Arizona Jewish Life February 2016 Vol. 4 / Issue 5

FEBRUARY 2016

WANDER NO MORE THE JEWISH LIFESTYLE

MAGAZINE

FOR ARIZONA

Weddings Photos, Chuppahs & Bangles

Jackson Katz Activist Author Brings Fight Against Domestic Violence to Arizona

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Inside

Features

February 2016/ Shevat-Adar I 5776 | Volume 4/Issue 5

32

COVER STORY Jewish community not immune to domestic violence…………………………………………..38 JFCS Brighter Tomorrow luncheon………………………………………………………………….. 38 LEAH supports victims in Tucson……………………………………………………………………..41 Letter from a former client……………………………..………………………………………………42 JEWS WITH ATTITUDE Randy Spelling: Hollywood royalty finds real-world fulfillment ……………………………...14 BUSINESS Ins & Outs………………………………………….………………………………………….…………...16 STYLE Jane Weitzman steps up for Women’s Philanthropy……………………………..…….….……32 FOOD Chef’s Corner: Love is in the air…....…………………………………………….…………………..34 A Taste of Arizona: The Clever Koi…...………………………………………………….…………..36 YOUNG ADULT Athletes really need this app…....…………………………………………….……………………..52 HOME & GARDEN A couple in their (design) element……………………………….………………………………….54 Tiny plants yield big flavor…..………………………………………………………………………….60 ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT Leslie Freed keeps magic of theater alive……………………………..…….….…………………64 Sharing the beauty of Yiddish poetry…………………………………………………….………… 68 Johnny Mathis brings anniversary tour to Phoenix………………………………………………70 SENIORS 94-year-old Gert keeps people laughing.……………………………………...………………….72 From chief justice to community advocate……………………………….……………………….76 Bernie Gross keeps deli memories alive……………………………………………………………78 Getting food should be a SNAP…………………………………………….………………………...81 Smokers, pneumonia and cancer…………………………………………….…………………….. 81

54

Weddings

Innovative wedding images……………………………………………………………….………19 Wedding bracelets carry tales of past era…………………………………………………….20 Tips for making the special day smooth……………………………………………………….23 Mikvah and marriage………………………………………………………………….……………24 Israel’s marriage mores……………………………….……………………………………………26 Our big, fat inclusive wedding…………………………………………………………………… 28 Wedding Directory……………………………………………………………………………..……30

JKids & Teens too

Kids find second home at The J………………………………………………….……………….46 Trivia night supports J’s ECC…………………………………………………….………………..47 Teens really can be self-reliant.............……………………………………………………….48 Pedestrian safety is no game……………………….……………………………..……………..49 Kids & Teen events……………………………………..………………………….………………..50

JLiving

Holocaust History Center reopens with new intimate exhibits……………………….… 82 Federation Notes…………………..………………………………………………………………..85 Faces & Places ………….…………………………………………………………………………..86 Previews ……………………….………………………………………………………………………88 Calendar …….………………..……………………………………………………………………… 89

Columns

20 To Life by Amy Hirshberg Lederman 34 Chef’s Corner by Lucia Schnitzer 36 A Taste of Arizona by A. Noshman 48 Family Time by Debra Rich Gettleman

Remebering Tonya Domestic Violence Victim

8 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

78

COVER PHOTO: Jackson Katz

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ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 9

Weddings are all about new beginnings – aren’t they?

They are the start of a new family, a new life together, a new home and new hopes and dreams.

But marriage also carries on family and religious traditions, some of which stretch back millennia.

Many women enjoy the welcome reprieve provided in the Jewish tradition of a pre-wedding visit to the the mikvah.

One woman notes, “Participating in the ritual of the mikvah before my wedding helped slow everything down in order to provide a sacred, quiet space to appreciate the meaning of this singular moment in my life.” Another comments: “Carrying out the ritual, I felt a beautiful connection to Hashem and to my heritage. I am so grateful that we were open to learning and trying this ancient tradition.”

Our To Life columnist writes about how a gift of jewelry handed down through generations provides her with a tie to both her family history and evolving Jewish practice.

Speaking of new beginnings, Arizona Jewish Life has also matured to a new stage of life. When we published our first issue in 2012, we mailed complementary copies of the monthly magazine to thousands of readers. About half of our readers have traditionally picked up the magazine for free at their synagogue, library, grocery store or a host of other pickup locations around the state. Those free pickup points have been expanded and remain free. But we have launched a subscription service for those who want to get their monthly magazine in their mailbox. Home delivery is available for just $12/year or $20/two years. Sign up at azjewishlife.com/magazine-subscription/ or call 602-5382955.

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In an odd juxtaposition of scheduling, this year our annual weddings issue coincides with the Brighter Tomorrow Luncheon hosted by Jewish Family & Children’s Service in Phoenix.

While weddings are the start of beautiful, lifelong love for many, the Jewish community is not immune to domestic violence. One in four women of all socioeconomic and religious affiliations will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Gender abuse expert Jackson Katz will talk about how society can reduce that statistic. And the Brighter Tomorrow Luncheon will provide funding to assist women who are victimized.

So here’s wishing you a brighter tomorrow. Whether you are beginning a new life with your partner, moving on from a bad relationship or curling up with your Jewish Life magazine for a cozy afternoon of reading, I hope the sun is shining on your day.

THE JEWISH LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE FOR ARIZONA

Publishers Robert Philip and Cindy Saltzman Advertising and Editorial Director Cindy Saltzman Editor-in-Chief Deborah Moon Contributing Editors Leni Reiss, Nancy Ben-Asher Ozer Social Media Editor Debra Rich Gettleman Webmaster Karl Knelson Sales Manager Leslie Goldman advertise@azjewishlife.com 602-570-8859 Art Director Philip Nerat Columnists Debra Rich Gettleman, Amy Hirshberg Lederman, A. Noshman, Lucia Schnitzer and Stuart Wachs Contributing Writers Mala Blomquist, Bryan Davis, Debra Rich Gettleman, Melissa Hirschl, Melinda Myers, Hila Ratzabi, Teddy Weinberger and Sheila Wilensky How to reach us: 602-538-AZJL (2955) Advertise@azjewishlife.com Editor1@azjewishlife.com Publisher@azjewishlife.com

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A Prince Hal Production (TGMR18) The content and opinions in Arizona Jewish Life do not necessarily reflect those of the publishers, staff or contractors.

Articles and columns are for informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Although every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of our published materials, Arizona Jewish Life, and its agents, publishers, employees and contractors will not be held responsible for the misuse of any information contained herein. The publishers reserve the right to refuse any advertisement. Publication of advertisements does not constitute endorsement of products or services.

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Important information for Arizona Jewish Life readers.

Arizona Jewish Life will only be mailed to homes of subscribers for $12/year.

As always, you can find complimentary copies of AZJL at dozens of retail locations including AJ’s Fine Foods, Chompie’s, synagogues, Jewish community centers, entertainment venues, restaurants and professional offices.

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ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 13

Jews With Attitude

Randy Spelling grew up in 56,500-square-foot Spelling Manor. But he has found the simple pleasures of life, such as an espresso in a local coffee house, are just as fulfilling. Now he is sharing the things he’s learned on his journey via his book – Unlimiting You, his website, his life coaching practice and talks around the country. Photo by Deborah Moon

Randy Spelling: Son of Hollywood royalty finds fulfillment in real world

By Deborah Moon

Although he was bored with his first bit part in his father’s “Beverly Hills, 90210” TV show, Randy Spelling decided in high school that he wanted to join the family business – entertainment.

Randy is the son of the late Aaron Spelling, television’s most prolific producer, and Candy Spelling. He is the brother of actress Tori Spelling. Randy says he didn’t want to disappoint his family, and he has 14 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

a great appreciation for the entertainment industry, but adds, “It never was for me.”

He attributes the addictions that nearly killed him the year his father died (2006) to “not being true to myself.”

Now a 37-year-old husband, father, life coach and author living in Portland, OR, he describes life as happy, fulfilling and full of good food.

But it was an often gilded, occasionally tortured road he followed from Spelling Manor in Los Angeles to a normal life in Oregon.

“Any house that has a name is usually on the large side,” Randy says of the mansion where he spent his adolescence. “It is its own entity.”

The family lived north of Sunset Boulevard in

Los Angeles and then moved three blocks to take up residence After taking a break to run an independent recording company in Spelling Manor after construction was completed on the for a couple of years beginning in 2000, he returned to acting.

56,500-square-foot mansion when Randy was 12.

He appeared in “a handful of movies” before his agent convinced “It was large,” he says, noting it had an arcade and bowling him he needed to do a reality show to propel his career. alley. “I had a lot of fun there. My house was the place where my The show was “Sons of Hollywood.” He starred with Sean friends came.”

Stewart (son of British rocker Rod Stewart) and their childhood Randy says his father’s parents, who immigrated from Poland friend and agent, David Weintraub. and Russia, “were as Jewish as they come.” His mother also grew “I never wanted to do a reality show,” he says. “Shooting the up in a Jewish home, though she longed to celebrate Christmas, show was a horrible experience. My father passed away while we so Randy was exposed to both Jewish and mainstream holidays were shooting. And I was struggling with an addiction. There early in life. He lit the Hanukkah candles and said the blessings. were four times when I could have or should have died.”

The family went to temple on High Holidays and celebrated Randy says he was addicted “to anything that would make me Passover. His parents gave him the choice of whether to study feel different – alcohol, drugs.” and become a bar mitzvah. “Eighty percent of my friends were When his father passed away in 2006, Randy says he realized Jewish, so I was going to bar and bat mitzvahs all the time,” he he, too, would die “unless something changed.” says. “Because they gave me a choice, the choice was ‘no.’ ” “Coupled with a feeling I had inside that there was so much He was always close to his dad, though sometimes he more to life, a deeper spiritual connection I was in tune with would only see him on weekends due to Aaron Spelling’s busy before this madness,” he began to find his way out. schedule. The Internet Movie Database He attributes his addiction to “not lists the elder Spelling as the producer of embracing who I was, struggling to find 225 television series, movies and minimy place in the world.” series including long-running series In the world he grew up in, he didn’t stretching from “Burke’s Law” (1963know what else he could do besides 66), “Mod Squad” (1968-73), “The Love join the entertainment industry.

Boat” (1977-87) and “Dynasty” (1981“Finding my own voice … took a 89) through “7th Heaven” (1996-2006) little longer, but I found it,” he says. and “Charmed” (1998-2006). “Beverly His first discovery was life coaching.

Hills, 90210,” which ran from 1990 to Knowing he wanted to do something 2000, gave Randy both his first taste of different, in 2007, he enrolled in a lifeacting and a recurring role three years coaching course and “it felt fitting.” So later. he signed up for the two-year Coach U A year after moving to Spelling program at a time when most people Manor, Randy says his dad and sister hadn’t heard of life coaching and began thought it would be fun for him to try his new career. acting. “So he gave me a tiny part the In 2009, two more changes were summer of eighth grade. I wanted to play on the horizon. Sitting in a doctor’s with my friends instead of waiting days waiting room, he picked up a magazine for one line; there were lots of takes. I and began reading an article about couldn’t wait to be done.”

Tori, Aaron, Randy and Candy Spelling with the Portland. “I got an excited feeling About three years later, Randy had in my stomach and thought ‘that’s family dogs. Photo courtesy of Randy Spelling taken some acting classes in high school strange,’ ” he says. and decided he did want to pursue the He read some Portland guidebooks family business. So during a family dinner in Las Vegas, he cover to cover and thought “all the things sounded appealing asked his parents if he could work with an acting coach. He at that stage of my life.” He was attracted in part by “the began working with Kathryn Daley, Tori’s childhood coach. It burgeoning food scene … I really love food.” was a momentous choice that turned out to have far-reaching So he and his girlfriend, Leah, went to explore Portland the repercussions. week before New Year’s. He proposed to Leah during the visit.

Kathryn was into meditation and metaphysical teachings.

They moved to Portland in February 2010 and got married in In addition to studying acting techniques, Randy began to September. He describes the outdoor wedding on a Hillsboro meditate daily and started “down the road of self-discovery.” He farm as a “spiritual, nature-based ceremony under a chuppah.” became an avid reader of self-help, new age and religious books They enjoy being in nature, hiking and visiting farmers’ including Kabbalah. markets.

“In retrospect, if I didn’t go so far in that direction and have The couple has two daughters, Sage, 4, and Lotus, 2, so those experiences of connection, I probably would have died,” he most family activities revolve around seasons and festivals. says. “When I was in a dark place, I knew how light life could Last Passover he says Lotus latched onto the traditional song be, and I wanted to go back there.”

“Dayenu” and for weeks kept singing “day, day enu.”

The acting payoff was more immediate. He landed a role He says his mom loves being a grandma. “I’m close to Mom; I on “Malibu Shores,” followed by a return to “90210” when a visit her, and she visits us.” He also stays close to his sister, Tori, recurring role came up for Steve’s little brother. He also appeared who now has four children ages 3 to 8. Given Tori’s and his busy in “Charmed” before starring on “Sunset Beach” for four seasons. schedules, he says they don’t see each other as often as he would ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 15

like, but they keep in touch with photos and texts.

Meanwhile, Randy has built a thriving life-coaching business called Being in Flow (Randyspelling.com). He is an Associate Certified Coach of the International Coach Federation. Though based in Portland, he says he has clients from around the world with about 70% of his business via Skype or on the telephone.

He is also a motivational speaker and leads workshops and online mastermind groups.

While acting professionally wasn’t for him, he says it did equip him with skills he uses in his presentations and working individually with clients.

“When I’m giving a talk in front of hundreds of people, I can sit in a chair or have more fun with it,” he says. “I act things out so people can see themselves in me and then change it. …

Sometimes it’s so hard to see yourself; if we see ourselves in someone else, it can be an ‘aha moment.’ It creates a visual of what the pattern is.”

After years of life coaching, Randy says, “I saw patterns in people – the same wants and needs no matter what country or age. The stories varied, but the underlying wants and needs are the same. We are all inhibited by our own limitations.”

So last year he wrote his first book, Unlimiting You: Step Out of Your Past and Into Your Purpose. He calls it a guidebook to living a better life. As he does in his coaching and speaking engagements, he helps people visualize themselves by sharing stories from his life and those of clients and friends. The stories “illustrate the biggest themes in the book. The point is to make it digestible and easy to read.”

The 286-page book from In Flow Books is available from unlimitingyou.com and on Amazon in paperback and for Kindle.

His business also expanded late last year. In November, he instituted online memberships on his website.

“The most exciting thing about membership is personal coaching can be expensive,” says Randy. “For a small monthly fee … people can work on weekly challenges at home without paying the same rates.”

There are three levels of membership available. Those who sign up for a free membership receive an e-book and step-by-step guides to try to make changes. The middle-level membership ($49/month) includes weekly challenges and access to all features of the website. Those who sign up for the top level ($99/ month) also get one 20-minute telephone session with Randy each month.

Between his family and running a business, Randy says life is busy, but now he is being true to himself, which for him means anything that is authentic and grounded in truth.

“I can get stressed and overwhelmed,” he says. But he realizes that when he is reacting to things happening around him, he is not being his true self at that moment. “I am an effect of happenings.”

At that time, he says it helps to take a deep breath, go for a walk or simply ask himself, “Is this my true self ?”

“That simple question brings a slight shift that makes an expansive difference,” says Randy. “If you look at something slightly differently, one tiny angle changes everything.”

For Randy, the changes have all been good.

16 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

VOSJCC HIRES KIM SUBRIN AS MANAGING DIRECTOR

The Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center has hired Kim Subrin as its managing director to provide guidance and support to J departments. Along with J President and CEO Stuart Wachs, Kim will provide the face of leadership for J members and the community.

“Kim comes to us with extensive programmatic and department leadership experience in preschool, youth and camping, and has an amazing passion for our community and The J,” says Stuart. “We had a number of very qualified candidates who went through an extensive interview process with senior staff, department heads and J lay leaders.”

Kim was hired after an extensive national search. Her proven track record in creative and quality program development and delivery are key to meeting The J’s mission and vision to enhance and serve our community.

“I am thrilled to return to the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center,” says Kim. “With more than 15 years in the Greater Phoenix Jewish community, I am excited to once again re-engage our community in Jewish life, learning and fun. I look forward to providing new adventures and opportunities for our entire community.”

Kim has more than 20 years’ experience developing programs and fostering relationship and engagement within Jewish communities.

She most recently served as director of the Congregation Beth Israel’s Chanen Preschool. She also served as The J’s program and camp director from 2004 to 2008 and as its youth and camp director from 2000 to 2004.

480-483-7121 ext. 1203 | kims@vosjcc.org | vosjcc.org

ARIZONA JNF WELCOMES TONI DUSIK AS BOARD PRESIDENT

Toni Dusik has become board president of Arizona’s Jewish National Fund just as JNF’s lay leadership and professional team begin to implement JNF’s $1 Billion Road Map for the Next Decade campaign. Toni will be instrumental in helping JNF connect Arizona to the people and land of Israel, and execute projects to strengthen Israel for the long-term.

“I am honored to serve JNF in this exciting, new capacity,” says Toni, who has been on JNF’s Arizona board for eight years. “I love Israel. I love the people and the land, and cannot stress enough the importance of continuing to support JNF, an organization that works to better the lives of all Israelis and is committed to developing and bettering the land of Israel.”

Toni’s first JNF trip to Israel was with the Queen of Sheba mission, an unforgettable journey for women only. The mission invigorated her passion and commitment as she bonded with the women on the trip and learned about JNF’s many projects in Israel. She will co-chair the November 2016 Queen of Sheba mission. Toni is a member of JNF’s Makor, leaders who provide resources, training and inspiration to other JNF lay leaders, and the Go North Taskforce. She is also on the

executive board of the national women’s campaign and is a member of the Sapphire Society and Century Council.

Arizona Director Deb Rochford says, “Toni is an invaluable asset to the JNF family. Her impressive leadership skills and passion for Israel make for the perfect board president.”

Toni looks forward to educating the community about the projects JNF is involved with in Israel and how the work done locally in Arizona affects the lives of all Israelis.

Toni has an incredibly supportive husband, Milan, who is proud of the time she dedicates to JNF, and two grown sons, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. jnf.org/Arizona | tdusik@gmail.com

CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST AUTUMN WILEY-HILL OPENS TUCSON OFFICE

Clinical psychologist Autumn Wiley-Hill announces the opening of her private practice on River Road and Campbell Blvd., in Tucson.

Wiley-Hill applies a mindfulness and compassion-based approach to facilitate healing and transition for adults on issues related to anxiety, relationships, identity and change. She especially loves working with postpartum mothers and college students.

Wiley-Hill holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona and a bachelor’s degree in psychology, sociology and women’s studies from Brandeis University.

She taught the Rosh Hodesh program at Congregation Anshei Israel from 2008 to 2012. Her husband Jordan Wiley-Hill, who goes by Jordan Hill, is a Jewish storyteller in town. He has taught at Tucson Hebrew Academy for several years and now he leads a kavanah program there.

Wiley-Hill grew up in Long Island, NY, and moved to Tucson for her Ph.D. 520-477-7049 | dr.wileyhill@gmail.com | autumnwiley-hill.com

GREAT FILMS With a little Jewish flavor

ARIZONA BROADWAY THEATRE HIRES BARBARA SCHIFANO

Barbara Schifano joined the Arizona Broadway Theatre leadership team in December 2015 as director of business development. She will oversee business development and marketing at the theater.

A 20-year resident of the West Valley, she has been an active community leader and an advocate for the performing arts for much of that time. Schifano is a marketing and communications professional with extensive experience at the Valley offices of American Express and JDA Software, and teaches marketing, communications and leadership courses for several local universities.

“I am delighted to lead such a creative marketing team as ABT begins our next decade of providing Broadway shows right here in the West Valley,” says Barbara. “This is an exciting time to be involved with an accomplished performing arts organization as we look forward to the next generation of community expansion and growing interest amongst young families to be entertained by live theater.” barbara@azbroadway.org

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Weddings

18 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

Make a grand entrance.

Photo by Martha Lochert

Dance the night away in custom-designed Mazel Tov slippers by Adidas.

Photo courtesy Deborah Muller

Gold markers add a touch of elegance to the guest book. Photo by Martha Lochert

Color-coordinated sneakers are much easier to dance in than 3-inch heels.

Photo by Martha Lochert

Invite your four-legged friend to serve as ring bearer. Photo courtesy Aviva Tirosh

Minnie and Mickey bring romantic whimsy to the table. Photo by Martha Lochert

Cowboy boots kick it up a notch.

Photo by Molho Photography

Nails can be silly and romantic, not just formal.

Photo by Martha Lochert

Make a grand exit. Photo Martha Lochert

Set the mood with music.

Photo by Martha Lochert ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 19

Weddings

To Life

Five gold bangles and a world of difference

By Amy Hirshberg Lederman

The morning of my wedding day, my mother called me into her bedroom.

“Sit with me, mi alma,” she said quietly, patting the spot next to her on the bed.

I sat down beside her, the softness of the mattress causing our bodies to curve into each other like a pair of parenthesis.

She turned her face towards mine, looking happier than I had seen her in years. I attributed it to the fact that her almost30-year-old daughter was finally getting married. Smiling, she handed me a box.

“Open it,” she urged.

Inside the box were five beautiful, gold filigree bangle bracelets of different patterns. The gold was unlike any I had ever seen, and the bracelets became warm as I held them in my hands.

They were not new, their imperfect oval shapes having been altered by the wrists they had adorned.

I turned them over and, one by one, slid them onto my right arm. They made a tinkling sound when they touched one another.

“Oh, Mom, I love them! Where did you get them?”

She answered by telling me a story about my greatgrandmother, D’Jmilla (pronounced Jamilla) Danino, who, at the age of 12, was married to a man more than three times her age to become his second wife. Born in 1882 to a poor family in Alexandria, Egypt, she had no choice but to respect the arrangement her parents had made. One afternoon he arrived with gifts and within the week, she was on a ship with her new husband sailing to Haifa, never to see her parents again. The bracelets on my arm were the same ones D’Jmilla had received from her husband as a token of their engagement.

It is hard for me, as a woman living in the 21st century, to fathom such an arrangement, which altered young D’Jmilla’s life forever. I barely got a vote as to whom my daughter dated in high school, let alone arranged for it. And the idea that I would send my child away, never to see her again, is a thought too painful to consider.

It is hard to believe that as recently as the early 1900s, my great-grandmother spent her adolescent days cooking and cleaning alongside the same woman who shared her husband’s bed at night. For Sephardic Jews who lived in communities 20 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

influenced by Islam, like Egypt, Yemen, Morocco and Turkey, polygamy was an accepted practice. The bitterness that D’Jmilla tasted each day was not from the dark Turkish coffee she drank every morning at breakfast, but from his first wife who was unable to give him the son he so desperately desired.

The Bible is filled with stories of the unhappiness that existed in polygamous marriages: Sarah was derided by Hagar because she couldn’t have a child, Leah was jealous of Rachel because Jacob loved her more, and Solomon’s many wives brought idolatry into the land of Israel. My great-grandmother suffered a similar fate when, at the age of 13, she gave birth to my grandfather. Still a child herself, she cried whenever baby Albert did, having no one to guide her. What saved her during those difficult and lonely years was her wit, wisdom and the undying love she felt for her son, my grandfather.

The laws of polygamy within the Jewish tradition, which often created hardship and injustice for women, have thankfully changed. In Eastern Europe, a ban on polygamy was decreed

by Rabbi Gershom in the 10th century. Although Sephardic Jews did not accept Rabbi Gershom’s prohibition, when Israel was created in 1948, the Israeli government permitted those marriages already in existence to stay in effect while forbidding any future ones. Today, the ban on polygamy is universally accepted in the Jewish world.

I treasure wearing my gold bracelets for many reasons. They help me remember my great-grandmother, a woman whose courage, strength and devotion carried her through a lifetime of struggle. They remind me of my mother, who wore them as a young girl when she was raised by D’Jmilla as a result of her own parents’ tragic and untimely deaths. And they give me a sense of optimism about my future as a Jewish woman. For it is because of the wisdom of my tradition and its ability to change and respond to laws that are patently unfair or result in causing hardship and injustice, that I can have faith and hope for the future of my children and grandchildren.

Amy Hirshberg Lederman has written more than 300 columns and essays that have been published nationwide. amyhirshberglederman.com

Your happy ending deserves a beautiful beginning.

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Here’s some tips you won’t read in a book Despite reading books and wedding blogs, there were a few things I wish someone had told me before my big day: 1. Give Your Phone Away – I should have coordinated with someone to take my phone away from me the moment I woke up on the day of my wedding. You would be surprised how many people text the bride with questions like, “Is there kosher food?” Or even worse, “I’m running late!” or “I’m lost.” Have a designated bridesmaid who is in charge of your phone and can respond for you.

2. Schedule Alone Time with Special Guests (and the Rabbi) – If you have people flying in for the wedding and you want to be able to talk to them for more than 15 seconds, schedule time with them. Especially if your rabbi is flying in to perform the ceremony, make sure to have time to meet with him or her to go over ceremony plans and the script.

3. Get Chairs for Dance – Hopefully you got to practice being lifted and catapulted into the air for the hora during your bar or bat mitzvah. Be sure to get sturdy chairs for this tradition of lifting the bride and groom on chairs for a dance. We had white folding chairs at our outdoor wedding and had to scramble to find chairs that would hold us.

4. Designate “Hora Men” – Be sure to designate a few strong men to lift you and your husband during the hora. You don’t want your Uncle Arnold to hurt his back because not enough people volunteered. Also appoint someone to hand you and your husband napkins tied together.

5. Practice Bustling and Getting Into Your Dress – We scheduled 15 minutes for me to get my dress bustled after the ceremony so I could move around without people (including me) stepping on my gown’s train. I thought this was plenty of time – wrong! Bustles are different on every dress, and unless you have a wedding-dress seamstress as a bridesmaid, you should try to have someone practice bustling your dress before the wedding.

6. Prepare Your Family for Photos – Most people take family photos between the ceremony and the reception. We did most of our photos before the ceremony. But after the ceremony we still wanted to take about 10 photos with extended family. It was incredibly challenging to try to track down all of the required people during cocktail hour. Send a little note ahead of time to people you want in photos kindly telling them where to wait for photos immediately after the ceremony.

7. Eat After signing the Ketubah – Tell your caterer to prepare a dish of appetizers and nibbles and have it sent up to the room where you and your husband will sign the ketubah and/ or marriage license. We were not very hungry at this point, but later we were glad we had eaten because otherwise we would not have had time to try the food.

8. Prepare Your Escape – We had a town car pick us up and take us to our hotel and I had my bridesmaids put my overnight bag in the back of the car. My husband left his wallet, phone, shoes and toiletries in the groom’s dressing room. We had to frantically call our parents to drop everything off at our hotel after the wedding – funny, but not very romantic!

– Courtesy Vanessa Van Edwards, Science of People

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Weddings

The Stein Family Mikveh at Congregation Beth Israel is open to all members of the Jewish community.

By Deborah Moon

Pre-wedding mikvah options in Arizona

A mikvah is a ritual bath satisfying very specific requirements that incorporate “living water” (running or moving water from a God-given source such as rain, snow, ice or a spring). Immersion in a mikvah is performed for ritual purification and a change in status, including before a wedding ceremony. The purpose of immersion is not physical, but spiritual, cleanliness.

A post on Chabad.org notes: “Tremendous amounts of time and energy are expended in planning a wedding. There is an innate human hope that a perfect wedding equals a perfect start in life. Yet all thinking individuals recognize human limitations.

That which we most need and want – health, good fortune and children – is beyond our control. … Immersion in the mikvah 24 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

is an important way of drawing God and His blessing into the marriage.”

Following are some comments from women who made the mikvah part of their marriage experience: • “At the time of my wedding I was a medical resident going through rigorous training to become a doctor. Life was fast and demanding. Participating in the ritual of the mikvah before my wedding helped slow everything down in order to provide a sacred, quiet space to appreciate the meaning of this singular moment in my life. I will always remember the unique stillness of the surroundings and the kindness of the rebbetzin who guided me through the experience.”

• “When my husband and I began our wedding plans, our education regarding traditional Jewish customs began in

Arizona women wanting more information on use of the mikvah or to arrange for including the mikvah as part of their wedding preparations may contact one of the following:

Mikvah Chaya Mushka Chabad of Arizona 2110 E Lincoln Dr. Phoenix, AZ 85016 602-944-2753 www.chabadaz.org

Stein Family Community Mikvah Congregation Beth Israel 10460 N 56th St. Scottsdale, AZ 85253 480-951-0323 ext. 141 www.cbiaz.org

Mikvah of Tucson

Congregation Young Israel 2443 E Fourth St. Tucson, AZ 85719 520-326-8362 www.youngisraeltucson.com

Perach Yisroel Community Mikvah Congregation Chofetz Chayim 5150 E Fifth St. Tucson, AZ 85711 520-591-7680 www.tucsontorah.org The preparation area at Perach Yisroel Community Mikvah in Tucson feels like a spa.

Art • Books • Gifts • Children’s toys earnest. The mitzvah of mikvah is beautiful in and of itself, but Esther Becker provided a comfortable, spiritual and wonderful introduction to a practice I now intend to continue throughout my life. Esther explained everything in a way I could understand and relate to in a manner that stays true to the tradition.

“The mikvah looks like a beautiful and very spiritual spa. The space is private and calming. Carrying out the ritual, I felt a beautiful connection to Hashem and to my heritage. I am so grateful that we were open to learning and trying this ancient tradition and that I was lucky to have Esther and the Chofetz Chaim Mikvah who made it such a wonderful first experience.”

• “Going to the mikvah was a very meaningful part of my wedding preparation. In the frenzy and excitement of the days preceding our wedding, it was like an oasis of spirituality and meaning. I loved the space – it was calm, peaceful and supportive. I felt like I was at a spa. My friends could be there with me to enhance the experience and the celebratory spirit. …I look back on the experience positively and am so glad I made it a priority as I planned for this very important transition in my life.”

• “I loved going to the mikvah before I got married. I’ve never felt so connected to my Jewish heritage. Jewish women have been going to the mikvah for thousands of years; it was humbling to feel so connected to my roots. Plus, it felt like a spa!

I had no idea what to expect, and I loved it.”

Bar/Bat Mitzvah, Wedding and Life-cycle needs.

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mazeltovgifts@gmail.com ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 25

Weddings Marrying Mores in Israel

By Teddy Weinberger

Very few American Jews marry before they finish college.

And even high school sweethearts are usually prepared to wait – or are convinced by their parents to do so – until they turn 21.

In Israel, with university coming after a lengthy post-high school period (including army service, travel, making up for screw-ups in high school, and then studying for and taking the university entrance examination), a matriculating bachelor’s student is typically in his or her mid- to late 20s. Obviously, teenagers aren’t going to be expected to wait that long, and this is especially true in the modern religious community, with very conservative sexual mores the ideal. Whereas in America the Jews getting married at 21 or younger are typically ultra-

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Orthodox, here in Israel if a modern religious couple is in love by their late teens, you can’t exactly tell them to wait until they finish college.

Not all couples who marry young have known each other for very long. Because modern religious culture is accepting of early marriages, a pair of 19-year-olds who both feel ready to take the plunge might reach this decision after having known each other for just a few months. Often what binds the pair is their religious commitment and not necessarily a sense that they are each other’s beshert. As long as this religious commitment remains in place (and for most people it does), these marriages are successful. This being the case, I suggested to my friend and rabbi, Lior Engelman, who himself married at 19 when his wife was 18, that perhaps the modern religious community should adopt a system of arranged marriages just like the ultra-Orthodox. Such a system would solve a growing problem for the modern religious: Alongside those who marry young are those who find themselves single as they approach – and sometimes pass – the age of 30.

Rabbi Lior said that not every young person is ready for the demands of married life, which often need to be juggled with parenthood (the sector’s conservatism extends to birth control), army service, work and university studies. So there went that idea.

Coincidentally, a few days after my conversation with Rabbi Lior, my former study partner, a Karlin-Stolin Hassid, closed the deal on a shiduch (match) for his 18-year-old son.

Before the arrangement was finalized, his son met with the girl twice (the “extra” second meeting was held at the young

Precisely because the modern religious community tends to live within (rather than apart from) contemporary Israeli society, my kids wish to experience the touchstones of Israeli youth in the normative way – as single people.

woman’s request – apparently at the first meeting the boy hardly uttered a word). At the l’chaim held to toast the couple, the new chattan (groom) was asked if he was worried. He said “no” because he does whatever his mother tells him to do. He did, however, ask to be reminded of the bride’s name.

Sarah and I have five marriageable children, ranging in age from 21 to 28. Precisely because the modern religious community tends to live within (rather than apart from) contemporary Israeli society, my kids wish to experience the touchstones of Israeli youth in the normative way – as single people. It’s not normative to be married during one’s army service, nor is it normative to be married while one goes on a post-army trip abroad. The interesting thing is that those of my kids who have “delayed” marriage have not done so because they want to “play the field.” They just didn’t want to be married at the age of 20. However, now that our oldest is in his late 20s, I think it’s important for someone to tell my children: Don’t overdo it.

Teddy Weinberger, Ph.D., writes from Givat Ze’ev, a suburb of Jerusalem just over the Green Line. He and his wife, Sarah Jane Ross, made aliyah in 1997 with their five children. Teddy is director of development for Meaningful, a company that works with Israeli nonprofit organizations. His in-laws live in Scottsdale for most of the year.

Celebrate Your Day at the J

The Tucson J is a versatile wedding location, open to all faiths.

We offer multiple, breathtaking outdoor sites as well as flexible indoor spaces for both your ceremony and reception. Here at The J we work with highly creative, reliable vendors to serve your catering and bartending needs.

Call us today!

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3800 E. River Rd. | Tucson, AZ | 85718 ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 27

Weddings Our

BIG

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By Hila Ratzabi

All Soleri Windbells... are perfect gifts for any occasion, but two models forever commemorate a particular ceremony when they ring: The “Bride & Groom” or “Love Birds”wedding bell!

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6433 E. Doubletree Ranch Rd. Paradise Valley, AZ 85253 28 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

When José and I first started dating, my Jewish parents were not pleased. Though my mom is fairly liberal, some instinct flared up in her that has roots in centuries of Jewish fear of disappearance. Though that fear has lessened over the decades for many Jewish families, particularly in the United States, it still rises up for many people, sometimes unexpectedly. What if my daughter loses her Jewish identity? some parents wonder. What if the grandchildren aren’t raised Jewish? Is this the end of the line?

For me and many other Jews like me, this fear is unfounded.

I went to Jewish day school from kindergarten through high school and even went on to get a degree in Jewish philosophy.

While my Jewish practices have changed over the years, I have always been a proud and engaged Jewish woman. I was, and remain, confident that my connection to Judaism is strong enough to share with my husband, who is not Jewish, and our future children.

The road to acceptance took a few years, but by the time we were ready to get engaged my parents had thankfully come around. They gave us their blessing, and we set out to create a wedding that reflected my Jewish heritage and José’s Mexican culture.

We had it fairly easy in that José does not identify with a particular religious tradition. He is a scientist and committed atheist; as a child he briefly attended a Baptist religious school in the small town in Baja where he was raised, but he definitively broke off with religion when he awakened to his atheism.

While being an atheist, José has always supported and joined in with my Jewish practices. I’m not a believer either, but I love Jewish holidays, attending services and grappling with the big

The road to acceptance took a few

years, but by the time we were ready to get engaged my parents had

thankfully come around. They gave us

their blessing, and we set out to create a wedding that reflected my Jewish

heritage and José’s Mexican culture. questions in life. Judaism is the lens through which I consider ethical dilemmas and the source of my commitment to social and environmental justice. These are things we’re able to share.

We found an amazing Reconstructionist rabbi, Rachel Weiss, of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, a gay/lesbian synagogue in New York City, to officiate at our wedding. Aside from being open-minded and accepting, Rabbi Weiss also had the added

bonus of being fluent in Spanish. She had previously worked with Mexican immigrants, and we felt she understood both of our backgrounds.

Together with Rabbi Weiss, we designed a ceremony that honored the dual heritage we were bringing together. We included traditional Jewish elements, including the chuppah, the seven blessings, the circling of bride and groom, the ketubah and the ring exchange. We wrote our own ketubah text instead of using the traditional text, and changed the language of the ring exchange and seven blessings to be more inclusive and universal.

The witnesses who signed our ketubah included two of our close friends, who happen to be another interfaith/intercultural couple –Jewish and Indian. We had watched them create a beautiful marriage that included both of their cultures and were inspired by their example.

José’s grandmother was central to his upbringing, often standing in as a second parent since he didn’t have a father in his life, so we wanted to make sure she was included and would understand what was going on at the wedding. Since his grandmother doesn’t speak English, Rabbi Weiss explained each part of the ceremony before it was performed in both English and Spanish. José’s grandmother found the customs fascinating and listened intently as they were described. We also had traditional Mexican paper cutouts (papel picado) created for our wedding, which served as decoration at the entrance of the garden where the ceremony took place.

My own Jewish background is somewhat mixed, in that my mother is Ashkenazi and my father is Yemenite on his father’s side and Sephardic on his mother’s side. To honor my late grandmother, Rabbi Weiss sang a Jewish song in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish language that my grandmother had spoken. This was another way to bridge our cultures, having a taste of the Spanish language woven into an ancient Jewish song.

When it came to the reception, we just wanted to throw an awesome party. The raucous klezmer band Golem was essential to making that happen. The wedding took place in an art museum on Long Island, and since both José and I dabble in visual art, we made mini-paintings on mini-easels as souvenirs for our (very impressed) guests. We also brought a giant blank canvas and paints for guests to create a piece of collective artwork for us. The painting now hangs in our living room, reminding us of that incredible day.

During the reception, my mom gave a speech that chronicled her and my dad’s evolution in coming to accept and share the joy in our relationship. They had truly done a “180,” realizing over time that they had nothing to fear in my marrying “outside” the Jewish faith, and that I had found the life partner who was exactly right for me, and whom they loved like a son. Now, three years later, I am pregnant, and we all can’t wait to bring another person into our crazy, mixed family. Among our plans for the baby: teaching it Hebrew, Spanish … and if there’s time, maybe even English.

This story is reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily (interfaithfamily.com).

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It’s vital that couples are compatible, including genetically.

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Functional art, gifts and accessories

Cosanti Originals, Inc.

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Soleri Windbells, by the late Paolo Soleri, are perfect gifts.

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Martha Lochert Photography

Molho Photography

111 E Dunlap Ave. #290 Phoenix, AZ 85020 602-758-1621 | 602-703-6775 molhophotography.com

Photographers Pinina Zober and Yaakov Molho capture magical images of special moments ranging from wedding and bar/bat mitzvahs to family photo sessions, business events and even pet portraits.

VENUES

Ancala Country Club 11700 E. Via Linda Scottsdale, AZ 85259 480-391-1000 ancalacc.com

The natural beauty of the McDowell Mountains and the Ancala Country Club Golf course adds inspiration to the serene and inviting setting for bridal luncheons, rehearsal dinners, wedding ceremonies and receptions. A ceremony

backdrop of Camelback Mountain with a brilliant sunset makes for breathtaking photos.

ASU Kerr Cultural Center 6110 N Scottsdale Road Scottsdale, AZ 85253 480-596-2660 asukerr.com

Historic music venue with professional sound and lighting is a versatile, affordable, conveniently located and unique Scottsdale location for weddings, receptions, religious events and parties. Prices include full use of indoor and outdoor space at ASU Kerr, sound and lighting, private parking, labor, tables, chairs and more!

Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center 122 E Culver St. Phoenix, AZ 85004 602-241-7870 Azjhs.org

The Phoenician

6000 E Camelback Road Scottsdale, AZ 85251 480-941-8200 thephoenician.com

Forever begins with a tapestry of collectible moments, as created only by The Phoenician. Say “I Do” among lush gardens, cascading waterfalls and iconic mountain views.

Discover the romance of a stunning desert sunset, and intimately appointed venues. The perfect backdrop to your happily ever after is found here.

Talking Stick Resort 9800 E Talking Stick Way 877-724-4687 talkingstickresort.com

Talking Stick Resort offers more than 100,000 square feet of indoor/outdoor space with configurations to accommodate small and large groups. This April marks the opening of a new outdoor event venue located near the scenic main pool. The property also features 496 guest rooms, valet parking and exciting entertainment options.

Phoenix Art Museum

Tucson Jewish Community Center

Begin your new life under the chuppah at Phoenix Museum. From a ceremony in one of our galleries or sculpture garden to a dinner and dance in the Great Hall, the Museum’s classically progressive design coupled with art from around the world blend to create a beautiful place unlike any other.

The Tucson J is a versatile wedding location, open to all faiths. We offer multiple breathtaking outdoor sites as well as flexible indoor spaces for both your ceremony and reception. Here at The J we work with creative, reliable vendors to serve your catering and bartending needs

1625 N. Central Phoenix, AZ 85004 602-307-2019 phxart.org/visit/hostanevent

3800 E River Road Tucson, AZ 85718 520-299-3000 Tucsonjcc.org

Beautifully restored historic venue perfect for 50 to 220 guests in the sanctuary, outdoor garden terrace or museum gallery. Main hall has original hardwood floors and 10-foot arched windows.

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 31

Style

Jane Weitzman:

Putting her best foot forward for Women’s Philanthropy relations and oversaw philanthropy for Stuart Weitzman LLC.” The National Olympics Committee and Children’s Hospital You could say that Jane Weitzman has put her heart and soul in Boston are among the organizations that benefit from her into Art & Sole, the volume of spectacular fantasy art shoes efforts. Breast and ovarian cancer are considerable concerns as from the Stuart Weitzman well (her mother died of collection. The stunning breast cancer) as are myriad 200-page volume showcases Jewish organizations the specially commissioned including the Jewish Book footwear that have drawn Council, Jewish Telegraphic crowds to the windows Agency, the American of the Stuart Weitzman Jewish Joint Distribution boutique on New York’s Committee and Jewish Madison Avenue and other Federations of North venues.

America.

Jane worked in tandem To that end, Jane will with her designer husband be the guest speaker for for years as executive vice Ignition!, the luncheon president of the company coordinated by Women’s bearing his name.

Philanthropy of Jewish “We did different Federation of Greater things,” she says. “He was Phoenix set for Friday, in the factory, he did the March 4, at the Hilton designing, and he did a Scottsdale Resort. Speaking lot of traveling. I founded at women’s philanthropy the retail stores beginning events, “are wonderful Jane and Stuart Weitzman with Jane’s book Art & Sole that features in 1996, worked in public experiences,” says Jane. “I fantasy art shoes from the Stuart Weitzman collection.

By Leni Reiss

32 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

meet the nicest women – the most caring and philanthropic.”

She says she doesn’t charge for her appearances at charitable events, and adds that proceeds from the sale that day of her book will benefit Women’s Philanthropy. She has booked speaking gigs through June, when she will travel to Venice to be present for the 500th commemoration of its Jewish ghetto.

Born and raised in a traditional Jewish home in Atlanta, Jane met her husband-to-be in Boston. They were neighbors and “just friends at first.” She was a buyer for a local bookstore; he worked in his family’s small shoe factory. They married when they both were in their mid-20s. With a background in the family business, Stuart embarked on what became mega-successful Stuart Weitzman LLC, designing shoes to suit a demanding and enthusiastic clientele.

Jane was at home in Greenwich, CT, until both the couple’s daughters, Elizabeth and Rachel, were in school full time. She then officially joined the business, eventually earning the title of executive vice president and spearheading the company’s philanthropic endeavors.

With both girls grown and on their own, the Weitzmans have semi-retired to New York, while maintaining their home in Greenwich, where they lived for 39 years.

“Lincoln Center is the ideal neighborhood for me,” says Jane. “I love to walk, I love the arts and I love the theater. I’ll often go right to the box office and get lucky!”

Jane speaks with pride of her husband’s talent in crafting shoes with an emphasis, even with the highest heels, of making them as comfortable as possible. “I wear our heels for dress of course, but I’m a big walker, so I wear our nice flats and simple sandals much of the time.”

Although her husband sold the business some four years ago, the new corporation has retained its highly recognizable name, and Stuart is still involved in shoe design. Jane says one of the most common requests she gets from women is to tell her husband to “please continue to make narrow sizes!”

And now the genesis of Art & Sole. When the first Weitzman boutique opened, Jane was responsible in good part for the window displays. She recalls traveling around the country seeking artists to make fantasy shoes for the store windows.

“In order to make sure the shoes reflected Stuart’s design, I asked him to draw a simple outline of a high-heeled pump,” Jane explains. “I took the sketch with me while I searched for new artists.”

The book, dedicated to her husband “whose love of shoes is infectious,” is the result of many years of hard work and fun that went into the search. The shoes selected for the book, Jane says, “represent the best of more than a thousand that have appeared in Stuart Weitzman stores over the years.” The variety of materials used by the artists range from silver leaf and stained glass to vintage dishes, from mah jongg tiles to metal mesh and metallic thread.

To learn more about what makes Jane run, and why she is so dedicated to myriad philanthropic causes, plan to attend Ignition!

Ignition! Luncheon

WHO: Featuring Jane Weitzman WHEN: 11 am, March 4 WHERE: Hilton Scottsdale, 6333 N Scottsdale Road WHY: Women’s Philanthropy TICKETS: $65; available at jewishphoenix.org/ignition Dietary laws observed ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 33

Food

LOVE IS IN THE AIR… CORNER

By Lucia Schnitzer Photo by Matthew Strauss

Lucia Schnitzer and her husband, Ken, own Luci’s Healthy Marketplace in Phoenix. The local coffee shop and marketplace opened in 2009 in Lucia’s honor after her successful battle with breast cancer. She successfully manages her career, her growing family (four children), her personal well-being and the countless demands of the day.

34 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

Love is in the air as wedding proposals and wedding planning is in the making, and so is the stress of making it all happen. The most important thing is to remember this is about celebrating a new life together, and there is no right or wrong way to showcase what that means to you.

Eleven years ago I married my best friend, and today I feel so blessed we chose each other. My husband has shown me many faces and each one I cherish and appreciate. He always lets me see what he is feeling and shares it with me.

It’s the moments that you share and create with each other that really matter, so here’s to celebrating love and moments that really count.

Enjoy this delicious and lovely treat that can be made for a shower, wedding or just because you deserve it!

RED VELVET WHOOPIE PIES Ingredients: ¾ cup butter, softened 1 cup sugar 2 large eggs ½ cup sour cream 1 tablespoon red food coloring 1½ teaspoons white vinegar 1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract 2¼ cups all-purpose flour ¼ cup baking cocoa 2 teaspoons baking powder ½ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon baking soda 2 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled Filling: 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened ½ cup butter, softened 2½ cups confectioners’ sugar 2 teaspoons clear vanilla extract Toppings: White baking chips, melted Finely chopped pecans

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, sour cream, food coloring, vinegar and vanilla. In another bowl, whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, salt and baking soda; gradually beat into creamed mixture. Stir in cooled chocolate.

Drop dough by tablespoon 2 inches apart onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are set. Cool on pans 2 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

For filling, in a large bowl, beat cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Beat in confectioners’ sugar and vanilla until smooth.

Spread filling on bottom of half of the cookies; cover with remaining cookies.

Drizzle with melted baking chips; sprinkle with pecans.

Refrigerate until serving.

What does the Federation do?

We help people.

Your donation to the Federation makes an amazing difference in peoples lives by: ... taking care of Jews in need, building community and creating vibrant Jewish life. ... increasing understanding and support of Israel through education, experiential connections and a community voice. ... engaging with young adult Jews and enabling them to define Jewish family in ways they find meaningful. ... helping older adults remain active, healthy, and living independently in their communities longer.

That’s it. That’s what we do.

WE HELP PEOPLE. Give today. Create tomorrow.

Helping Jews in need and building vibrant Jewish communities here, in Israel and throughout the world.

480.634.4900 x 1299 | jewishphoenix.org/donate

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 35

Food

Taste of A

By A. Noshman

Arizona

Clever Koi unites best of everything for Asian mashup

Friends have been urging me to try The Clever Koi for some time now. It always comes up in conversation about great food in Phoenix, so I had to overcome my fear of being crashed into by the light rail and get myself to midtown Phoenix. Near Central Avenue and Indian School Road, and a left turn across the light rail tracks for me, sits a stylish mid-century structure housing what would soon be the best meal I’ve had in a while.

The name of this place couldn’t be more appropriate. It is smartly decorated, and the menu is an ingenious re-invention of Asian fusion, more like Asian mashup: taking the best of everything, and creating unique and flavorful dishes. The owners were previously chefs at the Parlour Pizzeria, and though that may seem odd at first, their knowledge of dough shines through in their dumpling, noodle and dessert dishes.

There is an entirely separate menu for lunch that features a nicely priced $5 rice or noodle bowl. You should know before you go that dinner items are not available until 3 pm. I chose to wait for dinner and sat drinking iced green tea until the kitchen converted from the delicious basics to the delectably coy.

36 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

The Clever Koi $$$ 4236 N Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85012 thecleverkoi.com

Goat Cheese Dumplings The Clever Koi has an open kitchen concept that you can sit right beside, watching the magic happen and getting ideas for what you want to order next. There is a full bar as well, featuring signature cocktails and top shelf liquor brands.

There was so much on the menu, I had to plan a couple of visits.

Goat Cheese Dumplings $8

(roasted beets, miso cashew pureé, daikon sprouts) The understated description on the menu doesn’t come close to explaining this amazing dish. Delivered were four crisp dumplings, nicely arranged upon an island of earthy red beets, in a river of cashew pureé, sprinkled with healthy sprouts. The dumpling itself, just the dough alone, was a culinary experience.

It was more like a pastry and the perfect vessel for delivering delicious goat cheese. The beets, which I tried first because I always feel that the bed of a dish like this sets the tone, would send a beet lover’s heart to the moon. My server also brought two different bottles of Sriracha sauce (red and green) that were strikingly delicious. Though the dumplings didn’t need it, it was fun to dip back and forth between the sauces. When I gushed to my server how good this was he responded, “…yeah, fried cheese, you can’t go wrong…,” an understatement again, but very true. You have got to order this.

Caponata $7

(smoked eggplant, miso gastrique, celery, peanut)

Caponata is a Sicilian eggplant dish, the addition of miso gastrique (a caramelized sweet and sour sauce with miso, I am guessing) and peanuts give it the Asian flair. I’m a sucker for smoked vegetables, especially eggplant, so I order it. Beautifully served and colorful, this small plate appetizer had wonderfully sweet, complex flavors. I was surprised to find it as firm as it was, almost chewy. I don’t know why I expected it to be tenderer, none the less; it was absolutely marvelous and completely eaten.

Chicken and Waffles The meat (poultry) options called to me for another visit:

Chicken and Waffles – Steamed Buns $4

(kimchi waffle, chili maple, scallion) Did I mention my new phrase, Asian mashup? This is probably the best example of what I mean. Served in one of those taco holder things with a side of syrup, sits one of the most interesting concoctions I’ve seen in a while. Inside two golden waffle slices nests some crispy fried Asian chicken and I’m not exactly sure at first how to eat this. I have silverware, I have chopsticks, but I decide to use my hands and pick it up like a taco. Once in your hands, it can’t be set down and you don’t want to anyway. The chicken and the waffle are both good, and the syrup is a perfect complement. I struggle with dipping the “taco” into the syrup. Maybe this was meant to be a knife and fork affair, but I push on and happily conquer this original creation.

Duck Curry $14

Bananas Foster Fritters

Bananas Foster Fritters $6

(no menu description but … five banana beignets, sugar and Chinese five-spice powder, caramel miso sauce) Again, their knowledge of dough shows up in these tender pastries. Each beignet ball contains a chunk of banana that has been lightly fried and rolled in a mixture of sugar and five-spice blend. On their own they are delicious, but you have got to try the accompanying caramel miso sauce. It is like caramel on steroids. I even sopped up the leftover sauce with my finger once the fritters were gone.

(duck, roasted potato, pickled peppers, peanuts, cilantro) Another understated description of a heavenly bowl of coconut milk-based red curry, velvety smooth, rich with tons of separate flavors, each taste detectable in a single spoonful. This dish is spicy! They must use a hot curry bolstered with cayenne.

It’s the kind of heat though that keeps you wanting more. I have read that peppers release the same endorphins in your brain that heroin or opiates do. I’m not a doctor, but why else would you keep shoveling spicy spoonfuls into your mouth? Don’t get me wrong, this dish is absolutely delicious and perfectly prepared.

Spice lovers, this is definitely for you.

The duck is delicious and I try pieces of it separately. All of the pickled peppers, which are sweet, mix well with the other veggies in the bowl. What you don’t see until you dig in, are the udon noodles buried below the broth. They are thick and delicious.

This is really a meal and I had to take some of it home. To tell you the truth, I ate the leftovers later that day, didn’t even wait for them to become actual leftovers. ~~ Light rail fear be damned. I’ll keep going back to The Clever Koi; I’m sorry I waited so long for my first visit. There is much more on the menu to try, and I’m looking forward to the adventure that is The Clever Koi.

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 37

Cover

Jackson Katz

BRIGHTER TOMORROW 38 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

orrow luncheon nual Brighter Tom An h nt ve Se CS JF .D.,author and WHAT: r Jackson Katz, Ph ke ea sp e ot yn Ke nce WHO: ing in gender viole educator specializ ls al W t ou ith JFCS Shelter W WHY: Benefit for Friday, Feb. 26 WHEN: 11:45 am oenix Biltmore Hotel, Ph WHERE: Arizona 55 rg or 602-279-76 TICKETS: jfcsaz.o

Jewish community not immune to domestic violence

By Nancy Ben-Asher Ozeri

Think about the women you know in your life. Narrow it down to four. Imagine one of them – someone near and dear to you – suffering humiliation, mental anguish, physical pain, possibly having their life threatened, and feeling too fearful to talk about it.

One in four women reports experiencing abuse at the hands of a partner at some point in their lives, according to Shelter Without Walls, a program of Jewish Family & Children’s Service of Phoenix that works with survivors of domestic violence.

That statistic is reflected in the Jewish community as well, despite stereotypes that discourage Jewish victims from seeking help. The Jewish domestic violence movement, which is now more than two decades old, has been pushing against this stereotype.

“The thought was that it didn’t happen in the Jewish community because Jewish men weren’t like that. Women are meant to feel ashamed – it’s not supposed to happen, but it happened. The healthier response is, ‘He’s the one who violated Shalom Bayit, not me,’” says Jackson Katz, Ph.D., an educator and author known for his pioneering activism on issues of gender violence, referring to the Jewish value of maintaining a peaceful, happy home. “Yet the victim-blaming, which is so pervasive in the larger culture, not just in the Jewish community, is such a powerful force to keep the status quo in place. When you blame yourself, you don’t hold a perpetrator accountable, and nothing changes.”

Katz, who headlines the Phoenix JFCS Brighter Tomorrow luncheon on Feb. 26, holds that the key to ending the epidemic of gender abuse is a cultural shift in mindset, from seeing it as a women’s issue to making it a men’s issue, especially for men in leadership, in all spheres of society.

“We have this enormous and ongoing global problem of men’s violence against women and children, as well as men’s violence against other men,” says Katz.

The way society and individuals look at the problem will need to shift in order to reduce the prevalence of domestic violence.

He believes two paradigm shifts are necessary.

“The first part of the paradigm shift is that we need to see these as men’s issues, not as women’s issues that some good men help out with,” emphasizes Katz. “That concept is both deeply problematic and outmoded, because it shifts the burden of responsibility off the group with more power (men) onto the one with less (women). Among other things, this gives men an excuse not to pay attention.”

Although it’s important to note that abuse also occurs in same-sex relationships and against men, the overwhelming majority of domestic abuse incidents involve men abusing women. According to Katz, 86% of domestic violence assaults that result in injury are perpetrated by men, which is one of the reasons for approaching it as a men’s issue.

“The second part of the paradigm shift is that we have to see these issues as leadership issues for men,” he says. “Women – inside and outside the Jewish community – have been and will continue to be the primary leaders on the matter of counteracting sexism and the many related problems of domestic

ited States. or beaten in the Un d te ul sa as is an s a wom • Every nine second estic violence experiencing dom rts po re en om w • One in four in her lifetime. day. of three women a e kills an average nc le ncer vio tic es m • Do st cancer, lung ca women than brea e or m ts ec aff e • Domestic violencer combined. and ovarian canc ects all incomes, t discriminate. It aff n’ es do e nc le vio •Domestic ities. races and commun t rates of rience the highes pe out Walls ex ith W 34 er to elt 18 Sh – es ce •Women ag ly & Children’s Servi lence.

Courtesy Jewish Fami intimate partner vio

C DOMESTIE VIOLENC

BY THE NUMBERS

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 39

Jackson Katz and MVP Strategies co-trainers Lauren Grousd and Daryl Fort conduct a gender violence prevention training with student leaders at California State University - Long Beach.Photo by Melanie Bradshaw

and sexual violence. But men have a critical role to play as well.

If you’re a man in a position of leadership – however you define leadership – in your family, faith community, business, politics, education, sports culture, media you need to be knowledgeable about domestic violence and sexual assault and the ways that those issues are connected and intersected with all kinds of other issues. And you need to know what you can do in your sphere of influence to prevent it from happening, not because you’re a nice guy who is helping out the women, but because you are a leader….

It’s no longer acceptable, if it ever was, to say ‘It’s not really my problem.

It’s not really my issue.’ That’s just an unacceptable evasion.”

Katz is the founder and president of MVP Strategies, which provides gender violence prevention and leadership training to institutions in the public and private sectors. He is one of the architects of the “bystander” approach to gender violence prevention, which was introduced through a program he co-founded in 1993, the Mentors in Violence Prevention program at Northeastern University. It’s now one - Jackson Katz of the longest-running sexual and relationship abuse prevention programs utilized by high schools, colleges, sports and the military. He is the author of The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help and Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity, which will be released in February

through Interlink Books.

Katz stresses that we need to stop seeing domestic violence primarily as a criminal justice issue. It’s not enough to punish individual perpetrators. We need to change underlying social norms. And to bring about change, education needs to begin early.

“Parents of sons need to talk to them about their responsibility not only to treat women and girls with respect, but also about what to do in situations when guys around them are not treating girls and women with respect,” says Katz. “What’s your responsibility in those situations?

You, yourself, might never harm a girl or woman, but what do you do when friends and others in your peer culture act in ways that are sexist or abusive?”

Katz acknowledges that this may be difficult for fathers, who may feel hypocritical when looking back at their behaviors, or sense that they don’t have the language to talk about sexism authoritatively.

“The sum total of these anxieties, these doubts, these insecurities, these failures of imagination about what to do, the sum of that is a lot of silence and inaction. And in my work, I hear all the time about the results of this inaction,” says Katz, emphasizing the need for men to step out of their comfort zone and assume the responsibility of leadership, as women’s allies and partners, to change the collective frame of mind.

“Parents of sons need to talk to them about their responsibility not only to treat women and girls with respect, but also about what to do in situations when guys around them are not treating girls and women with respect. What do you do when friends act in ways that are sexist or abusive?”

ers. d by intimate partn women are victimize on illi m 1.3 ed at • Each year an estim h care visits yearly. an 18.5 million healt th e or m in lts su re .

• Domestic violence s domestic violence ore children witnes m or e on , na izo Ar • Every 44 minutes in hotline calls. r domestic violence fo n tio na e th in h of • Arizona ranks eight lls the Department tic violence victim ca es m do a , l. na ra izo fer Ar re in or • Every 12 minutes y shelter, information to request emergenc y rit cu Se ic om on Ec

BY THE

NUMBERS 40 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

of space. shelter due to lack a m fro ay aw ed is turn xiety, flashbacks in Arizona, a family ep disturbances, an sle n, • Every 30 minutes sio es pr de rates of e victims face high •Domestic violenc s such . chronic condition nal distress ng io di ot clu in em r rs he ivo ot rv d an y su or health for man e contributes to po nc le vio tic es m s. k • Do sorder lvement, legal wor gastrointestinal di enforcement invo law as heart disease or in ar ye a n llio $37 bi mpanies. e costs more than productivity at co st lo d • Domestic violenc an their t en m at come abusers of tal health tre r more likely to be fa medical and men e n. ar tio e ra nc le ne ge vio next estic of violence in the who witness dom cle ys cy bo , e lp th he ng t ui ou in ith nt •W us co ildren as adults, th partners and/or ch e never reported. lence incidents ar vio tic es m do t os •M

BY THE

NUMBERS To learn more about Katz’s approach to gender abuse, view his TED talk from November 2012, “Violence against Women – it’s a Men’s Issue” (ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_ women_it_s_a_men_s_issue).

Katz’s keynote presentation at the Brighter Tomorrow luncheon is just one part of the event focusing on domestic violence. Proceeds will support Shelter Without Walls, JFCS’s program for victims of domestic abuse.

Shelter Without Walls provides advocacy, court accompaniment, education, counseling and special assistance to domestic violence victims who do not live in shelters, helping more than 1,780 survivors, including children, each year.

Like most of JFCS’s programs, it serves the broader community and only a small percentage of the clients are Jewish.

According to the program’s director Mimi Kaplan, Shelter Without Walls was created to fill a gap. Most state or federally funded domestic violence services are for those who have left an abusive relationship and are living in a shelter. Shelter Without Walls provides services for victims who don’t qualify for those services because they are still living in the same home as their abuser, have escaped and are living with a relative or friend, or who have left a shelter and are transitioning to living on their own. Government funds often come with restrictions on the duration of services. Shelter Without Walls has no time limit; clients are offered assistance for as long as necessary.

“Our overall mission is safe self-sufficiency,” Kaplan says.

This initially involves educating the victims, so they learn not to blame themselves and understand what their options are. “We help them understand that it’s probably not going to change or get better.” When they get to the point where they are ready to leave the abusive relationship, Shelter Without Walls helps them plan for a safe exit. “Leaving the relationship is the most dangerous time, so we do lots of safety planning.”

The program also provides a range of case management services, support groups, advocacy and court accompaniment. “I call my advocates ‘resource queens,’” says Kaplan. “Whatever is needed – financial help, educational, finding a process server or a place to store your belongings, or finding a better job – they’re just awesome at finding the resources.”

Kaplan says that there is now a national trend towards community-based services for victims of domestic violence, but that JFCS is ahead of the game, having adopted this approach since it opened in 1998.

LEAH works to end abusive relationships

LEAH (Let’s End Abusive Households) is Jewish Family & Children’s Services of Southern Arizona’s domestic violence prevention program for Jewish individuals and families affected by domestic abuse in the greater Tucson area.

“There’s no prejudice to domestic violence,” says LEAH Program Coordinator Andrea Siemens. “Domestic abuse occurs in all genders, ages, sexes, race, cultures, education levels and socio-economic categories. There is no religious prejudice, not even within the branches of Judaism. But one of the stigmas associated within the Jewish community is shanda (shame).”

Andrea says that LEAH tries to break the cycle of abuse through outreach, education and visibility throughout the Jewish community.

“There’s the perception that abuse doesn’t happen in the Jewish community. Even if it does, it’s somebody else, never you,” she says. “So often people don’t talk about what is really going on in order to avoid this perceived shame. As a result, people feel alone, that there’s no one in the community who they can talk to and trust, which leads to people suffering in silence.”

LEAH provides resource referrals, advocacy, intense therapy and counseling – for everyone affected in the household, but also one-on-one clinical services for victims of violence. Support groups are available for victims to share experiences, process feelings and get the necessary support. Andrea says they are currently developing educational programs that will focus on healthy relationships and healthy communication.

For more information about LEAH, including confidential referrals and assistance, call 520-795-0300, email jfcsinfo@ jfcstucson.org or visit jfcstucson.org

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 41

A Survivor Speaks Out

“I feel I am a positive living proof of what Shelter Without Walls can do.”

February 26, 2016

42 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

My name is Francine. I am a fortunate survivor of domestic violence. The reason I say “fortunate” is because I feel there are three types of domestic violence victims. First, there is the woman that stays in the abusive environment. Second, the woman that is no longer here with us because she was killed by her abuser. Third women like me, fortunate enough to have escaped the abusive relationship.

It was an early Saturday morning when I received the last bruises from my ex-abuser. I was determined to seek help. It all started at the Scottsdale Police Department. I was introduced to Christine, Senior Crime Advocate for the City of Scottsdale, who encouraged me to call Jewish Family & Children’s Service. I did.

The DV advocate at their Shelter Without Walls program helped me find a place to live, food, clothing and even gave me bus passes since I didn’t have transportation. Soon, they offered me a weekly therapy group program, as well as individual therapy sessions.

They put me in touch with a legal advisor who prepared the divorce paper work and guided me through every single step until I was declared legally free.

I feel so grateful for all the support the staff at Shelter Without Walls gave me. I couldn’t have done anything without their help. They were there for me to listen to my insecurities, to reassure me that I am intelligent and that I can do it. It was a comforting feeling knowing that someone was just a phone call away.

Shelter Without Walls taught me that I have the right to say yes or no, when needed, and not feel guilty about it. I learned to accept compliments, to know I am beautiful, to have confidence, to believe in myself, to feel I can accomplish anything, to realize it was not my fault. Shelter Without Walls taught me to take risks in life, to taste success. Most of all, Shelter Without Walls taught me to love myself. I also learned to smile.

I often encounter opportunities to volunteer in special programs related to domestic violence. I will continue to do what I can to help others as I received amazing help myself. I had the pleasure to meet wonderful, caring, compassionate, smart individuals, who were there for me at different times through my healing process. I could not have done it on my own. It certainly has been a long, hard, rewarding road.

I consider myself a different woman now. I was able to work hard, save money, keep focus to buy my first home. I continue to go to school. With discipline; I know I will complete my Social Services degree. Although it has been some time since I left the violent atmosphere, and come so far with accomplishments, I still struggle with fear and insecurities. I know in my heart that these emotions will eventually subside with time.

I feel I am a positive living proof of what Jewish Family & Children’s Service and Shelter Without Walls can do. I am eternally grateful for this charitable, giving organization that helped save my life.

Domestic Violence Resources NATIONAL National Coalition Against Domestic Violence ncadv.org Hotline: 800-799-SAFE (7233)

ARIZONA Arizona Coalition To End Sexual and Domestic Violence 2800 N Central Ave., Suite 1570 Phoenix, AZ 85004 info@acesdv.org acesdv.org

Arizona Crime Victim’s Compensation 602-506-4955

PHOENIX Shelter Without Walls JFCS Phoenix, AZ 602-452-4640

Provides case management, advocacy, domestic violence education and support groups for victims and survivors to assist them in attaining safety, self-sufficiency and empowerment.

Sojourner Center

Crisis Hot Line: 602-244-0089 or 888-886-8793 sojournercenter.org Sojourner Center provides emergency shelter, transitional housing, domestic violence education, safety planning, lay-legal advocacy, case management, a child development center, 24-hour crisis hotline, referral services, community education and healthcare through an on-site clinic.

KICKOFF & AWARDS CELEBRATION WEDNESDAY, MARCH 9 | 7 PM

Maricopa County Domestic Violence Shelter Hotline 480- 891-3039

Fresh Start Women’s Resource Center 1130 E McDowell Road Phoenix, AZ 85006 602-252-8494 freshstartwomen.org

Offers a variety of classes, workshops, groups and other services geared toward selfsufficiency and empowerment some of which are specific to domestic violence.

Domestic Relations of Maricopa County Superior Court (for information about Orders of Protection) 602-506-1561

TUCSON Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Southern Arizona 4301 E. 5th St. Tucson, AZ 85711 520-795-0300 jfcstucson.org

JFCS offers two programs: LEAH (Let’s End Abusive Households). LEAH is a domestic violence prevention program for Jewish individuals and families affected by domestic abuse. LEAH provides intense therapy and counseling for these families who might otherwise continue to suffer in silence. LEAH also provides education, information and referral, and advocacy for those Jewish individuals and families who experience domestic abuse issues.

Project Safe Place is a specialized program for youths ages 3-18 who have experienced a trauma in their lives, including sexual and/or physical violence or witnessing domestic violence. Project Safe Place helps victims heal and recover from these traumas with ongoing counseling for their specific needs. Through supportive relationships with their counselors, these young clients begin to develop positive coping skills, the ability to trust and to feel safe – sometimes for the first time in their lives.

Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus 12701 N. Scottsdale Rd. Scottsdale, 85254 Dessert reception follows program No charge, but registration required by March 7 at jewishphoenix.org Medal of Honor Recipient Bob Silver

EMERGE! Center Against Domestic Abuse 520-795-4266 or 888-428-0101 emergecenter.org/

Emerge! Center Against Domestic Abuse provides domestic abuse crisis intervention and housing, prevention, education, support, and advocacy services to anyone experiencing domestic abuse. While the majority of the people seeking our services are women and their children, our services are available to anyone regardless of gender.

480.634.4900 | jewishphoenix.org

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 43

Kids &Teens too

A child-friendly resource for parents

44 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

FEBRUARY 27, 2O16 Midwestern University

19555 N 59th Ave, Glendale, AZ 85308

9AM to

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Stage performances Cooking Demos ~Dance ~ Fun Activities ~ Food ~ Give-A-Ways~

Booths that are all educational and/or interactive for you & your kids Expectant Parent and Baby Area

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JYL STEINBACK | 602-996-6300 | JYL@SHAPEUPUS .The Glendale Elementary School District neither endorses nor sponsors the organization or activity represented in this material The distribution or display of this material is provided as a community service ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 45

Kids & Teens too

Children have fun planting, playing and learning at the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center preschool

Kids find second home at The J

By Nancy Ben-Asher Ozeri

When Kristina Brown and her children walk into the Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center, she can tell they feel safe and secure. The J and its Early Childhood Center are their home away from home.

“My kids have this sense of confidence, safety and being at home,” says Kristina, who serves as president of the ECC’s Parent Teacher Group. “They know everyone. They walk ahead of me, like ‘I’ve got this. I know what I’m doing.’ They know that they belong there. To watch that, as a mom, is something you want every day for them.”

The ECC is a play-based preschool for children age 6 weeks to pre-kindergarten, with a strong emphasis on academic preparedness and developing Jewish identity. That was a big draw for Kristina, who loves that her children know the Shabbat blessings and holiday practices.

The preschool is accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children and partners with Pre-K Academy, which uses multisensory lessons to prepare children for the Arizona Common Core Standards.

Kristina says that the program did a great job of preparing her 6-year-old, Zoe, for kindergarten. “It gave her the foundation to want to learn and to love learning,” she says.

With many of The J’s amenities available to the ECC, Kristina feels that it offers a level of enrichment that other programs can’t touch. “The kids don’t stay in the classroom. They’re like big kids. They walk out with their teachers and they go to music, sports, swimming and yoga. It’s building their self-esteem, their confidence as individuals – ‘look at these things that I get to do.’

There are so many different avenues for the children to learn.”

On top of all that, the ECC also offers optional extracurricular classes such as basketball, science, gymnastics, math and cooking.

Kristina says that another area where the ECC strives to create a secure environment, is the way in which teachers and staff go above and beyond to accommodate children who have food allergies or dietary restrictions. In addition to being a peanut-free and kosher facility, the ECC does its best to ensure 46 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

that classrooms and play areas are clean and safe for kids with allergies, without making them feel excluded or singled out.

The Browns feel like part of a community at The J. Kristina hopes her kids will continue to meet up with their preschool friends. She envisions The J playing a central part in their lives as they attend summer camp and school days out, hang out at after school, maybe even work or volunteer there as they get older.

“They definitely have met their lifelong friends,” she says.

Registration for the 2016-2017 school year opens in early February. Tours are given by appointment only. For information, contact 480-659-7769 or earlychildhood@vosjcc.org, or visit vosjcc.org/preschool.

Last year’s trivia night theme ’80s Flashback inspired some colorful costumes. This year’s theme is black and white.

It’s trivia time!

The Valley of the Sun Jewish Community Center preschool will hold its 14th – and final – Trivia Night on Feb. 27 at 6:30 pm at The J. This year’s theme is black and white, and according to event co-chair Jen Rogers, any black and white attire goes – from black jeans and white shirts to sequined ball gowns and tuxedo tails.

The evening includes a cocktail hour, heavy appetizers and dessert bar featuring black and white chocolate fountains.

Throughout the night, you can test your trivia knowledge for fun and prizes.

Both live and silent auctions will be held, with prizes that include golf packages, resort overnights, an LCD flat panel TV, restaurant gift certificates and more. The silent auction will also be available online at trivianight2016.org. The winning bidder does not need to be present.

Proceeds from the event support the Early Childhood Center’s enrichment programming and scholarships.

“It helps the whole gamut, from extra-curricular (to) educational, start to finish,” says event co-chair Allison Turner.

Tickets are $50 per person. Reserved tables of 10 are available. Reserve your seats by Feb. 19 at 480-659-7769 or trivianight2016.org.

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 47

Kids & Teens too

By Debra Rich Gettleman

Family Time

Self-reliance

“Why aren’t you at the bus stop?” I sleepily barked at my 15-year-old son, Levi, as I pulled on a sweatshirt and emerged from another night of tossing and turning. “It’s 6:20. I can’t drive you to school. I have a breakfast meeting.”

“Mom,” he calmly reassured me, “Relax. My regular bus driver is out this week. There’s a sub taking his route. She’s not my regular driver, but she’s very nice. She has to run her route first so she won’t get to my stop until 6:42. I spoke with the dispatcher earlier this morning.”

“You spoke with the dispatcher?” I asked with complete incredulity.

“Yeah,” he said, “After waiting at the corner for 25 minutes in the cold last week, I decided to look into things and learned about the change in drivers. Apparently Ernie is out having some minor surgery. So Sheila is filling in. I expect Ernie will be back on Monday.”

“You spoke with the dispatcher?” I muttered still struggling to comprehend the reality at hand. How is it possible, I wondered, that a child of mine could be this organized, systematic and methodical? These are not skills that I possess in any quantity. His creative spirit, sense of wonder and off-thecharts enthusiasm smack sharply of all things me. But this … this … unbridled resourcefulness and time management talent was his and his alone.

“Well, have a great day,” I announced as I started my coffee, still pondering this incredible occurrence. He gave me a quick peck on the cheek, grabbed his backpack and headed out. “You too,” He said. “Hope your day is amazing.”

Two days later I had all but forgotten my son’s shrewd ingenuity and was focused instead on his typical teen boy behavior; the atrocious mess in his bedroom, his laundry littering the floor, his sassy comebacks to … almost everything.

“You haven’t heard about my ridiculous morning,” he said as I shuffled his breakfast dishes into the dishwasher at 4:30 in the afternoon.

“You know, Levi,” I griped, “I’m not your maid. You know better than to leave dishes in the sink. I have more important things to do than clean up all day after you and your brother.” I was frighteningly sounding like my mother and hating myself in the process.

“Sorry,” he chirped casually, “It won’t happen again.” This was a vow I had heard thousands of times before. I thought about calling him on it. But then a vision of him boarding a plane for 48 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

college and leaving me forever flooded my senses, and I decided to drop the maternal haranguing. I took a deep breath, thought about what was really important, and said, “Tell me about your ridiculous morning.”

“Well,” He began, “I was at the bus stop at 6:15 today. My regular driver was supposed to be back. But there was a big Cox truck right at the corner. There was another sub, and I guess she didn’t see me behind the truck, and she just drove right by me. So I immediately called the bus company and spoke with the dispatcher on duty. I told him what had happened while I was running to the final stop in the neighborhood. It was about a half mile away. But I ran hard. I told the guy to radio the driver and let her know that she’d inadvertently passed me and that she should wait for me right outside the back gate. So that’s what they did. Of course she was irritated when I finally got there and said, ‘Next time, be out there on time.’ To which I respectfully replied that she clearly had not received a full explanation of the event. I clarified that I was there on time and that she didn’t see me and drove right past me. ‘Oh,’ she reluctantly acknowledged, ‘Sorry.’”

Again I was stunned by his problem-solving capabilities and take-charge attitude. I had to concede to myself that had this happened to me I would undoubtedly have headed home, woken my parents, and insisted on someone driving me to school. This was a young man, unlike any teenager I have ever known, who saw a problem and instead of turning it into his parent’s responsibility, relied upon his own quick thinking and inventiveness to remedy the situation. This is a kid, I realized, who can make it on his own.

That thought was both empowering and crippling if truth be told. I felt a deep sense of pride and admiration for Levi’s selfreliance and strength of character. At the same time, there is a slight sense of loss when a parent recognizes that their offspring can survive and thrive without any assistance from them.

“You’re one amazing young man,” I told Levi as he shoveled in the remainder of the last bag of cinnamon pita chips I was saving for myself. He looked a little like Cookie Monster with the crumbs carelessly cascading from his mouth.

“Thanks,” he said smiling broadly. “You’re a pretty amazing mom too.”

Debra Rich Gettleman is a mother and blogger based in the Phoenix area. For more of her work, visit unmotherlyinsights.com.

Virtually dangerous

This is no game: Young pedestrians are at risk crossing streets Courtesy Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

“Look both ways before you cross the street” may be sage advice, but it is also apparently necessary for children as old as 13 according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers, who have pinpointed many of the behaviors that lead to child pedestrians being hit by cars.

Traffic accidents are one of the most common sources of injuries and fatalities for children on foot around the world. In Israel, automobiles cause 2% of child deaths.

The study, published in the online journal Safety Science (Elsevier), was conducted at the BGU Virtual Environment Simulation Laboratory, one of the world’s most sophisticated traffic research facilities, which enables researchers to measure pedestrian reactions to virtual reality scenarios.

“While we already knew that children were less able than adults to recognize road crossing hazards, our goal was to pinpoint which behaviors might lead to accidents and develop training to correct them,” explains Anat Meir, Ph.D., a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management.

Other researchers involved in the study include Prof. Tal OronGilad and Dr. Yisrael Parmet.

The study examined experienced-based hazard perception differences among child pedestrians and relative to experienced adults. Overall, the experimental design included groups of 7- to 9-year-olds, 9- to 10-year-olds, 10- to 13-year-olds and experienced adult pedestrians. The study simulated 18 prototypical streets in Israel and used an eye-tracking device to study how 46 adults and children evaluated when it was safe to cross. Participants’ eye movements were recorded to identify areas or objects of interest and unique behaviors.

“As predicted, we found that child pedestrians age 7 to 10 had the most difficulty in identifying when it was safe to cross and recognizing hazards caused by parked vehicles or curvature in the road that restricts field of view,” Dr. Meir says.

Older children did not perform much better and lingered on the curb for an excessive amount of time, which indicates that they are less able to distinguish between safe and hazardous situations than adults. In interviews, the children did not express an understanding of how crossing safely could be impacted by factors such as car speed and field of vision.

“These results can serve as a tool to construct a hazardperception training intervention for youngsters,” Meir says.

“Moreover, the differences that emerged between the various age groups reinforce that child pedestrians cannot be trained as a group, but rather the training needs to be adjusted to the level of experience the child has gained.”

In the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev study, children were asked to push a button when it was safe to cross the virtual reality street. Participants’ eye movements were recorded to identify areas or objects of interest and unique behaviors.

More effective training based on Meir’s research may already be working. She recently conducted another study on hazarddetection training of 7- to 9-year-olds and then compared their performance to untrained children. The children who had undergone training faired significantly better, approaching the skills of an adult pedestrian.

The study, “Are Child-pedestrians Able to Identify Hazardous Traffic Situations? Measuring Their Abilities in a Virtual Reality Environment,” was funded by the Ran Naor Foundation.

American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev plays a vital role in sustaining David Ben-Gurion’s vision, creating a world-class institution of education and research in the Israeli desert, nurturing the Negev community and sharing the university’sLife-Legacy-JewishLife-3.604x4.937-Bleed-FINAL.pdf expertise locally and around the globe. 5:28:11 PM 1 10/19/2015

C

M

Y

CM

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We are all responsible for the continued vitality of the Jewish organizations important to us.

CMY

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Offering a range of mental health and social services, JFCS helps foster a future where families are healthy, our children are safe, and our elders can live with dignity. Please consider a Legacy gift to JFCS.

Jewish Family & Children’s Service

To create your Jewish legacy contact: Frank Jacobson,VP of Marketing & Development Frank.Jacobson@jfcsaz.org 602-567-8329 • www.jfcsaz.org

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 49

Kids & Teen

EVENTS February

ONGOING: Club J at the Valley of the Sun JCC

Provides after-school programming ranging from sports to cooking and crafts to Israeli culture and more for those in K-5.

Transportation from nearby schools available. 12701 N Scottsdale Road. 480-634-4949 or youth@vosjcc.org, vosjcc.org

J-Care After School Program at the Tucson JCC Includes a variety of activities, Homework Hangout program (help from education specialists), arts, sports or teens can hang in the Youth Lounge. Bus transportation from schools available for K-12.

3800 E River Road in Tucson. Contact Scott at 520-299-3000 ext.

192 or szorn@tucsonjcc.org, tucsonjcc.org

J Care at the East Valley JCC Parent drop-off or bus transportation from area schools for grades K-7. Includes homework club, cooking, Israeli culture, dance, sports, gymnastics and more. Early pick-ups from Kyrene schools on Wednesday early dismissals. 908 N Alma School Road in Chandler.

Contact Jeff at 480-897-0588 or hastj@evjcc.org, evjcc.org

MIMKids Students in the Junior Museum Guide Program will learn about cultures from around the world, participate in music making, and discover the wide world of music. Junior Guides will train to

lead tours while exploring MIM’s unique galleries and exhibits.

Participants who complete all four classes will have the opportunity to lead group tours for Family Weekend: String Break March 5 and 6.

For grades 6-12. $40 for 4 classes: Feb. 6, 13, 20 and 27 at 3:30-5 pm.

Classes for children from birth to 5 years begin Feb. 3 and are held on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays and for kids 6-10 on Saturdays; times vary. Musical Instrument Museum, 4725 E Mayo Blvd., Phoenix. $12 per class, or 4 for $40; reservations required.

Contact Katherine Palmer at 480-245-6962 or katherine.palmer@ mim.org

FEB. 13 Parents Night Out from 6 to 10 pm allows parents to enjoy a night off while the J-Care staff provides a fun evening for children grades preK-5. Includes special-themed programs, dinner, snack, games, a movie and more! 48-hour advance reservation required.

Tucson JCC, 3800 E River Road in Tucson. JCC members: first child $20, each additional sibling $15; Non JCC members: first child $25, each additional sibling $20. Contact Aimee at 520-299-3000 ext.

256 or agillard@tucsonjcc.org

FEB. 15 School’s Out at the Valley of the Sun JCC for grades K-8.

Features activities, sports, art, games and more. 8:30 am-3:30

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pm; extended am and pm times available. $45-$65 (depending on membership). 12701 N Scottsdale Road. 480-634-4949 or youth@vosjcc.org

FEB. 20 Parents’ Night Out gives parents the opportunity to take a well-deserved break! Experienced JCC staff leads games, crafts and more. Separate movies for younger and older children. 6-11 pm. $25 for first child, $15 for sibling. Nonmembers welcome.

East Valley JCC, 908 N Alma School Road in Chandler. Contact Jeff at 480-897-0588 or hastj@evjcc.org

FEB. 25 & 26 Rodeo Break School Day Out with the Tucson JCC for grades K-6. On Thursday, start with a hike and then head to the Rooster Cogburn Ostrich Ranch to interact with goats, deer, lorikeets and ostriches. On Friday, enjoy Rockin’ Star Ranch’s petting zoo, carnival rides and games. Please bring a meatfree sack lunch for both days. Members: $44; Nonmembers: $55; additional fee of $5 if not reserved 24 hours in advance.

Field trips leave at 9:30 am from 3800 E River Road in Tucson.

Contact Aimee at 520-299-3000 ext. 256 or agillard@tucsonjcc. org

Sunday pick-up) at the Valley of the Sun JCC, 12701 N Scottsdale Road. Parents can enjoy a night out while their children make leis, have a limbo contest, enjoy coconut ice cream, watch “Lilo & Stich” and more. Grades preK-5. Members: $25; Nonmembers: $30. Contact 480-634-4949 or youth@vosjcc.org.

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ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 51 foothills academy.indd 1

1/18/16 10:54 AM

Young Adult

Dr. Hirsch Handmaker

Young athletes need this app

By Debra Rich Gettleman

Ever since the 2010 Sports Illustrated cover story on concussions in the NFL, the subsequent suicides of Junior Seau, famed Pro Bowl linebacker for the San Diego Chargers, and other high profile players, the world has taken a serious look at the dangers of concussions, CTE and other sport-related brain injuries. Junior Seau’s autopsy revealed CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition arising from multiple concussions.

Other NFL alumni have also emerged from the shadows with a variety of mental illnesses that physicians, the media and the NFL, have concluded are the result of multiple head injuries and repeated concussions sustained while playing contact sports.

CACTIS Foundation Chairman and CEO Dr. Hirsch Handmaker is also managing member of Conquering Concussions, LLC. He says the issue of concussions in the NFL, along with a series of class action lawsuits and strong advocacy campaigns for younger athletes, have all contributed to the current public obsession about the dangers of concussions. Dr. Handmaker, a research professor of radiology at The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix, along with several colleagues, have applied their expertise to design a smartphone app that exposes athletes to the symptoms of concussion using virtual reality. The team applied for an NCAA “Mind Matters” grant with their idea.

“One of us had learned of Google cardboard virtual reality 52 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

and used it as the ideal vehicle to deliver what we know about concusssions to athletes. The app lets them experienced the symptoms of concussion, so they know when to seek help,” he says.

Dr. Handmaker and his partners already have been awarded the grant’s Phase I and Phase II awards, totaling $100,000, to create a prototype of their app. They will present “Brain Gainz” at an award ceremony on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis, where the NCAA will decide if one or more of the five prototypes will be awarded a final prize to have their model adopted by the NCAA as an educational tool for its 400,000 athletes.

Dr. Handmaker stresses that the app is not a diagnostic tool, but rather an educational apparatus designed to teach college athletes what to expect, how to react and the negative consequences to electing to hide their concussion symptoms.

However, he doesn’t rule out the possibility that the current app may lead to more advanced applications down the road. “If we win the next phase of the NCAA grant, the app could be deployed to all NCAA athletes through a social media campaign with Twitter, (#braingainz), Facebook and Instagram,” he explains. The social media plan has been inspired and aided by the participation of several prominent U of A Wildcat football players.

One of the dangers Dr. Handmaker and his colleagues are attempting to combat is the compulsion many athletes feel to “play through” a concussion, to prove their invincibility and not

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let down their teammates or disappoint fans.

“Most concussions will heal over time,” says Dr. Handmaker.

“But an additional concussion that occurs before the brain has healed at a biochemical and microscopic level can lead to serious and occasionally fatal results, and potentially CTE.” With the app, the aim is to inform young athletes how to recognize signs of a concussion, experiencing them first in virtual reality. Knowing the symptoms empowers athletes to speak up and get the rest and medical attention necessary to heal from a sports-related concussion.

Dr. Handmaker grew up in Tucson in a traditional Conservative Jewish home and graduated from the U of A, before leaving for medical school, a stint in the military and 22 years of practicing in San Francisco. He returned to Phoenix and Scottsdale where he and his family joined Temple Kol Ami, where he remains a member.

Dr. Handmaker credits his interest in medicine to close family members who were observant Jews. “But more than that, they were ethical and spiritual Jews who were dedicated to their families, their professions and doing mitzvot for the people in their sphere of influence.”

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ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 53

H G

ome A couple in &

arden

Larry and Lisa Rogoff love the Southwest. That love is evident in the home they have designed together. The couple also are active supporters of many Jewish organizations.

their (design) element Story by Mala Blomquist Photos by Tal Peri

Nestled in the north Scottsdale desert, in the Lone Mountain Vista neighborhood, resides a unique home. From the outside, it blends into its surroundings with exposed beams and traditional stucco finish. But the inside is the real treat.

When you enter the home of Lisa and Larry Rogoff, your eyes don’t know where to look first. There are so many details that have been carefully and thoughtfully placed to capture your attention, not to mention the breathtaking view. It’s all a little overwhelming.

Their love of the Southwest is evident throughout the house. There are traditional touches like Navajo tapestries and handmade wooden chairs, and then there are the more eclectic, yet still Southwestern, design elements – two of them being the Rogoff ’s guest rooms.

The first room in the “guest wing” as the Rogoff ’s refer to it, is a turn-ofthe-century themed bordello (that is what they call it!). “I have two sons and a male dog, so I wanted something different,” Lisa says when asked about the inspiration behind the room’s interesting décor.

The door opens, and you are immediately transported to the 1880s.

54 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 55

Although the items have been collected from many places, they work together perfectly. The floor is 120-year-old wood reclaimed from an Amish barn in Michigan. There are prints on the walls that came from travels to Amsterdam and Italy, purchased before the home had even been built in 2002. Proof that the “idea had been cooking” for this theme, according to Lisa.

The door to the adjoining bathroom has stained-glass inserts and the attention to detail continues. The light switches are push buttons, the tile on the floor hexagon-shaped, the ceiling is tiled in ornate tin and the toilet has a high tank and a pull chain.

There is even a small dish on the bedside table that holds several coins stamped “good for all night” – in keeping with the theme.

The next guest room used to be their youngest son’s room.

When he moved out, Larry says, “We couldn’t figure out what to do with it. It was painted in ‘high school’ colors – dark red and blue. It took three coats of Kilz to cover it up.”

They did eventually figure out what to do with the room.

The inspiration for the room came from a shopping trip where they purchased an old Western bar – and designed the rest of the room around that piece. The wooden shutters have leather hide inserts, and the opposite window has a burlap curtain that Linda made. There is an enormous framed desert scene above 56 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

Another unique area is the couple’s dining room. You enter it via a rounded brick ceiling hallway. The door is framed in thick wood and as you step down you enter the room that Larry has designed to resemble a Kiva.

the bed of cowboys riding horses. When you question the artist, Lisa gets a grin on her face and tells you, “It’s two panels of wallpaper.” Here again, the pieces collected from many sources, work together to create what the Rogoff ’s call “Hollywood Cowboy.”

Another unique area is the couple’s dining room. You enter it via a rounded brick ceiling hallway. The door is framed in thick wood and as you step down you enter the room that Larry has designed to resemble a Kiva.

There is a long, narrow window under an enormous

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photograph of Monument Valley.

“Sit down and look out the window,” Larry says. As you lower yourself into the chair, your eyes move from the photo to the actual view of Pinnacle Peak and the McDowell Mountains outside. Suddenly, you realize why the window is the size it is, and the impact is enormous.

One of the stories Larry shared with us was finding a piece of wood in Santa Fe at La Puerta Originals. La Puerta reclaims antique materials, and the majority of the Rogoff ’s inside doors are made from pieces that they “found” among the acres of materials. This particular piece was a large candle mold from a church. Larry had to have it, and when asked what he was going to do with it, he just replied: “I don’t know.” Ten months later he had the inspiration – the candle molds are now the entrance doors to their master bedroom.

This story is just one of the many that the Rogoff ’s have to share about their design journey. They said they had heard stories of couples fighting or almost getting divorced over home improvements. Lisa says that if there is an item that they disagree on, they “scrap it and move on” to something that they can both agree on.

That is the feeling that you get in this home, even with the fantastic art and design elements, you get a feeling of a couple working together to create a home that they truly love.

The Markus Pierson print that hangs on the wall, the first thing Larry sees after coming in from the garage after work, sums it all up, “Tired and weary at days end, I find restoration at my fingertips. Honest, unpretentious, robust, full-bodied, a thrill to my lips, such a sweet intoxication … and she picks great wines, too.”

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BIG

Tiny plants equal

flavor

By Melinda Myers Photos courtesy of Gardener’s Supply Company

60 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

Add some homegrown flavor to your winter meals. From microgreens to tomatoes, it is possible to grow produce indoors.

Microgreens are a quick and easy way to add some flavor and crunch to your plate. Just plant seeds labeled for sprouting or microgreens in a shallow container filled with a sterile potting or seed starting mix. Within two weeks you will be harvesting nutritious miniature vegetable and herb leaves for salads, sandwiches or snacking.

Take it one step further and grow a few of your favorite herbs on a warm sunny windowsill.

Select a container with drainage holes and set on the appropriate size saucer to protect your woodwork. Fill the container with well-drained potting mix and plant seeds or transplants. Purchase basil, chives, parsley, oregano and rosemary plants from your local garden center or the produce department at the grocery store.

Greens, like lettuce and spinach, will also grow in a sunny window or better yet under artificial lights. Grow them in a container filled with a well-drained potting mix similar to your windowsill herb garden. Plant seeds according to the seed packet. Continually harvest the outer leaves when they are 4- to 6-inches tall.

Those that like a bit of a challenge may want to try growing a compact tomato, pepper or eggplant. You’ll get the best production with a combination of natural and artificial light or full spectrum lighting.

Natural sunlight and full-spectrum lighting contains the variety of light plants need to grow, flower and fruit.

Blue light promotes leaf and stem growth, while red combined with blue promotes flowering. Consider investing in energy-efficient and longlasting, high-intensity grow lights for the greatest yields when growing tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other fruiting plants indoors.

Natural sunlight and fullspectrum lighting contains the variety of light plants need to grow, flower and fruit. Blue light promotes leaf and stem growth, while red combined with blue promotes flowering.

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Leave lights on for 14, but no more than 16 hours each day.

Plants need a dark period as well as bright light each day to grow and thrive. Use a timer to ensure the plants receive the correct duration of light.

Most flowering and fruiting plants need a high intensity of light, so keep the lights 6 to 12 inches above your plants. Use reflective surfaces under and around the plants to bounce light back onto larger plants.

Increase your indoor growing space by going vertical. Shelf units with built-in light fixtures like the Stack-n-Grow Light System (gardeners.com) provide multiple layers of growing space.

And once your tomatoes, peppers and eggplants start flowering, you will need to shake things up a bit. Gently shake the plants several times a week, better yet daily, to move the pollen from the female to the male parts of the flower, so fruit will develop. A gentle breeze from a fan or vibrations from a battery-operated toothbrush also work well.

Indoor gardening won’t yield the same results as a sunny outdoor garden, but the flavor can’t be beat when gardening outdoors is not an option.

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Arts & Entertainment

Leslie Freed:

Keeping the magic of theater alive

By Nancy Ben-Asher Ozeri

Her official title is development director of Arizona Theatre Company, but Leslie Freed is still an educator at heart. She loves introducing people to the behind-the-scenes world of the theater, where costumes are sewn, sets are built and magic happens.

Throughout her career with museums and nonprofit organizations, her focus has been on sharing knowledge, history and culture. She also has a talent for raising money to ensure that those stories continue to be told.

“So many people who come to the theater - realize that we build the sets here [in Tucson], and we build them specifically to be transported up to our other venue in Phoenix,” says Leslie.

ATC’s shows usually open at the historic Temple of Music and Art in downtown Tucson and then travel up I-10 for a run at the Herberger Theater Center in downtown Phoenix. “Our costume shop, our scene shop, everything is done in Tucson. I love taking donors – or anyone – behind the scenes. They can meet the artisans that create all of this. That’s my favorite part.”

As ATC is poised to open its 50th season this fall, Leslie says, “We want to do it justice, celebrating the fact that we’ve been in existence for 50 years. We’re going to have a very special season, and a lot of surprises and good things.” Although Leslie has been with ATC for only two of those years, the excitement in her voice belies her passion for the organization.

Sets and costumes for Arizona Theatre Company productions, including this most recent ATC show “Snapshots,” are created at ATC in Tucson.

ATC Development Director Leslie Freed says she loves to introduce visitors to “the artisans that create all of this.”

64 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

Purchase tickets at asukerr.com or 480.596.2660

Greg Fishman Celebrates Getz

Wednesday, February 3 at 7:30 p.m.

jazz classical guitar

Grammy winner

Jason Vieaux

Tuesday, February 16 at 7:30 p.m.

Chicano, Afro-Mexican Leslie Freed

Before bringing that passion to nonprofit leadership, Leslie channeled it into education, earning her the Texas Teacher of the Year award from the Academy of Mathematics and Sciences in 1995. “I was nominated by a student’s parents. She and her family had moved to El Paso from China – her father was a professor at the University of Texas at El Paso – and she spoke no English,” Leslie says. “By the end of the school year, she was fluent in English and I’d had her teach Chinese to her classmates. She went on to medical school and became a doctor.

I was so proud of her.”

Involved in the nonprofit world as a volunteer for years, Leslie eventually found herself pulled into a professional role. In 1998, while volunteering with the El Paso Holocaust Museum and Study Center, she helped plan the annual fundraising dinner, which featured retired Army General Colin Powell as the guest speaker. Just days before the event, the museum’s program director quit and Leslie was asked to step in and manage the dinner. She must have pulled it off, because she was then offered the position of program director.

For the next four years, Leslie coordinated all of the EPHM’s events, including a semi-annual teacher training conference

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presents

Before bringing that passion

to nonprofit leadership, Leslie

channeled it into education, earning her the Texas Teacher of the

Year award from the Academy of

Mathematics and Sciences in 1995.

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and the annual community-wide Days of Remembrance commemorations. She also organized fundraisers, bringing in world renowned speakers such as Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Christopher Reeve. But in 2001, an electrical malfunction in one of the museum’s interactive exhibits set off a fire that burned the museum down.

“Because it occurred after the museum was closed, and it was three weeks after 9/11, obviously there was a thorough investigation, but it proved to be due to the malfunction,” says Leslie. Faced with the opportunity and challenge of rebuilding,

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66 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

Leslie was promoted to executive director and tasked with a $2 million capital campaign. She successfully surpassed the fundraising goal by $400,000 – with most of the money coming from within the El Paso community. But that wasn’t her sole accomplishment. In 2003, she helped found the Texas Coalition for Holocaust Education.

In 2008, the museum reopened in a new, larger facility in El Paso’s downtown museum corridor and Leslie was named El Paso Businesswoman of the Year. Then, ready to turn the reins over and move onto something else, Leslie retired.

In 2012, she moved to Tucson to be with her children, Yaxha Ruvein (logic and English literature teacher at BASIS Tucson North) and Bryan Davis (director of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Holocaust Education and Commemoration Project, and interim executive director of the Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center), and granddaughters, Emberly, Djuna and Zola. And she found Tucson to be very welcoming.

“It’s hard at my age to pick up and move to a new community, but I’ve made good friends. I love living here. It’s a good fit,” Leslie says.

She quickly got involved with the Jewish community, volunteering with Mitzvah Magic, a program of JFSA’s Women’s Philanthropy and Jewish Family & Children’s Services and, not surprisingly, with the JHM and HHC. However, Leslie was

soon eager for something more demanding.

“I found out that I retired way too soon,” Leslie says. “I loved working too much.” So she took on the role of development director for the 390th Memorial Museum Foundation. Located on the grounds of the Pima Air & Space Museum, it honors the World War II heroics of the 390th Bomb Group and features a fully restored B-17 “flying fortress.”

“It went through a major renovation while I was there,” says Leslie. “It’s really an absolutely fascinating museum. It interested me to still be in a museum atmosphere, and with my background at the Holocaust museum, I could bring a lot of history to that museum as well.”

When the spot for development director opened up at ATC, Leslie felt ready for a new challenge. “I enjoy meeting people and seeing how much they enjoy coming to the theater,” she says. “The more I learn about ATC, the more I see the quality of the productions and everything that goes into it, the professionalism; it just reels you in.”

Leslie’s recommendations for ATC’s spring productions include John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” (Tucson, March 5-26; Phoenix, March 31-April 17) and “The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord” (Tucson, April 9-30; Phoenix, May 5-29), a comedy by Scott Carter. As for the upcoming 50th season, Leslie says we should prepare to be amazed.

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February 2016 6 The Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra . . . . . 7:30pm 12 Tap Factory . . . . . . . . 7:30pm 14 The Summit – The Manhattan Transfer meets Take 6 . . . . 7pm 20 Frankie Avalon . . . . . . 7:30pm 21 Lee Ann Womack . . . . . . . 7pm 27 Steppin’ Out LIVE with Ben Vereen & Trio . . 7:30pm

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Leon Gildin, 87, has had a passion for Yiddish language, culture and literacy for most of his life.

The author of three previous books, he has now published a book 40 years in the making. The Poems of H. Leivick and Others: Yiddish Poetry in Translation is a collection of 20th century poets.

Leon says he hopes, “People will read and enjoy the translations and get a feeling for the original beauty of Yiddish poetry.”

The book includes 13 poems by Leivick (the pen name of Leivick Halpern, 1888-1962) and 19 poems by 10 other poets.

Leivick, who was born in Byelorussia, is perhaps best known for “Golem,” a dramatic poem that became a standard of Yiddish theater and was staged Off-Broadway in 2002.

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“My translations are of some of his lesser, and not so lesser, known poems that deal with his childhood, his imprisonment, his life in America, his family, Jewish survival, etcetera,” says Leon. “One of the translated poems, which strangely enough, deals with the writing of poetry, is not in rhyme which is very unusual since most of his work is in rhyme.”

Leon and his earlier books were the subject of a February 2014 article in Arizona Jewish Life (azjewishlife.com/ trusty-typewriter-keepsretired-lawyer-busy).

“I have translated poetry for 40 years or more and have had some of the translations – Leon Gildin published over the years in various Anglo-Jewish publications,” says Leon. “I looked for a publisher for 10 or more years. I went to almost every college and university that had a Jewish studies program and a university press. Editors and professors complimented me on the translations and the choice of poems, but no one would ever undertake to publish the book.”

After hearing a variety of reasons why publishers would not print the book of poetry, he was referred to Finishing Line Press, an award-winning small press publisher that specializes in poetry. “When I gave them my proposal they accepted it at once and did a lovely job with the book,” says Leon, adding he was disappointed the publisher decided not to include the original Yiddish with the translations.

“I am thrilled that I finally accomplished what I set out to do,” says Leon. “The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, has ordered copies for their bookstore/gift shop, I have been asked to speak about the book and will lecture at ASU about translating in general and the background of the book, Yiddish, the poets, etcetera.”

To purchase the book for $14, shipping included, mail Leon H. Gildin, 3801 N Goldwater Blvd., Scottsdale, AZ 85251. The book is also available online at finishinglinepress.com.

“People will read and enjoy the translations and get a feeling for the original beauty of Yiddish poetry.”

Judy Paxton Bruce

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Arts & Entertainment

Johnny Mathis brings silky voice to Phoenix

Johnny Mathis brings his 60th Anniversary Concert Tour to Phoenix March 5 for one show only (see box).

Even before he arrived in New York to record his first album for Columbia Records in 1956, Johnny Mathis had years of singing experience.

The fourth of Clem and Mildred Mathis’ seven children, Johnny learned an appreciation of music from his father who taught him his first song, “My Blue Heaven.” Johnny was 13 when Clem took him to see Connie Cox, a Bay Area voice teacher, who agreed to take on the youngster in exchange for his doing odd jobs around her house. Johnny studied with Connie for six years.

70 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

In 1954, Johnny enrolled at San Francisco State College (now called San Francisco State University) with the intention of being an English and physical education teacher. Black Hawk Nightclub owner Helen Noga heard him sing at a jam session with a fellow student and decided she wanted to manage his career.

In early September of 1955, Johnny landed a job singing weekends at Ann Dee’s 440 Club. After repeated attempts, Helen convinced George Avakian, then head of Jazz A&R at Columbia, to see him. Avakian came to the club, heard Johnny sing and sent the now famous telegram to his record company: “Have found phenomenal 19-year-old boy who could go all the way. Send blank contracts.”

In early 1956, Columbia Records requested that Johnny come

to New York to start arrangements for his first recording session.

He went to New York and recorded his first album – a collection of jazz oriented renditions of popular standards – in March of 1956. Johnny remained in New York and landed bookings at some of the leading nightclubs such as the Village Vanguard, The Blue Angel and Basin Street East.

Soon, Columbia placed Johnny under the supervision of producer Mitch Miller. Mitch favored using Johnny’s voice to sing soft, romantic ballads. At his second recording session, in the fall of 1956, Johnny recorded two singles. These songs are among his most popular all-time greatest hits: “Wonderful, Wonderful” and “It’s Not For Me To Say.” MGM Studios signed Johnny to sing “It’s Not For Me To Say” in the film “Lizzie,” in which he played a tavern piano bar singer. Since then, Johnny’s voice has been used in countless Hollywood movies for theme songs, background music and to enhance a particular setting or segment.

In June of 1957, Johnny appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show where he became a national celebrity and household name. That year “Chances Are” became Johnny’s first No.1 hit.

His second No. 1 hit single, “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late” (recorded with Deniece Williams), came almost 21 years after his very first No. 1 hit single.

Johnny has been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame three times so far for “Chances Are,” “Misty,” and “It’s Not For Me To Say.” In 2003 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 2006 he was honored with the Society of Singers coveted Ella Award. He was inducted into the America’s Pop Music Hall of Fame in 2013 and into the Great American Songbook Hall of Fame in 2014.

In spite of a very busy tour schedule and many charity events, Johnny still finds time to enjoy a little free time. Johnny was an avid tennis player until the late 1960s, when a good friend turned him on to his now life-long love of golf. He plays golf almost every day when he’s not traveling and has sung at many golf banquets such as the Ryder Cup. Johnny’s other favorite avocation is cooking. He is a gourmet cook who cooks for himself and often others when he’s home or traveling.

After almost 60 years as a recording artist, what’s next for Johnny? “I don’t think about retiring. I think about how I can keep singing for the rest of my life. I just have to pace myself.”

Johnny Mathis 60th Anniversary Concert WHO: Johnny Mathis with special guest Gary Mule Deer WHEN: March 5 with doors opening at 6 pm and show at 7 pm WHERE: Celebrity Theatre, 440 N 32nd St., Phoenix, AZ TICKETS: $133, $103, $69 and $39 PURCHASE: 602-267-1600 | celebritytheatre.com | box office: 440 N 32nd St.

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Seniors

Gert the Joke Lady laughs through life

By Melissa Hirschl

72 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

At age 94, Phoenix resident Gert Schuster, aka “Gert the Joke Lady,” is ready for prime time.

Don’t let her soft-spoken and gentle persona fool you. This seasoned comedian and actress possesses a razor sharp wit, combined with the impeccable timing that made Borscht Belt comedians like Henny Youngman and Don Rickles legendary in the Jewish community. In addition to frequent stints at Tempe Center for the Arts, Gert has performed several times at the Tempe Improv, Scottsdale Center for the Arts and at venues such as Talking Stick Resort for private parties. The famous stage and screen actress Debbie Reynolds even used her for her opening act at the Broadway Palms Theatre (now closed) in Mesa in 2010. Gert’s comedic talents evolved following a lucrative career in the Cleveland Playhouse, as well as occasional parts in the iconic 1960s’ series, “Route 66.”

Having performed on a variety of cruise ships as well, Gert recalls her first magic moment at sea. “My husband and I were on our first cruise and I went to a piano bar to hear a woman playing on the piano. After some panic, because one of the strings broke, I told her to give me the mike, and I proceeded to tell my jokes and stories. She resisted at first, but I told her she wouldn’t be sorry. After that, we became the ‘Kathy and Gert show.’”

Many of the cruise ships wanted Schuster to keep performing, but with the caveat of a six-month contract. That arrangement conflicted with her need for family time, so she declined. With more than 33 cruises under her belt, Gert relates that her fellow passengers provided her with a steady stream of material. “The rest I make up,” she says.

“Gert is one of the funniest people I ever met,” says Tony Vicich, producer of the Tempe Comedy Concert Series. “I never fail to laugh when I see her. Every time I talk to her, I learn something I didn’t realize I could learn due to her vast wisdom and experience.”

Gert began her life in a stately castle in picturesque Vienna. Her father’s made-to-order men’s clothing factory set the stage for a life of privilege that was tempered with a no-nonsense approach to education. “I went to school through high school, but it was considered a college education. “We went to learn – no homeroom, gymnastics or extracurricular

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Seniors activities.”

Upon graduation, Gert’s life started resembling a John La Carre’ novel, replete with fortuitous twists of fate, a narrow brush with Nazis and a cleverly devised escape plan. At age 14, she began an internship delivering tapestries and needlepoint pieces to embassies. Little did she realize how that job would be her saving grace.

Hitler’s arrival in Austria became a harbinger of bleak news for the Jews. Being adroit as well as gutsy, Gert used her wits to survive.

At 17, she was asked her religion by the Germans while on the street. Not wanting to lie, she replied she was Jewish and was promptly placed in a holding location for the camps – a soldiers’ barracks where she spent three days. “I was fortunate because I was very small,” she says. “I looked like I was 10, so they threw me out. I could easily have been raped, killed or sent to a camp.”

“I was fortunate to know the British and American ambassadors since I brought them my collections,” she says.

“The ambassadors gave me a visitor’s visa and I spent one year in Great Britain before coming to the United States.” To get to America though, she needed a valid passport that didn’t have the notorious “J” that the Germans imposed on Jewish passports.

Debbie Reynolds thanks Gert Schuster, after the senior jokester opened a show for her in Phoenix.

“I didn’t want to go to the German embassy, so I found out the name of the U.S. Secretary of State, Dean Rusk. I called him and he sent me a document so that my mother and I could travel without passports.”

Her brush with potential disaster behind her, Gert’s life started to bloom in the United States, beginning with a risky and audacious stint at the Cleveland Playhouse. A man who turned out to be the director, struck up a conversation with her and asked her to come back the next day for a reading. “We

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became very close friends,” she says. “And from then on I acted and sang in a variety of shows. I even performed some arias and one opera. I desperately wanted a part in a play, and he gave me free rein. I wore a low cut evening gown for the show, and underneath I wore red underpants with men’s work boots and an atrocious hat. When I lifted my dress and showed off the underwear, I brought the house down.”

In 2006 Gert was at the pinnacle of her career, but sadly she had no choice but to stop singing. “I was in an unexplained coma for a month, and the tubes killed my voice, and I never sang again,” she says. “I told my husband that life is a joke, and that’s when I began doing comedy.”

The most exciting part of being on stage, according to Gert, is the reaction from the audience. “I get so much from them,” she says. “I have people I have to call whenever I perform. They come and see me over and over again; it’s very gratifying. I love making people laugh; there is enough misery in the world.”

One of her most endearing jokes involves a cantor who told his congregation he insured his voice for $75,000 against losing his voice. A voice from the rear of the sanctuary called out, “So what did you do with the money?”

To find out when this gem of a comedian will be performing again at Tempe Center for the Arts; check the Tempe Center for the Arts website: tempe.gov/calendar or tca.ticketforce.com.

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Seniors

From chief justice to community advocate

By Sheila Wilensky

Stanley G. Feldman, 82, retired as an Arizona Supreme Court justice in 2002, but he hasn’t retired from the legal profession.

“I still work more or less full time,” says Feldman, who in 2003 returned to Haralson, Miller, Pitt, Feldman & McAnally – the firm he helped found.

The former Arizona Supreme Court justice represents clients in major personal injury, wrongful death, products liability, employment and other civil litigation.

Now in his sixth decade of fighting for the rights of all, Feldman says legal cases are currently “more complicated, more specialized.”

To our benefit, he says, “the law now recognizes more rights for ordinary people,” plus people’s rights against bad products as well as abuse by large corporations and government.

An example of such a case, one that he worked on, lasted for 20 years. The case involved the Maricopa County Flood Control District and farmers in Gila Bend. In 1982, the Flood Control District undertook a 10-year flood control project that was supposed to prevent a repeat of large floods that occurred in the area a few years before. However, the project exacerbated the flooding problem, and in 1993 there was another flood that caused more than $12 million in property damages to the farmers who owned property downstream from Gillespie Dam, originally built in 1921. The farmers sued the District in 1995, and after five appeals and various other court proceedings, the Maricopa County Flood Control District was finally deemed liable for flood damages to the farmland. The case finally settled in 2015.

The biggest change in the law, says Feldman, is more diversity in the bar. “There Stanley Feldman are more women lawyers Photo by Athol Cline and judges now, which was 76 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

a rarity in the 1950s.”

Lack of diversity affected Feldman himself as a young lawyer.

In 1956, after graduating first in his class at the University of Arizona College of Law, “I couldn’t get an interview in Tucson or Phoenix because I was Jewish,” says Feldman. “At first, I was quite hurt by that. I went out on my own. There were a few Jewish lawyers in Tucson, but they didn’t need any help.”

That hesitation to hire Jews, women or Hispanics “is more or less gone” today, he says.

Feldman’s first law office was across the street from brothers Morris and Stewart Udall on North Court Street. “I worked with them. I learned to practice law the way you should from Morris,” notes Feldman. “He was an honest, forthright guy with a great sense of humor.” During their careers, the Udall brothers were active in local and national politics, with Morris serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1991 and Stewart elected to the House for three terms before serving as U.S. Secretary of the Interior under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

Gov. Bruce Babbitt appointed Feldman to the Arizona Supreme Court in 1982, where he served for 21 years, including five as chief justice, from 1992 to 1996. Two of the most interesting cases he ruled on while on the highest court, says Feldman, were the impeachment trial of Gov. Evan Mecham in 1988 and Gov. John Fife Symington III’s fraud case leading to his resignation in 1997.

Feldman laments “the growing influence of special interest groups. The [Arizona] legislature keeps trying to politicize the appointment of judges. They’ve been fended off so far by the bar,” he says, adding that the legislators want to get rid of our merit system and return to open election of judges. “This would put pressure on our judicial system.”

Arizona’s merit selection of judges for the Supreme Court and Court of Appeals and the superior courts in Maricopa, Pima and Pinal counties, says Feldman, “insulates judges from raising money and from political partisanship.”

Commenting on how we’re treating undocumented immigrants in Arizona and across the country, he says, “The appeal to fear, bigotry and nativism, really disturbs me.”

Feldman notes that his parents and grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants; his mother’s side came from Ukraine and his father’s side came from what’s now Belarus. His family came from New York to Tucson around 1939, in the middle of the Depression, for his mother’s health.

The “dreamers,” or young people who were brought to this country as children, he says, “have to live under cover. They are really Americans, and the inability of Congress to handle the problem is shameful, really shameful.”

Feldman quips that his wife, Norma Padilla Feldman, “is waiting to be accused of being illegal, but I wouldn’t want to be the officer who stopped her. But they won’t do that because she drives a nice car and wears nice clothes.”

A seventh-generation Arizonan, her family was living in Gilbert before the Mexican-American War was settled in 1848

by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Under the treaty, the Mexicans living in the area covered by the agreement were given the option of staying and becoming U.S. citizens.

“How many people can say they’re seventh-generation anything?” asks Feldman.

As a first-generation Jewish Supreme Court justice, Feldman has clearly made his mark in the state.

Feldman currently serves on the boards of the Arizona Attorneys for Justice (formerly Arizona Trial Lawyers Association); J. Byron McCormick Society for Law and Public Affairs, James E. Rogers College of Law; Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest; Arizona Justice Project and United Policyholders (a national consumer organization protecting insureds).

He has received numerous awards, including the Judge Learned Hand Award for Public Service presented by the American Jewish Committee in March 2003; a Lifetime Achievement Award presented by James E. Rogers College of Law, University of Arizona, in September 2004 and the Jewish Heritage Award presented by Tucson’s Jewish History Museum in October 2014. Feldman didn’t accept this last award as personal as much as, he says, “I took it as an acknowledgment of how far the whole community has come.”

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Bernie Gross has prepared egg, tuna, pasta and potato salads for the Kiddush at Chabad for about 10 years. Photo by Hershl Weberman

Bernie Gross remembers it well

Ave., “and we all lived in the back for a few years.” A unique feature at the time was a “moveable fruit stand,” which the senior You’ve heard no doubt, of the Energizer Bunny.

Gross built and maneuvered on skate wheels, rolling it daily to Now meet Energizer Bernie, the 97-year-old who is living on the front of the store. Bernie remembers, “shining the apples and his own in the house in northwest Phoenix, purchased in 1949 the fruit.” on the GI Bill, where he and his late wife raised their children; Though the family was Orthodox “in the Old World,” Bernie he is driving (and thriving!) and working in sales (albeit not full says kosher food wasn’t readily available in the Valley at the time. time) and he is a treasure trove of He remembers his father saying, memories related to the history of the “Later we’ll eat kosher, but now – Jewish community here in the Valley. we gotta eat!”

Old-timers doubtless recall the “We concentrated on making a location at 4314 N Central Ave. living,” Bernie says. “Life was tough, where Gross Delicatessen and its but we didn’t know it!” And when neighbor, Karsh’s Bakery, and its the Jewish community needed predecessor, Sun Valley Bakery, were them, “they would find us to make a the singular destination for all things minyan!” kosher.

He describes the area then, on The Grosses traveled from their North Central between Van Buren native Russia to Harrisburg, PA, in and Jefferson streets, as having “lots the early 1920s. They were sponsored of shops, lots of foot traffic” often by family members who helped to catering to “a fancy crowd of movie ease their way into the New World. A stars and politicians” who stayed year after their mother died in 1933, at the Westward Ho Hotel and Bernie and a younger brother left strolled around the area. During that Harrisburg venturing cross-country period, Bernie “hawked the Phoenix via Greyhound bus to join their father, Gazette” – for 2 cents a copy – “after Sam, in Phoenix. A pioneer at heart, school on the sidewalk near the Sam had headed to Arizona “for store.” health reasons and the idea that he Until his high school years (at could earn a living.”

Phoenix Union) Bernie says he had His father’s initial venture, Bernie Bernie Gross displays the commendation signed by President thought he was a U.S. citizen, but he Harry Truman he received honoring his service in the Armed relates, was a small market for “sodas, found out in civics class that wasn’t Forces. Photo by Leni Reiss milk and basics,” at 506 N Central the case. He became a citizen upon

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Meanwhile, Bernie’s younger brother, who had been stationed in Italy, returned to the States with an Italian Catholic pregnant bride named Maria. “I was going with a nice Jewish girl at the time,” Bernie remembers, “but then Maria’s sister Gabriella came to visit – and she was gorgeous. It was love at first sight for both of us. She didn’t know one word of English, but I was an excellent student and figured it out.” Bernie and Gabriella, who passed away in 1989, were married for 37 years and had four children.

Bernie explains that he rarely was behind the counter at Gross’s but was active behind the scenes, handling all the business aspects and responsible for some excellent business investments for the family.

“We were the only game in town for many years for kosher stuff, for Jewish stuff. Everyone came to us with their questions, and we were able to help. We really were almost famous.” But in the early ’80s, Bernie remembers, “Supermarkets began to carry kosher merchandise and things “We were the only slowed up for us. One day a young real estate guy (Ron Bookbinder) game in town who specialized in Central Avenue properties told us he had a buyer for many years for us if we were ready to sell. My for kosher stuff, brother and I looked at each other – for Jewish stuff. and said ‘Sell it!’ ” Bookbinder, who now lives in Los Everyone came Angeles, recalls Bernie as “a terrific to us with their businessman with great integrity.” questions, and we Bernie and his dad had purchased were able to help. acreage “near and back of the store and also some frontage.” The We really were investments eventually proved very lucrative. almost famous.”

Not one to ease into retirement, – Bernie Gross Bernie has pursued myriad interests since the sale of the delicatessen, including successful stints selling long distance phone cards, learning the art of furniture upholstery and working with his brother in a video game warehouse.

To fill the days when his “baby brother,” who had lived in the house right next door for many years, passed away at age 81, Bernie accepted an invitation by a local rabbi to “come to Chabad.” He attended services for 11 months to honor his brother’s memory. “I never missed – and I am still there,” he says. Bernie recently baked a batch of “knockout cookies” in the Chabad kitchen on Lincoln Drive for Shabbat. And he is working on some new recipes.

The traditional blessing for long life, “You should live until 120,” relates to Moses, whose 120-year lifespan is recorded in the Torah.

What does Bernie, slight and sprightly, say to that: “I wonder if it’s possible – if it is – I wouldn’t mind!”

L’chaim, Bernie!

(A shout out to Arizona Jewish Historical Society, who provided additional information for this article.)

Getting food should be a SNAP for seniors

In response to the escalating number of seniors struggling to put food on the table, Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger has launched the second year of its Solutions to Senior Hunger in partnership with the Association of Jewish Family & Children’s Agencies. The initiative is designed to help low-income, foodinsecure seniors get the nutrition assistance they need. Jewish Family & Children’s Service in the greater Phoenix area is participating to help local seniors.

Solutions to Senior Hunger, which is generously funded by the Walmart Foundation, is designed to reduce the barriers that keep vulnerable seniors from enrolling in the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Thirteen Jewish human service agencies in 13 states have signed on to participate in the new round of this initiative.

With support from Mazon and the AJFCA, these agencies will conduct SNAP outreach and education to senior populations (ages 50 and over), administer SNAP application assistance for eligible clients and act as a liaison between the client and their local government agency managing SNAP. “Deeply embedded in Jewish tradition is the belief that the

Smokers diagnosed with pneumonia found to have higher risk of lung cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States, with a five-year survival rate of just 17%. Smoking causes approximately 85% of all lung cancer cases, only 15% of which are diagnosed at an early stage. Most efforts to obtain early diagnosis have been unsuccessful, largely due to the highly aggressive nature of the disease.

A new study from Tel Aviv University and Rabin Medical Center researchers proposes that screening heavy smokers admitted to the hospital with community-acquired pneumonia could facilitate the early diagnosis of lung cancer and thereby reduce the incidence of mortality. Heavy smokers who are diagnosed with pneumonia are one of the highest lung cancer risk groups – and therefore should be considered for early screening by chest-computer tomography.

The research was led by Daniel Shepshelovich, MD, of TAU’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Rabin Medical Center and was recently published in the American Journal of Medicine.

“Lung cancer is truly aggressive,” said Dr. Shepshelovich. “The only chance of recuperation is if it’s caught before it begins to cause any symptoms at all. The idea is to find the tumor well in advance. Previous studies have shown that a low-dose radiation

community has an obligation to sustain its most vulnerable,” says Mazon President and CEO Abby J. Leibman. “It is unacceptable that a rising number of our nation’s seniors struggle to put meals on the table when we have programs like SNAP that could help them buy nutritious food. As the only national Jewish organization focused exclusively on issues of hunger, Mazon is uniquely positioned to do this work. We bring 30 years of experience in the anti-hunger field, shaped by Jewish values and tradition, to a population that too often suffers in silence.”

JFCS Senior Concierge Janet Arnold is heading the project locally. Janet says all congregations have been notified of the program and she is working to get the word out to both the general and greater Jewish populations.

“For example, I recently met with the Goodwill Career Centers staff and will be working with their Senior Community Service Employment Program for those 55 and older,” she says.

“We’re also working with the East Valley Adult Resources and will be getting around the Valley.”

Janet encourages any older adults who have food insecurities to contact her. “There’s a simple online questionnaire to prequalify that can be completed in just a few minutes and indicates the probable dollar amount of the assistance. From there, we schedule a longer appointment to complete the necessary paperwork and comply with the requirements.”

Contact Janet at janet.arnold@jfcsaz.org or 480-599-7198.

CT scan conducted once a year on heavy smokers has the potential to lower lung cancer mortality rates. But this requires huge resources, and we still don’t know how it will perform in real-world conditions, outside of strictly conducted clinical trials.

“We want to develop a more realistic and cost-effective strategy targeting a particularly high-risk population,” he said.

Dr. Shepshelovich and his team examined the files of 381 admissions of heavy smokers with community-acquired pneumonia – a form of pneumonia contracted by a person with little contact with the health care system – at Rabin Medical Center between 2007 and 2011.

The researchers found that out of 381 admissions of heavy smokers with pneumonia, 31 – 9%, a figure that surprised the researchers – were diagnosed with lung cancer within a year of being hospitalized. They also found that the lung cancer was located in the lobe affected by pneumonia in 75.8% of cases.

“We discovered that smokers hospitalized with pneumonia are diagnosed with cancer after the infection because often the cancer masquerades as pneumonia, physically obstructing the airway and creating such an infection,” said Dr. Shepshelovich.

“Considering that only 0.5-1% of smokers without pneumonia have a chance of being diagnosed with lung cancer every year, the fact that 9% of our study group developed lung cancer is alarming.”

Courtesy of American Friends of Tel Aviv University (aftau.org), which supports Israel’s most influential, comprehensive, and sought-after center of higher learning, Tel Aviv University (english.tau.ac.il).

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 81

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Rendering by SBBL Architecture & Planning

Holocaust History Center re-opens in Tucson with intimate exhibits

By Bryan Davis

g n i v i L

82 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

On Feb. 21 the Holocaust History Center re-opens with a new exhibition titled “Intimate Histories” on the campus of the Jewish History Museum in downtown Tucson.

This re-opening follows the 18-month run of the inaugural exhibition of the Holocaust History Center in a 407-square-foot space adjacent to the Jewish History Museum. The inaugural exhibit, which featured the stories of more than 200 Holocaust survivors who live or had lived in Southern Arizona, attracted some 2,000 students and more than 5,000 visitors during its run.

The overwhelming reception of the inaugural exhibition, titled “Those Who Were There,” led to a lead gift that ignited a capital project in 2015. The project’s goal is to increase the size of the Holocaust History Center five-fold and renovate the entire Jewish History Museum campus into a contiguous and fluid space where Jewish culture would live and memory would be preserved. The renovated campus will feature sculpture and memorial gardens and numerous architectural features that maximize potential for learning, reflection and inspiration.

The design process has evolved from early grandiose concepts that relied heavily on technology, to a more intimate approach. The carefully curated spaces will gradually illuminate how forces such as totalitarianism and anti-Semitism impact individuals, families and societies while reminding visitors that these forces continue to influence the world today.

That shift toward intimacy as a guiding design principle arose during the summer of 2015 when members of our design team read Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958). In the book, Bachelard asks, “How do we unite exterior realities with intimate realities?” The design team understood this question as similar to asking, “How do you represent the effect of the overwhelming magnitude of history and power on the individual who history and power so often render mute, anonymous and invisible?”

The most precious and tangible materials we have to respond to this challenge are

the testimonials from local survivors. The core exhibit at the center will feature local survivor video testimonials; it includes interviews conducted by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona over the course of several decades and the 54 interviews of local Holocaust survivors conducted and archived by the USC Shoah Foundation in the mid-1990s.

Initial designs for this core exhibit featured a wall full of video monitors that abutted one another, and that would act independently, each displaying one testimonial video, or in concert to create a larger contiguous image.

The exhibit would have been highly technologically interactive with individual audio controls and headsets for each visitor. While this approach was visually and technologically mesmerizing, it would not achieve our primary aim of allowing visitors to immerse themselves in these micro-histories.

Another reading factored into the redesign of this core exhibit. In his book Dossier K., Imre Kertesz, a Nobel Prize-winning author and survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald writes, “It is painful to carry the brand of surviving for some unaccountable reason. You are invited to attend anniversaries; your irresolute face is video recorded, your faltering voice, you hardly notice that you’ve become a kitsch supporting character in a fraudulent narrative.�

This sentiment articulated by Kertesz haunted our design process. In response, we created the survivor memorial exhibit being sensitive to the dangers of smothering truth with sentimentality.

Our intent was to remain faithful to the testimonial truths spoken by those featured in the exhibit.

The design of the exhibit evolved in a way that aligns with our guiding principle of intimacy. Rather than the visual distraction of gazing at dozens of faces while standing in an open exhibition hall, we settled on a theater-like space where one testimonial video at a time will be presented on a large projection screen.

Visitors will be able to sit in an individual section of the center and receive the testimonials privately. This design also adheres

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ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 83

The most precious and tangible materials we have to respond to this challenge are the testimonials from local survivors.

to the pedagogical charge to work against anonymity and to translate staggering statistics into one human life at a time.

Another exhibit in the center will walk visitors through the eight stages of genocide in eight consecutive exhibit spaces. Each section will use a variety of media and artifacts to demonstrate how qualities such as hate speech, propaganda and the promotion of us-versus-them dichotomies can lead a society toward catastrophic consequences. The intimate experience of this exhibit reveals how the early stages of genocide are in some instances strikingly close to today’s realities. In other words, the exhibit guides us to look at ourselves in the present rather than look over our shoulders at the past.

In the center of the campus, in an enclosed outdoor space, a private remembrance room will provide visitors a place to reflect on all they have encountered across the campus and to enact Jewish memorial traditions. Yahrzeit candles will burn in the remembrance room, and containers of crushed stone will allow visitors to carry out the tradition of marking their remembrance by placing stones onto a ledge as part of an ongoing vigil.

Materials were carefully chosen to complement the exhibit’s design. The dominating presence of raw steel throughout the

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center reflects the industrial characteristic of the Nazi’s genocidal process. Repurposed materials, including 120-yearold wood reclaimed from the building’s interior and basalt stone salvaged from the building’s original foundation, provide authenticity and historic qualities.

The spatial design of the new campus will take visitors through a sequence of tension and release thresholds. This sequence of movements is intended as a physical metaphor of the dramatic back-and-forth shifts from hope to despair, freedom to imprisonment that victims of Nazism experienced. Visitors will simultaneously experience a movement from darkness to light with the end of the exhibit leading them out to the memorial garden where views of the mountains to the west and the Sonoran sky above will provide a private place for quiet reflection.

Bryan Davis is interim director of the Jewish History Museum, as well as the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona.

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FEDERATION NOTES

Families, Generations, Interfaith Spiritual Educational

Cultural

Give today – create tomorrow

By Stuart Wachs

The Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix 2015 campaign was a great success and the 2016 campaign is underway. We are so appreciative for every one of our donors who helped us achieve another growth year: our 2015 campaign was up more than 15%, which brought in an increase of nearly $500,000 to help us enrich lives here in Phoenix, in Israel and around the globe.

At the time I wrote this, total federation fundraising was nearly $5.2 million in 2015. The annual campaign raised more than $3.5 million. More than $1.5 million was raised to help maintain the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus, and $110,000 was raised for special projects to impact our community. While we are grateful for our success, we are not resting on our laurels. We have set another aggressive goal for 2016; a 15% increase over 2015 so we can impact more Jewish lives.

Though actual dollars are important, the campaign is also about the joy of giving and the collective impact we as individuals can make. At our recent Mega event, attended by nearly 800 people, I mentioned just a handful of services and programs supported by the federation and asked people to stand if they or someone close to them had been impacted by those services. Within 30 seconds everyone was standing!

Your gifts really do make an extraordinary impact, whether it is directly through our campaign, or through the collective of federations across North America.

So, when planning your level of support for the 2016 campaign, please consider that your gift will: • directly impact and enrich the life of someone you know • touch the lives of Jews around the world, who, without our support, could not survive • support our NowGen initiatives to engage young Jews, who truly are today and will be the leaders of our community tomorrow • enhance innovative Israel Advocacy programs on the ASU campus, a senior services concierge, Jewish education and so much more!

Through your support, the federation is here to ensure the vibrancy of our community, plan for the future, respond to emergencies, support our community organizations and to be a convener of diverse opinions, interests and needs.

I invite you to attend our campaign kickoff March 9 to celebrate our community, and hear how together we can make a difference. Watch for details coming soon on the federation’s website jewishphoenix.org.

Stuart Wachs is president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix.

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Living

FACES & PLACES

AVIV HONOREES – The AVIV Board of Directors recently recognized (from left) Sandor Lubisch, Marcie S. Lee and Rabbi Barton Lee. Sandor, AVIV president for four years, received the 2015 Leadership Award. Marcie received the 2015 Service Award for serving as AVIV’s Shabbat service officiant for the past three years. Rabbi Lee also received a Service Award for sharing his vast knowledge of Judaism and Judaic religious practice with AVIV members. AVIV of Arizona is a religious and social organization fulfilling the needs of the LGBT Jewish community of Greater Phoenix.

TAX & LEGAL SEMINAR – Last November, more than 300 people gathered for the 2015 Tax & Legal Seminar presented by the Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Phoenix and the Arizona Community Foundation. From left are the speakers at Tax & Legal 2015 and representatives of the key underwriters for the event: Susan Ciupak, director, Fennemore Craig; Bailey Tocco, manager, CBIZ; Terri Hardy, manager, Bonhams; Adam Brooks, seminar chair; Pamela Wheeler, seminar vice chair; Sam Donaldson, keynote speaker; Jacky Alling, chief philanthropic services officer, ACF; Richard Kasper, president and CEO, Jewish Community Foundation; and Denise McClain, director, Abbot Downing. Above right, Pamela Wheeler, principal at Henry & Horne LLP, is Tax & Legal chair planning the 2016 Tax & Legal Seminar Nov. 11.

86 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

HOLLYWOOD ICONS – Joe and Sharon Luber, standing, were the sponsors of the Jan. 12 showing of “Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own,” at the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. Lynn and Jerry Harris (below) were among audience members viewing the documentary about how Jews created Hollywood and their influence on the big studios and the American Dream. Photos by Leni Reiss

FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT – Handmaker, Tucson residents Les and Lois Waldman, below right, and top right, Peggy Simon with Handmaker Community Outreach Coordinator Nancy Levy enjoyed a wonderful time at the “Age of Love” film on Sunday Jan. 10 at the Tucson J. This was the kick-off of the 25th Annual Tucson International Jewish Film Festival!

It was a packed house, the movie was fantastic and the free popcorn flowed!

MIDDLE EAST EXPERT – David Makovsky, far right, with Arizona State University students Jacob Bernstein and Ellie Emerson. Jacob and Ellie, both from Tucson, were among the crowd gathered to hear Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, speak on prospects for peace in the Middle East. The event was sponsored

by Hillel at ASU and was one of eight visits by Makovsky to college campuses during the fall term last year. Photo by Leni Reiss

PEARL–The Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix Women’s Philanthropy held its inaugural Pearl Society recognition event on Dec. 10 at the showroom of WP platinum corporate sponsor, Allstate Appliances.

Guests enjoyed a cooking demonstration

by Lisa Rotmil, co-author of The Community Table, Recipes and Stories from the Manhattan Jewish Community Center and Beyond, and a dinner featuring recipes from the cookbook. The Pearl Society recognizes women who give at the $180+ level to the Federation’s Annual Campaign. From left are: Director of Women’s Philanthropy and Donor Relations Robin Loeb, WP Board member Jill Sandler, WP Board Chair Julee Landau Shahon, Pearl Event co-chair Natalie Stern, Chef Lisa Rotmil, Pearl Event co-chair Laurie Schwartz, Susan Sacks and WP Board member Terri Jonas.

EXPERT EDUCATORS – “Capital Punishment in Ancient and Modern Jewish Law” were the topics addressed on Jan. 17 by Valley Beit Midrash guest speakers Dr. Lynn Kaye and Rabbi Dr. Alexander Kaye, pictured with Dr. Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz. The Kayes, both faculty members at Ohio State University in Columbus, spoke to an attentive audience at Temple Chai. Photo by Leni Reiss

CARDOZO HANUKKAH The Jewish Federation of Greater Phoenix Business & Professionals Cardozo Society Hanukkah celebration at the Jewish Historical Society on Dec. 9 drew 60 people including from top: Evan Schechter, Kenneth Moskow, Michael Schwartz and Laurie Schwartz; Development Associate Amanda Garcia, Business and Professionals Chair Eliot Kaplan and Raphael Avraham; and Cardozo Committee members Geoff Balon and Raphael Avraham with Matthew Bycer.

The event was hosted in partnership with the Arizona Jewish Lawyers Association. Photos

by Daniel Spiegelman Photography

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 87

J

Living

PREVIEWS

Adam in Phoenix (see next preview).

Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Please RSVP to srubinaz@comcast.net, 520-577-7718 or shjcaz.org.

JEWISH ARIZONANS ON CAMPUS’ COMEDY NIGHT

Dr. Nathan and Judy Laufer will be honored for their incredible commitment to the Jewish education of students on Arizona campuses on Feb. 29. The Laufers have supported the work of Jewish Arizonans on Campus by funding trips to Israel and Europe and helping to fuel students with Jewish enlightening and social programing.

Also featured at the annual comedy night Judy and Dr. Nathan Laufer will be comedian Dan Naturman, who was the favorite comedian of judges Drew Carey and Brett Butler on the second season of NBC’s Last Comic Standing.

The event will be held at the Scottsdale Hilton Resort, 6333 N Scottsdale Road, and will begin at 6:30 pm with a dessert reception. The program will begin at 7:30 pm.

Tickets are $54 a person or $25 for students, and many sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact Rabbi Jordan Brumer at rabbijordan@gmail.com for details about sponsorship opportunities. Purchase tickets at http://bitly.com/ JACcomedy.

RABBI BARTON LEE SPEAKS AT BETH AMI TEMPLE

Recently retired Arizona State University Hillel Director Rabbi Barton Lee will present “Forever Young: A Rabbi’s Challenges Working with Jewish Young Adults on the College Campus” as part of the Beth Ami Temple Speaker Series at Beth Ami Temple in Paradise Valley on Feb. 19 at 2 pm.

Rabbi Lee was the rabbi/executive director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center at ASU for more than 40 years. An ASU faculty associate, he also taught courses Rabbi Barton Lee in history, religious studies and Jewish studies. Having graduated from Stanford University and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, he earned his doctorate from Hebrew Union College in 1968. Rabbi Lee has also studied in Israel.

Beth Ami Temple is located inside Palo Cristi Church at 3232 E Lincoln Dr., Paradise Valley. Free, but reservations are recommended: bethamitemple@ hotmail.com, 602-956-0805 or bethamitemple.org.

ONE RABBI, TWO LECTURES: HOLIDAYS AND JEWISH TRADITIONS OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE

The Secular Humanist Jewish Circle is partnering with the Hillel Foundation and the Secular Student Alliance at the University of Arizona to present a lecture at the Hillel building, 1245 E Second St., Tucson, on Feb. 11 at 6 pm. Rabbi Adam Chalom will discuss “Holidays Without the Holy: Secular Approaches to Religious Tradition.” He will ask the question: If holiday traditions were originally made by people, can they be remade by people as well?

On Feb. 14 from 2:30 to 5 pm Rabbi Chalom will focus on “Love and Marriage: From the Bible to Modern Jewish Life.” This lecture will take place at the Murphy-Wilmot Library, 530 N Wilmot Road, Tucson. Chalom will illuminate the history and reality of creating Jewish families, then and now. There will be time for socializing after the presentation. Participants are encouraged to bring a Valentine’s Day snack to share.

Rabbi Chalom was ordained by the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism in 2001. He received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies - Hebrew and Jewish Cultural Studies concentration from the University of Michigan. In addition to his work with the Institute, Rabbi Chalom is the rabbi of Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation in north suburban Chicago. His Tucson events are part of a statewide training opportunity.

Rabbi Chalom also will be leading a weekend institute for Congregation Or 88 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

WEEKEND SEMINAR FOCUSES ON ANTI-SEMITISM

Rabbi Adam Chalom, dean of the International Institute for Secular and Humanistic Judaism, will be in Phoenix Feb. 12-14 for Shabbat services and seminar.

He will lead Or Adam Congregation’s Shabbat Service on Friday night, Feb. 12.

The Arizona Jewish Historical Society and Or Adam Congregation are co-sponsoring a seminar “Jewish Cultural View of Zionism, Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism” featuring Rabbi Adam Chalom. Anti-Semitism and Israel have been intertwined since Theodor Herzl witnessed the Dreyfus Trial in 1894, sparking his book The Jewish State and Modern Zionism. Today’s conflicts in Europe, the Middle East and on college campuses are a bewildering, even disturbing, combination of legitimate criticism and irrational hatred. How should American Jews respond?

There will be two sessions on Feb. 13. From 9 am to noon, Rabbi Chalom will speak on “Diaspora, Diversity and Discrimination: Ancient and Medieval Origins.” In the afternoon, 1-4 pm, he will address “Founding, Fighting and Final Solutions: 1870-1948.”

Sunday’s session, “Reacting to Reality: The World Today” will be from 9 am to noon.

The Shabbat service is free. Individual sessions are $20. Cost for the full seminar is $50, which includes bagels Saturday and Sunday and Saturday lunch. Both the lecture and seminar will be held at the Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center, 122 E Culver St., Phoenix.

For tickets or information, contact oradaminfo@gmail.com or 480-663-7788.

Rabbi Adam Chalom

LECTURES LOOK AT HOLOCAUST AND ANTI-SEMITISM ON CAMPUS

As part of the Albert & Liese Eckstein Scholar-in-Residence Lecture series, Dr. Lynn Rapaport, Henry Snyder Professor of Sociology, Pomona College, will present two lectures on Feb. 1.

At 10:30 am she will speak about “The Holocaust in Popular Culture: A Close Look at Schindler’s List.” The lecture will be on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University in room 4401 of Lattie F. Coor Hall, 976 S Forest Mall.

Her evening lecture will focus on “Anti-Semitism on College Campuses.” The 7 pm talk will be at the Cutler-Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center, 122 E Culver St., Phoenix.

Rapaport is the author of Jews in Germany after the Holocaust: Memory, Identity, and Jewish-German Relations, which won the 1998 Most Distinguished Publication Award in the Sociology of Religion from the American Sociological Association. She is currently working on a project about the portrayal of Holocaust in American popular culture from the 1940s to present day.

The Albert and Liese Eckstein Scholar-in-Residence program is made possible through an endowment established by the late Dr. Albert and Liese Eckstein, with additional contributions from the Eckstein family and Friends of Jewish Studies. The program features annual lectures by experts in the field of Jewish Studies.

Both lectures are free, but RSVP is requested at jewishstudies.clas.asu.edu/rsvp or 480-727-5151.

NEW EXHIBIT AT THE CUTLER PLOTKIN JEWISH HERITAGE CENTER

The Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center opened a new exhibit Jan. 31 entitled, “The World Knew: Jan Karski’s Mission for Humanity.”

The exhibit details the life and actions of a Polish resistance member and courier during World War II who gained first-hand information about Nazi atrocities against Jews and brought that information to the West. In particular, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto as well as a transit/labor camp to witness what was taking place and was then smuggled to London, where he met with British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and also later Franklin D. Roosevelt

in Washington. It is a tragic story of a man who was witness to the Holocaust and who was largely disregarded by the world.

The exhibit also celebrates other Polish righteous gentiles who saved Jews during WWII. It is being co-sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland and the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.

The basic exhibit was curated by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Los Angeles. The AJHS is adding to it by soliciting objects of interest from the local Polish community and other connections. Phoenix artist Robert Sutz has volunteered to share his Polish Holocaust art.

On Tues. Feb. 9 at 7 pm the Center will hold the Arizona premiere screening of a documentary film, “Jan Karski and the Lords of Humanity.”

On Feb. 11 at 7 pm, in cooperation with Or Adam Congregation, there will be an author presentation: Two Among the Rightous Few: A Story of Courage in the Holocaust by Marty Brounstein.

On Feb. 18 at 7 pm there will be a book discussion of Jan Karski’s Story of a Secret State, originally published in 1944. The discussion is being led by the AZJHS president Mark Sendrow, who is a former student of Karski’s at Georgetown University.

There is also a live concert of music by Chopin on March 15 performed by the Rice Brothers in an effort to help foster better relations between Poles and Jews.

The exhibit will run through March 31. Admission is $5 (AZJHS members, students, survivors, and active duty military free). Special arrangements for groups.

Arizona Jewish Historical Society, Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center, 122 E Culver Street, Phoenix. 602-241-7870 or azjhs.org.

SUPER BOWL CHAMPION SHARES HIS TESHUVAH JOURNEY

Alan Veingrad was the only Jewish player on the Super Bowl Champion Dallas Cowboy Team. On Feb. 2 he will share his riveting personal story of self-discovery following his retirement from the NFL with the Phoenix Community Kollel.

This is the first of two talks in the Kollel’s Distinguished Speaker Lecture series. The second on March 8 will feature Judge Dan Butler, whose lectures inspire audiences to overcome tragedy and make the most of a bad day. Both lectures will be at 7:30 pm at the Scottsdale Hilton, 6333 N. Scottsdale Road.

Alan vividly relates the discipline of being a professional athlete to the process of becoming a Torah-observant Jew. His story is one of Jewish pride in the least likely of places. He relays his personal breakthroughs and accomplishments during his five years as an offensive lineman with the Green Bay Packers and two years with the Dallas Cowboys playing for legendary coach Jimmy Johnson, alongside hall of fame quarterback Troy Aikman and record-breaking running back Emmitt Smith. With remarkable candor and alacrity, Alan keeps his audiences spellbound with his accounts of the intense training, ruthless competitive atmosphere and performance requirements of professional football life.

Since his retirement, Alan has used his championship experience to score big in his business.

Perhaps most compelling is Alan’s account of finding himself and his religious identity following his NFL career as he became increasingly aware of the blankness in his heart and the emptiness in his soul. As Alan reacquainted himself with the teachings, values and practices of Jewish life, he began to get a glimpse of what was missing. In this very personal presentation, Alan shares the steps that have led to his own spiritual journey where he has found a deepening sense of contentment and a renewed sense of purpose.

Alan was inducted into the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, his alma mater Texas A&M, Commerce Athletic Hall of Fame and invited to the White House for the first ever reception honoring Jewish American heritage month.

Tickets are $10 or $15 for both lectures. Register at aztorah.com, programming@aztorah.com or 602-433-0300, ext. 105.

JNFUTURE

SHABBAT IN THE DESERT WEEKEND SEMINAR WITH RABBI ADAM CHALOM

Dean International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism

ZIONISM, ANTI-ZIONISM & ANTI-SEMITISM FRIDAY FEBRUARY 12 SATURDAY FEBRUARY 13 SUNDAY FEBRUARY 14

7:00PM –8:30PM SHABBAT SERVICE & ONEG SHABBAT -FREE SHABBAT CELEBRATION “BEING JEWISH IN A NON-JEWISH WORLD” SESSION 1-9:00AM-NOON “DIASPORA,DIVERSITY, & DISCRIMINATION: ORIGINS” SESSION 2-1:00PM-4:00PM “FOUNDING, FIGHTING, & FINAL SOLUTIONS:1870-1948”

SESSION 3-9:00AM-NOON “REACTING TO REALITY:THE WORLD TODAY”

REGISTRATION: $20 PER SESSION, $50 ALL 3 SESSIONS.

INCLUDES BAGELS & SHMEAR SAT. & SUN. FULL SEMINAR ALSO INCLUDES SAT. LUNCH

REGISTER BY FEBRUARY 5, 2016 – 480.663.7788 oradaminfo@gmail.com

MARCH 25, 2016 • 6:00 PM David & Gladys Wright House Parking and entry at 5225 E. Camelback Rd. Phoenix, AZ 85018 5:00 pm - VIP Cocktail Hour & Private Tour 6:00 pm - Shabbat Program & Dinner Shabbat & Dietary laws observed $36 - VIP Cocktail Hour & Shabbat Dinner for JNFuture Members $54 - Shabbat Dinner $72 - VIP Cocktail Hour & Shabbat Dinner JNFuture Arizona engages professionals ages 22-40 interested in supporting Israel

RSVP by March 15 at jnf.org/shabbatinthedesert or contact Leila Nouri at lnouri@jnf.org or 480.447.8100 x932

ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 89

FEBRUARY CALENDAR Through Feb. 28 “Becoming Dr. Ruth” at Herberger Theater Center, 222 E Monroe, Phoenix. 602-252-8497 or playhouseinfo.com

Feb. 8 Jewish Genealogy Presentation. Tammy Hepps, “How You Can Find Out Everything There Possibly is to Know About Your Ancestor?” 7 pm. $5; AZJHS Members free. 602-241-7870 or lbell@azjhs.org

Feb. 9

Through Mar. 31

“Jan Karski and the Lords of Humanity.” Film screening. See page 89

Feb. 1

VBM Class: Jewish Responses to Poverty. 7-9 pm at Temple Chai, 4645 E Marilyn Road, Phoenix. $18 (suggested donation). 602-445-3112 or rabbi@valleybeitmidrash.org

Exhibit: “The World Knew: Jan Karski’s Mission for Humanity” at the Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center, 122 E Culver St. 602-241-7870 or azjhs. org Albert & Liese Eckstein Scholar-in-Residence lecture series with Dr. Lynn Rapaport. See page 88

Feb. 9, 16

Feb. 10, 17, 24

“Fiory’s Flame” film screens at 7 pm at Beth Emeth Congregation, 13702 W Meeker Blvd., Sun City West. $10. 623-584-7210.

The Wisdom of Jewish Tucson a three-week adult education series. 7 pm at Congregation Anshei Israel, 5550 E 5th St., Tucson. 520-745-5550 ext.

225 or clergysecretary@caiaz.org

Feb. 2

Feb. 11

Distinguished Speaker Lectures: Alan Veingrad.

See page 89

Author Presentation: Two Among the Righteous Few: A Story of Courage in the Holocaust.

See page 89

Let’s Move On – Exploring Relocation & Transition at the VOSJCC. For seniors. Sponsored by Atria Senior Living and James Wexler Realty Group. Free.

Reservations recommended. 480-483-7121 ext.

1213 or harrietc@vosjcc.org VBM Lecture: “Ambiguity in the Jewish Tradition: Spirituality for Complicated People” with Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Blanchard. 7-9 pm at Congregation Beth Israel, 10460 N 56th St., Scottsdale. 602-4453112 or rabbi@valleybeitmidrash.org

Feb. 3-6 “Hello Dolly” performed by the Scottsdale Musical Theater Company at Tempe Center for the Arts, 700 W Rio Salado Pkwy., Tempe. 7:30 pm Wed.Fri., 2 & 7:30 pm Sat. $32-$42. 602-909-4215 or tickets@scottsdalemusicaltheater.com

Feb. 4 Let’s Be Strong & Single – Being Your Best. 10-11 am at the VOSJCC. Helps newly single, middle-aged women begin the next chapter of their lives. Free. Reservations recommended. 480-4837121 ext. 1213 or harrietc@vosjcc.org

“Holidays Without the Holy: Secular Approaches to Religious Tradition” lecture. See page 88 VBM Lecture: “Radical Compassion: The Mystical Teaching of R. Levi Yizhak of Berditchev.” 7-9 pm at 6805 E McDonald Dr., Paradise Valley. $18 (suggested donation). 602-445-3112 or rabbi@ valleybeitmidrash.org

Feb. 12-14 “Jewish Cultural View of Zionism, Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism” weekend seminar. See page 88 Waterfront Fine Art & Wine Festival in Scottsdale.

10 am-5 pm. $3. 480-837-5637 or thunderbirdartists.com

Feb. 13 Fostering Hope – A Fine Wine Auction at J. Levine Auction & Appraisal, 10345 N Scottsdale Road.

Advance tickets $100. Benefits OCJ Foster Kids.

6-10 pm. 480-448-2236 or reception@jlevines.com

Feb. 14

VBM Lecture: “Spiritual Activism: Leadership in the 21st Century” with Rabbi Avi Weiss. 7-9 pm at Temple Chai, 4645 E Marilyn Road, Phoenix. $18 suggested donation. 602-445-3112 or rabbi@ valleybeitmidrash.org

“Love and Marriage: From the Bible to Modern Jewish Life” lecture. See page 88 Passages Lecture Series – Steven Emerson, world’s foremost expert on Islamic terrorism speaks. 7:30-9 pm at Beth El Congregation, 1118 W Glendale Ave., Phoenix. $18/person. 480-6348050 or jewished@bjephoenix.org

Feb. 6

Feb. 16

Read it & Meet Book Discussion features the book selection My Promised Land by Ari Shavit. Noon1:30 pm at Congregation Anshei Israel, 5550 E 5th St., Tucson. Free. 520-887-8358 or rgellman@ cox.net

Feb. 7 “World Wide Wrap” unites men, women and children in learning about wearing tefillin. 9:30-11:30 am at Congregation Anshei Israel, 5550 E 5th St., Tucson. Free. 520-400-9930 or catsfan1997@cox.net

Interfaith Forum. 11:30 am. Free. Produced by Arizona Interfaith Movement. azifm.org Real Estate & Finance 2016 Greater Phoenix Economic Outlook for Jewish real estate and finance professional to network and learn the state of business in the Valley. $18 professionals; $10 students. 5:30-8:30 pm at Biltmore Financial Center, 2398 E Camelback Road #180, Phoenix.

Register by Feb. 12 at jewishphoenix.org

Feb. 17

The “Q” is a fast-paced trivia competition, a fun fundraiser with all proceeds going towards sup90 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

porting the work of the Phoenix Community Kollel. $125/individual; $1,250/table sponsor. 6:30 pm at the Arizona Science Center, 600 E Washington St., Phoenix. Register online at aztorah.com

Feb. 18 Book Discussion: The Story of a Secret State. See page 89

Feb. 19 Beth Ami Temple Speaker Series. See page 88

Feb. 20 Simchat Shabbat Special Needs Services for those with disabilities and their families. Noon-12:45 pm at Congregation Beth Israel, 10460 N 56th St., Scottsdale. Free. 480-629-5343 or sherri@ cjsn.org

Feb. 21 Congregation Beth Tefillah’s 5th Annual Gala featuring Dennis Prager. 6 pm at 6529 E Shea Blvd., Scottsdale. $72-$180. 480-223-9343 or gala@cbtaz.org Passages Lecture Series – Joel Chasnoff, performs stand-up. 7:30-9 pm at Temple Chai, 4645 E Marilyn Road, Phoenix. $18/person. 480-634-8050 or jewished@bjephoenix.org YOUTH: Family Yoga & PJ Library Story Time.

12:30-1:30 pm. Yoga followed by storytime at the VOSJCC. 480-483-7121 ext. 1281 or healthandfitness@vosjcc.org

Feb. 24 What’s Your Genetic Make-Up? luncheon at the Ina Levine Jewish Community Campus, 12701 N Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale. Ellyn Craine Davidson, a BRCA carrier, shares her story. 11 am. $46; RSVP

by Feb 10. 480-668-3347 or info@jewishgeneticsphx.org

Feb. 26 “Fiddler on the Roof” at Arizona Broadway Theatre, 7701 W Paradise Lane, Peoria. Continues through April 3. 623-776-8400 or azbroadway.org JFCS Seventh Annual Brighter Tomorrow luncheon.

See page 38

Feb. 26-28 Carefree Fine Art & Wine Festival in Carefree.

10 am-5 pm. $3. 480-837-5637 or thunderbirdartists.com

Feb. 27 Congregation Merkaz Ha-Iyr Shabbaton community-building experience. 9 am breakfast; 10 am programming begins. 37019 N Lava Lane Cave Creek. $25 adults, $15 for ages 6 and older, free for ages 5 and younger. denisekay0916@gmail.com Trivia Night Benefiting the VOCJCC ECC. See page 47.

YOUTH: Shape Up Kids Expo. 9 am-2 pm at Midwestern University, 19555 N 59th Ave., Glendale.

5K inflatable run, booths, expectant parent and baby area. Free. 602-996-6300 or jyl@shapeupus.org

Feb. 29 JAC Comedy Night. See page 88

From the Producers of MY MOTHER’S ITALIAN, MY FATHER’S JEWISH & I’M IN THERAPY!, RESPECT: A MUSICAL CELEBRATION OF WOMEN!, & YOU SAY TOMATO, I SAY SHUT UP!

THE HIT MUSICAL COMEDY COMES TO PHOENIX! Philip Roger Roy and Dana Matthow present

R HELD OVE THRU FEB. 7th!

Alan Jacobson’s

A delightful & fun musical about dieting, exercise & the age old “battle of the bulge” with parodies of hit songs in the tradition of Menopause The Musical®.

“The Audience Eats The Show Up!” - Miami Herald

“Be Prepared To Laugh Off A Few Pounds!”

- BroadwayWorld.com

Wed & Thursday 2 & 7 pm, Friday 8, Saturday 2 & 8, Sunday 2 pm

THE HIT NEW YORK DRAMEDY IS COMING TO PHOENIX! FEBRUARY 10-28, 2016 “Fascinating And Heartbreaking...

Conveys Westheimer’s Surprising Dignity, Courage, And Resilience” — The New Yorker

g n i m Beco uth Dr. R ermain

k St. G

By Mar

Let’s Talk About SEX!!

“A Surprising, Eventful Biography.

A Distinctive Sound, A Penchant for Humor & An Animated Personality!”

You thought you knew everything there was to know about Dr. Ruth Westheimer from her career as a pioneering radio and television sex therapist! But did you know about her incredible journey fleeing the Nazis in the Kindertransport and joining the Haganah in Jerusalem as a sniper, to her struggle as a single mother newly-arrived in America?

This remarkable story is filled with the humor, honesty, and life-affirming spirit of Karola Ruth Siegel, the girl who became “Dr. Ruth,” America’s most famous sex therapist.

Wed 7, Thursday 2 & 7, Friday 8, Saturday 2 & 8, Sunday 2 pm

Starring Jane Ridley

222 E. Monroe, Phoenix, AZ 85004

PlayhouseInfo.com

Box Office: 602-252-8497 • Group Sales: 888-264-1788 ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE | FEBRUARY 2016 91

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92 FEBRUARY 2016 | ARIZONA JEWISH LIFE

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