March 3, 2023

The Jewish Press

Week of Understanding Back in person!

Each year a highlight of the Institute for Holocaust Education calendar is our annual Week of Understanding. Between March 20 and 25, the IHE has arranged more than 20 speaking engagements that will reach some 7,000 Nebraska students. Some of these engagements will take place with local Holocaust survivors such as Dr. Fred Kader along with second generation speakers, Hazzan Michael Krausman and Dr. Steven Wees. This year we will also be joined by a new member of our survivor community, Dana Knox who will share her mother’s unique story of survival. To learn more about these and other local survivors, you can check out the “Survivor Stories” section on the IHE website. We are also honored to welcome Holocaust survivors who have agreed to travel to Omaha specifically for the

A Holy Nation

Week of Understanding program. The guests who will be joining us in 2023 are profiled below.

The public is invited to share in these moving testimonies, through two evening engagements. The whole community is invited to attend as follows:

Jim Berk, 2nd Generation Holocaust Survivor, March 22, 6:30 p.m. at the Durham Museum

To register for this presentation by Zoom, please visit the Durham Museum’s website at www.durhammuseum. org. Presented by the Durham Museum and the Institute for Holocaust Education.

Melissa Amateis, UNL Graduate Student, March 23, 7 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center in the Benjamin and Anna E. Wiesman Family Reception Room.

Born and raised in the Nebraska panhandle, Melissa A. Amateis earned her BA in history at Chadron State College See Week of Understanding page 3

New additions to the Kripke-Veret Collection

SHIRLY BANNER

JFO Library Specialist

JUVENILE: Pirate Passover by Judy Press

REGULARS

We often speak of the Jewish people as a גוי קדוש, a holy nation. One supporting text for that characterization comes from this week’s Torah reading, Terumah, in which G-d instructs the Israelites to build a sanctuary so that G-d could dwell among them. How can we fail to be a holy nation when G-d, at least for a time, dwelled in our midst?

This topic is on our minds as we watch – and now participate – in Israel’s debate over the proper role of its judicial system. There are so many See A Holy Nation page 2

The pirates are getting ready to celebrate Passover at sea, until their ship is washed ashore in a storm. What will they do? Luckily, they find a house with an open door, and everyone is invited in to enjoy the seder.

ADULT:

Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team That Changed Children’s Television by Nat Segaloff and Mallory Lewis

For almost half a century, celebrated ventriloquist and entertainer Shari

Lewis delighted generations of children and adults with the help of her trusted sock puppet sidekick Lamb Chop. For decades, the beloved pair were synonymous with children’s television, educating and entrancing their young audience with their symbiotic personalities and their proclivity for song, dance, and the joy of silliness. But as iconic as their television personas were, relatively little inside knowledge has been revealed about Lewis herself and the life-changing moments that led See Kripke additions page 2

US Reform rabbis join monthly Women of the Wall protest Page 4

Neo-Nazis rally outside Broadway preview of Parade Page 7

Reflecting on a year of helping Ukrainians at war Page 12

SCOTT LITTKY IHE Executive Director

Melissa Amateis Jim Berk Peter Metzelaar Sarah Kutler Rose Viny

Israelis protest against the proposed changes to the legal system in Haifa, on February 20, 2023. Credit: Shir Torem/Flash90

Kripke additions

Continued from page 1 her to the entertainment industry and perhaps, most importantly, to Lamb Chop. Renowned for her skills as a performer, Lewis was an equally skilled businesswoman. Operating in an era when women were largely left out of the conversation, she was one of the few women to run her own television production company. Whether it was singing, dancing, conducting, writing, drawing, or ventriloquism-a skill in which she was virtually unmatchedLewis spent the entirety of her 65 years in pursuit of performative perfection. Constantly innovating and adapting to the needs of her audience and the market, Lewis extended the longevity of her career decade after decade. Her contributions, and that of Lamb Chop, and the rest of her puppet pals forever changed the history of children’s television. Now, two decades after Lewis and Lamb Chop last graced television with their presence, Lewis’ daughter Mallory and author Nat Segaloff have set the record straight about the iconic pair in Shari Lewis and Lamb Chop: The Team that Changed Children’s Television. In this seminal biography, the pair pull the veritable wool from the eyes of audi-

ences who adored the legendary entertainer to examine the joys, sorrows, triumphs, and sheer hard work that gave Lewis and Lamb Chop their enduring star power.

It Could Happen Here: Why America is Tipping From Hate to the Unthinkable-and How We Stop

It by Jonathan Greenblatt

It’s almost impossible to imagine that unbridled hate and systematic violence

A Holy Nation

could come for us or our families. But it has happened in our lifetimes in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. And it could happen here.

Today, as CEO of the storied ADL (the Anti-Defamation League), Jonathan Greenblatt has made it his personal mission to demonstrate how antisemitism, racism, and other insidious forms of intolerance can destroy a society, taking root as quiet prejudices but mutating over time into horrific acts of brutality.

In this urgent book, Greenblatt sounds an alarm, warning that this age-old trend is gathering momentum in the United States—and that violence on an even larger, more catastrophic scale could be just around the corner.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Drawing on ADL’s decades of experience in fighting hate through investigative research, education programs, and legislative victories as well as his own personal story and his background in business and government, Greenblatt offers a bracing primer on how we—as individuals, as organizations, and as a society—can strike back against hate. Just because it could happen here, he shows, does not mean that the unthinkable is inevitable.

Continued from page 1 questions we need to think about. How did Israel allow such anger and resentment at the judiciary to build up without addressing it sooner? How do the proponents of this new set of policies not see that their rush to fundamentally restructure Israel’s governing system in just a few weeks time is tearing at the fabric of civil society? How should a holy nation arrange its government, balance, and rebalance the power of judges and legislators, and address grievances without rendering itself asunder?

We hope that our letter is in the spirit of a holy nation. We first make clear our deep love for, and unbreakable bond with, the State of Israel. Whatever the outcome of this debate, we believe in the miracle of the return to Zion and will always do everything in our power to support the flourishing of our Jewish State. We next urge support of the negotiations being suggested by President Herzog. We are fortunate to know President Herzog personally, and trust completely that he would lead a fair, inclusive and thoughtful process.

Finally, while there are many aspects of the judicial reorganization that have been proposed, we write to make clear that our core concern is the preservation within Israel’s system of governance of some system of checks and balances. As we know, Israel does not have a constitution, does not have a bicameral legislature, and, as a parliamentary system, has little separation between the executive and legislative authorities.

If Israel were to also provide the Knesset with the authority to override a decision of the Supreme Court with just sixty one votes out of the 120 member body, then complete power would be in the hands of each temporary majority created after each election. This concentration of power is a cause of great concern on many issues that North American Jews and our allies across the broader society have always cared about.

Let us act in the coming days and weeks in the spirit of Parshat Terumah. Let us approach this critical debate as if what we are building is not just a system of governance, but a sanctuary for the divine spirit to dwell in our midst. Perhaps that will encourage Israel’s governing and opposition leaders to act with care, humility, and wisdom.

We will continue to keep you all updated on developments and provide resources to share with your communities.

Thank you for all you are doing for the Jewish people and our beloved State of Israel. We hope to see you at the ‘Israel at 75’ General Assembly in April!

March 7–12, 2023 Orpheum Theater

Upcoming IHE Third Thursday Lunch and Learn Series

SCOTT LITTKY

IHE Executive Director

The Institute for Holocaust Education is pleased to announce the next three months of our Third Thursday Lunch and Learn Series speakers. The Third Thursday Lunch and Learn Series, presented by the Institute for Holocaust Education, is programming that seeks to educate, engage, and empower the community through discussion, presentations, and informative speakers about topics pertaining to the Holocaust. All Third Thursday presentations are offered via Zoom, from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. on their respective days.

On March 16, 2023, our speaker will be Mario Haynes, Artistic Director of the Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina. Mario is responsible as the onsite programmer and liaison for theatrical education and artistic events that take place at the Anne Frank Center. He also serves as an educator of pedagogy to get young people talking about antiracism, antisemitism, and anti-prejudice today while taking Anne Frank exhibits across the country and training students to be docents of the Anne Frank and World War II exhibits. Mario will be speaking about the role theater and how it relates to Anne Frank and the Holocaust.

On April 20, 2023, the Institute for Holocaust Education will welcome Kelly Tichauer-Kirk.

Her talk is titled, My Path: A 3G Conversation About My Family’s Holocaust History and the Journey to Becoming a Holocaust Educator. Beginning in her teen years, Kelly began her lifelong passion for learning about the Holocaust. In 2018, along with

her father and sister, she traveled to Germany and Poland on a mission to better understand her family’s past and learn about their experiences during the Holocaust. Her life-changing trip led her to pursue a Master’s Degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies with the goal of educating others about the Holocaust and antisemitism.

On May 18, 2023, our speaker will be Jane Nesbit, the Education Coordinator here at the Institute for Holocaust Education. She will be speaking about bringing individual voices of the Holocaust to the forefront of Holocaust education. Ms. Nesbit will draw from works such as Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust The Diary of Anne Frank, and others to showcase their individual stories during the Holocaust and the lessons that we can learn from them. She will also focus how these individual stories can be used in the classroom to inspire our community to use empathy and understanding in a time of rising antisemitism.

For more information regarding Third Thursday programming at IHE, or to RSVP for any of these IHE Third Thursday Lunch and Learn programs, please reach out to Scott Littky, Executive Director of IHE, at slittky@ihene.org

Week of Understanding

Continued from page 1

in 1997 and her MA in history from UNL in 2004. She is the author of two nonfiction books: Nebraska POW Camps: A History of WWII Prisoners in the Heartland and WWII Nebraska. Her historical fiction novel, The Stranger from Berlin, was published by Simon & Schuster UK in 2021. Her PhD work at UNL has centered on native fascism and antisemitism in America during the interwar period. She is currently the journals editorial assistant at UNL’s Center for Great Plains Studies and lives in Lincoln.

She will be speaking on - Charles B. Hudson, the Nebraska Nazi: Native Fascism and Antisemitism in Interwar America - Before America entered World War II, Omaha resident Charles B. Hudson published a virulently antisemitic, fascist newsletter called America in Danger

Through Hudson’s writings and life, we can see how he was emblematic of the right-wing movement of interwar America, one that advocated anti-Communism, Christian nationalism, antisemitism, and isolationism.

Meet our guests:

JIM BERK

Jim will be sharing the testimony and story of his mother, Ilona Dorenter Berk who was a remarkable woman. Tough, smart, resilient. She used all of those qualities, including some miracles, to survive the horror of five Nazi concentration camps. She eventually settled in Lincoln and carved out a brilliant dress making career. Her son, Jim, a former tv and radio sportscaster now living in the Detroit area, tells her remarkable story in a poignant, powerful presentation.

SARAH KUTLER

Sarah is our first 3G speaker. She is the granddaughter of Beatrice Karp, of blessed memory. Beatrice was born in 1932 in Lauterbach, Germany. She was six years old when the Nazis took power. She survived the Gurs and Rivesaltes concentration camps, along with her younger sister. With the encouragement of her late husband, Robert Pappenheimer, Bea went on to share her story with thousands of children and adults in order to remember the millions of innocent lives that were murdered, including her parents.

Beatrice died in early March of 2019. Being able to continue to tell her story truly brings a blessing to her memory and legacy.

Beatrice’s youngest grandchild, Sarah Kutler, is a student at the Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, working on her master’s in social work. She aims to be a counselor for trauma survivors, specifically survivors of sexual assault. While Sarah is learning how to keep her grandmother’s story alive, she takes a social justice perspective on how everyday individuals can engage in introspection, empathy, and social justice to ensure that a tragedy like the Holocaust will never happen again.

PETER METZELAAR

Peter was born in Amsterdam in 1935. In 1942, when Peter was 7, the Nazis seized Peter’s entire family except for Peter and his mother. Peter’s mother contacted the Dutch Underground for help. The Underground found Klaas and Roefina Post who agreed to shelter Peter and his mother on their small farm in northern Holland, putting their own lives at risk. For two years they lived with the Posts, until it became too dangerous and they found another hiding place with two women in The Hague. Peter, his mother, and his aunt were the only survivors of his family. Klaas and Roefina Post have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. After the war, Peter and his mother immigrated to the United States in 1949, arriving in New York. Peter was 13 and didn’t speak any English, but was placed in the 8th grade. Peter had a long career as a radiology technologist. He and his wife raised two children in California and moved to Seattle in 1997. Peter continues to be an active member of the Holocaust Center for Humanity’s Speakers Bureau.

ROSE VINY

Rose was born and raised in Omaha and is the daughter of Holocaust survivors Bluma and Joe Polonski. Her father Joe who was one of only 700 survivors of Treblinka and one of only three survivors who escaped from the death camp. Rose will be showing the movie, Escape from Treblinka: The Joseph Polonski Story, at each of her talks and will be sharing her message of Never Again! The film chronicles the life of Joseph Polonski from his childhood in Silvaki, Poland, to the Jewish ghetto, and ultimately to Treblinka. His wit and luck allowed him to become one of just two known escapees from Treblinka. After his escape, he served as an officer in the resistance, fighting Nazis until the liberation and eventually immigrated to the United States in 1949.

The Week of Understanding is an effort to maximize the opportunity for Nebraskans to hear from Holocaust survivors and liberators while these eye-witnesses are still among us. The program is made possible by generous support from The Jewish Federation of Omaha, the Institute for Holocaust Education, the Omaha Public Schools Foundation, and the Shirley and Leonard Goldstein Supporting Foundation of the Jewish Federation of Omaha Foundation.

ORGANIZATIONS

B’NAI B’RITH BREADBREAKERS

The award-winning B’NAI B’RITH BREADBREAKERS speaker program currently meets Wednesdays via Zoom from noon to 1 p.m. Please watch our email for specific information concerning its thought-provoking, informative list of speakers. To be placed on the email list, contact Breadbreakers chair at gary.javitch@gmail.com

Anne & Alan Cohen Marty & Kathy Cohen

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Mario Haynes

Kelly Tichauer-Kirk

Jane Nesbit

US Reform rabbis join monthly Women of the Wall protest

PHILISSA CRAMER

JTA

American Reform rabbis joined Women of the Wall for the group’s monthly prayer service at the Western Wall, weeks after members of the Israeli government introduced, then quickly withdrew, a law that would have banned their activity.

In addition, police intervened to stop Orthodox counter-protesters who tried to disrupt a separate prayer service at a space allocated for egalitarian worship.

Every month for more than a decade, a group called Women of the Wall tries to bring a Torah to the women’s section of the holy site, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, despite objections from the rabbi who oversees the space. Their prayer services occur on the first day of each Hebrew month, when the Torah is traditionally read, and are opposed by Orthodox leaders who see the services as a desecration of the holy space.

Wednesday marked the first new Jewish month since legislation that would have criminalized egalitarian prayer and immodest dress at the Western Wall was proposed, then quickly walked back amid a widespread outcry.

Reform rabbis from the United States were among the crowds of people joining and supporting the Women of the Wall demonstration. The Reform movement brought more than 200 rabbis to Israel this week for a convention, held in the country for the first time since the pandemic. Their Israeli colleagues joined them for a march and the prayer service.

“As a woman, a rabbi, the only woman chief executive in the CCAR’s 134-year history & as a proud feminist, I’m bound by Jewish values to support not only Women of the Wall but to

proudly hold the Torah for all women told they cannot worship freely at the Kotel,” Rabbi Hara Person, the head of the movement’s rabbinical association, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, said in a statement.

Gilad Kariv, a Reform rabbi who is a member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, played the role he has since been elected in 2021. The Orthodox rabbi who oversees the Western Wall Plaza has sought to block women from bringing Torahs by having guards remove them during the security screening at the plaza’s entrance. As a member of parliament, Kariv does not have to undergo those screenings and can bring the Torah scroll in. While another Knesset member from a haredi Orthodox party tried to block Kariv’s delivery of the Torah, the prayer service took place as planned. Teenagers associated with the far-right Noam Party heckled the women, as well as men and women praying together at a separate service in an egalitarian space administered by the Conservative-Masorti movement. But police intervened to restrain the Noam protesters, according to local media reports. The police pledged to deploy additional officers on the first day of the month in the wake of an incident in which Orthodox protesters disrupted the bar mitzvah of an American boy last summer in the egalitarian prayer section, and police officers did not intervene.

An agreement approved by the Israeli government in 2016 would have expanded a the egalitarian prayer area. That deal, however, was suspended the following year after backlash from haredi parties. The Israeli Supreme Court, which the current government wants to disempower, is due to discuss whether the agreement must be implemented at an upcoming hearing.

Causes of Mental Illness

Courtesy of the Kim Foundation: http://www.thekimfounda tion.org/

Although the exact cause of most mental illnesses is not known, it is becoming clear through research that many of these conditions are caused by a combination of biological, psychological, and environmental factors.

BIOLOGICAL

Some mental illnesses have been linked to an abnormal balance of special chemicals in the brain called neurotransmitters. Neurotransmitters help nerve cells in the brain communicate with each other. If these chemicals are out of balance or are not working properly, messages may not make it through the brain correctly, leading to symptoms of mental illness.

Other biological factors that may be involved in the development of mental illness include:

Genetics (heredity): Many mental illnesses run in families, suggesting that people who have a family member with a mental illness are more susceptible to developing a mental illness. Susceptibility is passed on in families through genes. Experts believe many mental illnesses are linked to abnormalities in many genes, not just one. That is why a person inherits a susceptibility to a mental illness and doesn’t necessarily develop the illness. Mental illness itself occurs from the interaction of multiple genes and other factors such as stress, abuse, or a traumatic event, which can influence or trigger an illness in a person who has an inherited susceptibility to it.

Infections: Certain infections have been linked to brain damage and the development of mental illness or the worsening of its symptoms. For example, a condition known as

pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder (PANDA) associated with the Streptococcus (Strep) bacteria has been linked to the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses in children.

Brain defects or injury: Defects in or injuries to certain areas of the brain have also been linked to some mental illnesses. Prenatal damage: Some evidence suggests that a disruption of early fetal brain development or trauma that occurs at the time of birth, for example, loss of oxygen to the brain, may be a factor in the development of certain conditions, such as autism.

Other factors: Poor nutrition and exposure to toxins, such as lead, may play a role in the development of mental illnesses.

PSYCHOLOGICAL

Psychological factors that may contribute to mental illness include:

• Severe psychological trauma suffered as a child, such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse

• An important early loss, such as the loss of a parent

• Neglect

• Poor ability to relate to others

ENVIRONMENTAL

Certain stressors can trigger an illness in a person who is susceptible to mental illness. These stressors include:

• A dysfunctional family life

• Living in poverty

• Significant life changes

• Social or cultural expectations

This series is sponsored by the Jewish Press and the Jennifer Beth Kay memorial fund.

Trade scholarships available for the 2023-24 academic year

An anonymous donor in our community has created two trade school and/or cosmetology school scholarship opportunities, up to $5,000 each, to go towards the 2023-24 academic year.

Not every student who advances into higher education signs up for a four-year curriculum. Some high school graduates seek job training that lasts a year or two and then places them in the workforce. Such opportunities include, but are not

restricted to: Information Technology, Construction, Industrial, Transportation and Horticulture. It is not too late to apply for this upcoming school year!

Qualified students who have unmet needs regarding tuition for either a two-year trade school program or a trade certificate program can contact the Jewish Press at avandekamp@jewishomaha. org or jpress@jewishomaha.org for more information.

Gilad Kariv, a member of Knesset, holds a Torah scroll during Rosh Hodesh prayer of Women of the Wall, at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Feb. 22, 2023.Credit: Erik Marmor/Flash90

Upcoming speaker at B’nai Israel

On Friday, March 10 at 7:30 p.m., Alexandra M. Cardon will be the speaker at B’nai Israel Synagogue. The entire community is welcome to join for services and stay for the oneg after.

Alexandra is the Gallery Manager and Assistant Curator of the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center. She envisions the future museum as a collaborative space that celebrates Samuel Bak’s oeuvre and educates viewers on the realities of the Holocaust, while also offering exhibitions that explore contemporary artistic responses to conflict, human rights, and genocide.

Alexandra has worked in art museums and taught art history in universities and colleges. She began her museum career at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice after which she worked at the American and Canadian pavilions during 2003 Venice Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and in the Modern and Contemporary art department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

She moved to Omaha in 2012 and worked for the sculptor Jun Kaneko as his studio’s registrar and archivist. She has taught at the Memphis College of Art and Christian Brothers College in Memphis, TN. She is an adjunct professor in the Art and Art history department and the Honors College at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her research focuses on mid twentieth century European painting, particularly the production of art in the interwar years and painting in France after World War Two. Alexandra is invested in Omaha’s non-profit community and currently serves on the Amplify Arts board.

For more information about B’nai Israel Synagogue, please visit https://www.cblhs.org

Sunday Fundays

The Jewish Federation of Omaha and Community Chairs Rachel and Daniel Grossman invite you to have some fun! The JFO is bringing ‘Sunday Fundays’ to the Kooper Fellman Staenberg Campus. Join us for one, two or all three events: everyone is welcome!

On March 12 from 3-5 p.m., we will host Music Bingo in the Shirley and Leonard Goldstein Community Engagement Venue. Music bingo is a fun and exciting take on the classic game of bingo. With songs replacing the numbers on a bingo card, the host will play music, and if you have that song listed on your card, you tick it off. Warning: You may feel like dancing and singing along!

On April 2, from 3-5 p.m., is Movie Night. Join us in the Alan J. Levine Performing Arts Theater for Marcel the Shell with Shoes on. Released in June of 2022, and nominated for an Academy Award, this film tells the story of Marcel, a 1-inchtall shell, and his grandmother, Connie, who are the only residents of their town after their neighbors’ sudden, mysterious

INFORMATION

ANTISEMITIC/HATE INCIDENTS

disappearance. When discovered by a guest amongst the clutter of his Airbnb, the short film he posts online brings Marcel millions of passionate fans and a new hope of reuniting with his long-lost family. We promise you will fall in love with this little shell!

On June 18, from 35 p.m., we will have a Father’s Day Cornhole Tournament at the Staenberg Omaha JCC soccer fields. The goal of Cornhole is to score points by either landing a bag on the board (one point) or putting a bag through the hole (three points). Fatherhood is not required! Just bring your ability to have fun while tossing a bean bag.

Sunday Fundays are chaired by Rachel and Daniel Grossman. All events are free to attend. To register, please visit https://fundraise.give smart.com/form/8aDwSw?vid= xb7vm

If you encounter an antisemitic or other hate incident, you are not alone. Your first call should be to the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) in Omaha at 402.334.6572, or email JCRCreporting@jewishomaha.org. If you perceive an imminent threat, call 911, and text Safety & Security Manager James Donahue at 402.213.1658.

Alexandra M. Cardon

Above: RBJH Resident Barb Ackerson reading the Jewish Press

Above: The 99th Annual International Convention of BBYO just took place in Dallas, Texas, and is the largest gathering of Jewish teens in the world. Omaha normally sends 5–7 teens, but this year we had the largest representation (17) in memory, if not ever.

A few shots from Lincoln’s Hillel, gathering for Shabbat. Below left: Hillel members gather for Friday night; Below right: the members of the Hillel Board, B Littman, Treasurer, left; Maggie Nielsen, Social Media and PR; Rachamim Zamek, Vice President; and Lillian Cohen, President.

SP O TLIGHT

Above, below and bottom: What do you do in a blizzard at RBJH? Play Blizzard Bingo, of course! Thank you, LOVE (League Offering Volunteers for the Elderly), for supplying the prizes of warm fuzzy socks, scarves, and gloves.

PHOTOS FROM RECENT JEWISH COMMUNITY EVENTS

SUBMIT A PHOTO: Have a photo of a recent Jewish Community event you would like to submit? Email the image and a suggested caption to: avandekamp@jewishomaha.org

GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED BY

Above: Temple Israel congregants John Waldbaum and Justin Cooper greet Rabbi Benjamin Scharff, before the Congregational Meeting to vote to ratify the engagement of Rabbi Benjamin Sharff as Temple Israel’s new Senior Rabbi. Credit: Debra Kaplan

Right: To celebrate Tu B Shevat – Jewish National Fund Trees for the Holy Land: A Ring of Three Trees will be planted in recognition of Rose Blumkin Jewish Home. Planted with love by RBJH faithful Shabbat service leader Renee Kazor.

Below left and right: RBJH staff enjoys the Blizzard Pizza Day sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Omaha. The lunch was delicious and appreciated - thank you!

Neo-Nazis rally outside Broadway preview of Parade

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2023

PHILISSA CRAMER

JTA

Members of a neo-Nazi group rallied the night of Feb. 21 outside the Broadway theater that is hosting Parade, a play about the 1915 lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia.

“It was definitely very ugly and scary, but [also] a wonderful reminder of why we’re telling this particular story, and how special and powerful art and particularly theater can be,” star Ben Platt said in a statement on Instagram after the performance, the first preview in the revival’s Broadway run.

Platt stars as Leo Frank, the Jewish manager of an Atlanta pencil factory who was accused of murdering a girl whose body was found there in 1913. Despite little evidence, Frank was found guilty of killing Mary Phagan, who had worked at the factory, and was sentenced to death. In 1915, when Frank’s sentence was commuted to life in prison, he was kidnapped by an armed mob and lynched. The case spurred both the creation of the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish civil rights group whose activities include monitoring neo-Nazi activity, and the revival of the Ku Klux Klan white supremacist hate group.

The protesters, who identified with the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group headquartered in Florida that has a swastika in its logo, carried a poster that accused Frank of being a pedophile, according to videos shared from the incident. That allegation is frequently made by neo-Nazis who reject the consensus that Frank was innocent of the crime. They see the advocacy on his behalf as evidence of Jewish control of the media, a longstanding antisemitic trope.

The Parade protesters also distributed antisemitic literature and criticized the ADL, according to videos shared on social media from the scene. One video shared on Twitter suggested that at least some people present jeered the neo-Nazis. The protesters held a

white banner with red capital letters reading “Leo frankly was a pedo.”

“Are you really doing the real work of an artist if you aren’t be[ing] protested by Neo Nazis?” a cast member, Prentiss Mouton, posted on Instagram, over a clip of the incident filmed from above. “If I wasn’t proud enough to be a part of this production it was solidified today.”

HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS

HIGH SCHOOL SENIORS AND PARENTS

We will be publishing our annual High School Graduation Class pages on May 26, 2023. To be included, send us an email with the student’s name, parents names, high school they are attending, the college they will be attending and photo to: jpress@jewishomaha.org by May 9, 2023.

The Jewish Press

Platt, who is Jewish, said the incident underscored the need for Parade at a time when watchdogs say antisemitism is on the rise in the United States.

“I just think that now is really the moment for this particular piece,” he said. “I just wanted the button on the evening, at least for me personally, to be to celebrate what a beautiful experience it is and what gorgeous work all of my wonderful colleagues did tonight. Not the really ugly actions of a few people who are spreading evil.”

Platt thanked the Bernard Jacobs Theater for keeping cast and audience members “super safe and secure — as you will be, too, when you come see the show.”

Parade first played on Broadway in 1998. The musical written by Jason Robert Brown and Albert Uhry won Tony awards for best book and best score. The revival, which officially begins March 16, follows a seven-performance off-Broadway run last year.

Vandals target NH synagogue

RON KAMPEAS

JTA

New Hampshire’s attorney general launched an investigation into an overnight wave of vandalism attacks in Portsmouth that included a red swastika and a cross painted on a synagogue.

The attack on Temple Israel was one of at least 14 acts of vandalism carried out before dawn on Feb. 21 against Jewish and minorityaffiliated institutions, Seacoast Online, a local publication, reported.

A security camera for a tattoo shop that displays expressions of solidarity with the

LGBTQ community on its window caught a man in a red hoodie painting two red swastikas and an “X” through a sign declaring “You Are Loved.” Black-owned business were among the others targeted.

The state’s attorney general, John Formella, said his office’s civil rights unit was investigating the attacks together with local, state and federal law enforcement.

Last month, Formella charged two members of a local neo-Nazi group, NSC-131, for alleged infractions related to their hanging of a banner that declared “Keep New England White” over an overpass.

The revival of Parade at New York City Center uses rear-wall projections to bring in the historical reality of the events being performed on stage. Credit: New York Jewish Week

Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt during the opening night curtain call for Parade at New York City Center, Nov. 1, 2022.

Credit: Bruce Glikas/WireImage/GettyImages

Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole.

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Margie Gutnik, President; Abigail Kutler, Ex-Officio; Seth Feldman; David Finkelstein; Ally Freeman; Mary Sue Grossman; Natasha Kraft; Chuck Lucoff; David Phillips; and Joseph Pinson.

The mission of the Jewish Federation of Omaha is to build and sustain a strong and vibrant Omaha Jewish Community and to support Jews in Israel and around the world. Agencies of the JFO are: Institute for Holocaust Education, Jewish Community Relations Council, Jewish Community Center, Jewish Social Services and the Jewish Press Guidelines and highlights of the Jewish Press, including front page stories and announcements, can be found online at: www.jewishomaha.org; click on ‘Jewish Press.’

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News that is not News

ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT

Jewish Press Editor

Maybe you read the small story on page 7, maybe you didn’t. They are a dime-a-dozen: random white supremacy affiliates vandalize a black church, a synagogue, an overpass, with or without spray paint. This time it happened in, New England, but it could have been New York, or Atlanta, or Paris or Amsterdam or Rio or Moscow. It could have been Omaha.

No matter where you live, hate crimes in the form of vandalism are, and always have been, much too common. They are scribbles in the margins of our world and no amount of pine sol can erase them. Also, when buildings get hurt instead of people, we tend to quickly move on.

This is the kind of news that is not news. What do we do when we are confronted with the same thing over and over and over? Shouldn’t we take action, fight it, confront it, make it go away? Can’t we wave our magic wand and make everybody love us?

Here’s a new thought: what if we operate from the assumption that this stuff will never disappear?

Near my mother’s home in the Netherlands, there is a dog park. It comes with a trashcan where dog owners are expected to dispose of their dog’s mess. For years, that stupid trashcan has had a spraypainted swastika on it. You can’t avoid it- it’s within your line of sight when you walk into town

from my mom’s place. When I asked my mother about it (I even suggested we go scrub it off ourselves) she made it clear she wasn’t bothered. And if I thought she was going anywhere near that dog park, I was dreaming.

over graffiti. If you see anyone committing vandalism, report it to the police, school authorities, or someone who can take action. Remember, vandalism is a crime,” it states on the LAPD website. But to my mother, this is not a big deal. She would tell the LAPD to calm down, the same way she tells me.

And then it dawns on me: it’s optimism. That’s the difference between her and me, between Western Europe and America. Here, we have the expectation that when we see something, we say something, and then things will change.

A painted swastika on a trashcan is maybe, perhaps, not the end of the world, she told me. And I cannot for the life of me decide if that attitude is commendable because she’s not letting hate get her down, or whether she is just sticking her head in the sand.

If I noticed that type of vandalism on a public trashcan in Omaha, I’d notify the authorities immediately.

“Clean up vandalism as soon as it happens — replace signs, repair playground equipment, paint

Even if they never do, we keep that optimism going strong. Someday, things will be better, we tell ourselves. We like things shiny and new, and if they don’t stay that way, we’ll just work harder. My mother, on the other hand, doesn’t think anything can or will change if that swastika is removed. So what if the trashcan is cleaned up, she’d say, it doesn’t change anyone’s optinion. People will still hate Jews. They’ll still hate Israel. There will still be antisemites.

Maybe she is right for where she lives, maybe my attitude is acceptable where I live and we’ll never see eye to eye. Maybe that swastika belongs on a trashcan filled with dog rubbish.

Perhaps I am completely overthinking this. Still, I am wondering what would happen if, next time I’m in Holland, I take a bucket of pink paint and give that trashcan a new look.

How Jewish comedy found religion, from Philip Roth to Broad City

ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL JTA

In the 2020 comedy Shiva Baby, a 20-something young woman shows up at a house of Jewish mourners and gently offers her condolences. When she finds her mother in the kitchen, they chat about the funeral and the rugelach before the daughter asks, “Mom, who died?”

While Shiva Baby explores themes of sexuality and gender, the comedy almost never comes at the expense of Jewish tradition, which is treated seriously by its millennial writer and director Emma Seligman (born in 1995) even as the shiva-goers collide. It’s far cry from the acerbic way an author raised during the Depression like Philip Roth lampooned a Jewish wedding or a baby boomer like Jerry Seinfeld mocked a bris.

These generational differences are explored in Jenny Caplan’s new book, Funny, You Don’t Look Funny: Judaism and Humor from the Silent Generation to Millennials. A religion scholar, Caplan writes about the way North American Jewish comedy has evolved since World War II, with a focus on how humorists treat Judaism as a religion. Her subjects range from writers and filmmakers who came of age shortly after the war (who viewed Judaism as “a joke at best and an actual danger at worst”) to Generation X and millennials, whose Jewish comedy often recognizes “the power of community, the value of family tradition, and the way that religion can serve as a port in an emotional storm.”

“I see great value in zeroing in on the ways in which Jewish humorists have engaged Jewish practices and their own Jewishness,” Caplan writes. “It tells us something (or perhaps it tells us many somethings) about the relationship between Jews and humor that goes deeper than the mere coincidence that a certain humorist was born into a certain family.”

Caplan is the chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has a master’s of theological studies degree from Harvard Divinity School and earned a Ph.D. in religion from Syracuse University.

In a conversation last week, we spoke about the Jewishness of Jerry Seinfeld, efforts by young women comics to reclaim the “Jewish American Princess” label, and why she no longer shows Woody Allen movies in her classrooms.

Our conversation was edited for length and clarity

[Note: For the purpose of her book and our conversation, this is how Caplan isolates the generations: the Silent Generation (b. 1925-45), the baby boom (194665), Generation X (1966-79) and millennials (1980–95).]

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Let me ask how you got into this topic.

Jenny Caplan: I grew up in a family where I was just sort of surrounded by this kind of material. My dad is a comedic actor and director who went to [Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s] Clown College. My degrees were more broadly in American religion, not Jewish studies, but I was really interested in the combination of American religion and popular culture.

vivor, sets up in town.

Roth spent the first 20 to 30 years of his career dodging the claim of being a self-loathing Jew and bad for the Jews. But the actual social critique of Eli, the Fanatic is so sharp. It is about how American Jewish comfort comes at the expense of displaced persons from World War II and at the expense of those for whom Judaism is a real thriving, living religious practice.

That’s an example you offer when you write that the Silent Generation “may have found organized religion to be a dangerous force, but they nevertheless wanted to protect and preserve the Jewish people.” I think that would surprise people in regards to Roth, and maybe to some degree Woody Allen.

Yeah, it surprised me. They really did, I think, share that postwar Jewish sense of insecurity about ongoing Jewish continuity, and that there’s still an existential threat to the ongoing existence of Jews.

When I got to Syracuse and it came time to start thinking about my larger project and what I wanted to do, I proposed a dissertation on Jewish humor.

The key to your book is how Jewish humor reflects the Jewish identity and compulsions of four sequential generations. Let’s start with the Silent Generation, which is sandwiched between the generation whose men were old enough to fight in World War II and the baby boomers who were born just after the war.

The hallmark of the Silent Generation is that they were old enough to be aware of the war, but they were mostly too young to serve. Every time I told people what I was writing about, they would say Woody Allen or Philip Roth, two people of roughly the same generation.

The Roth story you focus on is Eli, the Fanatic from 1959, about an assimilated Jewish suburb that is embarrassed and sort of freaks out when an Orthodox yeshiva, led by a Holocaust sur-

I hear that and I think of Woody Allen’s characters, atheists who are often on the lookout for antisemitism. But you don’t focus on Allen as the intellectual nebbish of the movies. You look at his satire of Jewish texts, like his very funny Hassidic Tales, With a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar from 1970, which appeared in The New Yorker. It’s a parody of Martin Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim and sentimental depictions of the shtetl, perhaps like Fiddler on the Roof. A reader might think he’s just mocking the tradition, but you think there’s something else going on.

He’s not mocking the tradition as much as he’s mocking a sort of consumerist approach to the tradition. There was this sort of very superficial attachment to Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim. Allen’s satire is not a critique of the traditions of Judaism, it’s a critique of the way that people latch onto things like the Kabbalah and these new English translations of Hasidic stories without any real depth of thought or intellect. Intellectual hypocrisy seems to be a common theme in his movies and in his writing. It’s really a critique of organized religion, and it’s a critique of institutions, and it’s a critique of the power of institutions. But it’s not a critique of the concept of religion. See How Jewish comedy found religion page 9

Larry David attends a bat mitzvah in a season 6 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm Credit: HBO

Credit: nejebad, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

How Jewish comedy found religion

Continued from page 8

Jerry Seinfeld, born in 1954, is seen as an icon of Jewish humor, but to me is an example of someone who never depicts religion as a positive thing. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Seinfeld is more a show about New York than it is necessarily a show about anything Jewish. The New York of Seinfeld is very similar to the New York of Woody Allen, peopled almost entirely by white, middle-class, attractive folks. It’s a sort of Upper West Side myopia.

But there’s the bris episode, aired in 1993, and written by Larry Charles. Unless you are really interested in the medium, you may not know much about Larry Charles, because he stays behind the camera. But he also goes on to do things like direct Bill Maher’s anti-religion documentary “Religulous,” and there’s a real strong case for him as having very negative feelings about organized religion which feels like a holdover from the Silent Generation. And so in that episode you have Kramer as the Larry Charles stand-in, just opining about the barbaric nature of the circumcision and trying to save this poor baby from being mutilated.

The few references to actual Judaism in Seinfeld are squirmy. I am thinking of the 1995 episode in which a buffoon of a rabbi blurts out Elaine’s secrets on a TV show.

That was written by Larry David, another boomer, whose follow-up series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, is similarly known for its irreverence toward Judaism. But you say David can also surprise you with a kind of empathy for religion.

For the most part, he’s classic, old school, anti-organized religion. There’s the Palestinian Chicken episode where the Jews are rabidly protesting the existence of a Palestinian-run chicken restaurant near a Jewish deli, and where his friend Funkhouser won’t play golf on Shabbos until Larry gets permission by bribing the rabbi with the Palestinian chicken. There, rabbis are ridiculous and can be bought and religion is hollow and this is all terrible.

But then there’s this bat mitzvah montage where for one moment in the entire run of this show, Larry seems happy and in a healthy relationship and fulfilled and enjoying life.

That’s where he falls in love with Loretta Black during a bat mitzvah and imagines a happy future with her.

It’s so startling: It is the most human we ever see Larry over the run of the show, and I believe that was the season finale for the 2007 season. It was much more in line with what we’ve been seeing from a lot of younger comedians at that point, which was religion as an anchor in a good way — not to pull you down but to keep you grounded.

So for Generation X, as you write, Judaism serves “real, emotional, or psychological purpose for the practitioners.”

I wouldn’t actually call it respect but religion is an idea that’s not just something to be mocked and relegated to the dustbin. I’m not saying that Generation X is necessarily more religious, but they see real power and value in tradition and in certain kinds of family experiences. So, a huge amount of the humor can still come at the expense of your Jewish mother or your Jewish grandmother, but the family can also be the thing that is keeping you grounded, and frequently through some sort of religious ritual.

Who exemplifies that?

My favorite example is the 2009 Jonathan Tropper novel, This Is Where I Leave You. I’m so disappointed that the film adaptation of that sucked a lot of the Jewish identity out of the story, so let’s stick with the novel. In that book, where a family gathers for their father’s shiva, the characters are horrible people in a dysfunctional family writ large. They lie to each other. They backstab each other. But in a scene where the protagonist Judd describes standing up on the bimah [in synagogue] to say Kaddish [the Mourner’s Prayer] after the death of his father, and the way he talks about this emotional catharsis that comes from saying the words and hearing the congregation say the words — it’s a startling moment of clarity in a book where these characters are otherwise just truly reprehensible.

Adam Sandler was born in 1966, the first year of Generation X, and his Chanukah Song seems like such a touchstone for his generation and the ones that follow. It’s not about religious Judaism, but in listing Jewish celebrities, it’s a statement of ethnic pride that Roth or Woody Allen couldn’t imagine.

It’s the reclamation of Jewish identity as something great and cool and fun and hip and wonderful and absolutely not to be ashamed of.

Which brings us to Broad City, which aired between 2014 and 2019. It’s about two 20-something Jewish women

This year you can send your greetings through these very special ads that will run in our annual Passover issue. Each ad can be personalized with your name, the names of your children or your grandchildren. Just fill out the form below and send or bring it to the Jewish Press office. But hurry; these ads will only be accepted through March 8, 2023

in New York who, in the case of Ilana Glazer’s character, anyway, are almost giddy about being Jewish and embrace it just as they embrace their sexuality: as just liberating. Ilana even upends the Jewish mother cliche by loving her mother to death.

That’s the episode with Ilana at her grandmother’s shiva, which also has the B plot where Ilana and her mother are shopping for underground illegal handbags. They spend most of the episode snarking at each other and fighting with each other and her mother’s a nag and Ilana is a bumbling idiot. But at the moment that the cops show up, and try to nab them for having all of these illegal knockoff handbags, the two of them are a team. They are an absolute unit of destructive force against these hapless police officers.

I think all of your examples of younger comics are women, who have always had fraught relationships with Jewish humor, both as practitioners and as the target of jokes. You write about The JAP Battle rap from Crazy ExGirlfriend, which both leans into the stereotype of the Jewish-American Princess — spoiled, acquisitive, “hard as nails” — and tries to reclaim it without the misogyny.

Rachel Bloom’s character Rebecca in Girlfriend self-identifies as a JAP, but she doesn’t actually fit the category. It’s her mother, Naomi, who truly is the Philip Roth, Marjorie Morningstar, Herman Wouk model of a JAP. So Bloom is kind of using the term, but you can’t repurpose the term when the original is still there.

So as an alternative, I offer up a new term: the Modern Ashkenazi American Woman. It’s very New York, it’s very East Coast, it’s very particular to a type of upbringing and community that in the 1950s and ’60s would have been almost exclusively Conservative Jews, and then may have become a bit more Reform as we’ve gotten into the ’90s and 2000s. They went to the JCC. They probably went to Jewish summer camp.

But even that doesn’t even really speak to the American sense of what Jewish is anymore, because American Jews have become increasingly racially and culturally diverse.

Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor in chief of the New York Jewish Week and senior editor of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He previously served as JTA’s editor in chief and as editor in chief and CEO of the New Jersey Jewish News.

This article was edited for length. Please find the full story at www.omahajewishpress.com

Synagogues

B’NAI ISRAEL SYNAGOGUE

618 Mynster Street

Council Bluffs, IA 51503-0766

712.322.4705 www.cblhs.orb

email: CBsynagogue@hotmail.com

BETH EL SYNAGOGUE

Member of United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism 14506 California Street

Omaha, NE 68154-1980

402.492.8550 bethel-omaha.org

BETH ISRAEL SYNAGOGUE

Member of Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

12604 Pacific Street Omaha, NE. 68154

402.556.6288 BethIsrael@OrthodoxOmaha.org

CHABAD HOUSE

An Affiliate of Chabad-Lubavitch

1866 South 120 Street Omaha, NE 68144-1646

402.330.1800 OChabad.com email: chabad@aol.com

LINCOLN JEWISH

COMMUNITY:

B’NAI JESHURUN

South Street Temple

Union for Reform Judaism

2061 South 20th Street Lincoln, NE 68502-2797

402.435.8004 www.southstreettemple.org

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE

Capehart Chapel 2500 Capehart Road

Offutt AFB, NE 68123

402.294.6244

email: oafbjsll@icloud.com

ROSE BLUMKIN

JEWISH HOME

323 South 132 Street Omaha, NE 68154 rbjh.com

TEMPLE ISRAEL

Union for Reform Judaism (URJ)

13111 Sterling Ridge Drive Omaha, NE 68144-1206

402.556.6536 templeisraelomaha.com

LINCOLN JEWISH COMMUNITY:

TIFERETH ISRAEL

Member of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism

3219 Sheridan Boulevard Lincoln, NE 68502-5236

402.423.8569 tiferethisraellincoln.org

B’NAI ISRAEL

Monthly Speaker Series Service, Friday, March 10, 7:30 p.m. with our guest speaker, Alexandra M. Cardon. Our service leader is Larry Blass. Everyone is always welcome at B’nai Israel!

For information on COVID-related closures and about our historic synagogue, please contact Howard Kutler at hkutler@hotmail.com or any of our other board members: Scott Friedman, Rick Katelman, Janie Kulakofsky, Howard Kutler, Carole and Wayne Lainof, Mary-Beth Muskin, Debbie Salomon and Sissy Silber. Handicap Accessible.

BETH EL

Services conducted by Rabbi Steven Abraham and Hazzan Michael Krausman.

VIRTUAL AND IN-PERSON MINYAN SCHEDULE: Mornings on Sundays, 9:30 a.m.; Mondays and Thursdays, 7 a.m.; Evenings on Sunday-Thursday, 5:30 p.m.

FRIDAY: Hamantashen Pick Up, 10 a.m.; Kabbalat Shabbat 6 p.m. at Beth El & Live Stream.

SATURDAY: Shabbat Morning Services, 10 a.m. at Beth El & Live Stream; Jr. Congregation (Grades 3-7) 10 a.m.; Havdalah, 6:50 p.m. Zoom Only.

SUNDAY: BESTT (Grades K-7), 9:30 a.m. with early dismissal at 11 a.m.; Torah Tots (Ages 3-5), 9:45 a.m.; Torah Study, 10 a.m.; Purim Carnival, 11 a.m.

MONDAY: Mincha/Ma’ariv, 5:30 p.m. followed by Megillah Reading & Reception at Beth El & Zoom.

TUESDAY: Purim Morning Minyan with Megillah, 7 a.m. at Beth El & Zoom; Pirkei Avot, 11:30 a.m. with Rabbi Abraham at Beth El & Live Stream.

WEDNESDAY: BESTT (Grades 3-7), 4:15 p.m.; Hebrew High (Grades 8-12), 6 p.m.

FRIDAY-Mar. 10: Kabbalat Shabbat, 6 p.m. at Beth El & Live Stream.

SATURDAY-Mar. 11: Shabbat Morning Services, 10 a.m. at Beth El & Live Stream; Jr. Congregation (Grades 3-7) 10 a.m.; Havdalah, 7 p.m. Zoom Only. Please visit bethel-omaha.org for additional information and service links.

to ochabad.com/onehour for more details; Shabbat Ends, 6:59 p.m.

SUNDAY: Sunday Morning Wraps: Video Presentation 9-9:30 a.m. and Breakfast, 9:45 a.m.

MONDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Personal Parsha, 9:30 a.m.; Hebrew Grammar, 10:30 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen; Parsha Reading, 6 p.m. with Prof. David Cohen.

TUESDAY: Shacharit 8 a.m.; Purim (Jerusalem Style), 5 p.m. at Chabad. Go to ochabad.com/purim rsvp for more details and to reserve; Hebrew Grammar, 6 p.m. with Prof. David Cohen.

WEDNESDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Tanya Class, 9:30 a.m.; Hebrew Grammar, 10:30 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen; Hebrew Reading, 11:30 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen.

THURSDAY: Shacharit 8 a.m.; Hebrew Reading, 11 a.m. with Prof. David Cohen; Talmud Study (Sanhedrin 34), noon; Hebrew Reading, 6 p.m. with Prof. David Cohen; Jewish Law Class, 7 p.m.

FRIDAY-Mar. 10: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Inspirational Lechayim (New time), 5:45 p.m. with Rabbi and friends: ochabad.com/Lechayim; Candlelighting, 6:07 p.m.

SATURDAY-Mar. 11: Shacharit 9:30 a.m.; followed by Kiddush and Cholent; Shabbat Ends, 7:07 p.m.

LINCOLN JEWISH COMMUNITY:

B’NAI JESHURUN & TIFERETH ISRAEL

Services facilitated by Rabbi Alex Felch.

Note: Some of our services, but not all, are now being offered in person.

FRIDAY: Shabbat Candlelighting, 6:02 p.m.; Kabbalat Shabbat Service with Rabbi Alex and music by Nathaniel and Steve Kaup, 6:30 p.m. at SST; Oneg host: TBD.

SATURDAY: Shabbat Morning Service 9:30 a.m. with Rabbi Alex at TI; Torah Study, noon on Parashat Tetzaveh; Havdalah 7:02 p.m.

TUESDAY: Synagogue Offices closed for Purim.

WEDNESDAY: LJCS Classes, 4:30 p.m.; Adult Ed class: The Modern History of Israel, 6:30-8:30 p.m. at SST.

THURSDAY: Temple Meet & Greet, 5:30-8 p.m. with fellow Temple members, Rabbi Alex and Iryna at the home of Priscilla Henkelmann & Sandy Grossbart, 3810 Stockwell St. Please RSVP to Priscilla at 402.304.2529 or phenk57@yahoo.com.

FRIDAY-Mar. 10: Shabbat Candlelighting, 6:09 p.m.; Kabbalat Shabbat Service with lay leaders and music by Leslie Delserone and Peter Mullin with Steve Kaup, 6:30 p.m. at SST; Oneg host: TBD.

SATURDAY-Mar. 11: Shabbat Morning Service 9:30 a.m. with lay leaders at TI; Torah Study, noon on Parashat Ki Tisa; Havdalah, 7:10 p.m.

OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE

FRIDAYS: Virtual Shabbat Service, 7:30 p.m. every first and third of the month at Capehart Chapel. Contact TSgt Jason Rife at OAFBJSLL@icloud.com for more information.

ROSE BLUMKIN JEWISH HOME

The Rose Blumkin Jewish Home’s service is currently closed to visitors.

TEMPLE ISRAEL

In-person and virtual services conducted by Rabbi Batsheva Appel, Rabbi Deana Sussman Berezin, and Cantor Joanna Alexander

FRIDAY: Drop in Mah Jongg, 9-11 a.m.; Purim: Whodunnit Shabbat, 5:30 p.m. In-Person & Zoom; Purim Planning Lock-In for Grades 8-12, 8 p.m.

SATURDAY: Torah Study 9:15 a.m. In-Person & Zoom; 20-Somethings Axe Throwing, 6-8 p.m.

SUNDAY: A Prehistoric Purim Spiel, 9:30 a.m.; Grades PreK-6 and Temple Tots Sunday attends Purim Spiel & Carnival, 9:30 a.m.; Purim Carnival, 10:30 a.m.-noon. In-Person.

FRIDAY: Nach Yomi, 6:45 a.m.; Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Mincha/Kabbalat Shabbat, 5:59 p.m.; Candlelighting, 5:59 p.m.

SATURDAY: Shabbat Kollel, 8:30 a.m.; Shacharit, 9 a.m.; Tot Shabbat, 10:45 a.m.; Mincha, 5:50 p.m.; Laws of Shabbos/Kids Activity 6:20 p.m.; Havdalah, 7 p.m.

SUNDAY: Shacharit 9 a.m.; Hamentaschen Baking 11 a.m.; Daf Yomi 5:20 p.m.; Mincha/Ma’ariv 6 p.m.

MONDAY: Taanit Esther/Erev Purim — Fast Begins, 5:39 a.m.; Nach Yomi, 6:45 a.m.; Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Daf Yomi, 5:20 p.m.; Mincha/Ma’ariv, 6:20 p.m.; Fast Ends/Megillah Reading, 6:49 p.m.; Pizza Hut and Ice Cream Social, 7:30 p.m.

TUESDAY: Purim — Nach Yomi, 6:30 a.m.; Shacharit/Megillah Reading, 6:45 a.m.; Megillah Reading, 9:15 a.m. at the Blumkin Home; Megillah Reading at the Jewish Federation, 10 a.m.; Megillah Reading, 11 a.m. at Sterling Ridge; Mincha, 5:15 p.m.; Megilliah Reading, 5:30 p.m.; Purim Party, 6 p.m.

WEDNESDAY: Shushan Purim — Nach Yomi, 6:45 a.m.; Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Daf Yomi 5:20 p.m.; Mincha/ Ma’ariv, 6 p.m.

THURSDAY: Nach Yomi, 6:45 a.m.; Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Character Development 9:30 a.m.; Daf Yomi 5:20 p.m.; Mincha/Ma’ariv, 6 p.m.; Parsha Class, 6:30 p.m.

FRIDAY-Mar. 10: Nach Yomi, 6:45 a.m.; Shacharit, 7 a.m.; Mincha/Kabbalat Shabbat/Candlelighting, 6:07 p.m.

SATURDAY-Mar. 11: Shabbat Kollel, 8:30 a.m.; Shacharit 9 a.m.; Tot Shabbat 10:45 a.m.; Mincha 6 p.m.; Laws of Shabbos/Kids Activity 6:30 p.m.; Havdalah, 7:08 p.m.

Please visit orthodoxomaha.org for additional information and Zoom service links.

BETH ISRAEL CHABAD HOUSE

All services are in-person. All classes are being offered in-person and via Zoom (ochabad.com/academy). For more information or to request help, please visit www.ochabad.com or call the office at 402.330.1800.

FRIDAY: Shacharit, 8 a.m.; Inspirational Lechayim, (new time) 5:45 p.m. with Rabbi and friends: ochabad.com/ Lechayim; Candlelighting, 5:59 p.m.

SATURDAY: Shacharit 9:30 a.m.; One-Hour Service, 11 a.m. followed by Kiddush Lunch at Chabad. Go

SUNDAY: LJCS Classes, 9:30 a.m.; LJCS Purim Family Education, 10 a.m.; Men’s Bike/Coffee Group continues to meet during the winter months, 10:30 a.m. at Rock-N-Joe, just off of 84th and Glynoaks. For more information or questions please email Al Weiss at albertw801@gmail.com; Pickleball, 3-5 p.m. at TI. For more information please contact Miriam Wallick by text message 402.470.2393 or email at Miriam57 @aol.com. Wear comfortable clothes and appropriate footwear.

MONDAY: Fast of Esther begins, 5:32 a.m.; Purim Celebration, 6:30 p.m. with Rabbi Alex and special guests at SST. Join us for readings from the Megillah, clown comedy, Esther-ific music, and hamantaschen; Fast Ends, 6:57 p.m.

WEDNESDAY: Yarn It, 9 a.m.-noon In-Person; Grades 3-6, 4-6 p.m.; T’filah, 4:45 p.m.; Grades 9-12, 6-8 p.m. at Temple; Grades 7-8 6:30-8 p.m.

THURSDAY: Thursday Morning Class 10 a.m. with Rabbi Azriel — In-Person & Zoom.

FRIDAY-Mar. 10: Drop in Mah Jongg, 9-11 a.m.; Tot Shabbat Service, 5:45 p.m. In-Person.; Shabbat Shira Service, 6 p.m. In-Person & Zoom.

SATURDAY-Mar. 11: Torah Study 9:15 a.m. In-Person & Zoom; Shabbat Morning Service, 10:30 a.m. InPerson & Zoom.

Please visit templeisraelomaha.com for additional information and Zoom service links.

Important update from our Campaign Chairs

Dear Community members, We have some exciting news to share...

We’re within a hair’s breadth of reaching our 2023 Annual Campaign goal and we’re receiving some help in getting there!

Several generous community members are offering $50,000 as a 1-to-1 match to help us reach our maximum potential.

Through this 1-to-1 match, we’ll be able to reach our goal of 3.6 Million to continue the support, education and programming we offer throughout the year.

A gift that will be matched 1-to-1 is all we’re asking for. This is the perfect opportunity to double the impact of your gift.

As you know, your donation is the reason our campus and our community are thriving.

We invite you to follow our social media pages for updates on how much your contributions have done here in Omaha and throughout the world.

Find us on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram or visit our website at www.jewishomaha.org

You are the reason why.

Joel Schlessinger, left, Kim and Bob Goldberg and Nancy Schlessinger at the Annual Campaign Event last October.

Life cycles

BARBARA J. FINKLE

Barbara J. Finkle passed away on Feb. 20, 2023, in Omaha. Services were held on Feb. 23, 2023, at Beth El Cemetery and were officiated by Rabbi Steven Abraham.

She was preceded in death by husband, Maynard Finkle and her sons, Scott and Bradley.

She is survived by sons and daughters-in-law, David and Judi, Terry and Sue, and Todd Finkle and Patti Livingstone, son-in-law, Thomas Neumann; daughter-in-law, Karen Finkle; six grandchildren, Andrew (Jessica), Jennifer (Jefferson) Hillman, Steven (Kaitlin), Alexander (Rebecca), Austin, and Zachary; and two great-grandchildren, Simon and Leo.

Barbara was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Robert and Fern Smalldon. She raised five boys and cherished her job as a nurse in the neonatal ICU for 20 years taking care of the most fragile infants.

Memorials may be made to the Nebraska Humane Society, Beth El Synagogue or the organization of your choice.

LAWRENCE DAVID KIRKE

Lawrence David Kirke passed away on Feb. 20, 2023, in Pensacola, FL. Services were held on Feb. 24, 2023, at Mount Sinai Cemetery in Omaha and were officiated by Rabbi Ari Dembitzer.

He was preceded in death by his his loving wife of nearly 48 years, Cheryl Anna Kirke in 2015; parents, Nathan and Helen Kirke; and brother, Raymond Kirke.

He is survived by his sons and daughters-in-law, Dr. Michael and Lisa Kirke of Bennington, NE, and Mark and Jana Kirke of Gulf Breeze, FL; daughter and son-in-law, Melissa and Sean Tanko of Las Vegas, NV; grandchildren: Colin, Lauren, Alex and Elyse, Kornelle and Lawson, and Jackson and Kaitlyn; and brother, Marvin Kirke of Omaha.

Larry and Cheryl moved to Kansas City in 2004 where they lived until he moved to Gulf Breeze, FL, in 2019 for his final years.

Larry was always friendly and greeted everyone that crossed his path. He loved to tease those he loved but most of all, he enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren and watching sports. Larry had a passion for baseball from playing in his younger years to rooting on his favorite teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the KC Royals. Larry will be loved eternally but is finally able to reunite with Cheryl, who has always held his heart.

SOL B. STISS

Sol B. Stiss passed away on Feb. 20, 2023, at age 88 in Lake Worth, Florida. Services were held on Feb. 22, 2023, at Beth Israel Memorial Chapel in Boynton Beach, FL, and were officiated by Rabbi David Steinhardt.

He was preceded in death by his parents, Izzie and Sarah Stiss, and brother, Jack Stiss.

He is survived by wife of 66 years, Therese Stiss, three children, Carey Stiss, married to Jill Stiss; Becky Heffner; Sarah Stiss, seven grandchildren; and five grandchildren.

He graduated from Central High School (Omaha), University of Nebraska (Lincoln), and George Washington University Law School. He was a retired tax attorney and CPA, army veteran. Sol was married 66 years to Therese. His father, Izzie, worked at the Omaha World Herald for 50 years. His brother, Jack, was a lifelong resident of Omaha. Memorials may be made to the organization of your choice.

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Reflecting on a year of helping Ukrainians at war

STEVE LIPMAN

JTA

In the months after Russian tanks rolled into her country last February, the music largely stopped for Elizaveta Sherstuk.

The founder of a Jewish choral ensemble called Aviv in her hometown of Sumy, in the northeastern flank of Ukraine, Sherstuk had to put singing aside in favor of her day job and personal mission: delivering aid to Jews in Sumy.

“There was no time to sleep,” Sherstuk recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently. “All my team members worked the same, 24/7.”

A year later, Sherstuk is still hustling as the Sumy director of Hesed, a network of welfare centers serving needy Jews in the former Soviet bloc. But she has also begun teaching music classes again, too — with performances sometimes held in bomb shelters. Sherstuk’s story reflects the ways that Russia’s war on Ukraine has affected Jews in Ukraine and beyond. The conflict has killed hundreds of thousands, left even more in peril and fundamentally altered the landscape and population of Ukraine, forcing millions to flee as refugees.

But the war has also mobilized the networks of Jewish aid and welfare groups across Europe, leading to a Jewish organizational response on a massive scale not seen in decades. And Ukrainian Jews who have remained in the country have recalibrated their lives and communities for wartime.

Here is one of four stories about Jews who stepped in and stepped up to help, and a taste of the on-the-ground situations they found themselves in.

(Ed. note: the other three stories can be read at www.omahajewishpress.com)

Sometime in the late 1890s, Harry Fellman, about 20 years old, left his home in Ukraine. According to family legend, he was a sharpshooter in the Ukrainian army and was about to be sent into active combat. Instead, he emigrated to the

United States and settled in Omaha, Nebraska, where he became a peddler.

His grandson Tom Fellman — whose middle name is Harry — doesn’t know all the 120-year-old details, but he knows that he is grateful that Harry Fellman decided to leave Ukraine when he did.

“It could [have been] me, if my grandparents had not left when they did,” said Fellman, a successful real estate developer and philanthropist in Omaha.

In October, at 78 years old, Fellman made the reverse trip across the Atlantic to pitch in to the relief effort. He also wanted to pay what he sees as a debt to the memory of his late grandfather and to help the current generation of Ukrainian Jews.

He and his wife Darlynn served as volunteers for a week at the Krakow Jewish community center, joining hundreds (possibly thousands) of volunteers from overseas who have gone to Poland and the other nations in the region over the last year to participate in humanitarian programs on behalf of the millions of Ukrainian refugees. Fellman worked nine hours a day with a half-dozen fellow foreign volunteers in the basement of the community center, transferring the contents of “big, big” sacks of items like potatoes and sugar into small containers to be distributed to refugees in the building’s first-floor food pantry. His wife spent her time in an art therapy program that was set up for

the refugee mothers and children to raise their spirits. Fellman is “not particularly religious” but supports “anything Jewish.” In 1986, he accompanied a rescue mission plane of Soviet Jews headed to Israel. “It was the most rewarding experience of my life,” he recalled.

Fellman says he plans to return to Poland, in June, for the JCC’s annual fundraising bike ride from Auschwitz to Krakow. What did his friends think of his septuagenarian volunteer stint? “They thought it was cool,” he said. “But none of them are going too.”

Darlynn and Tom Fellman volunteered in Krakow in October 2022. Credit: Tom Fellman