seder plate, a how-to guide and an easy to follow hagaddah, complements of Fusion Family’s New Traditions gift program,” she added. “We ended up having our own little family seder after all. My husband was so happy, and I realized it wasn’t that difficult to do, especially when you have all the resources you need at your fingertips! We’ve decided to have a seder every year from now on so we can make our own Passover memories with our family,” she continued. “If it wasn’t for Fusion Family though, I never would have even attempted it. The gift they gave us was way more than what came in that box!”

Jewish celebrations and more delivered free, right to your front door. That’s the motto of Fusion Family’s New Traditions Toolkit program, an initiative of The Mayerson Foundation that has made it possible for hundreds of interfaith and conversionary families in Greater Cincinnati to incorporate something, or something more, into their lives that’s Jewish, in a way that’s comfortable and meaningful to them. This series of free gifts includes all the ritual items, resources and information that the recipients need to celebrate Jewish holidays and incorporate Jewish traditions into their lives. The Shabbat Starter Kit, for example, comes complete with candlesticks, a kiddush cup, challah cover, candles, a fresh challah, matzo ball soup mix and Shabbat matches.

“Jewish Holidays in a JIFF,” an easy to understand step-by-step guidebook with an explanation of each holiday, transliterated and translated prayers, recipes, online resources and more, are also included in every box. Families receive similar boxes for Passover, Rosh Hashanah and Hanukkah as well as two additional kits containing a tzedakah box and mezuzah.

“As the parents of a 5- and a 2year-old, my husband and I really appreciate how the New Traditions program has helped make starting our own family tra-

r in Am ape er sp i

Taking the guesswork out of the Jewish holidays for interfaith families

THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE (USPS 019-320) is published weekly for $44 per year and $2.00 per single copy in Cincinnati and $49 per year and $3.00 per single copy elsewhere in U.S. by The American Israelite Co. 18 West Ninth Street, Suite 2, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-2037. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, OH. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE, 18 West Ninth Street, Suite 2, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-2037.

The views and opinions expressed by the columnists of The American Israelite do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the newspaper.

LOCAL / NATIONAL • 5

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

Tot Shabbat service at Rockdale Temple Families with young children are invited to Rockdale Temple’s Tot Shabbat service at 5:30 p.m.

Friday, April 20 in the chapel.

Senior Rabbi Sissy Coran will lead

the service, assisted by Rabbinic Intern Meredith Kahan and Religious School Director Margaret Friedman-Vaughan.

“This is a short service

designed for toddlers, pre-schoolers and their parents, but all ages are welcome,” said Rabbi Coran.

“We have music, laughter, stories and a lot of fun. It’s a relaxing time

and a great way to introduce children to the temple experience.”

She noted that parents say they enjoy being able to participate in the service with their children and

appreciate the chance to network with one another.

Rockdale’s Tot Shabbat services are offered monthly, either on a Friday evening or Saturday morning.

Wise Temple’s annual marriage reconsecration service On Friday, April 13, Wise Temple held its annual marriage reconsecration service for members celebrating significant wedding anniversaries.

Approximately 160 Wise Temple couples had been invited.

They were given a blessing during the service and an Oneg Shabbat in their honor followed the service. Family and friends were invited to come and share the occasion.

This year’s event was hosted

by Sharon and Ted KIeymeyer, who celebrated 30 years of marriage, and Missy and Mark Richter, who celebrated 25 years of marriage. Honorary hosts were David and Harriet Schiebel, 60 years, Sam and Lesha Greengus,

55 years, Tom and Helene Ohren, 55 years, and David and Susan Smith, 50 years.

“The renewal of vows with other couples who are also celebrating many years of marriage makes this Shabbat special,”

commented co-host Sharon Kleymeyer.

“A feature of this celebration that I especially enjoy is the display of wedding photos from many different decades,” observed co-host Missy Richter.

Adath Israel’s second graders make megilot This past Purim the second grade at Adath Israel was engaged in a wonderful art project making their own megilot. As Purim came closer, the teacher, Scott Kabakoff, realized it was a great holiday around which to do a hands-on project. He wanted to do more than just a “token” art project with the class so he had to think outside the box to come up with something very creative. He decided that they would make megilot—not your ordinary paper towel tube and construction paper end up in the trash a few months later megilot that pretty much he himself made in religious school while growing up. He wanted these megilot to be durable and to be able to withstand the carefree manners which most children use when playing with everyday toys. Just as important,

National Briefs Obama to speak at Holocaust Museum WASHINGTON (JTA) — President Obama will commemorate the Holocaust at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Obama will speak at the museum on April 23, less than a week after the official Holocaust Remembrance Day. “He will give remarks commemorating the Holocaust and discuss how the United States is honoring the pledge of ‘Never again’ by developing a comprehensive strategy to prevent and respond to mass atrocities,” said a White House statement issued Tuesday.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, will be marked this year on Thursday. Tim Geithner, the secretary of the treasury, will represent the Obama administration at the Capitol’s commemoration.

he also wanted to make the project unique, by having the megilah not only look like a real megilah, but also function like a real megilah— a quality which the aforementioned genre of grade school megilot really didn’t have.

The students worked hard to complete this project. The first step was to learn about the story they would find in the megilah and then the students colored and assembled their faux parchment megilot pages together into long scrolls over the course of two or three sessions of religious school.

Once the drawings were completed and put into one long scroll, they fastened the scrolls onto wooden dowels. They then inserted the dowels with the attached scrolls into the megilah tube, capped off the ends to prevent the U.S. author Eggers will not accept Gunter Grass prize in person (JTA) — American author Dave Eggers said he will not travel to Germany to accept a literary prize from the Gunter Grass Foundation.

Eggers said in a statement that the organizers should have postponed the award ceremony following the controversy over Grass’ recently published poem claiming that Israel is endangering world peace by threatening Iran.

“I felt it best if I did not attend in person,” Eggers said in a statement issued by his German publisher. “The issues raised in Grass’s recent poem are not issues I am prepared to speak about, and I would have been expected to comment on them repeatedly.”

Eggers was awarded the Albatross Prize, which includes a cash award worth about $56,000, for his 2009 novel “Zeitoun,” about a Syrian-American man’s experiences after Hurricane Katrina. Israeli author David Grossman is a past recipient of the prize.

dowel from coming out, and then pulled out the scroll from a slit in the tube—thus completing the assembly of their megilot. Noah, a

to see what it looks like when you first start to put it together and what it looks like in the end.”

The students completed the

“...a hands-on project that creates a finished product that is a real useable item.”

Dara Wood

second grade student, said “Putting the pages together and attaching them to the wood dowel scroll was the best part because I like to put things together. It’s neat

project by writing the words “Megilat Esther” in Hebrew on the tubes, and decorating them beautifully with Purim motifs.

“This is the type of project that

I encourage all of the teachers at the Jarson Education Center to do with their students, a hands-on project that creates a finished product that is a real useable item,” stated Religious School director, Dara Wood.

The second graders said they loved this project because it seemed like they created something real and were impressed that they could actually pull out the scroll and read the story and then wind it back up!

“I am very proud of the efforts of all my students on this project.

They have an authentic symbol of Judaism—their own 'working' Megilat Esther that they and their families can read from on Purim, suitable to keep, save and use for years to come,” commented Kabakoff.

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Ethiopian Israeli working Survivors’ grandchildren feeling an obligation to share Holocaust memories to honor Polish Jew who advocated for Beta Israel

By Suzanne Kurtz Jewish Telegraphic Agency

(JTA) — Shira Sheps remembers walking through an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan and stumbling upon her grandmother’s long-ago school reports alongside family photos and her great-grandparents’ wedding invitation.

Sheps, 25, had known that her grandmother shortly after Kristallnacht had left Furth, Germany, at age 9 on a Kindertransport to England. But seeing personal mementos of the life that had been taken from the family as well as her grandmother’s uncanny resemblance as a young girl to Sheps’ younger sister at that age, “I freaked out,” she says.

As a child, Sheps would listen to her grandmother’s stories of a childhood lived during the eve of World War II. The stories, she says, “profoundly affected me. No matter what I do, I come back to it.”

A social worker in Fair Lawn, N.J., who is pursuing her master’s degree at the Hunter College School of Social Work in New York, Sheps has spent the past several years researching and studying the effects of intergenerational trauma.

“It gives me an excuse, gives

meaning to [my studies]. It’s a fixation,” she says in an interview just days in advance of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day),

Courtesy of Shira Sheps

Marion Achtentuch, 83, with her granddaughter, Shira Sheps, 25.

which begins on Wednesday evening. “I’m bearing witness. I’m doing what I was taught for the purpose of remembering.”

She is among the many grandchildren of Holocaust survivors — often referred to as the Third Generation — who feel an obligation to share memories of the Shoah.

The bond that many in the Third Generation have with their grandparents has been noted by psychologists and researchers who have studied the effect of the Holocaust on families.

For many survivors, it was easier to share their experiences with their grandchildren than with their children, says Peppy Margolis, director of the Institute of Genocide and Holocaust Studies at Raritan Valley Community College in New Jersey, who recently produced a 30-minute documentary titled “The Second Generation: Ripples from the Holocaust.”

Through the dozens of interviews that she conducted, Margolis says she found that for survivors in general, the Holocaust was “too close” and “many were still processing what had happened and burying the pain in their work and raising their children.”

Their experiences also left many ill equipped to be parents, adds Margolis, herself a child of Holocaust survivors. “But the majority talked to their grandchildren and not with the same pain and bitterness; enough time has passed and it’s not as traumatic.”

While her film explores what it means to be a member of the Second Generation and to grow up with a parent who lived through the Nazi atrocities and World War II, she says it also has helped those of the Third Generation to better understand their own parents.

MEMORIES on page 19

Marking 25 years, March of the Living uniting survivors with liberators in Poland

By Ben Sales Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — Bernhard Storch grew up in a Jewish family in Silesia, near Poland’s border with Germany.

Like many Polish Jews, he moved quickly from town to town as the Nazis advanced in 1939, trying to avoid capture. Before long he was caught and sent to a brutal labor camp.

On July 23, 1944, Storch stood by the barbed wire as a Polish division of the Russian army liberated the Majdanek concentration camp.

Now, nearly 70 years later, he will return to Poland for the first time since the war.

But Storch was not an inmate at Majdanek; he was an officer in the army that liberated it.

Part of a delegation of 16 liberators — veterans of the American and Russian militaries who freed concentration camp inmates — Storch was scheduled to fly to Poland on Monday as part of the March of the Living, a trip that starts Tuesday with a week in Poland and ends with a week in Israel. This year’s trip is focusing on the liberators’ achievements.

“There should be much more of

these trips,” said Storch, 90, who spent the beginning of the war in a Siberian prison camp before joining a Polish division of the Russian army. “There’s a deep, deep Jewish history. We will die, but the history will never die from Poland.”

Holocaust survivors have been an integral part of the trip’s program from its inception, but this is the first year that liberators are taking center stage. A ceremony on Wednesday will honor the soldiers, and they will speak to smaller groups of students during the week in Poland.

“The liberators are great people to testify to the world as to what happened,” David Machlis, vice chairman of the march, told JTA. “They provide an incontrovertible and lasting testament to the truth.”

In all, some 10,000 participants from 35 countries, more than 100 Holocaust survivors and the liberators will take part in the march this year. In its 25th year, the March of the Living began as a way to expose young people to the story of the Holocaust as a way to counter Holocaust deniers, according to Machlis.

Participants, mostly high-school students, march from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the Birkenau

camp on Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls this year on April 18. After a few more days visiting concentration camps and memorial sites, the trip moves to Israel, where participants celebrate Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day, this year on April 25 and 26.

Storch has lectured on the Holocaust at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. But for other veterans, the march is one of their first times relating to their experiences liberating the camps.

Fredrick Carrier, 77, who was an engineer in Gen. George Patton’s army, has marched in Veterans’ Day parades in New York City since 1994, but he became involved in Holocaust commemoration only two years ago when he was invited to a ceremony at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Carrier said he hopes to inspire the march’s student participants to combat totalitarianism.

“These children are the new liberators,” said Carrier, who will be filming the march. “They have to connect on Facebook to aim their power against these dictators. We don’t need any guns anymore. We can do it with the media.”

MARCH on page 21

By Hillel Kuttler Jewish Telegraphic Agency BALTIMORE (JTA) — Avraham Adgah figuratively scratches his head, wondering what motivated Jacques Faitlovitch to dedicate his life to the Beta Israel — the Jews of Ethiopia.

“That’s the question that occupies me,” Adgah, a civil engineer at Israel’s Technion, says by telephone from his home in Kiryat Ata, near Haifa. “What led a 23year-old white Jew from Poland to go to an undeveloped country and travel from place to place on donkeys — and when there were no donkeys, on foot? So I ask: What compelled him?”

Adgah wants to honor Faitlovitch by establishing an institute dedicated to the history and culture of communities once known as “lost Jews,” including those from Ethiopia. Such an institute, he says, was the intent of Faitlovitch in bequeathing his Tel Aviv house to the city upon his death in 1955 at age 74.

Tel Aviv University now houses the archive of articles, photographs and personal writings on Ethiopian Jewry that Faitlovitch accumulated during many visits, beginning in 1904. Should the institute be established, Adgah says he will ask the school to return the collection to the old Faitlovitch home.

Adgah, 47, who immigrated to Israel in 1984 from the village of Wegera in Ethiopia’s Gondar region, wants to locate Faitlovitch’s relatives, who he hopes will support the venture and provide personal information about the man for future exhibits. A lawyer told Adgah that he could improve chances for establishing the institute by locating Faitlovitch kin and prevailing upon them to approach Tel Aviv officials.

“I won’t stop talking about him,” Adgah said of Faitlovitch.

“I want everyone to know about him. His whole life was the Ethiopian Jewish community.”

Faitlovitch occupies nearmythical status for leaving his hometown, Lodz, for Ethiopia in his 20s, devoting much of his life to the Jewish community there and rallying support and recognition for Ethiopian Jewry among European and American Jews. He brought Ethiopian pupils to study at Jewish schools in France, Switzerland and Italy, where they were trained to teach Jews back home. Later he helped establish a Jewish school in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa and founded the New York-based American Pro-Falasha Committee.

Shortly before he died,

Faitlovitch helped bring 27 Ethiopian Jewish teenagers to Israel to study at the Kfar Batya youth village, near Raanana. One person in that group was Adgah’s uncle, Yitzhak, now in his late 60s.

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Faitlovitch “was an indefatigable lecturer, everywhere trying to stir active interest in the ‘Black Jews of Abyssinia.’ He considered the Beta Israel ethnologically the descendants of genuine Jews and an integral part of the Jewish people.”

Adgah is concerned that time is working against his plan — that the Tel Aviv municipality, in violation of Faitlovitch’s will, might sell the home, at 10 Vitkin St., because of its prime location a block from the beach. In recent years the city has used the twostory home and its garden as a kindergarten and then as a drugtreatment facility, he says.

Faitlovitch was “certainly an historical figure, one of the first European figures to spread the word about Ethiopian Jews,” says Friends of Ethiopian Jews director Susan Pollack, who adds that she has spent “many hours” reading Faitlovitch’s “beautiful [and] fascinating” descriptions of the community.

“He’s highly respected because his writings about Ethiopian Jews were very positive. He described them as very religious, very devout and much more stringent about rituals than were [many] Jews in Europe in the early 20th century. He viewed them as very spiritual,” she says.

Shortly after being interviewed in late March on the Israeli radio program “Hamador L’chipus Krovim” (Searching for Relatives Bureau), Adgah heard from several cousins of Faitlovitch, who married late in life and never had children.

The relatives are excited about the venture and eager to lend a hand, Adgah says. He is gratified that through him, some of Faitlovitch’s relatives have reconnected after many years.

Sara Geiger remembers that Faitlovitch, who was her paternal grandfather’s first cousin, located her and her sister when they arrived in Israel in 1948 after surviving the Holocaust. On many a Saturday night, the sisters visited Faitlovitch and his wife, Mara, at their Vitkin Street home, which Geiger said “seemed large, like a castle.” There they listened to interesting lecturers the couple had invited to address guests in melavah malkah, or post-Shabbat, programs.

ETHIOPIAN on page 19

NATIONAL • 7

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

Obama administration is ready for Iran talks — but is Iran?

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Obama administration has its Iran ducks in a row: Tehran is coming to the table, Israel is sitting still, most of the world’s major oil buyers and sellers are on board with the sanctions effort, and Congress is in an agreeable mood.

Courtesy of Creative Commons

Satellite imagery of the suspected Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility under construction north of Qom, Iran.

Ducks, though, have a tendency to wander off. Iran might not stay at the table, or it might offer delaying tactics that peel off support for sanctions by U.S. allies.

Israeli leaders are skittish about alleged Obama administration leaks that they believe are aimed at heading off an Israeli military response.

Republicans in Congress, while pleasantly surprised at the administration’s diligence at keeping to the sanctions timeline, are worried that the administration could offer too much at the talks.

Iran is not likely to deliver the concessions that the United States is likely to seek, said Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corp., a think tank that often consults with government.

“The issue between Iran and the United States is not the nuclear program,” he said. “There is a perception among Iran’s leaders that Iran is engaged in a conflict with the United States and the nuclear program is part of the conflict. They believe that if Iran makes compromises under pressure, it makes Iran look weak.”

Iran is ready for talks in Istanbul on April 13 with the world’s major powers, including the United States, on its nuclear program. It is not clear what the U.S. bottom line

is, but Obama administration officials repeatedly have said that they will not ease the sanctions until Iran meets criteria set by the U.N. Security Council to make its nuclear program transparent.

The U.S. demands, according to reports, are that Iran stop enriching uranium to the 20 percent level. That figure is short of the 85 percent enrichment level needed for weapons grade, but it is close enough to raise concern. The U.S. also will reportedly demand that Iran shut down its underground nuclear facility near Qom. The United States would allow Iran to enrich uranium to 3.5 percent for medical purposes, according to the reports, and would agree to put a stop on planned new sanctions in the congressional pipeline that would further isolate Iranian financial institutions.

That approach would not be enough to keep the Iranians at the table, according to Trita Parsi, the director of the National Iranian American Council, and it could push away major powers that until now have followed the Obama administration’s lead.

“This package is a non-starter to most observers, including to other P5+1 diplomats,” Parsi wrote on The Huffington Post, referring to the grouping of nations that negotiates with Iran on nuclear issues and comprises permanent U.N. Security Council members United States, Russia, China, France and Britain as well as Germany. “The problem is not necessarily the demands but the imbalance between what is demanded and what is offered.”

Dennis Ross, Obama’s former top Iran adviser who still consults with the White House, suggested last week that the U.S. might soften one critical additional piece of the sanctions should Iran comply with the demands on the Qom site and enrichment.

“If Iran were to stop enriching uranium to 20 percent, ship out the material it has already enriched to that level and deactivate the Fordow facility near Qom, that would probably be sufficient,” he said in an analysis distributed by the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy think tank, where he now works. “Here again, the question is what Iran would seek in return. Lifting the Central Bank sanctions would probably be the minimum it would require.”

That prospect alarms Republicans in the U.S. Senate who until now have been impressed with Obama’s implementation of the sanctions regime.

IRAN on page 21

8 • NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Virginia Tech hoops coach Greenberg With Sacks retiring, ready to coach U.S. Maccabiah team British Jews mixed on relevancy of chief rabbi

By Mike Stoller JointMedia News Service

He’s already been inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, but don’t tell Virginia Tech men’s basketball coach Seth Greenberg that his Jewish sports legacy is complete.

Greenberg was recently appointed as head coach for the U.S. Maccabiah Games men’s basketball team. The 19th Maccabiah Games will be held in Israel in July 2013, when the U.S. hoops team hopes to duplicate the 2009 squad’s feat of winning the gold medal.

That team was led by then University of Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl.

Now the men’s basketball coach at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), the 45-year-old Greenberg’s teams have defeated perennial college basketball powerhouse Duke University four times.

The two-time Atlantic Coach Conference Coach of the Year said earning the right to coach the U.S. Maccabiah squad ranks among the top thrills of his 35-year career, during which he has amassed almost 400 wins as a college head coach at Virginia Tech, South Florida and Long Beach State.

“It’s pretty exciting representing

Courtesy of Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech basketball coach Seth Greenberg, recently named the U.S. Maccabiah coach for men’s hoops.

your faith and country at the same time and have the U.S. as the name on your chest and have that shared experience,” Greenberg, who served as an assistant coach at the Maccabiah Games in 1989 and called the experience “life-altering,” said in a telephone interview with JointMedia News Service.

The volunteer Maccabiah coaching position is “something very special,” Greenberg said.

“It’s a great honor to come from a number of terrific candidates and coming off [the team] winning the gold medal,” he said. “The success I’ve had at very high levels has given me the opportunity to coach this team.”

Inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and Museum in Dix Hills, N.Y., in April 2010, Greenberg joined the company of such luminaries as Red Auerbach, Red Holtzman and Sandy Koufax.

Greenberg said he expects his brother Brad, the one-time general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers who drafted future superstar Alan Iverson, to be one of his assistant coaches for the Maccabiah team.

Brad Greenberg is now coaching a professional basketball team in Venezuela.

Seth Greenberg said the U.S. Maccabiah coaching staff plans to hold two tryouts in August for college players, one in New Jersey and the other in California.

“We’re putting together the roster, collecting names,” Greenberg said. “We’re looking for the best players we can find, tough and skilled players all over the United States.”

Drake’s profanity-laced ‘re-bar mitzvah’ video filmed in Miami shul stirs controversy

By Debra Rubin Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — Thanks to hip-hop superstar Drake’s latest music video, there are now far more eyes focusing on Temple Israel’s bimah than there are even during the High Holidays.

And even though the song’s lyrics are decidedly more profane than sacred, the Reform synagogue’s president said he hoped the video would help Jewish youth connect to Judaism.

The video, parts of which were filmed in the Miami shul’s sanctuary, purports to depict Drake’s “rebar mitzvah,” showing the Jewish rapper reading from what appears to be a Torah. But the accompanying song, “HYFR” (Hell Yeah F***ing Right), has nothing to do with a bar mitzvah. Rather, it features profanity-filled and sexually explicit lyrics.

“But she was no angel, and we never waited / I took her for sushi, she wanted to f*** / So we took it to go, told them don’t even plate it,” Drake raps.

The video had garnered well over 1 million views by Wednesday, only five days after its release.

At first, Temple Israel’s president, Ben Kuehne, said that the

Courtesy of Cash Money Records/Youtube

In his video for the song “HYFR,” Drake re-creates his bar mitzvah — sort of.

video — lyrics aside — is “an embracing of religious passage.”

He said, “It’s not a sacrilegious message; it’s not an antireligious message.”

But once Kuehne had a chance to review the video and the lyrics more closely, Kuehne said, “The complete video is certainly not consistent with Temple Israel’s longstanding history and reputation as a progressive voice in the Jewish Reform movement.” He added, “Temple Israel does not adopt, condone, or sponsor any aspect of the Drake video, and was not involved in its production.”

Nevertheless, Kuehne said, he hoped “Jewish youth will see the Drake video at least in part as a reminder to ‘re-commit’ themselves to their Jewish religion.”

Drake, whose real name is Aubrey Graham, was raised by his Jewish mother in Toronto and attended a Jewish day school. “I went to a Jewish school, where nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish,” he told Heeb magazine in 2010. “When kids are young it’s hard for them to understand the make-up of religion and race.”

DRAKE on page 21

By Dianna Cahn Jewish Telegraphic Agency LONDON (JTA) — The search to replace Britain’s powerful longtime chief rabbi has gone international, but even as resumes are gathered and interviews conducted, some are questioning whether the position is still relevant and what it means today for the Anglo Jewish community.

As chief rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks brought international attention to the post as an eloquent writer and speaker on modern Jewish and social issues, gaining recognition as an ambassador for the whole of the Jewish community. Sacks’ writings on strengthening education, creating social mechanisms to counter crime and violence, and instilling moral values in society are often taken into the public policy sphere for discussion.

“With Jonathan Sacks you have somebody who has the gravitas and respect of the wider population of this country as a leading spiritual figure,” said Alexander Goldberg, a Jewish chaplain and interfaith expert.

But Sacks’ tenure as head of the centrist Orthodox United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth coincided with an era of sweeping decline in Jewish affiliation, particularly among the mainstream Orthodox he leads.

In the 21 years since he became chief rabbi, Modern Orthodox Jewry dropped from two-thirds of Britain’s affiliated Jews to just over half.

In a time of deepening polarization among the Jewish denominations, Sacks has been criticized for alienating progressive and secular Jews, particularly over Jewish status issues such as conversion and marriage. He is seen as leaning right, toward the haredi Orthodox community, while the Reform, Liberal and Masorti (Conservative) movements don’t recognize his authority and each has its own senior rabbi.

“The current chief rabbi of the United Synagogue is a very wise counsel who has done an enormous amount for interfaith relations and is a really valuable addition to the British Jewish community,” said Ben Rich, the Reform movement’s chief executive.

“He’s very good at interfaith, but not very good at intrafaith.”

With the fragmentation of Britain’s Jews, there is debate over what the office of chief rabbi means today: who should it represent, what should its focus be and, for some, whether the institution

has become bigger than the position it represents.

“I argue that the chief rabbinate has all but passed its sell-by date,” said Meir Persoff, the longtime former Judaism editor at the London-based Jewish Chronicle and author of “Another Way, Another Time.”

Courtesy of United Synagogue

After 21 years, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is retiring as Britain’s chief rabbi.

“The chief rabbinate has caused more controversy than peace,” Persoff said in an interview. “For the sake of peace, the non-Orthodox movements have let him have his say as spokesman for Anglo Jewry. But they argue with him over conversion, marriage and divorce to such an extent that the chief rabbinate is bound to create more problems than drawing the community together.”

Modeled after the archbishop of Canterbury, the chief rabbinate was created in Victorian times to give the monarchy a single address for British Jewry. He is selected by the United Synagogue, the governing body of the Orthodox synagogues, which decides on the method and chooses the committee that will make the appointment.

At the time the post was created, 85 percent of British Jews were Orthodox. But modern-day Judaism, much like the Anglican Church, is losing ground as a uniform community.

Jewish synagogue membership dropped from 99,763 in 1990 to 82,963 by 2010, according to the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Centrist, or Modern, Orthodoxy lost 20,000 of its 66,000 members, countered by a doubling of the haredi community and sharp growth in the tiny Conservative community, which went from 1,226 members to 2,269 in the same period.

INTERNATIONAL / ISRAEL • 9

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

International Briefs Arab-Israeli lawmaker in Ottawa speech calls for West Bank boycott TORONTO (JTA) — An Arab-Israeli member of Israel’s Knesset appears to have contravened an Israeli law by calling on Canadians to boycott Israel.

Ahmad Tibi, the deputy speaker of the Knesset, called for a boycott of companies and products linked to Israeli towns in the West Bank and other disputed territory, Canada’s Postmedia News reported.

During a visit to Ottawa on Monday, Tibi tested the Boycott Law, which came into force in Israel last July and allows civil actions against those who encourage boycotts against the Jewish state.

“I said that I am willing to test this immoral law trying to prevent me, as a member of the parliament, from expressing my views against the settlements in a peaceful way,” Tibi said.

Israeli Jewish settlements on the West Bank “are a cancer spreading all over Palestinian land, and cancer should be treated and eradicated,” he said. “I am talking about a peaceful and nonviolent way by not buying or selling or dealing in these products from these settlements.”

Tibi said Canada’s staunchly pro-Israel government “is not willing to differentiate between, for example, products coming from settlements and products coming from Israel.”

Survey: EU hate crime monitors lack reliable data THE HAGUE (JTA) — More than half of the nongovernmental organizations monitoring hate crimes in the European Union have no working definition for what constitutes a hate crime, according to a new survey.

The survey was conducted in the form of a questionnaire answered by representatives of 44 watchdog NGOs from across the EU. The results are to be released at a conference on hate crime registration in the EU sponsored by the Brussels-based CEJI: A Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe, scheduled to end on April 19, exactly one month after a Muslim extremist killed a rabbi and three children at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France.

The lacunas exposed in the survey correspond with flawed registration by EU governments, according to CEJI director Robin Sclafani.

“The killings in Toulouse are a tragic reminder that hate crimes continue to grow unabated in Europe,” Sclafani said.

Monument honors helpers of Czech Jewish family that hid in woods from Nazis

By Bruce Konviser Jewish Telegraphic Agency TRSICE, Czech Republic (JTA) — Nearly 70 years after a Czech Jewish family sought refuge from the Nazis by retreating into a nearby forest and relying on nonJewish locals for help, an American high school teacher has helped erect a permanent monument to their memory.

Last week, several dozen people went to the wooded site where the Wolf family had hid to unveil a modest stone monument that commemorates their struggle to survive and the locals who helped them.

For three nightmarish years during World War II, the Wolf family survived by intermittently hiding in the woods, a friend’s shed and people’s homes — all the while depending on others to provide them with food, fuel and other supplies.

The details of the family’s ordeal were recorded in a detailed diary by son Otto, who was 15 when they went into hiding in June 1942. The villagers of Trsice, which is about 150 miles east of Prague, knew the story. But it was only after Colleen Tambuscio, a New Jersey teacher, brought a group of students to the wooded hideout four years ago as part of a Holocaust study tour that the wheels were set in motion for a proper memorial.

Tambuscio, who teaches a course on the Holocaust, genocide and human behavior at New Milford High School, leads an annual Holocaust study tour to Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. One

Courtesy of Bruce Konviser

Eva Vavrecka contemplating the horrific living conditions that her mother and grandparents endured in the forest to survive World War II.

of the books she uses in class, “Salvaged Pages,” is a compilation of wartime diaries by young writers that includes an abridged version of Otto Wolf’s accounting of the family’s harrowing plight.

Four years ago Tambuscio realized during the group’s stop in Olomouc that they would be very close to the Wolf family’s forested

hideout. With the help of the local Jewish community, they trekked into the woods and managed to identify the family’s cave-like shelter.

Tambuscio said she was deeply moved by their discovery and wondered why it was not marked.

“We asked the mayor why isn’t this marked as a historical marker,” she said. “And they really did-

n’t have an answer other than they just never really thought about marking it.”

Tambuscio said she started a fundraising effort to collect the necessary $3,000 while also working through the Czech bureaucracy to acquire the necessary approvals for a memorial. Local villagers had no objections, according to Tambuscio, and four years later she and the village had their memorial.

One reason the locals never sought to memorialize the Wolfs’ story is that the aid to them did not come purely out of altruism.

The family’s initial benefactor, Jaroslav Zdaril, known as Slavek in the diary, set up the Wolf family in the forest, brought them food and supplies, and later provided them shelter in a primitive shed. He did so in part because he was in love with Otto’s 22-year-old sister, Felicitas. As his love went unrequited, his delivery of food and supplies gradually became erratic.

After two years, the relationship had become so frayed and the delivery of food so unreliable that the Wolfs were desperate for an alternative benefactor. They found a lifeline in their former housekeeper, Maria Zborilova, who hid them in the attic of her home. The new accommodations were a tremendous improvement in quality of life for the Wolf family – Otto and Felicitas, and their parents, Berthold and Ruzena — but almost immediately Maria’s husband wanted them out, fearing the repercussions if the Nazis found them hiding Jews.

With fond memories of native land, Iranian Israelis worried by talk of war

By Ben Lynfield Jewish Telegraphic Agency TEL AVIV (JTA) — Avi Nobel lived in Tehran and is sure the Iranian people want peace.

“There are a lot of poor people there and what they want is food and to work, not a nuclear bomb,” says Nobel, a spice seller here whose goods include some imported from Iran through third countries.

Still, he believes that Iran’s nuclear program must be stopped — by an Israeli airstrike, if necessary.

“It will have to be done because if [President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad has a bomb, there is no doubt he will use it,” Nobel says.

Nobel and others interviewed in this mini-enclave of Persian restaurants and spice shops in south Tel Aviv have a more nuanced — and cautious — view

of a possible war with Iran than do many other Israelis.

Not only do they have tangible, often positive, memories of Iran and Iranians, but they also count relatives among the 25,000 Jews still living in Iran who, some fear, could face reprisals if there is an Israeli strike.

Molok Shamshiri, an IranianIsraeli restaurant cook, says “It is hard for me to understand how things went so wrong. But I am sure the Iranian people are still the same people. Neither do the Iranian people want war. I know them.”

Shamshiri, whose sister still lives in Iran, left the country in 1964 but frequently made visits back home, sending her children to learn about their ancestral land.

The visits ended with the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

She recalls the relations she had with Muslims in Iran as being “so good, it is hard to describe.”

“My Muslim neighbor would come make tea for me every Sabbath because she knew I could not light the fire” on the Sabbath, says Shamshiri, an Orthodox woman who covers her hair for modesty. “The Muslims would help us with parties, celebrations, weddings. They would help with everything and not for money.

They would always ask if we needed anything.”

Her face lights up when she is asked where she lived.

“Isfahan, a city that has everything good in this world,” says Shamshiri, who takes pride in her ghormeh sabzi, a traditional herbal soup. “The four seasons there are like clockwork. In the spring you have the sunshine, the chirping of the birds and the flowers. It’s a calm city, a paradise.”

Yosef Melamed, who sells spices, apricots and dried mangos, describes Farsi as “a language

rooted in poetry, poetry that speaks to the soul.”

Although it’s been 47 years since he left Tehran for Israel, he remains avidly interested in his native land and watches three Iranian satellite television channels.

The decision as to whether to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities is beyond him, Melamed says, but he holds out hope it may be possible to reach an accommodation with the Iranian government.

“You have to take a religious approach in talking to them, not a political one,” he says. “The contacts need not be conducted by rabbis, but they should be done by believing Jews.”

Albert Moradian’s eyes tear up as he describes his feelings for Iran.

“To sum up in one word, I feel longing,” says Moradian, who owns a clothing store.

ISRAELIS on page 22

10 • ISRAEL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Jerusalem mall violence shines light on dark side of Israeli soccer

By Eetta Prince-Gibson Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) — Sports fans aren’t the only people lately paying attention to Israeli soccer. A string of ugly incidents has caused Israelis to focus on the problems of violence and racism within the sport.

In mid-March, thousands of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans rioted on the field after their team lost to Maccabi Tel Aviv. A few days later, two fans of Maccabi Petach Tikvah attempted to attack a referee. In late March a Hapoel Haifa player was hospitalized after being headbutted by a Maccabi Petach Tikvah coach and then kicked in the head by a team associate.

But the event that drew the most attention had happened a few days earlier, when more than 100 fans of Beitar Jerusalem stormed from their home base in Teddy Stadium after a game to the nearby Malha Mall, where they chanted racist slurs and some reportedly beat Arab mall workers.

News reports quoted sources decrying the “pogrom” and “lynch” against the Arabs, and some commentators made comparisons with anti-Semitism in Europe and the recent murders at the Jewish school

By Meredith Mandell Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Courtesy of Kobi Gideon/FLASH90/JTA

Fans of Beitar Jerusalem FC celebrate the winning in the State Cup in Ramat Gan Stadium on May 13, 2008.

in Toulouse. Some sports writers called for sanctions by international athletic organizations or for dismantling the Beitar Jerusalem club, whose fans have a longstanding reputation for racism and violence.

Israeli police say that the news reports exaggerated the incident, though they have since made arrests.

“There was no ‘lynch’ and no ‘pogrom,’” Jerusalem District police spokesman Shmulik Ben-Ruby told JTA. “The incident has been blown out of all proportion.”

But Dorit Abramowich, coordinator for Shutafut-Sharakah, the

Arab-Jewish Coalition for Shared Democracy, says the violence at the mall is indicative of a larger problem.

“Israel is in the midst of a racism plague, and the events at the mall are part of an intense series of events in which threats, intimidation and humiliation of Arabs is becoming accepted behavior,” she said. “I am saddened that the police and the leadership of Beitar Jerusalem are not more concerned and seem not to understand that words lead to actions.”

SOCCER on page 22

Evangelical couple sees calling as welcoming ‘lone’ soldiers for Shabbat dinners

By Meredith Mandell Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) — Every Friday night, Scott and Theresa Johnson host Jewish Shabbat dinners for lone Israeli soldiers. The meal begins after sundown, preceded by the Kiddush blessing over the wine and singing of “Shalom Aleichem,” the traditional Hebrew song greeting the Sabbath.

There’s one catch, however, made evident by the Christmas cards hanging in the kitchen: The Johnsons are not Jewish.

Why did this American couple leave the comforts of home and family in the small Smokey Mountains town of Seymour, Tenn., to serve young men and women in a faraway foreign army?

The Johnsons say it’s because they believe that God has called them to help the Jewish people.

Like many evangelical Christians, they say restoring a Jewish state is a prerequisite for what they believe will be the second coming of Jesus.

To do their part the Johnsons, who are both in their 50s and now live in Jerusalem, last year served more than 3,000 meals — including 600 pounds of Scott’s spicy chicken wings — to “lone sol-

Israeli female scientist Naama Geva-Zatorsky named Europe’s top young researcher

Courtesy of Meredith Mandell

Scott Johnson at the head of the table for a Shabbat dinner that he and his wife, both evangelical Christians, lead for “lone soldiers” in Israel.

diers,” the term applied to young men and women who have immigrated to Israel to serve in the army and have no family there. An estimated 5,000 lone Jewish soldiers are in the Israel Defense Forces.

“We believe it is a desire that God himself has imparted unto us,” Scott Johnson said on a recent Friday night. “Jeremiah says there is a time when God will beckon or whistle; he’ll raise a banner. He’s going to call to the gentiles and tell them to carry his daughters home and bring his sons home on their backs.”

Israelis historically have been

wary of Christian groups inside the country, worrying their aim is to convert Jews to Christianity.

But given evangelicals’ staunch political support for Israel in recent years, many Israeli politicians now welcome them.

“I think why there is such a strong connection between Jews and Christians, especially at the political level in Israel is, we saw during the intifada that one by one, the nations of the world were turning against us,” said Joshua Reinstein, director of the Israeli Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus.”But Christians stood their ground and stood up next to us.”

JERUSALEM (JTA) — She’s young, smart and aims to help treat life-threatening diseases.

Naama Geva-Zatorsky, 34, is among a growing group of Israeli women scientists who are gaining recognition for their contributions to scientific research.

The Weizmann Institute biologist was in Paris last month to accept the International UNESCO L’Oreal Prize for Women in Science. Dubbed “Europe’s top young researcher” by the prize committee, she received a two-year, $40,000 fellowship for her postdoctoral work at Harvard University.

The selection committee cited the “excellence and the originality of her work.”

Geva-Zatorsky’s research focuses on probiotics, which are commonly known as “good bacteria” and have the potential to treat a variety of diseases.

Geva-Zatorsky, who holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in systems biology, believes there is room for more research on the potential benefits of probiotics.

Her lab work has focused on the “good” microbes that live in the human intestines and protect our bodies by stimulating the immune system. Geva-Zatorsky will use her award to continue investigating what leads the bacterial molecule, known as polysaccharide A (PSA), to react this way.

“There are 10 times more bacteria than human cells in the body, and I’m learning how do we interact with them and what the impact is on our health,” she said in a phone interview from Brookline, Mass., where she has been living since September with her husband, Amnon Zatorsky, and their two sons, Yonatan, 5, and Uri, 2.

Despite the growing popularity of probiotics in an array of products — think Kefir, a dairy product made of goat’s milk and fermented grains, or the trendy tea-based drink Kombucha — both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Food Safety Authority say that most claims made about probiotic products are unproven.

“There’s really a lot more that can be studied,” she said, noting that researchers already know that probiotics can be used to treat inflammatory bowel disease and now are investigating whether microbacteria can inoculate multiple sclerosis, a chronic autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.

Additionally, Geva-Zatorsky said, certain bacteria can make humans develop more fat cells.

Someday, she said, researchers

Courtesy of Naama Geva-Zatorsky

Weizmann Institute biologist Naama Geva-Zatorsky is the winner of the International UNESCO L’Oreal Prize for Women in Science.

may be able to create a pill to help obese people lose weight.

The same bacteria affect emotions, she said, and eventually may be used to treat depression.

Once her postdoctoral work is completed, Naama Geva-Zatorsky plans to return to Israel to set up her own research team to probe how these bacteria can treat a myriad of diseases.

Weizmann biophysics professor Zvi Kam believes GevaZatorsky’s determination will carry her far.

Noting that experiments are tedious and often fail, Kam said in an email that the young scientist “never complained, never was let down, and never gave up! Her optimistic spirit and joy of doing science was never broken by the tough reality.”

Geva-Zatorsky’s success is unusual in Israel given the dearth of women working in the fields of science and engineering.

Despite Israel’s emphasis on research and development, a 2008 report by the European Commission on Gender Equality pointed out Israel’s low proportion of female researchers in higher education — 25 percent — compared to the 35 percent average found among EU member countries.

Those numbers combined with a highly publicized incident recently involving Channa Maayan, a Hebrew University professor who received an award but was told by Israel’s acting health minister, who is haredi Orthodox, that a male would have to accept it for her. The incident outraged and re-energized women in the scientific community to speak out about their important role as researchers.

SOCIAL LIFE • 11

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

TU B’SHEVAT AT THE JCC

Gayle Swift and Olivia

Mendel Morrison

Andy Cohen, Zoe and Ezra

Mimi and Charlotte Derrow

ANNOUNCEMENTS

S

my Mitman and Andrew Goloboy and their daughter Charlotte Hope Goloboy of Cambridge, Mass. are thrilled to announce the birth of their daughter and little sister, Paige Natalie Goloboy, born on March 26. Maternal grandparents are Felice and Michael Young and Susan and Dennis Mitman of

A

Laynie Shersky

MARTA HEWETT GALLERY finely crafted contemporary art

BIRTHS BIRTHS hira (Federman) and Jason Schwartz are proud to announce the birth of a son, Levi Menashe, on March 16 in New York City. Grandparents are Abby and David Schwartz, Elliott Federman of Long Beach, N.Y., and Renee (Gottesman) Barone of Glen Ridge, N.J. Great-grandparents are Ada and Morton Schwartz and Dottie and William Fogel, Dorothy Scher of South Orange, N.J. and Anita and Arthur Federman of Cederhurst, N.Y.

Yair Cohen and Maayan

Zecharya Rosenthal

1310 Pendleton Street Cincinnati, OH 45202 (513) 281-2780 Tue–Fri: 10–5, Sat: 11–3 Free Parking Available

Diaspora/Miasma: painting by Kevin Veara & glass by Eoin Breadon Open Final Friday, April 27th, 6 pm - 10 pm, exhibit continues through May 26th

Levi Menashe Schwartz Cincinnati, and Joan and Bernie Goloboy of Marblehead, Mass.

BIRTHDA Y BIRTHDAY lbert B. Levine, formerly of Cincinnati, has just celebrated his 90th birthday. He moved to Miami, Fla. in 1954. He spends time with his three children and many grandchildren.

A

Eoin Breadon, Dub Sainglend Runs, 14"h x 20"w x 7"d, hot sculpted & engraved glass

See this exhibit online at www.martahewett.com

12 • CINCINNATI SOCIAL LIFE

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

JFS & Mayerson JCC’s The Day of Caring Pancake Brunch The Day of Caring Pancake Brunch was hosted by the Mayerson JCC and Jewish Family Service on Sunday, Feb. 26.

Guests enjoyed the magic of Chuck Arkin while they ate delicious pancakes. The event benefits the Freestore Foodbank and the Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. Jewish Family Service is a Member of the FreeStore FoodBank Network.

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

2011 JCC Maccabi Games & ArtsFest in Israel The 2011 JCC Maccabi Games and ArtsFest in Israel was an experience of a lifetime for Cincinnati teens. The Cincinnati delegation was comprised of 16 teen athletes and artists and three adult chaperones. This year the delegation is heading to Houston, Texas, August 5-10 for the 2012 JCC Maccabi games and ArtsFest. If you are a Jewish teen athlete or artist between the ages of 13 and 16 and are interested in participating, please contact Cultural Arts Manager Courtney Cummings or Director of Sports and Recreation Mike Creemer at the JCC.

2011 JCC Cincinnati Maccabi basketball team

Carly Levick and Sam Harkavy in Jerusalem

Jonathan Moskovitz and Ben Hammer at an archaeological dig at Tel Maresha, Israel.

2011 Cincinnati Delegation in Jerusalem

Sarah Wolf dancing in the ArtsFest final performance.

Elyse Spiegel singing in her rock band at ArtsFest.

Dylan Stern and Charlie Heldman posing at the Israeli festival.

Gil Kaplan on bass in his rock band.

Daniel Seibert on the drums in his rock band at ArtsFest.

14 • DINING OUT

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Parkers offers upscale American food in ‘comfy’ pub atmosphere

By Sondra Katkin Dining Editor Parkers Blue Ash Grill is an elegant, white brick ranch, resembling a classic residential design for thoroughbred owners. The equestrian theme “trots” through the interior with saddles, tacking, pictures of racehorses and trophies. On the cold, damp day of my visit, I appreciated the inviting thick rugs, dark wood paneling and stone fireplaces.

Adding to this comfy-casual ambience were several rooms with cathedral ceilings and tall booths for a cozy, romantic dinner. Their professional staff, well versed in hospitality, caters to the community with a panoply of selections including seafood, meats, salads, sandwiches, Saratoga chips, vegetarian entrees, pizza, house made desserts and the always popular sweet potato fries. The culinary school trained chef, Josh House, whose resume includes working at Kentucky’s only “five diamond” restaurant, the Seelbach Hilton in Louisville, told me he is learning about the Blue Ash community. Soon the menu will reflect his personal touch which was already evident in the delicious feast I enjoyed. He explained that, “The fine dining scene is dying off. I’m much more comfortable working where people can see themselves dining a couple of times a week versus where you can eat once a year.” Both House and general manager Jim Brewster described Parkers’ food as upscale, casual American cuisine in a publike atmosphere.

They presented me with dessert first — and what a present! There is no better appetizer than something sweet stimulating your sensory psyche. “Oy vay” — homemade brulee cheesecake! I’d like to see anyone resist this tall, terrific confiture of genuine New York cheesecake with a crunchy, glazed brulee coating and a creme Anglaise sauce to finish it, and me, off. That was truly the best cheesecake combination I’ve ever had. With great restraint, I managed to take some home for my husband Steve who was grateful to have a flour free treat (he must avoid gluten). Fortunately, for those who will be eating their dinner in the normal sequence, they offer smaller selections of all their desserts which include such yummy sounding choices as Godiva ganache cake, apple and Montmorency cherry bread pudding and Ohio maple sugar cotton candy.

There was no sacrifice in resuming a more natural consuming sequence with the appetizer, fried zucchini. Its crunchy crust of panko breading and Reggiano Parmesan gave way to the creamy textured zucchini—a delectable contrast. It was accompanied by a robust marinara, notching up the flavor and making it a customer favorite. This was followed with

(Clockwise) Elegant exterior of Parkers Blue Ash Grill; “Comfy” pub-like bar area beckons patrons; Generous and crunchy serving of fried zucchini; Crackling and luscious brulee cheesecake; The noble cut: tender and juicy prime rib; “Painterly” presentation of planked roasted salmon; One of several cozy, romantic dining areas.

hearth-oven roasted cedar-planked salmon (delivered daily), artistically arranged over fresh and tendercrisp vegetables of bright green, red and yellow—reminiscent of a garden ready for harvest. A silky white wine butter sauce with a tasty sprinkling of fresh herbs enhanced the velvety smoothness of the Omega-3 laden fish.

On a previous visit, Steve and I had ordered their specialty, the prime rib of beef. The two inch thick, certified angus beef brought to mind a description by New York Times food critic Pete Wells, “Such a rosy beef could cure anemia from across the room.” Its natural “au jus” was replete with flavor and is the base of their delicious onion soup. When savoring this tender, gastronomic meat masterpiece, you understand why connoisseurs consider the rib cut to be the most fla-

vorful. This is also the jewel in the crown of their Sunday Brunch Buffet which also features freshly baked beignets (French style doughnuts), salads, vegetable dishes and a house made whole smoked salmon.

There is a separate dessert table that must hide extra reinforcing rods to display the extensive variety of selections. Other popular entrees on the menu include center cut charcoal grilled prime top sirloin and fries, Gerber Amish Farms roasted chicken, braised lamb shank, chicken pot pie, the ultimate Kobe beef burger with shitake mushrooms and challah bun and goat cheese ravioli with fresh basil pesto and roasted heirloom tomatoes. In addition, several choices of salads with homemade dressings are available.

Brewster told me that their Caesar salad is the most popular.

Chef House told me that his phi-

losophy is to combine fresh and local farm raised ingredients with careful preparation to create wonderful food. He explained that they order only what they need and don’t use frozen ingredients. He designs the menu for the five course monthly dinners to coordinate with the drink of the night — beer, wine or bourbon for $40 per person (by reservation only). Parkers is the first in this area of town to offer Kentucky Bourbon Ale on tap along with over 50 beers including craft beers. Happy hour is from 3:30 to 7 p.m. every day with a half price bar menu of appetizers, burgers and sandwiches. The bar also features live soft rock nightly on weekends.

On Monday evenings diners may order half priced bottles of wine from what Brewster described as an unusually large selection — 10 reds and 10 whites.

The restaurant hosts many private parties, including bar mitzvahs and weddings. “The high ceilings, carpeting and wood keep the sound down,” Brewster noted. On my last visit, I was told they had a bar/bat mitzvah for over l00 seniors who — no doubt — celebrated with “mature exuberance.” Diners will soon be able to enjoy the lovely outdoor patio scheduled to open in April. They are working to identify their gluten free dishes on the menu and will accommodate diners with allergies. Parkers is open Monday to Thursday from 11 a.m. — 10 p.m., on Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. — 11 p.m. and on Sunday 10 a.m. — 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. — 8 p.m.

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DINING OUT • 15

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16 • OPINION

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Surprising…and not so much

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

Dear Editor, When I read the first paragraph of Rabbi Avi Shafran’s article, “Meat and Murder”(March 22) I burst out laughing. Many years ago my son, Barnea, was a student at Kerem Yeshiva in Santa Clara Calif.,where Rabbi Shafran taught. I flew out to visit him and was offered hospitality by the Shafrans who were going to be away. I was made aware that I would be sharing the house with a large hairy tarantula named Hephzibah. Every few days one of the students, Jay (later my son’s best man) would bring in a batch of live crickets and introduce them into Hephzibah’s cage. I never actually saw the tarantula eat the crickets but they were all gone in a few days.

Sincerely, Ida Selavan Schwarcz Greenhills, OH

As you said, the Y is closed on Easter and Christmas. Let’s realize the world that we live in, those are now considered secular holidays. So, it is not a surprise to anybody that they are closed those days.

As you are not a member of the J and our family members are heavy users of the J, I have had conversations with non-Jews about closures.

If we are looking for the respect of non-Jews, perhaps Jewish membership should be more than 50 percent of the total membership. The J could use the membership of more Jews to ensure its sustainability (there is not a golden goose in the basement laying golden eggs to cover the operating costs).

Jews should be able to count on Jews to support their institutions. The J is only two more exits west on Cross County from the Y. Sincerely, Alan Eichner

Dear Editor, This is a reply to Mr. Jerome Liner. To be clear, my point is that the J is competing in a tight exercise facility market, they need to play by the same rules as their competition. If the J is going to follow the rules of observant Jews, the J would be closed the first and last two days of Passover. So, if anything, the J is “half pregnant.”

Dear President Abbas, We write our profound concern about the presentation of an award to Helen Thomas by Maen Areikat, the head of Palestine Liberation Organization General Mission to the United States. We believe that recognition of Helen Thomas with an award is tanta-

mount to accepting and agreeing with her call for Jews in Palestine to go back to “Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else.”

We strongly support the Middle East Peace Process which has been pursued by several successive Administrations in the United States. However, Helen Thomas’ words and beliefs have been anything but supportive of a settlement where two people, Israelis and Palestinians, would live side-by-side, in peace and security. By calling for Jews to leave the holy land, she exhibited a pronounced anti-Semitic animus and a severe anti-Israeli bias, as she has for many years.

Moreover, because millions of Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis in Poland and Germany during world War II, her demand for Jews to return there was offensive not only to Holocaust survivors, but to millions of Jews and non-Jews alike. Sadly, not long after retiring from journalism, Ms. Thomas confirmed that she expressed “exactly what she thought.” Her intemperate comments caused the Society of Professional Journalists to terminate the annual lifetime achievement award which bore her name and, more recently, was the reason Ms. Thomas was denied a table at the prestigious White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

LETTERS on page 22

T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: SHEMINI (LEVITCUS CHAPTERS 9-11) 1. A camel has which physical characteristic of a kosher animal? a) Chew its cud b) Split hooves 2. Which physical characteristic of a kosher animal does a pig have? a) Chews its cud b) Split hooves 3. What prohibition other than eating is mentioned by a non kosher animal?

a) Deriving profit b) Cooking or roasting c) Touching a carcass 4. Are all fish kosher? a) Yes b) No 5. Does the Torah list the physical characteristics of kosher birds? a) Yes b) No

the crown of Torah to its place. Midrash 536.

3. C. Chapter 11, verse 8. There is no prohibition of touching a carcass of an animal. If one wants to go to the Temple in Jerusalem, he should purify himself first if he had contact with a carcass. Rashi, Ramban 4. B. Chapter 11, verses 9-12. A fish must have

scales and fins. Scales are tiny plates which are attached to the skin of the fish. However if they are part of the skin and cannot be removed they are not considered to be scales. Ramban 5. B. Chapter 11, verse 13. Any bird that treads on others is considered non kosher. It leads to cruelty in character Ramban

After a hail of French police gunfire relieved humanity of the noxious presence of Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old AlgerianFrenchman who murdered seven people, including three children, in cold blood and declared himself ready to enter paradise, his soul must have really been surprised. If, that is, he had a soul and wasn’t just some demon in human guise.

Unsurprising for those of us back in this world was the revelation that when Mr. Merah was holed up in a building, his mother had refused to urge her son to surrender; or that, after Mr. Merah’s dispatching, his brother told police he was “very proud” of Mohamed and “approve[s] of what he did”; or that the murderer’s father plans to sue the French government over his son’s death.

Even the act of Lorraine Collin, a 56-year-old high school teacher at Gustave Flaubert High School in Rouen, Normandy, who asked her class to observe a moment of silence in memory of the deceased murderer, was not terribly surprising; it was pretty much par for the contorted conscience course.

What did come as something of a surprise, and a happy one, was the French Education Minister’s suspension of Ms. Collin from her job. Good for him, and may he make it permanent.

Surprising, too, at least to some people, were the words of Eva Sandler, the widow of one of the victims, Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, and the mother of two others: 5-year-old Arieh and 3year-old Gabriel. Amid her unimaginable shock and grief, she had the presence of mind and conviction to pen a public message, thanking “the Almighty for the privilege, short though it was, of raising my children together with my husband.”

“Now,” she continued, “the Almighty wants them back with Him.” And she urged all Jewish parents to honor her dead family members by loving their children and teaching them to love “their fellow man.”

“Parents, please kiss your children,” she wrote. “Tell them how much you love them, and how dear it is to your heart that they be living examples of our Torah, imbued with the fear of

Heaven and with love of their fellow man.”

Which takes us back to the “unsurprising” realm, namely the fact that, while Orthodox Jewish newpapers and magazines, and even secular media, duly reported Mrs. Sandler’s striking sentiments, the bereaved woman’s words were entirely ignored by the mainstream Jewish media.

Yes, those media that routinely seek out and highlight the worst examples of Orthodox Jews, individuals who commit crimes or show disdain for others, the media that do their best to leave their readers with the impression that such people are somehow normative and representative of the Orthodox community. The media that, it seemed, spilled more ink to recount and re-recount and comment and further comment on an allegedly uncouth Israeli individual’s saliva than on Iran’s nuclear program.

Those media, for some reason, didn’t find Mrs. Sandler’s words newsworthy. Why might that be?

Could it be because Mrs. Sandler revealed herself to be a true example of a dedicated Orthodox Jew? And that to bring attention to so refined, faithful, and purposeful an Orthodox Jew would only confuse their readers? After all, it might cause them to puzzle over the fact that there are Orthodox Jews who are truly selfless and deeply caring, who bear even the most unbearable burdens with grace and religious conviction. Could such a person, they might come to ask themselves, really be part of the same community that routinely flouts the law, harbors hatred, and spits on little girls?

Maybe I’m being too harsh.

Maybe I missed mention of Mrs. Sandler’s sentiments in the Forward and the New York Jewish Week and the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s dispatches. Maybe the search engines at the sites of each of those venerable institutions are all faulty, and reports of the bereaved widow and mother’s words lurk somewhere out of electronic reach.

Or maybe Mrs. Sandler’s words, and the meta-message they send about truly observant, believing Orthodox Jews, will yet appear in those media. It’s only been, after all, two weeks since she shared them with the world— at least the part of it that gets its news from Orthodox or nonJewish media.

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

ANSWERS 1. A. Chapter 11, verse 4. Chewing the cud is when the animal returns food from the stomach to the mouth to re-chew.

2. B. Chapter 11, verse 7. The pig also refers to the last exile of the Jewish people. The Hebrew word for pig also means to return. The last exile will return

By Rabbi Avi Shafran Contributing Columnist

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

JEWISH LIFE • 17

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

Sedra of the Week

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin Efrat, Israel - “And Aaron was silent” (Leviticus 10:3).

In the midst of the joyous celebration dedicating the desert Sanctuary fire came out from before the Lord and devoured Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aaron, the High Priest. “And Moses said to Aaron, ‘that is what the Lord has said, saying that through those closest to Me shall I be sanctified…’” (Lev.10:3).

Rashi quotes the following words which the rabbis attribute to Moses: “Moses said to Aaron, ‘Aaron my brother, I know that this Temple Sanctuary will have to be sanctified by beloved friends of the Divine, and I thought that it would be either through you or through me. Now I see that they (Nadav and Avihu) were greater than both me and you’”…

According to this view, Nadav and Avihu were saintly individuals; worthy of being sacrificed on the altar of the desert Sanctuary, “VaYidom Aaron,” and Aaron silently acquiesced to God’s will.

But why did the desert Sanctuary, and by extension any great advance of the Jewish nation, have to be dedicated by the deaths of great Jewish personalities?

Why must the pages of our glorious history be drenched in the blood of holy martyrs and soaked by the tears of mourners they leave behind?

The only answer I can give to this agonizing question of lamah – why—is the one word answer that our Israeli children like to give to our questions about why they do what they do, “kakha,” that is how it is. Why must sacrifice be a necessary condition for redemption?

The pattern may be discerned as far back as the Covenant between the Pieces, in which God guarantees Abram eternal seed (Gen 15:1-6) and the land of Israel (15:7). After this, a great fear descends upon Abram as he is told that his seed will be strangers in a strange land where they will be afflicted and enslaved until they leave, freed and enriched. God then commands Abram to circumcise himself and his entire male household. The blood of the

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT SHMINI LEVITICUS 9:1-11:47

“I caused you to be populous (revavah) even as the vegetation of the field, and you did increase and grow up and you came to excellent beauty. Your breasts were fashioned and your hair was grown – yet you were naked and bare”. covenant is thus built into the very male organ of propagation (Gen 17); the price of our nationhood is blood, sacrifice and affliction.

At our Passover Seder, the celebration of our national birth, we retell the tale of our initial march from servitude to freedom in the words of the fully liberated Jew bringing his first fruits to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem: “My father, (Jacob), was almost destroyed by the Aramean (Laban), and he went down to Egypt, and he became there a great mighty and populous (rav) nation” (Deut 26:5). The author of the Passover Haggadah then explicates the text with the description presented by the prophet Ezekiel (16:7): “I caused you to be populous (revavah) even as the vegetation of the field, and you did increase and grow up and you came to excellent beauty. Your breasts were fashioned and your hair was grown— yet you were naked and bare.”

The Hebrews in Egypt were numerous and powerful, but empty and bare of merit, of true character and courage. To achieve this, they had to undergo the suffering of Egyptian enslavement, having their male babies cast into the Nile. They had to place their lives on the line by sacrificing the “god” of the Egyptians to the God of Israel and the world.

They had to place the blood of this sacrifice on their doorposts and they had to undergo circumcision, to demonstrate their readiness to shed blood for freedom, for independence, and for their right to worship God in their own way.

With all of this in mind, the author of the Haggadah returns to Ezekiel (16:6): “And I passed over you, and I saw that you were rooted in your blood, and I say to you by that blood shall you live (the blood of

circumcision).” It is your willingness to sacrifice for your ideals that make you worthy of emulation, that made you a special and “chosen” people!

And so the author of the Haggadah then returns to Biblical description of Hebrew suffering in Egypt, a suffering which was meant to teach us to “love the other, the stranger, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Rabbi Yisrael Prager tells how a Nazi guard in the Vilna ghetto interrupted a secret nocturnal matzoh baking, causing the blood of the Jewish victims to mix with the dough of the baking matzot. The Rabbi cried out, “Behold we are prepared and ready to perform the commandment of the blood of the paschal sacrifice, the blood of the matzot which symbolize the paschal sacrifice!” As he concluded his blessing, his blood too was mixed with the baking matzot.

Lamah? Why such necessary sacrifice? Kakha, because so it is, because such is the inscrutable will of the Almighty. And “ashreiha’am she kakhah lo”, happy is the nation that can say kakhah, happy is the nation which understands that its sacrifices are for the sake of the Almighty, for the purification of their nation, for the world message that freedom and the absolute value that every human being is created in God’s image. And that these are values worth fighting for, values worth committing blood for. May it be God’s will that we now begin our exit from enslavement and our entry into redemption, for us and the entire world.

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

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18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

JEWZ

IN THE

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist DRAKE’S SECOND BAR MITZVAH Drake, the rap singer, has soared to the top of his field since the release of his first studio album in June 2010. Most rappers come out of America’s mean urban streets. Drake was born (1986) and raised in an affluent Toronto neighborhood, the son of a white Jewish mother and an African-American father. His parents split when he was 5 years old and he was raised mostly by his mother. When he was 13, like most Jewish boys, he had a bar mitzvah. From 2001-2009, he was a co-star of the international TV hit, “DeGrassi: The Next Generation.”

A couple of weeks ago, Drake released a video entitled “HYFR.” It begins with a few seconds of video from Drake’s 1999 bar mitzvah and a written statement: “On Oct. 24, 2011 Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham chose to be re-bar mitzvah’d as a re-commitment to the Jewish religion.”

The rest of the video takes place in a synagogue—Temple Israel in Miami, where the adult Drake has a bar mitzvah ceremony— followed by a surrealistically wild reception. (To find: google “Drake Bar Mitzvah video.”)

Drake’s re-commitment to Judaism is “very nice” — but the lyrics of the rap song accompanying the video are pretty graphic and address romantic relationship issues and not religious themes.

Of one thing I’m sure: Drake’s fans, Jewish or not, have to be confused about this juxtaposition and are saying to themselves: “What was that exactly?”

“GIRLS” ON HBO Last Sunday, April 15, the comedy/drama, “Girls,” premiered on HBO. It follows the lives of five women in their early 20s who are sorting things out after moving to New York City.

The series is produced by JUDD APATOW, 44, and was created

by LENA DUNHAM, 25.

Dunham also co-stars as “Hannah,” one of the five “girls.”

(Dunham is the daughter of a Jewish mother/non-Jewish father.)

ZOSIA MAMET, 23, plays Shoshanna, whom Dunham describes as, “The type of young woman who proudly displays her ‘Sex and the City’ poster in her bedroom, and wears light pink velour jumpsuits. A Jewish American Princess with an unexpected inner life.” Mamet is the daughter of famous playwright

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DAVID MAMET, 64, and his ex-wife, actress Lindsay Crouse, a devout Buddhist. Zosia’s credits include playing “Joyce,” a lesbian character, in the fourth season of “Mad Men.” (My educated guess is that Zosia wasn’t raised in any faith. Her father became a “serious” practicing Jew around when his marriage to Crouse was ending. His second wife, actress REBECCA PIDGEON, 46, with whom he has two children, is a convert to Judaism.)

Another one of the “five” is “Jessa” (played by Jemina Kirke). Jessa is described as a space cadet with hippie tendencies who wants to be an artist/educator. Jessa is supposed to be Shoshanna’s cousin, so presumably she is Jewish, too.

(Allison Williams, the daughter of NBC news anchor Brian Williams, plays Marnie, another one of the “girls.”)

MICHELE IS A CATHOLIC Lea Michele, now 25, became a TV star playing Jewish character Rachel Berry on the hit Fox show, “Glee,” which premiered in Sept. 2009. In August 2009, GERRI MILLER, a reporter I respect, interviewed Michele and DIANNA AGRON (who plays Quinn Fabray on “Glee”), for JVibe, a Jewish young people’s magazine. Agron, now 25, talked about her substantial Jewish religious background.

About Michele, Miller wrote this: “The daughter of an Italian-Catholic mom and Spanish-Sephardic Jewish father, Lea was raised with both religions, though she didn’t attend Hebrew school or have a bat mitzvah. ‘I want to learn how to make latkes,’ Lea says, also confiding that despite her success onstage, she was told she’d never make it ‘because I looked too ethnic, too Jewish.’”

I’m sure Ms. Miller didn’t mis-state what Michele told her. I think Michele realized a reporter for a Jewish publication wouldn’t put Michele in her article if she said she was “raised Catholic.”

Michele wanted any publicity she and her new show could get.

So, she told Miller that she was raised “both.” On April 8, Michele appeared on the Bravo TV show, “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” with most of the cast of “Glee.” She was asked about her parents’ background and if she was “raised both.” She said, “I was raised Catholic, but my father gladly attended church with us.” It’s obvious to me that Michele felt she no longer had to lie or fudge the facts now that she’s a “star.”

FROM THE PAGES 100 Y EARS A GO Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Freiberg and Miss Leah Freiberg sailed for Bremen on the Prinz Friedrich Wilhelm on Thursday, April 11.

Mrs. Isaac Wolf (Jennie Mook) Mt. Vernon, Ind., is the guest of her sister, Mrs. I. A. Weil of 820 Hutchins Avenue, Avondale.

Dr. Philipson will return from Baltimore in time to occupy his pulpit in the Rockdale Avenue Temple on Saturday and will speak on the work done by the Central Conference of American Rabbis.

Mr. Bernard Bettman delivered an address on “Religious Toleration” before the Wise Alumni Association, Sunday morning at the Assembly Room of the Sabbath School Building. He was listened to with rapt attention and his remarks on the duties of respect and reverence for the faith of others were very impressive.

Emil Nathan, well and widely known in Cincinnati and throughout the South, died at his late home, 436 Rockdale Avenue, Avondale, on April 10, in his 73rd year. He was born in 1840 at Mannheim, Germany, and came to this country in 1871, going to Memphis Tenn., and finally moving to Cincinnati in 1880, where he had since resided. He is survived by his widow, Mrs. Sophie Nathan, two sons, Hugo and Ernst, and two daughters, Miss Helen of this city, and Mrs. Sol (Alice) Nathan of Buffalo, N.Y. Funeral services were held at his late home and at the crematory, Rabbi Jacob Mielzinger officiating in the presence of a large number of friends — April 18, 1912

75 Y EARS A GO Germany has ordered dissolution of all B’nai B’rith lodges in Germany, the United Press reports.

Leaders of B’nai B’rith are being molested and at least part of the lodge’s property is being seized, the same news-services says.

Dr. Leo Baeck is the head of the order in Germany.

Alfred M. Cohen of Cincinnati is its international president.

Cincinnati Public Library will observe Jewish Book Week in America. The purpose is to emphasize the importance of books and learning in the life of the Jew. Books of particular interest to Jewish readers will be on display at the Main Library and Avondale Branch. One of the window cases at the Main Library on Vine Street near Seventh Street will feature some outstanding books by Jewish authors.

The “pot luck” supper at the last meeting of the Junior Auxiliary of B’nai B’rith was regarded as the group’s most successful affair. Miss

Minie Grad spoke on her trip to Palestine.

The Concert of the Jewish Choral Society has been set for Tuesday evening, May 18th, at 8:30 p.m., at Wise Center, according to Miss Bessie Hosen, president, and Rubin S. Phillips, director of the group. This will be the Choral Group’s third annual concert. — April 22, 1937

50 Y EARS A GO A husband and wife team will head the arrangements committee for the second annual Night of Stars, to be presented by the Cincinnati Committee, State of Israel Bonds, Saturday night, May 12, at the Jewish Community Center.

They are Dr. and Mrs. A.W. Brown.

Isidor Schifrin is chairman of the bonds drive.

Due to the enthusiastic acceptance of last year’s tribute to the city’s Bar Mitzvah children, the custom will be resumed May 12, Mr. Schifrin said. Each child who was Bar Mitzvah in 1961—Israel’s Bar Mitzvah year — was presented with a memento for the occasion.

The wedding of Miss Elinor Ann Cohen and Mr. William S. Ziv took place Sunday, April 15, at Golf Manor Synagogue.

The bride is the daughter of Rabbi and Mrs. Hyman J. Cohen of Stillwell Road. Mr. Ziv is the son of Mrs. Malvin Rae Ziv amd Mr. Frederic W. Ziv, both of Cincinnati.

The bride’s father, Rabbi Cohen, officiated.

The bridal party included: maid of honor, Miss Louise Cohen, sister of the bride; Mrs. Robert Yamin, sister of the bridegroom; Mrs. Albert F. Cohen, and Miss Ellen Fields.

Mr. and Mrs. Siegfried Samuel, 6206 Mayflower, announce the forthcoming Bar Mitzvah of their son, Abraham Allen, on Saturday, April 28, at 9 p.m. at Golf Manor Synagogue. Friends and relatives are invited to worship with the family and to attend the kiddush following the services. — April 19, 1962

25 Y EARS A GO Madame Jehan Sadat, widow of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, will speak at Adath Israel Synagogue on Wednesday, May 13 at 8 p.m. She is this year’s participant in the Mose L. Marcus lecture series.

A longtime political activist, Sadat has done extensive work to establish rights for Egyptian women and has actively sought world peace. She is a teacher, poetry scholar and has often been

called a “messenger of peace.”

Two Russian émigrés — conductor Gary Bertini and Violinist Mark Peskanov — will team up as guest artists in performances with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Friday, April 24 at 11 a.m., and Saturday, April 25 at 8:30 p.m. The Music Hall concerts — sponsored by Saks Fifth Avenue — will feature Peskanov as soloist in the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, with Haydn’s Symphony No. 95 and Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra” also on the program. Bertini, founder of the Israel Chamber Orchestra, will be on the podium.

Steve Bowman, associate professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati, has been awarded a Fulbright grant under the Western European Regional Research Program to do research on Greek Jews during the Holocaust period.

The grant, one of 15 awarded under this highly competitive federal program, is given to established scholars to further their research. — April 23, 1987

10 Y EARS A GO The Cincinnati Choral Society and the Rockdale Temple will present Donald McCullough’s Holocaust Cantata Sunday, April 28, at 4 p.m. in the Temple auditorium. Douglas Belland will conduct the 60-voice choir with guest soloists David Muchnick, tenor and cantor at Rockdale, and Amy Hill soprano.

Joining the vocal ensemble are Lee Fizer, cellist, Michael Chertock, pianist, and members of the Rockdale congregation who will read letters and poems written by inmates of Nazi concentration camps.

Belland described the Holocaust Cantata as a composition of alternating songs and readings describing or reflecting on life in the camps.

Charlotte M. Leiter, 83, passed away April 3. She was born March 12 1919, in Neckarsteinach (close to Heidelberg), Germany. She was a daughter of the late Louis and Hedwig (Scheuer) Oppenheimer.

Mrs. Leiter was the wife of the late Steven M. Leiter, whom she married March 7, 1943, and who predeceased her April 23, 1979.

She is survived by her children, Susan and Arthur Horowitz of Ellicott City, Md., and Jeffrey Leiter and Carrie Knowles of Raleigh, N.C. Mrs. Leiter’s surviving grandchildren are Stephanie and David Horowitz, both of Maryland, and Neil, Hedy and Cole Leiter, all of North Carolina. Mrs. Leiter was a sister of the late Jules and Sig Oppenheimer. –April 18, 2002

CLASSIFIEDS • 19

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS Access (513) 373-0300 • jypaccess.org Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc.

(513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7258 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 • camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Cincinnati Community Mikveh 513-351-0609 • cincinnatimikveh.org Fusion Family (513) 703-3343 • fusionnati.org Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati 513-961-0178 • jcemcin.org Jewish Community Center (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org Jewish Community Relations Council (513) 985-1501 Jewish Family Service (513) 469-1188 • jfscinti.org Jewish Federation of Cincinnati (513) 985-1500 • shalomcincy.org Jewish Foundation (513) 514-1200 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 Jewish Vocational Service (513) 985-0515 • jvscinti.org Kesher (513) 766-3348 Plum Street Temple Historic Preservation Fund (513) 793-2556 Shalom Family (513) 703-3343 • myshalomfamily.org The Center for Holocaust & Humanity Education (513) 487-3055 • holocaustandhumanity.org Vaad Hoier (513) 731-4671 Workum Fund (513) 899-1836 • workum.org YPs at the JCC (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org

CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 984-3393 Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net Congregation Beth Adam (513) 985-0400 • bethadam.org Congregation B’nai Tikvah (513) 759-5356 • bnai-tikvah.org Congregation B’nai Tzedek (513) 984-3393 • bnaitzedek.us Congregation Ohav Shalom (513) 489-3399 • ohavshalom.org

Congregation Ohr Chadash (513) 252-7267 • ohrchadashcincinnati.com Congregation Sha’arei Torah shaareitorahcincy.org Congregation Zichron Eliezer 513-631-4900 • czecincinnati.org Golf Manor Synagogue (513) 531-6654 • golfmanorsynagogue.org Isaac M. Wise Temple (513) 793-2556 • wisetemple.org Kehilas B’nai Israel (513) 761-0769 Northern Hills Synagogue (513) 931-6038 • nhs-cba.org Rockdale Temple (513) 891-9900 • rockdaletemple.org Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com

EDUCATION Chai Tots Early Childhood Center (513) 234.0600 • chaitots.com Chabad Blue Ash (513) 793-5200 • chabadba.com Cincinnati Hebrew Day School (513) 351-7777 • chds.shul.net HUC-JIR (513) 221-1875 • huc.edu JCC Early Childhood School (513) 793-2122 • mayersonjcc.org Kehilla - School for Creative Jewish Education (513) 489-3399 • kehilla-cincy.com Mercaz High School (513) 792-5082 x104 • mercazhs.org Kulanu (Reform Jewish High School) 513-262-8849 • kulanucincy.org Regional Institute Torah & Secular Studies (513) 631-0083 Rockwern Academy (513) 984-3770 • rockwernacademy.org

ORGANIZATIONS American Jewish Committee (513) 621-4020 • ajc.org American Friends of Magen David Adom (513) 521-1197 • afmda.org B’nai B’rith (513) 984-1999 BBYO (513) 722-7244 Hadassah (513) 821-6157 • cincinnati.hadassah.org Jewish Discovery Center (513) 234.0777 • jdiscovery.com Jewish National Fund (513) 794-1300 • jnf.org Jewish War Veterans (513) 204-5594 • 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

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MEMORIES from page 6 Though his grandfather died before he was born, Aaron Biterman, 29, says the experience of living in a home with a parent suffering from the trauma of surviving the Nazi death camps took a toll on his father and aunt. His grandfather never talked about the Holocaust he was so traumatized, Biterman recalls his father telling him.

“He lived but wasn’t living,” Biterman, a fundraiser in Arlington, Va., says of the grandfather he never met.

His grandmother also survived the Holocaust in Poland and for many years wasn’t eager to share her experiences. Yet after she retired, Biterman says, she started to open up. Eventually she recorded her story with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation and began speaking to student groups.

But knowing that his father had grown up in a home “where something was the matter” only strengthened Biterman’s desire “to connect with my family history and to my story.” In 2006 he started a Facebook group for grandchildren of the Holocaust that today has more than 2,000 friends.

“It’s just a network to organize, ask questions, get answers and educate others,” he says.

Education is the key for the Third Generation.

“It is important that the past not be forgotten,” Biterman says.

“There is a lot of misinformation out there, but we had direct experiences with [Holocaust] survivors.

We are the ones with the biggest ETHIOPIAN from page 6 Faitlovitch sometimes spoke about his work in Ethiopia, and it was evident that “he really loved his students and the people he helped,” recalls Geiger, 83, who lives in Jerusalem. Geiger remembers her young daughter accidentally breaking a beautiful platter Faitlovitch had been given by an Ethiopian emperor.

Faitlovitch’s “activity was praiseworthy” and the institute effort is “something that has to be done,” Geiger says. “I’m a religious

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(513) 531-9600 obligation to share the evidence that was in our backyards. It is up to us to preserve the memory.”

For Daniel Brooks, 35, the grandson of four Holocaust survivors, a need to reconnect with other grandchildren of Holocaust survivors led him to start 3GNY, a nonprofit organization in New York, seven years ago.

With more than 1,500 members in a database, ranging from college age to their 40s, Brooks says the group meets approximately once a month, sometimes for a Shabbat dinner or for an educational event.

To commemorate Yom Hashoah, 3GNY informally supports events held by synagogues and the Workmen’s Circle.

The Third Generation, he says, should not rely on the Jewish establishment to document the lives and experiences of their grandparents or even every Holocaust survivor.

“We all have an obligation,” Brooks says. “If not for us, no one will know these stories. Most will be lost, but each one has meaning.”

An increased sense of urgency, he says, has fueled members of 3GNY to organize speaking events at middle schools in the hope that sharing their grandparents’ stories with the next generation — a demographic that he worries will feel a wider disconnect to the events of the Holocaust — will leave a lasting impression.

“For them, [it could become] like talking about the Civil War,” Brooks says. “It doesn’t compare to listening to a survivor, but we carry on our grandparents’ stories and the lessons of the Holocaust. It hits them.” woman with a lot of faith. I believe that for sure [Faitlovitch] will get his reward in the world to come, if he did not get it in this world.”

Please contact Hillel Kuttler at JTA if you are a relative of Jacques Faitlovitch and wish to be involved in establishing the institute in his memory. If you would like the help of “Seeking Kin” in searching for long-lost relatives and friends, please include the principal facts and your contact information in a brief (one-paragraph) email.

20 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

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Painting lives: Artist helps clients mark pivotpoints

By Lisa Keys Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — Lori Loebelsohn enters other people’s lives at pivotal moments: a marriage, a milestone birthday, a bar mitzvah. Armed with a pen and a notebook, she discusses intimate details about the inner lives of those she has just met: their passions, their most significant memories, their dreams.

She’s not a rabbi, nor is she a therapist or a life coach. Loebelsohn is an artist whose specialty is what she calls “life-cycle portraits”: personalized works of art that commemorate a special day while also reflecting upon an individual’s lifetime. Loebelsohn draws upon influences as varied as early American quilts, medieval Jewish papercuts, Celtic imagery and 17th-century ketubahs to create an original work rich in personal symbolism.

“I end up having these deep, enlightening discussions with these people I work for,” said Loebelsohn, of Glen Ridge, N.J. “I really feel like I’m a transmitter; I’m trying to transmit what they think is important.”

Loebelsohn, who has decades of experience, recently completed her biggest project: illustrating a 20page Haggadah created by an 85year-old man with the intent to create a family heirloom. The project presented many challenges, the artist said, including interpreting her client’s specific ideas in a visual form and keeping a consistent style over a series of some 13 images.

But the biggest obstacle proved to be the rapidly deteriorating health of the family patriarch.

“This had been on his bucket list for years and years,” Loebelsohn said. “It gave him a sense of purpose in his old age.”

Over the course of their collaboration, which began in March 2011, the elderly man grew increasingly weak. The project became a race against the clock, as Loebelsohn worked tirelessly to finish the illustrations before the man’s final hour.

He signed off on the final images last November and passed away the following month.

Loebelsohn met the extended family for the first time at the funeral. They used the Haggadah the first time this Passover.

“There was something very spiritual and deep in that relationship,” said Loebelsohn, noting the dual purpose of the Haggadah. “It’s a way of keeping the Jewish Passover story alive; it’s a way of keeping this man’s memory alive.”

It’s an extreme example, to be sure, but Loebelsohn is seasoned at working with families at momentous junctures in their lives. In addition to creating custom ketubahs,

Meet Michael Ginsburg: On ‘Mad Men,’ Sterling Cooper gets a Jewish copywriter

By Ami Eden Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Courtesy of Lori Loebelsohn

Artist Lori Loebelsohn paints what she calls “life-cycle portraits.”

one of her more popular commissions is for bar and bat mitzvahs.

For a fee starting at $700 for an original painting, she will meet with her young clients (and their parents) and discuss the most meaningful aspects of their lives.

Over the course of about six weeks, Loebelsohn creates an original painting. Typically a central image depicts that week’s Torah portion, and the painting is adorned with numerous personal symbols.

Over the years she has incorporated images as diverse as musical notes and family pets, and once a Pittsburgh Steelers logo.

Looking back on her own life, Loebelsohn, 51, says that art — painting, in particular — was an early passion. Growing up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn, “art was a big thing in my house,” she said.

Loebelsohn’s father, Joseph, was a police officer, and her mother, Carol, an artist. (Her twin sister, Alise, is a decorative painter.) Carol worked as an illustrator for high-end fashion magazines and retailers such as Vogue and Bergdorf Goodman. Loebelsohn recalls that couture evening gowns often were present in their home, even though the family was of modest means.

In 1982, Loebelsohn earned a degree in painting at Cooper Union in New York and embarked on a career as both an art teacher and an artist, working primarily on abstract paintings and, later, more realistic illustrations. In 1989 she earned a master’s degree in special education from Hunter College; since then she has worked part time as a learning specialist.

“I’m very passionate about my other career — teaching kids to

read,” she said. “It’s not like I’m doing my other job like a waitress. I love both my careers.”

An artistic turning point came in 1991, when Loebelsohn was commissioned to create an overmantel painting for the Lefferts Historic House — a homestead built during the American Revolution, now a museum in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. Her task was to paint what the farm had looked like in the 1700s in the folk-art style of the era.

The project “liberated” her, Loebelsohn says, and turned her on to a more symbolic style of painting. Folk art, she realized, “was more about a story rather than getting the likeness of a person. This was more about the narrative.”

Loebelsohn has been experimenting with the format. She began with what she calls “quilt paintings” — paintings inspired by traditional American quilts in which each square evokes an image or symbol.

By the time her children reached bar/bat mitzvah age — Loebelsohn has two children with her husband, lawyer David Goldstein: Rachel was born in 1991 and Alex in 1994 — she found new inspiration amid historic Jewish manuscripts, particularly the layout of 17th-century ketubahs.

“It was still the same idea of using symbols and things, but the format had changed,” she said.

“There was a kind of structure; a central image and the words, and all this decorative stuff around the image.”

The artist is hoping to complete a children’s book project, but acknowledges it’s been put on the back burner. She says she’s been steadily working on commissions since 2004.

NEW YORK (JTA) — “Mad Men” is like the Jews — it gets a lot of attention for a show watched by less than 2 percent of the population.

To kick off its fifth season, the 1960s period program, winner of four straight Emmys for best drama, has a new Jewish character. To be more precise, the advertising firm at the center of the AMC show has its first Jewish employee: Michael Ginsburg (played by Ben Feldman).

And he’s, well, too Jewish.

At least he was in his first appearance, the two-episode season premiere earlier this month. It was like watching Eugene in a high school performance of “Brighton Beach Memoirs.”

You know you have a problem when Roger Sterling and the WASPs at the advertising firm formerly known as Sterling Cooper seem less offensive than the show’s creator, Matt Weiner, and the writing crew (actually, Jon “Don Draper” Hamm directed the episode, so maybe he bears some of the blame).

The whining: Think Woody Allen on steroids. And the father… oy, with the Yiddish accent. It was like watching one of the well-meaning gentiles from “Waiting for Guffman” take a stab at the father from “Shine” (Armin Mueller-Stahl: No one will love you like I do).

If that weren’t enough, the episode ended with Ginsburg telling his father that he got the copywriter’s job and dad breaking out the priestly blessing generally recited by parents over their children at the Shabbos table.

Things took a turn for the better last weekend in the season’s third episode.

Whether Ginsburg was feeling more comfortable at work or the show’s writers had gotten some shtick out of their system, the character felt less forced. (OK, he staged a holier-than-thou walkout and had a talk-too-much moment that could have had him fired, but that just tells you how bad things were the previous episode.)

Ginsburg even gave us a line worth chewing on. After Don— that’s Don Draper, the firm’s creative director and the show’s sexy, charming and womanizing protagonist—makes a crack about Ginsburg’s voice, Ginsburg responds without missing a beat: “It’s a regional accent—you have one, too.”

It was a nice turnaround, reminding us that Don (he’s not who he says he is) was really the first one to crash the rarefied WASP party.

And it fits an emerging pattern: This season, Don has hired the firm’s first Jewish employee

Courtesy of Michael Yarish/AMC

Michael Ginsberg, played by Ben Feldman, is the new Jewish copywriter on the AMC awardwinning show “Mad Men.”

(Ginsburg) and its first black employee (Dawn, a secretary, played by Teyonah Parris). This week we had Ginsburg’s you’rejust-like-me line, last week we had the quip about people confusing Don and Dawn.

None of this should come as a surprise. After all, it was Don who gave Peggy her break as the firm’s first woman copywriter.

This isn’t meant as some sort of ode to Don — like with everything else, the good deeds are colored by his own self-interest. Yes, all things being equal, Don thinks people should be judged by the work. But having the new arrivals around also provides emotional reassurance and validation, reinforcing his own membership in the old boys club.

At least one “Mad Men” viewer wrote in to take issue with the argument that the show overdid it on the Jewish in Ginsburg’s first episode.

“Jews have to UNLEARN 45 years of being in the Establishment and think about how the first Jews may have been perceived and may have been culturally out of sync entering big advertising, investment and law firms in the mid-60s,” the viewer argued. “The character’s performance seems a little over the top to us, but to us, firms that have no Jews working in them are anecdotes from before being born, not reality.

Maybe this isn’t the way it objectively looked in 1966 — but I’d say it’s a pretty good bet it’s the way it looked to the WASPy denizens of these firms hiring their first Jews.

Sort of like the great Wisconsin dinner scene in ‘Annie Hall,’ where they look at Woody Allen and see a Chasid. The home scene was the real Ginsberg, the veil lifted, crazy father and all.”

Either way, we should be able to agree on one thing: Let’s leave the priestly adaptations to Leonard Nimoy as Michael Ginsburg boldly (and nebbishly) goes where no Jew has gone before.

Ami Eden is JTA’s editor in chief and CEO. This article was adapted from JTA’s Telegraph blog.

FIRST PERSON • 21

THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012

Eating what you want and not gaining weight—Are you crazy?

Incidentally Iris

by Iris Ruth Pastor It started with the cottage cheese and graham cracker diet in my pre-teens and led to capricious experiments with Diet Workshop, Weight Watchers, Adkins, etc. I have been fighting the battle of my bulge ever since—my whole life, it seems. Apparently, I’m not alone.

Recent statistics site that the weight loss industry is a $30 billion a year industry.

I’m tired of trying to take away my longing for a vanilla malt by drinking eight glasses of water daily. I’m tired of trying to take away my longing for a big, gooey MARCH from page 6 March organizers recently introduced Carrier to Irving Roth, who was a 13-year-old inmate at Buchenwald when Carrier, then 20, blew up the camp’s main gate with dynamite. The two have since met several times, and they will participate in the march together.

At their first meeting, Carrier showed Roth a photograph he had of the camp. Roth recognized himself in the picture.

“The moment that I saw the Americans come in was like the Messiah,” said Roth of the day he was liberated. “There’s a kinship that existed all along between survivors and liberators.”

Although Carrier has not returned to the camps, he hopes the trip will be an opportunity to con-

piece of carrot cake by eating a bag of raw carrots—dipped in just a tad of ranch dressing. I’m tired of trying to take away my longing for a good old-fashioned grilled cheese sandwich—oozing butter and on white bread—by eating two low-fat mozzarella cheese sticks instead.

Eating disorders are on the rise.

Obesity rates are higher than ever.

At the same time, there is a plethora of fat-free and sugar-free foods gracing our grocery shelves and diets of every kind being introduced non-stop. We are a society in visceral pursuit of leanness. And we are losing the battle.

So when a good friend suggested I read “Intuitive Eating,” by Elyse Resch, I figured what did I have to lose? A few dollars and a few pounds? Been there before.

And maybe I would finally unravel the mystery of how to lose weight and keep it off—once and for all.

Imagine my utter surprise when I learned that intuitive eating is really just about normal eating—normal eating that can then lead to developing safe relationships with both food and my own body. Shocking.

First I learned that intense eat-

ing is a normal response to dieting.

Anguishing over each morsel of food, perpetually dieting, eating unconsciously with little regard for true physical hunger and using food to cope with emotions only helps to keep us in a chronic dieting state.

So what do the naturally intuitive eaters do that I don’t do?

Well, for starters, they keep their bodies fed biologically with adequate energy and carbs so a primal desire to overeat is not triggered. They give themselves permission to eat so that intense feelings of deprivation don’t build up.

Intuitive eaters take away the value judgment of good and bad in relation to food intake: “I’m good if I eat under 1,000 calories a day and I’m bad if I don’t.”

Intuitive eaters pause while eating—listening to their bodies so they can tell when they are comfortably full. Unlike me, they don’t push away from the dinner table feeling stuffed, disgusted with themselves for not resisting that second helping of mashed potatoes.

They find pleasure and satisfaction in the eating experience— savoring it.

And when feeling lonely, bored, anxious and angry, they don’t mindlessly open the door of the refrigerator looking for solace; they find other ways to comfort themselves.

Instead of forever trying to squeeze into size 2 skirts, they accept their unique genetic blueprint.

They get and feel active because it feels good, not because their only goal is to lose weight.

Intuitive eaters are, says, Resch, “unaffected eaters. They eat whatever they choose while marching to their own inner hunger signals.”

Pretty scary to me. A pretty outof-the-box approach. Pretty eyeopening too.

What did I have to change? For starters, the comfort of routine. For another, the diet mindset I’ve lived with every day of my life since my body changed and my teeth became encased in braces. How would I know what to eat and not eat if I didn’t follow the fat grams and calorie count? And weigh myself religiously?

Author Resch also sites that “healthy” meal plans were not helping people maintain permanent

weight control and yet the throwout-nutrition approach was a dangerous option. So think of intuitive eating, says Resch, “as a kind of bridge between the growing antidiet movement and the health community.”

With trepidation and mild skepticism, I embarked on the intuitive eating journey.

And where did it lead me? Well, let me just say this: if you see me at the ball game this spring eating a hot dog slathered in mustard or licking an oversized scoop of ice cream or dreamingly savoring a steaming plate of chili, feel free to interrupt my food fest and if you are brave enough, join me. You may just surprise yourself, like I did, and realize that at the end of this experiment, I actually lost a few pounds while gaining a whole new appreciation for eating the foods I have spent my life avoiding. So maybe I can’t get down to what I weighed before I gave birth to five children and passed the 64year kid mile marker, but I can still aspire to be the best I can look within realistic bounds and revel in the process of doing so.

front a traumatic event.

“I’m looking forward to it to clear up my own head,” Carrier said. “It goes into your subconscious mind; you don’t want it to come out. Going on this march has gotten me to release all the things I felt when I was 20.”

But many World War II veterans are not active in Holocaust remembrance. Dominick Sgobbo, who also liberated Buchenwald with Patton and is active in several New York City veterans’ organizations, said that fellow veterans often criticize him for speaking about the Holocaust.

“When I bring it up among veterans, they look at me and say, ‘Why are you talking like that?

You’re not even Jewish,’ ” said Sgobbo, who will not be participating in the march.

IRAN from page 7

“The idea that you have minimized a nuclear weapon by keeping them at 20 percent and not touching Natanz,” the aide said, referring to another enrichment facility, “that in no way stops the danger and would not change the calculus in Jerusalem.”

Republicans — and likely some Democrats, as well — would be “looking for a full suspension of all enrichment capabilities,” the aide said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met last month with Obama, told the White House and congressional leaders that he had not yet come to a decision on whether to strike, and would hold off while he assesses how Obama’s diplomacy and sanctions regime are working.

The pledge appears to be holding, although Israeli government officials have leaked to Israeli media their displeasure with what they see as Obama administration

leaks about Israel’s capacity to strike Iran. Among the revelations that have alarmed Israeli officials was a story in Foreign Policy last month that reported on alleged Israeli dealings with Azerbaijan, as well as American intelligence speculation that Israel planned to use the Caucasus nation as a refueling ground for a strike.

The aims of the leaks campaign “are fully operational,” Ron Ben Yishai, a senior military analyst with deep Israeli government sources, wrote in Yediot Achronot, “to make it more difficult for Israeli decision-makers to order the IDF to carry out a strike, and what’s even graver, to erode the IDF’s capacity to launch such strike with minimal casualties.”

A White House insider denied that the leaks were part of a campaign, noting that rogue leaks from the intelligence community have been commonplace under multiple administrations.

mitzvah’d as a re-commitment to the Jewish faith.”

The staged footage of the purported ceremony is followed by party and dancing scenes filmed elsewhere. In many ways, it looks like a typical over-the-top bar mitzvah party — only in this case, the bar mitzvah “boy” is a famous musician who is joined by hiphop producer DJ Khaled and fellow rapper Lil Wayne wearing a panda mask.

The camera pans a food table with bagels and what appears to be gefilte fish and smoked fish.

Drake is shown being lifted in a chair and later pounding a cake

with its Torah scroll decorations.

Kuehne said that those involved in the filming were “very respectful and used the temple outside and inside as we would have expected anybody to do.” He said that the producers of the video paid a standard rental fee for the use of the synagogue’s facilities.

Kuehne also said the synagogue’s Torah scroll was not used and that the scenes where Drake appears to be rapping in the sanctuary were inserted post-production. “None of the song’s lyrics were sung in the Temple Israel Sanctuary,” he said.

“So far the Obama administration is completely faithfully implementing” the sanctions, said a Republican Senate aide involved in the sanctions legislation talks.

“They’re executing everything as they’re supposed to.”

The Senate aide referred particularly to the president’s March 30 determination that oil markets could withstand U.S. sanctions that would effectively force much of the world to choose between cutting off Iran’s Central Bank and its energy sector or not dealing with the United States.

That effectively set the sanctions in motion and earned Obama some leeway in Congress for concessions he could make to the Iranians — but they would have to come after the Iranians had verifiably shut down their suspected nuclear weapons program, the Senate aide said.

DRAKE from page 8

Courtesy of March of Living International

Young Jews entering the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Camp in Poland during the 2010 March of Living.

The 25-year-old rapper today is one of the biggest names in hiphop. He has been very public in embracing his Jewish roots, wearing a Chai pendant on the cover of Vibe magazine.

The video for “HYFR” opens with a clip of Drake as a boy at a bar mitzvah celebration saying “mazel tov” and then cuts to him as an adult wearing a yarmulke and prayer shawl as he is shown apparently reading the Torah at Temple Israel’s bimah. A caption at the beginning of the video says the rapper “chose to get re-bar

22 • OBITUARIES

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

The children of Aleen C. Newman mourn the passing of their beloved mother and grandmother on March 21, 2012. Mrs. Newman was the wife of the late Elmer S. Newman, the mother of Bobbe Newman of Woodland Hills, Calif., and Patty and Lester Krupp of San Mateo, Calif., and

the grandmother of Adam N. Burton of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Jonathon A. Krupp of San Mateo, Calif. She is also survived by her sister, June Citron of Boca Raton, Fla. Mrs. Newman was surrounded by her family and devoted caregiver, Mila, when she passed away in her home in Woodland Hills following a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was nine days short of her 94th birthday.

Born March 30, 1918, and a lifetime resident of Cincinnati, Mrs. Newman attended Avondale School, Hughes High School and the University of Cincinnati where she met, and in 1939, married her husband of 67 years, Elmer.

Mrs. Newman was well known for her fun-loving spirit, her kindness and generosity, having devoted more than 25,000 volunteer hours as a buyer for the Jewish Hospital Gift Shop. She

was a long-standing member of Rockdale Temple.

Everyone who knew Mrs. Newman will be deeply affected by the loss. She was a wonderful friend, an expert listener, a stellar hostess and a much loved mother and grandmother.

The family requests that any contributions be donated to the “Cure Alzheimer’s Fund,” 34 Washington St. Ste. 200, Wellesley, MA 02481; (781) 237-3800.

of music, poetry and soul,” says Moradian, who says he visits Iran “through the Internet” and dreams of the day when he can take his children there.

“Unfortunately, the media here conveys a picture as if Iran is only Ahmadinejad. The media is mobilized and I don’t believe any report from it,” he says.

Moradian opposes an Israeli strike on nuclear installations and believes that the Iranian people eventually will overthrow the regime.

Some among the 250,000 Iranian Israelis fear an Israeli

strike will cause the Iranian regime to retaliate against the Jewish community, one of the world’s oldest.

“This is an unstable and unpredictable regime that can behave differently from day to day,” says Kamal Penhasi, the editor of Israel’s Farsi language newspaper, Shahyad. “I can envision them using criminals to attack Jews while denying the regime is involved.”

But Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born specialist on Iran at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, doubts there would be a backlash against

Iranian Jews.

“The Iranian regime always tries to portray itself as anti-Israel and not anti-Jewish,” he says.

“Hurting its own Jewish population would undermine that and be very counterproductive.”

Javedanfar also says that despite the regime’s demonization of Israel since 1979, the Iranian people’s views of Israelis are “far more positive than any other country in the Middle East.” An Israeli strike could affect those views, he says.

Prominent Israelis of Iranian descent include Shaul Mofaz,

who last month took the reins of Kadima, the country’s largest opposition party. Mofaz recently has taken a more dovish stance than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, urging that Israel allow Washington to take the lead in handling Iranian nuclear ambitions.

At the restaurant, Shamshiri says she does not believe there will be a war.

“I hope we find a peaceful solution. The Muslims and we have all grown up on the same food,” she says. “At the end of the day, we know each other well.”

fight with us,” a Palestinian janitor at the mall, who identified himself only as Ahmed, told JTA. “When we tried to defend ourselves, they ran away, but then came back and tried to attack us.”

Police eventually broke up the melee but did not initially make any arrests because they said no complaints were filed.

On April 3, police released some 51 seconds of security surveillance footage from the mall that showed three Arab workers wielding sticks at some screaming fans, who fled. Ben-Ruby said that police have arrested some 19 fans, against whom charges will be pressed, while another 20 have been banned from the games for 2 1/2 years.

The incident has reinforced Beitar Jerusalem’s bad reputation within Israeli sports.

“We condemn all physical and verbal violence,” Asaf Shaked, a spokesman for Beitar Jerusalem, told JTA. “But there is a stigma against the fans of Beitar Jerusalem, and that’s why this incident has attracted so much media attention.”

Like most sports clubs established during the mandate and early state periods, the team grew

out of a political party. Hapoel teams were drawn from the laborsocialist movements; Maccabi teams were allied with the nonsocialist groups; and Beitar was an outgrowth of the revisionist Zionist youth movement founded in 1923 by Zeev Jabotinsky.

While Hapoel teams represented the establishment, Beitar’s earliest players were members of the right-wing undergrounds.

Subsequently, after the establishment of the state, Beitar teams became linked to Herut, the rightwing party led by Menachem Begin that was the forerunner to the present-day Likud.

Beitar Jerusalem has won six national championships and played in numerous European competitions. It counts many prominent politicians and businessmen, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, from the left and the right, among its supporters.

But its core fans are traditionally oriented, right-wing, working-class males often from Sephardic backgrounds who tend to define themselves as outsiders against what they see as a leftwing establishment.

In 2005, hundreds of these diehard fans established the La

Familia organization to support the team. Members of the group are largely responsible for the numerous penalties that have been imposed on the team.

La Familia members brazenly flaunt symbols of the outlawed racist Kach party founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane. They fill the eastern bleachers of Teddy Stadium dressed in their team’s yellow and black and screaming curses at Arabs and anyone they identify as a leftist. Most infamously, several years ago they booed during a moment of silence for assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“We are in a dialogue with La Familia and we believe that, thanks to that dialogue, the racist, violent behavior is decreasing,” Shaked said.

Social psychologist Itsik Alfasi, a self-described “diehard, forever true supporter of Beitar Jerusalem,” says the combination of class and ethnic protest, social alienation, popular religion and simple patriotism produces the racism inside and outside of the stadiums.

But he insists that “La Familia and their like represent a minority of the team. Most of the fans are

working hard to get rid of this behavior, not only because it’s immoral but because it’s hurting us, too.”

Haifa University sociologist Oz Almog points out that throughout Israel, Arabs are playing a major role in Israeli soccer’s Premier League.

“In contrast to the image of Israel as a racist society, soccer is actually a social equalizer, where Arabs cheer Jews and Jews cheer Arabs,” he said. “This could have a tremendously positive effect on the entire society.”

In fact, six Arabs are now playing on Hapoel Ironi, the little team from Kiryat Shemona, the northern development town known mostly because it has been a frequent target of Hezbollah rocket fire. The team recently won this year’s national championship.

Beitar, in contrast, has never had an Arab player. Shaked, the Beitar spokesman, said that if a “suitably talented Arab player were to come up, we would definitely consider him for the team.”

But in the past when Arab players were suggested, their names were quickly withdrawn in the face of the vociferous and crude objections of the La Familia fans.

LETTERS from page 16

has broadcast songs, sermons, and other messages glorifying as “martyrs” the perpetrators of murderous suicide terrorist attacks. While Helen Thomas has not specifically espoused such violence, we see her recognition as simply part of the campaign to celebrate those who espouse harsh anti-Israeli and antiJewish themes.

Last year, the Committee on Foreign Affairs adopted an amendment entitled the Preparing

the Palestinian People for Peace Act. This legislation conditioned U.S. assistance on whether the PA was actively preparing its people for peace through compromise, with messages of tolerance, understanding and reconciliation.

Unfortunately, it seems that the award to Helen Thomas is just another way to avoid telling the Palestinian population that they must be prepared for a negotiated settlement.

We, therefore, condemn the selection of Helen Thomas for an award by your representation in Washington, D.C. and urge the Palestinian Authority to recommit itself to the peace process through messages of peace and reconciliation.

D EATH N OTICES

O BITUARIES

BERNSTEIN, Sandra “Sandi”, age 68, died on April 14, 2012; 22 Nissan, 5772.

NEWMAN, Aleen, C.

MOSKOWITZ, Miriam “Mimi,” age 88, died on April 16, 2012; 25 Nissan, 5772.

ISRAELIS from page 9 “I am Iranian in my behavior, my accent and the demands I make of my children to respect everyone,” Moradian says as he turns up a CD of Iranian classical music singer Mohammed Shajarian.

Moradian, who had been a lieutenant in the Iranian army, left after the ‘79 revolution, fearing reprisals against officers who served under Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

“Of course I have good memories. I think the Iranian people are a special people, not of wars, but SOCCER from page 10 The story first made headlines several days after the March 19 incident, when video footage surfaced on the Internet showing masses of Beitar Jerusalem fans at the mall chanting “Death to Arabs.”

Exactly what happened next is unclear. Haaretz reported that some fans harassed a group of Arab women in the mall’s food court and were chased away by broomstick-wielding Arab janitors. According to Haaretz, the fans returned and attacked the Arab workers. A shopkeeper told the paper that Arab workers were thrown against store windows and beaten.

“They came looking to have a

Unfortunately, the recognition of stridently, and sometimes even violently, anti-Israeli individuals and themes have become all too common by the Palestinian Authority (PA). In recent months and years, the PA has recognized Dala Mughrabi, the perpetrator of the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Israeli citizens were killed, and its official TV station

Sincerely, Steve Chabot Eliot L. Engel Members of Congress

AI

2012 CALENDAR SPECIAL ISSUES & SECTIONS

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MARCH

J ANUARY

FEBRUARY

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2 Kids/Summer Camps *Section 9 16 23

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APRIL

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3 Bar/Bat Mitzvah *Section 10 Lag B’Omer 17 24 Travel Guide 31

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6 13 Rosh Hashanah *Issue 20 Jewish Year In Review 27

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1 Event Planning 8 15 22 29 Gift Guide *Section

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