The American Israelite, September 13, 2012

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L’Shana Tova 5773

The American Israelite T H E

O L D E S T

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THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

26 ELUL, 5772

CINCINNATI, OH Candle Lighting Times Shabbat begins Fri 7:30p Shabbat ends Sat 8:31p

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Quint Kaufman, 12, Rockwern Academy - Winner of the 2012 Rosh Hashanah Cover Coloring Contest

MASON CENTER EMBARKS ON AMBITIOUS EXPANSION PROJECT

The Mason-area ‘Center for Jewish Life’ is expanding to accommodate growth and increased programming. Mason’s central location, good schools, and affordable housing has attracted many young families to the area contributing to its significant growth, while creating an increased Jewish presence in the northern corridor.

“We’ve been bursting at the seams!” said Rabbi Yosef Kalmanson, founder and executive director of the Jewish Discovery Center. His usual enthusiasm compliments his pride, as he shares his vision for the recent expansion of the Jewish Discovery Center in Mason, indicating his strong confidence in the future of Jewish life in the Mason area.

The Jewish Discovery Center has offered user-friendly religious services, a preschool and daycare, Hebrew school, and educational and social opportunities for adults and families of all backgrounds, resulting in its emergence as the center for Jewish life in the area. Unconditional love and acceptance of every Jew, regardless of affiliation or level of observance, is the hallmark of their operation.

While many private school enrollments have seen a decline over the last few years, JDC’s Chai Tots school has grown steadily. Unique in providing a Montessori curriculum that follows each individual child, Chai Tots focuses on academics, childhood development, character building, and Jewish life, as well as respect, independence, and preparing an environment that nurtures a child’s natural desire for discovery.

“Judaism places a high value on education and scholarly pursuits,” said Rochel Kalmanson the Jewish Discovery Center’s Education Director.

“To develop a unique and excellent preschool program, we chose the Montessori method which compliments the traditional Jewish approach.”

The program paralleled the growth of the

community. As enrollment increased, the center's congregation had to set up and take down for its instructional services, to provide much needed space for the preschool students during the week.

Hebrew school rooms began sharing space in the preschool classrooms. Teachers could be found eating lunch in the front office. Adult classes, meetings, and counseling were held in the students’ environment or in private homes.

Responding to the continued growth, Rabbi Yosef Kalmanson and his wife, Rochel, are leading a significant expansion of the Jewish Discovery Center (www.JDiscovery.com), and its Chai Tots (www.ChaiTots.com) preschool and kindergarten, at 7587 Central Parke Blvd.

This will be its third and largest expansion project since moving into its current facility in 2006. Thanks to a lead gift by local businessman and philanthropist, Mr. Sam Boymel, the expansion is well underway.

“We became adept at being flexible and working together, but it had limited the programming we can offer to meet the community’s needs. The additional space will make weekly services and holiday events more welcoming, convenient, and fluid,” Kalmanson noted.

The center’s expansion will feature dedicated Hebrew school classrooms, a Judaic lending library, an adult education room to increase its educational and social offerings for adults, and a dedicated worship space for user-friendly instructional services. A classroom will be added to the Chai Tots school, and the playground will be expanded. The newly expanded facility will be ready for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“We are here for any Jew, no matter who they are. We try to get to know each family and are available to respond to their individual needs,” said Rochel. “Our vision is to touch every Jew, whether he or she comes to services or not.

We are here to build community.”

“Despite the tumultuous time in our economy, we’re expanding! This is a tribute to our generous community here in Cincinnati, and a testament to the need for organizations dedicated to Torah, G-d, and the Jewish people. These centers serve as pillars in our community where people can come to feel empowered and find meaning. We thank Mr. Sam Boymel and his wife Rachel, for their lead gift to help the expansion begin right away,” said Kalmanson.

Mr. Sam Boymel is the board chair of five nursing facilities and an investment company where caring for others and philanthropy is his overarching objective. He and his wife, Rachel, use their success to actively help others. They support many Jewish causes, locally, nationally, and internationally. But those helping children are closest to the Boymels’ hearts, as they lost their own childhood early. As Holocaust survivors, they both lost the opportunity to live in a safe home, to eat well during the day, sleep well at night, or receive a formal education.

“My values were imparted to me as a boy by my mother, before she and my other immediate family died at the hands of the Nazi butchers,” said Boymel, who escaped death in Turijsk, Ukraine.

In 1941, the Germans invaded Boymel’s native town and forced his family into a Nazi concentration camp. Still alive a year later they were to be moved as a group to a new “work site.” But the Jewish community never made it to the new site. As they neared hastily dug mass graves, Sam’s mother told him to run. Although he escaped, the rest of his family was murdered. The next three years were the most difficult for Sam, as he remained on the run and in hiding.

Eventually, he was liberated by the Allies in 1945.

He lived in a refugee camp in the Ukraine, married his wife Rachel and, with help, arrived in New York in 1949. He was sent to Cincinnati, speaking

no English and with only $7 in his pocket.

The memory of running as a 12-year-old to escape death still haunts him. “Until today I hear my mother’s voice in my head as she yelled to me in Yiddish ‘run, my son, run away, but always remember from where you have come.’”

“Mr. and Mrs. Boymel have lived through so much which has shaped their vision of Jewish life and their commitment to giving,” said Rabbi Kalmanson.“They are making a tangible impact in the global community and are a true inspiration.

Our work in building and empowering a Jewish community in the Mason area compliments their vision. The Jewish community sincerely appreciates all that they do and we are grateful for their personal interest and support of our community center, as we partner to make a significant investment in the future of our people.”

Among their many philanthropic endeavors internationally, the Boymels recently sponsored over 1,000 daily meals for orphan children in Nahariya, Israel, and are involved in many organizations providing Jewish education.

“I feel like I survived for a reason,” said Boymel. “I have made it my responsibility to look after Jewish education and to ensure Jewish continuity. The [Jewish] Discovery Center is the perfect partner in that effort.”

The Jewish Discovery Center builds Jewish identity by ensuring that every Jewish family in the northeast corridor has a conveniently located center to call their home where they can be embraced unconditionally, develop relationships, grow and develop themselves personally, and remain connected to their true selves and to those around them.

The center is looking for additional sponsors at all levels, and dedication opportunities are available to support the growth. For more information, contact rabbi@JDiscovery.com, or call 513.234.0777.

LOCAL • 3

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Jewish Foundation invests in shared business services infrastructure Jewish Federation will coordinate finance, HR and IT services to benefit community The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati is pleased to announce a $2.2 million investment over three years in a new Jewish Federationled initiative to combine finance, human resources and information technology functions in key Jewish organizations. This effort will begin with the three agencies colocated on The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati campus — the Jewish Federation, Mayerson JCC and Jewish Family Services — and will build into a platform to support an integrated, communitywide Shared Business Services center. Once Shared Business Services is fully operational it will also be offered to additional Federation partner agencies, local congregations and other Jewish communal institutions over the next several years.

The Shared Business Services initiative seeks to supply organizations with higher quality business data, enabling them to make better business decisions and operate more efficiently as these three key services are provided by specialists. This initiative will also increase collaboration among Jewish agencies without reducing their autonomy in advancing their respective missions, as the organizations will continue to create and implement their own goals and business strategies.

“As we’ve gone out during the past year to better understand community needs, it’s clear that many, if not most organizations are stretched beyond their capacities,” said Jewish Foundation President Michael R. Oestreicher. “Too often, they are hampered in achieving their goals because they lack the resources and specialized capabilities, particularly in the areas of finance, human resources and information technologies. The Jewish Foundation is committed to helping build capacity in these areas; and the fact that the Federation, the JCC and JFS all are under one roof but currently are running separate programs and operations, presents an ideal opportunity to pilot something that not only can result in better resource allocation and greater efficiencies at those organizations, but ideally will benefit the broader community by providing a package of key business services that other organizations will be able to use.”

The Jewish Foundation’s investment will enable the recruitment and hiring of executive-level talent

to direct the new Shared Business Services Finance, HR and IT functions. In addition, new upgrades in both hardware and software will replace existing technology no longer supported by their vendors.

The Shared Business Services directors will manage their respective teams and report to Jewish Federation Chief Operating Officer Dan Fagin, who joined the Federation staff in July. Fagin has a Masters in Business Administration, as well as an additional degree in Finance and is a certified Project Manager. He has 25 years of business operations experience, and for the past 10 years was the Managing Director of Protiviti’s regional office (a global consulting firm and spin-off of Arthur Andersen), where he supervised a team of more than 30 business consultants.

Business Services model and have developed it with an eye towards sustainability.”

“For Cincinnati to fulfill its potential to become a model Jewish community, the core institutions that sustain community life must operate in a businesslike manner, providing timely and reliable financial information and human resource and technology management. This will strengthen their capacity to reach the best strategies and decisions,” said Jewish Federation CEO Shepard Englander. “This investment by The Jewish Foundation will help us to remove key obstacles to performance, such as our agencies’ current need to divert undue time and attention away from their core missions in order to manage underfunded and fragmented business services.” Beth

“This investment by The Jewish Foundation will help us to remove key obstacles to performance, such as our agencies’ current need to divert undue time and attention away from their core missions in order to manage underfunded and fragmented business services.”

Shepard Englander

The Shared Business Services initiative came together with significant planning input from volunteer and professional leaders from the Federation, JCC and JFS, and guided by expert consulting from Executive Service Corps of Cincinnati. This approach was suggested by the accounting firm that conducts the audits for each of the three agencies initially involved in the initiative. Key outcomes will include improved consistency and quality of finance, HR and IT services in participating agencies; more streamlined back office business processes, requiring less training and greater consistency in process delivery; strengthened internal controls, providing greater organizational integrity and reliability; and combined purchasing power to obtain more favorable pricing and cut costs. Rob Reifsnyder, President of United Way of Greater Cincinnati, commented, “I am pleased to hear that the Federation is building a Shared

Schwartz, Executive Director of Jewish Family Service, added “A joint business service structure would ensure that all administrative functions could be handled in an efficient manner while allowing us to maximize our ability to focus on providing top-quality services to our community.” Finally, Mayerson JCC President Marc Fisher said, “This initiative is in line with the JCC’s continued efforts to run its businesses in the most effective and efficient manner. It will also enable us to combine our strengths for everyone’s benefit and enable us to focus more deeply on our mission of being our community neighborhood.”

Both local and national umbrella organizations—including Jewish Federations of North America—are monitoring the progress of this initiative, which has already been identified as a cutting edge practice that other non-profit systems would want to adopt in order to better serve their constituencies.

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4 • LOCAL

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Jewish Federation of Cinti appoints new COO The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati is pleased to announce that Dan Fagin has joined the professional staff as Chief Operating Officer. Fagin brings over 23 years of business experience, the last 15 of which were in an executive role with Protiviti and other premier management consulting firms. His experience will enable the Federation to deliver greater community value, as well as support implementation of Cincinnati 2020, the long-range, communitywide strategic plan to make Cincinnati a model community and a Jewish destination.

“As the leader of one of our region’s most respected business consulting firms, Dan gained expertise strengthening organizations to achieve their goals. His decision to apply his track record of success to

Seasoned business consultant Dan Fagin brings experience to the Federation.

our community’s future presents us with a rare opportunity,” said Shep

Englander, Jewish Federation CEO. Fagin most recently served as Managing Director for Protiviti, a global business consulting firm.

Active in the Cincinnati community, Fagin serves on the Board of Trustees of the Visiting Nurse Association of Greater Cincinnati and the Board of Education for Isaac M. Wise Temple.

“When I had the chance to work professionally with Dan in his role as a senior business consultant with Protiviti, I was impressed with his professionalism and insight. I believe that Dan’s nearly two decades of experience in operations, organizational development and business strategy is the perfect supplement to our Federation’s professional staff and will bring our community to the next level of effectiveness,” said Steve Shifman,

CEO of Michelman, Inc., who also serves as president of the Mayerson JCC and a Board member of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati.

“I am excited to help move the Federation and Cincinnati’s Jewish community forward to a better future,” said Fagin. “The professional staff, lay leaders and volunteers are truly dedicated to serving our community and supporting Israel,” he continued. “They have inspired me to bring all of my effort and focus to support the Federation’s mission.”

Fagin is a native of Cincinnati and holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Indiana University and an MBA from Thomas More College. He is also a certified Project Management Professional. He lives in Mason with his wife, Kari, and their two teenagers, Anna and Jacob.

Many people think falls are a normal part of aging. The truth, however, is they’re not. Most falls can be prevented and older adults have the power to reduce their risk.

To bring attention to this growing public health issue, Jewish Family Service is joining the National Council on Aging (NCOA) in awareness of National Fall Prevention Day, Sept. 22, which coincides with the first day of fall.

“Though a fall could be an early sign of a health problem, it also may be caused by an avoidable accident around the home,” says Ann Sutton Burke, MPA, CCM, Jewish Family Service director of Aging & Caregiver Services.

“Exercising, managing your medications, having your vision checked, and making your living environment safer are all steps you can take to prevent a fall.”

When Jewish Family Service geriatric care managers visit a home of an older adult, they are able to see the actual living conditions and identify potential risks.

Accidents can be prevented by something as simple as picking up wet towels from the bathroom floor, removing a slippery rug in the hallway, or using a sturdy step stool instead of a chair to reach the top shelf in the kitchen pantry. Placing

a phone or lamp within reach can prevent someone falling out of bed.

“We don’t go into any home without continually assessing for fall risk. It is an essential part of care management,” says Burke.

“Even if we are scheduled to meet with an older adult to only review Medicare paperwork, our eyes are looking around the room for possible hazards or empty medicine bottles that need to be refilled.”

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

VOL. 159 • NO. 8 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012 26 ELUL 5772 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 7:30 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 8:31 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 ISAAC 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 YEHOSHUA MIZRACHI MICHAEL SAWAN Assistant Editors ALEXIA KADISH Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR RABBI A. JAMES RUDIN ZELL SCHULMAN RABBI AVI SHAFRAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager ERIN WYENANDT Office Manager e Oldest Eng Th

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Living program and has chaperoned many teen trips to Israel.

Additionally, Miller has been a lead staff member of the steering committee of Cincinnati’s partnership with Netanya, Israel, through Partnership2Gether (P2G), formerly known as Partnership2000 (P2K). In 2008, she worked with the community shaliach and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) to plan a year-long celebration of Israel’s 60 birthday, which culminated in a multi-cultural festival and a performance by Idan Raichel on Fountain Square.

She also helped staff the Jewish

know she will bring all her talent to these new responsibilities and I am looking forward to the great work she will continue to achieve with the rest of our Jewish Federation team.”

As part of her new role, Miller will lead both Cincinnati 2020—the community’s long-term strategic plan—and the Jewish Federation’s Board development. In preparation, she has been participating in Cincinnati 2020 steering committee and team meetings. She will continue to oversee the planning & allocations process (with the help of a new position, Planning Associate) and the Israel Center.

Jewish Federation of Cincinnati Planning & Allocations Chair Marcie Bachrach said, “Mazal tov to Barb in her new role! She is extremely knowledgeable about our community and has insight into our agencies.” Bachrach continued, “Aside from her drive and wealth of experience, it’s her passion for our community that is most impressive.

Barb cares deeply about the people and agencies in our community. She is the perfect professional to lead Cincinnati 2020, guiding the community to reach our goals for the future and enabling us to become a desirable destination city.”

Est. 1854

Barbara Miller

Federation’s Phillips Leadership program, under the leadership of Rabbi Sam Joseph.

Most recently, Miller transformed the Jewish Federation’s Planning & Allocations process, engaging 83 volunteers on three local councils to ensure that the community’s dollars are invested transparently and efficiently. Together, they have worked closely with the Federation’s partner agencies (Cincinnati Hebrew Day School, Cincinnati Hillel, Jewish Family Service, Jewish Vocational Service, the Mayerson JCC and Rockwern Academy), offering expertise, experience and creative solutions to foster stability and growth.

“Barb Miller’s commitment to, and compassion for, the Jewish community is amazing,” said Jewish Federation of Cincinnati Vice President Suzette Fisher. “While working with Barb as Chair of Planning & Allocations, I knew I could depend on her 100% to get any job done. She is one of the most hard working and productive people I know. And, in addition to all of that, Barb thinks ‘out of the box’ constantly. She often comes up with a creative solution to the many daily, as well as long-term, challenges we face. I

• ca

The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati is pleased to announce the promotion of Barbara Miller to Director of Community Building.

She will take over the position when current director Sharon Stern retires in October. Miller currently holds the position of Director of Planning & Allocations.

“Anyone who has worked with Barb knows of her uncommon passion and professionalism,” said Jewish Federation of Cincinnati CEO Shep Englander. “The Federation is fortunate to have her take on this new role.”

Throughout most of her 13 years with the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, Miller has had a strong focus on connecting Cincinnati to Israel. In 2000, along with other professionals, lay leaders, teens, parents, rabbis and educators, she helped establish and develop requirements for The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati’s Israel Travel Grant Program. Working closely with various community shlichim (emissaries) from Israel, Miller has led several community missions to Israel, including one for women in 2005 and a 2008 Poland-Israel mission. She also helped shape the March of the

r in Am ape er sp i

Jewish Federation of Cincinnati announces new Director of Community Building

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LOCAL • 5

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

NHS High Holiday observance features new prayerbook, creative service Northern Hills Synagogue Congregation B’nai Avraham will welcome 5773 with the new Conservative movement High Holiday mahzor and a special Creative Family Service. Planning for the adoption of the new prayerbook, Mahzor Lev Shalem, began last fall. Since then, Rabbi Gershom Barnard, the congregation’s Ritual Committee, and many interested congregants have been studying the prayerbook and determining how to best utilize it during this year’s services.

Mahzor Lev Shalem, published by the Rabbinical Assembly in 2010, has been widely applauded for bringing Conservative liturgy up to date, including references to the matriarchs alongside the patriarchs

as an integral feature of the text, and expressing a contemporary Conservative Jewish religious sensibility. In addition to the traditional text, the prayerbook presents both a historical overview and insight into the meaning of prayers, a new English translation closer to the meaning of the original text, and plentiful transliterations. In addition, the mahzor includes Hasidic stories, insights from luminaries such as Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Buber, and readings from contemporary scholars focusing on spiritual issues and Jewish values. The congregation solicited donations to pay for a complete set of the mahzorim, and the effort was quickly oversubscribed.

Rabbi Gershom Barnard noted,

“The name of the mahzor means ‘whole hearted,’ and it is our hope that the Mahzor Lev Shalem will help worshippers experience the Holidays in a whole hearted way.”

Another highlight will be the Creative Family Service on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, Sept.

17, at 10:30 a.m., under the leadership of Maksim Shilkrot, the congregation’s new director of Education and Programming. The service will focus on the laws associated with Rosh Hashanah and why we blow the shofar.

Shilkrot will also also lead a Junior Congregation service for youth on Tuesday, Sept. 18 at 10:30 a.m.

As always, High Holiday services at Northern Hills will be lay

The tradition of tolerance and cooperation permeates B’nai Tzedek and Beit Chaverim High Holiday services “But if both are the words of the living God, why did the School of Hillel merit that the halachah followed its view? Because they were soft-spoken and humble, and taught both their view and the view of the School of Shammai — and even mentioned the opinion of the School of Shammai first.” — Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Eruvin 13b The congregational building in Kenwood will again be the site of the remarkable High Holiday services. Within the same building, both the Conservative B’nai Tzedek congregation and the Reform Beit Chaverim congregation will be holding their separate yet parallel Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. Participants may move between services if they so choose.

The continued, creative cooperation between the congregations will

allow families in which one member prefers a conservative and another a reform approach, to worship in the same building.

Such options are not available elsewhere in the Cincinnati area and they are also uncommon elsewhere in the country outside of the campus Hillels.

B’nai Tzedek services, as in the past, will be conducted by members of the congregation expressing the strong egalitarian and participatory ethos of the congregation.

Congregants, women and men, will lead prayers, chant and read Torah, deliver sermons and share additional readings.

The first day Musaf service has been designed especially to contain participatory and creative elements.

The B’nai Tzedek choir encourages everyone to sing along, help-

Chabad invites Jewish community to High Holiday services CJC welcomes all at open-door synagogue BLUE ASH — As in years past, Chabad Jewish Center urges all Jews to participate in High Holiday services. “If you are not affiliated with any synagogue, and/or are not planning to join any for services, we invite you to join us on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and celebrate your New Year with us. No Jew should be left behind!” said Chabad Jewish Center director

Rabbi Yisroel Mangel.

Rabbi Mangel describes Chabad’s services as “refreshing and easy to follow.” Per the distinct Chabad style that has emerged across the nation over the past 20 years, many of traditional prayers are recited or sung by the congregation in unison out of English-Hebrew prayer books, along with commentary and insights provided by the rabbi that allow active crowd participation.

CJC on page 19

ing the service to be more meaningful to all.

Both congregations welcome new members of the Cincinnati area Jewish community and visitors to worship together with the members.

For additional information about the services contact either Synagouge.

No tickets are required, but we encourage potential visitors to contact the synagogue office.

led and participatory, featuring the talents of its congregants. In addition, the Northern Hills choir, under the direction of Claire Lee, will add their voices to the power and beauty of the services. No tickets are required.

For more information about the services, including service times, please contact the Synagogue office.

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Discover the benefits of yoga during National Yoga Month In September, join the millions of people across the world practicing yoga as the U.S. celebrates National Yoga Month. Since 2008, Yoga Month has expanded into a nationally recognized awareness campaign and observance, inspiring health and harmony in life through yoga. Inspired to help the community balance mind and body, the J is offering a free daypass to non-members to try out one of their yoga group exercise class-

es and enjoy the facilities during the month of September. Simply stop by the JCC membership office before class to receive a pass.

The numerous benefits of yoga include stress management, increased flexibility, relaxation, stronger muscles and connective tissue, among many others. These immense health benefits of yoga have been proven countless times, and the Mayerson JCC challenges people to experience yoga for

themselves and share its positive physical and mental effects.

More than 10 types of yoga classes are included free in J memberships. Three very popular yoga classes at the J are Yin Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga and Ashtanga Yoga.

Yin Yoga is a meditative yoga class that targets the connective tissues of the hips, pelvis and lower spine.

Ashtanga Yoga alternatively, is a more physically demanding style of yoga that develops endurance,

strength and flexibility for the body, as well as focus for the mind. Also popular is Vinyasa Yoga which is a class that includes a series of breathconnected postures that encourage integration of body and mind.

In addition to the JCC’s daily group exercise classes, they are celebrating National Yoga Month by offering a super-sized yoga class and mixer for young professionals ages 21- 35 on Wednesday, Sept. 19. This free class and mixer will be held in

the Amberley Room at the J and will be followed by drinks, snacks and good conversation in the J’s beautiful courtyard. The event is open to all young professionals and nonmembers will be given a free day pass to enjoy the event and facilities.

Simply drop by the JCC membership office to receive a pass.

For more information about Yoga month at the JCC or SuperSized Young Professionals Yoga, contact Josh Rothstein.

Camp Livingston strengthens kids’ Jewish identity “Last summer when Gaby left for camp, she wasn't sure if she wanted to have a Bat Mitzvah. She took her study materials and Torah portion in case she wanted to study there (hah!). Imagine my surprise when I looked at the pictures online and saw her with her books in front of her studying. She sent me a letter to tell me she was having a Bat Mitzvah, and this past December our family celebrated this life event,� said Andrea Melendez. “This past summer, Gaby told me she was looking forward to her last summer at Livingston. She was not interested in AU (Camp Livingston’s Adventures Unlimited program); but she got off of the bus

and told me to sign her up for AU.�

The Melendez’s story is not unique. A recent study, commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Camp (FJC), analyzed areas of adult behavior and attitudes, including synagogue membership, observance of holidays, donating to Jewish charities, and connection to Israel.

Findings about Jewish overnight camper alumni include that they are: 45 percent more likely to attend synagogue at least once a month; 30 percent more likely to donate to a Jewish federation; 55 percent more likely to feel very emotionally attached to Israel; 25 percent more likely to

donate to a Jewish charity (as compared to adults who did not attend camp); Camp also helps create Jewish community leaders including rabbis, cantors, teachers, and more who cite camp as an influence in their career path.

While it may sound like a clichÊ, it really holds true — Jewish camping will leave your child with memories and friendships to last a lifetime. Camp Livingston will provide your child with a camp experience like no other. Do your child a favor, and give him or her the opportunity to have a home away from home.

If you’ve ever thought about giving your child the opportunity to

attend overnight camp, now is the time. You’re probably thinking that with summer just ending and school starting, how can one even begin to think about next summer, but Jewish overnight camping is hugely popular, and the camps fill up quickly. Parents send their children to summer camps for many reasons.

Some want their kids to gain confidence and become self-sufficient in new situations. Others might want their children to build skills such as swimming or horseback riding. And some, like the Melendez family, may want to strengthen their child’s Jewish identity.

You will need to decide which type of camp is best for your child.

Camp Livingston, Cincinnati’s Jewish community residential camp, will be celebrating its 93rd year of strengthening Jewish children’s identity and character during the upcoming summer of 2013. As a regional JCC camp, Camp Livingston uniquely brings together a diverse Jewish community of children from across the Midwest and from all different segments of Judaism, as well as those unaffiliated with any movement. Livingston breaks down barriers and welcomes differences as well as similarities to help us come together as one people.

Alisa Handmaker sent two of her CAMP on page 22

ts All even are free y or deepl d subsidize 4IEGI SJ QMRH ORS[MRK XLEX ]SYV WSR SV HEYKLXIV MW FYMPHMRK RI[ JVMIRHWLMTW ERH KIXXMRK GSRRIGXIH XS .I[MWL PMJI ERH XLI .I[MWL GSQQYRMX] If you have a lead on any suspects between the ages of 21-35 who fit this description, let us know and we’ll start sending them information and invitations to some of the hottest parties and events in Cincinnati where they can meet other Jewish people and get connected to Jewish life on their own terms!

To RSVP or for more info SV MRJS$N]TEGGIWW SVK ˆ [[[ N]TEGGIWW SVK

Brunch on the Barge - Sunday, October 14th - Free!

Check out these upcoming events

Cruise down the O-HI-O and enjoy a full brunch buffet, Bloody Mary's, mimosas and other breakfast beverages, plus music, Cornhole, a caricature artist and more.

Cincy-style Shabbat - Friday, November 9th - Free!

Enjoy dinner at the historic Plum Street Temple featuring cuisine from some of Cincinnati’s most popular restaurants.

Beforehand, there will be a brief and engaging Shabbat service (optional) just for Access led by Rabbi Lewis Kamrass.

Events are open to Jewish YPs 21-35. Non-Jewish significant others welcome. Access is an initiative of The Mayerson Foundation.

NATIONAL • 7

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Oren denies Democratic chair’s comment that he called Republicans ‘dangerous for Israel’

By JNS Staffer JointMedia News Service Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), speaking at a training session for Jewish Democrats at the Democratic National Convention on Sept. 3, said Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren has called Republican policies “dangerous for Israel,” the Washington Examiner reported.

Oren denied the Democratic National Committee chair’s account in a statement Tuesday.

“I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel,” he said. “Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle.”

Richard Baehr, chief political correspondent for American Thinker, told JNS that Oren “doesn’t like to tick off anybody” from either party when it comes to the U.S.-Israel relationship.

The Examiner quoted Wasserman Schultz as saying the following at the Monday session: “We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.”

Wasserman Schultz told Fox News Sept. 4 that she “didn’t say [Oren] said that” about Republicans and Israel.

“And unfortunately, that comment was reported by a conservative newspaper,” she said. “Not surprising that they would deliberately misquote me.”

However, the Examiner later posted an audio recording of her comments on their website.

According to Hadassah magazine, Wasserman Schultz has made similar comments regarding Oren before.

“What the Republicans are doing is dangerous. They are using Israel as a political football…

Israel’s ambassador [to the United States], Michael Oren, has said this,” according to an interview with Wasserman Schultz that the magazine published in August.

Baehr told JNS that Democrats “thought they hit a home run” by choosing Wasserman Schultz as their committee chair because she would bolster support for Obama among three types of voters— women, Jews, and voters in the swing state of Florida. However, the choice has backfired because Wasserman Schultz “doesn’t look good when she’s lying,” Baehr said.

Secretary of State Clinton says U.S. not setting deadlines for Iran

By Israel Hayom JointMedia News Service The U.S. is “not setting deadlines” for Iran and still considers negotiations to be “by far the best approach” to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Bloomberg in an interview published Monday.

Speaking to Bloomberg Radio on Sunday after the conclusion of meetings at an Asia-Pacific forum in Vladivostok, Russia, Clinton said that economic sanctions are affecting Iran and the U.S. is “watching very carefully about what [the Iranians] do, because it’s always been more about their actions than their words.”

Her comments were published just hours after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney slammed President Barack Obama’s policy on Iran, dubbing it his “greatest failure.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently said that the international community was not doing enough to slow Iran’s nuclear progress. “This is a brutal regime that is racing ahead

with its nuclear program because it doesn’t see a clear red line from the international community and it doesn’t see the necessary resolve and determination from the international community,” Netanyahu said.

Israel believes that Iran’s nuclear program could be stopped if Obama would clearly demand that Iran immediately halt its uranium enrichment program and set a date for inspection of its nuclear facilities. If Iran does not meet these demands, the U.S. should then take military action, according to Israel.

Netanyahu thinks that making such a strong statement would force Iran to choose between nuclear aspirations and the current regime’s survival.

Asked if the Obama administration would set sharper “red lines” for Iran or explicitly state the consequences for failing to reach a solution in nuclear negotiations with the Iranians, Clinton told Bloomberg, “We’re not setting deadlines.”

While the U.S. and Israel are both determined that Iran not acquire a nuclear weapon, Clinton

said there is a difference in perspective over the time frame for talks.

“They’re [the Israelis] more anxious about a quick response because they feel that they’re right in the bull’s-eye, so to speak,” Clinton told Bloomberg. “But we’re convinced that we have more time to focus on these sanctions, to do everything we can to bring Iran to a good-faith negotiation.”

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney slammed Obama’s policy on Iran in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

“The president has not drawn us further away from a nuclear Iran,” he said, “In fact, Iran is closer to having a weapon, closer to having nuclear capability than when he took office. This is the greatest failure, in my opinion, of his foreign policy.”

He said that the current administration’s policy has not stopped Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from progressing toward nuclear armament and that a military response to Iran should always remain an option.

8 • NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL

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Can Asher Lopatin secure Yeshivat Chovevei Torah’s place in the Orthodox world?

By Uriel Heilman Jewish Telegraph Agency NEW YORK – When Rabbi Asher Lopatin takes over the helm of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah next summer, he may try to pull off something of a football move at the Modern Orthodox rabbinical school: Look left while going right.

In the 12 years since Rabbi Avi Weiss founded the school as a more liberal, pulpit-focused alternative to Yeshiva University’s scholarship-focused ordination program, Chovevei has produced more than 80 rabbis serving in a variety of capacities across North America. Their influence, Weiss argues, goes far beyond the Orthodox community: Chovevei’s rabbis are trained to reach out to non-Orthodox Jews while remaining firmly rooted in Orthodox practice. Weiss calls it “open Orthodoxy.”

“We think we have found a formula to train rabbis who are unapologetically Orthodox but also unapologetically open and nonjudgmental and inclusive on every level,” Weiss told JTA. But within the Orthodox world, Chovevei – which is also known by the acronym YCT – is still struggling for widespread acceptance.

The school is not accredited by the main Modern Orthodox rabbinical association, the Rabbinical Council of America. Not a single one of its 81 ordained rabbis

Courtesy Yeshivat Chovevei Torah

Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, located at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in New York, has ordained 81 rabbis since its establishment by Rabbi Avi Weiss in 2000.

serves in a synagogue affiliated with Young Israel, one of the nation’s largest Orthodox synagogue franchises, which has thwarted synagogue affiliates from hiring Chovevei rabbis. Weiss claims a warm relationship with the Orthodox Union, but an OU official was careful to note in an interview with JTA that the organization has no formal relationship with Weiss’ school.

Lopatin, who for the past 18 years has been the pulpit rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel synagogue, says he wants to maintain the school’s outreachoriented approach, but one of his first priorities will be gaining broader acceptance within the Orthodox camp.

“I want to make sure Chovevei Torah is an integral part of the Orthodox world,” Lopatin told JTA. “I do think there’s a perception that Chovevei is left, for liberal Orthodoxy,” he said. “I want to start with getting the word out that we’re open to right and left.”

A large swath of the Orthodox community is either ambivalent about Weiss’ yeshiva or outright hostile to it. A 2007 article in Yated Ne’eman, a haredi Orthodox paper, that was reprinted on the Yeshiva World News website and headlined “Yeshivat Chovevei Torah: Is it Orthodox?” called the rabbinical school a “threat to halachic Judaism” – rhetoric usually reserved for the non-Orthodox world.

In some shuls, congregants are encouraged to keep phones on during services

By Debra Rubin Jewish Telegraph Agency Don’t turn off your phone – it’s not an announcement typically heard as religious services begin.

But congregants at a Miami Beach High Holidays service for young adults will be asked to use their cellphones to send text messages to the rabbi during parts of the Rosh Hashanah evening service this year.

Rabbi Amy Morrison of Reform’s Temple Beth Sholom will be leading the free service for The Tribe, a semi-autonomous pluralistic group, at a nearby Florida Jewish Museum. Morrison, iPad in hand, plans to stand before a 5-foot screen and ask congregants to respond at various points in the service – texting, for example, whom they would like to forgive, how they would like to be remembered and their own transgressions. She expects more

than 250 people to attend.

“They can interact with the rabbi and they’ll drive the content of the service – they’ll see each other’s comments and can react to them,” said Rebecca Needler Dinar, The Tribe’s director. “We don’t call it a service; we call it an experience.”

Dinar and Morrison also have prepared a special prayerbook for the service that includes quotes from an array of sources – from Rashi and the prophet Amos to novelist Louisa May Alcott, author Maya Angelou, rapper P. Diddy, the musical the “Lion King” and the movie “Kung Fu Panda.”

The unusual service is just one way that technology and social media are changing Jewish observances in certain communities.

While an increasing number of synagogues are offering real-time Internet streaming of services for those unable or unwilling to participate in person, some shuls have

begun to incorporate social media into the congregational experience.

At Congregation Or Ami in Calabasas, Calif., also a Reform temple, Rabbi Paul Kipnes has tentative plans to encourage congregants with smartphones to use Facebook to reflect on the shofar after it is blown for the second time during the service.

“Maimonides says, ‘Awake sleepers.’ Most of us hear the shofar and continue sleeping through it,” Kipnes said. “It’s a show, not an alarm clock. I’m saying OK, everybody, sit up, wake up, reflect.”

Given that so much of the High Holidays liturgy is in the collective – “We have sinned” – Kipnes says it is appropriate for congregants to share their thoughts collectively during the service.

“Prayer,” he said, “is not supposed to be a spectator sport.”

PHONES on page 22

Siyum HaShas inspires newcomers to daily Talmud study

By Neil Rubin Jewish Telegraph Agency BALTIMORE – Watching coverage of the Siyum HaShas celebration in New Jersey this summer, Rabbi Ethan Linden said he wasn’t impressed by the spectacle of 90,000 Jews packed into a football stadium glorifying Talmud study.

Rather, Linden said, he was impressed by the discipline: the daily learning of Talmud that untold thousands around the world undertook to complete the Daf Yomi, the page-a-day Talmud study cycle that takes 7 1/2 years to finish.

So when the Daf Yomi adherents started a new cycle the next day, Linden, a Conservative pulpit rabbi at the Shir Chadash congregation in New Orleans, decided to join in.

“Watching the coverage of it made me feel like more liberal-type Jews need to be doing this,” Linden told JTA. “I try to do some every day after I daven in the morning,” he said.

“Sometimes it works, but often I’ll

find it’s 11 o’clock at night and I’ll sit down and learn it. For me, much like with prayer, I really appreciate the daily discipline that at times is an extremely meaningful experience when things jump off the page and at other times when I’m just getting through it.”

Two of Linden’s congregants also have started the Daf Yomi, and Linden has launched an invitationonly Facebook page called Unorthodox Daf Yomi that now has more than 120 members.

The members are just some of the many Jews who say they were motivated by the publicity surrounding the Aug. 1 completion of the Shas – the 2,711 pages of the Talmud – to make daily Talmud study a part of their lives.

The Siyum – literally “completion” – helped Dyonna Ginsburg, the New York-based director of Jewish service learning for the Jewish Agency for Israel, decide it was time to address what she called NEWCOMERS on page 19

From under police protection, Europe’s Jewish gems try to shine

By Cnaan Liphshiz Jewish Telegraph Agency BRUSSELS – Under the gaze of a dozen police officers, a single file of Belgians forms outside the Great Synagogue of Europe.

Waiting to enter the shul on its annual “open day”—when the synagogue throws open its doors to the public—many on this Sunday seem puzzled by the police presence.

“Open” is a relative term for Jewish institutions in Western Europe. On a continent where fears of anti-Semitic terrorism run high—and where memories are still fresh of this summer’s bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Burgas, Bulgaria—opening doors is a complicated matter. Security is an omnipresent concern.

“Taking pictures, taking notes and filming are forbidden,” Raphael, a community guard, says at the entrance. “Bags will be searched. Visitors will hear a 45minute lecture and then leave.

Cellular phones must be switched off.”

The European Day of Jewish Culture was born 16 years ago in Strasbourg, France, as a way to build bridges between the Jewish community and non-Jewish Europeans. Today, Jewish institutions in 28 European countries

open to the public on the first Sunday of every September, each year highlighting a different theme.

Sahra al-Assad, a young Muslim woman wearing a tight turquoise hijab, is among those standing in line to enter Brussels’ main synagogue. She says she is curious to see a local synagogue.

She has seen a synagogue once before, in Spain, but never in her home country of Belgium.

“I came to better understand the religion of my brothers,” she says.

“There are many things that set us apart, but I’m convinced we are intimately linked.”

Asked for her thoughts about the security arrangements, she offers, “It reflects a genuine anxiety.”

The friend accompanying alAssad, a Catholic woman who identifies herself as Sandra, says she has been curious about Judaism ever since a visit to a synagogue in Egypt.

“It was hidden and we weren’t even allowed to take pictures,” she recalls. “I thought I could photograph here in Brussels.”

Pointing at herself, Sandra asks, “What are they afraid of? If they want people to get to know the Jewish community, just let us in.”

GEMS on page 22

INTERNATIONAL • 9

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Latin America’s Jewish communities grow, confront challenges

By Diego Melamed Jewish Telegraph Agency BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – When the Sao Paulo Hebraica Sports Club and Community Center in Brazil opened the Aleph School earlier this month, it welcomed 450 students and had 120 more on the waiting list for next year.

Hebraica, which is similar to an American Jewish community center, has reached 24,000 members and has a $30 million budget.

Meanwhile, Sao Paulo’s oldest synagogue, Temple Beth El, recently dedicated a new building, leaving the original one to become the Jewish Museum of Sao Paulo.

In Panama, the Jewish community has grown by 70 percent in the past 10 years. The 8,000-member community in that period has seen a rise from three to 10 b’nai mitzvah a week.

In Argentina, the number of children in Jewish preschool programs has soared by nearly 1,000 – from 3,952 in 2005 to 4,914 in 2012.

Nearly wherever one looks, Jewish life is growing in Latin America, which is now home to an estimated 500,000 Jews. The growth comes as the region continues to transform economically as part of a social evolution following the end of military dictatorships that ruled many countries into the 1980s.

From 2000 to 2010, poverty in the region dropped from 44 percent

International Briefs Unholy sermon: Ahmadinejad expected to speak at UN on Yom Kippur (JNS) – The holiest day of the Jewish calendar could see one of the Jewish state’s most vocal opponents thrust into international spotlight.

On the fast day of Yom Kippur, Sept. 26, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likely to address the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Israel National News reported.

Last month, Ahmadinejad continued his pattern of anti-Israel rants by telling ambassadors from Muslim countries in advance of Quds Day – an Iranian display of solidarity for Palestinians – that “those who love freedom and justice must strive for the annihilation of the Zionist regime to make the world more just and free.”

“For 400 years the revolting Zionist tribe has been controlling the world’s affairs and pulling strings behind the scenes in poli-

to 32 percent of the population, according to the Economic Committee for Latin American and the Caribbean, or CEPAL. In large part it is because of the increase in jobs that has come from rising prices for the region’s commodities and natural resources, such as copper, oil, soybeans, meat, fruits and other agricultural products.

And more growth is on the horizon. Latin America will contribute to global growth more than Europe in the next seven years, according to CEPAL, which released a study in August that said the 2013-2020 period “will be a low-growth cycle for industrialized economies while it will display dynamism in emerging economies.”

Despite the growth, challenges remain for many Jewish communities.

“We have strong signals of a new flourishing situation, but we also will still have a variety of problems, like the poor knowledge about Judaism in our members and some type of hidden antiSemitism in the general society,” said Alberto Milkewitz, director of the Isaraelite Federation of Sao Paulo.

But that hasn’t dimmed optimism among Jewish leaders.

Some 83 percent of approxiately 400 of the region’s Jewish leaders polled recently by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee believe that conditions in their countries are good enough to further develop Jewish life. Only 10 percent reported that living as a tics, the media, and the financial sphere,” Ahmadinejad said, according to the IRNA news agency.

French doctor: Islamists surging the ranks of Syrian rebels, seek Islamic state (JNS) – After returning from treating patients in Aleppo, Syria, Jacques Beres, co-founder of the medical charity group Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), said that at least half the people he treated were foreign fighters who are intent on waging holy war and establishing an Islamist state.

“It’s really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren’t interested in Bashar alAssad’s fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate,” the doctor said, according to Reuters.

Additionally, according to the doctor, some of the fighters included French citizens who said they were inspired by Mohammed Merah—the al Qaida-linked terrorist who carried out the attack on the Ozar HaTorah Jewish Day School in Toulouse in March, killing a rabbi and three Jewish children.

Courtesy of Diego Melamed

Participants celebrating during services at the World Union for Progressive Judaism Conference of Jewish Communities in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Aug. 2012.

Jew is risky. Brazilians self-reported the most positive feedback, Venezuelans the most negative.

The poll’s full results will be released at the Nov. 12 JDC meeting of Latin American and Caribbean Jewish community leaders, which will convene in Quito, Ecuador.

Venezuela is the notable exception to the wave of positivity among Latin American Jewish communities. Political insecurity, economic challenges and state-sponsored anti-Semitism in the country have prompted significant Jewish emigration in recent years, with most expats moving to the United States, Israel, Spain, Colombia or Panama.

Venezuela now has an estimated 9,000 Jews, down from about twice

that number a decade ago, according to the JDC. The race for president in Venezuela has seen the incumbent, Hugo Chavez – a close ally of Iran and acerbic critic of Israel – use state media to lob anti-Semitic broadsides against his rival, Henrique Capriles Radonski, a grandson of Holocaust survivors who identifies as Catholic. The election is scheduled for Oct. 7.

In Chile, home to 15,000 Jews among a Palestinian Diaspora as large as 400,000, Rabbi Chaim Koritznisky is much more positive.

“Four years ago I was invited to Santiago by five families to build a new synagogue community called Ruach Ami,” said Koritznisky, who heads a Reform congregation. “The

founders felt that there was a void in the Jewish community for those searching for a Judaism that was egalitarian, inclusive, spiritual. We also offer a welcoming home for interfaith couples and families, gays and lesbians.”

A hundred families now belong to the temple and more than 500 people are expected to arrive for the coming High Holidays services.

Also in Santiago, the Dr. Chaim Weizmann Hebrew Institute has seen sustained growth. In 2005 there were 265 children aged 2 to 5 in the preschool. Today the number is at 373, according to Sergio Herskovitz, the school principal.

Similar stories in the region abound. In Panama City, a decade ago there were barely any children at weekly activities at Kol Shearith Israel synagogue. Now nearly 60 young people participate in weekly events and the total budget of the community has tripled.

The community has been strengthened in part by Jewish immigrants from Venezuela and even Argentina and Uruguay, says Gustavo Kraselnik, the rabbi of Kol Shearith Israel.

“We are very optimistic about our future,” he said.

Argentina, with 285,000 Jews, is home to the region’s largest Jewish community. The growth in preschool children there has been matched by a rise in Jewish high school and college students. In Buenos Aires alone the number has risen from 15,593 to 19,162 in the past seven years.

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Israeli desert aquaculture: A new school of fish

By Jeffrey Barken JointMedia News Service At a time when ocean fish populations are threatened worldwide, Israeli fish farmers are developing innovative new technologies and breeding methods that are revolutionizing their industry.

Faced with managing scarce water resources in a desert ecosystem, the Israeli government has supported the solutions of kibbutzim – and more recently, those of “Dagim,” the Fish Breeders Association – to promote healthy, environmentally sound, and profitable fish cultivation. Today, a close look at the country’s thriving fisheries and available ponds reveals a rich history and a rapidly evolving, yet pragmatic business. The result has been new patents, improved fish quality, increased trade, and, perhaps most importantly, a comprehensive mapping of Israel’s water use and untapped reservoirs.

Aqua-culturist Yankele Peretz tells JNS that the country’s demand for specific freshwater fish species, mainly carp, began “in the wake of the first aliyahs to Israel.” In the late 1930s, Eastern European Jews brought specimens of their favorite fish to Israel and began experimenting with fishponds. Ponds built in 1939 at Kibbutz Nir David, Ma’ayan

Courtesy of Remi Jouan

Aquaculture at Kibbutz Ketura.

Affek, and Kibbutz Bet HaArava, where the Jordan River flows into the Dead Sea, yielded early successes. The settlers quickly learned how to enable and control fish reproduction.

After Israel achieved independence in 1948, more kibbutzim began to experiment with fish farming.

“Hydro-geological surveys, initiated soon after independence, revealed that the Negev and its eastern part, the Arava valley, possess tremendous amounts of saline underground and geothermal waters,” notes Shmuel Rothbard in

his recent study, titled “Tilapia Culture in the Negev.”

Eager to expand settlement in southern Israel – an area previously deemed uninhabitable by the pre-state Turkish and the British Mandate governments – Israelis worked vigorously to establish methods to extract brackish water from deep underground, and they began implementing state-of-theart water recycling systems. Their goal was to combine aquaculture and agriculture, and to maximize efficient water use, thereby reclaiming land from the desert.

Today, thanks to past efforts,

“more than 10 super-intensive fish farms have been constructed in various parts of the Negev,” Rothbard writes.

“Geothermal water is passing through fish culture raceways, and is being used for irrigation of crops,” he writes.

Ponds are now spread throughout Israel and new fish species are being introduced. Israel farms carp, tilapia, grass carp, flathead mullet, striped bass, silver carp and rainbow trout, as well as many species of ornamental fish. In some places, however, fish farming has proven unsustainable.

“Many fisheries were abandoned in the Galilee, when water prices increased,” Fish Breeders Association Secretary Yossi Yaish tells JNS, recounting an early water management mistake. “The Galilee contained good potable drinking water, and it didn’t make sense to use this resource for fish farming.”

The key to success for Israel’s fish farming industry lies in knowing where and when water resources are most abundant and determining ways to optimize the use of every drop. Israel’s most important technological advance in this field has been, therefore, the realization that it could conduct fish breeding in the nation’s strategic water reserves.

AQUACULTURE on page 22

Push for recognition of Jewish refugees from Arab lands seeks to counterbalance Palestinian claims

By Ben Sales Jewish Telegraph Agency TEL AVIV – Naim Reuven was only 8 when he left Baghdad more than 50 years ago, but he still remembers going with his father to catch fish in the Tigris River.

His dad worked in a laundromat, a middle-class father of six and one of Iraq’s more than 100,000 Jews. Baghdad’s Jewish community suffered a pogrom in 1941, but Reuven, born a year later, has only fond memories of his childhood there—until Israel declared independence in 1948.

“When Israel was established it began, there was hate,” said Reuven, now 70. “We had a neighbor we got along with, and then there was hate.”

He still remembers the fear when grenades were thrown into his family’s synagogue.

In 1951, after three years of increasing animosity and persecution, the Reuvens moved to Israel, where the government placed them in an immigrant absorption camp and gave Reuven’s father agricultural work. Reuven now lives in Tel Aviv’s low-income Hatikvah neighborhood, retired after a career in construction.

Courtesy of Meir Kahaolon

Meir Kahaolon, second from left, president of the World Organization of Libyan Jews, with members Doron Shimon, left, Michael Goren and Zuri Doron Dadosh in the group’s offices, May 2012.

More than 800,000 Jews lived in the Arab world at the time of Israel’s founding. Virtually all of them left, fled or were forced out of their homes after Israel’s birth, with more than three-quarters moving to Israel. The once-thriving communities they had established in places such as Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and

Tunisia shrunk and, in some cases, virtually disappeared. In many cases the emigrants were forced to leave behind much of their property.

As part of an effort to have those Jews recognized as refugees and demand compensation for their lost property, the World Jewish Congress will be hosting a confer-

ence in Jerusalem next week focused on “raising the flag of rights of Jewish refugees from Arab countries,” according to WJC Secretary General Dan Diker.

Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its Ministry for Senior Citizens are joining the WJC as hosts.

Then, on Sept. 21, the WJC, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Israeli Foreign Ministry will host a similar conference at United Nations headquarters.

“It’s important that the world accept and recognize that most of them were forcibly exiled and subjected to the worst kind of antiSemitic assault,” which included Jews being “attacked, assaulted, killed, robbed,” Diker told JTA. “This issue has been largely ignored by Jewish leaders over the past number of years. They were resettled, so it wasn’t perceived as an acute bleeding.”

In addition to the WJC efforts, the Israeli Knesset is slated to vote soon on a resolution to establish a day commemorating the history of Jews from Arab lands and to found a museum focused on that history.

The U.S.-based Justice for Jews from Arab Countries also advocates for the refugees’ rights.

Israel Briefs Notes removed from Western Wall JERUSALEM (JTA) – The Western Wall was emptied of layers of notes from its cracks and crevices for the New Year.

The notes were removed Monday morning under the supervision of the rabbi of the Western Wall, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich, who ensured they will remain confidential. They will be buried.

At the time of the removal, the rabbi said a prayer asking God to fulfill the requests contained in the notes.

The notes are removed from the wall twice a year, before Rosh Hashanah and Passover.

Red Hot Chili Peppers arrives for Israel concert JERUSALEM (JTA) – The Red Hot Chili Peppers arrived in Israel ahead of the band’s first concert in the country.

The band traveled directly to the Western Wall after landing on a private jet from Istanbul, according to reports.

A crowd of tens of thousands is expected for Monday night’s show at Yarkon Park in Tel Aviv.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers canceled a scheduled performance in 2001 at the last minute due to the second Palestinian intifada.

Israel is the last stop on its European tour; the band will begin its U.S. tour in two weeks.

A Lebanese rock band canceled as the opening act last week in Beirut in protest of the concert in Israel, according to the Times of Israel. Several Facebook pages also have called for the Red Hot Chili Peppers to boycott Israel.

Water reservoir from First Temple period discovered near Western Wall JERUSALEM (JTA) – A public water reservoir dating to the First Temple period was unearthed next to the Western Wall.

The discovery unveiled late last week shows that “It is now absolutely clear that Jerusalem’s water consumption during the First Temple period was not solely based on the output of the Gihon Spring, but that it also relied on public reservoirs,” said Eli Shukron, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The reservoir was discovered in the archaeological excavations that are being conducted in the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden at the foot of Robinson’s Arch.

The excavations at the site are being carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority, underwritten by the Ir David Foundation, and in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority.

SOCIAL LIFE • 11

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

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Tony’s—the food magicians of Cincinnati

By Michael Sawan Assistant Editor Imagine you’re at some fast food chain.

The pimply teenager behind the counter couldn’t be more bored.

The guy dunking the fries is at least 30 and dirty. He even has grease stains on the back of his clothes somehow. The manager of the place is wearing a tie, that’s nice.

But he’s bent over a table in the corner, his face down in his folded arms. He’s snoring loudly.

Leave this place quickly!

Pretend it’s opposite day, that there is a restaurant out there that is this chain’s antithesis. A place where the owner greets you personally, remembers your name. Where the chef is both scientist and artist, carefully weighing and judging his own work, planning something even better. Where the staff is like a social club, treating each other and you, their guest, with respect and sincere friendliness.

Wouldn’t you know, you just imagined Tony’s.

Even more impressively, this all seems trivial next to the restaurant’s absolutely excellent food. Never before have I felt like I was “out of my league” while eating, but there I was, eating food that I simply couldn’t describe. I could tell what was in it, I could define tastes, but when it came time to figure out what was so impressive about it all, why I was so blown away, I simply sat at my table with what must have been a stupid looking face.

First was a Greek Salad. It was traditionally done, romaine lettuce, red onion, black olives, green olives, tomatoes and a vinaigrette for dressing. You could get a salad like this most anywhere, probably even the aforementioned fast food chain. But THIS salad, a lá Tony’s, was head and shoulders above the rest of them. I took a deep smell of the dish before I started eating and‚ I say this with as straight a face as possible, as un-poetic as I can: it literally smelled like the first spring breeze after winter, that first sign that something new is happening. I ate it greedily, trying to put my finger on what specifically was giving it this quality, but the salad ran out too quickly. As far as I can tell, it was just that fresh.

With a start like this, you can see why I had trouble understanding the food in this restaurant. It was like mother nature herself kept staring me down from my plate.

Next I tried the Fish Tacos. This thing hit its stride right in the middle, right as I got a nice full bite of everything in it: spiced sea bass, various vegetables, avocado, and a strip of crispy tortilla. The bit of lime juice I squeezed on sealed the deal, uniting the dish behind a pointed thrust of citrus zest.

This dish had one hitch, though: as I started the taco it was a touch

(Clockwise) One of the tables at Tony’s; The incredibly fresh Greek Salad; The buttery, zesty Chilean Sea Bass; 14 oz of New York Strip Steak, dubbed the Dallas Clark in honor of one of the restaurant's financial founders; The sushi-grade Yellow Fin Tuna.

dry. The avocado, the dish’s MVP, was not yet fully in play since there was only one wedge of it right in the taco’s center. It showed me just how important that element of the dish was, how it functioned as the taco’s unifying force. It’s an easy solution then, right? More avocado and it’s a five star dish.

I then tried the Chilean Sea Bass, an intimidating dish with a

formidable smell. I will tell you now, I was terrified of it. I’ve only just gotten into salmon, so such a strong fish had me on guard.

My fears were immediately put to rest with the first bite. The dish was prepared so that every trace of “fishiness” was replaced with succulent, buttery evenness. There wasn’t a hitch in the dish. The sweet corn puree, a lovely decora-

tion around the fish, gave the sea bass another face, another angle from which to appreciate it. The mixed greens on top of the fish did the same thing, giving me yet another glance from mother nature.

For any individual’s taste, even the fish adverse, this is an excellent dish.

I then sampled the Yellow Fin Tuna, a sushi grade slice of Pacific

tuna that was seared with sesame seeds and served with a side of wasabi paste and sweet cabbage salad. The quality of the ingredients was undeniable, the mixing of flavors absolutely unique, and any tuna connoisseur would leave the table happy. The way it was cooked was new to me, too, the dish really showed its sushi pedigree: the cut was very thick, meaning a fully cooked outside and a super-rare inside. For those who know, this is an absolutely incredible find.

Next was The Dallas Clark New York Strip Steak. With a name like that, you know it meant business.

The thing was 14 oz. of cow, just a log of meat and seasoning. Cooked medium rare, the steak continued bleeding as I ate it. My steak knife, a very impressive piece of full tang cutlery, cut as though I were removing the meat from a fresh kill.

Needless to say, I loved this dish.

After that was this ridiculously tasty Chocolate Pot de Creme, a chocolate-water emulsion that was between the consistency of mousse and cheesecake. Forget M&Ms, this REALLY melts in your mouth, becoming a smooth, dark, delicious wash of dark chocolate.

Order it with espresso to have a real treat, or else let it finish out your glass of wine.

Not only did the food cover a huge swath of ground, not only was it delicious, but there was a high minded creativity that felt downright scientific at times. I spoke to the restaurant’s chef, Harvey Germain, and before long I realized that he would be three steps ahead of any critique I could give of his food. For instance, he explained to me that the Greek Salad had changed recently.

The balance of salt and garlic previously in the salad had meant that any meat dish that might follow would taste much too salty. So he changed it, and to wonderful effect. Then the steak itself, it had to be cooked just right. Rare wasn’t the sweet spot, nor was medium. Even medium rare was off, so Chef Germain tweaked until he found the proper setting:“medium rare plus.” Chef Germain has that sense of rightness that you find in artists, and the scientific cataloging of trial and error to mean an effective, predictable achievement of it.

Tony’s Steak and Seafood is easily on par with the best that Cincinnati has to offer. It’s been said that when people don’t understand something, they write it off as magic. I therefore wholeheartedly recommend the spell casting food from the magicians at Tony’s – they’ll treat you right. Their hours are Monday, 5 – 9 p.m.; Tuesday through Thursday, 5 – 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 – 11 p.m.

Tony’s Steaks and Seafood 12110 Montgomery Road Cincinnati, Ohio 45140 513-667-1993

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DINING OUT • 15

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16 • OPINION

L’Shana Tova 5773

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

Dear Editor, I am deeply disturbed, troubled and very much embarrassed by the frequency and abundance of some of the letters that appear in this column. They are mean, hateful, biased and mostly inaccurate! Judaism does not teach nor condone this type of behavior and expression.

One of the greatest gifts I have is being able to write this column every year and asking for forgiveness. I realize this is a great gift and once again I ask for you all to forgive me for anything I have done to upset you. If I forgot to do something or accomplish something, I ask you to forgive me for that as well. I know I am human because I make so many mistakes, and I make them constantly. Getting upset and overreacting when I shouldn’t. Scolding someone over a mistake I have made myself in the past. Forgetting to do something I know I should have done.

And I believe the worst mistakes of all are those made out of laziness.

The month of Elul is a month of reflection and for some it can be painful, sometimes too painful. I know for me that I struggle and I ask my friends and family and they also struggle. I will always feel during Elul that I need to do this, fix that, apologize for something I have said or done, make changes as I am written down for a new year.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank and give praise to my entire staff. When it gets right down to it they have to tolerate me on a daily basis. They all work very hard to bring you a great paper, website and E-sralite. I know that you all enjoy reading the paper by the record number of people who keep renewing their subscription every year. I also know you enjoy reading and using our website, and E-sralite, because of the increasing numbers of viewers to both. The paper, website and E-sralite are brought to you by some very dedicated and highly talented individuals. Once again, thank you to the entire staff, and may you all be blessed with a year of happiness, good health and joy.

If I have angered you in any way, shape or form, please forgive me. I will try to improve this upcoming year. If you would like me to personally tell you this I would be more than happy to say it to you in person. Please let me know so that we can both begin the New Year with a clean slate. May you and your family be blessed with a year that is both delightful and prosperous, and may we all be healthy and joyful.

Sincerely, Netanel ( Ted ) Deutsch Publisher

Thank you, Nancy Schwartz Amberley Village

if the U.S. will not, and it is apparent the U.S will not. The general serves at the discretion of the president, so we must assume he was ordered to convey that message to Israel by Obama. This does not sound like a president who has Israel’s back. Further, regardless of what he says, short of being stupid, he must know that Iran will try to destroy our interests in that area anyway.

Remember, in Iran, we are the great Satan, Israel is only the little Satan.

Dear Editor, Since I wrote the letter that appeared September 6, several things have occurred that bear repeating, since some of us may have missed it in the press.

The Democratic platform committee removed the parts that mentioned our creator and Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The committee was chosen by Obama’s people so we may assume it was at his direction.

After this became public knowledge there was a great furor.

After realizing this was a tactical error, they tried to amend the platform. I am sure you can still find this vote online, perhaps YouTube. Three voice votes were taken, a 2/3 majority was needed to pass this amendment. On each and every one of the votes the no’s were louder than the ayes.

The chairman, realizing this was bad PR for the Democrats declared the motion passed anyway, a lot of democratic process here. This decision was roundly booed. This part of the plank may have been restored to be more like that of 2008, but we should be aware that the majority of Democrats present at the vote opposed it. ABC News never reported on this at all, and the other Main Stream Media skirted the incident never really giving any details. Those Jews who want to trust their lives to this ilk should be aware of this.

Last week General Martin Dempsey, U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Israel, the world, and specifically Iran, that The United States would not support Israel if it attacked Iran’s nuclear sites. In pre World War II Europe Hitler told everyone that he would exterminate the Jews.

No one believed him, and he killed 6 million of us. Iran keeps threatening to kill us; it behooves us to take them seriously. In over ten years no progress through diplomacy has worked, and economic sanctions have proven ineffective. Israel is a very small country. Time is not on its side.

At some point it must take action

Respectfully, Jerome Liner Cincinnati, OH Dear Editor, Yeh! Finally a woman with Chuzpah to stand up to this republican hugging newsletter and its radical, insanely ignorant republican readership. I love the Israelite for its articles and news around the Jewish world, but the Cincinnati population has so truly upset and astounded me with its myriad of hateful, treasonness attitudes toward our President, Barack Obama. I am 65 years old and have been around for a few elections, voting in all of them, and I am stupified to understand where these people get these attitudes and hatefulness with Barack and his attention or lack of attention to Israel.

Bravo to Cherie Rosenstein of Dayton, Ohio, not a typical Cincinnatian, to have the sense of democracy and decency to state her case for supporting our President. I could never have done or even known the statistics and history of what Barack Obama has done for the U.S. and Israel. I would be scared to death to know deep down what Romney and McCain and even Bush really thought about our relationship to Israel is or was really worth to them. Do you not think that the legacy of Nixon never trickled down to the Romneys and McCains of the world? Republicans care about one thing only: Money and their own riches.

Get real. Do you honestly think that Romney understands the middle class? Of which I am certainly one of; I am retired and on disability, and Romney wants to mess with my Medicare? He’s willing to take his own wife’s coverage and put a big CANCEL ON IT, just for his own gratification. God help us. Thank you Cherie.

Respectfully, Vicki Mengle Maineville, OH

Maligners

By Rabbi Avi Shafran Contributing Columnist An umbrella group of institutions engaged in Jewish-Christian relations and the Anti-Defamation League both issued statements recently that were harshly critical of Rabbi Hershel Schachter, the respected posek (halachic authority), Rosh Yeshiva, and Rosh Kollel at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in New York. In a dvar Torah posted to the web, Rabbi Schachter had decried missionary activity in Eretz Yisrael and the efforts of some Orthodox-ordained rabbis to affirm Catholic claims to “a covenantal connection” to Eretz Yisrael.

In the process, he noted how the “official Catholic response” to the Zionist movement was a negative one, and how the position of the Vatican to this day is that Jerusalem should be an “international city.” And he noted Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik’s strong opposition to the establishment of religious bonds with Christian clergy – and how “shameful” it is that some claiming to be disciples of “the Rav” have disregarded or misrepresented his words. Rabbi Schachter is recognized as, in the words of the New York Jewish Week, “a leading disciple” of Rab Soloveitchik, whom the paper calls “a towering figure of 20thcentury Orthodoxy in America.”

It was a recent edition of that Jewish weekly that reported that the Council of Centers on JewishChristian Relations, a group dedicated to “enhancing understanding between Jewish and Christians,” had scored Rabbi Schachter’s “inflammatory language” and “glaring errors.”

The Council asserted that the goal of “interreligious exchange” today is not “to entice Jews to baptism” but rather to help Christians “understand today’s Judaism”; and that “since 1967, the Vatican has not called for the internationalization of Jerusalem.”

In fact, though, while there has been much progress over the years in the Vatican’s position toward Israel (largely born of realities on the ground that could no longer be ignored), the Vatican has never conceded Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. As recently as this past June, the Vatican took pains to note that an economic agreement it was negotiating with Israel regarding Church properties in Jerusalem should not be regarded as even a de facto recognition of Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem.

Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham

Foxman also criticized Rabbi Schachter, who, he asserted, “seems to know nothing about the current state of Jewish-Christian relations.”

That state, however, is subject to differing interpretations. There is no doubt that the Church has made positive strides over the years, most notably the groundbreaking 1965 Nostra Aetate declaration disavowing antiSemitism. Whether there are in fact Catholic efforts, as there are Protestant ones, to “reach out” to Jews is not clear. But “interfaith dialogue,” while embraced by some outlier Orthodox rabbis, has been deemed off-limits by all widely accepted Orthodox religious authorities, Rabbi Soloveitchik among them. And Rabbi Schachter is eminently qualified to offer his thoughts and guidance on such issues.

How the controversy came about isn’t clear. While it’s not impossible, it isn’t likely that either the Council of Centers on Jewish-Christian Relations or Abe Foxman regularly follows Rabbi Schachter’s divrei Torah. Did the Jewish Week (the only medium in which the “story” was covered), perhaps “tipped off” by some anonymous informer, decide to pro-actively approach the two groups? One thing is certain: this isn’t the first time the paper has made an effort to subject Rabbi Schachter to vilification.

In 2008, the paper reported that Rabbi Schachter had made – and apologized for – an ill-considered off-the-cuff remark about an unimaginable Israeli government’s relinquishing control of Jerusalem, and its culpability for such an action. And in 2004, in a shiur about the halachic permissibility of a woman reading the kesuva at a Jewish wedding, he was taken to task by the paper for invoking a Talmudic metaphor signifying an action whose performer is of no halachic consequence. The kesuva reading, he said, could just as well be performed “by a monkey.” The Jewish Week’s editor said that the Rosh Yeshiva’s words “seem[ed] to compare women to animals.”

In an editorial in 2008, that editor offered his assessment that “despite [Rabbi Schachter’s] ‘modern’ credentials, many believe that in temperament and outlook, he is more closely aligned to the more traditional yeshiva world,” thus betraying what the editor sees as Yeshiva University’s essence.

The real story here may not be the state of Jewish-Christian relations, but, sadly, of Jewish-Jewish ones.

Efrat, Israel – “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse: therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19).

What does it mean to choose life? Is life then ours to choose?

The Torah should have written to “choose good,” which I would understand because good seems within my control. But life and death? Go tell the children in a cancer ward to choose life! How many young people receive harsh decrees from heaven? So what does it mean to “choose life”? A person can choose life! As Sigmund Freud taught, built into the human psyche is not only a passion for life, but also a passion for death, not only a will to create, but also a will to destroy – and sometimes even to self-destruct.

The first thing one must do is to avoid the lure of death. Despite the awareness of danger in certain lifestyles – indiscriminate sex, excessive alcohol, drugs etc – many pursue thrills until the last chill, when it’s too late. Good and evil are abstractions; a genius in the art of rationalization only requires one hour to totally confuse himself and others about their moral foundations. But life and death are not abstractions. People who overdose on drugs or alcohol are real. And when the Torah says “choose life,” it means avoid a lifestyle, or fanatical religion, which promotes death rather than life.

A second, less dramatic way, of choosing life is by not wasting time; hours spent in front of the TV, at best watching people running in pursuit of a ball and at worst inviting violence and pornography into our homes. We don’t need an accountant to inform us that the hours soon become days, weeks, even months. The simple act of shutting off most programs on TV and opening a worthwhile book is an example of choosing life. In modern Hebrew, the term for going out and having a good time is levalot – which is derived from bilui, a word which actually means to wear something out, to turn a usable garment into an outworn rag. In modern Hebrew slang, the expression lisrof zman, to burn time, is equivalent to the Americanism “to kill time,” all pointing to the inherent destruction in improper time management.

You can commit suicide in one moment.

Or you can commit suicide in a lifetime of wasted moments. The number of years a person is given is not under their control, but what we do with the moments God has given us, is. If we choose not to waste these precious moments, we have “chosen life.”

You can commit suicide in one moment. Or you can commit suicide in a lifetime of wasted moments. The number of years a person is given is not under their control, but what we do with the moments God has given us, is. If we choose not to waste these precious moments, we have “chosen life.”

And there is yet a third way to choose life, in the larger sense of the word – not just life as the avoidance of death, but life in its fullest meaning.

An older version of the Targum (Aramaic translation of the Bible) on the verse, “...Not by bread alone does the human being live, but by that which proceeds from God’s mouth does the human being live” (Deut. 8:3), is revealing. It translates, “Not on bread alone does the human being exist (mitkayem) but on what proceeds from God’s mouth does the human being live (hayei).” Bread gives us kiyum – existence, the ability to stand on our feet, to work, to survive. But that which emanates from God’s mouth provides life with meaning, purpose, participation in eternity.

Material subsistence is existence; spiritual and intellectual engagement in improving self and society is life. Bread is existence; Shabbat and compassion are life.

Food, clothing and shelter are necessities, but they are necessities for existence. Humans require an objective which goes beyond existence. As Victor Frankel, noted psychologist-philosopher and founder of logotherapy, discovered in the concentration camps, the most important drive within humans is not the will for pleasure or even the will for power, but the will for meaning. Those who had a higher meaning, who were involved in helping others survive, in calculating in their heads different mathematical or philosophical problems or in preserving and copying segments from the prayer books or the Bible from memory stood a better chance of surviving the horrendous living conditions of the concentration camps. This

search for purpose beyond one’s own physical survival, this quest for self-transcendence and reaching out for the infinite, is what comes forth from God’s mouth and it is what the Targum refers to as “life.”

The search for pleasure is linked to the body, and since the body is finite, the fruits of the search are also finite. The Torah is immortal and infinite. An individual home is destructible; the Land of Israel for the people of Israel is eternal. Materialistic goods are existence; Torah and Israel are life.

The keeping of the commandments and the inheritance of the Land of Israel are in themselves involvement with eternity, participating in eternity. This is the real meaning of the Biblical command: Choose life!

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

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T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: NITZAVIM (DEVARIM 29:9—30:20) 1. Which two groups were singled out for coming to the assembly? a.) Levites b.) First born c.) Converts d.) Wood Choppers e.) Water drawers 2. Why did the people assemble? a.) To make final plans before entering the land of Israel b.) To make a covenant and oath with Hashem c.) To review the 40 years in the desert 4. A 29:10 Even the children were present because they should do what is proper in the eyes of their parents. Sforno.

5. 30:1-6 The Children of Israel will return to Hashem

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

WHAT’S

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT NITZAVIM DEUTERONOMY 29:9 – 30:20

3. How does the Torah describe the desolation of the land of Israel? a.) Like a desert b.) Like Sodom and Amora c.) Empty of people 4. Did children go the assembly? a.) Yes b.) No 5. What will happen after the fulfillment of the curse?

2. B 29:11,12 Hashem swore that the children of Israel would always be his people, therefore Moshe wanted to insure that they would keep the Torah. Rashi 3. B 29:22

Sedra of the Week

JEWISH LIFE • 17

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

Answers 1. D,E 29:10 Canaanites came to Moshe to make peace before the Children of Israel entered Canaan. Immediately Moshe made them woodchoppers and water carriers . Rashi

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

JEWZ

IN THE

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist SOMETHING EVIL; SOMETHING CUTE The following films open on Friday, Sept. 14: Handsome Israeli actor ODED FEHR, 41, who is best known for playing the character Ardeth Bay in “The Mummy” and “The Mummy Returns,” has a large supporting role in “Resident Evil: Retribution,” the fifth flick in the “Resident Evil” series. His character (Carlos Olivera) was killed in the third “Evil” movie, but Carlos comes back as a clone of himself. Fehr is also seen in flashback as the “real Carlos.”

Disney has brought back the 2003 animated film classic, “Finding Nemo,” in 3-D. ALBERT BROOKS, 65, voices Marlin, the overprotective father of Nemo (voiced by ALEXANDER GOULD, now 18. He’s been co-starring as Shane Botwin on the Showtime series, “Weeds,” since 2005).

NICHOLAS JARECKI, 33, the brother of director/screenwriters ANDREW JARECKI, 49 (“Capturing the Friedmans”), and EUGENE JARECKI, 42 (“Why We Fight”), makes his feature film directing/screenwriting debut with “Arbitrage,” a suspense thriller. The plot: hedgefund magnate Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is desperate to sell his company to a major bank before the depths of his fraud is revealed to the public and to his loyal wife (Susan Sarandon), and to his adult daughter, the heirapparent of his firm. He’s also concealing an extra-marital affair.

All this juggling gets the attention of an NYPD detective (Tim Roth) who is determined to reveal the truth.

Interesting sidelights: Jarecki is a co-founder of Moviefone, the popular web service, and it has made him quite wealthy. Tim Roth, who was born and raised in Britain, is not Jewish “at all.” His father, whose original last name was “Smith,” changed his name to “Roth” not longer after WWII. He was a left-wing journalist who made this name change, in part, he said, to express solidarity with the victims of the Holocaust.

EASIER TO CATCH ON-DEMAND The following IFC films had or will have a short run in Cincinnati, but it’s easier to catch them using the on-demand feature provided by almost all cable or satellite providers “Sleepwalk with Me” stars Mike Birbiglia, a real life come-

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NEWZ

dian, who has turned his surreal bouts of sleepwalking into a hit play, best-selling book, and, now, a film. Much of this mostly comedic film concerns Birbiglia’s relationship with his girlfriend Abby (Lauren Ambrose) and his parents (played by CAROL KANE, 60, and James Rebhorn).

“Sleepwalk” is produced and coscripted by IRA GLASS, 53 (“This American Life”) (It opened in one Cincy theater on August 24 for a short run).

JOSH RADNOR, 38, is best known as the star of “How I Met Your Mother.” In 2010, he directed, wrote, and starred-in the romantic comedy/drama “Happythankyoumoreplease,” which had some good moments, but didn’t charm me or critics. He stars in the new film, “Liberal Arts,” as well as directs and writes it. Respected advance reviewers say it is pretty good, but not great. Radnor, a practicing Jew who grew-up in Columbus, filmed the movie on the campus of Kenyon College, his alma mater. The plot: Jesse Fisher (Radnor), newly single and uninspired by his job, leaps at a chance to speak at the retirement dinner of his favorite college professor (Richard Jenkins). While on campus, he meets and becomes infatuated with Zibby, a beautiful, cultured, and precocious college sophomore (Elizabeth Olson). Can it work?

Zac Efron (whose paternal grandpa was Jewish) has an important, but small role as a free-spirited young guy who ends up steering Fisher in the right direction.

SHORT TAKES The prestigious Motion Picture Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, which isn’t given every year, will be given to Hollywood executive JEFFREY KATZENBERG, 51, currently the head of Dreamworks SKG. The award will be presented on Dec. 1. Katzenberg’s award isn’t for his film work, but for his philanthropy. This includes serving on the boards for AIDS Project Los Angeles, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, and the SIMON WISENTHAL Center.

On Aug. 27, the son of the late Soviet Olympic gold medalist Valeriy Brumel, one of the top high jumpers of all-time, arrived in Israel and sought citizenship under the law of return. He made this claim based on his father’s Jewish background. It is unclear if Brumel had one or two Jewish parents. But it has never been previously reported that this great athlete was Jewish at all.

FROM THE PAGES 150 Y EARS A GO Cincinnati being under martial law, all able-bodied men being required to perform military duties, business suspended, the drum and fife resounding in all corners, excitement prevailing generally, it is almost impossible to write anything. Our hands left us to join the ranks of the country’s defenders, we could not bring out a paper last week. But our arrangements are again completed, and we shall be enabled to go on as usually. – September 19, 1862

125 Y EARS A GO On Monday morning at three o’clock the Faculty and students, together with the President and other members of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew Union College, were assembled in the spacious rooms, to witness the opening of the thirteenth collegiate year of that institution.

Several prominent visitors were present, interested spectators of the decidedly interesting and impressive exercises. Forty-two students were present and duly registered. But five were absent, from unavoidable causes, and these will be on hand in a very few days. The students, ranging from the youthful novice to the mature senior, presented a fine appearance, and after the summer vacation, their faces glowed with health, intelligence and hopeful interest. September 9, 1887

100 Y EARS A GO Records of forty years were broken Saturday at Nelson’s Business College when Hymen Rosenblatt, 16 years old, wrote from dictation from unfamiliar text at the rate of 116 2/3 words a minute and read his notes without an error, hesitating only for a fraction of a second on one word. Mr. Nelson says the boy’s performance is the most astonishing that ever has come under his observation, although he says there have been many bright pupils in the 40,000 who have passed through the school. This quick-witted boy lives at 1650 Amsterdam avenue, New York City, and came to the school six weeks ago Monday to take a shorthand course. This boy, while he was taking shorthand here, also was studying Spanish at another Cincinnati school to occupy his spare time. Saturday, after he had made the wonderful record, eclipsing every student of that school in 40 years, he announced that he had other studies to take up at home, and Sunday left for New York on a night train.

He is a graduate of a New York

City high school and a sophomore in a college in the metropolis.

September 12, 1912

75 Y EARS A GO The Reds’ longest and last home stand of the season will start Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 14th, with a ladies’ day double-header against Brooklyn. That twin bill will be the first of three in succession against the Dodgers, this crowded schedule having been made necessary because of postponements in Brooklyn during the Reds’ last visit there.

The Giants will follow into Crosley Field for two days.

Boston will come in for a doubleheader Sunday, Sept. 19th. The home stand will last through Thursday, Sept. 30th.

Two unbeaten matmen in Cincinnati will head the Quality Athletic Club’s wrestling program Friday, Sept. 10th, at 8:30 p.m. at Parkway Arena when Walter Achiu, Chinese light-heavy, will go against Maurice La Chapelle of Paris.

The bout, a one fall, 90-minute affair, will have the support of three other matches in which two newcomers are carded. September 9, 1937

50 Y EARS A GO Miss Ayala Lavee, formerly of Haifa, Israel, will return to the Center this fall to conduct the Israeli Dance Group, sponsored by the Adult Department.

The group, which is open to Center members of all ages will mark its second year of activity at the Center, when it holds its first meeting Wednesday, October 17, 8:30 p.m.

Miss Lavee, who has been associated with the Israeli Folk Dancing Troupe before coming to the United States, brings with her authentic interpretations of a wide scope of dances, old and new.

For the new season, Miss Lavee hopes to welcome new members as well as last season’s “charter” members of teens, young adults and adults. Mr. Saul Agrari, an accomplished accordionist, accompanies the group at each session.

While meetings are primarily for relaxation and enjoyment, Miss Lavee and the Department hope to eventually form a performing Israeli dance group from those members who wish to perform. September 13, 1962

25 Y EARS A GO The Jewish Federation has commissioned SAMI-Burke Marketing Research, Inc., to con-

duct a study of the size and makeup of the Greater Cincinnati Jewish community, said Connie Hintz, the study’s director. The format involves conducting a telephone interview of 500 Jewish adults randomly selected. These interviews will take place between September 10 and October 31.

The survey’s purpose is to assist the Jewish community in planning for needed services in the future. To that end, questions will be asked on the size and ages of everyone in the household, religious and/or congregational affiliation, the activities in the Jewish community in which respondents participate, access to transportation, occupation and income.

The interview will take 25-30 minutes to complete, Hintz said.

She emphasized that extensive safeguards have been taken to ensure the confidentiality of responses so that no single individual can ever be identified after the survey is completed.

The results of the study will be made available to the Jewish community by April, 1988. September 17, 1987

10 Y EARS A GO The third annual Cedar Village Golf Classic took place Aug. 19 at the Oasis golf club in Loveland.

One hundred seventy golfers played in either the morning or afternoon shotgun start event.

Following the tournament, there was a buffet dinner, an auction and a raffle. At that time, individual and team prizes were given.

Nancy and Dolph Berman and Judy and Larry Smiley co-chaired the tournament, which was presented by Fort Washington Investment Advisors and Touchstone Investments, members of Western & Southern Financial Group. Betsy Farasey, assistant golf professional of The Ridge Club, Losantiville Course, was the guest pro in the Beat the Pro contest.

“On behalf of the residents and tenants who will benefit from our third tournament, we would like to thank the Bermans, the Smileys, and their entire committee,” said Sally Korkin, director of development and community relations.

“We also thank all of our sponsors, golfers, volunteers, and everyone in the community who bought raffle tickets or donated prizes and gifts. Although all the final numbers are not in, we are projecting that the 2002 Cedar Village Golf Classic will net more than $97,000 for Cedar Village.”

Funds raised from this year’s Cedar Village Golf Classic will be placed in the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Endowment Fund and will be matched on a $1 for $1 basis by the Weinberg Foundation of Baltimore. September 12, 2002

CLASSIFIEDS • 19

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 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 Chabad (513) 731-5111 • campchabad.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 • camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Cincinnati Community Kollel (513) 631-1118 • kollel.shul.net Cincinnati Community Mikveh (513) 351-0609 • cincinnatimikveh.org Eruv Hotline (513) 351-3788 Fusion Family (513) 703-3343 • fusionnati.org Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (Miami) (513) 523-5190 • muhillel.org Hillel Jewish Student Center (UC) (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) 214-1200 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 • btzbc.com 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 • btzbc.com

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 Sarah’s Place (513) 531-3151 • sarahsplacecincy.com

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

DO YOU WANT TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED? Send an e-mail including what you would like in your classified & your contact information to

business@ americanisraelite.com or call Erin at 621-3145 CJC from page 5 “Rosh Hashanah is a most optimistic day,” explains Rabbi Mangel. “We cut a deal with G-d, so to speak. We take new year’s resolutions upon ourselves—to improve our ways, and in return, we ask G-d to bless us and our children with health and sustenance throughout the upcoming year. It really isn’t much different than parents and children resolving their differences. We walk away from the services with a wonderful, positive feeling—full of motivation and hope for the coming months.”

“I’ve always found the concept of Rosh Hashanah uplifting,” said Allen Govronsky. “The idea that you can always start again— now that’s a refreshing change from what you get in the news.”

Age-appropriate, interactive children’s services and programs led by Rabbi Berel and Zipporah Cohen, Chabad’s youth program coordinators, will also be conducted, while a professional cantor, Rabbi Dovid Shraga Polter from Detroit, Mich., will lead the main services utilizing popular traditional Ashkenazic and Sephardic melodies.

Chabad’s Rosh Hashanah services begin Sunday evening, Sept. 16, at 7 p.m. and resume on Monday and Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.

Yom Kippur services will begin Tuesday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. and resume Wednesday, Sept. 26 at 9:30 a.m. A full-course holiday dinner will follow the Rosh Hashanah evening services on Sept. 16, reservations only. A NEWCOMERS from page 8 weaknesses in her Jewish knowledge. The daughter of a Conservative rabbi and a graduate of a Modern Orthodox high school on Long Island, Ginsburg had studied Talmud before, but not in a systematic way.

“Until now my engagement with the text and the issues were very piecemeal, isolated segments not in their overall context,” Ginsburg said. “The ability to really go through the Talmud page after page and understand the flow has been really, really powerful.”

With a chuckle, she added, “The

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Up to 24 hour care Meal Preparation Errands/Shopping Hygiene Assistance Light Housekeeping

(513) 531-9600 “break-fast” will likewise follow the Yom Kippur services.

Services are free and open to the public. All services will be held at Chabad Jewish Center, in Blue Ash. “There is palpable, familyfriendly warmth at our services that melts away any embarrassment for those unfamiliar with Hebrew or new to communal prayer,” added Rabbi Mangel.

“The High Holidays are an experience all Jews should actively take part in,” said Rabbi Mangel. “We open our doors to the entire Jewish community regardless of background or level of observance.”

Chabad also invites you to not be a stranger this year during the High Holiday season. Learn the significance, meaning, and relevance of the prayers, rituals and customs associated with the High Holidays and make this year’s experience a more meaningful one.

The Goldstein Family Learning Academy encourages you to join us for a three-part series of lively discussions with Rabbi Yisroel Mangel exploring the spiritual and Kabbalistic dimensions of these special days.

Rosh Hashanah—Happy New Year in September? Wednesday, Sept. 12. A Yom Kippur discussion on Does G-d Really Need Our Repentance? Thursday, Sept.

20, and a Sukkot conversation about, Can You Truly Rejoice with Today’s Economy?

Thursday, Sept. 27. All classes are from 7–8 p.m. at Chabad Jewish Center. thought of taking on something that lasts 7 1/2 years seemed overwhelming. It wasn't well thought out, but I have not missed a day.”

In Atlanta, Ari Bendicoff, who had seen advertisements for the Siyum in the weeks leading up to it, watched the New Jersey celebration on the Internet. He needed no more convincing.

“I grab it as I can,” said Bendicoff, 29, a business analyst in health-care technology, said of his Daf Yomi study time. “There is a lot of weekend catch up.”

The experience, he said, has helped with his overall Jewish learning.

20 • TRAVEL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

‘See-ing’ the world... at ground level Wandering Jew

by Janet Steinberg

Going Topless in North Carolina PART 1 Hopping into a shiny black convertible, top down, sun on my face and wind in my hair, my husband and I set out for a 1458-mile drive through North Carolina. For 3-plus decades I have been sea-ing the world at sea level. It was now time for me to start see-ing the world at ground level.

Come along with me, as I highlight some of my amazing discoveries in the “Tar Heel State.”

Greeted by mountains, my spirits soared. Crisp air filled my lungs and the scent of the forest was nothing short of overwhelming. I knew I was about to encounter a timeless natural beauty, a place where nature transcended the ordinary, a place called Asheville, N.C., “The Land of the Sky.” In Asheville there is a close collaboration between Mother Nature and the friendly mountain people.

You might find yourself wandering through a European Chateau in the morning, hiking a twisty mountain trail in the afternoon, and enjoying evening cocktails while overlooking a spectacular mountain sunset.

Asheville’s hop-on hop-off Red Trolley Tour is a great way to get acquainted with the city. The tour

guide’s commentary on Asheville’s sights is combined with humor and historical information. On the tour you’ll pass Congregation Beth Israel, the location of Asheville’s only Mah Jongg tournament.

George Vanderbilt’s 250-room Biltmore House is a step back in time where you will experience Gilded Age elegance at America’s largest home. Asheville’s oldest home, the circa 1840 SmithMcDowell House-Museum, brings the Victorian Era to life.

The newest star on the Asheville food scene is Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, opened December 2011 in Historic Biltmore Village. I devoured my seared Ahi Tuna appetizer and filet and then dug into my husband’s equally divine Osso Buco Ravioli and New York Strip.

The secret to the culinary magic of Ruth’s Chris begins with a USDA prime steak seared at 1800° Fahrenheit and served on a heated (500° F) ceramic plate.

Just before the plate leaves the kitchen a dollop of butter is dropped on the hot plate to create the steak’s signature sizzle. Add to that some garlic mashed potatoes, creamed spinach, and Chocolate Sin Cake. Calories be damned!

For more casual farm-to-table dining in downtown Asheville, try the Lake Lure Chicken or Brasstown Beef Burger at The Table Restaurant, and the Woodgrilled Flatbread and the Sunburst Farms Trout at The Market Place.

Asheville has held the title of “Beer City USA” for three years.

Where else but in Asheville can you find a Jamaican-born, Chinese man brewing award-winning Scottish beer or unwind with local, stout-flavored ice cream? Asheville is also home to the only woman-owned Moonshine Distillery in the U.S. Asheville is a free-spirited, beautiful city that oozes charm. It is mountains, mansions, moonshine, and much more. It is magical.

The sixth-largest city in North

The 250-room Biltmore House in Asheville, N.C.

Carolina, Fayetteville is located in the Sandhills, on the Cape Fear River. This city of approximately 200,000 was the first city in America to be named for General La Fayette. In 1825, Lafayette traveled to Fayetteville in a horsedrawn carriage that is on display at the Fayetteville Independent Light Infantry Armory & Museum.

The Market House is the focal point of downtown Fayetteville.

Originally the site of the State House, this National Landmark was built in 1832 after the big fire of 1831. The Museum of the Cape Fear Historical complex encompasses The Museum, the 1897 Poe House, and Arsenal Park.

Cool Springs Tavern, having survived the 1831 fire, is believed to be the oldest existing structure in Fayetteville. Designed in the Federal style, the building was so named because of its proximity to a spring of that name.

Although Fayetteville is predominantly a Christian community, Jews had a presence in Fayetteville as far back as the early 1800s. Judah P. Benjamin, who lived in Fayetteville from 1813 to 1822, served as a U.S. Senator and held three cabinet positions in the Confederate government. In 1910 a synagogue was built.

The Fayetteville area boasts some 600-plus restaurants. Luigi’s Italian Restaurant is said to be Fayetteville’s premier Italian restaurant, and Morgan’s Chop House is reputed to be the city’s top Chop House. After dinner, take in a play at the Cape Fear Regional Theater.

Fayetteville is adjacent to Fort Bragg, one of the largest military installations in the United States.

Established in 1918 as an artillery training post, the facility is now called “Home of the 82nd Airborne.” This military-oriented city has numerous other historic sites, the magnificent 77-acre Cape Fear Botanical Garden, and dozens

Janet Steinberg goes topless in North Carolina.

of award-winning golf courses.

Fayetteville is an interesting small town known for life, liberty and the pursuit of a scratch handicap.

The village of Highlands, in the southern Appalachian Mountains, is the perfect destination for city dwellers in need of a retreat.

The Highlands area offers stunning Blue Ridge Mountain panoramas. With more than its share of natural beauty, there are cascading waterfalls of every variety. Bridal Veil Falls (that you can drive under), Dry Falls (where you can stay dry), and Bust your Butt Falls (where you can…use your imagination!)

With a permanent population of less than 1,000, the count swells to 10,000-15,000 during the spring to fall season. Eclectic shops, restaurants and The Bascom Center for the Visual Arts highlight this scenic mountain town.

Add to that a stay at the utterly fantastic Old Edwards Inn, a customized massage in the Inn’s Spa, a fabulous dinner at Madisons, and a second night’s dinner at Nicholas Figel’s outstanding Cyprus Restaurant, and you will find it hard to believe you are in a tiny Appalachian mountain town.

Garnering a prime seat by the open kitchen in Cyprus Restaurant, and watching the ebullient Nicholas

Figel work his culinary magic, would have been enough for me to have a perfect evening. (Cyprus must save on electricity because Nick’s smile lights up the room.)

Additionally, the Cognac Toasted Marrow-bone and the Parmegiano Reggiano Eggplant he whipped up for appetizers, plus the dinner chosen from his everchanging specialty menu, and there is little wonder why Cyprus, along with Madisons, are Highland’s top restaurants.

If you want to be seated in front of Nick’s open kitchen at Cyprus, it is suggested you call a week in advance. When I asked Nicholas his philosophy for the success of his exciting 5-star dining destination, he stated: “I like to think of my trade as a form of communication and to always approach it with great sincerity.”

Whether seeking serenity or adventure, this 3-stoplight town will provide you with leisurely funfilled days and peaceful romantic nights at the Old Edwards Inn. Like the 1922 lyrics of the Gus Kahn song says: “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina…”

Janet Steinberg is an awardwinning travel writer and travel consultant.

Patrick Dougherty’s hardwood sapling sculpture “Do Tell” at Bascom Center for Visual Arts in Highlands, N.C.

FOOD / AUTOS • 21

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

Zell’s Tzimmes Zell’s Bites

by Zell Schulman In a few days, the High Holy Days begin and because we all wish the new year to be sweet and fruitful, we start our Rosh Hashanah meal with apple slices dipped in honey.

Over the years families have created new traditions along the way.

Like serving pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, but instead of pie we prepare and serve recipes made with honey. My children count on me to bring the desserts to our High Holy Day lunch.

Holidays are always difficult for me. So many memories need to be dealt with. No matter how many times I think, “ This year will be different,” it never is. As a young girl, I remember celebrating with my parents at our home in Park Hills, Ky. As a college student at the University of Kentucky, I remember my dad sending so much food it was enough for the one Jewish sorority, the one Jewish fraternity and the half dozen Jewish girls who lived in the dorm with me all to share.

Today, I returned from the market with two jars of honey. A small jar of clover honey and a large jar of buckwheat honey. In my pantry at home, I have a small jar of wildflower honey waiting to be added along with the others, to bake my honey cakes and taiglach then prepare my sweet potato casserole which will all be served at our holiday meals.

I tried purchasing apples for applesauce at the farmer’s market, but was told the weather affected the apple growing season and they won’t be available until next week.

They may not taste as good as home grown, but I’m sure I can buy apples at my supermarket. I usually make a large amount of applesauce and give it away to family and friends for a sweet year along with a miniature honey cake.

I had a friend come over last week and we spent the morning baking strudel. You know the old fashioned kind where the dough needs to be stretched until it’s paper thin, then filled and baked. I was taught by a wonderful woman from New York, Mrs. Polokoff. She would come in the summer to hear her son sing with our Cincinnati Opera, and I would have her over for Friday night dinner. Each Rosh Hashanah she would send me a large tin filled with her strudels. One year, when she came, I

asked her to teach me how to make her strudels. Now I bake them each year for the High Holy Days. This year I baked seven dozen. My freezer is full of rolls of strudel waiting to be cut and delivered to my friends and family for a “sweet new year.”

My kitchen will be busy preparing side dishes and desserts with honey as the starring ingredient.

Several of the dishes I prepare have become a traditional part of my menus. My housekeeper Maude, who worked for me more than 15 years, gave me her recipe for sweet potatoes, which are now part of both my Thanksgiving and High Holy Day menus.

This year, I am gong to celebrate the New Year with my daughter Karen at her farm in Cynthiana, Ky., where we will enjoy Audrey’s honey cake for dessert. In the morning we will attend services at the Synagogue in Lexington, Ky., and after the service, we will join her friends in Lexington at their home for lunch. I will bring along some of my homemade strudel for dessert.

CARROT/SWEET POTATO TZIMMES Makes 6 to 8 servings The word Tzimmes is Yiddish and means “to make a fuss.” We go to a lot of fuss at holiday times and maybe that’s why Tzimmes has become a traditional dish for this holiday. These particular Tzimmes ingredients are perfect for Rosh Hashanah because we all wish for a sweet and healthy year. The carrots, sweet potatoes and honey all fill this wish. Each time I’ve prepared it, everyone raves over its fantastic flavor and unusual consistency. It’s great with poultry or brisket and freezes beautifully.

Ingredients 3 cups (1-1/2 lbs) carrots, peeled, sliced/cooked or 1-16 ounce package mini carrots, already peeled 1-(17 oz) can yams, sliced or 1 lb sweet potatoes 8 pitted prunes, quartered 8 dried apricots, quartered 1/c cup of orange juice 1/4 cup of dry sherry 1/3 cup of clover honey 1/3 cup of pineapple preserves 1/4 teaspoon of ground cooked ginger A pinch of salt Method 1. Grease a 2-quart casserole.

Preheat the oven to 300°F. Drain the carrots and place them in a 3-quart bowl. Add the sliced yams, prunes, apricots, orange juice, sherry, honey, pineapple preserves, ginger and salt.

Mix well. (You can prepare the recipe several days ahead and refrigerate it before baking.)

2. Place in prepared casserole, cover and bake 3 hours. Serve warm. Cool the Tzimmes before freezing.

2013 Audi A4 — Fresh and revised Already renowned for its athletic driving character and spacious interior, the Audi A4 returns for 2013 with a fresh look, a revised interior, and a new electromechanical steering system for better agility and efficiency.

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Outside, the body incorporates a new design for the hood and all the lights, with distinctive LEDs now available to power the daytime running lights and taillights.

How the A4 drives largely depends on your own personal tastes. Those wanting a more sporting character can choose the optional 18-inch wheels with lower-profile tires, or go a step further with the Sport package for its 19-inch wheels, lowered suspension, and sport seats. The A4 also offers no less than three different transmissions — a six-speed manual, an eight-speed Tiptronic® automatic, and a multitronic® continuously variable automatic — and for even more personal tailoring, the optional Audi drive select enables adjustment of steering effort, throttle response, and transmission shifting style on the fly.

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The Bang & Olufsen® Sound System fills the interior with 505 watts of crisp, premium sound through 14 speakers. Dolby Digital 5.1 technology can create the impression of a soundstage, and noise compensation technology helps maintain a constant volume under varying road conditions and speeds.

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22 • OBITUARIES D EATH N OTICES FRIED, Clara, age 81, died on August 17, 2012; 29 Av, 5772.

BETTER, Jill, age 64, died on September 2, 2012, 15 Elul, 5772.

SPIZEL, Sheila K., age 86, died on September 3, 2012; 16 Elul, 5772.

KRAUS, Betty, age 85, died on September 5, 2012; 18 Elul, 5772.

LEVINE, E. Pike, age 89, died on September 6, 2012; 20 Elul, 5772.

TURCHIN, Henry, age 61, died on September 7, 2012; 20 Elul, 5772.

BLASBERG, Herbert, age 97, died on September 8, 2012; 21 Elul, 5772.

WARTH, Irvin, M.D., age 90, died on September 8, 2012; 21 Elul, 5772.

KANTOR, Marvin, age 79, died on September 8, 2012; 21 Elul, 5772.

PHONES from page 8 A youth group at Temple Shalom in Newton, Mass., also used texting last year in its Rosh Hashanah service. Scott Kroll, the Reform synagogue’s youth educator at the time, brought the idea to the teens from a digital media program he had taught at Kutz Camp in Warwick, N.Y. The campers incorporated texting into the session’s final evening services in conjunction with the Avinu Malkeinu prayer, expressing their hopes for the coming year.

“High school kids are never told to take out their cellphones and use them during a service,” Kroll said. “I thought it may be a little gimmicky, but it ended up being very meaningful.”

The New Year’s wishes were projected on a screen in front of the chapel, “allowing them to create collective prayer,” Kroll said.

“Mobile phones and texting is part of teenagers’ everyday life,” he said. “Being able to incorporate that into a holiday service is not odd to them,” but rather helped “enhance their prayer experience.”

“Social media for teens and kids and young adults – and increasingly for older adults – is a way of communicating and staying in touch,” he said.

Texting during services might not become common, but Kroll says he thinks “the norm will be integrating new forms of communications and digital media into services, particularly in Reform.

It’s obvious that most Conservative and Orthodox services would not embrace this.”

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

CAMP from page 6 daughters this year for the first time and the oldest will be participating in AU next summer. She shared, “Morgan has been talking about this ever since she stepped off the bus after first session! This summer truly changed her life.”

Jewish camp is first and foremost camp. Children will experience everything from aquatics and sports to drama and crafts! And they will develop life skills in a safe and nurturing environment where campers gain self esteem and confidence and form lasting friendships with their camp friends, all within a fun and exciting Jewish atmosphere.

Campers become part of their own community where they learn independence and responsibility. Sam Price commented this upon his son’s return from Livingston’s Yisrael program for rising 11th graders, “Jacob had the most amazing time. He came back with a renewed spirit toward Judaism.”

Regardless of your choice in Jewish camp, there are certain things a parent newly looking into resident camp for their child should be aware of. “It’s important to make sure that the camp you choose is accredited by the American Camping Association (ACA),” say Ben Davis, executive director of Camp Livingston and active volunteer with the ACA. The main purpose of the ACA accreditation process ensures the camp owners and directors are GEMS from page 8 Joel Rubinfeld, co-chairman of the recently established European Jewish Parliament is based in Brussels, says many Jewish communities in Western Europe are facing the dilemma of openness vs. security.

“We want to open up to the general public to fight anti-Semitism and ignorance, but that is difficult precisely because of anti-Semitism.

AQUACULTURE from page 10 “Because of the water shortage,” Yaish explains, “many water reserves are built to collect water in the winter and are used to water the agricultural fields in the summer.

The fish farmers were smart to use these reserves for fish breeding.”

The collected water provides the perfect environment to breed fish, and farmers capitalize on the opportunity to synchronize agriculture and aquaculture.

When asked whether this dualuse strategy poses any environmental risks, Yaish is confident that fish farming does not pollute or endanger ecosystems. In fact, he notes, “protecting the environment is a basic condition for the progression of fish farming.” The industry has driven implementation of intensive water treatment facilities across Israel and has encouraged water conservation.

Likewise, the focus on fish

Campers enjoying an after Shabbos fire with dancing and singing.

educated in key areas of camp operation, particularly those related to program quality and the health and safety of campers and staff. The standards establish guidelines for necessary policies, procedures and practices. The camp, then, is responsible for ongoing implementation of these policies. Secondly, ACA accreditation helps families select camps that meet industry-accepted and government-recognized standards. Davis continues, “I believe very strongly in these (300) standards and that is why I volunteer my time as an ACA Visitor. As a Visitor, it is both my honor and my responsibility to visit two or three regional day and resident camps every sum-

mer to verify they are following all of the standards required of an accredited camp, and I take that responsibility very seriously and I want Camp Livingston to be a role model for other camps to follow.” It is also important to make sure the camp “fits” your child. There is a Jewish camp to fit every Jewish child. Make sure you call the camp and ask them questions. How do they celebrate Shabbat? Do they pray and if so, how often? What if my child doesn’t know anything about Judaism? My kid goes to Jewish day school, why do I need to send them to Jewish camp too?

Ask all the questions you can think of and see if the camp aligns

with your values. You need to feel comfortable with the camp, because if you don’t, how can you expect your child to be comfortable?

When the first Jewish camps were founded in North America between 1900 and 1950, the idea was to give city kids some fresh air.

The latrines and outhouses of days past have been replaced by modern plumbing, athletic facilities, rockclimbing walls, and swimming pools. It may look different, but camp continues to be the tried and true way to build independence, self esteem, good character and Jewish identity into our children. The ACA’s tag line says it all. Camp gives kids a world of good.

It’s a chicken and egg problem,” says Rubinfeld, who previously led the umbrella group representing Belgium’s French-speaking Jews, CCOJB. “If I were an operative planning an attack, I would use today for reconnaissance.”

The “trick,” he says, “is to find a careful balance between caution and openness. If hundreds come to visit despite the complications, it’s a sign the balance is being reached.”

Rubinfeld adds, “It is a sad fact of

life that synagogues in Europe today get the same protection as airports.”

The deadly March 19 attack in Toulouse, France, by an Islamist that left four dead at a Jewish school prompted Belgium’s Jewish communities—themselves no strangers to anti-Semitic violence—to ratchet up their already robust security arrangements. Last month, dozens of Jewish rescue workers from Antwerp held a drill simulating a deadly bombing at a

Jewish school.

Despite the lines and the military-style security instructions, some 200 people visited the Brussels synagogue on Sunday. In Antwerp, organized guided tours drew a few hundred people to the city’s Jewish neighborhoods, where at least 10,000 haredi Orthodox Jews live, according to Israel’s Beit Hatfutsot museum. In total, some 40,000 Jews live in Belgium, according to the the World Jewish Congress.

quality has helped Israel reverse the effects of past pollution on native fresh water species. “Israel was the first to cultivate wild tilapia from the Jordan River and Galilee,” Yaish says. “The fish only get better in terms of their disease resistance and growth rate.”

Israelis are cashing in on a precise method for producing quality fish with limited negative environmental impact. The industry has grown dramatically, now producing around 20,000 tons of fish annually.

With the market value of fish currently standing around $3.5/kg, this translates to a gross income for the farmers of about $70 million.

Moving forward, Yaish underlines the priority of increasing production and marketing for tilapia. To be profitable, Israeli fish production must yield at least 10,000 tons annually; presently the country produces 8,000 tons. Israeli fish farmers hope to soon raise fish exports to Europe, expand the range of indus-

trial fish products, and even encourage fish farm tourism, an unexpected bonus of a growing interest in Israel’s innovative fisheries.

Meanwhile, the Fish Breeders Association provides a supportive network to all aquaculture enthusiasts in Israel. The group works directly with the ministry of agriculture to help provide education and enable cooperation between independent farms and kibbutzim.

“Fisheries do not receive the same support as other crops and produce,” Peretz says, explaining the government’s laissez faire relationship with fisheries. “Prices are not regulated as in the case of eggs, poultry, and meat.”

On the other hand, significant “support is expressed through training incentives, investment in research and insurance against damages caused by nature,” says Yaish. An existing Israeli law encourages investment in local agriculture, and the government

supports priority investment grants of up to 24 percent, in addition to providing import-tax protection.

A recent UN report indicates that demand for ocean and/or farmed fish has reached an unprecedented high. The global population now consumes 17kg of fish per person annually. With ocean stores ever declining, fisheries around the world are adapting their cultivation methods in an effort to meet demand. While Yaish maintains it is difficult to predict how the industry will eventually shift from ocean fishing to fish farming, the global trend is clear.

Peretz points to China as the world leader in developing productive farms, acknowledging that the country combines “innovative research with tradition and discipline.” Israel, however, is emerging as a clear competitor, demonstrating that efficient farming can be achieved even in an arid environment.

SAVE THE DATE The Jewish Foundation’s Annual Meeting Tuesday, October 30, 2012 7:00 pm–8:30 pm (Dessert Reception to follow) Mayerson JCC, Amberley Room

Check out our new website: www.thejewishfoundation.org

DO YOU SUFFER FROM

KNEE, HIP OR SHOULDER PAIN? Join us for FREE presentations at The Jewish Hospital from leading physicians on a variety of orthopaedic conditions.

Knee Replacement: Faster Recovery, Less Pain, Better Results Thursday, September 6 Michael Swank, MD Hip Replacement and Resurfacing: New Ways to Live Pain Free Thursday, September 13 Michael Swank, MD Robotic-Assisted Knee Replacement: Advances to Help Decrease Pain and Achieve Success Wednesday, September 19 Frank Noyes, MD

To register call: 95-MERCY (513-956-3729). Press option 2, then option 1. www.e-mercy.com

Knee Replacement: Advances to Help Decrease Pain and Achieve Success Wednesday, September 26 Frank Noyes, MD Shoulder Treatment Options for Active Adults Thursday, September 20 Marc Galloway, MD Treatment Options for Knee Pain in Active Adults Thursday, October 11 Marc Galloway, MD Shoulder Pain Solutions for Active Older Adults Thursday, October 4 Michelle Andrews, MD

CELEBRATE

ROSH HASHANAH Aaron’s Best Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast Cutlets

499

Kosher Rotisserie Chicken

lb

With Card

Available at Your Blue Ash Kroger, Sold in Our Deli

Red Snapper Fillets Previously Frozen

99

8

7

Driscoll’s Raspberries

California Peaches or Nectarines

6 oz

or Red or Black Plums

for

4$

5

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Kedem Grape Juice 22 oz

5

With Card

It’s important to you.

It’s important to us.

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for

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4$

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3 oz

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for

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999 With Card

Blue Ash Kosher Service Hours: SUNDAY-Wednesday 9AM-8PM; THURSDAY 9AM-8PM; FRIDAY 9AM-4PM;

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SATURDAY CLOSED Fresh Packaged Meats Available 24 Hours Daily

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Prices and Items effective with a Kroger Plus TM Card, Today through Sunday, September 16, 2012 at your Stroop Road fresh fare by Kroger, Blue Ash and Harper’s Point Kroger stores only.

Manufacturer’s coupons 50¢ or less will be doubled, coupons between 50¢ and $1.00 will be redeemed for $1.00, coupons over $1.00 will be redeemed at face value. Limit one manufacturer’s coupon for any particular item. Items must be purchased in sizes specified on coupon. This offer applies only to Manufacturer’s Cents Off coupons for items sold at Kroger and not to FREE or tobacco product coupons. Amount refunded cannot exceed the price of the item. ADVERTISED ITEM POLICY: Each of these advertised items is required to be readily available for sale in each Kroger store, except as specifically noted in this ad. If we do run out of an advertised item, we will offer you your choice of a comparable item at the same savings or a raincheck which will entitle you to purchase the advertised item at the advertised price within 30 days. LIMIT ONE MANUFACTURER’S COUPON PER ITEM PURCHASED, AND NO MORE THAN FIVE (5) PAPER MANUFACTURER’S COUPONS FOR THE SAME PRODUCT. COPYRIGHT 2012. KROGER LIMITED PARTNERSHIP I. QUANTITY RIGHTS RESERVED. NONE SOLD TO DEALERS.