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ficialposition on thebills yet, sition has softened,especially meantime.” said Shannon Dirmann, the after hearing from people who State Rep. TedJames, Dgroup’sattorney. benefited from the drug. BatonRouge, is chairofthe
“Several members have Last lyear,heshepherded the House Administration of Crimrecommended that we oppose (recreationalmarijuana) bills, although there has not been IFeStylebill to allow doctorstorecommend the drug to any patient they think it could help, ininal Justice Committee,which will hear the bill. He said he supports Nelson’seffort, sayThis Year, I Learned the Pain and Beauty of Praying an officialvotetaken yet,” Dirmann said. “Wewill be disstead of only those with specifiedconditions. ing Louisiana is “behindt times.” he Outside cussing islation this bill andother legwith our members at “When Ifirst came in, there was no way that’d get through Still, legalization of marijuana for recreational use will Esther Sperber hard times, that moved me so much. that this was all we really needed. A an upcoming meeting.” Dirmann said the group hasn’tyet discussed Magee’s (the Legislature),” he said. ‘The daywill come’ that, although philosophers will not be atough hill to climb in Louisiana’sRepublican-dominated Legislature, especially if, as We often forget to notice the mag- committed group, willing to stand in bill, but she noted that the orga- State Sen. Ronnie Johns, R- tell you this, the sign of truth is that expected,law enforcement nificence of nature in the hyper-urban concrete and glass of Manhattan. Prayer is a strange thing. We try the snow and sing together. The hazzan sings, “He removes day and brings night, God is his nization hasn’topposed recent medical marijuana bills. The Sheriffs’ Association helped tank amedical marijuana bill LakeCharles, said he hasn’t read Magee’sbill but is in favor of medical marijuana. He also said opinions among lawupon hearing it one breaks into tears. That night I was touched by groups turn out to oppose it. Lampert, of thedistrict attorneys group, said law enforcement typically worries that to deeply connect with our pain and in 2014but came aboardt name” in synchrony with the dark-he makers have changed as they truth. legalizing recreational marigratitude, speak to our hopes and ening sky. It is getting harder to read following year, helping craft saw the benefits of the drug. Was it the pain and loss of the juana will lead to more traffic
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Park bench locked off with barrier regrets. We say these words to our-legislationthat passed and the small print in my prayer book, set But Johns isn’tready to get pandemic? The fragility of life? fatalities. He also contends tape during the corona virus lock down selves with a divine intention. in motion the state’s medicbut I know the words by heart. al on board with recreational The support of togetherness? I’m there could be a“shadow crime This essay originally appeared in the New York Jewish Week. (Getty Images) Prayer is something that should be so personal and private, yet I find it most meaningful when done with a The lump in my throat loosens and I breathe in the cold air. Marc Cousins, the architectural The Advocate - 04/11/2021 marijuana program. Changing attitudes Legal marijuana —whether marijuana, even if its day is coming. “I’m72yearsold; I’mold school,I guess,” he said. “I not sure, but it was real, and it was worth bundling up for and seeking out on a freezing, snowy Friday component” where statesthat legalize marijuana but are surrounded by states where it’sstill illegal see heightened
Friday night. We are standing in community. for recreational or medical theorist, said in one of his lectures use guess the day will come when evening. black-market activityaspeoa paved plaza beside Riverside I have come to see communal —ispopular among Louisiana Drive; the air is crisp; the fresh snow is sparkling like diamond dust in the setting sun. We are 6 feet apart and masked (I can’t wait for this combined phrase to become praying as a bit like therapy. In therapy we learn to hear our feelings, accept our pain and cherish our joys. But it is hard, if not impossible, to do this work alone. residents, polls haveconsistently shown. And that support appears to be growing. In 2019, the LSU PublicPolicy ResearchLab did astatewide poll that found55% of resiPAINTRENOVATIONS3ROOMS$500 Complete obsolete). We join the hazzan, We need someone, the therapist, to dents support legalizing small Interior/Exterior chanting the Friday evening prayer, help us see ourselves better. Some-amounts of marijuana for rec- Available welcoming the Sabbath as the sun one who can give us permission to reationaluse, withhuge gendisappears over the Hudson River. feel sadness and encourage us to erational divides. “Come my beloved towards your bride to welcome the Sabbath.” Suddenly I’m choked up, no loncelebrate success. Community can play a similar role. It legitimizes and creates a In polls conducted for amedical marijuana industry group in 2020 and 2021, pollster John Couvillon found support for StateLicensed Bonded Insured ger able to sing. My eyes fill with tears and emotions. I have sung place for deep emotions. Together, we dare to say that life is fleeting legalization of medicinal and recreational pot jumped from Financ Avail these words almost every week of and that the universe is vast, and 54% to 67% in ayear, with my life — that’s about 2,500 times history has awful moments and nearly unanimous support — but tonight these very familiar words feel new and deeply moving. Perhaps it is the beauty of prayhumanity can be inspiring. We can hold these disturbing conflicting ideas because we are doing it among the 18-34age group this year. In August 2019, medical marijuana became available to ing outside. together, and together we feel safe patients afteryears of delays;
Kabbalat Shabbat, the prayer and accepted. This need for com-state Sen. Fred Mills, R-Parks, welcoming, or literally accepting, munity is so fundamental that our ushered throughlegislation to the Sabbath, is a relatively new numbers have grown even as the authorizethe programin2015 prayer service. It was added in the 16th century by the Jewish mystical Kabbalists (note the repeating root) temperature dropped. Praying on a public New York City sidewalk, I felt exposed and and 2016. Since then, atotal of 15,672 patients have gotten the drug as of March 31, according to records from the Louisiana in the holy city of Tzfat in the Galilee. They got into the habit of leaving the city and walking out to the vulnerable at first. Some stared, others took photos on their phone or lingered, while their dog sniffed Board of Pharmacy. The number of patients, prescriptions and doctors in the From our table to yours, Best Wishes to our many Call 50 nearby hills and orchard. Out in nature, they sang and meditated about God’s glory as manifest in a shrub, to watch us, or even joined us. Can we do this? I’m sure those who use this spot for yoga on Sunprogram grewsignificantly afterlawmakers agreedlast summer to allow doctors to AcquistApAce’s friends and customers in the Jewish community *Est system the universe and in history. This new service was an instant day morning have felt this discom fort too. - Covington Supermarkethit and has become part of the prayer The reclaiming of public space We have the largest selection of Wine, Beer, & Spirits in the state!book canon. But for most urban has been one of the surprising joys dwellers, it is a rare occasion, maybe of the pandemic: restaurants using on a high school weekend trip, Shab- the parking lane for seating and baton or retreat, to practice it out- closed streets becoming plazas for doors as the Kabbalists did. bikes and pedestrians. I realize how
Early in the pandemic, our con- many things we could do outdoors gregation shifted to outdoor servic- if our city were designed to facilies. We thought this would work tate these activities. I hope we move during the summer. None of us toward making outdoor life in our envisioned the weekly service con- city more easily accessible to all of tinuing outside through the bitter New York winter. But it did. Perhaps it was the link to the origin its inhabitants. The pandemic has stripped our service to its bare basics. We wor985-951-2501 631 N. Causeway Blvd.,, Mandeville www.acquistapaces.com 985-893-0593 125 E. 21st Ave of Kabbalat Shabbat, the repetition of ship without a space, without chairs, Facing East Causeway Approach In Historic Downtown Covington a practice through good times and with dim light and no heat. I realized
HENDERSON
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others, but as “a very funny girl with a subtle sense of humor.”
“Aside from her loss, it really hit home to everyone because this was the first loss in our community,” he said. “It was a reality check on how precious life is.”
Rand’s family represented a relatively rare occurrence. While Henderson has four synagogues – mainstream Orthodox, Chabad, Conservative and Reform – running the gamut of contemporary American Jewish life, it’s the local Orthodox community that has seen the most dramatic growth from its beginnings a quarter-century ago with a Chabad emissary.
Henderson, which was incorporated in 1953, saw its population expand rapidly beginning in the 1990s, quintupling over the past 30 years to its current 320,000-plus. The first Chabad emissary had arrived in the mid-’90s. The Orthodox presence grew further with the arrival of Rabbi Yehoshua Fromowitz in the summer of 2008 to form a kollel (yeshiva for married men). Three years later he founded the Ahavas Torah Center, an Orthodox synagogue.
Unlike in some other expanding Orthodox-dominated suburbs, such as Lakewood, New Jersey, the Jews of Henderson don’t necessarily see their proximity to a big city as an advantage. Being a stone’s throw from the legendary Vegas Strip “definitely created some challenges in terms of spiritual growth,” Fromowitz said.
“But for the most part,” he added, “the community remains isolated from the entertainment capital of the world — or so we hope.”
Rabbi Bradley Tecktiel of Midbar Kodesh Temple, a Conservative congregation, considers Henderson unique in that “you can live here and avoid the common vices normally associated with Las Vegas.”
“The Strip and all that it offers is there for those who want to take advantage of it,” he said. “However, you can live in Henderson and not even know it exists. As a masterplanned community there is a park within a mile walk of any home.”
For some in the community, having Las Vegas nearby offers something of a beacon when it comes to maintaining Orthodox values in Henderson.
“Every city has its places to go and places to avoid, but they are all interlaced and it’s hard to know where to steer clear of,” Lader said. “With Vegas only a few miles away, we know that all the tumah [impurity] is concentrated in one specific area, and it’s lit up and visible for miles around, so it’s very obvious where to avoid.”
Others say the Strip allows for employment opportunities, even if the content is not totally palatable for Orthodox workers.
“Look, you grin and bear it,” said one Orthodox local who had worked at the Egypt-themed Luxor resort on the Strip and asked not to be named for fear of societal pressure. “Earning a living for one’s family is a righteous endeavor, and bottom line we’re still in golus [exile]. You make the best of things.”
Many have made that determination. The Yeshiva Day School of Las Vegas is now located in Henderson and has 200 students, enough to have outgrown the school’s physical space — it leases additional space from the local Reform congregation, Ner Tamid. And preliminary plans are in motion to expand the city’s eruv eastward to encompass more apartment communities. Consultation with rabbinic experts is already underway.
“People in Henderson, Jews and gentiles alike, are generally nice,” said Howard Perlman, president and founder of Perlman Architects. His firm designed developments in the city that cater to observant Jews, including housing units that surround the three synagogues and a local assisted living facility with a kosher kitchen.
“I have found over the years that the gentile community we’re integrated with accepts and likes us,” Perlman said. “Even the city government went out of its way to help us with our eruv and traffic control on Shabbat and holidays.”
Like many Jewish communities, Henderson is reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID had a huge impact on our community,” said Ahavas Torah Center’s Rabbi Zecharia Rubin, who relocated with his family from Jerusalem. “Many people have been home and stayed away from shul and other gatherings, even with social distancing in effect. I am confident it will get back to normal, but it will take time.”
When the pandemic struck, the community, like so many others, had to pivot to virtual events. Shuls shut down for months, then moved outdoors, adopted all regulations such as providing face masks and hand sanitizers, and socially distancing, suspended the weekly kiddush (the repast following Shabbat services) and curtailed all social events.
Tecktiel sees “great” potential for the growth of Henderson’s Jewish community.
“The strong base that we have created allows for people to move here and seamlessly integrate into the Jewish community,” he said.
Locals await the addition of fresh-made food items for takeout or even on-premise consumption by the newly arrived kosher butcher Prime Nosh, which opened in 2018. The charitable organization founded by the Wolfs shortly after they arrived, Aishel Avraham — similar to one they had operated back in New York — now delivers free Shabbat food bundles to 80 financially stressed families across the area, and its scope is growing.
Rubin said the pandemic had made Henderson attractive to even more potential Jewish residents than before.
“Jews in big cities are looking to get out,” Rubin said, “and when they see Henderson they find the perfect place to come to. … There simply aren’t enough homes available within the eruv to accommodate the families interested in moving here.”
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YEAR 2
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ing from history to psychology and sociology, perhaps even theology. One thing is certain: The explanation isn’t ‘Of course.'”
— Meyer Labin
“What American Jews can learn from my Italian-Jewish community’s response to the coronavirus”
“One year later, everything and nothing has changed.”
I recall the frustration I felt in early March last year as I saw the coronavirus hit my home country, Italy, while here in New York City, life went on as usual. Most people saw the looming pandemic as an exotic news story. I wrote my warnings in these pages and felt very much like a Cassandra, the Greek mythical figure whose prophecies nobody listened to.
One year later, everything and nothing has changed. My Jewish community back home has lost many lives, especially during the second wave, which hit the country in November. The vaccines have arrived, but only 5% of the population has received the first dose. Yet Jewish life in Italy has never stopped. Synagogues have been open (with strict social distancing compliance) uninterruptedly since June, and dozens of classes, events, talks and social gatherings have been taking place via Zoom every week. All that’s left is the question: Are we at the finish line yet?
— Simone Somekh
“You don’t need Zoom or Skype to say Kaddish without a minyan. Here’s a healthier option for the community.”
“For some, virtual platforms are a meaningful way to get through the pandemic. For many others, a physical connection to a local community is vital and irreplaceable.”
My personal view hasn’t changed. Without minimizing how emotionally difficult it can be, halakhah requires being together in person for certain rituals such as the Mourner’s Kaddish.
Many months of working with young adults virtually and in person has convinced me that the most important and fundamentally human aspects of community do not transpose easily to a virtual space. Brandeis has had very few COVID cases on campus. We’ve worked incredibly hard to provide continuous religious life in person for all faith communities on campus.
For some, virtual platforms are a meaningful way to get through the pandemic. For many others, a physical connection to a local community is vital and irreplaceable.
— Rabbi Seth Winberg
“I fought AIDS in the Jewish community. Here’s what I learned that can help us get through this pandemic.”
“I did have one thing right: When our community put our Jewish values to work, it made all the difference.”
When I left my office on March 12, 2020, I never dreamed that a full year would go by without my returning. I never imagined how effective I’d be in working from home or how much I would miss interacting with my colleagues. And I never anticipated how thankful I’d be for Zoom, Teams and other technological tools that have enabled us to stay connected to friends and family — and to stream Shabbat services every week.
But I did have one thing right: When our community put our Jewish values to work, it made all the difference. From the woman who delivered loaves of challah to her neighbors every week to the day school kids who used 3-D printers to make face shields for frontline workers, we have found ways to care for one another and stay connected. Everyone has been so creative and thoughtful in taking their programming online. And I am so proud to work for JUF, which has distributed nearly $20 million in extra funding to help meet emergency needs in the community.
— Linda S. Haase
“I’m staying sane during the pandemic by reclaiming an ageold Jewish tradition: baking bread.”
“There will never be the perfect conditions to produce anything … we just have to do the work anyway.”
A year into this pandemic, I’ve moved four times and am back home in Las Vegas, for the moment. My living circumstances have not allowed me to cook or garden much, which is driving me mad. Thanks to Patreon, I make just under $500 a month, and I’m not looking for my 39th job anytime soon. Once my tax refund hits, I’m thinking about living in a van and traveling around
See YEAR 2 on Page 38
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YEAR 2
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the country, though I don’t know how I’ll get around any of the practicalities like my hideous credit score and near total lack of savings.
But yesterday, I snuck into the 57th floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel.
In 2017, the perpetrator of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history holed up here. In the stairwell where cops waited to enter his room, there’s now a placard bearing Nevada’s trespassing code. I took another stairwell and walked slowly down the hallway where he rolled 21 cases of guns and ammo.
Soon enough, hotel security found me, asked me what I was doing and threw me out. I learned then that when you get banned from one MGM-owned property, you get banned from all of them.
Recently I became deeply involved in the Belarusian Freedom Movement on the streets of Chicago. It’s now six months out from the sham elections. There are over 250 political prisoners. And still, the people meet every Saturday in the snow on a small corner in Skokie.
Love or stillness, the kind I sought a year ago, the kind I’m always seeking, is not something you can possess or carry. It’s some umbilicus joining us to everything. Sometimes, if we’re lucky enough, we know it has felt our twitchings and yearnings because it has responded in kind and placed us on the right path with the right people.
There will never be the perfect conditions to produce anything, be it a loaf of bread or a revolution. We just have to do the work anyway.
— Stephanie Kutner
“As a rabbi, how can I best serve my congregants when we can’t ‘be there’ for one another?”
“I hope we don’t forget what it feels like … to be human.”
We have spent thousands of years turning our world into a familiar and habitable place. We have carefully curated our surroundings to convince us that we are the main characters on this planet. One year into this pandemic we are reminded that we are strangers in a strange land. We have seen traffic arteries cleared of cars while ventilators were clearing lungs. We have learned the humility of a global sabbath, of being still. And at the same time we have never felt more human.
When families go through loss before a wedding or a bar mitzvah, they will sometimes say to me, ‘We don’t want to mention that. We want it to be happy.’ I will then suggest they think of the sanctuary like the human heart. It’s a place that contains everything all at once.
Loss mixes with love mixes with joy mixes with tears. It’s a place where we don’t think of things as messy and chaotic but as one feeling teaching another to feel itself more deeply. This past year, we have had no choice but to feel it all at the same time. I hope we don’t forget what it feels like to be a creature and to be human.
— Rabbi Aaron Brusso
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media. Israel, will be required to be vaccinated, and there will be surveillance testing throughout the summer.
While the camp won’t be bringing everyone together in one room for singing the way it usually might, OSRUI has ideas about gathering the entire camp.
“Something like a Friday-night song session, instead of being all together [inside], we’re in a soccer field with kids sitting in pods and wearing masks,” Kane said.
But no matter how much testing has to be done and how many events have to be reconfigured to work outside, the most important thing to Kane is to get the kids back to camp.
“It’s been a hard last year for everybody,” Kane said. “Kids need camp this summer more than ever before.”
Camp Modin in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, was one of the few Jewish camps to open last year, hosting about 300 children for one fiveweek session. The camp asked families to quarantine before camp, and tested campers and staff multiple times in the first weeks.
Co-director Howard Salzberg plans to follow the same playbook this year, though at a significantly reduced cost now that testing has become cheaper and more widely available.
“We learned a lot last year, so we don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” Salzberg said.
Modin campers will be asked to get a COVID test in the days before camp and will be tested on the first day — and possibly again with a rapid antigen test before boarding buses to camp.
“We have the ability to test, test, test,” Salzberg said. “That is so much more than we even had at our disposal last year and costwise it’s now affordable.”
Still, Salzberg is worried that parents this year may be less on guard than they were in 2020, when parents were overjoyed to be able to send their kids to camp at all.
“The thing that was most effective was that the parents were partners with us and they really, really locked down and they tested negative,” he said.
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SCHOOL CULTURE
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creating a world that holds at its core equity and justice? For our children, our elders and ourselves, how do we reframe our experience of ‘the other’ by coming to see all human beings as a different version of ourselves?” asked Case, who is a Jew of color. “How do we deeply root our work — emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually — in our Jewish belief that each of us is created ‘b’tzelem elokim,’ in the image of God, and recreate Jewish institutions, systems, language, rituals and cultural norms that hold organically the whole of who we are while maintaining the integrity of our beautiful and blessed difference?”
The primary funders of the Prizmah project are the Jim Joseph Foundation, Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah and Crown Family Philanthropies, which have partnered to fund the program for at least three years, according to Bernstein.
“At a moment when our country is reckoning more seriously with our legacy of racial injustice than it has in decades, the Jewish community must confront our own responsibilities, both to Jews of color and as part of our broader national commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion for all Americans,” Aaron Dorfman, president of the Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah, said.
Steve Freedman, head of the 415-student Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County in New Milford, New Jersey, said his school is taking part in the Race and School Culture initiative to help get guidance in making better decisions about how to teach children.
“This is a complicated time we’re living in. We’re facing complex issues, so we want the collective wisdom of different experts in the field to help us,” Freedman said. “We’ve been exploring these issues at Schechter for many years, dealing with the broader issue of race and discrimination using our own experience as Jews.”
Years ago the school began examining its library and curriculum to make sure that students studying history and civics were hearing multiple voices — an approach informed by Jewish tradition, Freedman said.
“Being human is to be messy,” Freedman said. “Our biblical heroes all contributed significantly to the betterment of civilization, and yet they were all flawed. The same goes for our own heroes of American history. We must not be afraid to teach kids honestly and help them think critically.”
Tikvah Wiener, head of The IDEA School in Tenafly, New Jersey, a Modern Orthodox, projectbased learning high school that opened in 2018 and now has 51 students, said that addressing racial justice issues is an integral part of the curriculum.
In its first two years, the school ran a “justice and righteousness” curriculum that used Talmudic texts to show how Judaism is concerned with seeking justice. For next year, Wiener and her team are working with experts to design a curriculum that weaves together the history of American slavery and the Jewish
experience in the Holocaust. The students will interview survivors and descendants of both horrors, Wiener said.
“We will inevitably make mistakes and need to learn from them, but by providing us with information and resources, schools can then decide how they will start, continue and develop racial justice work and be there for each other,” Wiener said. She cited a well-known Jewish aphorism from a Mishna in Pirkei Avot: “You are not obligated to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Aside from the 40 Jewish schools participating in the initiative, many more of the over 300 Jewish day schools in the Prizmah network are doing their own work in educational programming related to equity, diversity and inclusion.
Portland Jewish Academy, a community day school in Oregon with about 180 students, began working on diversity issues several years ago, examining everything from its print educational materials to its wall art, the language teachers used to educate students and the facility’s layout to ensure inclusion.
The school also brought in educators from the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education to work with students and adults on issues of racism and discrimination. Over the winter, 12 middle-school students participated in a three-day diversity workshop for students across the Pacific Northwest.
“Our students are activists who express themselves and their passions in a number of different ways, including attending protests, researching and teaching about important causes, and going into the community to feed the hungry,” school principal Merrill Hendin said. “Our goal is to send mensches out into the world — whether at the age of 3 or 14 — and we are doing whatever we can to accomplish that.”
Debra Shaffer Seeman, Prizmah’s director of network weaving, said that though many schools were already doing this work on their own, there is new urgency to addressing inequity in the Jewish community and beyond.
“Why are we doing this? Because Jewish day school and yeshiva educators feel a deep sense of responsibility for their students, including instilling their own sense of responsibility for the world around them,” Seeman said. “We can best serve the next generation by instilling in them the value and responsibility to improve themselves and the world.”
This story was sponsored by and produced in partnership with Prizmah, the network for Jewish day schools across North America. This article was produced by JTA's native content team.
Jewish day school students, like these at the Solomon Schechter Day School of Bergen County bearing signs with the Hebrew word for love, are increasingly pushing their schools to explore how they can foster greater diversity, equity and inclusion both in school and out in the world. (Courtesy of the Schechter School of Bergen County)
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