July/August 2023

Add these titles to your summer reading list!

Hadassah & You Together in Israel

BOND IN ISRAEL. BOND WITH HADASSAH.

Share special quality time with loved ones, make meaningful memories and enjoy an unforgettable journey to Israel.

Sign up for the Hadassah Israel Together: Mothers, Daughters & Friends trip, taking place during our yearlong celebration of Hadassah & Israel — Together at 75, and get ready for a bonding experience like no other.

Grandmothers, aunts and siblings are welcome, too!

October 24–November 3, 2023

Led by Ellen Hershkin & Lisa Hershkin Roth

Learn more at go.hadassah.org/travelwithmom

MORE TOURS HAPPENING THIS YEAR:

HADASSAH TOUR OF ISRAEL FOR FIRST TIMERS

Led by Aileen Bormel | October 11–22, 2023

HADASSAH ISRAELI CULTURAL CURIOSITY MUSIC, ART & CUISINE

Led by Peg Elefant & Valerie Lowenstein | November 5–15, 2023

HADASSAH KEEPERS OF THE GATE TOUR TO ISRAEL

Led by Linda Freedman Block & Roz Kantor | December 10–19, 2023

HADASSAH WINTER FAMILY TOUR

Led by Carol Rosenthal | December 21–31, 2023

14 BARBIE’S JEWISH MOTHER

By Renée Rosen

Barbie isn’t affiliated with a specific religion, but her roots trace back to Ruth Handler, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants. Now, thanks in part to the Barbie movie in theaters this summer starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the iconic doll that Handler and Mattel debuted in 1959 is at the height of her popularity.

16 FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION

By Tamar Dunbar

“As a young teen, I had dreams of moving to Israel to become a kibbutznik,” the author writes. “Fed a diet of books about Hannah Szenes, Henrietta Szold and the early pioneers, I, too, saw myself as a valiant Woman of Zion.” But it wasn’t until her youngest child had finished high school that she and her husband fulfilled that dream‚ one that had been nurtured by several fortuitous Hadassah connections.

20 THE INCREDIBLE RISE OF #JEWISHTIKTOK

By Alexandra Lapkin Schwank

Since its launch in 2017, TikTok, the video-sharing app favored by Gen Z and millennials, has attracted legions of Jewish content creators, including a growing number of women who devote their feeds to everything from educating followers on an Orthodox way of life to sharing recipes, promoting comedy careers and spreading the word about interesting Jewish reads.

DEPARTMENTS

12 COMMENTARY Anita Diamant on changing Jewish ways

26 HEALTH

Teaching yoga as missiles fall

34 TRAVEL

Jewish heritage along the Danube River

38 FOOD

What to do with leftovers

40 ARTS

• Savor ’s menu of Sephardi music and food

• Golda on the silver screen

46 BOOKS

• Jewish refugees in L.A. in Künstlers in Paradise

• Mothers as metaphorical nesting dolls

• Family secrets at the heart of The Postcard

Always on Guard

Summer may be a season of escape for many, but at Hadassah, we don’t abandon our mission or our watchtowers in July and August. Jewish figures from Isaiah to Bob Dylan remind us that someone must always be on guard. If we do manage to get away from our routines for a few weeks, it is only because we have made sure the ramparts are staffed.

In Jerusalem, our medical center didn’t earn its reputation for worldclass care and research by taking off nights, weekends or summers. Nor do we care only for those who make their way to our doorstep. Last year, the Hadassah Medical Organization was the first outside medical presence in Poland to handle the needs of refugees streaming across the border from Ukraine. Earlier this year, a Hadassah team took part in the Israeli aid delegation—organized by the Israel Defense Forces and the Ministry of Health—that saved and treated victims of the devastating earthquake that struck the Turkish-Syrian border region.

Schools may take a break, but our Youth Aliyah villages are open this summer—as they were at this time last year—for students from Ukraine and Russia unable to return to their homes. Just like Jewish parents in Germany who entrusted their children to Henrietta Szold in the 1930s, we continue the work nearly a century later for youngsters in need of a safe haven.

It was a long summer journey that brought the American Zionist Medical Unit—the mobile hospital that

became the nucleus of HMO—to Palestine in 1918. Leaving New York in a military convoy on June 12, the 44 doctors, nurses and technicians switched back and forth between sea and rail transport, finally reaching their destination on August 18. They arrived in the middle of the global flu pandemic, which they hardly noticed amid cholera, malaria, smallpox, tuberculosis, trachoma and scattered cases of bubonic plague.

AS OUR DOCTORS OPEN NEW FRONTIERS, HADASSAH VOLUNTEERS OFTEN FIND THEMSELVES REVISITING OLD ONES.

The lead up to summer this year gave us shining examples of why our name carries so much weight in Israel, America and the world. On April 25, Yom Ha’atzmaut, Dr. Avi Rivkind, founding head of the Shock Trauma Unit at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, was honored as one of the torch lighters at the official ceremony marking 75 years of Israeli independence. I was so proud to be at the event on Jerusalem’s Har Herzl in person, representing all our members, and to see him light the torch. Dr. Rivkind’s name is synonymous with trauma expertise; he and his unit have saved numerous lives in Israel, and he has

aided victims of terror and natural disasters from Argentina to Nepal, Kenya to Sri Lanka.

Another prominent name in Hadassah medicine today is Dr. Polina Stepensky, head of HMO’s Department of Bone Marrow Transplantation and Cancer Immunotherapy. The Ukrainian-born specialist is the first in Israel to use personalized, genetically modified T-cells to treat multiple myeloma, a blood cancer found in bone marrow. She has already treated more than 70 patients.

As our doctors open new frontiers, Hadassah volunteers often find themselves revisiting old ones. Our members were instrumental in Virginia’s official adoption in February of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. They are also in the forefront of a similar effort in Georgia. And since the beginning of this year, Hadassah members have been active in more than a dozen states in defense of reproductive freedom and, most recently, in opposing a Texas court ruling to repeal approval of mifepristone, part of an abortion drug regimen.

For Hadassah, summer is traditionally the time for some of our most important campaigns, conventions and conferences. In July, our leaders are gathering in Chicago for our National Assembly meeting, business session, symposium and workshops to plot our course for the coming year and beyond.

Summer is sweet. And so is our work.

Our work is too important to take the summer off |

By Rhoda Smolow

360

Without the transformative contributions of our donors, Hadassah Mount Scopus would not be able to provide top-tier care for the 6,000 babies born there each year. With support from our members and donors, a new 10-suite delivery room will house the facilities expected in a state-of-the-art hospital, while also offering the expectant mother the ambience and warmth associated with being at home. Your generosity will help make possible the many innovative services and procedures provided by a multidisciplinary team, and is critical in making sure Hadassah can provide world-class care to mothers and their newborns.

Degrees of Healing is more than a building. It’s about delivering hope to Israel’s mothers and children. Help bring healthy babies into the world while providing the very best care for their moms!

CHAIR Marlene Post

EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lisa Hostein

DEPUTY EDITOR Libby Barnea

SENIOR EDITOR Leah Finkelshteyn

DIGITAL EDITOR Arielle Kaplan

EDITOR EMERITUS Alan M. Tigay

DESIGN/PRODUCTION Regina and Samantha Marsh

Roselyn Bell

Ruth G. Cole

Nancy Falchuk

Gloria Goldreich

Blu Greenberg

Dara Horn

Female Determination

Chutzpah and perseverance in life and on social media

By Lisa Hostein

EDITORIAL BOARD

Ruth B Hurwitz

Francine Klagsbrun

Anne Lapidus Lerner

Curt Leviant

Joy Levitt

Bonnie Lipton

Marcie Natan

Nessa Rapoport

Sima Schuster

Susan S. Smirnoff

Barbara Topol

HADASSAH NATIONAL PRESIDENT Rhoda Smolow

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Whether you’re young, youngish or simply young at heart, we’ve got you covered in this summer issue of Hadassah Magazine.

If images of Barbie dolls on the cover surprised you, you’re not alone. Never did I imagine that Barbie would ever grace that honored spot. But then again, I never knew—or at least I didn’t remember—that Barbie had a Jewish mother.

I was not a big fan of the glamorous doll (or most dolls) when I was young, but it’s been fascinating to learn about Ruth Handler’s motivation for creating Barbie as well as about the iconic figure’s evolution over the decades.

As you’ll read in Renée Rosen’s “Barbie’s Jewish Mother” (page 14), Handler, the co-creator of the Mattel toy company, clearly possessed chutzpah—in a good way—as a young woman pursuing her idea and the persistence needed to turn it into a success.

While Handler exhibited that chutzpah behind the scenes of a major corporation, today, countless young women are displaying their gumption in a much more public forum—on TikTok, the video-sharing app that may soon eclipse all other social media.

It could be my age, but TikTok’s popularity has caught me by surprise. I am, however, trying to understand the attraction. We all should, given that hundreds of millions of mostly, but not all, young people are addicted to it. Plus, many Jewish women and

girls are using TikTok in positive ways to highlight their Jewish pride as well as to combat antisemitism.

To better understand this cultural phenomenon, we offer “The Incredible Reach of #JewishTikTok” by Alexandra Lapkin Schwank (page 20). And when you finish reading, be sure to register for our July 19 Hadassah Magazine Discussion, which will explore more about TikTok with a panel of experts and leading Jewish female influencers. (Find registration information on page 24.)

Elsewhere in the issue, we’ve got more examples of female determination: Tamar Dunbar recounts her mid-life decision to fulfill her lifelong dream to make aliyah (page 16) and Jennifer Lang details her experience living and teaching yoga in Israel in “Yoga and Missiles” (page 26).

Also for your summer-reading pleasure, we bring you many enticing stories: cruising along the Danube (page 34); turning leftovers into real meals (page 38); stirring musical projects (page 40); a preview of Helen Mirren’s portrayal of Golda Meir (page 42); and, as always, an array of book recommendations that will last all summer and beyond.

Lastly, whether you’ve got kids or grandchildren at Jewish summer camp, learn what’s new on the camp scene these days in an interview with Jamie Simon, chief program officer at the Foundation for Jewish Camp (page 56).

On behalf of all of us at the magazine, I wish you a fun, adventurous and safe summer!

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VEGANISM AND HALACHA

As Jews, we are commanded to avoid causing unnecessary suffering to animals (tzaar ba’alei chayim). Paradoxically, most of our holiday meals include animal flesh or animal milk or eggs, all of which result from cruel animal husbandry and none of which can be said to be the result of “necessary” suffering.

It is easy to feel isolated as a Jewish vegan who seeks to avoid the consumption of animal products. You can imagine, then, how joyful I felt to see that the May/June 2023 issue included “Shavuot’s Origins as a Wheat Harvest Festival,” which highlights the laudable campaigns of vegan activists in Israel. I urge fellow readers to research breeding, farming and slaughter practices and then reconsider whether such consumption in today’s day and age is in keeping with our mitzvot.

Dara Lovitz

Bala Cynwyd, Pa.

Veganism is acceptable under Jewish law, for the most part, as is meat consumption and animal milk. But the claims made by Rabbi Asa Keisar in this article are the opinion of his advocacy group—not one shared by the vast bulk of Orthodox rabbis today.

WE ASKED, YOU ANSWERED

Readers share letters about female pioneers in social science and medicine in a follow-up to our May/June 2023 feature “Israeli Women Who Led the Way,” which explored Israeli changemakers who were the first in their fields, from politics and business to science, sports and the arts.

Israeli-born Dr. Ronna

Israeli Women Who Led the Way

Israeli geneticist Batsheva Kerem, Ph.D. , was on the research team that identified and cloned the cystic fibrosis (CF) gene, a discovery that laid the groundwork for highly effective therapies. (Her husband, Dr. Eitan Kerem, a Hadassah Medical Organization pediatrician, was also on the team.) Kerem later established an Israeli national center for CF genetic research and identified the most frequent CF-causing mutations in the Israeli population. This led to the development of a nationwide screening program to identify CF carriers and to enable prenatal diagnosis.

Beryl Rosenstein, M.D. Baltimore, Md.

Keisar’s group hardly acts as a deciding rabbinical body. People can follow his opinion for their personal (not communal) practice, just as people are free to follow the rabbinical majority on this issue. Until Keisar’s views become the majority opinion, based on the halachic approach and method, we should keep in mind that veganism is an extra-Torah ideology that may have its own ideological agenda.

Alan Hoffman East Windsor, N.J.

Hertzano is an otolaryngologist surgeon-scientist who is also the inventor of the gEAR portal (gene Expression Analysis Resource), which is a tool for sharing and analyzing multiomic data, primarily in the hearing field. This year, she joined the National Institutes of Health as chief of the Neurotology Branch. Dr. Hertzano shares her story in a new book edited by me, Lessons Learned: Stories from Women Leaders in STEM

Deborah M. Shlian, M.D. Boca Raton, Fla.

Judith T. Shuval, Ph.D., was the first sociologist to be awarded the Israel Prize for social sciences. For decades, she taught at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem as the Louis and Pearl Rose Professor of Medical Sociology. In 1995, Hadassah awarded her the Henrietta Szold award for her work in public health.

Lois K. Cohen, Ph.D. Bethesda, Md.

In the Torah, Shavuot is about the giving and receiving of the Torah, not about the wheat harvest. As for the tradition of eating dairy for the holiday, there are many possible origins for it. One is that the Torah was given on Shabbat, when Jews would have been unable to implement the laws of shechitah, ritual slaughter, so they ate dairy instead. Another is that the Land of Israel is described as the land of milk and honey in the Torah.

Suzanne Somosi   Brooklyn, N.Y.

RESPECTFUL DISAGREEMENT

Although I have great respect for Alice Shalvi, who was interviewed in the May/June issue, as well as for her accomplishments, I must disagree with the views she shared regarding the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

TECH, TRAILBLAZERS AND TATTOOS

as the first step toward two states for two peoples, a Palestinian state neighboring a Jewish state with members of minority groups having full civil rights in their country of residence.

Toby F. Block Atlanta, Ga.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!

We value your interest in Hadassah Magazine and welcome hearing from you. Please email letters to the editor to letters@ hadassah.org . To read more letters, visit us online at hadassahmagazine.org

True supporters of a better life for the Palestinians should be urging Palestinian leaders to begin building the infrastructure required by a viable state and start preparing their people for peaceful co-existence with their Jewish neighbors. The Israeli businesses in the Israeli-administered portion of Judea and Samaria employ both Israeli and Palestinian workers and serve both Israeli and Palestinian consumers. They should be lauded

A ‘KEEPER’ OF AN ISSUE

Mazel tov on publishing the celebratory May/June issue, which I found to be quite eye-opening in its coverage of Israel at 75.

Since I began reading Hadassah Magazine in 1992, every issue is like comfort food to me. And while I typically donate my magazines to assisted living or skilled nursing communities

ZIONISM

HOSTED BY

when I finish reading them, this issue I will be keeping.

Might I suggest that this issue be gifted to all new Hadassah members? And to young girls on becoming a bat mitzvah? This is a gift that could spark a new generation of Hadassah members as well as inspire young Jewish women.

Bonnie L. Weiss Salem, Mass.

From social media, Israeli music and TV, the tattoo taboo and breaking the glass ceiling to the unique experiences of Zionists balancing multiple identities, this virtual event spotlights Zionism in all its complexities.

TO

Paying It Forward to Young Women in Afghanistan

When Lika Torikashvili was growing up in Tbilisi, Georgia, she liked watching Dora the Explorer cartoons and, like Dora, she imagined what life was like on the other side of the mountains towering over her house. She yearned for a life beyond the limited means of her family, observant Jews in Georgia’s small and ancient Jewish community.

“I knew I’d have to fight for a better future from a very early age,” said the 25-year-old Torikashvili, whose path beyond Georgia

Lessons in Aging Learned From Survivors

started with scholarships to attend high school in London and, later, Bennington College in Vermont.

When still an undergraduate, she served as Georgia’s youth delegate to the United Nations and as a World Jewish Congress Lauder fellow—two roles that furthered the interfaith work she had begun with her high school best friend, a Malaysian student she’d met in London. As teenagers, the two had founded the global art therapy program Paint the World,

Federations of North America (JFNA). Holocaust survivors, Wernick noted, may, for example, resist important health interventions such as walkers or hearing aids out of fear of appearing weak.

“In a concentration camp lineup, you had to look strong to survive,” she explained. As late-in-life needs begin to emerge, those past ordeals can resonate in ways that “make people feel particularly vulnerable and at risk for retraumatization.”

And it’s not just Holocaust survivors: According to research from the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, 90 percent of people will experience a traumatic event by age 65. Wernick and her team’s answer to this challenge—a practice they call Patient-Centered, Trauma-Informed (PCTI) care—has become a national model for responding to traumatized populations.

which uses art and music as vehicles for interfaith dialogue in conflict-ridden areas of the world, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Bosnia and the Middle East.

Torikashvili’s latest project is her most ambitious yet. With seed funding from UNESCO, in 2022 she launched the E-Learning Platform with the goal of using technology to allow women in Afghanistan to access the college education that the Taliban has denied them since regaining power in August 2021.

racial and sexual minorities.

The approach emphasizes sensitivity to culture and gender so that patients feel safe, supported and empowered to participate in personalizing their own care.

“Suppose we’re developing a chair yoga program for older adults with a history of trauma,” said Wernick. “Being seated may provide an extra sense of safety for someone with balance issues and empowerment by allowing that person to be able to fully participate.”

Holocaust survivors’ needs continue to inform the burgeoning fields of aging and trauma.

“They are our teachers and our heroes,” reflected Wernick. “We’re still learning from them.” —Hilary Danailova

Having grown up with Polish-born grandparents who survived the Holocaust, Shelly Rood Wernick understands the long shadow of adversity.

“For people with a history of trauma, past experiences impact them as they age,” said Wernick, the managing director of the Center on Holocaust Survivor Care and Institute on Aging and Trauma, an initiative of the Jewish

Impressed by JFNA’s approach, the United States Department of Health and Human Services has partnered with the organization to roll out PCTI care in agencies nationwide. Since JFNA launched its Holocaust Survivor Care initiative in 2015, federal funding has tripled to $8.5 million annually for the JFNA-designed programs. The target audience has broadened to include veterans, refugees, emergency responders, victims of violence and

Patient-Centered, Trauma-Informed Care has become a national model for responding to traumatized populations.

Hasib Hamdard (right) works with Afghani college students in Kabul to access college courses online.

LIKA TORIKASHVILI

“I myself know what it means to get an education that empowers you to be the woman that you want to be,” she said, noting that her Judaism has influenced her values. “By trying to solve the education crisis in Afghanistan, I am fulfilling my mission as a Jew. I am doing what I can to improve the state of the world.”

Torikashvili implemented the E-Learning pilot project in Kabul, providing internet access,

AI’s Latest Frontier: Jewish Dating

Jdate, JSwipe, JWed, JPeopleMeet, Saw You At Sinai—do we really need another Jewish dating app? Israel-based startup AlgoAI Tech thinks so.

This summer, the company is launching Mujual—short for “the feeling is mutual” with a “j” for Jewish—to inject artificial intelligence into the online dating process. Mujual’s AI matchmaker, a woman they have named Lora, is trained and educated in more than 1,400 studies conducted over the past 45 years on what makes a relationship successful.

To start, Lora interacts with each new user to gather the scope of personal information that is typically obtained through a questionnaire. After matching

hardware and digital resources to link Afghani students to online courses at her alma mater as well as at Bard College in New York. Since the platform’s inception, 20 women have enrolled in computer science, human rights law and photojournalism classes.

Torikashvili directs the project from Vermont while Aisha Khurram, a former youth delegate from Afghanistan who currently lives as

that data with its knowledge of relationships, Lora begins recommending matches.

“This is not the standard ‘log on, swipe through faces, decide’ model. Your profile isn’t just out there on the platform for anyone to find,” said Alexa Eden, AlgoAI’s New York-based head of marketing and business development. “This is a highly curated digital matchmaking solution that gives you high-compatibility dating matches based on what we’ve learned about you on the levels

a refugee in Germany, helps coordinate activities in Afghanistan. Hasib Hamdard, Khurram’s friend and a student at Kabul University, works directly with the female students on the ground. As a man, Hamdard is better able to navigate the women’s access to technology under Taliban rule.

Despite all odds and dangers, Hamdard “advocates for women getting an education and works with us, two women—a Georgian Jew and an Afghan Muslim—to challenge the status quo and fight against the injustices,” Torikashvili said.

“I see the world as a big bubble where we’re all interconnected,” she added. “That’s the whole idea behind this project. Technologies, which are borderless, connect us all.” —Elaine Ellis

of personality, psychology and values.”

“When I get recommended matches,” said Eden, who is single, “it won’t be because we live five miles from each other and both like tennis. It will be because the things I’ve listed about myself are a compatible match based on the relationship research that AlgoAI studied and reverse-engineered into understanding people and understanding matches among people.”

According to Eden, AlgoAI’s own research indicates that Jews across the religious spectrum are experiencing challenges with dating—and that “there is something broken in the system.” Hence the popularity of Netflix’s reality series, Jewish Matchmaking , she added. Soft-launching initially in New York this summer before it is expanded to other major cities, the app will be available through iOS and Android with a “free-mium” model (users will be offered in-app purchases).

“I believe everything happens in its right time,” Eden said. “AI started getting involved in everything, and a Jewish matchmaker show came out on Netflix, and at the same time, we’re launching this platform? When the world is ready for something, it comes.”

—Jordana Benami

Lika Torikashvili (left) and Aisha Khurram met as youth delegates to the United Nations.

COURTESY OF LIKA TORIKASHVILI

Things Change

Jewish survival depends on our ability to adapt

By Anita Diamant

In 1991, it was rare to see a female rabbi leading worship services; today, women comprise more than 25 percent of the rabbinate. In 1991, most American Jews would have found the appearance of rice at a Passover seder meal an abomination—even though that has always been standard fare (and kosher) among non-Ashkenazi Jews. Today, the Sephardi/Mizrachi allowance of kitniyot is gaining traction outside those communities.

Things change. Which is a good thing. In the words of Albert Einstein: “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

I wrote Living a Jewish Life: Jewish Traditions, Customs, and Values for Today’s Families in the early 1990s as an open-door “Introduction to Judaism” that I would have found useful as a young mother raising a Jewish child. The book provides all kinds of options, but there is no “Thou shalt not” and no “Thou shalt.”

I updated the book in 2007, because after 16 years in print, the first edition seemed dated and out of touch. Some omissions in the 1991 version made me cringe. There was

no mention, for example, of gay and lesbian Jews, much less alternative language that would gladden the hearts of same-sex wedding couples. Even so, an update to the update was needed. The new 2023 edition goes further in embracing Jewish diversity, using, for example, inclusive pronouns and a non-binary Shabbat blessing for children in Hebrew and English.

At the same time, much has re–mained the same across all three editions, including the sentence, “Shabbat is the way Jews arrange their lives to stay in touch with what is perfect in the world on a regular basis.” The rhythm of the holidays remains constant and life-cycle rituals continue to give us words to express wonder, joy and grief. But the reason we Jews are still here is our ability to change.

The new living a jewish life reflects a community that is cognizant and proud of its gender, cultural, ethnic and racial diversity. The new edition notes that Ladino melodies have been adopted into the Shabbat liturgy in congregations full of Ashkenazi Jews and that

chuppahs are being made of fabrics that reflect the identity of the people who stand beneath them, including mantillas, saris and rainbow flags.

Of course, technology has changed Jewish life worldwide. First perceived as a threat, the internet has proven itself a convener and connector. Covid accelerated the already burgeoning use of online resources to erase barriers of distance, age and physical ability. Synagogue attendance overall rose during the pandemic. I attended b’nai mitzvahs, weddings and shivas in three states without leaving my home, and I know that my presence mattered to those who were in the rooms where they happened.

The internet has also democratized the vast library of Jewish living and learning—providing access to everything from the Talmud to contemporary biblical commentaries, from Jewish history to Passover recipes from Iraq and India. The web weaves us together in unexpected ways, a Jewish academy without walls, with lectures and classes at all levels accessible to learners of all levels, means and abilities.

For example, years back, when I received emails from people who wished to convert to Judaism, including one from Peru and another from rural Ireland, I didn’t know where to send them. Today, there are many online Introduction to Judaism classes offered by reputable organizations, including by the Reform and Conservative movements.

On July 27, we will be observing Tisha B’Av, which is less a holiday than a communal day of mourning. It is a somber yahrzeit for the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed twice: in the year 586 BCE by the Babylonians, and again, seven centuries later, in 70 C.E. by the Romans.

The end of the Temple meant there would be no more tithes or sacrifices, no more pilgrimages to Jerusalem, no more hereditary priesthood. It was seen as the end of a national identity for the Jewish people, most of whom were exiled from Israel and dispersed; it was feared to be a sign that God had withdrawn from the world and would no longer intervene on our behalf. Without a homeland, it surely seemed like the end of our story.

But the end of the Temple was not the end of the Jews. That calamity made it necessary to create a new Jewish civilization. So, prayers and songs replaced tithes and burnt offerings. There was room for interpretation and debate about Jewish observance and laws as seen in the Talmud, where even losing arguments are recorded for posterity. The Jewish home became a mikdash ma’at, a little sanctuary, where the dinner table was an altar and women as well as men recited blessings.

It is hard for Jews to trust change given our history of grievous loss— from the destruction of the Temple to the murder of six million in the Holocaust to current threats to our safety. But our tradition tells us to hold fast to the Torah, which is called “a tree of life.” That beloved and kaleidoscopic metaphor might teach us to have faith in change.

The trees in my neighborhood appear to die in winter only to blossom in the spring. We now know that in some forests, tree roots are connected to one another, nourishing the young and sick, supporting the well-being of the whole community. Etz chaim hee, she is a tree of life.

Anita Diamant is the author of five novels, including The Red Tent, and six guidebooks to contemporary Jewish life. Her newest book, an update of Living a Jewish Life, is slated to be published in September.

RECALLING Ruth Handler’s VISION & CHUTZPAH

Leave it to a jewish mother to create the world’s most iconic doll. Barbie isn’t affiliated with a specific religion, but her roots trace back to Ruth Handler, the daughter of Polish Jewish immigrants.

After arriving at Ellis Island, her father, Jacob Mosko, moved to Denver to work on the railroad before starting his own trucking company. From a young age, Handler, the youngest of 10 children, heard her Yiddish-speaking parents’ stories of Poland and how antisemitism impacted the family financially. To make ends meet, everyone worked, including the women. Handler inherited her father’s entrepreneurial spirit and his gambling gene, although she preferred to roll the dice in business rather than at the craps table. When it came to creating a doll that would appeal to young girls, she was willing to risk it all, potentially jeopardizing the future of Mattel, the toy

By Renée Rosen

company she helped create with her husband, Elliot.

Handler met Elliot at a B’nai B’rith dance in 1932 when they were in high school, and the couple married in 1938. Though his grandfather was a rabbi, the yeshiva was not for him. Elliot was an artist and an inventor. When he and his friend Harold “Matt” Matson started making Lucite picture frames in their garage, Ruth began selling them. By 1945, the three had formed Mattel, combining both men’s names, despite Ruth being the driving force behind selling their products.

Matson exited the company in 1946, leaving the Handlers at the helm. When you mixed Elliot’s talent with Ruth’s moxie, they made an unbeatable team.

Thanks in part to the Barbie movie set to open nationwide on July 21, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the doll is at the height of her popularity. But that wasn’t always the case. Early on, Handler faced an uphill battle trying to convince Mattel’s all-male board of directors, including her husband, that a doll with breasts was suitable for little girls.

Handler got the idea for a grownup doll in the early 1950s, after

watching her children at play: Kenneth had toy guns, trucks and soldiers whereas Barbara had baby dolls, reinforcing the narrow notion that little girls should grow up to be housewives and mothers. The only fashion dolls at the time were paper dolls, which looked like adult women, but the clothes were flimsy and held in place by even flimsier tabs, resulting in more frustration than fun for Handler’s daughter and her peers. She wanted to create a doll that would empower girls to believe they could do and be anything.

That idea wouldn’t take shape until several years later. In 1956, while vacationing in Europe, Handler passed by a cigar shop and spotted a novelty gag doll in the window. Her name was Bild Lilli, and she was a prostitute, based on a character in a German comic strip for adults. Despite her occupation, Bild Lilli was exactly the type of doll Handler had been envisioning. She bought two: one for her daughter and one for the men at Mattel, who thought the doll was inappropriate,

(CLOCKWISE FROM TOP) SHUTTERSTOCK; ALAMY; MATTEL, INC.

Barbie. After finally getting Mattel on board, Handler had to find a cost-effective way to manufacture the doll. Creating a figure with rooted hair, detailed makeup and soft plastic took a feat of engineering. Then came the wardrobe and the challenges of designing high fashion at one-sixth the scale of a real woman. Through fits and starts, Barbie was perfected.

But, when Mattel launched her at the 1959 American Toy Fair in New York City, the doll was a flop. Handler, however, refused to admit defeat. That June, when school let out for the summer, Handler began airing a Barbie commercial during The Mickey Mouse Club, a children’s television show. With an infectious jingle, the commercial showcased the “Teenage Fashion Model” (Barbie’s first career) wearing her signature zebra-striped swimsuit and an array

of party dresses. Soon, little girls everywhere began clamoring for Barbie. The rest, as they say, is history.

By the early 1960s, Mattel was flooded with fan mail from girls asking for Barbie to marry her perpetual boyfriend, Ken, and have a baby. Handler refused, not wanting to reinforce the idea that young girls should aspire only to marriage and motherhood. Despite donning numerous wedding gowns, Barbie has never walked down the aisle. Instead of a baby, in 1964, Handler gave Barbie a kid sister, Skipper.

The ever-independent Barbie has pursued more than 200 careers. She’s been everything from a fashion designer, nurse and astronaut (back in the 1960s) to a surgeon and Olympic skier (1970s) to a presidential candidate (early 2000s). More recently, she embarked on a career in STEM—a far cry from 1992’s “Teen Talk” Barbie who, with a pull of a string, uttered those damning words: “Math class is tough.”

That wouldn’t be the first or last

time that Barbie met with disapproval from feminists. In 1976, Mattel released “Growing Up Skipper,” a doll that went from flatchested pubescence to breast-sprouting womanhood with the crank of her arm. The outrage was swift and added to the criticism of Barbie, who’d already been blamed for causing body dysmorphia, eating disorders and low self-esteem among girls.

Yet for every Barbie hater, there have always been twice as many who embraced her. Today, the doll is available in nearly two dozen skin tones as well as multiple hair and eye colors and body shapes. And earlier this year, Mattel released a Barbie with Down syndrome.

As a historical novelist, I was immediately drawn to Ruth Handler’s story in much the same way I’d been drawn to write about another Jewish trailblazer, Estée Lauder, in Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl. Both Lauder and Handler, who died in 2002 at 85, were tough, hardworking women who had a lot of chutzpah.

As I close in on the first draft of my Ruth Handler novel, my promise to readers is this: Whether you loved playing with Barbie or shaved off all her hair in a fit of protest, my novel, The Doll Makers, will speak to the feminists in all of us.

Renée Rosen is a USA Today best-selling author of historical fiction, including Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl (See review on page 48.)

Barbie’s Origin Story Ruth Handler (left and with husband, Elliot, and children, Barbara and Kenneth, around 1952) wanted to create a doll that would empower girls to believe they could be anything—including (opposite page) a presidential candidate and astronaut like Sally Ride.

From Generation to Generation

Tamar Dunbar

Israel was always front and center in the observant Jewish home in the small southern town of Danville, Va., where I grew up in the 1960s. Like today, those, too, were times of upheaval and social unrest. Yet, despite the turbulence on the outside, our home was a fairly peaceful oasis filled with Yiddishkeit.

My family went to synagogue regularly, kept a kosher home and celebrated the holidays. On Sundays, we’d eat matzah brei, even when it wasn’t Passover, and listen to the melodies of Joel Grey and The Barry Sisters as well as the comedy routines of Zero Mostel and Alan Sherman. My father was active on the synagogue board and in B’nai B’rith and my mother seemed to always be going to Hadassah meetings, both locally and regionally.

Our pushke for the Jewish National Fund never left the kitchen table. In our tiny Jewish community, my mother was known as the “tree lady.” She would call the other Jewish women and ask them to plant trees in Israel for memorials, birthdays, anniversaries and life-cycle events. She even reached out to neighboring Christians and convinced them to plant trees in the Holy Land. She and my father held fundraisers in support of Hadassah’s hospitals in Jerusalem, and they traveled to Israel.

The women of Hadassah and their support for Israel were an important

part of my mother’s life, and now I can see in my own life how that support has come full circle.

As a young teen, i had dreams of moving to Israel to become a kibbutznik. Fed a diet of books about Hannah Szenes, Henrietta Szold and the early pioneers, I, too, saw myself as a valiant Woman of Zion. My parents sent me and my sister to a Jewish summer camp for girls, and we traveled to cities with large Jewish populations to attend Israeli fairs. I formed friendships in both places with several Israeli scouts; we became pen pals and corresponded for years.

During the Yom Kippur War, I mailed a letter to Prime Minister Golda Meir, my heroine. I was 13 and wrote about running away to join the Israel Defense Forces. Fostering the romantic dreams of a young feminist and Zionist, I was determined to defend the Jewish homeland.

A month later, I received a typed response from the prime minister thanking me for my dedication but telling me to wait until I finished my education. My family needed me, she wrote, and I could raise awareness about Israel in the meantime. Then, when I grew older, Israel would be proud to welcome me.

That letter, along with the letters from my Israeli pen pals and other cherished items, eventually got

packed away into a box that I initially kept under my bed.

Then came university, a move cross-country to California and marriage, followed by the births of four daughters. There was little time for outside activities. We attended synagogue services most Friday nights, but my attention was largely focused on our ever-expanding family. Making aliyah became a foggy dream of the past. We were creating a successful life in Southern California, and Israel was not part of the picture.

When our youngest daughter was 6, I gave birth to a son, Max. Both of my parents passed away before getting to meet the newest member of our family. Years later, one of Max’s summer camp directors introduced the campers to the comedy of Alan Sherman. Out of our garage came a box of my dad’s old vinyl records: Sherman, Mickey Katz and all the greats.

But that wasn’t all I found in the box. At the bottom were the letters from my pen pals and Golda Meir as well as a few of my mother’s old Hadassah Magazines. My girls got a kick out of the ’60s and ’70s fashions worn by the women featured in the issues, and I tried a couple of the recipes.

In 2011, as a bar mitzvah present for Max, my husband, John, and I

Fulfilling a lifelong dream of living in Israel | By

Karmi’el in Northern Israel

took him to Israel. It was the first time for all of us, and we felt an instant connection to the land and the people. Perhaps it was the complete surprise of seeing the names of my parents, Dr. Milton and Thelma Weissman, on donor plaques at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, or seeing the blue and white flag waving at the top of Masada. It could have been the friendliness and hospitality of the people. Strangers, when they found out we were visiting for the first time, invited us to dinner and to stay in their homes. We knew we had to be a part of this country, a part of our people.

In 2014, Max graduated from high school at the age of 16, having been homeschooled, as his sisters had been. With the girls grown and immersed in their own lives and careers—one was married; another, our youngest, was in university— John and I decided it was time to sell our home and take the plunge.

The following year, we and Max made aliyah, settling in Karmi’el, a lovely mid-size city in Northern Israel. We chose it because it has a sizeable English-speaking population, and its topography reminded us of Southern California.

John, who had retired by that time, enjoyed a new volunteering mission—bringing American baseball to the youth of the North and coaching several newly formed teams. I started a blog about our adventures as olim chadashim, new immigrants, and reinvented myself as a freelance writer. We were, and still are, working on our conversational Hebrew.

Leaving behind all that was familiar to move to Israel was, perhaps, the hardest thing we’ve ever done, but it was also one of the most rewarding. We were gradually and successfully rebuilding our lives. There was so much to experience and learn:

a new language and culture with a diversity of people, new places to explore, different foods, new styles of liturgy and new friends to make. We were living the dream.

After finishing mechinah , a gap-year program between high school and the army, Max became a soldier in the IDF. He served in the Foreign Relations division, working with the United Nations Disengagement Observation Forces and the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization along the Golan Heights border with Syria. During his service, Max received Israeli security clearance that enabled him to work on classified projects.

I made friends on social media and in person with other Englishspeaking parents with children in the IDF. We helped each other cope with the worries of having kids serving close to Syria’s civil war and on the front lines during the Gaza conflict in 2021. We all looked forward to the heaps of smelly, dirty uniforms dropped on the floor when our kids came home for a weekend. How one’s perspective changes with a loved one in the IDF!

Every two weeks, Max came home to sleep, eat and unwind. Except for conversations about new friends and superficial talk of army life, he never went into detail about his job or duties. We knew not to press him. We sometimes had

a house full of Lone Soldiers, those without families in Israel, from all over the world. We hosted Thanksgiving dinners for them at our home and July 4th barbecues at the picnic grounds just off the base. We regularly took food and treats to the soldiers for birthdays, Hanukkah and Purim.

Max finished his regular service in 2020. After Covid lockdowns ended in the summer of 2021, John and I returned to the United States for a visit. Our family had expanded to include two new sons-in-law and four new grandchildren.

pediatric heart patients who required specialized surgery. The army helped Fatima and Ahmed cross the border at the end of June. They were then taken to the Poriya medical center, where Hadassah pediatric cardiologist Dr. Julius Golender examined Ahmed.

Dr. Golender had been making the two-and-a-half-hour trip from Jerusalem to Tiberias once a month to join a team of doctors treating Syrian children. Upon examining Ahmed, he found that the child had a life-threatening congenital heart condition called Tetralogy of Fallot and coordinated the baby’s care and transfer to Hadassah.

“Given the condition of the baby,” explained Dr. Golender, “it was clear that if he went back to Syria he would die there. So we arranged for emergency transport to Hadassah and immediate surgery.”

By Linda Gradstein

Helping Neighborsin Need

help them. But I also think it changes attitudes. They go back home to their families in Syria and tell them that the Israelis are human beings and that they helped them.” Israel’s medical relief program extended beyond children. The Galilee Medical Center treated more than 2,500 Syrians of all ages since civil war broke out in 2011, even before the start of Operation Good Neighbor. Wounded Syrians were able to choose between Jordan, Turkey or Israel for medical care, and Israel’s humanitarian relief aids Syrians devastated by war

war began seven years ago. The situation is constantly in flux in the war-torn country. In June, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad launched a campaign to defeat rebel forces in and around the city, placing Dara’a on the front lines, and in late July, Syrian government troops recaptured the entire southwest area bordering Israel’s Golan Heights.

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Fatima gave birth to Ahmed in a makeshift clinic near her hometown; due to the conflict, there is little medical infrastructure in southern Syria. A doctor at the clinic mentioned that the newborn might have heart problems and should be monitored, but mother and child were sent home a few hours after the birth. Fatima had noted a bluish tinge to Ahmed’s skin, but busy with her other three children—including a 15-monthold toddler—she did not become concerned until he began weakening. Through word of mouth, she heard about an Israeli pediatric cardiology program that treated Syrian children, and she decided to travel to the border between the two countries to find help for her ailing child. The cardiology initiative was one facet of Israel’s extensive relief efforts on the border with its longtime foe. The program was part of Operation Good Neighbor, a complex Israel

Defense Forces humanitarian aid effort. Since June 2016, the army has provided food, supplies and basic medical treatment to Syrians unable to access hospitals or physicians because of the war, all the while maintaining a policy of nonintervention in the conflict. In August, with Assad’s troops mere miles away from the border and the situation there increasingly complex, the future of the Good Neighbor program was uncertain.

As part of the operation, the army facilitated transportation from Syria into northern Israel for sick children and accompanying parents. Once inside Israel, most of the children were treated at the Baruch Padeh Medical Center in Poriya-Tiberias, where the cardiology initiative was based, or at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, both in northern Israel. Hadassah Medical Center, located further from the conflict, reached out to provide care for

At Hadassah, pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Erez Eldad spent five hours operating on the baby, successfully. Ahmed was one of seven Syrian children with heart problems brought to Hadassah Hospital by Operation Good Neighbor. Four required catheterizations; three, including Ahmed, needed surgery. The procedures— which cost $10,000 to $15,000 per child, after a significant discount from Hadassah—were partly funded by the Tel Aviv-based Peres Center for Peace and Innovation. Donations also came from private individuals and organizations, including Christian churches in the United States as well as other Israeli nonprofits.

many chose Israel, said Dr. Eyal chief of head and neck surgery Galilee Medical Center. Dressed in turquoise scrubs, Sela said he was impressed by first aid administered to the victims of war violence in Syria, despite lack of medical infrastructure. injuries we see are high-velocity shootings from snipers,” he group of visiting reporters “They cause injuries to the head that are sometimes hard repair.”

Food and medical were also part of Good Neighbor, some 10,000 Syrian who had fled heavy fi Dara’a area, settling part of the summer in the Israeli border. In in mid-July, the army 72 tons of food, about 9,000 liters of fuel full of medicine and ment to the refugees. During that time, transfer some 100 rescue workers their families from

“There are humanitarian reasons to

“They are our neighbors, and they don’t have any access to medical care,” said Rachel Hadari, director of the Peres Center’s department of medicine, business and environment.

Max Dunbar in his fatigues and with his IDF unit (left) along the Syrian border in a 2018 ‘Hadassah Magazine’ feature.

her 3-month-old son, Ahmed, in her arms, Fatima smoothes back his soft, brown hair and makes cooing noises at the sleeping infant.

At one point, we stayed in the home of old friends from our California synagogue. Our host, Susan, had some old copies of Hadassah Magazine scattered across her coffee table. Drinking coffee by myself early one morning, I picked up the September/ October 2018 issue and began thumbing through this familiar magazine. My heart skipped a few beats

when I came across a picture of Max and a couple members of his unit—in uniform, helmeted and wearing flak jackets. Even with his back to the camera, I recognized him and his buddies. The article was about Operation Good Neighbor, the humanitarian aid efforts Israel undertook in the dead of night at secret locations on the Syrian border. The soldiers delivered palettes of unmarked food, water, diapers and essential supplies to the Syrian civilians caught up in the civil war. Syrians would somehow hear of

the undercover operation and carry their sick and wounded children, some needing surgeries, some with cancer, to the makeshift triage tents at the border. Sometimes IDF medics and nurses would administer aid on the spot. The more serious cases were airlifted to local hospitals. My son had been there, but we had had no knowledge of his involvement in this dangerous operation.

Immediately, I called Max in Israel to ask him about what I had seen in the magazine: Yes, he said, he had been there. Yes, he had worked to help coordinate the operation, the security at the border checkpoints and the loading and unloading of supplies.

Max began to open up, and the

“Passover magic.”

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

 “A generally lighthearted tale, but one that nods at the more serious history behind the holiday.”

— HORN BOOK, STARRED REVIEW

“Even readers unfamiliar with the tale will find themselves drawn in by Eshet’s lyrical ink and watercolor drawings.”

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

John, Tamar and Max Dunbar in Israel

formerly classified stories started to flow. He recounted the time the soldiers dressed up as clowns, juggling and performing card and balloon tricks for the small children to allay their fears. He told us about distributing gifts that the neighboring Jewish families of the Golan had collected for the Syrian families: toys, baby bottles, books, blankets, clothes.

He recalled how he had helped arrange a tense, pre-dawn IDF rescue of members of a Syrian volunteer search and rescue group, known as the White Helmets, who were being pursued by terrorists.

My parents would have been so proud of the involvement of their grandson in this daring military mission. I, however, was glad I only

learned of all this after the fact.

After the army, max entered Reichman University in Herzliya, where he has continued with the foreign relations track, majoring in government and international diplomacy. Now in his last semester, he has been named an Argov Fellow, part of a group of 20 distinguished students who travel the world representing Israel. He is currently working on his capstone project on the normalization of Israeli-Arab relations in North Africa.

Nearly 10 years after our aliyah, one of our daughters, along with her husband and baby, has started their own preparations to immigrate to

Israel. Hopefully, the rest of our daughters and their families will follow soon.

I will always be grateful to Hadassah. It was that box in the garage, with the letters and Hadassah Magazines, that rekindled my flame for the Jewish homeland. And it was the September/October 2018 article at my friend’s home that elicited all those IDF stories from Max and brought our son closer to us.

We are home at last, fulfilling my lifelong dream. I’m sure my parents, of blessed memory, are looking down upon us and smiling.

Tamar Dunbar is a freelance writer living in Northern Israel. She has written for the Jewish Journal and Times of Israel. You can follow her blog, israeldreams.com

The Incredible Reach of #JewishTikTok

And the Jewish women who are fueling its rise

By Alexandra Lapkin Schwank

Here’s all the kosher food my kids ate at Disney World,” Miriam Ezagui shares in one of the many TikTok videos she filmed during her family’s May trip to Orlando, Fla. As she lists off the kosher meals and snacks, her followers see her daughters—Naomi, Zahava, Aviva and Dassy, all wearing princess dresses— slurp down ramen noodles and munch on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches brought from home as well as enjoy popcorn and strawberry ice pops bought in the park.

When the family tried hot food at a Disney restaurant, which came double wrapped since it was heated in a non-kosher oven, Zahava made a face after taking a bite.

“She was not a fan,” Ezagui tells her acolytes.

If Ezagui’s name is unfamiliar to

you, then you’re probably not among her 1.7 million followers on TikTok. The married 37-year-old, wearing a wig or headscarf in keeping with Orthodox practice, lets people into every aspect of her life, from her work as a labor and delivery nurse in Brooklyn, N.Y., to parenting four daughters to her marriage to Aron Ezagui, a paramedic.

Her reach on the platform is astounding. That TikTok—the app’s name is now synonymous with an individual video post—about kosher food at Disney World received 3.5 million views alone and over 400,000 likes. Meanwhile, the post’s comments section opened up a lively discussion. One user recommended a nearby kosher restaurant in the Orlando area. Another excitedly noted that she saw the Ezagui family at Disney World.

But not everyone had something positive to say.

“Just for once make them have normal kids’ food, you are in DISNEY, why go if you are not allowing them to enjoy their snacks,” one commenter chimed in.

“We don’t pick and choose being Jewish,” Ezagui replied to that comment. “We are Jewish 24/7 even while on vacation.”

For Ezagui, who behind her glasses and broad smile habitually exudes a calm, friendly and unpretentious presence on TikTok, her biggest motivation as a content creator is to educate people about her Orthodox way of life.

“I’m breaking down walls,” she said in an interview, “and I’m giving people a window into my life so that they can have a better understanding of how Orthodox Jews live.”

Ezagui is far from the only Jewish woman on TikTok, a platform that allows users to create and watch short-form videos on any topic. Originally called Musical.ly, the app was launched in 2014 by Chinese entrepreneurs, then acquired and renamed TikTok in November 2017 by the Beijing-based tech company ByteDance. Since then,

Sarah Haskell appears at a TikTok-sponsored event and in an empowering video shared with her nearly 150,000 followers.

TikTok has skyrocketed in popularity and amassed 150 million monthly users in the United States and more than one billion users worldwide.

The app has likewise attracted legions of Jewish content creators. Indeed, the hashtag #jewishtiktok has received 3.4 billion views to date. Among them are many Jewish girls and women of all ages sharing everything from cringy dating stories to SpongeBob SquarePants lyrics sung in Yiddish to glimpses of living in Israel.

Food, of course, is hugely popular. Among the Jewish women hosting the most-followed food accounts are Romanian-born social media recipe developer Carolina Gelen; Melinda Strauss, an Orthodox food and lifestyle blogger; and Anat Ishai, a Canadian whose specialty is challah.

Many performers and artists use the platform to grow their audience. Marcia Belsky, a stand-up comedian and musician, shares clips from her act in which she jokes about growing up Jewish in Tulsa, Okla. Libby Walker does impressions of a Jewish mother she has named Sheryl Cohen and reenacts funny summer camp memories.

Book blogger Amanda Spivack is committed to expanding her coverage of books by Jewish authors on TikTok and on Instagram, where she co-hosts the Matzah Book Soup book club. Among her recent recommendations were My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin and Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly.

It’s no accident that there’s something for every Jewish person—or any person interested in Jewish culture—on TikTok.

“As Jewish users began creating and engaging with Jewish-themed content, TikTok’s algorithm gradually started amplifying and recommending such content to a wider audi-

ence,” said Tom Divon, a Ph.D. student at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is researching digital culture as it relates to the Holocaust, antisemitism and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on TikTok.

He has noticed a recent change in TikTok from a platform purely for entertainment to one where users are engaging in serious conversations about history, identity and politics.

“One of the strengths of TikTok is its ability to disseminate information and spark conversations rapidly,” Divon said. “As more users recognize the potential of TikTok as a platform for meaningful discussions, the range and depth of these conversations are likely to expand.”

Auschwitz survivors tova Friedman and Lily Ebert are part of this evolution. Each hosts a TikTok account— Friedman with the help of her 17-year-old grandson, Aron Goodman, and Ebert with her 19-year-old grandson, Dov Forman. Both women share their stories of survival, educate about the Shoah and answer followers’ questions.

“I was on the last train from Hungary to Auschwitz,” Ebert said in a TikTok shared on May 15, the

day marking 79 years since the first deportation of Hungarian Jews. “There, they killed my mother, my brother and my youngest sister. I want from the world at least one thing: that this terrible tragedy should not happen again.”

Most TikTokers are decades younger than Ebert and Friedman. According to data compiled earlier this year by Comscore, a media analytics company, TikTok’s highest percentage of users are also its youngest: 32.5 percent of account holders are between the ages of 10 and 19.

Those numbers stand in stark contrast to the most recent data available from Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. According to Meta, only 3.9 percent of Facebook users are between 13 and 17, and its highest percentage of users—at 23.8 percent—are those aged 25 to 34. On Instagram, 8 percent of users are 13 to 17; and 30.8 percent, the highest percentage audience on the platform, are 18 to 24.

Sarah Haskell wants to show the world that not all religious Jewish women look and act the same. Using the handle @thatrelatablejew, the 23-year-old strives to be just that. While she grew up in an Orthodox home and continues to be observant,

Miriam Ezagui brings her 1.7 million followers with her and her family to Disney World and to try on new sheitels in Brooklyn.

today she eschews religious labels.

“When I was younger,” she said during an interview, “I saw people online who were representing Judaism, and they were either rabbis or people who had a Jewish identity but weren’t practicing religiously. All of that is great, but I wanted to see someone who looks like me online—an average, modern Jewish person who incorporates Judaism in their life.”

Haskell, who has long blond hair and gray eyes, began creating TikToks during the Covid-19 pandemic in the bedroom of the apartment she shares with two roommates. The process, she said, “snowballed.” She now posts at least one video—it could be about touring a kosher supermarket with her mother or locating Star of David donuts at a kosher Dunkin— every three to four days and enjoys it so much that she has made a career out of social media. She currently works as the social media manager for a custom men’s suit company.

In a recent TikTok, Haskell discussed living in a Manhattan neighborhood popular among Jewish singles in their 20s and early 30s.

“Most synagogues in my area will have a kiddush after davening is over, and people tend to treat that almost like a dating mixer,” she said with a cheeky smile about her local Shabbat scene.

Thirty-four-year-old Margot Touitou also has something to say about the Jewish dating scene, a frequent topic both on her TikTok feed and on her podcast Kiss and Tel Aviv, which she describes as “the first and only podcast about dating, sex and relationships in the White City.”

On TikTok, she typically posts videos every two to three days that highlight the ups and downs of living and dating in Tel Aviv. She routinely offers advice to recent immigrants

based on her own experience making aliyah from Denver 10 years ago and takes lighthearted jabs at Israeli culture—all done with a wry sense of humor.

“Here are four things that start on time in Israel,” Touitou, a freelance social media consultant and coach, said in a TikTok. On her list: loud construction beginning at 7 a.m.; drivers honking the second that a traffic light turns yellow (traffic lights change from red to yellow and then green in Israel); Israeli men hitting on female tourists the moment they arrive at the beach; and Shabbat.

“There’s ‘trauma porn’ on social media when it comes to Israel,” Touitou said in an interview on a day of intense rocket fire and airstrikes between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Israel Defense Forces. “No one needs to see another video of a rocket siren. It’s important to show the reality, but sometimes people just want to escape.”

Touitou said she accumulated 1,000-plus followers after only two weeks of posting videos, which could be attributed to a TikTok feature that allows creators to gain exposure to new audiences. Unlike with Meta, TikTok users, when they open the app, are automatically taken to their “For You” feeds, which spool endless

videos from creators the user does not follow.

“On Instagram, I have a community, people who come back every time,” she said. “But on TikTok, I’m able to reach new audiences. The reach on TikTok is unmatched.”

According to Touitou, her videos usually take anywhere from five minutes to several hours to create. However, she added, one of her most popular ones, which has surpassed 6 million views, was made in 30 seconds. In the clip, Touitou is at the beach and says, “I just saw a guy who is so my type. Look!” She then points her camera at a big red flag.

Ezagui, the Orthodox nurse and mother, is a prolific TikToker who posts one or more videos daily. She said that it takes her about an hour to film and edit each 60- to 90-second clip.

As with most social media platforms, there are ways for TikTokers to monetize their accounts. Many consumer businesses pay top influencers to feature their products or services, for example.

Ezagui is a member of the TikTok Creator Fund, which compensates creators for well-performing videos. The platform has not divulged exactly how it pays its contributors, but reports indicate that TikTok pays between 2 and 4 cents for every 1,000 views.

TikTok is also a great place to advertise your side hustle. Haskell promotes sweatshirts that she sells that are emblazoned with a Star of David. Ezagui advertises the natural childbirth class she teaches—“Birthing with Miriam”—to potential new clients.

It was while on maternity leave in December 2021 that Ezagui first began making videos about one of

Survivor Lily Ebert and her grandson Dov Forman share her Holocaust experiences to educate and inspire their 2 million-plus followers.

her passions: babywearing, i.e., carrying a baby in a woven wrap. But what began as a hobby while caring for a newborn soon evolved into something far more meaningful.

Last year, when The View co-host Whoopi Goldberg made a comment that the Holocaust was not about race, Ezagui, whose grandmother, Lilly Applebaum Malnik, is a survivor of Auschwitz, said that she realized that antisemitism often comes from a place of ignorance— so why not use her feed to educate? Her bubbe now makes the occasional cameo with her on TikTok to discuss her experience during the Holocaust.

Ezagui said she receives a range of questions about her religious observance from non-Jewish followers: “What is kosher? Why do you cover your hair with hair? Would you still accept your children if they didn’t want to be Orthodox?” She answers most, including about Jewish laws that govern a relationship between a husband and wife and talks openly about her miscarriages and breastfeeding in public. The one subject that she does not touch is politics.

“I make a point not to talk about anything political,” Ezagui said. “It’s something that people are constantly asking me, but I’m not here to be a political figure.”

But eschewing politics or other potentially sensitive topics is not enough to deter the haters. “I get hate every single day on the internet, from one angle or another,” Touitou said. “Whether it’s misogynistic if I’m talking about dating, or Jew hatred if I’m talking about my Jewish identity or Israel.”

According to Divon, the Hebrew University researcher, “TikTok does have community guidelines that prohibit hate speech, but not directly antisemitism” as a category for reporting.

TikTok is not the only online breeding ground for anti-Jewish bias and hatred of other groups. All social networks have become notorious for spreading hate speech, especially from “trolls”—people who try to instigate conflict and hostility online.

TikTok is unique, explained Daniela Jaramillo-Dent, an internet scholar at the University of Zurich, when compared to the Meta platforms because of its “duet” and “stitch” features that allow trolls to attack influencers by co-opting their content.

In a stitch, a user takes a five-second excerpt of a video previously posted by someone else and overlays that recording with their own audio and captions. A duet allows a user to create a split screen, showing their

reaction to an existing video.

For example, user @itsandrewv shared antisemitic tropes in a duet created with a video that Haskell, the young Manhattanite, posted showing her family conducting morning prayers at an airport en route to Florida. “Jews run the world. Do you know why? Because they are smarter than everybody. Google it,” he said alongside a video of the Haskell family davening.

Divon noted that because Meta

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Miriam Ezagui @miriamezagui

Sarah Haskell @thatrelatablejew

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Margot Touitou takes lighthearted jabs at Israeli culture and the dating scene in Tel Aviv for her almost 20,000 followers on TikTok.

platforms have been around longer and have been the subject of governmental and international committees that impose fines for data breaches, the company has been more proactive in addressing hate speech than TikTok, though Meta, too, continues to face criticism for not doing enough to police speech.

Sabine von Mering, professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Brandeis University and co-editor of the book Antisemitism on Social Media, said that of all the biases on the major platforms, the most pervasive and toxic is sexism.

“There is a lot of racism and antisemitism, Islamophobia, you name it,” von Mering said. “But women are the prime target of hate on social media, and especially women who dare to speak up, like politicians, public figures, etc.”

“The great thing about TikTok, you’re reaching so many people who are not even Jewish,” Haskell began by saying when asked about her experience with trolls. “The downside

MAGAZINE DISCUSSION

Join us on Wednesday, July 19 at 7 PM ET as  Hadassah Magazine  Executive Editor Lisa Hostein presents a crash course on TikTok, the social media video-sharing app favored by Gen Z and millennials. The program will feature a panel of experts, including Miriam Ezagui and Libby Walker, two Jewish women who are using the platform to spread messages of religious pride as well as challenge antisemitism. Register with this QR code or online at hadassahmagazine.org .

of TikTok is they need to do a better job filtering out antisemitic content.”

Ultimately, she said, there aren’t enough hours in the day to report and block each troll. “Sometimes, I think, if I’m doing that, I’m letting them win,” she explained. “Why should I take hours of my time correcting them?”

Dealing with trolls and even death threats is a balancing act, said Ezagui, and she has had to grow thicker skin. “To say that it doesn’t affect me wouldn’t be completely true,” she said, “but it doesn’t stop me from doing what I’m doing.”

Touitou has a similar perspective. “I don’t think we’re going to end or solve antisemitism by showing up online,” she reflected, “but I do think we will combat it by just showing up as Jews and not letting people scare us away from using our voice.”

And then there are the messages of support from the communities these women have built online.

Haskell, who shares the story of her religious journey—rebelling against her strict upbringing as a teenager and later becoming more observant on her own terms—has attracted an audience of other young people who have similarly struggled with religious identity.

For her part, Touitou has fostered a community of Jewish Americans living and traveling in Israel who watch her TikToks for advice. Nevertheless, she said, being a creator can sometimes feel isolating.

“When you put yourself on the internet, you feel like you’re shouting into the ether,” said Touitou, who shoots most of her videos in her apartment or on walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, often wearing her trademark big black sunglasses and her dark blond hair casually swept up in a bun. “But when you actually meet the people whose lives have been impacted positively by your content—that’s why I do it.” She said she encounters followers almost daily who recognize her from TikTok.

Jewish TikTokers are now being recognized by more than their followers. In May, Haskell was invited to the White House to take part in a Jewish American Heritage Month celebration, where she filmed several TikToks.

Ezagui attended and posted from the premiere of A Small Light, a miniseries about Miep Gies, the Dutch woman who helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis.

And Touitou participated in the Tel Aviv Institute’s Jews Talk Justice training, where she and other influencers honed their expertise in speaking about their Jewish identities online.

“Social media has been an opportunity for so many people for whom normal media is not an option,” Touitou said. “Whether they’re a person of color or Jewish or queer, whom traditional forms of media often overlook. On social media, you can have a voice.”

Alexandra Lapkin Schwank is a freelance writer for several Jewish publications. She lives with her family in the Boston area.

Libby Walker reenacts a Jewish summer camp scene for her more than 50,000 followers.

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Yoga and Missiles

Grounding myself through asanas and deep breathing

By Jennifer Lang

The morning yoga class that I teach started late, each of us stressed and skittish. Seconds after we had all taken a comfortable, cross-legged seat, the unmistakable up-and-down air-raid siren wailed. I stood, opened the door to the sealed room and ushered in my students—a Middle Eastern melting pot of students from America, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Britain, Canada and Turkey as well as a few sabras.

Frantic, they dialed home to check on children and spouses. A far-off muted boom, followed by a second, louder boom made the hulking steel door and walls throughout our house shudder. After hearing alerts and running for cover for the past 10 days in Raanana, a peaceful city in the center of Israel, we knew that either a missile had landed or that the Iron Dome defense system had felled it, causing fragments to fall from the sky. This was neither our first time, nor sadly would it be our last, spent huddling while missiles targeted Israel.

Alert over, the class and I trudged back to our mats. It was tough to

assume the position of teacher. My students expected me to lead them, to help them experience the magical mind-body connection of this ancient practice, but I was wallowing in sour-smelling, foul-tasting fear.

In my basement studio, we faced each other, closed eyes, inhaled deeply and chanted “om”—a vibrational, lulling sound meant to represent all the sounds of the universe—in an attempt to re-center, to press reset.

In sanskrit, the word yoga means “yoke,” the union of the individual spirit with the universal spirit. How apt to teach it here, in Israel, where the personal is forever entangled, or yoked, with the political. Where hamatsav, “the situation”—a euphemism for unrest, operation, war, suicide bomb or any malaise du jour—is every citizen’s birthright. One day, car rammings, another day, kidnappings.

Just because I was certified to teach yoga, what right did I have to tell anyone in this room to soften or let go, especially if they recently had sent their son or daughter to their army

unit or their spouse to reserve duty?

After every flare-up of tension or violence, I wrestled. Pictured myself on my azure blue mat, my legs spread wide in the pose called Standing Straddle—one foot here, the other in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I was born and grew up, feeling the irreparable pull between them. How many times had I dropped the F-bomb or practiced a grounding breathing exercise to block out my spinning mind? How many times had I cursed myself for agreeing to my husband’s request to leave our comfortable lives in White Plains, N.Y., and return to the country where we first met and married two and a half decades earlier.

There are no exact numbers or studies on the practice of yoga in Israel. Gilad Harouvi, a longtime member of the Israeli Yoga Teachers’ Association, estimates that there are roughly 370,000 yoga practitioners in Israel—approximately 5 percent of the country—a number that includes Jews and Arabs. Some Israeli yoga teachers estimate that the total is much higher, around 500,000.

Since returning here in 2011, I’ve seen the scene in Israel blossom, with annual festivals and meetups throughout the country—from daylong events in Tel Aviv to the annual three-day Yoga Arava festival, which will take place this year in November

in Beersheba. There is even a program that offers free yoga sessions to young men and women in the Israel Defense Forces. Founded in 2012 by Karen Zivan, who moved to Israel from New York, it is called Masa L’Koach, Journey to Power, and teaches meditation and mindfulness as well as asanas, or poses.

Over the years, i’ve often compared yoga in the United States to its practice in Israel. Like in America, every style exists here. I teach Vinyasa, which links conscious breathing with fluid movements, as well as prenatal yoga. There is the popular and energetic Ashtanga; Kundalini, which includes chanting, singing, breathing exercises and repetitive poses; and Acro yoga, an athletic style that combines acrobatics and yoga poses and is often practiced in partner teams.

There is even an internationally recognized style created by an Israeli, Orit Sen-Gupta. Called Vijnana, it is slow, gentle and therapeutic and focuses on relaxing and quieting the mind.

Unlike in America, yoga teachers in Israel generally have a more tactile approach. Influenced, perhaps, by a less litigious society, greater cultural acceptance of physical contact and the warmer climate, instructors will make adjustments to their students’ poses through appropriate touch.

Many teach in apartments or parks, at beaches or on rooftops, either in addition to or in lieu of a studio or gym that is more the standard in the United States.

As fellow yoga teacher Rony Stav, who runs Yoga to the People Tel Aviv, said to me in a recent conversation: “The stakes here are high. We watch our backs, knowing nothing is certain. But during sirens, Covid and, lately,

the current political crisis, people always come. They want their yoga.”

TEACHING HERE IN ISRAEL IS MEANINGFUL, POTENT. IT ANCHORS ME.

I want my yoga, too. Not only to keep me physically flexible and strong, but also to keep me mentally centered and quiet. Teaching here in Israel is meaningful, potent. It anchors me. It makes me accountable, forces me to summon my inner warrior and reminds me of the quintessential and admirable Israeli life-

must-go-on stoicism. It prepares me for inevitable, unexpected setbacks that impact the world around me, like the Covid pandemic, or personal setbacks, such as being diagnosed with and removing a melanoma about five years ago.

But what I most appreciate, which I acknowledge every time I chant “om,” is how it highlights our shared humanity. That we are all in this together.

Jennifer Lang runs Israel Writers Studio in Tel Aviv and writes about her yoga journey in her forthcoming memoirs, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature and Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses, both by Vine Leaves Press. She also teaches YogaProse (using your practice to write your story) and will be holding two events at the 92 Street Y in New York City in the fall.

Safeguarding Our Hospitals

Meet the security team protecting patients and medical personnel

|

By Barbara Sofer

Eyal kashi pulls brass knuckles, knives and what appear to be two guns from his desk drawer in his office at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem. While the latter two are replicas—one shoots tear gas and the other is a cigarette lighter—Kashi and his team have confiscated these potential weapons from men and women attempting to sneak them past security checkpoints.

Kashi is the head of Bitachon, or security, at Hadassah Ein Kerem, where it is his team’s responsibility to protect staff and patients as well as secure the hospital, its equipment and campus.

About 30,000 people a day pass over the thresholds of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s two Jerusalem campuses, in Ein Kerem and on Mount Scopus. The vast majority have come to heal or be healed, to visit the sick or celebrate the birth of a new family member.

Kashi and his counterpart Roi Bardea at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus are charged with stopping the relatively small percentage of people who enter to do harm.

HMO security is responsible for managing the crowds that arrive at the hospitals, overseeing media events and press visits and patrolling the busy hallways, parking lots and hos-

pital grounds. They also must act as buffers between anxious or hostile patients and hospital staff.

Tall and lanky, Kashi, 44, projects hyper-alertness softened by a boyish smile. He stresses to his nearly 100-member security team that they are safeguarding a hospital, not a shopping mall. His message: “Patients and their loved ones are rushing to emergencies, anxious about procedures, waiting for diagnoses. Everything you do needs to be tempered with compassion.”

Pinned to a bulletin board on a wall behind his desk is a roster of his security deputies in charge of a rotating list of departments and security personnel. A mix of Israeli Jews and Druze, all have served as officers in the Israel Defense Forces. Kashi has quipped that he heads the most highly educated cadre of guards in the world; among them are physicians-to-be, budding engineers and graduate students in sciences and humanities. All, he said, are trained to evaluate a tense situation with intelligence and nuance.

In addition to this internal team, HMO hires an outside security company with a mix of Jewish and Arab guards, men and women. There are also small police stations and an around-the-clock police presence at

both the Ein Kerem and Mount Scopus campuses.

“We’re all dedicated to the same thing: Keeping Hadassah Hospital safe,” Kashi said.

The challenges are profound. Greater Jerusalem is about 61 percent Jewish and 39 percent Arab, a ratio represented in both patients and staff. The daily mix of Israeli and Palestinian patients and staff includes every political opinion, although Hadassah’s motto, said Director-General Dr. Yoram Weiss, is “check your political opinions at the door.”

The Mount Scopus campus is bordered by the Palestinian village of Isawiya, a site of frequent civil disturbances that can spill over to campus grounds. At Ein Kerem, helicopters frequently land on one of the two helipads, carrying wounded soldiers and visiting celebrities or international politicians.

Over the past year and a half, greater attention to the number of disruptive incidents at Israeli hospitals and clinics, including assaults on medical personnel, has resulted in increased security vigilance at major medical centers. According to the Israel Medical Association, in 2022, hospitals throughout the country experienced more than 100 cases of physical assault and 2,000 reports of verbal abuse, threats or damage to personal property. Among the events was an incident at Hadassah Mount Scopus in May 2022 in which the

family of a patient who had been declared dead attacked staff and destroyed equipment.

For kashi and his team, who rotate onsite 24/7, the security day begins at dawn with a circling of the periphery of the hospital, when they look for anything out of the ordinary—a door left open or an abandoned backpack, for instance.

People arrive around the clock and are screened by security with magnetometers. In the hospital, many patients have metal screws and plates from orthopedic procedures. Then there are the construction workers renovating the 1960s-era Round Building who wear steel-toed boots, which set off a warning alarm in the magnetometers. How can everyone be checked?

“We see the person in front of us,” said Kashi, who usually arrives at Ein Kerem before 7 a.m., “talk to him or her and, if necessary, take them to a special booth that identifies where the ringing is coming from. That’s why we need such a sensitive and professional staff.”

Crowd management remains one of the most difficult duties for Kashi’s team, and he strategically places his staff in critical locations throughout the hospital.

In tiny Israel, news travels fast. Whether there is a terrorist incident,

a building collapse or a multi-car collision, friends and families rush to the emergency department for firsthand information.

Patient rooms are potential sites of conflict as large families come at all hours bringing homemade food, flowers and balloons, despite hospital restrictions on visitor numbers and hours. When the situation gets too unuly, the security team is called to intervene.

“The good news is that everyone feels at home in our hospitals,” said Kashi, “but they can also feel a little too much at home and ignore the rules.”

Yossi Millstein, 32, a medical student and one of Kashi’s deputies, deals with extended families in the wards. “We’ll often get 40 to 50 family members and neighbors visiting one patient,” said Millstein, who has been part of Kashi’s crew for several years. “We seek a person of authority among them and make sure to speak in their language,” whether it is Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish, Russian or English.

If the patient is the rabbi of an ultra-Orthodox sect, the crowds get even bigger. (When the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the Shas Party, was hospitalized in 2013, thousands gathered both within and around the Ein Kerem campus.) “We enlist the most senior rabbinical figure to help us make order by limiting

the numbers in the hallways and keeping the noise down,” explained Millstein, who like the rest of the guards is armed while on duty at the hospital.

Sometimes security is forced to restrain someone, which requires the help of more than one guard, or must escort someone out of the hospital. But, said Millstein, “if I have to use force, then I’ve failed.”

The emergency room is another possible setting for escalating tensions, even violence. Nearly every day, the security team is called on to diffuse heated situations, according to Alaa Abu Roukp, a 32-year-old security guard often stationed in the Ein Kerem emergency department. Scared patients can speak to nurses in an angry way, he explained. The guards step in and talk to the patient, allowing the nurse to take a moment to back away from the confrontation.

Abu Roukp often teams up with colleague Eliav Ben Yair. Recently, the two prevented a man from committing suicide.

“A man was treated in our emergency room and sent home,” said Abu Roukp. “When he left, we heard him say he was going to kill himself. We followed him at a distance and saw him climb up on a railing near the campus hillside mall. We raced toward him. Each of us grabbed one of his arms and caught him as he jumped.”

The man was then admitted to the psychiatric ward.

The incident was not out of the ordinary. Roughly once a month, Kashi reports, a distraught patient attempts suicide by jumping from either a rooftop or window.

Kashi himself is a local, having

Secure and Protect, Tempered With Compassion (from opposite page, far left) Alaa Abu Roukp at his post in the emergency department; spotters monitor security cameras set throughout Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem; a screener at one of the entrances to the hospital; a guard checks a car before it drives into the campus

grown up on the campus of the pastoral Ein Kerem Agricultural School, a residential high school minutes away from Hadassah Ein Kerem. His Iraqi-born dad was the principal and his mother, the housemother.

After serving in an IDF unit that specialized in dismantling bombs, Kashi attended Hadassah Academic College, studying information systems management. During that time, he applied to join HMO’s security team on a part-time basis. The job quickly evolved into both a career and a passion. His wife, Natalie, and their four children, he said, have grown accustomed to his being on call every day, including Yom Kippur.

“Part of the job,” he said with a shrug.

Over the course of his career, he has dealt with several mass casualty events. The first was the collapse of the third floor of the Versailles Wedding Hall in Jerusalem in May 2001. The incident resulted in the deaths of 23 people and injuries to another 380, including the bride.

Additional emergency areas needed to be opened and protected at the hospital—including in the lobby of the building that is now the Charlotte E. Bloomberg Mother and Child Center—as hundreds, including members of the press and officials, followed the ambulances to the campus.

“The first step was to create a sterile area separating onlookers and press from the patients,” recalled Kashi.

In the case of mass casualties after a terror attack, his team receives support from both the police and intelligence from the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency. These incidents pose an added complexity as the terrorist might be among the injured being treated at the hospital.

Indeed, Hadassah has many times faced the challenge of treating terrorists, who must be kept under constant surveillance. The same is true for criminals who arrive from Israel’s prisons.

“We are trained to treat these patients professionally without expressing anger or sympathy,” explained Kashi.

Because the security team often arrives first in an emergency, dis-

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patched by spotters who monitor CCTV cameras discreetly placed throughout the hospital, they have even played a role in medical interventions. For example, Abu Roukp and Ben Yair recently delivered a baby in a car in the Ein Kerem parking lot.

“We went to get the mom in our security ambulance, and she started shouting that the baby’s head was out,” recalled Ben Yair, 26. “She was right. We delivered the baby. The grandmother”—who had driven her laboring daughter to the hospital—“started asking, ‘Boy or girl?’ and only then did we look and say ‘girl.’ ”

Amid the mazel tovs, the two brought mother and baby to the maternity ward for further care.

During the height of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, security was increased. Kashi’s team had to make sure that each arriving patient was accompanied to the specially designated internal medicine departments and intensive care units, all of which had strict no-entry policies for relatives.

“Israelis hated seeing their family member being taken away without them,” said Kashi. “Our job was to supply TLC and reassurance— not part of every security officer’s job description. But it is in ours at Hadassah.”

Barbara Sofer, an award-winning journalist and author, is Israel director of public relations for Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America.

HADASSAH ON CALL

Decode today’s developments in health and medicine, from new treatments to tips on staying healthy, with the Hadassah On Call podcast. In each episode, journalist Maayan Hoffman, a third-generation Hadassah member, interviews one of the Hadassah Medical Organization’s top doctors, nurses or medical innovators. Upcoming episodes will discuss nutrition and diet and the connection between asthma and sleep. Catch up on recent episodes, including a discussion about Crohn’s disease with Hadassah gastroenterologists Drs. Ari Benson and Zev Davidovics. Subscribe and share your comments at hadassah.org/hadassahoncall or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Year-round Fun in Israel

Now’s the time to explore the country with Hadassah

Tours of Israel Unlike Any Other

By Hilary Danailova

An auspicious 36 years passed between Rivanna Hyman’s first trip to Israel, when she was a toddler, and her return in 1998 to show her children the land where her mother had been a nurse at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus.

“My mother passed away when I was 17, and she was the one with the connection to Israel,” explained Hyman.

Her homecoming came full circle during her third trip to Israel, in March 2022, when she and her part-

ner, Joel Friedland, joined Hadassah’s Awesome Israel trip. Standing in the same Mount Scopus lobby that her mother used to walk through a lifetime ago, Hyman said that she finally realized that “Israel was a second home to me. Meeting the doctors, hearing people’s stories and the passion they had for Hadassah and for Israel—that made it totally different from any other trip we’ve been on.”

Hyman joined Hadassah in 2020 after getting to know her Long Island, N.Y., neighbor, Ellen Hershkin, Hadassah’s immediate past national president, during the Covid-19 lockdowns.

“It’s one thing to read or watch a video about Hadassah Hospital,” said Hershkin. “It’s another thing to actually see the patients and staff— secular, Orthodox Jews, Christians,

DON’T STOP THINKING ABOUT TOMORROW

Henrietta Szold reportedly asked a sculptor who was capturing her image for a bust not long before her death in 1945 to “make my eyes look to the future.” That farsighted stewardship still guides Hadassah, as demonstrated by many of its programming and funding priorities—including the annual Leaders of Tomorrow Award.

The $1,000 scholarship toward tuition for Young Judaea’s summer in Israel leadership program, called Gesher, grew out of Hadassah’s more than 100-year-old partnership with what is the oldest Zionist youth movement in the United States.

The three recipients of the 2023 award are Claire Eisenstadt of Northbrook, Ill.; Marissa

Arabs—who mirror the diversity of Israel.”

Having visited Israel numerous times since her own first trip in 1978, Hershkin is now chair of Hadassah Israel travel (hadassah.org/get-involved/israel-travel). Before the start of the pandemic, the organization traditionally ran about eight annual excursions. Trips for members and

Bishop of Houston, Texas; and Mia Finestone of San Rafael, Calif. Keen readers of this magazine will recognize Finestone from her volunteer work as a peer-to-peer mental health adviser as featured in our January/ February 2023 article “A Space to Hear and Be Heard.”

We wish all three Young Judaeans a meaningful and memorable summer in Israel!

Award recipients (from left): Mia Finestone, Marissa Bishop and Claire Eisenstadt

Hadassah traveler Felice Zensius explores the culinary delights of a shuk.

Travelers plant a tree during the From Ancient to Awesome tour, led by Aileen Bormel (left).

their families started up again in 2022, with each trip averaging 30 travelers.

Whether geared for first-timers, mother-daughter pairs or Israel devotees, all tours combine major sights like the Kotel with experiences of contemporary Israel, such as food, winery and museum tours. The itinerary of the Hadassah Israeli Cultural Curiosity Music, Art & Cuisine excursion, beginning on November 5, adds highlights such as a Druze cook-

ZIONISM…DID YOU KNOW?

Israel offers a bounty of outdoor adventures for the warmer months.

1. The most popular sport in Israel may be ______ , but we’re itching to lace up our hiking boots this summer. And what better way to encounter the country from north to south than the ______ , which covers 637 miles from Kibbutz Dan in Metullah to the Red Sea near Eilat.

2. Just east of Metullah, in the Golan Heights, refresh yourself at ______ Nature Reserve, home to Israel’s largest waterfall.

3. With over 130 saltwater beaches, it’s easy to forget the freshwater stretches of sand along the ______ , which features popular boating and swimming options.

ing workshop, Machaneh Yehudah tasting tour and meetings with several artists and thinkers, among other planned visits.

“Back in the 1980s, nobody went to Israel for the food, but today it’s a culinary destination,” marveled Hershkin, who with her daughter, Lisa Hershkin Roth, will lead the Hadassah Israel Together: Mothers, Daughters & Friends tour, which starts on October 24.

What sets Hadassah trips apart is the behind-the-scenes look at the fabric of Israeli life through visits to the organization’s two hospital campuses, youth villages and other places. Alongside a licensed guide, every trip includes a Hadassah tour leader to illuminate the organization’s achievements.

4. Along Israel’s Mediterranean coast, hang ten with the ______ in Caesarea, Herzliya, Tel Aviv and Ashdod.

5. In coastal Beit Yanai, stop in at Hadassah ______ Youth Village, where our students enjoy riding the waves, too.

6. When you reach the ______ Desert, spread out a picnic in ______ Lake Park, a surprisingly verdant oasis whose body of water was created from recycled wastewater and purified rainwater.

7. There are many mountain and road biking trails in Israel. If you are there in October, you could participate in the ______ from Jerusalem to the Red Sea, in support of the ______ Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura.

According to Hershkin, the most frequent question she receives from travelers is, “Why did I wait so long?”

It’s likely she’ll hear that this fall from Nancy Sall of Baltimore, a life member who along with her husband, David, is joining the Hadassah Tour of Israel for First Timers, which begins October 11.

“My mother made her own firsttime Israel trip as a senior, and she always said, ‘You’ve got to get there,’” said Sall.

Now, Sall said that she has already planned the note she will leave at the Kotel.

“It’ll say, ‘Mom, we made it,’ ” she confided. “This is something she wanted us to do for 30 years.”

8. And when you finally make it to Eilat at the southernmost tip of Israel? Maybe you will swim with ______ , or perhaps you’d like to ______ or ______ in search of coral reefs and tropical fish.

NOW YOU KNOW… MORE ABOUT SUMMER ADVENTURES IN ISRAEL

Hilary Danailova writes about travel, culture, politics and lifestyle for numerous publications.

Rivanna Hyman (above) and partner Joel Friedland (with Hyman, above right) enjoy their 2022 trip to Israel.

SNORKEL, SCUBA DIVE

RIVANNA HYMAN

Underwater in Eilat

Jewish Heritage Along the Danube

Sights of great beauty and pain from Budapest to Bucharest

By Michele Cohen Marill

As the taxi sped from the Budapest airport through an industrial stretch before reaching grand boulevards in the city center, I had an East-meets-West moment. With its ornate Baroque buildings and sprawling neo-Gothic Parliament, Budapest was clearly the architectural equal of the great capitals of Western Europe. Yet something felt different about this land.

It wasn’t because our driver was gesticulating enthusiastically with both hands as he told my husband and me about his city. Or that we had sidestepped concerns about the ongoing war in Ukraine, whose border was less than 200 miles away. Or that we had reservations about Hungarian right-wing politics and antisemitism.

To meet up with our seven-night lower Danube River cruise, we had crossed the former Iron Curtain. Flowing from Germany’s Black Forest to the Black Sea, the Danube traverses or borders 10 countries. Beginning in Hungary, we would move east into countries that for decades had experienced Communist rule.

For a host of logistical and practical reasons, we weren’t likely to travel to Hungary, Croatia, Serbia,

Bulgaria and Romania on our own. Each country has its own currency and language. Such an itinerary involves numerous border crossings with strict passport checkpoints. The journey would have been arduous by car and inaccessible by train.

But all those challenges were smoothed over by the eager-to-please crew of our AmaWaterways “Gems of Southeast Europe” cruise. Because we booked the trip through Brandeis Travelers, a program of Brandeis University, our small group gained Jewish historical and political context from Professor Emeritus Antony Polonsky, an expert in Holocaust studies, as well as guided visits to Jewish sights. (Similar itineraries are served by several major cruise companies, including Uniworld and its Delightful Danube sailings.)

We began our journey on solid ground a day before embarkation, giving us time to explore Budapest. With a few hours on our own, we rode the funicular up the steep hill of the Castle District on the Buda side of the Danube and wandered down a narrow road in search of the Medieval

Jewish Prayer House.

We passed it, then doubled back. From the outside, the two-room prayer house resembles its neighboring buildings, marked only by a small sign. We had to rap on the entrance, a barnlike door reinforced with iron bars in a menorah-like design, to gain admittance.

Inside the dim entryway, to the left, Hebrew gravestones from the Middle Ages have been arranged on concrete slabs. In the low-ceilinged room where minyans once gathered, we saw crude, ruddy markings drawn overhead: a bow and arrow pointing toward heaven with a prayer for strength against mighty foes and a Star of David marked with the priestly blessing. Once used as a sanctuary by Sephardi Jews fleeing persecution in the late 15th century, the structure dates back further, to the 14th century, when it was originally built and used by Ashkenazim.

As either a museum or chapel, this was a curious place—spartan compared to Budapest’s gold-plated Pava Street Synagogue and the Moorishstyle Dohany Street Synagogue, the largest Jewish house of worship in Europe and a top tourist destination.

But this medieval prayer house embodies Jewish life in southeast Europe: once vibrant but now receding, imperiled but somehow resilient. In our cruise through the Balkans and the Iron Gates—a gorge between Serbia and Romania—we would encounter this reality again and again as we witnessed the beauty and pain of this region.

The Danube River slices through the heart of Budapest.

“The Danube was one of the great European frontiers,” Polonsky, the professor, would later explain onboard. It marked a religious divide— the Catholics of Croatia on one bank, the Eastern Orthodox of Serbia on the other—that was a backdrop to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.

When Yugoslavia broke apart, Serbian forces targeted the predominantly Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as its Catholic Croats in a bloody campaign of “ethnic cleansing.” (Islam had been brought to the Balkans centuries earlier by the encroaching Ottoman Empire.) In these contested lands, religious loyalties were entwined with national identity, and Jews, who numbered around 5,000 in 1991 at the start of Yugoslavia’s disbanding, historically led a precarious existence.

While the Holocaust extinguished entire Jewish communities in Europe, we saw the broad arc of a Jewish presence both before and after in Budapest. Before Hungary joined the Axis powers in 1941, Budapest’s Jewish population stood at 200,000. The population in Greater Hungary, including territories such as Transylvania that were ceded to the country after their allegiance to Germany, exceeded 725,000. By the time of liberation in 1945, some 565,000 Jews had been murdered.

Today, Budapest’s Jewish population is estimated at 100,000, and there are five kosher restaurants in Pest’s

old Jewish quarter, an area that has reinvented itself as an entertainment district known for its “ruin bars.”

The old stone wall and high fence that surrounded Pest’s ghetto beginning in December 1944 are gone, but the vertical concrete slabs of the Ghetto Wall Memorial mark that dark time and display a timeline of the tragedy that befell the area’s Jews. In the same vicinity, in-ground brass plaques known as Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, honor Jewish residents who were persecuted, deported and killed during the Holocaust. Also in Pest, adjoining the Pava Street Synagogue, visitors will encounter the Tower of Lost Communities in the courtyard of the Holocaust Memorial Center. The Tower installation features panes of glass etched with the names of the 1,441 Hungarian towns and villages where Jewish life ceased to exist.

We set sail before sunset on a Monday evening and were still in Hungary when we awoke, in Pecs, a storied city that offers visual examples of both religious turmoil and tolerance.

Indeed, a mosque, cathedral and synagogue stand within a short radius.

As we walked past the remnants of the medieval city wall, we stepped into Szechenyi Square and stood before the Downtown Candlemas Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an unusual-looking cathedral with a round stone exterior and green dome. It was previously the Mosque of Pasha Qasim, built by the Ottomans in the 1500s, before the conquering Hapsburgs replaced the minaret with a bell. A short walk from the square, the Jakovali Hassan Mosque, also dating to the Ottoman era, is still in use.

Nearby, the peach-colored façade of the Pecs Synagogue features arches and, above a large clock, an inscription from Isaiah in Hebrew: “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.” The tablets of Moses crown the top of the building.

Pecs’ Jewish community numbered almost 3,500 prior to the Holocaust. The last date that the synagogue was fully packed for services was May 8th, 1944. The next day, the Jewish people were sent to ghettoes, Tibor Kaufmann, the synagogue’s caretaker, told us through an interpreter.

Budapest Must-Sees In Pest, look for The Shoes on the Danube Promenade Memorial (left) and the Dohany Street Synagogue.

Pecs’ Moorish-style synagogue

“And all of them were deported to Auschwitz in the first week of July,” he added. “Out of the people sent to the concentration camps, approximately 10 per cent returned.”

The congregation today has about 70 members.

We heard a similar story when we disembarked in Novi Sad, Serbia, and when we saw the tarp-covered synagogue under renovation in Vidin,

WHAT TO SEE BUDAPEST

Most Danube cruise itineraries feature a stop in Budapest, where the river slices through the city, with Buda on the West and Pest on the East. On the shores of Buda looms the massive Buda Castle complex, which includes, among other sights, the Budapest History Museum , the Hungarian National Gallery and the Castle Museum . The Medieval Jewish Prayer House , also part of the Castle District, is a short walk away. If you feel fit enough to climb 197 narrow steps in the bell tower of the neo-Gothic Matthias Church , you’ll be rewarded with

Bulgaria. While most of Vidin’s Jews moved to Israel decades ago, in 2003, a group of them erected a white stone memorial in a city center park to thank their former neighbors for protecting them during the war.

children’s lace-ups are scattered in a row. The rusting shoes represent the Jewish men, women and children who were lined up and shot into the river by the Hungarian Arrow Cross militia in 1944 and 1945 after they had removed their shoes, which were then reused. Visitors leave stones or candles in remembrance.

The Dohany Street Synagogue , a Moorish-style edifice and UNESCO World Heritage Site, anchors the old Jewish quarter in Pest. The largest in Europe, the synagogue was built in the 1850s by a Neolog congregation—a Hungarian Reform group that favored speaking Hungarian rather than Yiddish. Thanks to a

In Belgrade, now home to around 2,000 Jews, we wandered through Sukkat Shalom Synagogue. Outside a nearby Jewish cultural center in the onetime Jewish quarter, flyers advertised a Sephardi music festival,

The synagogue grounds encompass several other buildings and spaces. The Raoul Wallenberg Memorial Park honors Holocaust victims and Righteous Gentiles, including Swedish diplomat Wallenberg. The metal leaves of the park’s weeping willow Tree of Life sculpture are engraved with names of Hungarian Holocaust victims. The collections of the onsite Hungarian Jewish Museum and Archives range from Judaica and artifacts to one of the largest community archives in Europe.

PECS, HUNGARY

The Pecs Synagogue , also built by a Neolog group, was completed

sanctuary still has its original organ built by master organ designer Jozsef Angster. But a net hanging from far above reveals the financial struggles; there’s not enough money for a full renovation and the ceiling is crumbling. The synagogue is open to visitors every day but Saturday. In the women’s gallery, peruse a small exhibit on the history of Jewish life in Pecs. Shabbat services are held in a community center next door.

NOVI SAD, SERBIA

The glorious Art Nouveau Novi Sad Synagogue features a 130-foothigh dome and design elements reminiscent of a medieval church. It is now used mostly as a concert

On the banks of the Danube,

The Family memorial along the Danube in Novi Sad

Interior and exterior views of Bucharest’s Choral Temple

just one sign of the resilience of Jewish culture despite the community’s dwindling numbers. Another example is the 144-year-old Serbian Jewish Singing Society, today known as the Baruch Brothers Choir, which still holds annual concerts. And 2023 marks the fourth year of a local Jewish film festival.

We sailed on between Serbia and Romania, climbing to the top sun-

deck to view cliffs rising on both shores, majestic and impenetrable. Our cellphone clocks shifted between the countries’ different time zones, giving us the sense that we were somehow suspended from ordinary time.

Later that night, our group of 13 Brandeis Travelers squeezed around a table for a Shabbat meal. The ship’s hotel manager, a jovial Bulgarian named Zhivko Georgiev, brought out electric candles—no flames allowed

onboard—and presented us with a picture-perfect challah courtesy of the chef.

As we recited the Kiddush, it felt like more than a blessing. It became an anthem, or, to borrow from Hanukkah, a rededication to our own Jewish heritage and to the endurance of Jewish communities around the world.

tal at the end of the pathway.

VIDIN, BULGARIA

a monument known as both the Raid Victims’ Memorial and The Family —13-foot-high bronze figures of a man, woman and child—commemorates the January 1942 massacre in which Hungarian police and soldiers shot thousands of Jews, Serbs and Roma and pushed their bodies into the river.

BELGRADE, SERBIA

Sukkat Shalom , consecrated in 1929, is the only synagogue in Belgrade to survive World War II (the Nazis had turned it into a brothel). Today, it is the only functioning synagogue in Serbia’s capital. Its gray stone exterior features a large Magen David in its gable above rows of arched windows. Inside, white columns flank the ark, but the sanctuary lacks the grandeur of some of the other ornate, renovated syna -

gogues of the region.

Created in 1948, the small Jewish Historical Museum , housed in the Jewish community center about a 10-minute walk from the synagogue, recounts through ritual objects, documents and photographs the story of Serbian Jewry from Roman times to postwar Yugoslavia. (It hasn’t been updated to mark the end of Communism.)

In the city’s Sephardi cemetery, which is still in use and far larger than the Ashkenazi burial ground, the Jewish community of Belgrade erected the Monument to the Jewish Victims of Fascism in 1952. Two wing-like stone walls more than 30 feet high flank a pathway that incorporates pieces of rubble and broken gravestones from the old Jewish neighborhood, which was destroyed in the war. An iron menorah rests on a pedes -

For decades, Vidin’s synagogue , built in 1894 in a neo-Gothic style, was a roofless, decaying hull, abandoned after failed renovation efforts. With an infusion of European Regional Development funds, the synagogue is now being restored as a cultural center and museum.

BUCHAREST, ROMANIA

It takes over an hour to drive from the Danube port city of Giurgiu to Bucharest, but it’s worth the detour. Bucharest was dubbed the “Little Paris of the East” at the turn of the 20th century, and that nickname still seems apt, if somewhat exaggerated. The city boasts fine examples of neoclassical and Baroque architecture, dozens of downtown fountains and the Arcul de Triumf (triumphal arch) on Kiseleff Road. Romania has refurbished a sizable portion of its Old Town , which is abuzz with outdoor cafes and shops.

Today home to just over 10,000 Jews, Bucharest also boasts significant Jewish heritage sights all within easy walking distance. The

Great Synagogue on Adamache Street presents a somewhat plain yellow stucco exterior to passersby, but inside, the rococo-style sanctuary dazzles with an intricately painted vaulted ceiling and rich details such as gilded candelabras and chandeliers. The oldest extant synagogue in the city, it houses an exhibit on the Holocaust in Romania featuring photos, documents and written testimonials that describe the persecution and extermination of Jewish life in Romania.

The Dr. Moses Rosen Museum of Jewish History in Romania , named for the city’s chief rabbi from 1964 to 1994, is located at the Holy Union Temple, built in the Moorish-style in 1864 and funded by the wealthy Jewish Tailor’s guild.

The Choral Temple , which holds daily services in a small chapel, was designed to resemble Vienna’s Leopoldstadter Tempel, a beautiful synagogue in Moorish revival style that was destroyed during Kristallnacht. After the fall of Communism, the Romanian Jewish community erected a monument to victims of the Holocaust in front of the synagogue.

Michele Cohen Marill is a freelance journalist based in Atlanta. Her work has appeared in Tablet, Atlanta magazine, Wired.com and many other publications.

Monument to the Jewish Victims of Fascism in Belgrade

‘Leftovers’ Maven Tamar Adler

How to use up everything from burnt rice to herring brine

By Adeena Sussman

Tamar adler wants to help you clear out your refrigerator and cupboards.

“Cooking shouldn’t be compli‑ cated, and it shouldn’t be intimidat ing,” said Adler, an award winning writer whose The Everlasting Meal Cookbook: Leftovers A-Z hit book shelves in March. “There’s no better place to look for inspiration than what you already have on hand.”

Packed with more than 1,500 inventive ideas for refashioning left over raw materials as well as cooked food into something totally different, Adler’s new title is the follow up to An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, a collection of essays about practical, sustainable cooking that was published to great acclaim in 2012.

The cookbook, which features sev eral food paintings by cover artist Caitlin Winner rather than photo graphs, is written in an intimate, conversational style whose spare prose is as alluring as the recipes it puts forth. It is also timely in its focus on reducing food waste. According to Feeding America, a nationwide net work of food banks, $408 bil lion in food is thrown away in the United States every year.

With dishes like Almost

Any Vegetable Pasta and Composed Salad of Herbs, Meat and Small Pota toes, The Everlasting Meal Cookbook is equal parts permissive kitchen coach and object lesson in beautiful writing.

“I see the book as a collection of suggestions, not commandments,” said Adler, 45, who worked on the book during the depths of the Covid 19 pandemic while she, her husband and son were quarantining at their home in Hudson, N.Y. She said that she and her collaborator, Amanda Kingsley, “created a spreadsheet of ingredients from A to Z, and that is how the book took its structure. That led to anchovies and apple cores being nailed down in the same week.”

Cooking constantly yet only able to feed her small family was a chal

Buttered Zucchini

1 huge zucchini or more smaller ones

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon butter

1 clove garlic

1/2 cup chopped spring or regular onion Salt

1 dried chile (optional)

1 cup basil leaves

1 tablespoon heavy cream

1 cup chopped other herbs (dill, parsley, fennel frond or chives)

Freshly ground black pepper

lenge, but she rose to the occasion.

“In order to come up with ideas to use leftover bourekas, I first had to make the bourekas myself,” said Adler, who treated her family to batches of them.

Then again, bourekas have been a part of her life for as long as she can remember. Her Israeli father, David Adler, was working as the dean of students at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in the late 1970s when Sam Kadison, the owner of Camp Modin in Maine, recruited him to work at the Jewish summer camp. There he met Amy Posner, a counselor who happened to be Kadison’s niece. David and Amy married and, after Kadison’s death in 1979, ran Camp Modin until David’s passing in 1992.

Despite the couple’s decision to live in the United States, Israel was very much part of their home.

“We always had whatever you had in an Israeli house on the table,” recalled Adler. “Olives, pickles, hummus, charif (hot sauce) were at every meal.”

Cooking wasn’t the obvious career path for Adler after graduating from

Cut the zucchini into 1/2-inch cubes, removing any bruised or rotten bits. Heat a deep pot. Add the oil, butter, garlic and a pinch of salt. Cook, stirring over low heat, 1-2 minutes. Add the zucchini, chile (if using) and half the basil leaves. Cover and cook over low heat, letting the zucchini self-braise, for about 15 minutes, checking and stirring once or twice. Uncover and cook, adjusting the heat as you like, covering and uncovering, until it begins to sizzle and loses a bit of its liquid. Stir vigorously, so the zucchini fries a bit. Taste for salt and adjust. Over high heat, add the cream and stir until it’s integrated. Add the rest of the herbs and a lot of black pepper. Eat hot or at room temperature, on its own, on toast, on pasta, on rice, etc.

Tomato and Egg Stir-Fry

2 eggs

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons neutral oil (peanut or grapeseed)

1 scallion, sliced

1/2 to 1 cup chopped tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon sugar (optional)

Hot rice for eating

In a bowl, beat together the eggs and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt. Heat an omelet pan. Add 1 tablespoon of the oil, then the eggs and lightly scramble until just set, then pour onto a plate. Heat the pan again, add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil, then add the scallion, tomatoes, sugar if using and remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and stir-fry until the tomatoes have begun to break down and release juice, 1-2 minutes. Return the eggs to the pan and mix through briefly. Eat on rice. If you have only a half a tomato, or a handful of chopped ones, heat a small skillet, add 1-2 tablespoons olive oil, then add the tomatoes and a little salt and cook them until they’ve just broken down and become a spoonful of saucy tomatoes. This can be added to sautéed greens.

Haverford College.

“My love affair is with language, and it always has been,” she said of her post-college work as an edi tor at Harper’s “Cooking is a byproduct of that love affair.”

It was during her time at Harper’s that a boyfriend encouraged her to pursue cooking, which had long been a personal

passion, alongside her career.

Despite having no formal training, Adler said she “used my Jewish chutzpah to get an internship at chef Gabrielle Hamilton’s renowned (and now closed) Lower East Side restaurant, Prune.” She ended up moonlighting at the Manhattan restaurant for months, followed by a stint at Alice Water’s legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.

Working with accomplished chefs helped hone her cooking style. At the same time, she was writing about food for outlets like Vogue—where she continues to be a contributor— which led to the book deal that resulted in An Everlasting Meal.

What one takes away more than anything from Adler’s books, which in addition to the Everlasting titles includes the 2019 Something Old, Something New: Oysters Rockefeller, Walnut Soufflé, and Other Classic Recipes Revisited, is her intuitive and unpretentious approach to time in the kitchen.

For example, while Adler advocates for local, seasonal and organic ingredients when possible, she’s not pedantic about it.

“My very Jewish upbringing had a very intense social justice element to the degree where it was important not to judge people for structural issues like food access,” she said. “While I definitely have strong opinions about the quality of the food and the people who make the food and the labor behind it, I have tried to never say, ‘You have to get your food from there.’”

That laid-back approach carries over

to Adler’s entertaining philosophy.

“We have people over all the time, and that means that half the time they are coming over to grilled cheese sandwiches or a salad, or sometimes pancakes and eggs,” she said.

Take your cue from Adler and make these simple recipes using peak summer produce that may be filling up your vegetable bins. Served together or separately, they are great for entertaining—or entertaining yourself.

Adeena Sussman is the author of Sababa: Fresh, Sunny Flavors from My Israeli Kitchen and the upcoming Shabbat: Recipes and Rituals from My Kitchen to Yours, set to be released on September 5. She lives in Tel Aviv.

Garlicky Broccoli Stem and Core Pesto

1/4 cup olive oil

2 small cloves garlic, chopped

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups chopped broccoli stems (or stems and cores from other brassicas, such as cauliflower, cabbage, etc.)

Heat a small pot. Add the olive oil, garlic and salt and cook until the garlic begins to soften, about 30 seconds. Add the chopped stems and cores and enough water to cover by half. Simmer, adding water if needed, until the vegetables are easily pierced with a knife, about 15 minutes. Scoop out the vegetables, transfer to a blender and puree to completely smooth, only adding as much liquid as you need to blend and reserving the rest for future needs. This is delicious on toast, or eaten as a side dish like mashed potatoes, or as a pasta sauce with lots of freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus some reserved cooking liquid added. A variation is to use heavy cream instead of all or some of the water when you cook the stems and cores.

Tamar Adler

Setting Lost Holocaust Poetry to Music

Lenka Lichtenberg finds inspiration in her grandmother’s story

|

By Alan M. Tigay

The poem “what is this Place?,” written in a concentration camp, reaches in opposite directions: “We’re eternally lost/ and eternally redeemed/ In the darkest of nights/ remember the sun!”

The poet, Anna Hana Friesova, was imprisoned in Terezin, north of Prague, with her husband—who was ultimately murdered in Auschwitz— and her daughter, Jana Renée. Mother and daughter walked out of Terezin when it was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945. But 65 of Anna Hana’s poems, filling two notebooks, never saw the light of day.

Fast forward to 2016. Lenka Lichtenberg, Friesova’s granddaughter, an award-winning singer-composer and cantorial soloist living in Canada, had returned to her native Prague to go through the belongings of her mother, who had passed away recently. As she opened a desk drawer that had been secretly safeguarding the notebooks, Lichtenberg simultaneously opened a door to the past.

It took Lichtenberg almost two years to decide what to do with the poems, which are filled with nightmares and dreams, grief and miracles.

She hadn’t known that her grandmother—gone 30 years at that point—was a poet. No one did. A friend suggested she give the tattered pages to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, but she decided otherwise.

“I felt some ownership,” Lichtenberg said in an interview. “It’s my grandmother. I think I can do something more meaningful. If I set them to music, I can make my grandmother and her life as a poet live.”

That decision led to the creation of Thieves of Dreams, the artist’s 13th album, released in May 2022. She composed music for eight poems and enlisted a cadre of composers to create music for eight more. Earlier this year, in March, the collection won her the Juno Award—Canada’s highest music honor—for Global Music Album of the Year.

Making her grandmother’s poems sing is true to form for Lichtenberg. “Everything important in my life has happened through music,” she said.

She began playing the piano more than five decades ago at age 6, and

cal theater act and on radio. But as she became known to much of the Czechoslovakian public, there was one key fact that the young prodigy didn’t know about herself: Scarred by history, her mother never told her that they were Jewish. (Lichtenberg’s father was not Jewish.)

That changed when she was about 10 and an invitation came to sing at a holiday show at the Prague Jewish Community Center. While traveling in a streetcar on the way to the performance, Lichtenberg vividly recalled her mother unveiling the secret with a pregnant, “By the way….”

She sang popular Czech songs at that first show before a Jewish audience, but when she was invited back, Lichtenberg worked with a cantor and learned some Hebrew and Yiddish songs phonetically. As she continued her music studies and eventually immigrated—first to Denmark, then to Canada—an inner conversation that began on that streetcar unfolded.

“My mother saw being Jewish as a burden, a risk of becoming a victim,” Lichtenberg said. Even after the revelation, both her mother and grandmother rarely discussed their

Holocaust survivor Anna Hana Friesova and one of her notebooks of poems

experiences at Terezin. “For me, embracing my heritage was first an act of defiance, then a way to love and honor my roots through learning, creating and sharing Yiddish and cantorial music.”

She has an expansive musical worldview: In her albums, she sings in Czech, Yiddish, Hebrew, English, French and Russian. She began her adult career as a club and lounge singer before moving into rock, jazz and folk. It was on her first visit to Israel, in 1987, that she realized her true calling was Yiddish and Jewish music. As a relative newcomer to Yiddish, her interest was less in prewar nostalgia and more in a contemporary world music sound.

Among her projects have been pairing Yiddish and Iraqi Jewish themes with Israeli violinist and oud player Yair Dalal in the Lullabies

From Exile project; and a musical dialogue, called Bridges, with Palestinian Canadian artist Roula Said. Lichtenberg also appears on two tracks of the album Silent Tears: The Last Yiddish Tango, released in January of this year, which intertwines Warsaw’s prewar status as the European capital of tango with postwar Holocaust poems and testimonies.

And she is planning a second edition of Thieves of Dreams, with songs performed in English.

Comfortable with where that long-ago streetcar took her, Lichtenberg assigns no blame for the delayed discovery of her Jewishness. Accepting the Juno Award at a ceremony in Edmonton, Alberta, she thanked her husband, children, publicist and manager, adding, “Mainly I want to thank my mother and grandmother, who created this album for me.”

Though she sees her grandmother’s notebooks as a gift, Lichtenberg still finds it hard, seven years after their discovery, to square her memories of the woman she knew as a child with the poet she found as an adult. “It’s hard to put the two sides together,” she observed. “It’s like two different people. Did she purposely turn off the person who lost so much—her husband, parents, family? Maybe it was her way of moving on. And she really did move on, beautifully.

“In my memory,” Lichtenberg added, “she’s still the happy, fun-loving person I knew before. I feel so privileged I had the opportunity to discover her alter ego.”

And what about the next generation of the family? The music for “What Is This Place?”—lead track on Thieves of Dreams—was composed by Rachel Cohen, Lichtenberg’s daughter.

Alan M. Tigay is editor emeritus of Hadassah Magazine music from around the globe at World Listening Post (worldlisteningpost.com)

A Menu of Music and Food

Preserving Sephardi culture through the experiences of women |

There’s a certain kind of magic in the perfect melding of food and music that creates our most enduring memories. Think homemade challah and the zemirot sung around the Shabbat table, or “Happy Birthday to You” with a favorite cake.

Those special moments are what inspired singer-songwriter Sarah

Aroeste and chef Susan Barocas to create the multimedia, multifaceted project Savor: A Sephardic Music and Food Experience

The modest title, which means taste or flavor in Ladino, belies this rich portal into a world that explores Sephardi culture through classic Ladino songs, traditional recipes and detailed cooking videos. The project,

By Beth Segal

however, began simply. Aroeste, an internationally known performer as well as an advocate for contemporary Ladino music, was researching songs for a new collection—her eighth—during Covid lockdowns.

At the same time, she said, “I was leading virtual song workshops and was asked to share family recipes

Singer-composer Lenka Lichtenberg

Stuffed grape leaves

LIORA KOGAN (TOP); COURTESY OF SARAH AROESTE

as well, as I had been doing a lot of cooking with my daughters”—she has two with her husband, Jeffrey Blaugrund. “To enhance the sets, I was inspired to start looking at songs that related to the food I was preparing.”

With visions of songs dancing in her head about the many ways to cook eggplant and the delights of making bourekas with a child, Aroeste realized that the music was only half the story. You can’t have an album about food and not have the actual food, she realized.

She then reached out to her friend Barocas, a chef as passionate about Sephardi food as Aroeste is about the Ladino music, and the two began

IN THE WAR ROOM WITH ISRAEL’S IRON LADY BY

CURT SCHLEIER

Many if not most people who watch the revelatory film Golda will come to recognize the truth of what its Israeli-born director, Guy Nattiv, told me in a recent Zoom interview: “History is not what they always taught us in school.”

The titular Golda, of course, is Golda Meir, who served as prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974. The first and, so far, only female Israeli head of state, Meir, sometimes called the “Iron Lady of Israel,” became a beacon for Jewish women around the world, though Israelis view her through a much more critical lens. The film, however, is not a biopic. Instead, it is a behindthe-scenes drama concentrating largely on the critical weeks surrounding the Yom Kippur War.

to build the project.

Barocas recruited a community of well-known female Sephardi chefs from around the world. That was important to both Barocas and Aroeste, because, as Aroeste said, one “impetus of Savor was to highlight the important role women have played—and continue to play—in preserving Sephardic culture. There were no written Jewish cookbooks that came out of medieval Spain, but the women in the diaspora kept on cooking and taught their daughters who taught their daughters. That’s how the food remained distinctive. And when they cooked, they sang, and through the songs and the food,

Nattiv, 50, was born six months before the war. “I grew up on the narrative that the Yom Kippur War was a complete surprise,” he said of the 1973 attack by a coalition of Arab forces led by Syria and Egypt. “We won, and it was a success.”

But that it was a “complete surprise” turned out to be untrue, he said, speaking from his home in Los Angeles. The devastating war happened in large measure because of a major intelligence failure, as recounted in the film. The government was aware that Syria and Egypt were massing troops along their borders, yet members of Meir’s war council refused to trust intelligence sources that said an invasion was imminent.

Adding to the shortsightedness was, as the film shows, Israeli hubris about its military superiority over its neighboring Arab countries. These miscalculations resulted in massive losses of both soldiers and equipment. At one point in Golda , the situation becomes so dire that Meir, played by Helen Mirren, turns to an aide and says: “If the Arabs reach Tel Aviv, I won’t be taken alive. You are to make sure of that.”

The film also portrays how, after the war, a commission was

they preserved their rich history.”

Each of the chefs found songs that inspired them, and their 10 resulting recipes and how-to videos, alongside an album of 10 songs performed by Aroeste and her band, make up the

appointed to investigate who should be held responsible for the disproportionally high number of fatalities—the commission ultimately absolved Meir of direct responsibility. Nevertheless, over the last decade, according to Nattiv, newly unclassified documents reveal the tensions in the war room, details about the intelligence failures and Meir’s doubts around her decisions.

The unmasking of these truths is what makes Golda , which is set to open nationwide on August 25, so remarkable. Most movies value cinematic continuity over facts, but what Nattiv has done is trust that the story that took place out of public view is sufficiently powerful to stand by itself.

In part, the film’s success is a tribute to its lead. While covered in layers of prosthetics and makeup, Mirren fully captures the chain-smoking Israeli leader, both physically and emotionally. You see in her performance Meir’s no-nonsense toughness as well as the doubts she must have felt as someone with no military experience who must contend with the divided views and nonstop in-fighting among her allmale cabinet and military experts.

Filmgoers will also sense Meir’s weariness. She is secretly undergoing treatment for cancer, which she fears could impact her mental health. (In real life, Meir died of lymphoma just

JASPER WOLF

Susan Barocas

Helen Mirren in ‘Golda’

Savor package. (Both a physical CD and access to a digital portal with the recipes, videos and music can be purchased at saraharoeste.com.)

In one video, nonagenarian writer Kaye Israel, alongside her daughter

four years after she left office.)

“If you see the slightest sign of dementia,” Meir tells her trusted assistant, Lou Kaddar (Camille Cottin), “let me know. I can’t trust the flatterers.”

In the end, Meir emerges from the film as a tarnished hero. She wasn’t the best military leader, but it was through her efforts that the United States was convinced to replace Israel’s dwindling supplies at a time when President Richard Nixon was fighting a battle of his own over Watergate. Moreover, it was Meir’s close relationship with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, played by Liev Schreiber, that influenced the decision to delay officially announcing the cease-fire for 18 hours, giving Israel a chance to recapture territory lost in the battles.

Israel didn’t win the war; the Arabs lost it. Exhilarated by early success, Egypt moved further into Israel, thereby leaving Cairo unprotected and a flank exposed to Israeli fire. As Meir says in the film, “Knowing when you’ve lost is easy. Knowing when you’ve won, that’s hard.”

With this film, Nattiv and certainly Mirren should know that they’ve won.

Curt Schleier, a freelance writer, teaches business writing to corporate executives.

Marcia Israel Weingarten, seems to time the precise hand-turned crimps on her crisp bourekas to the rhythm of Aroeste’s rendition of “Chico Ianiko.” The sweet tune about making the savory stuffed pastry with a grandson was originally written by Bosnian Sephardi musician Flory Jagoda.

Komida de Berendjena, a honeyed eggplant and hummus dish, gets a free-style demo in a video by exuberant young chef Hélène Jawhara Piñer, whose bona fides include a Ph.D. in medieval history and the history of food. The dish is paired with “Siete Modos de Guisar La Berendjena,” an equally lively song describing seven ways to cook eggplant, one of the essential ingredients of Sephardi cuisine.

Ropa Vieja, classic Cuban shredded beef, is revealed as a centuries-old Iberian dish by historian-chef Genie Milgrom. She prepares the recipe to a lilting counting song, “Ke Komiash Duenya,” that commemorates a vast meal that went on for days.

Taken together, the recipes with their videos create a delectable meal.

Preserving memories of food and music by passing them along to new generations and making Sephardi culture accessible to everyone is what Savor is all about, said Aroeste.

“We have survived so much and come out the other side carrying these traditions that are so magnifi-

cent and so beautiful,” she said of the Sephardi diaspora. “We want to share the culture with joy.”

Beth Segal is an award-winning writer and photographer specializing in food projects. Her work has appeared in The Plain Dealer, The New York Times, Bon Appétit and many other publications.

Ladino singer-songwriter Sarah Aroeste

Komida de Berendjena, honeyed eggplant and hummus

The Sassoons is made possible by Denise Littlefield Sobel; the Arthur F. and Alice E. Adams Charitable Foundation; The Achelis and Bodman Foundation; The David Berg Foundation; The Starr Foundation; the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; Barbara Tober, The Acronym Fund; and other generous donors. Digital guide supported by Bloomberg Connects.

Images: (Left) Attributed to William Melville, David Sassoon, mid-nineteenth century. Private collection. (Right) John Singer Sargent, Sybil, Countess of Rocksavage, 1913. Courtesy Houghton Hall Collection, used by permission. Image courtesy Bridgeman Images

The Jewish Museum is under the auspices of The Jewish Theological Seminary

California Dreams

Telling stories about the past—and the future

FICTION Künstlers in Paradise

By Cathleen Schine (Henry Holt and Co.)

The sun doesn’t have a fragrance, but in Cathleen Schine’s latest novel, readers can practically inhale the power of Southern California’s rays, just as they can almost catch a whiff of the bougainvillea, honeysuckle, jasmine and oranges blossoms blooming there year-round.

That’s one of the many magical infusions in Schine’s vivid and deeply felt work. It focuses on the 10,000strong colony of German-speaking

Jewish refugees—artists, writers, musicians and scholars—who were assembled as a brain trust of sorts in Los Angeles after the rise of Nazism in their native cities of Berlin, Munich and Vienna. They included Lion Feuchtwanger, Arnold Schoenberg, Vicki Baum, Berthold and Salka Viertel and many others who worked for the Hollywood studios, taught at UCLA and contributed vastly to Southern California’s cultural and intellectual scene.

Some of these dramatis personae have secondary and tertiary roles in the book, but the star of the novel—and she burns brightly— is Viennese-born Salomea Künstler, better known as Mamie, a feisty, sharp-tongued nonagenarian who is sharing the story of her life, and the Hollywood artist colony, with

her somewhat aimless 20-something grandson, Julian. It is 2020 and the two are holed up in Mamie’s comfortable but slightly disheveled digs in Venice, Calif., waiting out the Covid19 storm.

All of Mamie’s stories are engaging to Julian (and to this reader), but the most affecting ones focus on the sense of physical and psychological displacement of Mamie’s elders. The move from Vienna—where the Künstlers had made names for themselves over multiple generations in music, medicine and commerce—to Los Angeles had clearly taken its toll. Language, age and middling talent served as formidable barriers to the reinvention of the self.

After all, Schine gently suggests, not everyone can be a Schoenberg, the father of atonal music. In Vienna, Mamie’s own father, Otto, had been a respected composer; in Santa Monica, he was relegated to teaching piano scales to children with no aptitude for music.

“Loss, which Otto had so heroically faced at first, had soured to a sense of abandonment,” Schine writes. “Both his old country and his new country had abandoned him. The new country is bright, but my future is dark: that’s what he began to say.”

One of Schine’s greatest gifts as a novelist is her capacity to capture the light and the dark in the flash of a moment, leaving the reader with a sense of life’s preciousness and precariousness—a hint of orange blossoms wafting in the air, along with the heartache of love lost and things past.

—Robert Nagler Miller

Robert Nagler Miller frequently writes about the arts, literature and Jewish themes from his home near New York City.

Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl

By Renée Rosen (Berkley)

Estée Lauder, a Jewish girl from Queens, N.Y., built a multimillion-dollar cosmetics empire on the false premise that she was descended from Austrian aristocracy. Gloria Downing, the fictional best friend who tells Estée’s story in Renée Rosen’s new novel, Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl, knows how painful secrets and lies can be.

The book opens in 1938 on the day that society girl Gloria Dowaziac’s father is sentenced to Sing Sing prison for running a Ponzi scheme that left hundreds, including Gloria and her family, penniless at the height of the Great Depression. Ashamed and homeless, Gloria walks into Darlene’s Palace of Beauty for a dye job to mask her recognizable platinum hair. She leaves with a new hair color, a new name (invented on the spot), a new job washing hair for tips (her first ever, at age 21) and a new friend—Estée, the young woman giving facials and peddling homemade skincare products in the salon.

Estée, already married to Joe Lauder and mother to Leonard, mixes up skin creams in her kitchen, determined to become a famous cosmetics magnate. Her earliest words to Gloria, whom she sees as a fellow striver, capture Estée’s personality and one of the book’s major themes: “You may be a shampoo girl today, but if you change your attitude, you might be able to make something of yourself.... If you want to be successful, you have to imagine you already are successful.”

The book follows Gloria and Estée as they strive for that success. Gloria works her way up to Saks Fifth Avenue shopgirl, then assistant cosmetics buyer. She hides her real name from everyone, even her new love, pretending her parents are dead.

With persistence and Gloria’s help, Estée finally wins counter space at Saks, where she pioneers in-store makeup demonstrations and incentives such as gifts-with-purchase on her way to stardom in the beauty business. But even as the two women advance in their careers, secrets and lies jeopardize their friendship.

In her reader’s guide, included with the print and Kindle versions of the novel, Rosen says she invented Gloria as a way to tell Estée Lauder’s story while allowing some freedom to tinker with the truth. Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl arrives just in time for beach-reading season, and it is an enjoyable combination of glamour, romance and the mostly accurate story of a remarkable Jewish woman.

—Elizabeth Edelglass

Elizabeth Edelglass is a fiction writer, poet and book reviewer living in Connecticut.

Once We Were Home

By Jennifer Rosner (Flatiron Books)

Jennifer Rosner begins her new novel from an unusual perspective: “My family’s song sets the rhythm of my heart as I nest inside my mother, inside her mother, inside her mother,” she writes, expressing the thoughts of the innermost doll in a set of nesting

dolls. That metaphor instantly sets the theme of the intertwined stories that follow.

Rosner, whose previous novel, The Yellow Bird Sings, was a finalist for two National Jewish Book Awards as well as a One Book, One Hadassah book club selection, hauntingly evokes in her new work the inner and outer lives of those who, as children, were displaced, stolen and hidden during World War II. Some were placed in convents and monasteries; some were taken in by non-Jewish families. Those who looked Aryan

ONE BOOK, ONE HADASSAH

Join us on Thursday, August 17 at 7 PM ET as  Hadassah Magazine  Executive Editor Lisa Hostein interviews best-selling author Cathleen Schine about her latest  book,  Künstlers in Paradise . The novel introduces readers to an unforgettable Jewish grandmother: sharp-tongued and glamorous Mamie, who describes her family’s escape from the Nazis to a sunny Californian artist colony to her lovable but aimless 20-something grandson, Julian, during Covid lockdowns.

Vivid and witty, the novel is an exploration of inherited trauma as well as an ode to the power of storytelling. Register at hadassahmagazine.org/books , or by using the QR code here.

Cathleen Schine

were sometimes kidnapped and raised by Germans as their own children. After the war, many were reclaimed, sometimes forcibly, and transported to British Mandate Palestine.

The voices of the four main characters—Roger, Renata, Ana and Oskar—alternate by chapter, moving forward in time from war-torn Europe in 1942 to Israel in 1968. The characters’ stories converge unexpectedly as they attempt to move on from the trauma and loss they experienced as children during the Holocaust and build new lives.

Roger, placed in a convent in Marseilles during the war, has been asking questions since a young age: “Why, if God is good, did he create mosquitos that sting and bite us?” “Are there really roads to good and evil?” When relatives come to reclaim him, the Church whisks him away to a monastery in Spain until required by a court ruling to turn him over to his aunt. Despite being embraced by a loving family in Israel, he feels as if he’s “still afloat between two worlds, watching.”

Renata, a British student from Oxford, is on an archaeological dig in Jerusalem in 1968 when readers first meet her. Her chosen area of study reflects her fascination with excavating the past. She does not know that her German mother and father are not her biological parents. After the death of her mother, Renata is grief-stricken and tries to contend with unanswered questions about her life, including why her parents fled Germany when she was a child.

Ana and Oskar, born Mira and Daniel Kowalski, spend the war years hidden by Agata and Jozef Dabrowski, a Polish farming couple. Ana is the older sibling. She is left with the couple at age 7, and initially she clings to a photo of her parents

every night before falling asleep: “She wants to imagine all of them home, Mama and Aunt Frieda bustling in and out, tending soup pots of steaming kneidel. Jars of plum marmalade lining the kitchen counter; herbs tied fresh and drying off the beam above.”

Oskar wasn’t yet 2 when the Nazis forced Jews into ghettos in Poland. He has no memory of his parents and feels that he doesn’t need to remember them, preferring to focus on “the fields and forests, and birds who trill and chirp and thwack and whistle.”

The Dabrowskis don’t want to give the children up after the war, but Ana and Oskar are taken from the couple by a Jewish woman from a reclamation organization and resettled in Israel on a kibbutz. Ana embraces kibbutz life, but Oskar is heartbroken and angry. Attempting to find his place in the kibbutz carpentry shop, he learns to craft magnificent nesting boxes. Remember those nesting dolls mentioned in the opening?

Rosner’s tender prose unearths the depth and complexity of family, love, religion, identity, memory and home. Lying deep within each character’s tangled feelings is the pivotal place of the mother. As a friend astutely comments on Oskar’s work, “What is a mother if not a nesting box?”

—Rahel Musleah

Rahel Musleah, a frequent contributor to Hadassah Magazine , runs Jewish tours to India (explorejewishindia.com) and speaks about its communities.

The Postcard By Anne Berest. Translated by Tina Kover (Europa Editions)

A best seller in her native France, where it was published in 2021, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is now available to English readers in a translation

that captures the author’s poetic language and compelling story.

This is a work of autofiction, a genre somewhere between autobiography and narrative fiction. The book recounts the author’s extensive research into the history of her Ashkenazi Jewish family, how they escaped from revolutionary Russia to Latvia and Mandate Palestine, and finally to France, where Berest was born and grew up with minimal connection to Judaism.

The Postcard begins on a snowy day in January 2003. Anne’s mother, Lélia Picabia, a renowned linguist, receives an anonymous postcard with only a handwritten list of four names—Ephraim, Emma, Noémie, Jacques. The first two are Leila’s grandparents, the Rabinovitches; the latter names are two of their children, Lélia’s aunt and uncle. All four were killed at Auschwitz.

Lélia gathers her husband and daughter to show them the card. They muse about the picture on the front, that of an opera house, and which post office it came from, but the names—people Anne knew only as ancestors murdered during the Holocaust and little else—are not discussed.

“After lunch, my parents put the postcard away in a drawer, and we never talked about it again. I was twenty-four years old, my mind full of my own life, of other stories to be written. I erased the recollection of the postcard from my memory, though I kept hold of the vague intention to ask my mother, one day, about our family’s history.”

Sixteen years later, when Anne’s 6-year-old daughter, Clara, returns from school one day and says, “They don’t like Jews very much at school,” that earlier intention reverberates in Anne’s mind. Even as she struggles with how to respond to her daughter, the statement spurs Anne to research the postcard.

“The idea of finding the culprit became an obsession,” Berest writes. “I had to understand why that card had been sent.”

Anne hires a private detective and a handwriting specialist. She travels with her mother across France to interview anyone who might have known Myriam—Lélia’s mother who had been the sole surviving Rabinovitch—even as Anne attempts to understand herself and her own identity.

Myriam had escaped to France’s unoccupied zone before the roundup of Jews for deportation from her family’s home in Normandy. Ephraim and Emma, of the postcard, were her parents. Yet Myriam, who died in the 1990s, never spoke about the war or her lost loved ones.

Silence is a major theme in Berest’s book. Not only does Myriam stay silent about her Jewish family and the Holocaust, but she also keeps secret her role in the French Resistance. She fought alongside her non-Jewish husband, Vicente, Lélia’s father and the son of renowned painter Francis Picabia. For much of Anne’s childhood, she thinks Myriam’s second husband, Yves, is her grandfather.

Berest is the author of award-winning fiction and nonfiction as well as scripts for television, film and theater. In The Postcard, she deftly intertwines the story of her research with the stories she uncovers. She reserves her fictionalization to the imagined scenes of her ancestors’ lives and even

ON YOUR SHELF: NEW BOOKS FOR SUMMER READING

By Sandee Brawarsky

How to Love Your Daughter

by Hila Blum. Translated

by Daniella Zamir (Riverhead)

Best-selling Israeli author Blum was awarded the Edward Sapir Prize, one of Israel’s most distinguished literary awards, for this enthralling novel that mines the relationship between a mother and daughter. The book opens with the mother gazing into the window of her estranged daughter’s home in a foreign city, seeing her grandchildren for the first time. The story moves back in time through their lives that were once so closely entwined. Both women are the only daughters of only daughters. Told in the voice of the mother, this is a novel of emotional depth and complexity, at once disturbing and enlightening.

Hope

by Andrew Ridker (Viking)

In this story of a contemporary American Jewish family set in the suburb of Brookline, Mass., Ridker introduces a physician father, do-gooder mother and their two 20-something kids in alternating chapters. The sharply drawn characters are full of foibles and missteps yet are still able to charm. While Ridker lampoons the publishing industry, where the daughter finds her career, as well as upper-middle-class life, he also manages to write about forgiveness, meaning and, as the title says, hope.

All-Night Pharmacy

by Ruth Madievsky (Catapult)

Written in prose that’s full of energy, wit and striking imagery, Madievsky’s debut novel is a tale of two sisters. Set mostly in Los Angeles, it’s also a wild and perceptive coming-of-age and coming-out story mixed with addiction and mysticism, the latter shared by a Jewish refugee from Moldova who offers psychic revelations. The author,

who was born in Moldova, is an essayist and award-winning poet as well as a pharmacist.

The Ascent: A House Can Have Many

Secrets by Stefan Hertmans. Translated by David McKay (Pantheon)

In this memoir that records and re-imagines the past, Belgian author Hertmans recounts his discovery that the house in Ghent where he lived for 20 years had once been the home of a Nazi official, Willem Verhulst. It was, he writes, “as if phantoms haunted the rooms I’d known so well.” The author, an International Booker Prize nominee for his novel The Convert , tells Verhulst’s life story in The Ascent , including his first marriage to a Jewish woman, his early political leanings and his cruelty. The text is accompanied by photos, creating a fuller picture of the house, its inhabitants and the long shadow of the Holocaust.

Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance by Jeremy Eichler (Knopf)

The chief classical music critic at The Boston Globe and a cultural historian, Eichler guides readers in listening to history through music. He has crafted an original, well-researched and poetic work about the multilayered connections between music and memory, going backward and forward in time. He looks at sounds, stories, events and landscapes as he reports on works by four 20th-century composers—Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten—and their different musical responses to the war years.

Sandee Brawarsky is a longtime columnist in the Jewish book world as well as an award-winning journalist, editor and author of several books, most recently 212 Views of Central Park: Experiencing New York City’s Jewel From Every Angle.

follows her great-uncle Jacques to his last moments in the gas chamber in Auschwitz.

This book delves into quite a bit of history, but perhaps more important than that factual reporting is how the history is reflected in the present-day rise of antisemitism in France. A shroud of fear hangs over the narrative as Anne, the writer, and Anne, the character, both wonder if the postcard was meant as a threat. Could what happened to Ephraim, Emma, Noémie and Jacques happen to her family again? After all, she notes, the Rabinovitches knew when to leave Russia in 1918, but not when to leave France in 1939.

The Postcard was a finalist for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. Perhaps more notably, considering the rise of antisemitism worldwide, in 2022 it won the inaugural Prix Goncourt US, an award selected by French literature students from five prestigious American universities.

—Elizabeth Edelglass

A N S W E R S Crossword

Knockout Beauty and Other Afflictions

By Marina Rubin (Crowsnest Books)

Flora and her longtime fiancé are stuck in a relationship she likens to a suitcase of unnecessary things, as in the Ukrainian proverb she quotes in the short story, “Good People Make Bad Couples”: “Too heavy to carry but oh, such a shame to drop.” In Marina Rubin’s sparkling new collection of stories, Knockout Beauty and Other Afflictions, Flora as well as most other women in the book are searching for love—and running from it, too.

While that makes for complicated lives, their adventures are high-spirited, colorful and alive to possibility. In “Valentino,” a clothes-loving optometrist named Iris, who is hav-

ing an affair with a married man, buys piles of designer clothing. She sees endless possibilities as a “myriad of fabrics, textures, colors dovetailed with zippers, buttons and belts. Each hanger held a promise—an opening night at the Metropolitan Opera in a plunging Escada, a red Valentino at the fundraiser for glaucoma, a silk jumpsuit at an art opening in Chelsea.” In the end, most of the clothing is returned.

Rubin’s characters, many of them Jewish, are Americans and émigrés. Her writing is funny, dramatic, compassionate, rich with detail and original. Born in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, Rubin immigrated to the United States as a teenager in 1989 and grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., where many of the 17 stories take place.

Her previous book, Stealing Cherries, was flash fiction, a collection of microstories that fit perfectly into a square of text. Here, her characters have more space to wrestle with their uncertainties, mysterious lovers, moments of loneliness and the serendipities of life and hope.

—Sandee Brawarsky

NONFICTION

The Baron: Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Nineteenth Century By Matthias B. Lehmann (Stanford University Press)

Long before the world was focused on the wealth of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos or the activities of George Soros and Bill Gates, there was Baron Maurice de Hirsch. During his time, the German Jewish financier and entrepreneur’s name was synonymous with wealth, privilege and philanthropy. Today, however, his influence is less well-known than names like the Rothschilds or his non-Jewish counterpart, Andrew Carnegie.

Hirsch, who lived during the second half of the 19th century, a tumultuous time, was a charismatic and controversial character, a giant of the “gilded age of Jewish philanthropy,” historian Matthias B. Lehmann, Teller Family chair in Jewish History at the University of California, Irvine, writes in The Baron.

The exhaustive, and in some places too detailed, biography—there are more than 65 pages of footnotes—illuminates the legacy of the man who built rail lines; funded Jewish colonies in Argentina, the United States and pre-State Israel; and, at one point, suggested that the best way to eradicate antisemitism was

through assimilation. The book also describes how Hirsch’s life helps us understand Jewish philanthropy and politics in Europe at a time when private benefactors played a major role in shaping the fate of Jewish communities worldwide.

“Philanthropy did not operate outside or beyond the realm of politics,” writes Lehmann. “It was the principal form of Jewish political action at the time.”

Hirsch was born into wealth. His grandfather was the first Jewish landowner in Bavaria and his father served as banker to Maximilian Joseph, king of Bavaria, who awarded the family a hereditary barony. Hirsch, who established his own banking firm at the age of 17,

expanded the family fortune through sugar and copper speculation as well as by purchasing railway concessions in Austria, Turkey and the Balkans.

Indeed, he created the first rail line linking Western Europe with the Ottoman Empire at a time when transcontinental tracks were being laid in the United States and elsewhere. The rail line, Chemins de fer Orientaux, was a visionary project that took two decades to complete and spurred business development across the continent. It also became the rail line for the Orient Express.

One of the most influential men of his time, Hirsch had homes in France, England and Hungary as well as in what is now the Czech Republic. He and his wife, Clara de Hirsch,

Charlotte Weiss

Each Remembrance includes your loved one’s name and photo, along with your tribute of 150 to 180 words, including any involvement with Hadassah, if pertinent. The cost is $625 per Remembrance, per issue. For more information or to reserve space for

Our beloved mom, Charlotte (Tzivia bas Malka Perel) was interred at the Jewish Community Cemetery on Smith Road in Doylestown, PA on July 1, 2023 (12 Tammuz 5783). She lived in Pennsylvania for most of her life, working and raising four children with her husband David, of blessed memory. A connoisseur of coffee, chocolate and kugel, she was well known as a cheerful and experimental cook who loved hosting festive holiday meals. A renowned and gifted nurse educator, Charlotte pioneered nurse training methods at the University of Scranton, following her own long and fulfilling nursing career. She was a proud Hadassah member in Doylestown for 52 years, serving two terms as chapter president. Charlotte’s fellow chapter members became lifelong friends who added much fun, richness and meaning to her life. She is sorely missed by her children Sylvia, Carol, Ted and Amy, her sons- and daughtersin-law, and nine grandchildren. (This is a fictitious person; the text above is used for example purposes only.)

frequently entertained influential Jews and Christians at grand events on their estates, and invitations to his lavish hunting parties were much sought after.

Although he himself received a Jewish education, Hirsch shunned all

religious practice, feeling that secularization would solve the problem of anti-Jewish discrimination. He even urged his son, Lucien, to find a wife among the Christian aristocracy of London. (Lucien died in 1887, before he could marry.) In January

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All decisions regarding the use of funds for any purpose, or the transfer of funds to or for the benefit of any other entity or organization, shall be subject to the approval of the Board or other governing body of Hadassah. The Hadassah Foundation, Inc. is a supporting organization of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Inc. September 2022

1889, Hirsch gave an extraordinary interview to the New York Herald, reprinted in newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic. In it, he said, “The Jewish question can only be solved by the disappearance of the Jewish race, which will inevitably be accomplished by the amalgamation of Christians and Jews.”

Such a process, he explained, could start with “enabling oppressed Jews to deal with modernity.”

That universalist approach collided with the reality of antisemitism in his era, notes Lehmann. Even as he was building his railway, Hirsch became a popular target of conspiracy theories and was accused of swindling his investors, with one Austrian newspaper lamenting those caught in his “devilish Jewish net.”

Nevertheless, Hirsch remained a constant defender of Jewish causes. He donated funds to the Alliance Israélite Universelle, an aid organization founded in France in 1860 for the creation of Jewish schools in Turkey and the Balkans. His greatest charitable undertaking, Lehmann explains, was his attempt to alleviate the suffering and poverty of Jews in the Pale of Settlement, a geographic area that included parts of Russia and much of Poland and Lithuania.

Hirsch created the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) in 1891. With a budget of $36 million, it was the greatest charitable trust in the world at that time. The JCA purchased large tracts of land for establishing Jewish colonies to resettle Jews from the Pale in North and South America as well as in Mandate Palestine. The JCA also managed a complex system for dealing with Jewish persecution, including emigration bureaus, technical schools and savings and loan banks.

Through the JCA, Hirsch set up

a central committee to organize the immigration of Russian Jews to Argentina, giving them land in the Pampas to establish farms. Indeed, the towns of Moisés Ville, Clara and Mauricio in Argentina were all named for the Hirsches. Unfortunately, the plan to establish farming colonies fizzled, as, Lehmann writes, the Russian Jews “had never worked in agriculture and had no idea about farming,” and that they were struggling with “an entirely unfamiliar country and completely uprooted from their old habits.”

Nevertheless, the immigrants who settled there formed the seeds of the Ashkenazi Jewish communities of Latin America.

After Hirsch’s death in 1896, Clara continued the family’s investment in charitable works, including in the JCA.

The Baron paints an image of Hirsch as a complex, audacious man who grappled with some of the same issues that plague Jewish leaders today—questions of privilege, assimilation, antisemitism and continuity. Hirsch thought of his immense wealth as “a sacred trust,” Lehmann writes, that he must use to ensure the survival of Jews worldwide. Today, over a century later, the charity he started still exists, under the name Jewish Charitable Association. Its accumulated funds are largely directed toward agricultural projects in Israel, supporting programs in the Negev and the Galilee.

In a letter to a friend after the too-early death of his son, Hirsch ruminates on his legacy. “My son I have lost, but not my heir,” he writes. “Humanity is my heir.”

—Stewart Kampel

WHO WILL SAY

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Stewart Kampel was a longtime editor at The New York Times

G uide to Jewish Literature

Order

KILL BROTHERS

Steven Moscovitz

Kill Brothers is a pulsepounding, cold case thriller that delivers page-turning twists and turns, weaving together historical fi ction (World War II) and modernday DNA analysis. Will NYPD’s Detective Mills murder investigation link him back to Greta Weber’s shocking secret of nearly a century before? From the 1920s Germany to 2018 in Brooklyn, Kill Brothers will keep readers racing through the pages until its mind-bending conclusion. Available on Amazon.com and www.stevendmoscovitz.com.

TEN YEARS GONE

Jonathan Dunsky

Tel Aviv, 1949: The search for a missing boy takes private detective Adam Lapid on a perilous journey toward a shocking truth. A thrilling historical mystery, book 1 of the popular Adam Lapid series. Recommended by the Jewish Book Council and loved by thousands of readers worldwide.

Available on https://jonathandunsky.com/products/ ten-years-gone.

THIS IS N OT HOW IT E NDS

Rochelle Weinstein

Weinstein’s bestselling novel has charmed readers across the globe. Set in the picturesque Florida Keys, Charlotte fi nds herself torn between the love she thought she wanted and the one she knows she needs. As a hurricane passes through Islamorada, stunning revelations challenge Charlotte’s loyalties and she embarks on an emotional journey of friendship, love, and sacrifi ce— knowing that forgiveness is a gift, and the bestlaid plans can change in a heartbeat. A tender, moving story of heartbreak and healing that asks the question: Which takes more courage— holding on or letting go?

Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org. www.rochelleweinstein.com

E SCAPE TO THE TATRAS –A BOY, A WAR AND A LIFE I NTERRUPTED

Oscar Sladek with Corinne Joy Brown

“A masterpiece of love and survival” – James Carroll (Constantine’s Sword). “A gripping page-turner… as dramatic and powerful an account of the Holocaust era as a reader is likely to find.” Chris Leppek - Intermountain Jewish News. The Štaub family; Irene, Frici, and young son Oskar, citizens of Prešov, Slovakia, flee into the forbidding Tatra mountains in the winter of 1944. Young Osi finds the courage and resiliency to cope with physical and emotional challenges far beyond his years. Amazon, Audible and EscapeToTheTatras.com.

HOW TO M AKE A LIFE

Florence Reiss Kraut

An award-winning and riveting historical novel of four generations of an immigrant family. When matriarch Ida escapes a pogrom in Ukraine determined to save her family, she cannot foresee the struggles of her descendants. Through war, mental illness, secrets and betrayal, each generation’s actions impact the lives of the next, as love and loyalty is tested by secrets and betrayal. You will recognize these family members and grieve and rejoice with them. Readers cannot put the book down. Gift it. Pick it for your book club and author will Zoom with you for a lively conversation. Available in paperback, audio, and e-book on Amazon, Bookshop.org, or wherever you buy books. www.florencereisskraut.com.

R EBECCA OF SALERNO: A N OVEL OF ROGUE CRUSADERS , A J EWISH FEMALE PHYSICIAN , AND A M URDER

Esther Erman

200 years in the making – since Sir Walter Scott wrote Ivanhoe: What does Rebecca, perhaps the fi rst positive Jewish character in European literature, do after fleeing England for her life? Yearning to work as a healer, rebelling against expectations of marriage and children, Rebecca studies at the medical school in Salerno. But political turmoil in the early 13th century brings unwelcome changes to the once tolerant Kingdom of Sicily. When a visiting rabbi from Egypt is falsely accused of murder, Rebecca must race against time to pursue justice.

Print and e-books available everywhere. EstherErman.com.

A TRAIN TO PALESTINE

Randy Grigsby

A chapter of the Shoah, mostly unknown outside of Israel, this book portrays the deportation of Jews to Siberian Labor Camps in 1941, and the sickness and death they endured before a daring rescue by Youth Aliyah. That Joe Rosenbaum and over a thousand Jewish children endured such a three-year journey is a powerful reminder of the miraculous strength of the human will to survive. $24.95 paperback, 270 pages. Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

THIS L ABYRINTH OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT

Randy Grigsby

Drawing on Henrietta Szold’s letters and diary entries, and extensive research and historical sources of that time in Germany and Palestine, This Labyrinth of Darkness and Light is a powerful narrative and spellbinding rescue story, that brings to life one of the darkest and yet most inspirational chapters in Jewish history. Paperback, 278 pages. $24.95. Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

SAGA OF G ENERATIONS

Adele Sinoway-Barnett

Saga of Generations is a family story of Jewish people, some who escaped the horrifi c murderous ways of Russia taking place in 1818, going through generations over four continents, including the World War 1. This book includes love, lust, and heartache. Read and you will feel that each of these characters are part of your family.

Available from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Bookshop.org and e-books.

BEA –THE BEST KIND OF PATIENT

Gail Goldstein

A Picture Book

Making Hurt Events a Little Easier on Everyone. Bea is a curious little girl who wants to know about the boys on the wall at the doctor’s o ce. Her Mom reads the stories teaching pain help vocabulary to her while they wait.

Available in print through Amazon, $12.99. Learn more about the family stress reducing My Pain Alert Scale at https://www.MyPainAlert.com/.

these books directly through the Hadassah Magazine website! Just go to Hadassahmagazine.org and click on Guide to Jewish Literature.

THE SECRET WAR O F H ENRY R EBBENOFF

Alice Reiter Laby

The year is 1937 in the first pages of this intriguing World War II novel, an important year for Henry Rebbeno . He hopes to be hired as the new Cantor of Temple Beth Elohim in Charleston, South Carolina, and he meets the lovely southern Jewish belle Ada Tobias. As war comes to America’s shores, Cantor Henry must make decisions that will a ect him and his family. Does he make the right choices? Journey over the years with Henry through this beautifully written novel.

Available on Amazon.

Throw Me a Bone, Please

A root for butchers and architects | By

Joseph Lowin

THE PRECIOUS FEW

David Twain with Art Twain

While the Nazis round up Polish Jews and herd them to concentration camps, four separate young Jews find ways to escape, adjust, and fight back. The force that drives them is an iron will to survive—against overwhelming odds—to fi nd lost family, refuse to bow to antisemitic force, and to retaliate. Four survivors tell their stories of incredible success in a time rich with failure. Their experiences lead to a new mindset: a breed of Jews who will eventually create a Jewish state dedicated to never letting another Holocaust stain history. These precious few greatly changed Jewish life. The book may be purchased on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

O N 174TH STREET: THE WORLD OF WILLIE M ITTLEMAN

Mel Weiser

Days are bad in the Great Depression of the 1930s. But for little Willie Mittleman and the Mittleman clan in their Bronx, NY neighborhood, life is still good, proving that laughter and love will always be the lifesaving forces to rescue us from adversity and pain. A big-hearted gem. Funny, touching and insightful. For readers of all ages. Available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

To advertise here, please call Randi O’Connor at (212) 451-6221, or email roconnor@hadassah.org. Space is limited.

Searching for the root cause of a contemporary political issue? Regrettably, this column is licensed to speak only about Hebrew roots, such as ם-ר-ג (gimel-resh-mem), which means causation and gives us a number of related words, including bones, frameworks and a mitzvah-exemption for Jewish women.

In Job 40:18, God makes a small point using our root. He argues that it was He who created the behemoth, such a huge beast that ויָמָרְגּ (geramav), “its bones,” are as strong as iron bars. The prophet Zephania compares the corrupt judges of his time to rapacious foxes who have gnawed the meat from the carcasses of the shepherd’s flock, but, רֶקֹבַּל

(lo gormu la-boker), “come dawn, did not leave them even the bones.” In Genesis, foremother Leah’s fifth son, Issachar, receives a prophecy from his father that he will be a םֶרָגּ

(hamor gorem), “strong-boned donkey,” i.e., fit for carrying heavy burdens.

A rabbinic midrash is puzzled by this expression and emends our root, giving us the sentence היֵמְרָגּ רֹמֲח (hamor garmei), “A donkey caused him.” One night, so the story goes, Jacob’s scorned but resourceful wife Leah is awakened by Jacob’s donkey screeching outside. This noise gives Leah an excuse to rush out to welcome her husband home. Nature takes its course and—thanks to the braying animal—Issachar is born.

During the Feast of Booths, a woman is not required to use the sukkah because it involves a positive mitzvah אָמָרְגּ ןַמְזַּהֶשׁ (she-ha-zeman geramah), “in which time is a factor,” from which generally women are exempt. Our sages use the root when, for example, they discuss the case of הָמָרְגַה (hagramah), a minute slide of the knife during a ritual slaughtering. Moving from the physical to the spiritual, the rabbis suggest that םֵרוֹגּ םֵשַּׁה (ha-shem gorem), one’s name causes a person’s character and fate.

Then as now, a goodwill gesture offered by butchers to their favorite customers is called םיִמוּרֵגּ (gerumim), “a few grams extra.” And among the important םיִמְרגּ (gormim), factors, for a building being awarded an architecture and design prize is the style of its תגֵרְדַמ םֶרֶגּ (gerem madregot), array of steps, i.e., staircase.

Israeli slang today adopts the biblical hamor gorem as an idiom to call someone stupid. To motivate us to use kinder language, let us rather learn Proverbs 25:15, which uses our root in the phrase, םֶרָג רָבְּשִׁתּ הָכַּר ןוֹשָׁל (lashon rakkah tishbor gorem), “A gentle tongue will shatter a bone.”

Joseph Lowin’s columns for Hadassah Magazine are collected in the books HebrewSpeak , Hebrew Talk and the recently published Hebrew Matters, available at gcrr.org/product-page/hebrew-matters

Jamie Simon

Promoting the ‘magical experience’ of Jewish camp

By Esther D. Kustanowitz

Jamie simon is a true believer in jewish summer camp. “camp changed the whole trajectory of my life,” asserts the new chief program officer at the Foundation for Jewish Camp. “It’s where I got my self-esteem, where I got excited about being Jewish, where I found my community and my people, and where I got my passion for social justice.” With summer in full swing, Simon, 41, a former CEO at Camp Tawonga in Groveland, Calif., says that she and FJC staff are visiting some of the 300-plus day and overnight camps nationwide to see how their organization can support them. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

How did Jewish summer camp become your professional life?

My first year at Tawonga was 1990. I was 9 and the only Jewish kid in my third-grade class in Danville, Calif. Jewish camp was a place to make Jewish friends and be in a Jewish community, where I was loved for who I was. When Tawonga’s director called me in 2006 about a full-time position, I was like, “To take all my passions, values and education and work year-round in camping…what a gift!” And I never left.

What is the state of Jewish camping now? And what will we see in the future?

This year, we’re seeing numbers similar to [pre-pandemic] 2019. With only about 15 percent of Jewish kids in the United States going to Jewish camp, there’s a huge opportunity for more kids to have this magical experience. Research shows that people have a Jewish identity as adults because of their Jewish experience at camp.

But costs are rising. What was once $100,000 for property insurance is now in the millions. We want

to make camp accessible and affordable, as with FJC’s One Happy Camper, which incentivizes new campers with subsidies.

In five to 10 years, the Jewish community—and camps as part of that—will be even more diverse. We’re going to serve more LGBTQ Jews, Jews of color, Jews who have multiple-faith families.

What important issues are Jewish camps navigating right now?

The talent situation: 40 percent of Jewish camps across the country this year have a director who started their post within the past two years. There is a challenge with the retention of both seasonal and year-round staff, so camps are getting creative: Staff can work a partial summer, or alumni can come up for a week to work in the kitchen or lead arts and crafts. Making this a sustainable job that pays a competitive salary is a big challenge I’m excited to figure out.

In addition, kids have many more significant mental health challenges. And so do young adult staff, who have their own stuff they’re grappling with. FJC has piloted the Yedid

Nefesh program, which gives camps money to hire more mental health professionals.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion— camps can do better [at creating DEI policies], and they want to, but they have limited time, money and bandwidth. We want to keep striving to do a better job to serve the diversity of the Jewish community.

FJC has a real opportunity to think about the communities that are underrepresented in leadership roles. We’re looking at doing a study on salaries as well as other ways that sexism and other isms play out at camp.

With regard to harassment and abuse issues, studies show that creating a consent culture is critical at summer camp. The needle has really moved, with consent talked about at staff meetings and something counselors are trained to watch for and to teach kids about. Also, we partner with the American Camp Association on some safety trainings around child abuse prevention and sexual assault prevention.

Esther D. Kustanowitz, an award-winning writer and cohost of The Bagel Report podcast, is based in Los Angeles.

SUPPORTING HEROES: HOW YAD SARAH HELPED TZIPI REGAIN INDEPENDENCE

We owe everything to heroes like Sergeant Tzipi Ya’akobian, a 21-year veteran of the Jerusalem police force who suffered a vicious terrorist stabbing attack, severing her spinal cord and leaving her paralyzed from the shoulders down. After a year in the hospital, Tzipi was finally able to come home – but how would she manage?

Yad Sarah steps in to help.

We showed Tzipi equipment and accessories she didn’t know existed, like an adjustable bathroom chair. We also demonstrated how to cook with some simple adaptations, practice, and patience. Like any of us, Tzipi was delighted to be home, “I finally had peace. I can't describe to you the happiness I felt when, for the first time in a year, my children came and cuddled with me in the morning.”

Now, Tzipi has hope again: “The sky is the limit."

YAD SARAH IS PROUD TO SUPPORT THOSE WHO DEVOTE THEIR LIVES TO ISRAEL.

Westbury, New York

established several charitable gift annuities with Hadassah. It is a win-win gift. They will receive fixed monthly payments for their lifetimes and the remainder of their gifts will support the medical breakthroughs of tomorrow.

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The payments you will receive depend on your age and the amount of your gift. Contact us for a personalized example or to learn about ways to include Hadassah in your estate plan.

NEW OPTION! You may be eligible to fund your CGA using your IRA. This option comes with special rules, so contact us to see if you qualify.

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The information and content contained herein are intended for educational purposes only and are not intended to provide legal, tax or other professional advice or to be relied upon. For such advice, please consult an attorney, tax advisor or accountant. References to estate and income taxes include federal taxes only and are subject to change. State income/estate taxes and/or other state laws may impact your results.

The solicitation disclosure on page 52 is incorporated in this advertisement.

Charitable deductions are allowed to the extent provided by law. Hadassah shall have full dominion, control and discretion over your gifts (and shall be under no legal obligation to transfer any portion of a gift to or for the use or benefit of any other entity or organization). All decisions regarding the transfer of funds to or for the benefit of any other entity or organization shall be subject to the approval of the Board or other governing body of Hadassah.

California residents: Annuities are subject to regulation by the State of California. Payments under such agreements, however, are not protected or otherwise guaranteed by any government agency or the California Life and Health Insurance Guarantee Association. Oklahoma residents: A charitable gift annuity is not regulated by the Oklahoma Insurance Department and is not protected by a guaranty association affiliated with the Oklahoma Insurance Department. South Dakota residents: Charitable gift annuities are not regulated by and are not under the jurisdiction of the South Dakota Division of Insurance.

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“Hadassah Medical Organization’s cutting-edge research brings hope to people with neurological and other diseases. The Slone Family is proud to support this wonderful endeavor.”

—Merry Slone, Old

Because of you, new discoveries are transforming lives.

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